BULLSEYE: The Double Ad Standard

A TV show might portray lovemaking, murder, violence, racism, misogyny, and poor dental hygiene.  While the ads sponsoring that show might be ordered off the air for showing a kid removing the vegetables from a burger, or a woman (legally) riding a bicycle without a helmet.

Here's my BULLSEYE for Marketing TV:

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Brrrrrr. Skittles and the New Big Chill

If you're ever hoping to pinpoint the generational divide, step away from the GPS, and look no farther than DDB Chicago's campaign for SKITTLES.  A campaign which, from my side of the chasm, has a distinct chill to it.

Who are these ads playing to?  C'mon- I'll introduce you to a whole ballroom full of them.

CARLEW HOTEL, TORONTO
LAST MONTH

The ballroom was a'buzz for a major Ad Awards presentation, especially since most of the two-free-drink-tickets had been redeemed.  Dinner and wine were done, as were coffee and dessert.  Lights dimmed, and two hosts were introduced, and strode on stage before hundreds of Canada's most high-octane young ad creatives*.

                * Memo to word snobs:  "creatives" is an established industry noun referring to a class of writers, artists and designers.  Suck it up. 

And then, nothing happened.

Really.  By 'nothing' I mean that few acknowledged that the presentation had begun, and the loud chatter continued.  Many laughed and gossiped loudly with their backs to the stage, raising their voices slightly to compete with the room noise, which now included two hosts on a P/A system.  Try starting a bible study in a strip joint and you get the gist.

Anticipating this, the hosts introduced their running gag:  when (not 'if', mind you) the room became too noisy, a third character would be wheeled to the stage on a dolly (channeling, one supposes, Hannibal Lecter.) packing a bear horn, with which he would restore quiet. (Neither the bear horn, nor the gag, worked.)

Peace broke out now and then over the next hour and change; as particular names were called, and particular works cited, interested tables hushed, then cheered madly.

The savvier marketing minds in the room- and they were many- must have grasped the irony:  this was a microcosm of 21st century marketing communications:  people pay attention to what interests them (which is nothing new), but have no time, zip, nada, zero tolerance, for what doesn't.  This is a relatively new, and troubling trend.

TROUBLING HOW?

This is the audience of "you have two seconds to win my attention."  If that.

As a branding device, DDB's SKITTLES campaign is trashes the campaign playbook:  it lacks warmth, story and emotional connection.  It does nothing to forge a relationship.  Instead, each spot is built around an abstraction: a bizarre 'moment', a mutation of the cute and the disturbing. Young love, fluffy white clouds, and sweet older ladies are dispensed with the same confectionery iconoclasm.



SKITTLES builds no emotional equity or momentum; it's less a campaign than a series of first dates, linked by a common design and tone, and a plug-in-the-verb tagline:

Touch (or Smell/Feel/Pet/See) the Rainbow.  Taste the Rainbow.  

You can be forgiven for seeing a similarity in style to Wieden + Kennedy's much lauded Old Spice work:



The tone and imagery share a similar DNA.  But there's a major difference: Old Spice is built on a clear proposition:  "This isn't Dad's Old Spice anymore.  And to show it, we'll take you on a joy-ride far, far away from Dadland.  SKITTLES makes an inexplicable b-line to a similar place, and just parks there.  (Caveat:  yes, Old Spice is a fashion/lifestyle product, where SKITTLES is candy.  Marketing approaches twixt these categories are not interchangeable.)

All this isn't to say the SKITTLES campaign is a failure. Merely a sign of how an emerging generation of ad Creatives are perceiving and communicating with their peers:  opting for quick sugar hits over long-term relationship building.

And if that doesn't work?  There's always the bear horn.

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The Decline of Mad Men- and What it Teaches about Brands

My old friend Bill Barnes- the undisputed king-of-deadpan- used to say: "Ask me the secret of comedy."
"Okay, wha-"
"-Timing."

The man had chops.

So much of branding is about timing.  A lesson niftilly illustrated in the recent woes of Mad Men, whose final season debuted this spring to underwhelming ratings.

The wonderful John Hamm, too often the de facto spokesman for the Mad Men brand (whose headquarters is found between the ears of showrunner Matthew Weiner) spun it thus- as though a decline in ratings was part of the Mad Men master plan:

"It's gotten to where it's only the hardcore people are down with it," Hamm said of "Mad Men." "It makes sense. It's a different viewing experience."

Conventional wisdom has it that Mad Men is suffering from hiatus-itis-  lags between seasons (and half-seasons) that allowed audience interest to cool.  And the reason for these lags and disappearances?

• A 17-month 'holiday' a couple of seasons back while Weiner and host network AMC squabbled over, yes, money
• The network's desire to hold the show for one of four US Sweeps months (February, May, July and November).
• Disagreements over production details: including-

      -how much product placement to sell within episodes.

Consider a similar dispute- between The Sopranos and HBO.  During a hiatus of nearly two years (June '04 to March '06), James Gandolfini, rest him, lost 160 pounds, and the show lost 1.6 million viewers, about 14% of its constituency.

Squeak, rumble, squeak.  Hear that?  It's the sound of glutes squirming in leather boardroom seats in AMC sales meetings.

Indeed- The Mad Men Season 7 première last month yielded 2.3 million viewers-  about a million fewer than its Season 6 début in 2013. The sense of disappointment is compounded by news that AMC would dispense the final AMC season with an eye-dropper- seven episodes now, and the final seven a year (!) from now.

Oh yes, cliffhangers work- as well today as they did for the landmark film series The Perils of Pauline exactly a century ago...

...and for Scheherazade, whose 1001 tales saved her life, one story at a time.

But-

The Eclectic Film Company (it's said owner William Randolph Hearst had a hand in generating stories)  knew they'd need to release the next installment in a week.

And Scheherazade knew that a failure to resolve one story and begin another the very next night would be fatal.

THE LESSON FOR BRAND MANAGERS

Was this Mad Man lapse avoidable?  Could AMC and Weiner have agreed to put their customer first and air shows while their audience interest peaked?  We mere mortals may never know. What is certain is that Mad Men forgot- or ignored- two of the sacred pillars of Branding:

1.   When your Brand succeeds, it no longer belongs to you

Brands reside and thrive in the imaginations of those who consume them.  When that brand succeeds, its consumers- it's fans- assume ownership.  Those who created and run the brand become managers.  Or, to switch metaphors, the consumers own the ship; it the manager's job to steer.  And, true to the metaphor, the larger the ship, the harder it becomes to steer.

2.   Servitude

To serve the brand's 'owners' is to serve the brand.  Like the yellow sun that makes Superman out of Kal-El, consumers imbue a brand with its power. Mad Men draws its power from its viewer base.  They are what put AMC's original productions on the map; they're the reason Matthew Weiner doesn't ask his waitress to recite the dinner specials. But consumers need to be cultivated, fed, and lovingly nurtured.

So easily, so often- brand managers forget that.  The delays-for-ratings, the contract wrangles, the 'split' seasons of Mad Men weren't devised for the viewer's benefit.  Worse, they ignored the viewers' appetite for fresh episodes.

AMC and Weiner, as brand stewards, ignored the rule of servitude, and it cost them a million viewers.  And probably a lot of its momentum.

It's a common tale.

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SECRETS OF A MOISTER, TASTIER TURKEY

Welcome back- good to meet you here again.

Oh, to beg a nickel for every client meeting nowadays let by someone who says:

"We're going to create a viral video."

There is a technical 'marketing' name for these people.  They are idiots.

Don't get me wrong:  creating a viral video is possible.  So is writing a bestselling book, a Grammy-winning teen anthem, and a runaway-hit Broadway play, and an Oscar-winning uber-hit.

So let's look at a marvelous example of that winning-lottery-ticket breed:  a video that's fast-earning the adjective 'viral'-



I love this video, and the entire campaign.  It's made by smart, intuitive people, who completely understand the reinvented self-parodying Bill Shatner.  They intuitively understand that if turkey is funny, a turkey deep-fryer is even funnier.  A 'dingle-dangle' is pure, well, gravy.

Most of all, I love how un-corporate it makes an ad for a massive insurance company.

Viral ads are the new platinum in the shift from 'push' (where advertisers would shove their ad in front of you- on TV or Radio, in print, or, say, with Banners on the Web) and 'pull'- where an attractive ad or idea is released into the zeitgeist, and attracts an audience.

This is not a process story, but rather a quick glimpse at how this viral ad did *not* come about.  At no time did State Farm's creative team use this handy checklist:

To reduce viral success to a paint-by-numbers formula is, alas, a left-brain wet dream.  As simultaneously seductive and elusive as mermaids, perpetual motion, and cold fusion.

Which doesn't stop clients, bless 'em, from making the hopelessly naive request:  "Can you make me a viral video"; to which Marketing creatives can respond with one of two answers:

A)  Of course!  Or-
B)  We'll try our best

The first is a big fat lie, the second screams 'fire me and meet with someone who will answer 'A'.

Creating a viral-video to order is but the latest chapter in a century long struggle to glean a formula from creative success and apply it to other campaigns.  But as self-serving as it sounds, Ad Creative is art, and art doesn't work that way.  Aspire to create a new 'To Kill a Mockingbird', and all you'll wind up with 'Friday the 13th, Part VII'.

Good to meet you here again.  Did I mention that?

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How *Do* We Make Purchase Decisions?

Such a simple question. Answer it correctly and they'll rename Madison Avenue after you.

Here's the 'elevator' answer I give clients:

YOU SHOP WITH YOUR HEAD

YOU BUY WITH YOUR GUT

Suppose you're buying a car.  Many- I'd suggest most- create some sort of shopping criteria.  For instance: 

Price

Consumer Reviews

Crash Safety

Is it Domestically Made

Available features

This is infused with personal criteria:

"I want a convertible"

"I want to leave a small carbon footprint"

"I want people to see it and say 'oooo baby!'"
"If Chrysler was good enough for dear ol' Dad, dammit, it's good enough for me."

So what drives (pun intended) the final decision?  This is the part that causes weeping and gnashing of teeth among brands, marketers and salesfolk:  

It's about comfort.

Choice is about fashion.  Really.

Ultimately, comfort with  brand- a product- a restaurant- trumps logic when making a purchase.  

People are often indignant when told this.  "Not me!" they holler, as though accused of pinching the last can of Who hash, or the rare Who roast beast. 

Comfort can originate with a memory:  the family huddled in a tent on a raining morning munching Frosted Flakes.  Often it's built on word-of-mouth- the most powerful of all marketing media.  Now and then it's based on an undefinable emotional impression created by- wait for it- a marketing campaign.  Or years of campaigns. 

And often, it's about fashion. We're being trained to judge people by the label of beer they hold at a party (trade term is 'badge brands'). About their choice of phone- Android, iPhone, or Blackberry.  About which political party they support, or whether they're a Mac or a PC .  Cars are seen as an extension of our personalities (what *is* the difference between a cactus and a Corvette?).  Sometimes- often- comfort is the avoidance of being un-cool.

Competitive brands spend King's ransoms painting an aura of un-cool around their competitors.  Nike does it by marrying their brand- by name and attitude- to victory.  Planting in consumers a nagging sense that competitor's brands are about not winning.  

Mac sucking at subtle.

Apple, by comparison, spent years personifying their main rival with pocket-protector-perfection by way of John Hodgeman's character "PC".  File Mac under 'S' for 'Sucks at Subtle.'

You can easily spend decades- as many of us have- forging a working understanding of the intangible process of purchase decisions, and how to help clients shape them.  In doing so you find yourself gravitating to two powerful conclusions:

   1.  Advertising is not a science
 
There is not- never can be- an algorithm for the illogical, emotional 'gut choice' that drives most purchase decisions.

   2.    Great Ads are Intuitive

The best creative marketing is the product of informed intuition, fearless 'what if' thinking, built, almost always, on a solid foundation of past mistakes.

Past mistakes are where data analysis comes in so handy.  Number crunchers can tell you tons about why people bought- past tense- or didn't buy- past tense- a product.  They help marketers understand who they're talking to, and what past mistakes to avoid. What they cannot do- ever- is tell you how to design the next campaign- the one that will shape tomorrow's purchase decisions, and offer a client's brand a favoured place in the consumer's imagination.

Step aside, you pointy-headed college kids.  This is a job for the artists.