Drinks after work are revealing when it comes to personal opinions.

Recently we heard complaints about both young and older people ad agencies.

‘Young people in the business are not trained to a high enough level. Few know how to write.’

That got an affirmative nod.

‘Yeah, tell me about it’, one guy said. He’s fairly young himself, but successful.

Then seniors were in the crosshairs.

Energetic, open-minded, risk-taking, provocative — not!

More to that, we heard, ‘those in more senior positions are in decline and s%!t when it comes to effecting change.’

‘Pass 50 and you’re passed it.’

A bit harsh, of course, but maybe it was the Jack Daniels talking. In any case, someone said it’s no wonder clients are unhappy with agencies and business is shifting to consultants.

The thing is, why complain if you don’t have a solution. It’s just ear bashing.

So, how about better training programs? They’re bound to help young art directors, writers and account people. Agencies could invest more in courses to bring staff further along.

But what about seniors, those who could be well set in there ways and not exactly open to change.

The imperative could be ‘remake yourself, make a clean, new start’.

It’s easier said then done, but a model for that is Glenda Jackson.

Remember Glenda Jackson?

The great actress is coming out of retirement to play King Lear in an Old Vic production.

A woman in the King Lear role is intriguing as a re-imagination of Shakespeare.

But gender swapping is not unheard of in Shakespeare productions.

Women have played Hamlet.

And in the role they’ve come across as virile, manly and tough. Especially Sarah Bernhardt who played the role in Paris and London in 1899.

We’re wondering if a man could play Joan of Arc as well in George Bernard Shaw’s play Saint Joan.

Chances are you know Glenda Jackson’s work. Academy Awards for Best Actress, Emmy Awards … the list of her abilities is as long as your arm.

But imagine giving all that up to follow your political convictions.

Jackson did just that.

She retired from acting to stand for election to the House of Commons in 1992.

She became Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, served as a shadow minister and was appointed as parliamentary under secretary of state by Tony Blair.

No doubt we’re forgetting half a hundred other accomplishments including railing against Margaret Thatcher’s policies in order to redress the problems of unemployment.

Now Glenda Jackson is back.

She opens as King Lear on October 25th.

For those in decline, here’s a thought.

The Old Vic box office is open. So fly to London.

It’s bound to be inspiring, motivating and more to head for the Old Vic to see Glenda Jackson stage.

She’s a living example that you don’t have to be in decline and s%!t past 50.

Did we 50? Glenda Jackson is more like 80.

There’s a loaded expression for you, Do It The Way I Picture You Doing It.

 It’s how some marketers direct the creative work of their agencies.

Anything counter to their thinking hits a snag.

With inflexible beliefs or inexperience, any chance of progress is squashed.

It’s not exactly a great recipe for creativity, is it, when you start with preconceptions and boundaries.

We were wondering about this when it comes to Volvo.

The company is going from strength to strength with their cars.

The new S90 sedan is a wonder of automotive thinking according to car reviewers.

The V90 wagon, soon to be introduced, should put the German manufacturers on notice when it comes to excellence.

Volvo has come a long way.

But it looks like the opposite is true for Volvo advertising.

Many say it’s become ordinary.

So what’s happened to Volvo’s ability to do great ads?

Not too long ago they excelled not just in the automotive category but they stood as examples of how good advertising can be.

What’s holding Volvo back, is it the Do It The Way I Picture You Doing It thing? Or is it the agency?

Maybe Volvo engineers should have a say in the ads.

That way the work could become as good as the cars they build.

That shaming …

It’s evident in the tattooed number the Nazis put on Elie Wiesel’s forearm in Buchenwald.

A-7713.

Nelson Mandela had a number as well. A penitentiary number. A government dehumanized him as 46664, locking him away for 27 years.

You know how the 46664 story turned out, of course.

Prisoner to President. It’s a tribute to rights and justice.

Lesser known may be Wiesel who passed away yesterday (2 July) at 87.

He survived the Holocaust to write Night. A 127-page book about death in the concentration camps.

Smoke from the chimneys carried away the innocent faces of children. That’s his image, his memory.

At 127 pages Night is short but terrifying. It’s hardly bearable.

Many agree that it’s good that it’s alarming.

Still, Wiesel left us a message about that.

He said, ‘Because I remember I despair … because I remember I have the duty to reject despair’.

There’s an abiding faith in humanism and the future in that.

Optimism … even after wreathes of smoke spilled from the chimney tops.

Maybe that’s why Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama looked to him for inspiration.

Many will now read and re-read Night. Many of the unborn will come to read it as well.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

So said the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.

True enough.

But what’s wrong with making an effort to create the future?

Why do many content themselves with hindsight instead of trying to break new ground?

Could it be it’s easier and less risky than trying to figure out what’s next?

You don’t need me to tell you it’s not simple to become an innovator.

It’s tough to extend your boundaries in the marketplace.

Is that why a lot of thinking becomes commoditized?

Maybe it’s the reason some marketers rely on old certainties and strategy by habit.

People become rubber stamps for thinking.

Well, it is difficult to teach the future.

If you’re like most companies, training is based on an established strategy.

What the boss says.

And if C-Suite ideas are producing revenue it’s hard to argue for change when the money is rolling in.

However, one area could be easier for improvement.

HR.

As many HR people hire only in their company’s image they may be limiting the ability of their organization.

Selling it short.

Creating a downstream effect that makes it harder to compete.

Some HR execs don’t take into account the advantages of diverse thinking. Viewpoints that prompt thought, discussion and reexamined opinions.

To many it feels safer to duplicate the kind of people on your team. Common ground is reassuring.

Yet more of the same doesn’t always equal more in terms of an organization’s ability to see ahead and move ahead.

Especially when you see the same ideas tabled.

The ones that merely restate what you and everyone else already believes.

Those with different backgrounds and experiences could bring a new perspective to products and progress in the marketplace.

They could accelerate your future.

So, what if HR could think differently to find the kind of enquiring minds that created Uber, Airbnb, Tesla or the Dyson line of products?

Of course fresh thinking can be contrary thinking.

But isn’t that what Kodak needed when they invented digital imaging and fluffed the chance to capitalize on it?

It’s useful to remember contrarians were lionized in an ad campaign we’re betting you noticed.

The Crazy Ones from Apple.

The ads aren’t new, 2002, but they’re still talked about. Put that down to the fact we all want to find new ways to move ahead.

The thing is, did The Crazy Ones cut any ice with your HR people?

Did the campaign extend their thinking? Did it encourage them to question everything?

Because as you know, crazy ones like Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi can change everything.

Share with us. Leave your comment below. Thanks for reading Whybetonto.com. Regards, Steve Ulin. LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/20Imgh3

Slow dynamite is the way Tennessee Williams characterized the ravages of time.

It’s a gradual explosion that changes everything.

The expression comes from his play, Sweet Bird of Youth.

As slow dynamite applies to marketing, how are you coping? How are you dealing with changes over time?

It’s a fair question as many agree, change is the biggest challenge we face today.

That’s change in consumer attitudes and the way brands are seen.

It’s the way people view social media and the intrusions that have come with online messaging.

As to the last, we’re thinking of pre-rolls, page take-overs, pop-ups and ads that pursue you around the Web.

Pesky stuff.

Little wonder ad blocking is seen as a new form of self-defense.

There’s also change in technology, the marketplace and development of new products.

There’s change in the way your competitors operate.

More to that, change can extend to old companies that suddenly get re-energized or merge to become a threat to your sales efforts.

American Airlines, General Motors and now maybe Kodak fall into that category.

It includes overseas companies that come to America to take brand share as well as start-ups like Uber and Airbnb that emerge to change the economic landscape.

It’s all part of dynamite that doesn’t seem so slow these days. Moore’s Law is one reason why.

But for too many people — those in management, marketing and sales  — change is little more than an academic issue.

They talk about it; they put the idea of it on a pedestal.

But they live in the comfort of routine.

Could that be an inescapable human trait? That was a question a TED Talk speaker asked his audience recently.

One thing’s pretty clear, as security feels better than risk many people do things by habit.

It’s easy to slot in to convention and uniformity as you operate under the illusion you’re forging ahead.

Adding to that, the American writer Paul Auster has suggested:

Failure is measured by the

number of routines you have.

He could have a point there. Maybe he should expand on it in a TED Talk.

After all, when you give yourself over to habit you may miss the way consumer thinking and competitor efforts are changing.

The world can pass you by.

In that situation slow dynamite isn’t the worry.

It’s fast dynamite that’s the challenge.

Share with us. Leave your comment below. Thanks for reading Whybetonto.com. Steve Ulin, LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/1Bey3Jl

When the celebrated Welsh poet Dylan Thomas came to the United States in 1953 he was met at the airport by the press.

They mobbed him and wanted to know if he’d written new poems.

He said yes he had some recent ones.

As he was swept out of the airport on a tide of photographers, blinding flash bulbs and badgering reporters he said he also had written some decent ones.

Then he turned to all assembled, stopped them in their tracks and gave them an effortless account of his writing:

‘I’ve written some recent ones,

some decent ones

and some recent decent ones’.

The press broke up laughing.

They were delighted with the answer. The impromptu performance surprised them.

Surprise value also serves marketers well when communicating with a target audience.

You could say it’s the most important thing about commercial messaging.

That and the fact that brands should always be presented anew.

Saying or showing something surprising, new and unexpected is what stops people and extends attention spans.

It makes it easier for a brand to compete.

Put another way, it helps you become a real problem for your competition.

Southwest Airlines has a handle on that.

Remember the line, ‘Ding. You are now free to move about the country’.

There’s bags of character in that. It’s both surprising and unexpected.

It’s the opposite of the ‘try-hard thing’ which gives it surprise value.

Of course, Southwest is still at it with funny flight attendant announcements and safety briefings that are near enough sidesplitting.

You’ve seen them. And no doubt you laughed.

Why bother to create work like this, why go the surprising route at all?

As Dylan Thomas would have told you, you have to give people something if you want them to remember you.

Share with us. Leave your comment below. Thanks for reading Whybetonto.com. Regards, Steve Ulin LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/1Bey3Jl

Start thinking in a Jeopardy sort way. But in reverse.

The answer is ‘What is Marketing?’

Now, what’s the question?

You’d be surprised at some of the responses at a recent seminar.

Some were War and Peace in length, only slightly abridged and minus a plot.

You need a sabbatical after enduring  a long-winded explanation like that.

Other answers were half-baked and tinpot ideas.

They were enough to put you in mind of a fifth grade teacher who writes ‘Must try harder’ on a  D-student’s report card.

One bright spark stood up proudly and said ‘marketing is marketing your product across all channels including Facebook’.

Another said something like, ‘It’s the process whereby certain products are given prominence against a pre-determined budget and target audience activity with ROI in the forefront and …’

Had you been there, you would have had to sit tight as another 76 or so words followed. Some of the words had more than four syllables.

In our office, marketing is defined in four words.

‘Helping people choose you.’

Isn’t it that simple?

That straightforwardness should lead to  more organized minds, better focus and messaging that can extend attention spans.

More to ‘organized minds’, many now agree we all need  to avoid one disorganized thought about content today.

Too many marketers presume their target audience is attentive and interested. They’re chauvinists when it comes to their brands

But do people really give a fig about brands? They’re not  living  just to connect with products on Facebook, are they?

No way they are, says the intern who comes into our office two days a week.

You have to work hard to earn market attention.

To ensure people choose you takes focus. And skill.

The kind of skill that sees marketers and agency people open to lifelong learning and keen to listen to the target audience.

Surprisingly some marketers and agency staff aren’t great listeners.

Too many fall down in this area and operate with assumed knowledge and opinions.

Opinions … what are they in a constantly changing marketplace but iffy thinking without data.

With that said, let’s double back to the thought on ‘skill’.

If the answer is ‘What is skill?, what’s the question?

How about this?

The opposite of half-baked, tinpot ideas. And four-syllable words.

Share with us. Have you found books on marketing that give you the skills to compete in a more effective way? Scroll down and leave your comment. Thanks, Steve Ulin

TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor.

It wouldn’t be surprising if you logged on multiple times to arrange your travel plans.

As we all know, TripAdvisor is more than useful when it comes to reviews and Travelers’ Choice destinations.

If you’re an adult, that is.

If you’re a kid, forget it.

No kids write reviews on TravelAdvisor.

If you happen to be 12 you’re too young to register.

So while parents can look forward to reading about the thread count of sheets in a smart hotel, nobody is writing to warn kids about lumpy rollout cots.

Or those uninviting kids’ meals of warmed up chicken tenders.

Or the babysitter who is more focused on a visit by her boyfriend than her charges.

TripAdvisor won’t tell kids anything like that.

But if you were a kid you’d want to be in the know, wouldn’t you?

You’d want to know, is there’s an ice skating rink near your hotel?

How do you find the Sheep Meadow in Central Park to fly a kite?

Is there’s a doll museum nearby?

Is there a firehouse in the area that does tours for kids?

What can kids do in places like San Diego, Philadelphia or Nashville?

Until now there were no answers.

But Kidzcationz.com was invented by a 12-year-old Australian girl called Bella Tipping.

You might say it’s like TripAdvisor but with a refreshing difference.

The reviews are written by kids for kids.

They make for great reading.

Bella Tipping says adults have a better travel experience than kids because their online reviews make hotels and airlines work for continuous improvement.

Right enough.

So Kidzcationz is bound to prompt improvements for kids to make family vacations better.

Meanwhile, Kidzcationz is an ambitious startup.

It might make Mark Zuckerberg wonder why he wasn’t doing something equally impressive at age 12.

Kidzcationz is niche thinking to be admired, whether it’s started by a 12-year-old or a few 21-year-olds.

More to that, a CEO client of ours wants to be advised the minute Bella Tipping turns 18.

He wants her to come work for him … ahem, Mark.

Share with us. Leave your comment below. Thanks for reading Whybetonto.com. Regards, Steve Ulin, LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/1Bey3Jl

You can’t beat Thursdays. Dinner with friends is on the calendar.

Chosen restaurants are usually in the back of beyond — somewhere in the Five Boroughs of New York City.

Join us and you might find yourself having Italian on Staten Island, seafood in Far Rockaway or Ethiopian on West 135^th Street.

You won’t go begging for variety.

While we’re all good friends, our group still sets ground rules. Nobody talks about himself/herself.

The me-me-me-thing is out.

So the conversation is often more than passable.

Recently a quote from Sir Isaac Newton came up.

‘If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’

That dates from around 1689 or so, early in the Enlightenment.

To us the message is clear: ‘pay attention to those who know’.

As dinner friends we do just that.

We stand on each other shoulders, so we reckon we’re something like 42-feet tall when together.

Of course, you can stand on the shoulders of giants when it comes to your communications.

You can learn from the giants of marketing and advertising.

That should encourage you to make your messaging less about your company and product and more about your target audience.

Bill Bernbach took that approach.

Those like Bernbach — Howard Gossage, David Ogilvy and John Caples — would probably say, you need to concentrate on your customers’ needs, wants and problems.

Why haven’t all marketers learned this? Where’s the enlightenment?

After all, your prospects’ perceptions outweigh a CMO’s opinion about his/her brand.

That opinion often equates to what people already know or believe. Will that quicken heartbeats? Not really.

You don’t have to be Isaac Newton to understand that the answer to marketing problems — both online and brick and mortar — lies in the way customers think.

They’re the ones who dip into their wallets for you.

So write accordingly.

Instead of beginning Web content or an email, with words like ‘We’, ‘I’, ‘Our’, ‘My’ or ‘Here at the XYZ Company’, put your customers first.

Ban the ‘me’ words.

Make your first word ‘You’, then craft your customer benefit message from there.

That way you’re on the shoulders of giants instead of struggling somewhere below.

Share with us. Leave your comment below. Thanks for reading Whybetonto.com. Regards, Steve Ulin LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/1Bey3Jl

The guns fell silent; France was free toward the end of WWII.

Paris was liberated in August 1944.

In the cellars of the world-famous champagne maker Moët & Chandon in Epernay they had a special visitor.

The Supreme Allied Commander of Forces in Europe, General Eisenhower.

The Wehrmacht didn’t loot all the stocks of champagne.

Great vintages, hidden from marauding Nazi units, remained.

So the General was asked what he wanted to drink.

‘A Coke’, was his instant reply.

There you have it.

Not just a product endorsement, but a natural preference. Believable and true.

It’s a preference that rates some of the world’s best and most expensive bubbly as a distant second to Coke.

How’s that for publicity?

It reminds us a bit of Wheat Thins, those humble little crackers.

They benefitted with an unexpected boost on The Colbert Report.

You might have seen it.

Colbert yakked on about Wheat Thins for seven minutes or so. A windfall for a product. http://bit.ly/1NFui5W

Funny stuff … droll and whacky as he crammed 17 Wheat Thins into his mouth in one go.

Try it yourself – you’re bound to get more than a few laughs.

The segment was targeted at millennials, who research says, hardly knew Wheat Thins existed.

As a product endorsement you’d have to say this stands apart.

It’s well ahead of the usual try-hard efforts that deserve an Olympic medal for feebleness.

With Colbert, Wheat Thins suddenly came into their own and became famous.

As the ad agency for Wheat Thins said, ‘the brand went from off the radar to off the shelves’.

Not surprisingly Colbert’s seven minutes of Wheat Thins antics did well on social media. Maybe you caught some of it.

Those lucky, lucky, lucky Wheat Thins brand managers.

Let’s hope they celebrated. With a glass of Moët, of course.

Share with us. Leave your comment below. Thanks for reading Whybetonto.com. Regards, Steve Ulin LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/1Bey3Jl