Smarts And Hearts

Watching Madmen’s Don Draper pitch his slide projector idea to Kodak: the way he tells his story, articulates his insight into the audience, understands the emotions involved and takes the client into an entirely new space got me thinking about the style and way of client engagement most agencies have adopted today. And I think it leaves a lot to wish for.

The key to effective commercial creativity – original ideas that drive business growth – is to understand people in a profound way. Not just what people do, but why they do it. Trend reports, for example, are basically pointless if they only explain what’s happening with a gimmicky catchphrase (an observation) without giving you an idea of the underlying human motivation.

While there are some agencies that truly understand what their role is…motivating human behaviour through perception, many are drifting dangerously close to the land of management consultants. This is a world in which you can put a number on everything, a world in which everything is linear and sequential and a world in which everything is scientifically predictable.

Not only is this making agencies lose sight of human emotions, which is affecting their ability to connect with people through their work, it’s also influencing the way the entire industry is pitching its services to brands. And for the most part, this is process-centered and not particularly creative, human or interesting.

Agencies are also becoming too similar to the clients they serve. They’re emulating them rather than maintaining their point of difference (if there was one to begin with). By doing so, they’re effectively sending the signal: “We’re not really that different from you”, which means that clients don’t perceive the value of the agency and start wondering why they’re paying them.

Of course we need structure, process, methodologies and ability to demonstrate that we understand our clients’ businesses. I’m not suggesting otherwise, as long as it doesn’t happen at the expense of our ability to emotionally connect both with our clients and their audiences. I think Draper manages both.

 

Morning Coffee Reflection…

Last Friday was the opening ceremony of the Being Olympics; a pivotal moment for China as a nation and an opportunity to show the world how far they’ve come. Having just reached home in Singapore after a memorable trip to the olympic host nation just a few hours earier, I was sat in front of the tellie expecting nothing short of an impressive display of power, strength and artistic/athletic brilliance. And this is exactly the kind of spectacle the Chinese put on.

Among all the numbers performed, the firework footsteps advancing across the Beijing night sky was one of the things that impressed me the most. Just now, I learned that the firework footsteps cabled out to millions and millions of television viewers around the world, weren’t real. They were computer generated and invisible to all to the people of Bejing. And the little girl, Lin Miaoke who sang during the ceremony didn’t actually sing. The voice we heard was that of 7 year old Yang Peiji, who was considered too ugly to represent her country as “she didn’t fit the bill for the image they wanted to project”. This is so wrong on many levels.

What the organisers have failed to understand is what this signals to the world is anything but conducive to improving China’s image as regards how ‘the system’ views its own people let alone the value of genuineness/transparency of that system. To me, this signals:

1) In China, people are just viewed as numbers (even children)
2) In China, nothing is what it seems (don’t believe anything you see and hear)

Opening Ceremony brilliance aside, I honestly can’t see how either of these signals in any way would help tackle the key credibility issues facing China and help portray “Made in China” in a more positive light.

 

Lethal Research

For what must have been the first time, I was genuinely delighted to find myself viewing concept tests in focus groups today. Honest. This, however, had very little to do with the concept tests themselves: what was discussed in them, what different people said, not to mention the methodology itself. Truth is, I was just happy to be alive. To just sit there. To be. I looked at my hands, checked that I could move them at will and confirmed to myself that I was in fact alive. It wasn’t a dream.

What had happened a few hours earlier in the day when I flew into Shenzhen from Singapore for these focus groups is something I’ll never forget. I was convinced that sitting in that airplane seat, feeling as if I had suddenly been thrown into a gigantic washing machine cylinder, was going to be my last experience in life.

Shortly after take-off, we were warned by the captain that our descent into Shenzhen was going to be bumpy. This must be one of the biggest understatements ever made. In the middle of raging tropical storm Kammuri, it took the pilots three attempts, including two abruptly aborted runway approaches, to get the Airbus 319 in position to touch down on mother earth. Violently.

The agonisingly annoying elevator music streaming out of the cabin’s sound system during the drama didn’t make it any easier for anyone. I soon realized that it wasn’t just me who found the experience disconcerting; three passengers seated near me were all throwing up in those sick bags you always find in the seat pocket in front of you. I assumed it was the turbulence, not the elevator music, that triggered the vomiting, but I thought I’d better not ask.

The initial delight and positivity I felt sitting in these concept tests turned out to be short-lived. Although I was still happy to be alive, I couldn’t help but hearing what was said in the groups in response to the questions asked. This reminded me how much I passionately hate mindless research let alone advertising’s and market research’s co-existence in the biggest commercial lie since the beginning of history.

I’ve posted on the misuse of ‘research’ before and maintain my position: copious amounts of money is poured into research predicated on completely flawed and outdated theories about how the human mind works and how it processes advertising. I’m not going to repeat myself. Instead, I strongly recommend you go here and read Paul Feldwick’s excellent article “Exploding the message myth”. I wish every person in the industry could fully understand and embrace the implications of what Paul is saying.

I’m tired now and will be going to bed in a few minutes with the rather disturbing thought that focus groups almost got me killed today. Literally. So take my advice: stay away from creativity-killing focus groups. Your life could depend on it.

 

Lifestyle. I don’t want it.

Lifestyle. It’s a word I’ve grown to detest. Not because there is anything wrong with it…at least not from a linguistic standpoint. Not at all. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it means: ‘the way in which one lives’. Fair enough.

A slightly extended meaning of the word is: ‘a set of attitudes, habits, and possessions regarded as typical of a particular group or an individual’. Nothing to object against here either.

The problem I have with the word isn’t really the word itself. The problem I have with it lies in the associations that it triggers in my mind. These are, I have to assume, the result of numerous discussions with marketing directors and agency people alike. If you don’t work in marketing/advertising you may not have the vaguest idea what I’m talking about. [Consider yourself lucky] And even if you do, this may still be the case. So let me explain.

I’m totally and utterly fed up with marketers talking about lifestyle brands. Why? Because they have no idea what it means. And neither do I, frankly. Ask them to specify what the implications of ‘lifestyle’ are in terms of their advertising and brand communications and what you’ll get is a response full of fluffy drivel…if you’re lucky.

And if you were to call them on it in a meeting…hold them against the wall revealing you’ve got a baseball bat behind your back while coincidently whispering something innocent about kneecaps, what you’ll get out of them is that ‘lifestyle’ means nothing but advertising clichés; the very stuff that makes advertising indistinguishable from wallpaper. Actually, it’s what makes it wallpaper.

This kind of advertising is all predicated on the assumption that mirroring what the marketer superficially assumes to be ‘aspirational’ for his/her audience is going to generate brand growth. The reality is that this thinking and the advertising it leads to constitute the lowest common denominator in almost all consumer goods categories. And its remarkably uninspiring, not to mention undifferentiated.

So, what’s behind this nonsense? Is it lazyness or incapability or both? I’m not quite sure. But what I am sure about is that it points to a severe lack of understanding of what motivates human beings, such as you and me. I find this quite odd given we’re an industry that is highly reliant on this knowledge.

“We want to make it a lifestyle brand”. When a marketing director or agency person utters these words in an advertising context, it typically means there is no strategy, no substance, no real idea to build on. And what sends chills up my spine is that the phrase is often expressed with a sense of self-contentment as if this was breakthrough thinking.

If only the industry could realize that what people [brand audiences] fundamentally seek is a life rather than a lifestyle, a lot of brands would be rising to dizzy heights.

 

Man [including researchers] has got to know his limitations…

I’ve just read a research report this afternoon, totally flawed from objective to methodology. So much so that I still find myself completely dumbfounded. A massively huge ‘HOW’ is hovering in my cerebral cortex and it simply can’t seem to find its way out of there.

It’s strange, but part of me can’t help but wish life was as easily understood and our minds as simplistic in their processing as the people behind this study seem to think. Because by their reckoning, it would be a perfectly valid methodology to judge the taste and aesthetics of a cake by tasting and observing its ingredients separately….flour, sugar, eggs, butter and the rest of it.

This ‘experience’ reminded me of a quote that I came across when we pitched for the Sony APAC business in my previous agency. Not only is this quote music to my ears, but its also evidence of an understanding of the severe limitations of methodologies involving direct questions to people. I’ve previously touched on this here and here.

“We don’t ask consumers what they want. They don’t know. Instead we apply our brainpower to what they need, and will want, and make sure we’re there, ready”

Akio Morita, Co-founder, Sony Corporation

 

An Emotional Truth

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Our knowledge and understanding of the human brain and what goes on inside of it has progressed tremendously over the last couple of decades. Just in the last several years alone, research findings in neurology and psychology have made huge advancements to prove beyond reasonable doubt that both you and I are more emotionally driven in our behaviour than we would probably like to think. And definitely more than we’re comfortable admitting…not just to people around us, but to ourselves as well.

Modern psychology rarely uses the words ‘human’ and ‘rational’ in the same sentence. It used to when it didn’t know any better, but it has learnt and since moved on. Unfortunately, very little of this debate has yet reached into marketing departments and agencies. I find this rather curious and at the same time immensely frustrating. Are we too scared to host it? And is this because many of us know that if we welcome it into the marketing world, it’ll force us to fundamentally rethink the way we do things. And what we have done for the longest time may not have served us the way we thought. Ouch!

The time has come for all of us to bite the bullet.

Folks, we’re emotional creatures. All of us. Yes, even the IT technician in your office. Hand on heart. All our decisions are emotional; it’s just that we justify them rationally. The reason why focus groups fail so miserably [as well as the products/communication that are ‘tested’ in them] in many instances is that we’re all way too good at making up stories to explain our behaviour. It’s not that we deliberately lie. We just don’t know why we do things, as we don’t have access to the real reason stored deep down in the recesses of our brain – our subconscious mind.

In spite of what we know about the brain today, we are still fixated on distinguishing between rational and emotional factors in communication development. Actually, we’re not only separating them; we often treat them as opposing forces that are pulling our minds in different directions when we’re about to make a decision. It’s as if we collectively believe we all have two giant silos marked “E” and “R” respectively inside our own heads.

It is precisely this 1960’s thinking that still drives the prevalent malpractice of rational messaging carpet bombing: “Let’s hit them with the proposition three-sixty”. And I’m not joking when I say that this is why, according to recent studies, we’re spending more and more time on the toilet as it has become the last bastillion of peace and quiet in our everyday.

Today’s constant bombardment of commercial, fragmented messages have left us longing for meaning; something whole, coherent and long-lasting. We seek meaning because we’re starved for it. And the opportunity is there for the taking for brands that understand this reality and dare to do it differently.

Simply put, we want something different, something that stands out, connects with us, moves us and inspires us. What we’re looking for is something as exotic as a good, classic well-told story. But in today’s brand world, these stories seem to be on the verge of extinction and it worries me. We need to tell these stories to pull people back out of the toilet.

But how do we come to terms with our fear of letting go of ‘reason’ in advertising and communication? It’s so bloody hard, isn’t it? We can’t just let go of the functional “reason to believe” we all know that effective advertising needs, can we? Yes, we can. And we should.

“A good story is always true” goes an old saying. We all want to believe a good story…we want it to be true. We love it that way. This is what fuels conspiracy theories for example, why they take root and spread. And we love to believe gossip and rumours.

The real beauty of it is that when a story is well told, interesting and inspiring, it gains credibility and authenticity without a need for proof and verification. We choose not to question good stories; we simply love to listen to them unfold and we don’t want them to end. We want more.

But conversely, I think we all agree that a true story isn’t always good. Because logic, reason and truth are often not the most evocative and motivating of concepts.

But like all great story telling, brand story telling requires time and continuity to gain credibility. This continuity requires commitment, dedication and a long-term view. And in many companies it also takes courage from marketing people to break the status quo of rationality, even if it means breaking an obviously flawed convention. ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ springs to mind.

Engaging, evocative story-telling based on brand philosophy/belief can be incredibly inspirational and motivating, infectious even. But a great story needs time to unfold, just like a great novel often requires several chapters to deliver the cues that pull you in. Together, the chapters create the meaning we so desperately seek and when we find it, it gives as a sense of fulfillment. Something happens inside of us. And this ‘something’ is what every brand out there should aim to be part of.

The sooner we collectively surrender to this inevitable truth the better our creative output.

Happy agencies. Euforic clients. Lots of money to go around.

As planners and creatives, we should talk about emotional engagement rather than proof and reason. We should help brands tell compelling stories that bring meaning and create inspiration rather than explain function and benefits.

To accomplish this, we need loads of honesty. And we need to start being brutally honest with ourselves. We must begin to recognise ourselves as the emotional creatures we really are and break away from our obsession to hold onto logic and reason.

Let’s show some courage.

 

Clients of the world, use your judgment!

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In our corporate world of increasing demands for accountability and the pressure that comes with it, a pandemic is spreading fast across all levels of companies’ middle management. What’s even more alarming is that it’s spread all the way up to top management in many organizations.

You can identify the victims through the initial symptoms of general indecisiveness, insecurity and total lack of a point of view on any of the issues that really matter. In most incidents, these symptoms quickly turn into complete decision paralysis and a severe phobia for anything outside the realm of convention. I’m talking about ‘fear’, fear with a capital ‘F’. Tragically, the implications are devastating for creative thinkers and doers out there.

Frankly speaking, many of them are not allowed to do what they’re meant and paid to do – to create. No. They’re in fact asked to duplicate and spread the conventions we’re all too familiar with: the very conventions holding brands and businesses back from fulfilling their potential. What really gets me is that we in this day and age still allow systematic abuse of original thinking and expression in what is generally an accepted research method called ‘pre-testing’. Common sense and modern neuro-science co-wrote the death certificate for this method long ago and yet it’s still alive and kicking, resuscitated and resurrected by the victims of fear.

Don’t get me wrong, research can be a wonderful insight source if it’s conducted intelligently. However, I find ‘pre-testing’ in most shapes and forms directly detrimental to original ideas and creativity. And I’ve yet to work with a research company that has managed to get me to rethink my position on this topic. More about my position on pre-testing here.

The following clip from Boston agency Arnold shows what ‘pre-testing’ systematically does to creativity. Apple didn’t pre-test its famous “1984” commercial. Would the world have been the same today if it had? Maybe. Maybe not.

 

Sales Obsession Stains Brands…

This morning, when I was in a meeting, a person I can’t describe with any other term but ‘Muppet’ calls me up from HSBC’s credit card sales department. Using a masked caller ID which prevents me from identifying the caller’s number, I have to answer.

Having excused myself from the meeting, he hits me with his first question is: “are you currently a HSBC card member?” The person interrupting me at work from HSBC doesn’t know because he hasn’t bothered checking, or he can’t access the database at his bank that would give him this information. But I couldn’t care less as to why he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. I was already potently irritated with his organisation’s ignorance. I even remember thinking that this Muppet I had on the line had to be a conman of some kind. You know the kind who doesn’t work in a bank. The whole experience was just so unprofessional, so unbanklike. Well, that’s actually a fantastic thing normally, but it wasn’t in this instance.

When I politely told him that I, using bank speak, was a ‘member’ of the bank and wondered why he didn’t know this, he ducked the question and went on to deliver a well-rehearsed piece on this referral program HSBC was running. It works like this, he told me. For every personal referral that leads to a new card customer for the bank, you can get $20 in return. Twenty dollars!

So, can you give me the contact details to five people on your mobile phone, he asks me.

No, I can’t, I reply.

And I continue to tell him that he’s just disturbed me in an important meeting, expecting me to help him do his job at the expense of my friends’ time and irritation for twenty dollars. I ask him if he has any idea what this ‘sales program’ does to the reputation of his organization. All I get is silence from the other end. Then ‘click’.

I think this little experience of mine points to a number of perennial problems that are holding brands back:

1. Short-term financial goals and performance evaluations [commercial reality] often have a devastating effect on long-term brand building goals.
2. Compartmentalised structure/thinking in companies leads to fragmented brand behaviour in the marketplace. Every department has its own set of KPIs, which are rarely aligned with a brand vision in any way.
3. The lack of understanding about fundamental human nature and organizations ability to ‘empathise’ is severely lacking in most places.

Everyone who deals with brands in one way or another are aware of these issues and yet so little is done to resolve them. With the risk of sounding cynical [which is a virtue for some of my friends], I don’t believe there are any long-term solutions other than having a visionary leader at the very top; a CEO who understands people and gets brands. Brands who get it right, such as Tesco, Ikea and Virgin all have leaders who build their businesses based on their empathy and understanding of people and what they want/need. Every CEO talks about how important this is, but few do anything about it. Not because they don’t want to, but because they don’t know how to.

Tesco’s senior management make a point about it by spending at least two weeks a year stacking shelves in their supermarkets, talking to customers. IKEA’s Kamprad is a genius when it comes to understanding people’s ‘living needs’ by traveling around the world, talking to people, visiting them in their homes. Branson has built Virgin and expanded into new categories by figuring out what people are unhappy with, what they hate about the category in hand. His strategy is then focused on addressing these problems directly with his product/brand. Brilliant simplicity!

HSBC clearly has no clue about what I’m talking about.

 

Conversations and Priorities

It seems that the ways/channels/technologies we choose for creating, maintaining and building relationships generally adhere to a kind of nebulous hierarchy. Not always, but typically, we select the mode for our communication according to our own consciously or subconsciously prioritised relationship hierarchy; there are some people we always make sure we meet up with and talk to directly and others we simply keep at text message or email distance.

Of course, this hierarchical structure would vary on an individual basis and with the purpose of communication, as well as other things, but typically it would probably look something like this for most people [in order of priority]:

1. The old-fashion, face-to-face conversation
• In-home: dinner/coffee
• Dinner out of home
• Coffee out of home
2. The voice call/video call conversation
3. The Skype-type IP telephony conversation
4. The online chat – MS/Yahoo Messenger
5. The text/MMS message
6. The Facebook-type message
7. The email message
8. The multiple recipient email/Facebook massage
9. Mass media communication[!?]

The good old-fashioned snail mail letter isn’t even on the list since a lot of people below the age of 20 have never received one in their entire life. But I suspect it would actually end up near the very top given the relative effort involved. It would for me anyway.

Whilst technology has made it possible to transcend both time and space in a multitude of ways [which is great for a number of reasons] I can’t help but feel that all these options have also dehumanised the way we interact with our fellow human beings. No, I’m not joking.

I believe the highest form of human interaction can transcend neither time nor space. Though technology has allowed us to keep a large quantity of relationships ‘alive’ [an acceptable level of messaging frequency is maintained to warrant some level of perceived connection] and given us fantastic opportunities to connect with people from all over the planet, this may actually prevent us from connecting with the most significant people in our lives on a fundamental human level the way only a tech-free, face-to-face conversation can make possible.

People now email their colleagues seated a few meters away in the office instead of talking to them. Many of us socialise in front of computer screens instead of human faces. And while we do get to engage in face-to-face conversations with people we prioritise, these conversations are sadly often distracted by messages in various shapes and forms from the wider, technology-enabled sphere of acquaintances [many of whom aren’t really that important to us].

What’s going on here and what does this mean? Well, I can only tell you for certain what it means to me. You’ve got to figure out what it means to you. What I do know for a fact is that we all feel more important and valued when we enjoy our friends’ undivided attention. And yet most of us seem to struggle to deliver on it.

Brands are generally not great at making us feel prioritised and special as people/customers either. Some do it a lot better than others, but due to the commercial reality in which they exist, it’s hard for brands to give us their undivided, personal attention the way that makes us feel really special. Most brands have to ‘settle’ for mass media communication [#9] and make the best of it. But that’s a separate issue all together.

In creative agencies where people are concerned, however, the room for improvement is enormous. From a creative standpoint, it’s an undisputable truth that great things happen when people talk to each other. Agencies that have a collaborative, inclusive, conversational culture are the ones that create the greatest work. This is the kind of agency culture I want to be part of and shape.

Even if it would be close to impossible to measure, I would say that the quality of an agency’s creative is likely to correlate strongly with the quality and quantity of conversations that have taken place in the development of that work. This means conversations between planners, creatives and suits. A silo-like, compartmentalised work culture, fueled by email communication, inflated egos and politics is anything but conducive to creativity.

So people, when we begin the new year in a few days time, let’s all vow to talk more with each other: to have more conversations. Because both relationships and creativity thrive on them! And let’s also become better at prioritising our time so that those significant few who really mean the world to us can have the undivided attention they deserve.

 

The Power of Change

It’s been said that the only thing that’s constant in life is change. Without it, philosophically speaking at least, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this pontificating post. And I know Charlie Darwin for one would back that argument in the broadest sense.

I think we should all be thankful that change is a reality we all face to a greater or lesser degree. And I say this despite knowing how painful, devastating and seemingly pointless a lot of it can be. Don’t think for a second I haven’t been through enough of it. I have, believe me.

But imagine how perpetuatingly boring life would be without it. In fact, it’s almost an impossibility to conceive the thought, isn’t it? Imagine facing sameness day in and day out, week after week, year after year. You can’t, can you? Because this would mean a life without the possibility of growth, a life without progress, a life without hope and dreams, a life utterly void of excitement and spark; it would be an endless suffering from a soul-suffocating status quo. Without change purpose would not live and our existence would be one not worth experiencing. Tomorrow would seem completely pointless.

In short, a life without change is no life at all. Even in the absence of a slight Shiraz intoxication leading my thoughts to areas that may alter my perspective slightly, I would hold this as a fundamental truth.

You may be wondering why I’m writing about change. To be perfectly honest, I’m not quite sure. But that Shiraz may have something to do with it and also the fact that at this point in time, change is something that’s happening to me in a big way.

I’ve just said farewell [never goodbye] to some wonderful friends and colleagues at Y&R Brands Asia and I’m about to say hello to the people at my new agency, TBWA. I’m riding the wave of change into a future impossible to grasp. And I am excited.

It struck me that change often proves to be the most powerful catalyst for growth for people, myself included. I can certainly say that letting go of certainty and allowing change to happen have allowed me to get to know myself better over the years and also understand what really matters to me in life.

I think brands are no different. They thrive on change too. Strangely though, more often than not, they seem to be systematically constricted by rules and templates. Unfortunately, the quasi sacred parole of ‘brand consistency’ has come to materialize itself in many a marketing departments and brands as one-dimensional monologue of sameness; every brand communication is crafted to say the same thing, using the same format and tone of voice, year in and year out. [Changes in a brand's expression that we see from time to time is most often a result of ego and/or change of agency as every new marketing director seems to have in inherent need to leave his/her mark.]

This is hardly the kind of stimuli that intelligent beings like human beings find interesting and engaging. When all elements of surprise are driven out of a brand’s character and it’s communication, the way the human mind deals with it is to choose to block it out. Because the mind sees little point in re-interpreting and processing the same information over and over again when the conclusion is likely to be identical time and time again. This is a survival mechanism that I’m sure has evolved to became even more refined in today’s branded world where a constant bombardment of messages and stimuli are a reality in which we all live.

For far too long, marketing has worshiped at the church of consistency. It has done so without really questioning this doctrine and it’s origin. Failing to question directives and instructions from authorities is one of the fundamental factors needed for fanaticism to take root. [I just wanted to point that out.] By the way, have you ever heard of MCF? According to a number of sources, this organisation have several thousand members in marketing departments and ad agencies globally. And there is reason to be afraid. Very afraid. Their full name is “Militant Consistency Front” and they have been astoundingly successful at converting people to their belief for decades. Their infiltration capability is second to none and you’re probably not even aware of their existence.

Under the rising demands for accountability from marketing departments, I believe a mind-paralysing fear of change has gripped thousands of marketing directors, preventing them to see what consistency should really be about in the context communication.

Don’t get me wrong, consistency has a definite role to play in a brand’s existence if, and that’s a colossal if, it serves the brand in terms of clarity of purpose, not perpetuated monotony. There is a massive difference between the two.

A brand’s purpose must continually be conveyed in new and exciting ways in order to be noticed, resonant and engaging, ultimately moving stuff off the shelves. In order to connect brands with people – what ultimately will secure the future of our industry – we have to stop belittling our own minds and start recognizing them for the incredibly intelligent, advanced and sophisticated things they really are. We – whether we’re talking about brands or ourselves – have to embrace change knowing we can handle it and that it can fuel tremendous growth if allowed to run its course. Now, I’m off to find out if what I’ve been muttering about still holds true and if it can lead to growth.