You might say Volvo ads these days are at the exhilarating end of cheerless. At best they’re just okay. But in the past the ad above and other Volvo work set creative standards for automotive as well as all product areas.
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.
Here, four gas chambers put 6000 people to death each day. As a Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel started the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity and won the Nobel Prize. The most important moral voice of our time. That’s how world leaders saw him.
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.
Tennessee Williams wrote 34 plays, Sweet Bird of Youth being one of them.
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 he first came to America the name Dylan was mostly unknown. So Dylan Thomas coached the press on the pronunciation with the line, It’s Dylan as in Penicillin.
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
Questions, questions, questions. But those who have in-depth marketing knowledge from listening to their target audience are often immune to not knowing.
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
When kids travel with their parents where can they go ice skating? Where can they find an old-fashioned soda shoppe? Where can they fly a kite? Where can they find kids’ meals that are yum?
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
Isaac Newton, 1689, by Godfrey Kneller. In 1705 Newton was knighted by Queen Anne. From then on it was Sir Isaac Newton.
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 135th 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
Every marketer worth his or her salt demands great work from their ad agency.
They want the best.
‘Highly creative stuff’ tops their must-have list.
But can they recognize breakthrough work when they see it?
That was the topic of conversation among creative people packed into a bar after work.
Just about everyone had a story about a campaign that was killed. Work that was given the heave-ho by a marketer.
We heard about rejected campaigns that were unusual, powerful and loaded with surprise value.
Those in the bar said the killed ideas were ‘light years ahead of the limp, safe, so-called acceptable’ work that finally ran.
When worthy campaigns are turned down most agreed … opportunities to take the brand further are lost.
‘Too different’.
‘Too unusual.’
‘I’ve never seen anything like this before.’
They were all reasons for rejection of work that was on strategy.
It was agreed that education could help.
If marketers were savvier about creative work, it would make them better able to compete.
To that end it was decided MBA programs should teach more than courses like ‘Corporate Strategy’, ‘Entrepreneurial Finance’ and ‘Managing Human Capital’.
Business schools could also offer courses on creativity and its value in the marketplace.
After all, a company’s appeal rides on making informed and correct content decisions.
This reminded us of a reading assignment at ad school years ago.
The book was George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The assignment wasn’t to read the book.
Or even the first chapter.
It was to read the first sentence — 14 words.
Here they are:
‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks
were striking thirteen.’
The opening is a lesson on how to gain attention … to stop people right from the start.
Orwell turns his back on what’s ‘ordinary’.
In its place you get something that’s different, dramatic, challenging, involving, engrossing.
It’s an example of giving your audience more than they expect. A jolt.
Equally, it reminds you that to get people to read the second line of any kind of writing, the preceding line better be damn good. And so on throughout the piece.
As you know, making people read on is crucial when you want to change minds and drive sales.
If these points about differentiation and sales aren’t enough, here’s another thing about that night.
It took place at PJ Clarke’s in New York. Maybe you know it.
They have a tagline that makes the place stand out.
‘The Vatican of Saloons’.
There’s a thought that stops you.
Maybe it should become the title of a creative course in business schools.
Share with us. Leave your comment below. Thanks for reading Whybetonto.com. Regards, Steve Ulin LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/1Bey3Jl
