June 30, 2008

Lawyers and Research Ruin Everything

For those of us on the creative side of advertising, there is nothing more infuriating than having an idea nibbled to death by ducks. It doesn't take much to turn something good into shit.

Just one wrong word, one extra word, or one bad thought and an idea that's unique and memorable becomes just one more bad ad.

A million years ago, there was a very effective campaign for Band-Aid. It consisted of kids singing a silly jingle:
"I'm stuck on Band-Aid,
Cause Band-Aid's stuck on me"
I admit, it ain't "Hamlet", but it does have the elements of effective advertising: it's simple, it's memorable, it's clever. The other day I was watching tv and I saw the latest iteration of this campaign.
"I'm stuck on Band-Aid brand
Cause Band-Aid helps heal me"
I wanted to kick the tv. I'm just glad I had nothing to do with the original campaign, cause if I did, I would hunt down the agency and shoot everyone involved. The one thing that made the commercial palatable-- the parallelism of "stuck on/stuck on"-- has been removed and replaced by a focus-group approved "reason to believe" -- helps heal me. Which is what language?

The insertion of the word "brand" just serves to remind everyone that they're watching a commercial. Kids singing "Band-Aid brand?" Bullshit.

I know some lawyer told them they had to put "brand" in to protect their copyright, but you know what? You're allowed to say "screw you" to lawyers.

Thats's what Tiger Woods would have done. Just before the U.S. Open he and his caddie went to see his doctor. His doctor told him he had a torn ACL and two stress fractures of his leg and that he couldn't play in the Open. Woods said, "I'm playing, and I'm going to win. C'mon Stevie, let's go."

Afterthought:
I don't know why I get upset about an idiotic jungle. Does this stuff bother anyone else?

PostAfterthought:
It's Monday and I have to go to Denver. Maybe I'm just cranky.

June 27, 2008

Einstein On Advertising

Albert Einstein was a pretty smart guy.

What most people don't know about Einstein is that in addition to uncovering the laws of relativity, the equivalency of mass and energy, and predicting that the speed of light was constant, he also said -- without knowing it -- the smartest thing ever said about advertising.

After his amazing successes as a young man, Einstein spent the rest of his life searching for what was called the "grand unified theory" -- a theory that would unify the four known forces of nature: gravity, electro-magnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. Scientists believed -- and most still do -- that these four forces must be different manifestations of one underlying force.

Einstein worked for 40 years on this problem and failed in his attempts to uncover a grand unified theory. To date, no one has found it.

Near the end of his life he was being interviewed. The interviewer asked Einstein if he thought a grand unified theory would ever be found. He said, "The answer to this problem, when found, will be simple."

No matter how complex a marketing or advertising problem seems to be; no matter how much convoluted research has been done; no matter how many conflicting opinions there are; no matter how many "decks" have been written and Powerpoint presentations have been made, the correct answer, when found, is always simple.

June 26, 2008

Simplifiers and Complicators

About a thousand years ago I wrote a piece for ADWEEK called "Simplifiers and Complicators". It was so long ago, ADWEEK wasn't even called ADWEEK. It was called MAC.

Every now and then I run into someone who reminds me of the piece. It happened again last week.

I can't remember the specifics of the article, but the point was that there are two kinds of people: people who simplify things and people who complicate them. In most businesses, complicators are annoying. In advertising they are ruinous.

Every time you create an ad there are a million things to say about the brand or product. The key to producing a successful ad is in understanding what is essential and what is extraneous. Simplifiers have the ability to cut down the weeds and clear a path. Complicators cannot distinguish between the pertinent and the irrelevant.

If you're working with an account exec or a creative director who is a complicator, you understand the frustration involved. If you're working with a client who's a complicator, you're probably thinking about that fry job at Burger King.

In an ad agency, one highly placed complicator can undo the good work of a dozen simplifiers.

June 25, 2008

Why Your Clients Hate You

Photos of the Cannes advertising whack-a-thon from Ad Age. Every room, martini, airline ticket, condom, shrimp cocktail, limo, line, and hooker subsidized by client ad budgets.


Maybe Not Cautious Enough

In an article on June 18th called "Brought To You By...Anyone?" The Washington Post chided "big brands" for being slow to adopt digital media in their advertising plans.

"While spending on Internet marketing has been growing dramatically over the past decade, the top 50 or 60 brand marketers are very much underrepresented," said Randall Rothenberg, president and chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau..."
The Post gave a number of reasons for big brands being cautious about online advertising -- the usual nonsense about agencies being conservative...

"...the advertising industry and its workforce are more accustomed to creating and presenting 15-second television spots (huh?) or magazine ads than they are to arranging an online campaign."

Of course, they didn't mention the real reason why anyone with a brain is "cautious" about online advertising -- the alarming ineffectiveness of online display ads.

In contrast to the supposed short-sightedness of the "big brands", the story focused on the progressive thinking of a company called Apollo Group, Inc. which owns the University of Phoenix and is the largest single spender of online advertising dollars. Last year they spent $278 million on online advertising.
"We are, in fact, everywhere," said (Rob) Wrubel, who is chief executive of... the online ad outfit owned by the university's parent company (Apollo Group, Inc.) He compared their spots to "carpet bombing..."
Yeah, well they're bombing all right. Five days later, on June 23rd, I happened to run across this. According to The Financial Times...
Audit Integrity (the "the leading provider of accounting and governance risk analysis on public companies" )...published a list of companies that performed poorly in its rankings of corporate governance... (they) identified University of Phoenix owner Apollo Group, Inc. (as having) “serious questions regarding management’s integrity vis-a-vis their shareholders... the companies may be intentionally deceiving their shareholders to mask serious problems...”

$278 million in online advertising? Somehow I'm not surprised.

June 24, 2008

Just Toddlers With Money

One of my regular stops in the blogosphere is remarkable communication written by Sonia Simone, which is aimed at helping online marketers write and think better.

She wrote a post last week called A Toddler's Guide To Salemanship which drew analogies between talking to customers and talking to three-year-olds.

It reminded me of something my daughter used to do when she was a kid. We called it "Twelve Degrees of Why." It went like this:

"Dad, why do the stars go away during the day?"

"They don't go away."

"Then why can't we see them?"

"Uh...because the sun's light is stronger and drowns them out."

"Why is the sun's light stronger?"

"Um...because it's closer."

"Why is it closer?"

And on and on....

The interesting thing was that at the end of the interrogation, I found out if I really understood something or not.

It's much the same with clients. A smart client, like a smart kid, is a pain in the ass who wants to know "why." And the more they press you, the more you find out whether you really know what you're talking about.

Clients are just toddlers with money.

June 23, 2008

It's All About U

I never post on weekends, but I write on weekends.

So it's actually Saturday morning now. And it's probably one of the most unusual Saturday mornings in at least a hundred years. Why? The two major league home run leaders this morning are guys whose last names begin with "U" -- Dan Uggla and Chase Utley.

I want some of you tech and data geeks out there to scour the web and tell us if there has ever been another time in the history of baseball when the two leading home run hitters had last names that began with "U." First one with a reliable answer gets to accompany me on an all-expense-paid trip to a SF Giants baseball game next time he/she is in SF. Including beer.

Okay, get going.

Afterthought:
One more "U" story. A true story about my mother.

One day about a million years ago, I decided to surprise my parents. I had moved to SF about 3 months earlier and they were living in NY. I hopped on a red-eye and flew to JFK. I arrived about 5:00 am. I rented a car and drove to their apartment.

I arrived about 6:30 am. As expected, they were sitting at the dining room table drinking coffee and smoking cigarets. There were hugs all around. Then I noticed it. My mother was wearing a sweatshirt. It said, "F_CK. The Only Thing Missing Is U."

Now you understand why I turned out this way.

PostAfterthought:
What does all this have to do with advertising (WDATHTDWA?) Maintaining my contrarian status requires me to ignore the putative theme of this blog as frequently as possible.

June 20, 2008

Cliche Update

The Calibrated Cliche Counter -- TAC's proprietary marketing claptrap detector - reports that "engagement" is losing steam and "conversation" is gaining momentum.

Check out this blog post in which a guy named David Deal (apparently a marketing director for Avenue A/Razorfish) uses the word "conversation" 4 times in one paragraph. We call that "leveraging the bullshit." Congratulations to David!

TAC Predicts: Within 2 years the word "advertising" will become outdated and will be replaced by some new pompous marketing buzzword. Best current candidate --"media arts."


June 19, 2008

How The Narcissistic Keep In Touch With The Feckless

The latest idiotic rage in "social media" is Twitter.

For those of you who have been on another planet for the last year or so, Twitter is essentially a way for the narcissistic to keep in touch with the feckless.

In short bursts, 140 characters or less, they post messages to their "friends" about what they're doing -- "Now I'm going to the dry cleaners." "Now I'm changing my shorts."

As a blogger, I'm no stranger to narcissism. But the idea that someone (other than Marcel Proust) thinks the mundane particulars of his/her daily life are so fascinating that they should be documented and regularly updated is astounding. The fact that anyone actually follows them is mind-boggling.

To the outsider (that's me), it reinforces the impression that this whole "social media" thing is just one big circle of jerk.

Afterthought:
Have you noticed that it's hard to find a TAC post without the word "idiotic" or "moronic" in it? I'm starting to think I'm not a people person.

AfterAfterthought:
Also, "dry cleaning" seems to pop up a lot.

PostAfterAfterthought:
Like "chat rooms", Twitter will be a bad memory soon enough

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June 18, 2008

Brilliant and Delusional

A very interesting ad guy named Tony Schwartz died this week. Tony was apparently a strange and remarkable person. You can read about him here.

Tony was responsible for the most famous political spot ever created, called the "Daisy Ad", which you can see here.

The spot was created for Lyndon Johnson during the presidential race of 1964. The spot was unquestionably one of the most brilliant -- and slanderous -- political ads ever run. And was hugely effective.

It implied that Barry Goldwater, Johnson's adversary, was dangerously irresponsible and was likely to trigger nuclear war. It was the granddaddy of all the awful, negative political advertising we are subject to today.

The thing that interests me most about Tony is something that interests me about a lot of artists -- their blindness to the ramifications of their work. In Tony's words...
“For many years, it’s been referred to as the beginning of negative commercials...There was nothing negative about it. Frankly, I think it was the most positive commercial ever made

June 17, 2008

Dumb and Desperate

The advertising community has convinced itself to go back 50 years and create its own tv shows to sponsor. Although now, of course, it has to have a bullshit name -- "branded entertainment" -- to make it more attractive to the nitwits who are doing it.
“Branded entertainment brings the experience of the brand to the viewer...” said Mitch Sheiner, vice president and associate media director at...MediaVest ...
Yeah, right. And how's this for some brilliant branded entertainment...
Dos Equis beer will present a reality series on the Mojo HD cable network that will chronicle the search for an assistant to a character who is featured in the brand’s advertising campaign.. according to The New York Times.
Wow, can't wait for that. Talk about bringing the experience of the brand to the viewer! Well, if you think that's stupid, wait, there's more.
...Meow Mix...is underwriting a game show for GSN, the Game Show Network cable channel, that will test how well cat owners understand their pets — and vice versa...
I don't understand my wife, I'm supposed to understand my cat?
Putting something on TV is easy,” Mr. Sheiner said. “Putting something on TV that’s effective and engaging and builds awareness — that’s the key.
Yeah, good luck with that, Sheiner.

June 16, 2008

Too Much Information

I had the pleasure of playing golf at Pebble Beach last week. On the first hole (par 4) I hit my second shot to within two feet of the hole. Although a mediocre golfer, I can make 2-footers 9 out of 10 times.

Then the caddie said, "Play it just outside the left edge. Two-thirds of the ball outside the lip and one-third inside." As soon as he said that, I knew I would miss it. And, sure enough, I did.

Sometimes we make simple things way too complicated. We confuse ourselves and make the task much more difficult than it needs to be.

This is especially true in advertising. It's hard to imagine that there's another industry that has taken a simple idea -- it's lucrative to publicize your product -- and complicated it as much as we have.

Brand architecture, positioning documents, strategy statements, copy briefs...two-thirds outside the lip and one-third inside.

June 13, 2008

How To Be Happy In Advertising

TAC is traveling today. Here's an oldie.

Dr. AdContrarian is on duty today to help you be a happier ad person. Please have a seat.

It's not easy being happy in advertising. It's a frustrating business. Modern life is filled with many horrors -- war, husbands, pizza with chicken on it... And we ad people are closely aligned with something uniquely horrible -- pop culture.

Advertising used to be about discovering what consumers want and creating messages to address those interests. Now it's about pretending to find out what consumers want, but really trying to figure out what the next hot cultural thing is going to be and jumping on it under the pretext of understanding consumer interests. Call me cynical.

Paying such close attention to pop culture causes great anxiety. It is non-stop slime bucket stimulation . We secretly enjoy pop culture because it keeps us on edge and anxious. This works its way through our back-office computers to stimulate us consciously and make us miserable unconsciously (full disclosure - I have no idea what I'm talking about but, admit it, if your shrink said this you'd nod your head.)

Anyway, I was on vacation not long ago. I was out-of-the-loop for a while -- off-the-grid, so to speak. I came back 50% happier than I left. After thinking about it, I realized that I was so much less tense and anxious because I hadn't watched a tv show, or read a newspaper, or visited a pop culture website, or watched a news broadcast for weeks.

June 12, 2008

5 Good Things About Advertising

1. If you're in it long enough you'll use everything you know.
2. It's the last stronghold of really smart C students.
3. You get to look behind the curtain of lots of different kinds of businesses.
4. If you pay attention, there is no other occupation that teaches you more thoroughly the difference between what people say and what they do.
5. It's way more interesting than dry cleaning.

June 11, 2008

The Cluefree Manifesto

Nine years ago, something called the Cluetrain Manifesto appeared. It became a kind of web-geek Declaration of Independence in which online zealots threatened to hold their breath until someone paid attention to them. It is apparently the basis for the "coversationalist/social media" branch of online dogmatism.

Always years behind the times, TAC came across it just last week, and published it on Monday.
It's probably best to read it before you read today's post.

The target was too easy to pass up, so we had to create the "Cluefree Manifesto." Here it is.

The Cluefree Manifesto
95 Theses

1. Markets are conversations. Supermarkets are arguments.
2. Markets consist of aisles and checkout counters and really good stuff like Doritos and Mountain Dew.
3. Conversations among human beings are usually tiresome. You’re better off doing a crossword.
4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically shrill and irritating.
5. People recognize each other and wisely cross the street.
6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible when we actually looked at each other.
7. Hot links subvert haute cuisine.
8. In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, intrusive international interest in intestines is intentionally and inevitably intense.
9. These networked conversations are enabling really hot pictures to emerge.
10. Markets are getting more organized. Like when they have those good olives in the cheese section.
11. People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from their IT department.
12. There are no secrets. Except how to change line spacing in Powerpoint.
13. What's happening to markets is also happening among employees. A metaphysical construct called "The Paycheck" is the only thing standing between the two.
14. Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. Especially when all those big shots inhale helium and start talking like chipmunks or something.
15. In just a few more years, the current homogenized "voice" of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the "Cluetrain Manifesto."
16. Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone. Except, of course, their customers.
17. Companies that assume online markets are the same as markets that carry Hot Pockets are kidding themselves.
18. Companies that don't realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are probably confused by the structure of illiterate sentences like this.
19. Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. Or they can just go there and stand in line like the rest of us.
20. Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. Especially when you buy a can of Mountain Dew for a buck when you could have bought a whole six-pack for a buck ninety-nine. How stupid is that?
21. Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor. And stop issuing “manifestos”.
22. Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the corporate web site. It means hilarous banter about farts and poop and stuff like that.
23. Companies attempting to "position" themselves need to take a position. Like when the girl is on top...yeah, baby!
24. Bombastic boasts—"Maybe you're impressing your investors. Maybe you're impressing Wall Street. You're not impressing us."—do not constitute a position.
25. Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships. But be careful, those Ivory Steps are slippery.
26. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets and sometimes of their dry cleaners.
27. By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, their manifestos invite parody.
28. Most marketing programs are based on the fear that the market might see what's really going on inside their pants.
29. Elvis said it best: "Pass the Oreos, darlin’."
30. Going out for Chinese is the corporate version of going steady.
31. Networked markets can change pajamas overnight. Networked knowledge workers can change shirts over lunch. Your own "downsizing initiatives" taught us to ask the question: "Who has the mustard?"
32. Smart markets will find check-out clerks who speak their own language.
33. Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor trick. Unless you’re a ventriloquist or something.
34. To speak with a human voice, companies must not make long lists of “95 things.”
35. But first, they must belong to a community and register to vote.
36. Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end. And also where the damn stapler went.
37. If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have no market. Also, they shouldn’t end before the holiday season because that’s when all the fun starts.
38. Human communities are based on whining. Especially those “senior” communities.
39. The community of discourse is the market. Or haven’t we hit you over the head with this enough yet?
40. Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will die. Or at least get a rotator cuff and need an MRI.
41. Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than against those guys selling magazine subscriptions.
42. As with networked markets, people are also talking to each other directly inside the company—and not just about rules and regulations, boardroom directives, bottom lines. Also about recipes, and those Viagra emails, and the Yankees. What’s up with them?
43. Such conversations are taking place today on corporate intranets. But only when the phone system is down.
44. Companies typically install intranets top-down, which is silly unless you don’t care about the wind messing up your hair.
45. Intranets naturally tend to route around bedrooms.
46. A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union. But you don’t get to meet guys named Vito.
47. While this scares companies witless, it doesn’t scare them as much as Vito does.
48. When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like this kind of pompous bullshit.
49. Org charts worked in an older economy where plans could be fully understood from atop steep management pyramids and deli orders could be handed down from on high.
50. Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority. That’s why Steve Jobs has to take so much shit from software engineers.
51. Command-and-control management styles both derive from and reinforce bureaucracy, power tripping, an overall culture of paranoia, and incomprehensible writing.
52. Raid kills bugs fast.
53. There are two conversations going on. How am I supposed to read?
54. In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Especially the one about lending money to your sister.
55. As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken. Command and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in internetworked markets. And also in intrerior-networked networks and work nets.
56. These two conversations want to talk to each other. They are speaking the same language. They recognize each other's voices. They sing the same songs. They dance in the moonlight. They fly on gossamer wings. They kiss and make up. They love, and love to be loved. They find meaning in meaning, and nothing in nothingness. They chant beneath the moon. They laugh and soar and fart and make big fat poopies and write pathetically infantile pseudo-poetic nonsense.
57. Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner. We, the conversationalists, will take a vacation and try to lose a few pounds.
58. If willingness to get out of the way is taken as a measure of sperm count, then very few companies are having nocturnal emissions.
59. However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now online perceive companies as little more than quaint legal fictions that are actively preventing these conversations from intersecting. Except when they want to buy something.
60. This is suicidal. Markets want to talk to companies. Please send them your phone numbers.
61. Sadly, the part of the company a networked market wants to talk to is the good looking babes who are stuck in some rotten cubicle doing spreadsheets.
62. Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want hot babes.
63. De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those markets. We want to talk to you. We are the world. We are the children.
64. We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge, your wives, your liquor cabinet, your stash. And could you lend us twenty till Friday?
65. We're also the workers who make your companies go. (How? We put Metamucil in the Crystal Geyser.)
66. As markets, as workers, both of us are sick to death of getting our information by remote control. Why do we need faceless annual reports and third-hand market research studies to introduce us to each other? Why can’t we just get together over a drink and then, I don’t know, we could go to my place…?
67. As markets, as workers, we wonder why you're not listening. Is it because we’re so fucking annoying?
68. The inflated self-important jargon you sling around—in the press, at your conferences—it's kidstuff compared to this bullshit.
69. Maybe you're impressing your investors. Maybe you're impressing Wall Street. You're not impressing us. But if we could borrow your Beemer for just a few minutes, that would be awesome.
70. If you don't impress us, your investors are going to take a bath. Which is something we ought to think about.
71. Your tired notions of "the market" make our eyes glaze over. And our noses run. And that yukky stuff to accumulate between our toes.
72. We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are creating it. And you’re not invited. And if you tell mom, I’ll kill you.
73. You're invited, but it's our world. Take your shoes off at the door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel! Ooh, sorry. Didn’t realize it’s your husband.
74. We are immune to advertising. But can we have a little sip of your Coke?
75. If you want us to talk to you, please take those earbuds out.
76. We've got some ideas for you too: but we’re not going to tell because it's for us to know and you to find out!
77. You're too busy "doing your business" to answer our email? Oh gosh, sorry, gee, we'll come back later. Remember to flush.
78. You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention. Look at me when I talk to you.
79. We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic self-involvement, join the party. And maybe you can bring some beer.
80. Don't worry, you can still make money. That is, as long as you ignore every moronic thing in this idiotic screed.
81. Have you noticed that, in itself, money is kind of one-dimensional and boring? What else can we talk about? How about that blouse you were wearing on Tuesday? Yeah, baby!
82. Your product broke. Why? I’ll tell you why. Because I tried to stick my wife’s cat in it and he started screeching and biting.
83. We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from The Wall Street Journal. And you know which one I mean. The one with the “big ones.”
84. We know some people from your company. They’re pathetic dicks, too.
85. When we have questions we turn to each other for answers. That’s why we’re so clueless.
86. When we're not busy being your "target market," many of us are your people. We'd rather be talking to friends online than watching the clock. Actually, we’d rather be doing anything online because online is the only place we can criticize everything and everyone without people realizing what hopeless weasels we are.
87. We'd like it if you got what's going on here. You just don't get it, do you? Do you?.
88. We have better things to do than worry about whether you'll change in time to get to the Halloween party. I’m going as Mr. Spock. Cool, huh?
89. We have real power and we know it. Don't let this pitiful whining fool you.
90. Even at its worst, our newfound conversation is more interesting than most trade shows, more entertaining than any TV sitcom, and certainly more true-to-life than the corporate web sites we've been seeing. And it’s all your fault and I'm telling my dad.
91. Our allegiance is to ourselves—and to the flag of the United States of America.
92. Companies are spending billions of dollars on Y2K. Why can't they buy us a beer? Just one. Is that too much to ask? Oh, and maybe a sandwich. Nothing fancy. Tuna or something?
93. We're both inside companies and outside them. That’s why there’s that smell.
94. To traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are. We have better tools, nicer pencils cases, and watches that tell the hour in three different time zones.
95. We are waking up and linking to each other. Then we are having strawberry Toaster Strudel and going back to sleep. Please don’t slam the door.

June 10, 2008

5 Bad Things About Advertising

1. When we say it's an art, they say it's a business. When we say it's a business, they say it's an art.
2. Ten million people see your mistakes every night.
3. The good stuff often fails. The bad stuff often works.
4. Success is never final.
5. It's way harder than it looks.


Coming tomorrow:
The Cluefree Manifesto

June 09, 2008

Clueless

TAC seems to have become a pariah among the cult of web zealotry. You can read recent references to my stupidity at the following locations:
Here
Here
Here
and
Here

My great sin has been to be skeptical about the effectiveness of online social media as a marketing tool.

To get myself more familiar with this topic -- just in case it turns into a fist fight -- I tried going back to original sources. Apparently one of the early documents in this field is something called the "Cluetrain Manifesto" -- without question one of the most smug, pompous, humorless, and infantile exercises in self-righteousness I have ever had the agony of reading.

It contains "95 Theses" (Get it? Actually one thesis repeated 95 times) and came from a book of the same name.

It's so out of date now as to be laughable, but in its time it seems to have served as some kind of bible for the web-babble crowd.

If you're like me and haven't paid much attention to the lunatic fringe of web advocacy over the years, you really ought to read this thing. I have reproduced it below.


95 Theses

1. Markets are conversations.
2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.
6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
8. In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
9. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.
11. People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.
12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.
13. What's happening to markets is also happening among employees. A metaphysical construct called "The Company" is the only thing standing between the two.
14. Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.
15. In just a few more years, the current homogenized "voice" of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.
16. Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.
17. Companies that assume online markets are the same markets that used to watch their ads on television are kidding themselves.
18. Companies that don't realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.
19. Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. If they blow it, it could be their last chance.
20. Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.
21. Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.
22. Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the corporate web site. Rather, it requires big values, a little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view.
23. Companies attempting to "position" themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market actually cares about.
24. Bombastic boasts—"We are positioned to become the preeminent provider of XYZ"—do not constitute a position.
25. Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.
26. Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.
27. By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they build walls to keep markets at bay.
28. Most marketing programs are based on the fear that the market might see what's really going on inside the company.
29. Elvis said it best: "We can't go on together with suspicious minds."
30. Brand loyalty is the corporate version of going steady, but the breakup is inevitable—and coming fast. Because they are networked, smart markets are able to renegotiate relationships with blinding speed.
31. Networked markets can change suppliers overnight. Networked knowledge workers can change employers over lunch. Your own "downsizing initiatives" taught us to ask the question: "Loyalty? What's that?"
32. Smart markets will find suppliers who speak their own language.
33. Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor trick. It can't be "picked up" at some tony conference.
34. To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.
35. But first, they must belong to a community.
36. ompanies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end.
37. If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have no market.
38. Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech about human concerns.
39. The community of discourse is the market.
40. Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will die.
41. Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than against their own market and workforce.
42. As with networked markets, people are also talking to each other directly inside the company—and not just about rules and regulations, boardroom directives, bottom lines.
43. Such conversations are taking place today on corporate intranets. But only when the conditions are right.
44. Companies typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies and other corporate information that workers are doing their best to ignore.
45. Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable: an intranetworked corporate conversation.
46. A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.
47. While this scares companies witless, they also depend heavily on open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist the urge to "improve" or control these networked conversations.
48. When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of the networked marketplace.
49. Org charts worked in an older economy where plans could be fully understood from atop steep management pyramids and detailed work orders could be handed down from on high.
50. Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority.
51. Command-and-control management styles both derive from and reinforce bureaucracy, power tripping and an overall culture of paranoia.
52. Paranoia kills conversation. That's its point. But lack of open conversation kills companies.
53. There are two conversations going on. One inside the company. One with the market.
54. In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete notions of command and control.
55. As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken. Command and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in internetworked markets.
56. These two conversations want to talk to each other. They are speaking the same language. They recognize each other's voices.
57. Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.
58. If willingness to get out of the way is taken as a measure of IQ, then very few companies have yet wised up.
59. However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now online perceive companies as little more than quaint legal fictions that are actively preventing these conversations from intersecting.
60. This is suicidal. Markets want to talk to companies.
61. Sadly, the part of the company a networked market wants to talk to is usually hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of language that rings false—and often is.
62. Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall.
63. De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those markets. We want to talk to you.
64. We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance.
65. We're also the workers who make your companies go. We want to talk to customers directly in our own voices, not in platitudes written into a script.
66. As markets, as workers, both of us are sick to death of getting our information by remote control. Why do we need faceless annual reports and third-hand market research studies to introduce us to each other?
67. As markets, as workers, we wonder why you're not listening. You seem to be speaking a different language.
68. The inflated self-important jargon you sling around—in the press, at your conferences—what's that got to do with us?
69. Maybe you're impressing your investors. Maybe you're impressing Wall Street. You're not impressing us.
70. If you don't impress us, your investors are going to take a bath. Don't they understand this? If they did, they wouldn't let you talk that way.
71. Your tired notions of "the market" make our eyes glaze over. We don't recognize ourselves in your projections—perhaps because we know we're already elsewhere.
72. We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are creating it.
73. You're invited, but it's our world. Take your shoes off at the door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!
74. We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.
75. f you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it something interesting for a change.
76. We've got some ideas for you too: some new tools we need, some better service. Stuff we'd be willing to pay for. Got a minute?
77. You're too busy "doing business" to answer our email? Oh gosh, sorry, gee, we'll come back later. Maybe.
78. You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.
79. We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic self-involvement, join the party.
80. Don't worry, you can still make money. That is, as long as it's not the only thing on your mind.
81. Have you noticed that, in itself, money is kind of one-dimensional and boring? What else can we talk about?
82. Your product broke. Why? We'd like to ask the guy who made it. Your corporate strategy makes no sense. We'd like to have a chat with your CEO. What do you mean she's not in?
83. We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from The Wall Street Journal.
84. We know some people from your company. They're pretty cool online. Do you have any more like that you're hiding? Can they come out and play?
85. When we have questions we turn to each other for answers. If you didn't have such a tight rein on "your people" maybe they'd be among the people we'd turn to.
86. When we're not busy being your "target market," many of us are your people. We'd rather be talking to friends online than watching the clock. That would get your name around better than your entire million dollar web site. But you tell us speaking to the market is Marketing's job.
87. We'd like it if you got what's going on here. That'd be real nice. But it would be a big mistake to think we're holding our breath.
88. We have better things to do than worry about whether you'll change in time to get our business. Business is only a part of our lives. It seems to be all of yours. Think about it: who needs whom?
89. We have real power and we know it. If you don't quite see the light, some other outfit will come along that's more attentive, more interesting, more fun to play with.
90. Even at its worst, our newfound conversation is more interesting than most trade shows, more entertaining than any TV sitcom, and certainly more true-to-life than the corporate web sites we've been seeing.
91. Our allegiance is to ourselves—our friends, our new allies and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Companies that have no part in this world, also have no future.
92. Companies are spending billions of dollars on Y2K. Why can't they hear this market timebomb ticking? The stakes are even higher.
93. We're both inside companies and outside them. The boundaries that separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall today, but they're really just an annoyance. We know they're coming down. We're going to work from both sides to take them down.
94. To traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.
95. We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.
Note to Cheney:
Close down Gitmo and make your prisoners read the Cluetrain Manifesto. They'll talk.

Don't Miss It:
Later this week, TAC will release "The Cluefree Manifesto." An update on the original.


June 06, 2008

Congratulations!

My wonderful daughter graduates high school this weekend. She makes me proud every day.

Friday Celebrity Roundup

Remember the time your mom got drunk?

Embarrassing, wasn't it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
What will we do without her?

Susan Sarandon says that if John McCain wins the election, she will move to Canada or Italy.

Finally, a reason to vote for McCain.

Afterthought...
Wish I had a dollar for every Hollywood phony who said (s)he would move to another country if someone (s)he didn't like won an election. We ought to make them sign contracts.

Note to Susan:
Would you mind taking Mel and Barbra with you?

What Does This Have To Do With Advertising?
Nothing. Contrarians do whatever the hell they want -- especially on Fridays.

June 05, 2008

Grand Strategic Insights

One of the best pieces of advice I can give to anyone in marketing or advertising is this:

  • Be eternally skeptical of grand strategic insights

Planners, researchers and their ilk love to take a little information and turn it into a heroic vision. Beware of this. Most valuable insights are small and contingent.

I was once at an advertising conference and a planning director was making a presentation. She was talking about groups she was conducting for a bank. The groups were going nowhere. She asked a participant “If you could invent the perfect bank, what would it be like?” He sat there for a minute or two without answering.

“I suddenly realized,” she said, “I had the answer right there before me. People don’t want to think about their bank. Then I knew I had the strategy: Bank of Whatever-It-Was. It’s the bank you don’t have to think about!

I have a different explanation for the above. She asked a moronic question and the respondent sat there dazed and confused. From the flimsiest of observations she drew a majestic, idiotic conclusion.

Worst of all, the agency and the client bought it.

June 04, 2008

Smart Guys Being Stupid

I read two really dumb things last week by two really smart guys.

First was Seth Godin. He wrote a blog about Danny DeVito. Claimed that Danny DeVito had a better chance of becoming a star than George Clooney. Why?

The math...tells us...

...everyone in Hollywood is trying to be George, there are a lot more opportunities for the few Dannys willing to show up.

Invest in Danny. The edges usually pay off.

Oh, yeah. There are way more fat, bald 5-foot tall shrimp movie stars than Clooneys. Hollywood just can't get enough of 'em.

"The few Danny's willing to show up"? Seth, you ever been to a casting session? In Southern California, every Tom, Dick and Harry is a Danny. You really need to get out from behind that computer.

Next was a quote from Mark Kvamme, founder of now defunct CKS and super-rich venture capital guy.
His advice to attendees gathered at today's American Association of Advertising Agencies' Digital Conference: creativity alone won't cut it in the future. As advertising moves from messages to engagement, technology is a critical component for success. "You have to have world-class creative, but you have to have world-class tech folks who can translate that into conversations..."

Right, there aren't enough tech geeks floating around, now we need them in ad agencies. Maybe we can get rid of all the creatives and just have agencies filled with account planners, online strategists and data analysts. That'll make these overfed global deal-makers happy.

And if I hear one more moronic pronouncement about "conversations" someone's gonna die.

Afterthought:
An ad agency doing tech work is like a plumber doing surgery.

And one more thing:
How did CKS, the leading web agency in the universe, go bust just when the web was exploding? My theory: "We didn't bring any creative work to show you, but here's Dylan, our data analyst."

June 03, 2008

The Tyranny of Strategy

Advertising strategies are not handed down by God.

They are written by planners, researchers, account execs, clients and other mildly retarded mortals.

You only have to turn on the tv to notice that these people often get it wrong.

Meanwhile, good creative people sometimes have a better feel for the problem than the committee that wrote the strategy. It is not unheard of for them to develop -- unknowingly -- a strategy that is better than the one you approved.

If you are a creative director, account manager, client-side ad manager or marketing director, you really need to keep this in mind when evaluating creative work.

It’s not enough to say "this is off strategy". You must also ask yourself, "is this a better strategy than the one we have?"

If the answer is yes, you’re going to have a lousy week. You have to go back and un-sell a strategy that has probably taken months to develop; has been up and down the organization; and has lots of (probably irrelevant) research behind it. All because some pain-in-the-ass copywriter or art director -- at the end of the process -- sees the problem a little more clearly than you did at the beginning.

Somehow, you have to convince a whole bunch of people that the thinking they’ve been doing for the past few months is wrong.

Sound tough? That’s why you get the big bucks, baby.

June 02, 2008

The Mindless Herd

Advertising has always been a trendy business. But the internet has driven the trendiness to new heights. It has turned ad agencies into a mindless herd, desperate to be on the cutting edge regardless of how much of their clients' money they are pissing away.

For some time now TAC has been screaming that most advertising on "social media" is a monumental waste of money (see my guest blog on Copyblogger.)

Apparently, at least a few in the ad industry are catching on. Here's an excerpt from a piece in last week's ADWEEK.

...a Facebook user looks at a page filled with dozens of links and snippets of information, mostly about friends' activities. Such environments yield terrible ad-click rates....

"Advertisers are finding that the inventory being packaged for them and the spend they're being asked for isn't justified by the results," said Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, a New York digital agency. "The low-hanging fruit of results is click-throughs and it's frankly minimal, no matter how much targeting is applied.

"Last week, eMarketer lowered its forecast for social-media ad spending by 12 percent...it tempered its enthusiasm for meshing ads with social environments. It estimates MySpace will miss its $1 billion U.S. sales goal by 11 percent and Facebook will take in 13 percent less than the $305 million forecast."


I'm shocked. Shocked I tell you!

Remember...
Perspective is called cluelessness by those who don't have it.