On Time With Nowhere To Go

On time with somewhere to go

2009-08-22T11:48:00.006+02:00

Please visit www.nikoherzeg.com

The Keyser would be proud

2009-08-21T00:48:00.001+02:00

Yesterday we talked about invisible enemies and actionable fear based motivation.

Behold: The Monster Steam 1200 pitch.

It not only cleans 99% of all germs and bacteria, it sterilizes and sanitizes as well and protects your beloved family, from parent to babies.

Textbook.

Lessons from the Keyser

2009-08-20T00:10:00.009+02:00

Q: what do you do when your product, in this case detergent, cleans so well that all dirt is washed out and you still need to grow your business?

A: You inform the public about microbes. Invsible organisms that infiltrate and get your clothes and skin dirty. They require multiple cleanings, as you never know when they are truly clean.

But you can beat them, if you clean your clothes (even better to use new products) more often.

While it is good practise to demonstrate value of your product or service, sometimes it is better to point at gains that one is in danger of losing if no action is taken.

The hard part is to find a balance between a fear that motivates and a fear that paralyzes.

In our minds our dreams are real

2009-08-19T00:48:00.001+02:00

District Major of Amsterdam Zeeburg, Fatima Elatik, compared the right wing politician Geert Wilders to Hilter. Of course she meant it differently and she had a more nuanced thought in mind. When given the chance to explain her statement, she does.

I found nuanced statements after googling a "hand me down" soundbite. The soundbite I overheard, some people tell each other, was "she called all PVV supporters nazi's". Nowhere near the original tweet or the explanation given. Yet typing those words into Google let me a story about the incident, meaning other people interpreted the story the same way or were given a similair account.

What we mean or say, and what other people hear (and more importantly) retell, often will change as it passes from one group to another. Though we can't control how people interpret our statement and actions, we should be aware of the fact that meaning is assigned to us that we may or may not want to be associated with. Sometimes this leads to unexpected customers and fans, othertimes not so.

Either way, fact is that if we believe something to be true, sooner or later it will become part of our reality and govern our behaviour towards others.

Looking for the bright side of business and life

2009-08-18T00:50:00.000+02:00

*This post is inspired by me taking my own medicine, ha!

A nursing home in Germany built an exact replica of a bus stop in front of the facility to stop Alzheimer patients, who walk out the the home. The only difference is that buses never stop there. “It sounds funny,” said Old Lions Chairman Franz-Josef Goebel, “but it helps. Our members are 84 years-old on average.

Their short-term memory hardly works at all, but the long-term memory is still active. They know the green and yellow bus sign and remember that waiting there means they will go home.” The result is that errant patients now wait for their trip home at the bus stop, before quickly forgetting why they were there in the first place.

“We will approach them and say that the bus is coming later today and invite them in to the home for a coffee,” said Mr Neureither. “Five minutes later they have completely forgotten they wanted to leave.”

This ia a good example of a bit of creative thinking by focusing not on what is wrong, but on

a) what is there;

b) what is working within behaviour shown;

c) amplifying the positive instead of stopping a negative.

Which can be a quite usefull way of working, especially when trying to get client buy-in.

There is this form of therapy, called Solution Focused Brief Therapy. It is a form of family and personal trauma therapy. The big difference being: it refuses to discuss the problem you are experiencing. Quit bluntly, one of it foundational premises is that: the solution and problem are not in direct relation to each other.

It asks the following questions:

what is wanted (vs what is wrong)

what is working (vs why is it wrong)

what are the strengths (vs what are the weaknesses)

what small steps along the lines of what is working can we amplify (vs what overarching strategies can we develop)

So from a business p.o.v. instead of doing research to become an expert at the clients problem, what if you focus time on getting the client to discribe the solution (say a margin growth of 8% by next year) and specify the ways this perfect solution could be noticed ? (read # of items sold, downing of cost by x amount etc...)?

The second thing SFBT does is asks on a scale of 0 to 10 as to how close you are to your dream solution. If it is a 3, then you identify the things that make it a 3 and try to build on that. Most companies will not be a " 0", so there is always something positive to work with that enables you to achieve initial succes and momentum.

When you know what success looks like and what already is contribution towards it, you now start to focus on identifiying the ways to amplify this.

Because again, the solution may not have any connection to the problem. But by starting from a "perfect solution" and working back to present day situations, time is used in a postive and constructive way. Even more so, because most people will have a harder time talking about their problems than about nice things.

See..like the Alzheimer patients mentioned earlier, sometimes trying to change hardwired bad behaviour can be to much trouble and in the end not bring you or the client the results both of you wish.

But by working with what is there (and accepting that there is a negative and positive in every situation) and seeing how you can enhance the positive, you just might end up in a place where you, your client and your competitors did not expect to end up. And get there quicker, with a stronger bond between you and your client.

skills to pay the bills

2009-08-17T01:31:00.005+02:00

I dumb down for my audience
And double my dollars
They criticize me for it
Yet they all yell "Holla"
If skills sold
Truth be told
I'd probably be
Lyricly
Talib Kweli
Truthfully
I wanna rhyme like Common Sense
(But i did five Mil)
I ain't been rhymin like Common since
When your sense got that much in common
And you been hustlin since
Your inception
Fuck perception
Go with what makes sense

Jay-Z "Moment of Clarity"

the above lyrics show the difference between a mainstream star and a profitable one.

Talib Kweli makes a good living of his personal brand of highly intelligent, mature rap. Jay-Z on the other hand makes loads more build on a foundation of his rap skills, but less and less dependent on those rap skills.

In order to become a mainstream star, compromise around content will creep in
and stuff with no relation to your core business will become important.

And even then there is no way to be certain all this will make you a star.
As we know from work of Mark Earls, a major part of that is not in our hands.

Becoming a profitable brand on the other hand is very much within our hands.
It involves a distinct proposition that solves a problem in the lives of prospective consumers, whose value is clearly and uniquely communicated

and backed up by a product and service that lives up to the communication.

Making sure we have healthy margins and focussing not on the mainstream,
but the people who buy our product, keeping them happy and growing that foundation.

Most people make most decisions about most products not out of loyalty towards most brands. They are open to try something new if given a compelling reason.

So next time you meet clients, ask them straight up what they really want, the fame or the fortune? One may follow the other, but it helps to know what to focus on first.

That will save both parties a lot of time and make for clear strategy, goals and accountability.

Advertising and Awareness

2009-08-14T14:03:00.005+02:00

There is this story Gordon Livingstone tells in his book about Vietnam. As a young luitanant in the 82d Airborne he tried to determine the position of his platoon. His platoon sargeant walked up and asked if he knew where they were.

Livingstone answered: "according to this map, there should be a hill around here. Yet I don't see it." To which the sargeant said: "If the map doesn't agree with the the ground, the map doesn't work".

Our minds work quite the same way. They do not make sense of reality.

They create reality. They create patterns out of incidents and give weight to events that just "are".

Because humans are irrational. We know this. And as marketers we try to exploit this. Only in order for that to work, we have to be able to step back and as Chuck D said: "Dont believe the hype".

Bob Hoffman once pointed out something about car commercials. We know that the buyers of cars are older. Yet the ads are created for an different audience. Because the map we (as irrational humans) have hinders us from agreeing with the ground.

Now having a wrong map is not always the problem. Daniel Kanheman tells the story of people who were lost in the Alps.

There is a group of Swiss soldiers who set out on a long navigation exercise in the Alps. The weather was severe and they got lost. After several days, with their desperation mounting, one of the men suddenly realized he had a map of the region. They followed the map and managed to reach a town.

When they returned to base and their commanding officer asked how they had made their way back. They replied, "We suddenly found a map." The officer looked at the map and said, "You found a map all right, but it's not of the Alps, it's of the Pyrenees."

The map, however wrong, gave them confidence to seek out a path down the mountains. In many ways this is what entrepreneurs and marketerts do.

They seek out new ways of doing stuff. But much like the soldiers coming down the Alps (and mind you, these are people trained to make good decisions under pressure) if we look at how many campaings and products fail, it seems the time it does work has more to do with luck then skill.

The singles most important, and I would argue most difficult, skill is being able to see what is there. To just observe and notice, without starting to make assumptions. Without connecting or to letting your mind create reality.

It is something Zen Buddishm calles shoshin, beginners mind. But it would be more than just having no preconceptions or judgments. Being able to see what is there requires you to be able to focus and to be aware.

Whether it is the Account Manager talking to the client, without his mind wondering. Planners and Creatives needing to be able to look at what is actually being done and lived by consumers and not only to follow the brief or rely on research.

Focus, awareness and absense of judgement are the starting points to doing work that is, unexpected, capturing and effective.

Rob talked about investing in stressmamangement to help employees become better at their work.

What I would suggest as a supplement is that, especially adland, industries that need imagination to thrive; we also invest in training our people to see past the personal frames, blockades and point of views. Having a resident psychologist to train with staff should be standard practice for an industry that uses them and other social scientists to see what other people are doing.

To actively start training the mind, not to learn, but to be able to shut down the constant stream of thought it generates.

To become aware of wondering thoughts, lazy thinking and the kicking in of heuristics and mental models.

In order to capture the imagination of others we have to become masters of reality again, not of rationale.

how human nature can change consumption habits

2009-08-12T11:35:00.006+02:00

The above commercial shows us a bias that can help producers and consumers change their habits to more eco friendly ways without less consumption.

It is called the Diderot effect

If you buy a bigger washingmachine, you of course need a better detergent to help with the bigger loads.

So if we want to change habits on a macro scale , look outside the category and see what social and cultural cohesion the item provides. Link to it and get the consumer to be consious of the link.

Want to sell more items as a retailer, well if you sell clothes, get your local hairsalon and shoeshop to have a sale to. New haircut leads to new manicure and pedicure leads to new shoes, new bag, new clothes, new person (well untill next season that is).

At the beginning I stated that it can be used to change habits to more eco friendly ways, but it can be, and has been, used for any number of goals. That depends on the intentions you have.

Show, don't tell

2009-08-03T14:15:00.006+02:00

Above three pictures taken in the Rotterdam subway this morning.

1) Advertising space in the wagon I was sitting in.

2) An ad announcing the sale of seasontickets for local Premiership Football club Sparta.

For the season 2008-2009

3) The media company that sells the space, trying to convince potential advertisers for this medium.

If you are going to tell somebody, that doing business with you is a good idea, it might help to show it with more than words alone.

social norms, people and marketers

2009-07-28T21:09:00.005+02:00

A couple of things caught my attention last week. And both got me thinking about social norms and biases.

First of, several people around caught a light bout of flu. Nothing serious or Mexican, just a bit of a temperture and some chills and coughing. However after asking them how seriously they were treating this (given the context), I was surprised to find out that they in fact did not see it as something serious.

Reason being, they said that they most likely got it from a colleague or family member and that "it was doing the rounds". So they were not worried about it. It would pass.

The second thing is the ad you see at the top there. It is an ad for a Dutch electricity company. On it you see Maurice de Hond, a well known opinion poller in Holland.

The tag line reads:"94% of Dutch Households pay to much". Which struck me as something odd to communicate.

From research conducted by dr Robert Cialdini and by the work of Mark Earls we know that people copy behaviour of other people and that when told of a social norm, people tend to adher to it.

So saying that 94% pays to much, seems to me to generate the same effect as those I asked about their flu: "everybody is doing/having it, so I am not really worried or going to change my behaviour".

Now of course making people aware of the dangers of having a serious, and hugely viral strain of flu is important, as is letting people know that they are paying to much for utilities.

I have no data to doubt the success of the ad campaign, but I am left wondering if, pointing out the possible fact that your neighbour is most likely the only one on the block not losing money by paying to much, could have a bigger impact on converting sales.

As would getting one or two people to wear flu-masks could do more for awereness of the possible pandemic and get people to take it more serious.

The way we allow people to absorb and proces our information, is at least as important as the information itself, if we hope to inlfuence any change and action in human beings out in the real world.

Perhaps common sense, but well worth remembering.

what we can learn from pick up artists

2009-07-20T20:40:00.002+02:00

Seeing as I am based in Holland, I thought it time to write a bit in Dutch, and for a Dutch blog.

As of today I will be blogging for Molblog, one of Holland's most read blogs about marketing.

My first piece of writing is here, but since some of you may not be fluent in Dutch, below is a translation.

What we can learn from pick up artists

There is a crisis. Not that economic one. No. There is crisis in the world of pick-up gurus. Yes, pick-up gurus. Men who can get every woman an teach followers how they can get laid as well.

It all started with a book several years ago. Called "The Game". It describes journalist Neil Strauss, on his quest to become PUA, Pick Up Artist. The book was a bestseller. But also ensured that women got insight into the workings of these PUA's.

Because, despite all the shits and giggles, these gentlemen had a process. Their practices were secretly shared on forums and message boards.

From opening sentences, to routines and field reports, PUA's were constantly trying to improve efficiency and speed up the scoring.

Yet suddenly opening phrases were known, routines (a fixed linguistic pattern to achieve a positive result, think AIDA, but in the pub) were spotted and PUA's were ridiculed. This led to a number of the gurus proclaiming that they found a new way.

Method vs. Natural
This new group was a response to the way it had been up till now. Until now, PU's were a series of steps and mechanics. First there was the opening, then the routine, then increasing the tension and finally .. action. Hence the name Method.

But by now the audience knew how it worked, the effect became less strong. This led to even crazier openings, increasingly complex routines. But this did not lead to improvement in outcome. Only more noise and ridicule.

Group two said that a pick-up (PU) was a spontaneous, natural thing, and that you as a PUA attracted women by being yourself. The best self you can be, but still yourself.

No script, no story,just a spontaneous interaction that had an open ending. If there is no script, then you could get caught, and if they liked you because of you, you do not need to worry about fullfilling the image what you portraying with your routines (self-insured and cocky, etc.

For followers and gurus, this is a more difficult path. It requires self-improvement of personality, appearance and self-confidence before you proceed to chase. But if we believe the feedback the Natural way is beating Method.

Not in the least because the practitioners are at least feeling better about themselves and are no longer stressed out memorizing routines.

Action speaks louder than words

Yeah ... .. so what you're think. This is a marketing blog. Correct. And from a marketing standpoint there are some interesting observations.

Google, Hyves, Facebook, HBO, Skype, show us that many of the strongest brands over the last 10 years were built by attracting customers through a disproportionate focus on product and service innovation. Not product and service communications (which still plays a role, but a lesser one).

Research of the University of South London shows us the same. In a study of purchases over time, researcher Charles Graham discovered that despite large amounts of money brands spend, market shares remaines stable. He saw that the market shares of most brands in the study increased or decreased by 3 percent, but always within that margin.

Only six brands increased their market shares by more than 6%. These changes were "not achieved by changes in promotional mix" but by "exceptional, strategic and structural innovation."

So ...
Like PU gurus we are in a crisis. Consumers are more aware of our practices, trust the advice their friends more than our commercials and many businessowners and CFO's can't get a good answer to the question of "what that budget is contributing to the bottom line".

But therein lies the opportunity for our industry to show our value. Not by better creation of campaigns, but by challenging our customers and clients to learn, innovate and be of real value to the lives of consumers in those moments when they need us.

Only we will have to look at ourselves first. For an industry that brags about innovation and creation, we have only played a modest role in the creation of the above mentioned brands or the many other innovations that we know.

Not that there is no place for advertising agencies, but decades ago an agency developed the idea of the soapseries, now we fill the few minutes between content blocks.

For just as women do not mind a talking to fun, spontaneous guy who, in addition to humor and self-confidence, actually has something to say, consumers have nothing against seduction by advertising, products and services, or spending money.

Only the umpteenth variation on "Don't I know you from somewhere ..." will not get us of the list of "things which can be cut", just as it won't help PUA's get dates...

the power of culture and social norms

2009-07-09T22:01:00.001+02:00

Ovens "big enough for a Christmas turkey".

Freezers "with enough room so you always have food for unexpected guests".

Just two examples of clever marketing, using extreme events (once a year Christmas and let's say twice a year unexpected dinner guests) with latent cultural and social stigma's that still work on the (post)modern human beings decision making proces.

In each case they were used to sell us more. But the principle can also be used to change behaviour towards sustainability.

So ask yourself: what extreme situations with cultural resonance, and the possibility for social failure do you have within your particular business?

These types of situations and this type of approach will allow you to change behaviour by make the unlikely (yet when it happens very socialy uncomfortable) become a focus point, thus making acceptance of the new behaviour seem obvious.

Perhaps a bit evil, but given the fact it worked the first time around, I am betting it would work again.

the era of High Concept returns

2009-07-08T20:51:00.008+02:00

"High concept often has themes based on an existing area of popular fascination—such as sharks, dinosaurs, flying saucers, the Titanic, and so on— thus having a ready-built foundation of subsidiary issues and ever-ramifying facts that can feed the machine, on levels ranging from the superficial to the intellectually or factually exhaustive".wikipedia

Better go and read this. Now that (at breakneck speed) technology enables us to belong to, and interact with likeminded people from around the world, the art of doing stuff that is:

"easy (flows naturaly with needs and wants, instead of creating them artificialy) to sell (cash is king again) to a wide audience(facebook being an example: more and more oldies instead of just kids) because it delivers upon an easy to grasp idea that is original, interesting, colorful and sometimes humorous (pull people together and give them something to do )", is a skill marketers need to get reacquainted with.

Billy Apple exhibition in Rotterdam

2009-06-23T12:45:00.003+02:00

thx to her. If you are in Rotterdam, do visit here.

don't care about being original, care about being great

2009-06-08T22:26:00.002+02:00

2009-05-25T09:23:00.000+02:00

note to self: adland problem #1

2009-05-17T13:58:00.002+02:00

" A perfection of means and a confusion of aims,
seems to be our biggest problem"

Albert Einstein

Clients remember: output and risk not input and gains matter when judging creative work

2009-05-16T22:32:00.007+02:00

The cultural and commercial worldwide success know as MTV Unplugged came about by sheer luck and coincidence.

Bon Jovi was asked to perform at the '89 MTV Awards. The crowd at home and in the audience responded with great enthusiasm to their stripped down version of two great electric songs. Executives at MTV took a chance and ran with it. The rest is history.

Never judge the work on how it came about. Best never to ask either. Only judge it by the outcome. For the process is often times messy and unruly and sometimes literally just takes seven and a half minutes to produce great work.

And don't worry if it will become a hit. You don't know. Look at the risk instead. If the downside is something you will survive, take a chance, so at least you know what does not work and you can move on to something else.

Nobody got ahead by staying at the back of the pack.

everything you need to know about getting a date and doing effective advertising

2009-05-15T21:50:00.009+02:00

Flowers? No
Money? No (perhaps, but for the sake of argument, let's not open that can of worms)
Cars? No
Stylish dressing? No
Humor? Mehh
Good Looks? Don't hurt, but not really dealbreakers
Social skills? Usefull
Power? Hmmm...

All of the above are really just rationale that help propagate certain emotional triggers once all that matters is said and done.

So without further ado, and with an explanation following, the one thing you need to know, the only thing you will ever need to know, the thing you wish somebody had told you when you were younger... to get a date or to create advertising work that works is:

Get people to do something for you. *pin dropping*

Get people to do something for you. That's it. You don't have to believe me, and you are allowed to be sceptical.

But is it true. Under certain circumstances, which are not difficult to figure out or to set up, all you need to do, to be effective, is to get people to do something for you. Allow me to explain.

As I was walking around Berlin, I experienced something that amazed me.

Being approached by strangers, who, after spotting me and my mates standing there with camera's, would volunteer to take our picture infront of set building or whatever.

Total strangers who after taking the picture would, without being asked to, proceed to explain something about the place, ask what we had seen, so they could recommend other things and in some cases even offer to show the way or play guide. And all the while seeming to enjoy it and having a blast doing it. Absolutely amazing.

So I asked myself: would asking for it have the same effect? Would me going up to total strangers and asking to have my picture taken, have some of the same generosity effects?

It turns out that it does. Walking up to elderly, kids, mothers, police men, and off course good looking females, pretty much resulted in the same things:

1) They were more then happy to take my/our picture;
2) When given the chance to, most were happy to either walk us to some other piece of culture, tell us what they knew about that one, or exchange numbers to continue the conversation at another time.

Asking a tourist or a local was not much different as far as the actual action taken was concerned. The conversation that took place after was, but that is natural as the context changes from interaction to interaction.

This experience a bit of an eye opener. And it also helped me cristalize certain vague ideas.

First of it made me even stronger in my belief that awereness is overrated. And that people who think in terms of

1) Awereness
2) Interest
3) Action/purchase

are missing the point and are wasting time and money that clients and agencies could and should be using more wisely.

As I touched upon here, the idea of figuring out the conversion side of things down the line, is thinking that is not going to help convince clients with limited budgets and consumers with selective attention.

Start with action in mind and build from there.

1) solicit an (predictable)act (of culture)
2) create a conversation ( and in the case of brands a relationship, though remember that the one with the least invested controls the relationship)
3) allow for the experience to spread

This is a far more effective way to go about things. Perhaps counter intuitive but effective.

Why?

1) First off because by getting people to do something for you, instead of you doing something for them, you can cancel out major penny gap effects.

See people are inherently selfish. If you cook a meal for others, you do so off course to have them enjoy that meal, but there is also the expectation of getting some kind of compliment. Nothing wrong with that, but the selfishness is always around. Not being acknowlegded makes for sour grapes fast

And well, most brands, when making that piece of funny film, commercial, ambient or giving that stuff away for free, act friendly but expect to monetize on that friendship at some point down the line. But as Dan Ariely has shown us, doing business after we have been social does not work, most of the time and for most industries.

By asking for action from the other party first a couple of things happen. The most obvious is the fact that you learn the other party's flight or fight mechanism. If they don't run away, or turn hostile on you, well you got yourselve a keeper.

Always nice to know up front and not after you did your whole song and dance routine, if only to keep you from overcommiting some sterile strategy that got the ok in focus groups (kicking a ball into the back of the net during a match is still the only way to score, nobody get's point for training extra had). Which off course does wonder for the accountability of the effectiveness of an agency, as you end up doing stuff that works in the field.

Secondly from action follows belief and enthusiasm. Or more exactly the belief that "If I do something for you, well you must be ok. Because no way in hell am I gonna do something for someone I do not like. And if I like you, well I might as well like you alot."

Asking up front for action (and by the way this can be a small action, because as long as it has some cultural/social element build into it and is asked in the right context, it will resonate and kickstart our heuristic mind and thus resulting in conversion with bigger than expected certainty) we thus avoid the problem that most guys dread: How to go from friends to lovers after you've invested time and resources, making her think you are friends. Or how to convert all that awereness into action.

2) As I said here, the magic starts after the act is performed. After having asked for an act (of culture) by the other party, and this act is performed, the other becomes part of something shared. And if it is something worth spreading, he will do so if only for the simple but powerfull reason to have something new to say to friends and relatives.

In my personal experience, having my picture taken by other tourists with a mobile phone, allowed me to get the picture bluetoothed or mailed to me, my mates there and at home and all of their friends. A simple and easy way to make the act of taking a picture into something more, a story/conversation starter.

Circumstances

As I noted above, one does need to take into account certain things before asking for action.
A couple of major once are:

1) the context of asking

When I asked to get my picture taken at the subway near the appartment outside of the tourist city centre, the results were not as great. Still not to bad (as most people even though we are selfish, or perhaps because we are selfish and do it to make ouselves feel good, still want to help others when asked), but not as great. So the obvious lesson is: Context.

Right time, right place, determine how forthcoming the other will be and how effective the proposition asked will enhance the status of the one being asked in the eyes of his peers (turning down a tourist in a non tourist part of town, may not make you seem a bad city ambassador as when you do it at Checkpoint Charlie.)

2) The culture of the solicitation

As noted above asking something at the right time and place makes for better response. To upp it even more the question posed has to have some culture in it. Asking somebody to take your picture at a tourist spot, feels natural and right. Our instincts do not raise red flags. And since we are genetically trained to spot that which stand out in order to survive, we should take into account the history of humans when asking.

Asking people to look after your bag in a library, or asking for a light inside a pub, also work. One because well library = earnest= safe = off course you would watch a bag. The other because pub/club = fun = flirting, fire = danger. With the smoking ban it becomes somewhat of a law defying act thus making you seem masculine. (But this all pure speculation. Though the results were good. Better then asking for your picture to be taken in a library, or having someone watch your stuff in a club).

So there you have it folks, ask (don't give) for something that seems natural, fun and sharable and people will most likey do it, with pleasure and talk about it afterwards. All markets are solliciations, so might as well ask.

briefings and/of the future

2009-05-12T20:55:00.005+02:00

"I came into this motherfucker a hundred grand strong
Nine to be exact, from grindin G-packs
Put this shit in motion ain't no rewindin me back
Could make 40 off a brick but one rhyme could beat that
And if somebody woulda told 'em that Hov' would sell clothin
Heh, not in this lifetime, wasn't in my right mind
That's another difference that's between me and them
Heh, I'm smarten up, open the market up
One million, two million, three million, four
In eighteen months, eighty million more "

What do you do when you sell drugs, but you figure out that your rhyming ability can earn you that much needed goal of money, cars, hoes* faster and safer? You start rhyming off course. Quite obvious really.

Now what do you do if your artform is laced with refferences with regards to luxury items, such as clothes, cars jewelry etc? Get endorsments by those? Mehh..could go that way aka the "tommy hilfigger is my nigga" namecheck strategy by Mobb Deep.

Or how about you start your own companies (RoccaWear, Roccafella Film, Roccafella records, Armadale Wodka to name a few) in one or more of the markets you are already are advertising for as a platform? Get some of that equity out of those acts of culture instead of a paycheck? Sounds more like it, right..

Well if it does sound more like it then why is it not more common?Why is Jay-z worth more than 200 million and Mobb Deep say, one or two million? Leaving aside issues of musical taste and talent, the revenue streams were there for both of them, yet one took full advantage and the other did not.

And the difference: Effectual reasoning.

Effectual reasoning is basically the mindstate of an entrepeneur. It asks the simple questions: What do I have of value?
Who am I?
Whom do I know?
Will I survive if this path fails me?

In other words it starts with the available means and the risk and works toward eliminating risk (thus gaining ways that work), instead of stating a problem and rewards and then working towards achieving those rewards.

Now why is this distinction important? It could inginite the industry again to become the force it was during the the 1960's and it is the writing on the wall for those who continue to hold on to the olden ways.

Couple of factors also make it the perfect time to stop and think about our way of working.

1) Abundance in the West
2) Growing importance of cultures and regions where abundance is not standard

Right now the tech advances are such that companies/citizens in the West can pretty much get all the supplies they need for free or at bargain prices. So the need to spot a gap in the market, which will always be important, is not the primary point of entry anymore. If most markets are without scarcity and work for free, you will need to be about more than product differentiation and pricing. You need to be about you. And this is good because?

Well everybody is banging on about authenticity, story, narrative, recession, budgets, monetization, accountability and the likes. And well, they are right. By looking inward at what you have build up in the last decades, at the resources at hand, you will find true differentiation in little acts of culture or in processes that are unique to you. Things that could help your customers within habits established, without it costing you a dime. Again I like to stress that it is not just about soft stuff, but also the hard stuff that you have under your noses. Change the point of view and they become assests.

Africa, Asia, Latin America. Powerhouses of the now to next. But also places where resources have been scarce. And will continue to be for some time. However because of the somewhat levelling playingfield via the web and globalisation, the culture of making the most with what you have and not being tide down to methods (because the only criteria you have is, does it work, as in does it feed me, give me shelter etc NOW) all of a sudden becomes a major business advantage.

You see just coming up with an goal idea and then trying to get it spread without any backend, is nice when you've got funding. When you have to fund yourself along the way, you learn the value of conversion and monetization. And who likes monetization? We all do, and clients the most.

(The next creative advertising revolution will come from the third world cultures, largely because their definition of creativity is different. It is creating something out of practically nothing, not getting bogged down in form exercises that serve no value, but that is a post for another time)

Taking these (out of many more ) factors in account, working from a viewpoint that allows for quick connections and affordable failure enables us to achieve more tangible results, hence not only making the adland industry gain that much needed Accountability tag, but it also allows us to slip in the social(ist)/2.0 principles the plannersphere has been wetting itself (me included) over, up to the C-level.

And doing it all while not costing the client any money. And that is important. Because reality is, fear still works. Fear of loss of face, job, prestige, budget etc works. Quite powerfully.

Right now it works to stop advances, because we can't convey the value down the line. But it could work in our advantage as we focus on taking away fears because we elimate the downside instead of trying to figure out the upside in advance.

Off course this is easier said then done, hiring practices will have to change at agencies, training has to change at agencies, compensation will have to change at agencies. But guess what..That will happen with you or without you.

Don't say I did not warn you. Smarten up, open the market up...

*lyrics by Notorious BIG

coming full circle pt2.1 :shared responsibility

2009-03-26T22:04:00.000+01:00

coming full circle pt 2: intent and output

2009-03-20T23:30:00.020+01:00

Brenda Paz, 16, was an informant on Mara Salvatrucha, aka MS-13 in the state of Virginia in the USA. She wanted to turn over a new leaf, but was found out and murdered in 2003 . Paz was stabbed, and her throat was slit. Brenda Paz was 4 months pregnant.

Anthony Haynes died in Brooklyn for a blue bandanna wrapped around his head, the symbol of his allegiance to the Crips, a street gang originally from LA. At age 12 in 2000, Anthony was one of the youngest victim of the bloody gang war that was raging in south Brooklyn New York.

Their stories served as a backdrop for my personal thoughts on the interconnectedness of our lives and the fact that we need to accept that everything we do has more impact than that we think it does.

" Very few men today comprehend the totally integrating significance of the 99 percent invisible activity which is coalescing to reshape our future "
-Buckminster Fuller-

The fight against cocaine in Florida.
Cocaine as a drug got popular in the 1970s and early 80's. The drug became particularly popular in the disco culture, as cocaine usage was very common and popular in many discos such as Studio 54. So much so, that Time magazine wrote about it as the drug of the high society. And with the demand so grew the supply.

The main point of access for the South American cartels was the state of Florida. Strategically located a few miles from the Caribbean and being within driving distance of the major east coast cities, it was the perfect place to set up shop.

As members of the drug trade made immense amounts of money, this money also attracted much violence to southern Florida.

Outraged by the drug trade's increasing violence in their city, Miami citizens lobbied the federal government for help. President Reagan responded by creating a cabinet-level task force, the Vice President's Task Force on South Florida. Headed by George Bush, it combined agents from the DEA, Customs, FBI, ATF, IRS, Army and Navy to fight drug traffickers. It proved to be a success for a small period of time.

This law enforcement pressure drove many major players out of the picture, and forced the South American cartels, which were not about to lose out on the most lucrative market for their product, to find an alternate route for the import of cocaine. They found their answer. And then some.

There are known known’s. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don't know we don't know.
- Donald Rumsfeld -

Freeway Ricky, Crips and the fight against the Red Danger

The cold war was at it height in the 1980’s and the US involvement to stop communism from spreading as well. In it’s effort to fight communism the US got involved against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. And as it turned out to fund the fight, cocaine profits were used.

The CIA, to amass as much funds as possible for the fight, allegedly recruited dealers. And to raise the money needed fast, the dealers switched tactics.

First of all to get away from the police heat they set up shop on the West Coast of America. Using Mexico to smuggle their dope. And instead of selling to the people of Beverly Hills or other places similar to the customer base they had catered to in Florida, coke dealers started selling the drugs in the ghetto markets of L.A.'s.

What at the time might have seemed as a foolish strategy to apply turned out to be the start of the longest war in the history of the US. One the government and various defense agencies did not foresee and, in the end could not control.

According to his wikipedia entry Ricky Ross was: Born on May 3, 1960 in Troup Texas and as a young child moved to South Central Los Angeles with his mother. Originally interested in tennis, he pursued a scholarship while attending high school. His coach would later find out he was illiterate and removed him from the school. To make money, he turned to selling drugs to pay for tennis lessons. It was through Henry Corrales, a college friend, that Ross was introduced to cocaine. Through Corrales, Ross found a connection to purchase cheap Nicaraguan cocaine: two Nicaraguan exiles and alleged agency recruits Oscar Blandon and Norwin.

And what helped him become the biggest dealer on the West coast of the USA was that he had access to one of the biggest gangs of LA: the Crips. And the arrival of an epidemic.

The crack that let the genie out of the bottle

Right around the time that the Latin drugs dealers, who were preparing to sell the drugs on the west coast of the usa were setting up shop, street-level drug users were figuring out how to make cocaine affordable: by cooking the powdered form into little rocks that could be smoked: crack.

Nothing was the same afterwards. Cocaine smoked gives a high unmatched by 10 times as much snorted powder. A tiny amount was needed for the high, so the price for cocaine dropped so low that everybody could buy it. More addictive and less expensive. A dealers dream.

Within a year, Ross' drug operation grew to dominate inner-city Los Angeles, and many of the biggest dealers in town were his customers. When crack hit L.A.'s streets hard in late 1983, he was the man at the right place to capitalize on this epidemic. Which he did, with a little unintended stroke of fortune.

The urge of the freedom fighting dealers to get as much money as possible drove them to give Freeway Ricky (named so because he had a lot of property along highways), drugs on consignment and at bargain prices. This allowed Ross to undercut virtually every dealer he encountered and expand his empire with rapid speed.

His main points of distribution were the Crip gangs of LA. And so with his expansion and growing wealth so did theirs grow.

The Crips are a primarily, but not exclusively, African American gang founded in Los Angeles, California. What was once a single alliance between two autonomous gangs is now a loosely connected network of individual sets, often engaged in open warfare with one another.

The Crips are one of the largest and most violent associations of street gangs in the United States with an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 members. The gang is known to be involved in murders, robberies, and drug dealing, among many other criminal pursuits.

What had before had been a local gang fighting over blocks in LA, was turning into a drug army, able to buy heavier guns and increase the violence to heights unseen before. And to places that had never heard of the Crips (and their great rivals the Bloods), but now will not see the end of them.

The rise of MS-13 as an international force of mayhem

Any major alleged US government involvement with narcotics ended with the Iran Contra scandals of the late 80’s. What did not end was the smuggling of drugs via the Mexico route.
Up until the 1970’s Mexico was a place that people went to get soft drugs, mostly marijuana.

But as stated above, with the forced exile of dealers from Florida, Mexico became the primary route smuggle cocaine through. And with the fall of the major cartels in Colombia, the Mexican smugglers and their related gangs are becoming the ringleaders.

According to the LA Times: “ About 90% of the estimated 780 tons of cocaine entering the United States each year passes through the hands of Mexican drug traffickers, according to U.S. studies. Mexican traffickers see Central America as a natural hub between their Colombian suppliers and the smuggling routes the Mexicans control on the U.S. border. A war among competing cartels to control those routes, known as "plazas" in Mexico, led to more than 2,000 killings in 2007.U.S.

Officials said that Central American organized-crime groups, working with the Mexican and Colombian cartels under a subcontracting system, are reaping huge profits. That money, in turn, is fueling a crime wave, especially in Guatemala and El Salvador.” MS-13, by accident/luck, being one of the biggest actors and profiteers of this wave.

The MS-13 gang, aka Mara Salvatrucha 13, is one of the most dangerous gangs in the United States - and one of the most organized. Like many gangs, MS-13 was named after "La Mara", a street in El Salvador and "13th Street" in Los Angeles. The gang originated in El Salvador and initially consisted of violent guerillas that fought in El Salvador's civil war.

The Mara Salvatrucha gang moved into the Los Angeles area in the late 1980's as immigrants from El Salvador began arriving in the city. The early Los Angeles MS-13 gangs sought to protect El Salvadorian immigrants from the ruthless LA gangs. As with many gangs who's original intent was to protect others, the gang soon came to prey upon the Salvadorian community themselves.

In order to break up the gang the US installed a policy of deporting members to their home countries. But a deportation policy aimed in part at breaking up a Los Angeles street gang, backfired and helped spread it across Central America and back into other parts of the United States.

Newly organized cells in El Salvador have returned to establish strongholds in metropolitan Washington, D.C and other U.S. cities. Prisons in El Salvador have become nerve centers, authorities say, where deported leaders from Los Angeles communicate with gang cliques across the United States.

The lesson of the Iroquois

"In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation... even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine."

- Great Law of the Iroquois -

What was intended as a short and local fight against drug dealers in Florida, turned into (via foreign policy interest) an international problem devastating urban communities in the USA, bringing Mexico to the brink of total social unrest and allowing the violence the USA wanted to fight, back into the USA bigger and stronger than ever.

The Crips are in New York. MS-13 is gaining in strength across the entire US and various countries in Central America.

Of course to just write that the killing of young Anthony or Brenda Paz, is the result of a failed foreing policy strategy of the USA in the 80's or that drug dealer Freeway Ricky is sole responsible for the spread of violence caused by the Crips and crack cocaine is to easy and most of all wrong. I am willing to bet that nobody even thought of the posibility of things turning out as they did.

But the fact is, that actions taken, took on a life of their own and propageted their reactions in their own way. The output of actions taken many years before Brenda's and Anthony's deaths, did have effects on their lives.

Brenda Paz, born in Honduras and raised in LA, did migrate to MS-13 chapters in Virginia. Anthony did become part of the Crips in New York, because the Crpis were able to be there for him to join.

Both geographical locations are not natural habitats of these gangs, but became so due to policies and decisions made by individuals on both sides of the law.

So what does it all mean?

Perhaps it is too much to think seven generations ahead, but the Iroquois did get it right in spirit. And (don't laugh) so did Donald Rumsfeld.

The effects of our decisions are not a snapshot and do not live in a vacuum. They are always shared. Shared by all of those (known and unknown, intended and unintended) who feel the effects and act upon these decisions in their own way.

At the time of decision or down the line.

We need to remember this and "be willing to implicate ourselves in the consequences of our imagination"* and actions.

Thank you.

*quote by bruce mau

4 p's of my marketing thinking

2009-03-06T23:28:00.002+01:00

Predictive

Propagative

Personalized

Participatory

presentation P&O Cruises

2009-02-27T21:33:00.001+01:00

P&O: Staying ahead means thinking ahead

View more presentations from nikoherzeg. (tags: strategy marketing)

About the Community, by the Community: a presentation by Neil Perkin

2009-02-06T19:25:00.003+01:00

Neil Perkin asked people to help create this presentation about (online) communities.

Below the result.

Hat tip to all for helping and to Mr Perkin for making it something special.

A Presentation About Community, By The Community

View more presentations from neilperkin. (tags: communications socialnetworks)

Coming full circle: the evolution of gangsta rap

2009-02-02T10:25:00.004+01:00

Gangster rap is a term coined by the mainstream media to describe a certain genre of hip-hop that reflects the violent lifestyles of some inner-city youths. Gangsta is a corruption of the word gangster. The genre was pioneered around 1983 by Ice T with songs like Cold Winter Madness and Body Rock/Killers and was popularized by groups like N.W.A in the late '80s' After the national attention that Ice-T & N.W.A created in the late 80's, gangster rap became the most commercially lucrative subgenre of hip hop (wikipedia).

Lately it is been floundering and in dire need of a rewiring. I write this as an opportunity for the entire genre to reinvent itself and to reaffirm that is it still viable and profitable.

It’s morning in the hoods of America
Straight Outta Compton, Crazy Motherfucker Named Ice Cube
From The Gang Called Niggaz With Attitudes
When I'm Called Off, I Got A Sawed Off
Squeeze The Trigger, And Bodies Are Hauled Off

NWA- straight out of compton

In 1988 NWA broke down the doors for gangster rap. At it’s purest it was a depiction of the realities of life in south central LA. It was raw, uncut, the black answer to punk rock and Elvis. Four guys from Compton were able to make White America take notice of what was going on. Yet without intent they also united black and white America behind the color green; 9 million sold of “straight out of Compton” without major airplay showed that there was money to be made in bringing the hood to America.

What followed was a flood of gangster rap. From those who witnessed to those who had participated in crime, everybody grabbed the mike to spit the truth. And a couple of things started to change from the original vision of NWA.

1. Gang affiliation started infiltrating the genre (most noticeable in the early ‘90’s via Snoop Doggy Dogg, who was/ is a Crip). This lead to the loss of independance in storytelling that had been visible in the work of NWA. Now you were telling your story, which of course means somebody else’s was not being told.

2. The celebration of wealth (in contrast to the celebration/empowerment of life that had been the dominant theme up until then via good time rap of Fresh Prince e.a or political rap of Public Enemy) started to take center stage, which in turn led to mediated tales of life on the streets being told. Characters like scarface (the movie) and the “pimp” got a polished rounding and struck a nerve with record buying public, thus even more pushing the tales that were being told in a certain direction.

3. Looking back, we can also see that, much like during the Mafia Castellammarese Wars in the 1930 in the US, when many bought “made men status” because there was a war going on and soldiers were needed (thus applying less strict rules to those who entered the organizations), cred was being sold by those who could give in on order to ensure that the one getting the affiliation would be more successful. Record companies and artists alike created a web of onscreen personas and off screen deals to ensure that the pie was big enough for all to eat of.
It worked. At it’s height gangster rap was the major genre in rap, commercially and artistically. Yet factors outside of its influence were about to bring it to its knees.

The end of street cred and the gangsta as we knew him

Picture this. You can flow a bit, and live in the hood. Maybe you’ve even dealt a little dope or hustled a bit to support yourself. You spot rap as a way out, so do some of the people in your crew. You make a record about your area and talk about the trials and tribulations you’ve been through. It’s a success. You are on MTV BET or what ever. The record company is happy, you are happy. Middle America thinks you are the reincarnation of Capone and for now you are content to keep sending out this image. Every now and then people would hear about rappers having beef (sometimes fatal) about reputations.

Those wanting to steal the throne would check somebody’s Gangsta. But because of technology and media being controllable and sender orientated, the record company and the artist are not forced to take these attacks to serious. As long as the major media transmit the image that you want nothing is in danger.

World 2.0

Well as we all know, shift happens. The first sign was the “Wanksta” track with which 50 cent ended the career of Ja rule to launch his own. 50 cent was one of the first artists to utilize alternative channels of communication to get the message out about Ja rule. He flooded the streets of New York with mix tapes, which were being bought and resold across America. In essence the mix tape was the you tube before you tube.

This plan was carried over in the age of 2.0. Rappers started making disstracks on youtube, challenging each other’s street cred and focusing mainly on showing off their (limited) wealth. The focus got lost from telling stories about what is going on to trying to eliminate the competition by discrediting them.

Basically every gangsta rapper has now become Motrin and a Motrin-Mom in one. .
So now the genre is occupied by people who’s image can be destroyed by anybody who grew up with them and has a grudge. This has lead to gangster rappers either going in hiding, on the offensive destroying others or creating alternative personas (that of someone with swagger, or that of a business man) in order to still be relevant and to capitalize on the need of a younger public to hear and buy these stories.

And after reviewing the downward sales figures of 50 cent, the major star of the genre, and those of non-gangster rap outfits Outkast or Kanye West, we can say that it has not worked. Kanye West outsold 50 cent in a first week album battle two years ago to become the biggest star in hip-hop, period. It was Ali’s phantom punch delivered to gangster rap.

Contextual rap
"I think you need a lot of context to examine anything." -Augustus Haynes The Wire episode 2 season 5.

What does it all mean? This is the question that we need to ask in order to restore the genre. Strangely enough the answer came from two middle aged white guys. Ed Burns and David Simon, co-creators of the show the Wire. A former cop and journalist/teacher who‘ve spend more than 20 years in the ghetto of Baltimore.

At its heart the show is a modern ganster rap classic. It tells everything we would be expecting to hear from rappers. It’s got gangsters, corrupt cops and politicians. But is has more. It has context.

In five seasons it took me from the towers and drugs of West Baltimore, to political Washington, the white polish working class in the harbors, the empty class rooms of schools across Maryland and via the corrupt media desks back to the drug fields of West Baltimore. It showed me what it all means and how the dots are connected. That is also the power of gangsta rap. It has the allure. We all like the bad guy, we are fascinated by this archetype. So let’s use it to give people their medicine with it.

The so called “backpack rappers” like a Kanye West or Outkast do sell. They sell big time. But in my view they would lack the appeal to talk about the wider social issues, that a Jay-Z or DMX would have. Their starting point is the gritty tales of the criminal. That they take you on a social journey as well is gravy.

As I am writing about the state of American gangsta rap from my living room in Rotterdam- Holland, Tropa Elite is playing on the telly. A movie about corrupt cops in Brazil who are at the heart of a lot of violence in the city of Rio.

The world has gotten smaller for me and it has gotten smaller for those who want to get their story out. A kid in Brooklyn can start a blog or post vids on youtube to tell how his life is being affected by the stuff around him. An unknown rapper in Atlanta can spit crazy lyrics and become a hit on the web.

“I'll tell you half the story, the rest you fill it in. Long as the villian win..”
Jay-Z Reasonable Doubt

But what they can’t do is create the context needed to understand the bigger picture. For that you need to live in more that one world. You need to be street, corporate, white, black, suburb, downtown, Rio and Compton. You need a bit of “gangsta”.

The above lyric is from Jay-Z on the track “dead presidents II” and it’s exactly half the solution. From hinting at stuff that is happening, rappers need to go to connecting dots and filling in the blank space, they need to shine light on the shadows.

Follow the money

Now why should they do all this you ask? Hip-hop is a young mans game and the kids wanna have fun. Well because there is money in it. Huge money.

Hip Hop is over 20 years old. Its listeners have grown up with it. The demographics are there to capitalize on. Yet there is no one talking to the 30+ about stuff they want/need now in the manner that they have grown accustomed to.

Sure we can all appreciate the brilliance of the “ Whisper Song” and like the shock rap or Mr. Mather’s.

But the more we learn the more questions we have. How do drugs get in the ghettos, how can an AK-47 from Russian factories end up on the streets of Compton? What’s the connection between the Mexican drug lords, Salvadorian left wing radicals and the brutal killing of a latino female in Maryland? Why is no one tackling the tales of drug use by US soldiers in Iraq, or the fact that gangs send their people to the army, so that they learn the use of weapons?

The need to understand the world around is the greatest market in the 21 century. More than that, people are willing to invest time and money in order to make sense of the world around them. If cash is king, then context is the new cash. I repeat, Context is cash.

And it is at this need-point that the current crop of gangsta rappers has an advantage over their younger challengers. The up and comers can talk about their short life or the good life. The older crew can talk about life.

So not only are they relevant, they have a shot at extending their careers for another 5-10 years. Springsteen wrote Born to Run about his own little world, he wrote the Rising, about the world at large. Both sold millions.

Ice Cube is a great example. His record “laugh now” has sold over 400.000 copies. He distributed it independently. With the average retail price of $ 10,- that amounts to gross turnover of $ 4000.000,-. Seeing as it was recorded in his own studio for less that $ 100.000,- and it sold without a major push by record companies, that a very healthy gross margin. And let’s face it, gross margin is what keeps us in business. It would be very interesting to see the breakdown of the buyers by age, but I’ll give you 5:1 it’s mostly 30 years and over.

Of course the record labels have to take a hard look at themselves as well. They need to cultivate talent differently. For all it’s fault’s, and there are many, the advertising world and it’s agencies take care of their creative. They make sure that the stimuli is there, that a understanding of the broader culture is there. That a creative filters this in his or her own way is their thing. The input is there. (P.S. if an ad agency or research company is looking for a new market, check out the music industry…and let me know when it pays of)

Why would you sign a major talent and then not help develop him to his full potential over time? That’s just bad business.

Final thoughts
NWA sold over 9 million of their album “straight out of Compton” without major airplay by bringing the hood to the world. You know what they called their brand of rap: Reality Rap.
So we are back a square one, but with a shot of reliving success all over again.

The gangsta has the ability to hook us in with his tales of power and crime, but he is also able to school us on more once he has us. We need stop talking about us, and start showing how our lives are connected to you and the world. The means to communicate are there, the stories are there, and the audience is there.

But we do need to change how labels groom their talents past a certain age, we need to create corporate awareness about the demographic changes in hip hop buying audiences and start catering to them. And we need to tell our creative that they don’t need to chase to 15 year old to make money.

Now let’s make some money!

striving for inclusion

2009-01-31T18:06:00.003+01:00

“It’s not just my creation at this point, and it hasn’t been really for a long time, “I wanted it to be our creation. Once you set that in motion, it’s a large community of people gathered around a core set of values."

Bruce Springsteen

thoughts on brands

2008-11-20T11:07:00.004+01:00

Parts of an exchange about brands. Was very helpfull in clarifying some of my thoughts, so it is being reprinted for those who like this sort of stuff with kind permission of Rob Campbell

Rob,
Why would a brand want to live forever? especially with the life span of 18 months when it comes to brand managers why doesn't anybody retire brands like they do rockbands (and releasing a single to pay for your ex wife does not count as keeping the beatles alive, they died the day ringo stopped replying to fanmail!).

Killing it prematurly is surely a strategy. Hendrix, Che, JFK, The Wire will live on more powerfully with the great "what if..? question" sparking the imagination then say the brand of Law & Order or Bill Clinton...

I would really like to hear your opinion on heritage in brands, does this burden or enhance? and should you sometimes kill them off? The product life cycly is just another midless act people refer to. Brand euthanasia is surely in order. who needs 2000 jeans brands?

I think it’s an interesting strat however there’s a few points that will probably stop it from ever happening …
1/ No company will kill a brand that is making them tons of cash. Apart from the fact they crave profit, if they are listed, it is a legal duty to do whatever is in the best interests of the company and as much as you could argue it will give the brand ‘emotional longevity’, it’d be a hard sell to shareholders.

2/ There are lots of brands that meant a lot to people that got pulled [because of poor sales for example] and whilst they still live in the minds of the fans, their commercial value [unlike Hendrix/Elvis etc] is minimal.

3/ The fact is that in the main, ‘brands that are manufactured’ just don’t have that much importance in people’s lives. Sure they like them, but they don’t love for them – mainly because their communication is primarily blatantly commercially based as opposed to musicians that often represent a more emotional value, even if in reality they are designed to get money out of your wallets.

As I said, I do think it’s an interesting idea, but killing the goose that laid the golden egg – especially from a corporate standpoint – is sadly, quite unlikely.

like i said, I believe that legal issues (such as obligations to shareholders) are preventing growth of brands.

So I believe that first of lifting the copyright protection on a brand will free up a brand and simultaniously scare them into delivering tangible value. If you look at the stock market crisis it's alot down to intangible fears. A lot of companies are very liquid but lose value.

If it's free market you want, well let the market decide. basically it's Rome. You got two brands (copyright free) and the consumer get's to decide if they live or dy. They can vote (think the brandtags thing of Noah Brier but with thums up or thumds down vote, not asking abbout associations).

And secondly by making brands creative comm licence esque, the public will indirectly decide what happens to a brand. If a brand is good and acts proper, you will most likely see small charities and other projects hop on their name. If it's shite you will see most likely some cynical and satirical stuff on youtube and in other media that will kill it. self regualation, much like wikipedia.

If 'i've learned anything it's that brands only exist in the minds of those who buy/believe in them. So either you deliver uplifting meaning and raise spirits (such as Nike) or you flog a good enough product at cheap prices so it meet needs.

I see a future where there are two type of tangible product brands: autonomous brands that deserve to live and the Unicef brands. by Unicef brands I mean that the major (multi religious and otherwise) charities start adding their label to products. so you get the typhoid south africa pants, the fresh water shirts.

This way not only do we rid the world of bad brands (and the hacks that support them in their comms) but we make sure that either you get someting great or you do something good. Web based brands will be a different story, because of the low cost of scaling.

Might never happen, but that's what they said about communisme in the usa!

Quick question, if we follow your idea to its natural conclusion, what role does marketing then have given it used to be about ‘influence’ whereas you seem to almost be saying it should be totally upto the people’s choice or am I missing something?

It's about filling in the akward silences that occur when conversation is turning from interesting to not [PR is gaining in importance]. it's about becoming the one people can turn to in time of crisis.

So instead of toning down their presence to inlfuence, marketing has to ramp it up, when it matters and with different content!

via:
1) internal company development (structuraly, legaly, productwise, making JFK "we will put a man on the moon in 10 years"goals)

2) relevant culture converstation starter/matchmaking problems with solutions (enabling journalist to do work, filmmakers to talk, taking the real beauty strat to a more abstract level)

3) community outreach (perhaps like a state that takes care of it's citizens [yeah it's going back to industrial age practice of job for life, but now it's about quality for life]; how many brand consumers can't afford their healthcare? why are not all the brands pooling resources to come up with something. loyalty = 2way street)

I believe that brands should put their faith in the hands of consumers. it's like that exercise where you fall backwards and hope somebody catches you. now brands expect to be caught, but don't catch.

Nothing wrong with making money, nothing wrong with making mistakes.

We talk about brands behaving more human or treating consumers more humane. So why not than see how we can make brands as vulnerable as possible so that a) they are seen as one of "us", b) they can change people's minds and actions because they will do like brands/companies.

So perhaps I was a bit black and white about the rome analogy, but I stick by my Uplifting vs Valuable categorization. either you make me feel good, or help me be better/do good while offering me good enough product I don't have to think to much about.

By putting yourselve out there you will see if you are good enough. The goose /currency = people. Pete was right. And like oil, we are abusing it untill there will be no more.

How many people will say with pride: I work at....? That is another the role of marketing. Making sure that the consumers, who happen to work for them, feel proud. kingdom for meaning!

Hope it makes sense

branding at the speed of law

2008-11-18T09:19:00.008+01:00

You've probably read, seen or heard about this. It's the reality of business today. Shit can hit the fan. But what peakes my interest is the fact that it's a losing reality for most brands. Why?

The legal department.

The aim of the game back in the day was to protect image. And when it comes to that game, most major companies are well equiped. cease and desist, halting actions.

Only nobody told them the citizens are playing a different game. A bit like cops and robbers, Batman and the Joker.

It's about being able to talk the fluid fast paced, truth based talk. How may companies are structured in such a way that they know the exact margins of communication, so that they can act without concern and stay in conversation?

So riddle me this agencies:

When it comes to briefing or presenting strat + concepts, how many are concerned with the facilitation of an ongoing dialogue from a legal structure p.o.v.?

For so many intergrated agencies it seems that ad/marketing and p.r. are still seen as silo's and not letters that, read out loud, form the word experience.

Yet if you do not set yourselves up to learn real time, you are just setting yourselve up to fail. And just thinking about the initial setup whereby courting controversy (which in turn can ignite passionate followers and fierce detractors; the bedrock of branding against beige) is in some cases a viable way to go, is not enough. It's always about the next move.

Asking yourselve questions like: what if we don't create followers, but just piss people of ? What is our Time to Reponse ?

As a client I would very much appreciate the fact that my ad team has legal experts on board who played a role in the overal strategy and have paved the way for advertising and pr to flow into one another. Creativity is reading and knowing the fineprint. And this is not a plea for further focus group testing, this is simply asking companies and agencies to level the playingfield for themselves so that they are not hijacked.

For as long as a brand does not truly belong to it's consumers (in every sense of the way) companies have to think about how to become as agile as citizens. Or at least know what game they are in and the rules that apply.

note to self: the art of storytelling

2008-11-11T21:05:00.002+01:00

For sale: baby shoes, never used.

Ernest Hemingway

more reflections on agencies: the client agency relationship

2008-11-11T20:30:00.003+01:00

Terry: You was my brother, Charley, you shoulda looked out for me a little bit. You shoulda taken care of me just a little bit so I wouldn't have to take them dives for the short-end money.

Charlie: Oh I had some bets down for you. You saw some money.

Terry: You don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it.

tnx: george@cynic.com

brand lessons from Ralph Waldo Emerson

2008-11-11T19:27:00.003+01:00

Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

The world belongs to the energetic.

A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.

Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think.

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

some more thoughts on strategy, agencies and the industry

2008-11-05T20:20:00.001+01:00

some thoughts on strategy and agencies

2008-10-30T19:37:00.003+01:00

The agencies that will survive/thrive in the (near) future will be structured as the BDA’s (big dumb agencies) of today. They will be international conglomerates that do full service work and help the client grow successfully into profitable companies. Jusqu'ici tout va bien.

Ideology and recruitment
The main difference will be the following. The agencies will limit themselves to the clients they will assist. Some get it, some don’t. Those who do will get help. What that it is, we all know. It is not just bottom line, not just the lowest common denominator, not just satisfying the boss above you, not being non involved with the business, because you have no vested interest in the success or failure.

It’s a state of mind, a inner manifesto, based on part naïveté, part reckless ambition, part idealism, part stubborn feeling that there is a better way of doing things (this a personal view of the world, I admit, but go look at the people/things you admire and you will see these elements surface).

The problem with the agency of tomorrow is, the same as the discussion about the role of advertising in general in the future. It’s always from the angle of service. Submissively catering to the needs of the client. That has to change or everything else is just dryfucking.

Agencies need to choose clients, better yet not choose clients. It is neither the execution, nor the work nor the strategy; the fight is in alignment of worldviews and the destruction of institutionalizing effects. We want to have successful families with sound values that can grow and evolve, not one night stands.

For better or for worse we will need to demand from our clients that they state a point view publicly that is ours. The talk need to be about fundamental, not instrumental reasons for doing stuff/going about stuff. Middle or wing is detail work. But we have to demand a show of colour. It’s not about one word, brand energy or any tactical proprietary tool/system. It’s about ideology.

Matchmaking
Business strategy will be more replaced by the achievement of audacious non business goals across multiple types of business (since you will have blue and red business in tech, food, logistics, non profit) and regions, religions that need to be achieved via business funds (think providing every kid in Tanzania with an education till the age of 16 instead of 12, or new technologies or what not). Multinational clients cram local territory, yet still function as silos when it comes to solving problems within the territory they operate in.

It’s the role of the agency of the future to pick businesses that fit a certain mould, connect them with local consultants from the agency, who will help the business grow and keep focus on the grander ideological goals. To spot business opportunities with other likeminded business to achieve growth.

Forget media neutral, transmedia, matchmaking is our business. Once again, fundamentals, not instuments. Instead of servicing one client we shift to becoming middlemen that connect those who can do more without us than with us interfering. That means design, movie producers, farmers, whoever can help solve the problem and advance the business towards the non-business goals.

to be continued

NH

note to self: strategy is...

2008-10-27T12:01:00.005+01:00

"Real strategy lies not in figuring out what to do, but in devising ways to ensure that, compared to others, we actually do more of what everybody knows they should do."

"You can't achieve a competitive differentiation through things you do 'reasonably well most of the time.' "

"The necessary outcome of strategic planning is not analytical insight but resolve."

"Strategy is deciding whose business you are going to turn away."

David Maister (via TomPeters)

What do we do now? Help Obama during first 100 days in office

2008-10-22T23:07:00.005+02:00

The above clip was the inspiration;

Obama is the side chosen;

Facu is the partner in crime;

the work is: WhatDoWeDoNow

It's very beta, so if anybody wants to help or shoot it down, chip in.

weapons of choice pt 5

2008-10-18T20:47:00.000+02:00

weapon of choice pt 4: stuck for inspiration

2008-10-13T17:59:00.005+02:00

Oasis are mad for the Beatles.

Little Steven has love for garage rock.

Nickelback are stuck in the Seatle grunge sound.

When it comes to inspiration I have to admit I am also stuck.

Certain albums, movies, books always seem to offer up deeper insight than the last time I checked them out.

Same goes for the era in advertising called "the creative revolution". The time of Bernbach, Krone, Lois, Koenig, Callaway, Della Femina, Gossage.

Although the current times offer up a great deal of stimuli, food for thought and are truly interesting times, when in comes to all out-aim for another universe- type inspiration the 60's are my era.

Perhaps it's the fact that they were pioneers, troublemakers and the art of advertising was held in higher esteem. Sure it's a sentimental view, and there was shite back then, but still..

But strip all that away and what get's me everytime is the power and abundance of the ideas. Some would say that it was also the era of the mass media, and you could buy your way into popular demand.

Perhaps. But mostly thought it is the sheer audacity and freshness (after all these years) that stands out. There is no need to contexualize the work (like say some of the work that was done prior). There is no need to explain the thinking behind it. it speaks for itself.

So here's to the brave admen and brave clients, to sharp ideas and great execution.

And here's to hoping that the next decade out shines the 1960's. It's about time, don't you think.

Strawberries in January pt 5: from the head of Zeus Jones

2008-10-10T10:28:00.003+02:00

In keeping with building on existing relationships:

A very sharp and clear discription of the distinction between telling about usefullness and being usefull.

The Aesthetic Divide by Adrian Ho

vision of the future

2008-10-09T09:34:00.003+02:00

show me and I will make up my mind, guide me to understand and I will teach others

2008-10-06T16:09:00.004+02:00

"Let's compare technology to works of art. Even masterpieces appear somehow lacking until people appreciate them. That's when they become truly complete. Beyond the works themselves, it's how people interpret or receive them that matters. And it's the same for technology. What matters is deciding how people will want to embrace new technology or features."

Kenya Hara

Strawberries in January pt 4 : the magic starts after the trick

2008-09-21T16:11:00.007+02:00

A very important rule in magic (the real kind, not the one that creates 700 billion, ha!) states, that the real magic starts after the trick is done.

When a trick is performed correctly, the audience will go home and add stuff to the trick that was not there, but does enhance the trick.

Once home they face their audience and at that moment their own biases kick in. The trick grows, from a simple sleight of hand, to three lions and a midget bellydancer. The real magic starts after the trick.

The magic is in the story. It is the delight that the teller has in building on the groundworks laid by the magician, it's the delight the listener has in hearing the story, half shaking his head, knowing the story is probably bollocks, but kicking himself anyways for not going. It's the simple act of having something interesting to tell somebody else. That's the real deal the audience paid for. Not the trick.

So should we, as marketeers keep this in mind. The real story starts after the trick is done. Whether this means handling the client by giving him what he wants, but not how he wanted it, or by making sure that the products we sell are more then just one layer.

So much stuff is about the story we sell. But in actual fact it's the story they tell. So when done correctly, their work will do the business for you. And often in these jaded times, it's not about the, shouty, over the top, disruptive, big thing.

How are you gonna build on that? It's so distant and leaves nothing to the imagination. It's gone, but you don't buy it. The reaction is: ok, how did he do that? you go all CSI and start deconstructing it. The trick did not pull you in, it just triggered an reaction to disprove it.

It's about the up close and personal small gestures. They stop us in our habit driven lives and catch our imagination and give us permission to build upon them and make life interesting. Bold trumps big these days. In these days of obiquitousness and larger than life events that our minds can't comprehend, you gotta feel it to believe it.

And like anything in else in our lives, nothing feels stronger than the stuff that happens close to home.

the view from a far is sometimes sharper

2008-09-16T20:00:00.006+02:00

Derren Brown is a mentalist. His book about the trade is quite a spell binding (boom tish!) read.

Among the many gems, he discusses the fact that it is easier for him to play his tricks on those who watch him the closest. He flipped the old saying "for every action there is an equal reaction" by stating that for every bit of concentration in one part of the brain and on one part of his act, there is a loss of concentration in another part of the brain and on another part of his act.

This simple insight allows him to play with people. With great ease.

However, the people he as a magician fears most are the once who don't give him their full attention, those who glimpse out of the corner of their eyes to see what it is he is doing. No pressure is there on them to follow. They are not paying attention to a single part, but just glance to see the entire act. And then spot the cheat quite easy.

Sometimes we as admen to can get so deep into research/work or as a brand in our products, that we just see parts and are being played without even knowing it.

So remember to cultivate blank slates. Be it in your agency, or those that don't fit into the target group you do focusgroups with.

Those with no pressure to come up with anything, that have no stake in your brand. Have them glance your work, brand or thinking. Forget territorial pissing and be suprised to learn a lot.

P.S. over on his blog Northern makes an very good case for blank slates in your own life. Go and read.

the power of words

2008-09-15T21:02:00.005+02:00

Watching a regional football derby yesterday it struck me: these players were more ferocious, more physical, more inclined to play rough, to do whatever it took to win that derby not because of what the derby meant to both teams. It was because of what the word derby means. period.

It is this implicitness, the context of the word that these players understood. The reff understood, the crowd understood. Derby = hard play, full of fouls, at breakneck pace. More was allowed, because of the frame it was presented in.

Briefing is one of those words that lately has frustrated me. If say the agency we work with gives feedback about the briefing they received it somehow always revolves around questions of format, channel choice, pay off. It seems that the auto pilot kicks in whenever they hear the word briefing, and it takes them back to when they learned about it in school. Briefing = ......

Words. Context. We often glance over it, but once you get down to the nitty gritty of it, it is powerfull. Especially when the implicit meaning is understood but not articulated. When the illusion of civility is upheld or explicitly removed.

They can grant us room to grow or close our way of thinking down.

Exploring vs Drilling for oil

Immigrant vs illigal Alien

Words dictacte so much of the space we can, allow ourselves to take, and can help us articulate the reasons behind actions not explicitly mentioned, that a dictionary is this marketeers new friend. Perhaps obvious to some, but important enough to me to repeat.

House MD or Doctor Melfi

2008-09-13T16:52:00.002+02:00

McCain and Obama. Bare with me. From an archetypical point of view.

the US/Western voter is a Hyperchondriac (compared to 90% of the people of the world, in terms of problems)

Obama is the Therapist.

McCain is the Surgeon.

O is centered around the mind and emotions.

He talks and he listens. He is a chance for all the people to wallow in their own sorrow and to feel bad together. dream of better together. He is sympathetic. He wants to get to the root of it all and change us, it. He wants us to reach our full potential. But what he does not mention to much, but what people instinctively do know is that profound change is a long and hard road to travel. It takes guts to look at oneself and say, I do not measure up, I need to change. He knows that the problems patients talk about are not the root, that the solutions that they ask for are patchwork at best. He must educate and change.

But in reality there is no clear game plan from his side, it's a bit ambigious. We know it's cureable, but there is now easy one fit's all solution. it's a combo of medicine and therapy. It takes time.

And like the great Soprano's have shown us, It's not always up to the physician, but the patient, whether one get's better.

Most (and please do not see this as a lightharted attempt to make fun of menatal illness,) people who see someone about their problems, just wanna have an excuse " I am depressed, give me medication" or hear " It's not your fault, your childhood was bad" and then walk out with a solution.

Positive Change does not come easy. Negative Change does. Negative stuff impacts us way more than the good. Think sickness, death, pain etc. Negative is profound yet instant. Positive is fleeting yet longterm.

Enter the Surgeon. he talks about the body.

M says: mam/sir, you are ill. Boom. Negative. But the good news is, I am a Surgeon and I know what is wrong and how to fix it. Let's cut it out. He validates and than goes into default mode, whatever the problem. You don't know, because at that time the patient is asleep.

The fix is quick, but the recovery takes time. See how it's framed nice. Sure, you do not mind the long recovery, if the fix is immediate.

You like this. it's straight talk. No flip flop. this it what you wanna hear. Perhaps not what you need, perhaps so.

And so what do you as a hypochondriac do? U want validation of your problem!

The validation comes in the form of the solution u get. A scar to prove it was real after all, or a mirror held up that you that confronts you with the fact that it's all in your mind and it wll take time to deal with that? Both hurt, one on the outside and not for long, the other on the inside and long.

Real change or illusion of change.

If you ask the people at QVC, they'd laugh at the fact that you even have to ask.

right to healthy food

2008-09-12T13:57:00.005+02:00

I know this is a bit of a western train of thought, but amma go with it anyways.

Why does the constitution in most western world countries not have a garantuee in it with regards to healthy food? with epidemic proportions, it seems that the basic right to food (as part of the right to shelter, water, freedom of speech, etc) needs some re-evaluating.

Food in itself has become something of an abstract thought. That what most of us consume today, would not be recognized just a couple of generations ago.

This in itself is not evil. But the elements of food have not changed as dramatically as the form in which it is being presented.

So should there be a garantuee in the constitution?

Well for one it would kickstart checks and balances principles. If it's a right, it will have advocates and governamental protection.

Secondly it would also serve as a prerequisite whenever the west starts to export democracy again. Whick they/we will always keep doing. So the kids in the EU to be countries than would have some inbuild protection, when the socities there get all the aillments of luxury we now face in the West.

On the other hand: how to define and enforce it? food is culture and culture does not always paint in broad strokes.

I know for a fact that my father used to be laughed at by his Dutch pittbosses when he used to eat garlic at lunch. It was considered a weed and not very good for you. Times do change, as now the Dutch eat it almost as much.

So if we are to garantuee the right to healthy food, perhaps we should look at it from a reverse angle, the obligation to produce food or feeding elements, that in the tradition of medicine: Do no harm. Food that has an Darwin-esque quality to it. Food that has been around for more than two generations. If you have a food that has been around for more than 2 generations, you could argue that the negative effects of the food are outweighed by the postive ones, thus adding to the survival of the species, with adjustments possible for cultural difference.

So in short order: we get all the old folks and put in front of them dishes. if they don't know them they are gone. of course this would hurt the world economy, but that's an added bonus ;)

crackpot thinking or something to it?

world community grid

2008-09-11T16:06:00.001+02:00

via mr Maschmeyer

great example of building on existing relationships

what if...rapid response via existing means

2008-09-10T16:38:00.004+02:00

this idea got me thinking.

There are printshops, shops for t-shirts and the shops like Kinko's. These shops have an infrastructure in place to produce.

What if you created a UN server? this server would kickstart when great disasters happen.

From this server you, as a shop, could download prints. On this server as a designer, artist, you could upload stuff to be printed. all for charity. What you do is three things:

1) make use of existing worldwide distribution to facilitate a charity/money scheme.

2) you could kickstart an extra money revenue, by having a online/televised fashion show, with limited editions. Like you could have a Paris limited edition done by some designer, and have an London Hirst limited edition.

3) make use of existing desire to have t shirt with great motifs on them, and or the need to have something haning from the wall.

a tentative first step in a new thought direction for me. So any and all feedback is welcome

note to self: sender is nothing without receiver

2008-09-08T15:51:00.002+02:00

If you are a planner, remember the consumer, if you are a creative remember the consumer, if you are a client remember the consumer. Sure it helps if you can throw it 50 yards, or do a behind the back no look bounce pass between the legs. But...

If it ain't caught, you don't score

digital planning: a case for running after we learn how to walk

2008-09-08T13:29:00.005+02:00

Over on sunshine's blog there is interesting debate going on. Should digital planning be separate and be the domain of digital planners or should it be a tool in the box of planners? Period.

After having some lunch, I have come to the following conclusion. Yes and No.

It's time we (?) learned a lesson from the restaurant industry. Chefs are in many ways a great inspiration for me as they are the ultimate advertising men. They have to do the planning and the creative execution all in one. Plus making sure that they do it on a budget , like good Account Handlers(well most have to), and advancing the craft further. All the while they never lose sight of the strategic anker of their proffession: serving up great food that customers want to eat.

That's the trick. Serving up food that people wanna eat. Some do it via the classical French Cuisine, some do fusion cooking.

Another small trick is that the majority of the Chefs with 1 or more Michelin star have been trained in the classic French cuisine, the basis of modern cooking, at some point or another in their career. Some have chosen to move on to do different styles and explore different cuisines, some have choses to perfect it. But the root understanding and appreciation of the craft is there.

So why not have digital agencies. there could well be a market for it. That is not the real question.

One could argue that Nike did the right thing by not having Wieden do all the Nike+ stuff. Their strength is with emotional stuff in print and telly (bit of a generalisation, but for arguments sake, let's play along). You don't go to a restaurant to eat tapas with your coq au vine? why should you demand McDonald style service from your agency but that's a client problem and a post for another time.

The question is: Do planners understand the root of their craft, the consumer and what drives him? If they do, well than there is no reason why they should not serve up their food in a digital form. If their is not, well than it's time to re-evaluate the relevancy. For if you can not meet the never changing demand for consumer insight (but taken to a new medium) you should go back to school.

P.S. what if there was a Cordon Blue with a "Classis Cycle" for planning? I'd sign up. Just like mr King's book should be read by all.

Strawberries in January pt 3: the way forward: enhancing relationships, not creating totaly new ones

2008-09-05T17:17:00.004+02:00

I realized there was no need to create new forms; all I had to do was design the relationship between a human, an object, and what is around the two. That realization gave me a big relief.

For example, if a client asked me “Please design a chair” while sitting in a good chair, I might go so far as to say, “Why? You’re already sitting in a nice one!” That’s almost it. People think that design is about making new things, creating new stimulations. But what about the good relationships that already exist? Why abandon all that and make things all over again? If there is already a relationship with a chair that is 95 percent good, then all that has to be done is to adjust the remaining 5 percent to suit the current needs. The client might persist and say “No, no, I want you to design it, Mr. Fukasawa.” But what I’m trying to say is that the important thing is how much design you can do with the remaining 5 percent of what has been 95 percent completed, how you can make the best out of the design that has already been developed and improved, and make your design along with what’s already there, instead of just throwing everything out and starting from scratch. Of course, to design that 5 percent is not as easy as it sounds because you have to further improve what’s already a great design.

Naoto Fukasawa

friday open vault: deutsch telekom + Oasis

2008-08-22T10:06:00.004+02:00

call it cheezy, call it easy, but I admit this clip moves me

Can't wait for the album to drop...

have good one..

what if...we changed the budget

2008-08-21T16:58:00.002+02:00

So here is one from real life actually that got shot down.

One of my targets, in my official capacity, for next year is to help Sales increase revenue (somehow it seems that's always a target). So to achieve that here is what I proposed.

Cut the target and budget meetings down from once a month to once every three months.

See most of our sales managers know at the beginning of a month whether they will achieve their targets. So when they know it's gonna be negative, they go on defense. cutting costs to reach margin targets, squeeze old clients for more and go on sales driven binges by offering everything at lower prices. This then only wrecks havoc on the revenue side, because if you have a bad month you go to the same clients a s always and dump the price even more. It's a cycle.

But what if you knew you had two months to make up you current negative? This would allow you to use a month, that is "lost" anyways to go on offence and take chances with new business. It would free up sales manager to be more proactive and the trickle down would be positive instead of fearfull.

Yes this is all just a theory, but never put to practice it remains that.

Back to the drawingboard.

what if: whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me

2008-08-21T11:02:00.002+02:00

A comment I made about breaking the competition sparked the above quote from Matthew 25:40 in my head, given by Senator Obama at mr Warren's debate last week. That in turn lead me to think back to a comment made on the blog I commented on.

"Droga5 had the chance to lift the norm of Aussie adland" was in essence the comment.

What if, the responsability was put in the hands of the client, instead of the agency? Speaking as a client, I know that customers don't care.

They don't care that I have a 10.000 papers bigger circulation or that the competition has more display points. They base their decisions on emotional associations we trigger in them and the amount of interestingness we can offer in a fresh and original way. The only thing that they do care and share is their loathing of those who sell advertising space. So it's a question of getting them to a point of " I hate all of you as a category, but I like you personally..let's do business".

Because customers are tainted by experiences with others, you pay a price.

So why not as a client do the following:

Write a brief to your agency to do work for your competitors (off course presuming you got a good agency). It's like opposition research in politics, but in reverse. You do not want to be better than your competitors, you want them to be better for the sake of all.

You want to lift them to new hights and the category as well. Knowing off course that the better the competition get's the better you've got to be.

I am aware of category strategies that have been applied in the past, think Juan Valdes, but that was out of co-operation between competitors.

But has there been a client who actively demanded that he be surpassed by his competition, and even helped the process along? I hope so..

what if...some thoughts on the music industry

2008-08-15T17:07:00.004+02:00

So there is a lot of music talent out there. Youtube has produced some stars (?). Everybody is a virtual platform that can act like a label and produce and distribute music, jadajadajada..

But on the other side we have the record label. They ain't going nowhere soon.

And the guys hurting the most are the A&R reps. The artist and repetoire peeps.

So here is the thing.

If you get famous on youtube or whatever, you can get signed by a label. But this way of doing business decreases the value of the A&R. He did not find the talent, millions of viewers kinda did.

Now...what if you had platform that was a a step ahead of the current distribution king, Youtube?

Say..if you have platform where you can tell the musicians/performers/actors that on the other side of the mirror you have the world A&R reps/casting agents sitting and sifting throught the acts, would this be interesting to a budding musician?

You make the money of the A&R reps by providing him with the acces to musicians sorted by genre and you give him the opportunity sign someone right before they mega explode. All at a monthly flat fee. So no ad revenues, just a check every month and a back end from 360 degrees artist income. That means shows, tours, sponsored deals, albums, dvd's etc..

On the other hand you get the content, because you have an audience that the musicians/content providers (still, no matter what everybody says,) want to connect with.

I like Youtube. But for the pro am who wants to get a something going, Youtube lacks the ability to connect me with people who want to pay me so that I can be a full time musician.

Labels do pay you, but don't want to sign you via a bidding war after 30.000.000 people have seen you. You have already lost money by free exposure.

Would this kinda solve those problems?? Would this be a proposition the A&R's of the world would pay for?

what if...you could be champion of the world

2008-08-14T13:26:00.004+02:00

Just a quick post on an even quicker idea.

What with all the user generated content, 2.0, participation of the peoples going on in the world I have an idea:

What if we create the WCEF: World Championship of Everything (u like) Federation.

U got an activity, hybrid of old stuff or something u do with friends: sign up to the website, pick a date for regional preliminaries etc and (most importantly) declare yourself world champeen and allow people to challenge you.

Who does not want to be able to say he is world champion at something, anything??

the Role of the WCEF is the following:

to give you tools to plan your own world championship;
to look for sponsors (local to international) to help you out with any and all costs;
help you quickly determine whether the current format is ok, or needs some adjustment to make it spread;
fighting indifference and cynisme by promoting the cause of doing something/anything to world champion standard, instead of doing nothing;
buying every world champion a cold beer;
to make sure that the broadcasting rights are fairly distributed amongst all the championships;
to facilitate the breakaway of succesfull championships on their own (as with everything; money changes stuff, so why not make the split amicable)

just an idea (or a widget; or tv show; or nothing)

What...did I hear anybody say Innocent ;)

n to the h presents: lazy person's guide to briefing volume I

2008-08-14T09:41:00.007+02:00

Basically all briefs can be boiled down into achieving two goals:

business goal and comms goal.

On the business goal side it's about one of three ( or a mix of the three):

get new customers
retain current customers
get more out of current customers

On the comms goal side it's about one of two:

create a "I knew there was a reason I liked his product/company/etc" reaction
create a "I never thought of it that way, that's interesting"reaction

Of course multiple business goals are mixed with the two comms goals. Like getting more out of current customers could need a "I never tought of it like that"reaction, etc..

The supporting evidence to help your agency along is:

new feature
new product
old product
old feature
mental position in relation to current culture

So there you have it.. the lazy person's guide to briefing.

what if...loaded words + ambiguity = interesting t.v.?

2008-08-12T09:15:00.005+02:00

A little concept (kinda candid camera meets talk show meets gonzo porn) I have been playing with and can't quite make work yet..

Here it is:

You get a host and you make him put on a t-shirt. On it he has a word. Just one word. Say, Halliburton or Tibet or Abortion. that's it. And he walks the city. Waiting for someone to approach him and ask what he means by wearing the shirt. Better yet u get some one coming up and taking a stand pro or against the word.

The host than takes the opposite view and tries to start a semi spontanious debate with passers by.

What I like:
the thought of ambiguity. A word in itself is just that. a word. But the implicit connatations attached to it are your's. So by not being overtly pro or against we can play with the implicit connatations.

the fact that it's legal and democratic with a twitst. It's legal to wear a shirt with the word abortion on it right dead center in Vatican City. Would have to check the facts, but a shirt with the just the word Jihad is not illegal to wear in Down town New York or at Capitol Hill.

the p to p effect. I kinda see it as a possible thing for everybody to contribute to. Whatever you feel you wanna debate, do it by putting just one word on a shirt, check if it's legal and start a debate, film it and send it in.

What I don't like:

The businessmodel. Can't see how I am to make money of it. It's basically a creative comms format.

That's it...so if anybody wan't to shoot some holes in it, please do..

the festival to end all festivals

2008-08-06T19:10:00.002+02:00

Today the Guca Sabor, aka the best fucking festival in the world, begins.

For those with any knowlegde of Eastern Europen music, know this is the highlight of the year...

For those who don' t know, now you know..

I'll take that Pepsi test with any festival, so bring it on if you think you can hang

note to self: solve right problems

2008-08-04T17:25:00.001+02:00

not to self: sometimes a blue ocean is just water

2008-07-28T12:24:00.002+02:00

"There is a gap in the market, but is there a market in the gap?"

Peter Jones

six simple rules for changing you life (always wanted to write tabloid headlines)

2008-07-25T14:21:00.006+02:00

take a look at the clip. It's from a documentary called Air guitar Nation. It follows the ups and downs of random people chasing the title of world champion air guitar. The doco in itself is one of the funniest, hartwarming pieces of movie I've seen in a long time.

But it also reveals a simple framework forward in a world where parity in all aspects of our lives triggers a pavlov-esque reaction of buying ourselves out of blandness.

perhaps a bit simplistic, but it comes down to a couple of things:

the act is the reward
the act can not be bought or have a physical manifestation of it's reward
finding others to enjoy it with you ( we do stuff so others can see, let's be honest about that)
being a member comes at a price (monetary + participatory)
doing something that requires you to have a point of view (satisfiying our inate desire to be different among likeminded )
the act has real and symbolic meaning to you and the group (think dieting, walking for elders, digital bingo etc..)

This it not new, but it seems like an effective business model on a small scale. Air guitar is making money (be it to mostly to cover cost like venue and travel). And local seems the future, from enviromental points of view, so why focus on physical scaling of businesses (scaling digital beats its hands down)?

So go out do something that makes you smile and better for it, do it together and enjoy..

Just some thoughts

have a nice weekend

weapon of choice pt 3: shades of grey

2008-07-24T14:57:00.012+02:00

this is Killer Mike and this is the cover of his street album: I plegde allegiance to the grind vol I.

this is Young Jeezy's new single ft Mr West.

Good music, music I like to listen to. but that's not the point.

It's those black American flags.

It's how they are able to capture feelings (that I myself as an second generation immigrant had/have) of growing ambiguity in life, that to often get's confused with apathy. On the one hand they (getto peeps in jeezy's clip) are America's second class citizens, but on the other it's home nonetheless. It's a place people die for, but don't love living.

The black flags shout out: It's not that I don't love you , it's just that I don't care. Make me care again!

It's the Yoshimura Kanichiro principle if you will. By individualizing ourselves from clans, tribes, society we have become ronins, serving those who meet our needs. Yet this way of living is also a constant reminder that at the end of the day, though we might live for ourselves, for money or for things, it's in our sacrifice for others (those we might not like even) that we find our purpose.

I'll leave the obvious brand lesson unwritten..

p.s. on the subject of ambiguity, nation pride etc...here is an interview with basketball star Carmelo Anthony that touches on some of those issues.

one for the books

2008-07-24T10:06:00.003+02:00

filed this one under..."hé I thought of that also a while back, but different. "

still a nice idea: blank2clothe

Lost in translation

2008-06-21T12:36:00.006+02:00

The web is discriminating. The victim is: ME! In all seriousness, I have noticed the last couple of weeks that somehow I do not translate well on to the www. Whether it is via this blog, comments elsewhere or skype talks, important elements of the person I am are getting lost when I digitze myself.

2.0 is funny that way. In many ways it strips people down to the core of their being; their inner personality. And that's where I run into trouble. Not that I don't have one ( I actually think quite highly of myself, hah), but it's just words (in my case) that are used to convey who I am and what I believe. The physicality of human interaction is left out.

I feel I am being robbed of instinct. The web stripped me of the ambiguity I thrive on in real life. A certain look you give, a pause you take while speaking, how you walk in to a room, the fact that I am 6"7 or left handed. Gone.

Recently I played some poker online. And I went down in flames. It was clinical, without context and safe. Yet when seated at a table in a real life cash game, I hold my own, being able to fully explore the one element 2.0 is advocating, but I am missing; the human element. Does this expose me lacking fundamental math skills required for this game or exposes me to be a good soft skill player? How do you make such a judgement about a person? Do we start keeping tabs about online and off line feelings towards one another?

Would a nice template, some more pics, tweets, tags, clouds and streams enhance me on the web? Perhaps.. and yes the offline versions of tags and pics etc, are clothing and haircuts, make up etc, so If I do not translate well I should use the tools at hand better (get a make over of sorts), but there is still the loss of that ambiguity of flesh.

So what's my point: Will the web, like a great poetry translation, ever capture the nunaces of the meaning of people and convey them to full effect, or will it stay what it is now: a part of the picture that is editable to make you more or less than you really are. And if it stays this ways, but keeps gaining importance, where do I, we go from here?

coke needs to be pushed

2008-06-18T08:28:00.009+02:00

So the Carter III is out. and it's a hit. First day sales are predicted to be well over 400.000 copies. First week over a milli.

From a businessmodel and from a brand perspective there a couple of interesting observations to be made. Observations that hark back to some old school marketing lessons and some seem to encompas some 2.0 tricks.

In classic disruption fashion Lil 'Wayne's path to releasing his album has offered (often) lower quality in some ways (depth and comprihensiveness), but offered atractive trade offs as lower cost or free of charge, fresher output and anytime access.

1) Segmentation is crucial/Stand for something!

Wayne claimed "the best rapper alive" tag and stuck with it. He was ridiculed, laughed at by industry types and old hip hop heads. But that was never his core audience. Best rapper alive is not so much a slogan as it is a call to action for those who feel him and feel the same to join him in staking their claim (to call him the Obama of rap would be overstating it, but is yes we can so much different except for the "we" form).

His audience are the "80's + 90's babies", much like himself. Kids who heard of Biggie or Nas, but actually don't have a connection with those guys, much like you daddy's fav player being Best and you thinking Ronaldinho is the bees knees. Kids who got mountains to move. Kids who the record execs kinda ignored because of some common believe that they don't buy albums, they just go online...

2) However whenever where ever
So now that he knows who he is catering to, he needs to push his product in a way that appeals to his peoples: short, free and without delays. So he was out there: mixtapes, leaks, guest appearences. In 2007 he dropped 77 songs without releasing a official track. that's a track a week. Bit of a strategy like the toyota company. While other artists wait years to drop something, waiting for the perfect song, he just drops. Good plan right now, beating a better plan tomorrow type thinking.

3) primer inter parus + live your audiences lives
Yes he has the money, the fame the women..but he shares. Not the money or the fame or the women, but his experiences. He talks about going out and blowing money, about being dumped. It's not all glamour, nor is it the hard knock life that other rappers talk about. It's basically teen angst wrapped in syrup stories. Just like the kids who buy into him want it.

The sense of talking to your audience is gone. Wayne is not an authority figure. It's more about being amongst the herd and making moves that they understand and respond to.

4) it's not the content, nor the competition, stupid!

He has flow, but little or no conceptual thinking in his non official material. But that's ok. With a song a week average he does not need to be deep, he just need to be out there. Going on mixtapes assures that he has the hottest beats at hand, making it easier to ride the wave of what's hot and what's not. piggybacking may not be original, but it is helpfull.

What Wayne, and rap in general teach us, is that coopetiton is where it's at. Shared resources, like hot beats, producers and even verses written by other rappers can be used by different competitors. It's not even about them, it's as Wayne says about " doing you" and giving the crowd what they want.

The time of keeping stuff in the vault is gone. Why try to create the hottest track all the time by yourselve, when the ecosystem that you are part of provides you with all you need to re-use and re-sell. All it asks is that you share as well.

The best rapper alive (Lill Wayne) and the God MC (Jay-Z) share the same stage, beats, last name ;) and it's all good. The crowd want the best and are willing to pay for it. So they give it to them. With great profit.

5) Everybody likes an event (especially if their parents don't care for it) and once in, you stay the course

So you hear stories about Ali vs Frazier, about the Golden age of rap ( when wutang, nas, big, jay-z, dr dre, snoop and tupac dropped albums between 1992-1996) and what do u have? fuck all. So if the "best rapper alive" announces he is to drop his masterpiece, and then builds up by delaying a couple of times, buzz starts to create. Add to that the fact that he was not liked alot by the establishment and u got the makings of a perfect storm.

From an strategy point of view Wanye was also creating commitment amongst his fans. Every time he delayed, people cared (either positive or negative), blogged and talked about it and in the end were more eager to get the album.

6) The game is to be sold, not to be told

Reciprocation is about how, if you do something for somebody, they will feel obliged to do something for you, or they will at least feel better about doing something for you. And Wayne made sure that his fans knew he had given them enough and that is was time to return the favour. We are in the business of selling, lest we forget.

7) Scarcity AND ubiquity.

Lil' Wayne is talked about, written about. His drugs, women and money. Yet he remains elusive. Yes he does interview, but really tells nothing. He keeps it interesting. All the while being quite ubiquitous with his music. Like stated before, 77 songs and no official album did not saturate, but caused major interest. What would he do next? So by giving a lot (online), but also holding back (offline) he pushes and pulls people in. Know your channels and how to use them. Know how to start a converstation and how to provide tools to keep the conversation going.

8) Breathing space

Lil' Wayne has managed to created different brand molecules (idea John Grant) for himself. He is not a straight gangsterrapper, although he can lay claim to that aspect of life with some cred. He is not a straight pop artist, yet can do that quite well.

He freestyles on various subjects and thus has created many layers and operating space. He has the room to stay current without being seen as bending to popular demand. He has fluidity to his persona/brand.

So what do we learn:

Create addicts, ha!

Give your shit away (even if it's not top as long as it meets demand), isolate them by making sure they feel besieged by outsiders who don't understand, hype stuff up so that it feels monumental, leave room for yourself to stay current (either by sharing resources or by stretching who you are), cash in + don't forget to ask for the sale. repeat cycle.

Off to make some money...

note to self: what is it in itself?

2008-06-10T07:42:00.004+02:00

if the bloke in the picture has found a way to make a light bulb glow without electricity, why the fuck is he trying to contain the light in his hands? There's not much fucking use having a great idea if you dont let anyone see it.(andy@cynic.com)

Over at Rob's blog there was a post about some workshop about ideas + creativity. The comments went in to detail talking about the above poster offering the workshop.

The comment above shows us (me) the importance of asking a basic question when reviewing strategy/ creative output: Does it hold up without additional support? For if your output only works with you standing there and explaining the point that people should get from the output, well things get messy and sloppy and no end will be met. Basic stuff, but worth remembering.

note to self: lessons from hiphop

2008-06-08T10:35:00.004+02:00

One of those obvious things, but good to remind myself of (and I kinda wanted to share two great songs, so I forced a planning-esque lesson in it..haha).

It's ok to borrow. As long as it's a stepping stone for something new and fresh. So go into other fields of business/life and sample and remix, but don't become just a coverband.

Case in point.

Evidence A

Evidence B

competition in a 2.0 world

2008-06-06T17:32:00.001+02:00

"The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot." Mark Twain

fiending for it; what Kobe can teach business

2008-06-06T13:06:00.004+02:00

So it's the finals of the NBA. Boston vs LA. Game 1 was for Boston.

But that's ok, it is after all a best of seven.

So why this post: well because my fav sports writer Scoop Jackson analysed Kobe Bryant and in the process tells us what it takes to be succesfull.

I will leave you with the opening paragraph, the rest you can read here

There's a term used in the community called "thirsty."
It means what you think it means, but it's now being used in different contexts. Only to make a point of the extremes to which some people will go to get what they want. More severely, what they need. Kobe Bryant, for lack of more sophisticated terminology, is thirsty.
His thirst for another NBA title is that of an amplitude we may not have ever seen before. Not in sports, business, crime, corruption or politics. Keeping it community: He's thirsty like a fiend

Have a nice weekend

how to deconstruct strategies and analyze the competition

2008-06-03T15:53:00.001+02:00

great video + song and a lesson to be learned (kinda)

stick and stones may break my bones, but don't forget about words

2008-05-05T18:23:00.009+02:00

this post may seem abit all over the place, but since I will be out of orbit for a while I just wanted to put some stuff out there that has been festering in my mind of late.

I have noticed a sublte change in my vocabulary when talking to clients or when talking to creatives. To better make sense of where clients should go or what way creatives should view the problem the following changes have been slipping into my vocab and briefing.

1)Coherence vs Consistency

This one has been here some time now, but it's relevance still is great. It is not about the right CMYK codes or the right dimensions of the logo. it's about stuff making sense when it's out there. it shoud fit together like a music album, more then a math formula. the sum of the parts shoud be you (the brand, company, etc) but the individual parts should also be enjoyable on there own and still ouze some of your flavour. which brings me to the second vocab change...

2)Gestalt vs tone of voice

This is by no means a new distinction, but to me it's more and more important/back in vogue. Product parity makes for a use of advertising human emotions, but advertising parity and a lack of attention makes for the need to be recognizable in al the things you do. Gestalt is an old theory explained here. But the basic difference is that tone of voice is about presentation of one self. Funny, sarcastic, cool whatever. Gestalt is about owning something. it's about having a unique (tangible?) quality that cannot be applied to something else. all this is basically been influenced by me reading more about design, art, city plannig etc. Apple being a very easy example of this, particulary with their iphone, pod, ads.

See one can have a romantic feel attached to anything (almost),but for many the feeling of seeing the city lights of Paris from the Eiffel tower is not something that can be transported. That particular zone is owned by the Eiffel tower, due to it's physical elements. So while it's may be contrary to say coherence is more important then consistency and then to say non portable elements are more important then portable, I can just say, yes and yes. Can't explain it better yet. but you gotta be like a diamond, with many facets but still one diamond.

3) Finite solutions vs Infinite

It's all about this generation, this era. the sky is not the limit. How can you make a difference now without trowing everything at the problem but the kitchen sink. restrictions, discrimination are a couple of tools/ideas that are needed more and more to create something that has focus and leaves no burden for the next group to come along.

3)bold ideas vs Big ideas.
Can't realy put my finger on this one but it actually feels the most important. For me when I use the word big this is what I kinda think of.

The complicated, intricate elaborate scheme. Which is great, and can be/is still very usefull. Bold thinking on the other hand gives me a whole different feel, point of entry.

Bold makes me think of

or this

Perhaps this all is thin thinking and not very clear, but somehow bold can be /mostly is big, but big does not always mean bold. perhaps there is more of an rebelious streak to bold ideas then to a big idea. this one I will need to come back to...continue

4)Politics vs people

due to the nature of the problems challenges and demands of the current and future world, politics is more and more important. While the rise of the consumer/prosumer is a much talked about and has had great impact, politics is where the pendelum of true power is swinging back to. it's a realisation that we will not solve growing fuel prices, shortages in food. We, people, are firestarters, we are able to make things roll, but the big Mo come from running with the elected wolves. so what does this all mean? Reading fine print, finding pressure points to help people activate politicians that can move mountains, doing the non sexy stuff. while not every product lends it'self for all out politics, actualy every product does lend its self for politics. now matter how small we all leave a footprint that effects someone.

SO ask yourself, what small print can we use to make changes that riplle through society? just by thinking more about politics, (not ideoligical, but more practical), gets juices flowing that normaly don't move much.

anyways, these are words that have been changing my thinking and actions, as well as the actions of clients. If anybody has some other words that they feel have changed their points of entry into discussions, let me know...

I leave you now with some nice music and a not so sublte message. Dovidjenja!

Heard about the guy
who fell off a skyscraper?
On his way down past each floor,
he kept saying to reassure himself:
"So far so good...
"so far so good..."
How you fall doesn't matter. It's how you land!

Interesting Amsterdam

2008-05-02T11:11:00.003+02:00

Just got my ticket for Interesting Amsterdam !!

So all you guys and gals wanting to see some random but interesting stuff, go on over to pinkair, and book yourself a ticket..

month of may

2008-05-02T05:00:00.004+02:00

So here in Holland the month of May is the month we remember the Second World War, the liberation of Holland and the loss of so much life.

So in memory of those passed away, those who survided and those who chose to fight; some chilling, uplifting and spot on quotes to give us (wannabe) planners that much sought after insight in to humans, and perspective on this thing of ours.

* We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

* "Nietzsche's words, 'He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.'"

* "When we are no longer able to change a situation—just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer—we are challenged to change ourselves"

* "Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him - mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp."

* "We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering."

* "It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."

* "Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary

* "We have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."

Viktor Frankl

the utopia of better advertising

2008-04-28T21:36:00.005+02:00

A lot of people have talked and are still talking about the end of image advertising, because it's bad, not working, run it's course, etc. It's all about 2.0, utility etc...but the fact is, it is not, nor will it be, because advertising has got a built in factor that prevents it from growing, gaining absolute quality improvement; humans.

Right now people are kinda falling in the same trap as in the ' 20, during the time of Claude Hopkins. We think that advertsing can somehow be scientied, just because it has more technical tools at it's disposal. People seem to believe that unless you provide a tool within the advertising, you are doing rubbish. We think this we such a zeal that we forget that it's just the hope we have manifested in herd talk. Bit like the neo cons, thinking that they will create a democracy and that oil will go down to $20,- a barrell and all will be peaches and cream, anyways...

The underliying mechanics of advertising prevent this because they are flawed in the sense that they are emotion driven. We look for insight into human beings and we tend to focus on communicating some value/bond between product and and customer. This basic fact allows for inversion of progress. If empowering women works (Dove) let's do it, if degrading them (lynx/Axe) works, let's do that.

No absolute progress is possible, because in order to feel like we are moving we will go in any direction, even backwards.

So why am I writing this? Because I just today talked with an agency who did no advertising, but " created solutions on a business and emotional end" and the talk got 'round to Gorilla ads and the usual bitching began. It was shite, waste of money etc.... They make fucking horrible websites and are gonna piss all over fellows comrades who at least entertained?

Advertising is about communicating something, right now and here. Something that makes a connection so that you will move from a to b.

Method acting looked more realistic and great then the old style stage type acting (and searched for character from an inside point of view/ kinda like the when planning came along), but it's still acting..nobody was any more a doctor then the actors 200 years before the method.

The future of advertising is already here and has been here since it's invention. Sure we will get better at using tools at hand. But it's role will not grow nor will it's quality be better 10 year from now.

That type of change will be driven by industrials, by people who build absolute stuff, who deal with the binary. Fields where once you go forward, you can not go back, because new reality denies regression. 1+1 is 2. It will never go back to being 1. Once you have an cure for something, there is no gain in talking 'bout the opposite.

Call me crazy, but perhaps that's the really brilliant part in Cabral and Fallons thinking; they know their limits and play their part of court jester with great applaud.

Non Advertising Planning Hall of Fame: Pierre Wack

2008-04-21T15:38:00.006+02:00

So here is little segment looking at guys and girls from all over the world, who can contribute to the education of me, fellow wannabe planners, those doing it and those just wanting some new info.

To kick it of an article about Pierre Wack. The Stephen King of Shell ( this does him no justice, nor mister King, but hopefully will trigger you to read on)

THE MAN WHO SAW THE FUTURE

I had the feeling,” said Pierre Wack, “of hunting in a pack of wolves, being the eyes of the pack, and sending signals back to the rest. Now if you see something serious, and the pack doesn’t notice it, you’d better find out — are you in front?”

That observation is probably the most succinct description there is of the practice of scenario planning. Scenario planning — the use of alternative stories about the future, many with improbable and dramatic twists, to develop strategy — is one of the few management innovations to have actually been created in a corporate setting, amid the real-life battle for profits.

Pierre Wack, who died in 1997, was the leader of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies’ elite London-based scenario team. With his colleagues and successors at Shell’s Group Planning department, he designed and refined this important business tool, in effect serving as the chief analyst of Shell’s version of Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Scenario planning alerted Shell’s managing directors (its committee of CEO equivalents) in advance about some of the most confounding events of their times: the 1973 energy crisis, the more severe price shock of 1979, the collapse of the oil market in 1986, the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of Muslim radicalism, and the increasing pressure on companies to address environmental and social problems. The method has since become widely popular outside Shell, not just in corporations but in some governments. In South Africa, for example, scenario planning played a major role in the peaceful transition from a system of apartheid to a stable multiracial government.

Yet for all of that, and despite its reputation for prescience and panache, scenario planning has not always been influential within the companies that use it, including Shell itself. To be sure, the “energy crisis” scenarios, in particular, helped Shell prosper more than its rivals. Called the “Ugly Sister” by Forbes for its relatively weak financial position in the late 1960s, Shell moved to become one of two breakout leaders (Exxon was the other) of the industry. Even so, the company often seemed to ignore many of the warnings from its own scenarios. For example, the scenarios might have helped it avoid some extremely costly failed investments in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the public relations and legal damage associated with its 1995 plan to dispose of the Brent Spar storage facility by sinking it in the North Sea.

Shell is hardly unique; most companies that create scenarios of potential risks and opportunities find it difficult to actually make effective real-world decisions based on the stories they imagine.

Pierre Wack understood this paradox as well as anyone. Today, his legacy is more relevant than ever: The political and economic uncertainties that Mr. Wack foresaw (he christened the future “the rapids” back in 1975) have become a fundamental part of business life. A clear sense of the future’s obscure challenges and opportunities is the most valuable asset an executive can have. To Mr. Wack, the ability for which managers are most celebrated — the ability to get things done — was only one part of their necessary skills. Equally important, and much harder to come by, was the ability to see ahead. The more aware the wolf pack is of the terrain in which it runs, the more effectively it hunts. What does it take to engender that awareness in managers, particularly in these shocking and skittish times?

Early in October 2002, I visited Shell Centre in London for an answer. Officially, I was there to attend a commemorative celebration of 30 years of scenario planning at Shell. The first great scenario event at Shell had been a 1972 report to the managing directors anticipating the impending energy crisis. With host Ged Davis, Shell’s vice president of global business environment and the company’s genial and erudite leader of scenario planning today, we met in a corporate banquet room.

On the walls were brightly colored murals with the names of futures from years gone by, some of which never came to pass and others of which were counterintuitive but did come true: “Oil Tightrope,” “Greening of Russia,” “Liberalisation,” “Business Class.” The room was filled with Group Planning members and alumni ranging in age from 30 to 80, along with about 30 outsiders who had used or explored scenarios in some noteworthy way.
During one breakout session, I joined a group of obstreperous firebrands (Shell’s Group Planning department has always employed some of these) on the subject of “life after scenarios.” They were keenly aware, of course, that scenarios have become a widespread consulting practice, popularized by such futurists and management writers as Peter Schwartz, Arie de Geus, Joseph Jaworski, Charles Hampden-Turner, and Kees van der Heijden — all former senior officials in Shell’s Group Planning department.

There is also now a collegial network of scenario planners and consultants around the world; one Shell alumnus, Napier Collyns, was honored at the celebration for his role in fostering that network. (Mr. Collyns and Mr. Schwartz went from Shell to cofound Global Business Network, another central source of scenario practice.)

But Mr. Collyns pointed out the essential contradiction in scenario work: Shell’s original insights came from “years of deep research, rigorous analysis, ongoing conversations, and multiple iterations of the scenarios themselves” — all conducted by Shell’s mysterious and brilliant team. But over time, the method seems to have been watered down into just another three- or four-day workshop in which people feel like they’ve expanded their thinking away from the office, but still return to business as usual. Perhaps, some of the firebrands suggested, the golden age of scenarios is ending. Maybe some new methodology is needed to help companies see their own troubled futures as clearly as Shell saw the energy crisis in 1972.
I felt that if Pierre Wack were at the anniversary celebration himself, he might find the discussion beside the point. He had, after all, experienced the same sort of frustration throughout his career with scenarios, which began in the 1960s.

Thinking the Unthinkable
The seeds of scenario planning methodology were planted in the late 1940s, when the futurist Herman Kahn, then a young defense analyst at the Rand Corporation, started telling brief stories to describe the many possible ways that nuclear weapons technology might be used by hostile nations. (For this, Scientific American described Mr. Kahn as “thinking the unthinkable,” a characterization he embraced gleefully.) Near Rand’s Southern California offices, Mr. Kahn hung out with screenwriters and moviemakers — one of whom, Stanley Kubrick, used him as a model for Dr. Strangelove, and another of whom, Leo Rosten, suggested the name “scenarios” for these storytelling exercises.

But by the mid-1960s, Mr. Kahn’s methods had become a mechanistic smorgasbord approach, serving up dozens of possible forecasts (often generated with mainframe computers). The method would probably have died of sheer complexity, except that two individuals from Shell sought out Mr. Kahn. One was Mr. Wack, then head of planning at Shell Française (originally from Alsace-Lorraine, he pronounced his surname to rhyme with “Jacques”).

The other was Ted Newland, a senior staff planner known for his incisive, unsentimental views of global politics. When Mr. Wack and Mr. Newland joined forces at Shell’s headquarters in 1971, they already shared two key insights. First, change in the Arab world was about to destroy the stability of the existing oil regime, which oil companies had dominated (and drawn a profit stream from) for 25 years. Second, everybody in the oil industry knew it, but nobody was prepared to do anything. With sponsorship from several far-seeing Shell managing directors, the two assembled a team to bring that awareness to the entire organization.

Scenario planning was just a starting point for them. Mr. Wack, who had studied some of the mystic traditions of India and Japan in depth, had been a student of the Sufi mystic G.I. Gurdjieff in the 1940s, and he had learned to cultivate what he called “remarkable people” around the world; this phrase in French means not so much gifted or eccentric people, but people with unconventional insights about the world around them.

At that time, most oil executives believed that tensions in the Middle East would soon abate because Western-dominated stability would triumph; it always had before. Mr. Wack and Mr. Newland systematically examined every possible angle of the situation, with particular attention to the pressures faced by the ruling governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia. They concluded that it would take a miracle to avoid an energy crisis, and a set of keenly focused scenarios to make managers not just intellectually realize the danger, but prepare for it.

“People today could not possibly believe the degree of inward-lookingness that there was in the companies [of the 1960s],” Mr. van der Heijden told the 30th anniversary celebrants gathered in London last October. “Suddenly Pierre and Ted came in and showed us that you could open the window and look at the world.”

Shell RespondsDuring 1972 and early 1973, the Group Planners’ message percolated through the global Shell organization: The oil price could soar from its current $2 per barrel to an unimaginable price of as much as $10 per barrel. (Actually, by 1975, it would hit $13.) Despite resistance from some Shell managers, the organization began to put in place many of the commonsense, mundane frugalities that had been lost amid the frenetic growth of the 1950s and 1960s.

This put Shell in an enviable position when the crisis did occur, and an even more enviable position during the Iranian revolution of 1979, when the oil price soared a second time, up to $37 per barrel. As the shock from that shift subsided, the industry entered a bubble. Through the early 1980s, oil traders assumed the price would keep rising; they kept bidding for oil futures and driving the price higher.

Once again, in the early 1980s, Shell’s planners offered a counterintuitive message: They said the bubble would collapse. The forces holding OPEC together would fragment, energy demand would finally slow down, and the industry would have to retrench. Mia de Kuijper, one of the young planners of that era, proposed that oil was about to become a commodity product. This was a shocking notion to many executives because it meant, as Ms. de Kuijper later noted, that “a trader in Rotterdam would have more to say about the price of oil than the managing directors.”

Ted Newland actually stood before the Shell managing directors in 1982 and intoned a nursery rhyme to describe OPEC’s impending disarray: “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.” As the price fell over the next three years, it set in motion an industry consolidation that eventually swallowed three of the major oil companies known as the “Seven Sisters.”

Mr. Wack and Mr. Newland left Shell in 1982. Mr. Wack began consulting for Anglo American, the South African mining corporation, on its efforts to globalize. One of his fascinating insights involved the effect of apartheid on the price of gold production. He said, “South Africans live with the feeling that they are blessed with a geological miracle: their gold and diamond deposits. But it is actually a human miracle: People work in horrible conditions for very low wages. ‘Be careful,’ I told them. ‘You are going to be the highest-cost producer, because this human miracle is not going to last.’ ”

To Anglo American executives, Mr. Wack seemed to be predicting the end of apartheid, and they wanted to hear more. So did their spouses; indeed, they wanted to know if there was a future for their children in South Africa, or whether they should emigrate.

An Anglo American executive named Clem Sunter picked up the challenge, and, inspired by Pierre Wack, he suggested two scenarios for the country: A “low road” scenario in which the whites fought to hold on to apartheid, and a “high road” scenario in which they accepted the inevitability of a multiracial society and pushed for the kind of widespread economic growth that would allow such a society to thrive (in part by bringing South African business back into the flow of the international economy). Mr. Sunter’s 1987 book, The World and South Africa in the 1990s (Human & Rousseau Tafelberg Ltd.), became a bestseller in South Africa during the late 1980s and early 1990s, second only to Nelson Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. It is credited with helping South Africa’s white population see the value of a peaceful transition from apartheid.

By the time Mr. Wack left Shell, he had concluded that scenario planning, in itself, was not nearly effective enough at changing, as he put it, “the mental maps of managers.” The best way for me to explain this deficiency is to describe one of my own scenario projects, conducted for an Internet service provider at the height of the dot-com bubble.
We came up with four possible images of the future.

Three represented glittering futures of easy success, and then there was the sad story called “Gruel,” in which the venture capital market for Internet entrepreneurs dried up. During our sessions, I tried but failed to coax the group to pay more attention to Gruel. Preparing for that future would have meant building some cash reserves, being more frugal, and focusing on short-term revenue streams.

Had they done all that, they might still exist today. Had I paid better attention to changing their mental maps, I might have had the confidence to tell them not just that this worst-case scenario was plausible, but that it was predetermined. By not seeing the possibility of Gruel, my clients were helping to ensure that it would happen.

What, then, does it take to come up with the kind of scenario that makes people shed their natural defenses so they can understand and prepare for the futures that are inevitable, if only they could spot the factors that create them?

Mr. Wack spent his last year with Shell traveling the world, trying to come up with an answer to this question. He returned with a single cryptic diagram labeled “the gentle art of reperceiving.” It showed a process involving not just study of the business environment (through scenarios), but a rigorous and intuitive examination of one’s own intent, of competitive advantage (à la Michael Porter), and of strategic options.

But even Shell, which based a set of workshops on the Pierre Wack process, couldn’t make them stick. It turns out that you can’t develop this kind of capability in a set of workshops — or even through an elite agency of analysts and internal consultants.

If you truly want to create a “pack of wolves” attuned to the environment around them, then the people making decisions have to devote their careers to increasing their collective awareness of the outside world. Scenario planning, as Mr. Wack conducted it, provides precisely this kind of in-depth training over time.

You research present key trends; you determine which are predictable and which are uncertain; you decide which uncertainties are most influential; you base some stories of the future on those uncertainties; you spend some time imaginatively playing out the implications of those stories; and then you use those implications to start all over again and develop a sense of the impending surprises that you cannot ignore.

Very, very occasionally, a company takes this way of using scenarios to heart. For instance, the South African energy company Sasol Ltd., working with a scenario practitioner named Louis van der Merwe, has used an elaborate year-long exercise to shift the entire culture of the company toward scenario thinking — in part by having managers throughout the company take part in writing and publishing their own highly polished scenario book. Only time will tell, of course, whether or not that translates into better results. Managers and executives already report themselves taking risks more confidently and seeing options more clearly, which is not usually the case after scenario exercises.

Successful companies typically have one or two people with the ability to see their environment clearly. Pierre Wack’s methodology, which he never fully articulated while he was alive, is a way of developing this aptitude throughout the organization. Companies that achieve this tend to remain out of public view for fear of being copied or outdone. (Sasol, for instance, is ruthlessly private about the content of its scenarios.)

If executives at many companies seem paralyzed or in retreat during this moment of exceptional business uncertainty, perhaps it’s not just the environment that’s gotten to them. Perhaps it’s that, while pursuing the numbers day after day, they haven’t been systematically training themselves to be like wolves at the front of the pack. They haven’t been training themselves to see as far as they can see.

Article courtesy of : Art Kleiner for strategy+business
art@well.com Mr Kleiner is the “Culture & Change” columnist and a regular contributor of “The Creative Mind” profiles for strategy+business. He teaches at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. His Web site is www.well.com/user/art.

more on Pierre Wack can be found here, here and here

note to self..

2008-04-09T16:48:00.004+02:00

"Some men see things as they are and say 'Why?' I dream things that never were and say, 'Why not?'"

TD library: sound princess

2008-04-09T13:00:00.004+02:00

Here is a nice example of transformation design. It deals with Japanse toilet culture.

In Japan it is considered rude for woman to be heard while they go to the bathroom. This has some longstanding cultural issues. So what do the Japanese women do? they keep flushing the toilet. Up to 20 liters a time is used.

So instead of a great awareness campaign (there was some communication), there was a design centric look at the problem and it's possible solution. Toto created the Sound Princess. A machine installed in bathroom that recreates the sound of a toilet flushing.

The whole article can be read here.

A practical way of changing culture to more positive values. A great way of reframing ancient culture with respect and adapting it to modern constraints (money, eco issues) and tech possibilities.

gringo pride bruised

2008-04-08T11:18:00.003+02:00

Guess the USA doesn't have a great sense of humor. Perhaps because it is more true then they care to believe?

TD library: reducing sick leave

2008-04-03T22:51:00.004+02:00

Here is a example of transformation design, whereby action is deliberately made difficult in order to achieve new behaviour.

Hema, a dutch department store, has halved the sickness absence. Employees must nowadays "call in sick" online, where they must fill out a questionnaire directly. Online "calling in sick" raises the psychological threshold according to the inventor of the system. From six up to sixty questions are asked online and the employee must still ring his boss. The boss does not get to see the answers given in the questionnaire, but he does build op files so that patterns can be detected.

The reason I find this example interesting is that it is not about making something easy with regards to changing behaviour, but making stuff more difficult in order to be better. Complexity actually is intended, much like a bank vault, or the way casino's are designed to keep players in house.

permission to kill your darlings granted

2008-04-01T19:22:00.007+02:00

I love Seth's thinking and I love the whole concept but, it's misuse is crippling marketeers:

Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.. (via seth blog)

Permission marketing should be seen as empowering the marketeers.

To often it's the status quo enhancing answer to innovation. Nobody asked for this or that. We gotta get permission from the market. Let's test it. The very word has taken a wrong turn. Is it because of a human need for security during chaotic times, laziness, or fear of the future? who knows. But permission now means safe, means boring means less profit.

It should be about giving customers permission to do business with you. You gotta lead. Not ask it, pretty please, with sugar on top. Method did not ask permission, it took it. the fruit company has been doing it for years. And the beauty of this...people begin to see them as ahead of the curve, so they can freely act like it.

This all kinda fell into place as we were creating our new corporate brochure. Our's is a Rubick's cube. It really works for us as a reinforcement of who we are and what we do. And we started giving it out to clients, and they loved it.

It was really great seeing, old serious men going back in time and be given permission to be children again; playfull, eager to find a solution, when they had only given us permission to do a presentation on the housing market situation.

Was it the reason why some assignments were won by us? No. But it forced some room for us to go further, to take clients on a ride somewhere where others would have looked out of place even asking if it's ok to go there.

Give people what they want, but please do not ask them how they want it, or worse wait for them to tell you when they want it..they just do not know. Or else we would have had faster horses.

For marketeers it really is time to take back what is theirs, the right/obligation to stay ahead of the curve, of being a teacher to the public. The bar is now so low we can't help but trip over it to victory.

Fraai magazine; free online mag for creativity

2008-04-01T16:37:00.005+02:00

For anybody looking for some inspiration, creativity, and what not go here

As they put it themselves:

So here we are: FRAAI magazine, issue 1; the prototype. We got some great creative inspiration ready for you. A cover story on Art. Lebedev Studio. We got Fraai’s Favourites; compilations of inspiring artists and designers who receive our seal of approval. Furthermore; Creative Columns, Fraai News, An Interview Six Feet Under, That’s Fraai’s and a lot more creative content

Small trivia for when chatting up the ladies: fraai actually means pretty/good looking in Dutch. Bet they did that on purpose...poncy bastards ;-)

what if....the final frontier?

2008-03-31T21:51:00.007+02:00

Watching a very interesting documentary about the US Army. It deals with the fact that the US army is in the midst of a great transition and overhaul of it's purpose.

Since Jalta there was a cold war to be won. This created an arms race to see who had more military might (mind you this a vast simplification). Since the fall of the wall, the war had ended.

This also presented the US army with new set of problems that still have not been fixed as we speak. 40 years or so of training your troops of fighting a big enemy who is most likely to attack with great might created a mind set that was focused on a finite all out war (it seems that the experience of vietnam, where fighting an guerillia war resulted in a disaster, did not alter the paradigm thinking that big war was a thing of the past).

Oh yeah and thanks to 80' movies and the kidnapping of born in the usa the image of the USA of being the place to go was also on point.

The fall of an enemy also upset the moral balance. Democracy became a non negotioable argument, instead of a desirable means, when dealing with foreign regimes. This is easy to understand why, as research shows that democracies tend not to fight other democracies. they tend to fight autocracies, dictatorships etc.. So moral superiority is around the corner

So enter the 90's and beyond, what u got is a one punch boxer who has not been seriously challenged for a long time and convinced of his superiority. But as the movie quote goes: " You're a big man, but you're in bad shape."

A new landscape emerged where one is not fighting armies, but human mobs, movements, cells. non liniar/military enteties, without the " rationale" conventions that governs western military thinking.

So the US/west right now is able to win every war. The problem off course is that, it's not about armies winning the war, but about governements winning peace.

It's not about the question of how to execute (excuse the entendre) something..it's become a question of why to execute something, uncovering the insights that best lead to a strategy that allows for great execution to fullfil it's natural role. That's were the new test lies. If you do not understand the motives of why some one does what they do, how can u then try to form a counter/prevention to their chosen execution of their motives?

So the what if of this long post is this: Is the military industry the final frontier for Account Planning?

Stretching the analogy, but AP has had to deal with approximately same conditions. Big giants corporations that first were used to go: " let's get our add on the Super Bowl, make it the sexiest, funniest ad ever with the best USP and we win the consumer from target group, because he is a rationale buyer".

Post modernism, social change, internet, 2.0 among other things have knocked this Big guy/corporation down for an 8 count. No longer does he have to win the war against other brands, no.. he is now facing an enemy who plays by his own rules, the human being who happens to consume. He does not care that you have the biggest budgets, best ads. You are not what he wants. He is (more or less)in control. All in all adland has been in quite some chaos, overflown by tech changes like tidal waves. Insight now more then ever has been key. ideas, not ads ( mere weapons) matter. We now know that irrationality, and messy decisions are what's what.

If AP can help design Jumbo jets, create healtier lifestyles, and make green cool, could it have a a part to play in helping western military thinking adapt the this new chaotic world?

Simply saying that AP's are not qualified, is not an argument, what makes you qualified to introduce medical products, talk about eco solutions? Like a good movie producer, AP's at their best are blank slates, able to spot the difference and help move organisations along...

Wag the dog did it in a movie, and only with regards to the PR part of a "war"...could it be done for real and all the way? should it be done? Business as usual or does emotion play a part ?

TD library: green wave

2008-03-30T16:15:00.004+02:00

Driving home this morning was a joy; the sun rising in my face, some good tunes and better company made the ride home nice. But that was not what was so special about the
trip home (sorry Martina..:-) .

What was, was the fact that I hit 7 straight green lights. In...a....row. But I nearly missed two of them.

Why? Because once I was driving below 50 km an hour, once because I was going to fast (about 75 km).

Now off course this could have been a coincidence, like beating the spread on a full matchday, but some searching on the net proved that in fact it was not.

I had caught a perfect wave; the green wave to be precise.

To quote:

A green wave is an intentionally induced phenomenon, in which a series of traffic lights (usually three or more) are coordinated to allow continuous traffic flow over several intersections in one main direction.

Any vehicle travelling along with the green wave (at an approximate speed decided upon by the traffic engineers) will see a progressive cascade of green lights, and not have to stop at intersections. This allows higher traffic loads, and reduces noise and energy use (because less acceleration and braking is needed). In practical use, only a group of cars (the size is defined by the signal times) can use the green wave before the time band is interrupted to give way to other traffic flows.

What this achieves is that drivers are indirectly made to choose between a great ride or a ride with start and stops. It alters behaviour to a more favorable type. better for the enviroment, better for the engines, better all around.

But the kicker for me is the human element. You drive to fast, u will not hit the green lights. This will cause agro for your fellow drivers who do keep tot the preffered speed. Social controle will occur and the herd will sort out the extremes.

Simple, understated, effective planning and execution. Huraa for Holland... (and Denmark, but since I don't live there, who cares)

head to head contest

2008-03-24T13:20:00.006+01:00

The NBA had Magic and Bird in the 80's, a rivalry which took a declining category and made it more popular than any other sport.

More recently Kanye West and 50 cent went head tot head, releasing albums on the same day and creating a great buzz + great first week sales for their albums.

Ali had Frazier.

Death Row Records had Bad Boy Records.

But where are the great rivalries with consumer goods?

For all the talk of evangelist brand loyalty, iconic brands, it seems that there is not much going on in terms of rivalry. Yet this is a staple ingridient for loyal fans to grow.

Sure Apple and Microsoft had some run ins, Burgerking and McDonalds, but in all the categories you can think, how many geniune rivalries are there that get people buzzing ?

The definition of rivalry is the following: the act of rivaling, a state of being a rival; a competition. Competing for the same finite goal.

So before one can examine why there are no great rivalries, lets answer the question:

what does make for a rivalry, or a great rivalry at that:

A shared history:

If two enteties have a history whit each other, this is great basis for a rivalry. one was started as a antidote to the other, or they came from same backrounds but took different routes to the same goal.

The quality of the output/product.

For a rivalry to start the opposites have to be equaly good.

Proximity:

You can not hate what u can not see. The two enteties have to be close enough to each other for followers to identify one as pro and the other as contra. they also have to aspire to deliver the same emotional connection/pay-off for either set of supporters (the lakers and celtics both went for the same title for instance).

Head to Head:

This is basically a must. Without this rivalries will not happen. One of the great rivalries of recent years: the redsox and the yankees became that in part because they played each other more than 50 times in a couple of years.

Competitevness:

You both gotta be chasing the number one spot or else people will tune out.

Black Swan:

Something out of the ordianary has to occur that links the two together and creates diverse emotional responses/camps. Think of an all out brawl between two Baseball teams.

Taking this all in to account several problems can be spotted.

First of the chasing of the same finite goal. Most products, aspire to have a long life. there is no rush to get to the finish line. so if there is no time clock, why bother tuning in now. as a consumer, you perhaps subconciously feel that there is no urge to act now, as there is most likely always tomorrow. And most brand claim victory anyway by moving the goal post. Just think of all the metrics to justify some kind of leadership...

Competiveness: Most products are just not good enough.

Head to Head:

Separate launches, commercials that run at different times. there is this sense that brands do anything to avoid each other. only when they can't avoid it, like on a shelve is there a head to head. mostly dissapointingly bland.

Black Swan:

Ipod was a black swan. Microsoft and Sony were sleeping, chance missed.

" We try harder" strategy and campaing was a Black Swan at the time; prompting Avis and Hertz to go head to head with great products and ads.

All in all it seems that the great loyalty, passed on from generation to generation, is not being achieved by most brands (even though they like to believe that they do achieve it), because they prefer to operate in a vacuum, declaring themself victorious by default. yet the same loyalty can be achieved if they were to become open to their enviroment, allowing for context to select their opponents, and followers.

A friend of mine used to say: put a $100, - on it and you got yourself a game and fans, no matter what. while this is true, there are alot of ways yet for brands to create followings/emotions that in the end benefit not just the brands, but the categories, and consumers...

I'll bet that it won't happen any time soon though...but at least this is a good exercise for a creative session with clients and agencies

what if..there was a new type of photo album?

2008-03-17T09:01:00.014+01:00

picture courtesy memorylanemedia

"She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called petites madeleines, which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place…at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory…”

Perhaps some one can help me with this, because I have been thinking about storytelling,

mem(e)ories and... photo albums;

More and more I (and a lot of people are) am creating memories via not only photo's, but blog posts, text messages, emails etc..

But if I wanna share and file it all, and my mum wants to have her friends look at all the memories, there is no one album that fulfills this need of mine.

There is virtual sharing, blogging and filing, but it lacks the physicality of being able to sit next to a person and leading them past memory lane, adding those little details/stories that are triggered as you relive memories and pass them on to loved ones...

So.....what if there was a hybrid : A Memory album

Basically an album/book/ where I could place (upload to) all my text messages, photo's (digital and prints), mails, posts (and all the feedback, which is a great part of the fun of sharing), twitter entries, postcards, e-cards etc... so I can tell grandkids (lord willin') about the memories they hold for me?

Maybe because I work at a publishing company that I just love the feeling of a book or a magazine placed in my hands.....Maybe I have just not searched very well yet and this type of album is in production already...

Anyways...I can't find it yet....so does anybody have alternatives, or feedback for me?

what if...we collectively expressed our individuality

2008-03-12T09:39:00.009+01:00

image courtesy http://www.exactitudes.com/

This post is most def not rocket science but the following hit me:

Why is there not a growth in collective blogs? Doing some basic research (?) shows that blogs are basically social clusters.

Example: Musings of an opinionated sod, is connected to punk planning, to fredrik sarnblad, to

in my atmosphere, to she sees red, to the kevin bacon (egg, beans and chips) of planning russell davies.

Besides the personalized templates, twitters, delicious and last fm thingies and some egotripping, why not all join in on one blog?

It seems to me that the most fun is bouncing ideas of one another and replying on comments.

Yes there is such a thing as a blog roll, and there is facebook and the like, but still...

Perhaps I am just to lazy, but what if everybody just got the same space and posted??

if you like the idea and have a decent name...please post a comment... If you have objections, please tell me those also..

what if...you could create a classic?

2008-03-10T09:16:00.000+01:00

So Lil' Wayne has been planning the release of his latest album. As far as hip hop goes, it is one of the most anticipated albums of the year. However there has been a lot of talk on blogs regarding the album and the artist . It's one thing to call yourself the best rapper alive, but the knock on Wayne is that he has not yet produced a classic. That ready to die, reasonable doubt non-disputed, across the board, certified classic type album. Tha CarterIII is suppose to be thát one.

How to achieve such an album? Well there is off course no mathematical formula; it depends on talent, zeitgeist, reviews, sales, etc... stuff that Wayne has and in getting... but still...

Wayne has been doing what every musician has been doing; going in the studio and recording material to the best of his ability. Putting some of it free online, some of it on mixtapes and holding some of it back for the album. All the while having very little control over the process of making a classic. He just controls the process of making an album. Nothing more.

But what if he flipped the process? What if he released control of making an album in order to gain more control over making a classic??

See.. Wayne is a southern rapper (he is from New Orleans, Louisiana), so his style will always have strong southern influences.

Enter Scarface. Undisputed O.G., with kilo's of street cred (enough so, to ruin Lil'Flip career when he would not vouch for Flips credentials in a beef with T.I), musical success and more importantly classic material to his name. Not to mention the guy has a good ear (he was the one who signed Ludacris to def Jam South). Scarface should executive produce Wayne's album.

On three conditions which would have to be told at a live press conference:

1) the album will only be released if 'Face approves;

2) if it drops he has to back it with his full reputation;

3) it has to be released by a certain date.

What would this accomplish? Firstly the album will get a huge boost in quality. Scarface has a lot riding on it, he is the king of the south with a undisputed reputation, as does Wayne (imaging not dropping the album, because 'face says it's not good enough). So the A game will be brought to the table.

Secondly it will eliminate meaningless marketing expenses, which can go into the recording budget. Hip hop will listen when these two state their intentions, and the buzz will be big enough come the last couple of weeks before release (it's like a time relaease capsule).

Thirdly it wil set the bar higher for the rest of the indusrty. Hip Hop is dying (if not commercialy, then certainly creatively). Self imposed control via (still highly relevant) powers that be, will separate the platinum from the bronze. Still no garantuee for a classic. But definite steps towards it? Yes indeed..

It would also be an interesting model for much of business:

What if undisputed reputations were attached to projects?

What if Jobs executive produced products with public right to veto?

What if the Nakeds, Cynics, W+K's, KesselsKramers, CP+B's of the world refused to release their campaigns if the products were not up to par? Would that force companies to better themselves? Or would the hacks just take over??

What if...is as far as it will most likely go, because Lil'Wayne will do his thing, Scarface and Jobs are not that altruistic (but perhaps enough of an egomaniac), business will be as usual, the consumer has bills to pay/other worries and the above thinking has a lot of flaws in it..

Stat quo is popular for a reason...but still I am left wondering.......what if?

Strawberries in January: part 2 hidden in plain site

2008-03-07T08:46:00.000+01:00

The Japanese tea ceremony cha-no-yu is an ancient tradition; it's most famous practicioner went by the name Sen no Rikyu.

Amongst many things he became emporer Hideyoshi's favorite tea master, and part adviser on matters of politics and culture.

On a certain day emporer Hideyoshi decided to pay Sen no Rikyu a visit at his house. This news came to the tea master. On the eve of the emporers visit Sen yo Rikyu noticed something; it had started to snow.

Quickly the tea master grabbed all his pillows and placed them on top of the stepstones in his front garden; thus covering them from the snow.

The next day he got up very early and removed the pillows, forming a simple, natural and beautifully clear path for the emporer to take from the gate to the tea masters house. The emporer could not help but smile and appriciate the beauty of nature.

More and more I have come to believe that the coming years will be a time of interaction-design led marketing, with the primary task of making the known/local/mundane/obvious, unknown/exiting/re-valueable, and put back in to the right context for consumers and people in general.

Various books, blogs, thoughts, causes (such as the ecology, economy, human population and health) lead me to this thinking.

So in a series of posts, called Strawberries in January, I will try to explain my views, the origins of them, possible applications for people and also catalogue the thinking of others who do and think along these lines.

A lot of this may be known already to those who read it, so feel free to correct and add something to the posts as they are posted, that will assist and help me in my thinking and writing.

Strawberries in January: part 1

2008-03-06T12:56:00.000+01:00

Ichi-go Ichi- e

Transformation Design Library: Slate magazine

2008-03-06T08:35:00.000+01:00

image courtesy Time magazine

transformation design is a human-centered, interdisciplinary process that seeks to create desirable and sustainable changes in behavior and form – of individuals, systems and organizations – often for socially progressive ends.

Mr Maschmeyer, over at his new blog has been trying to get an example library started.

So here is an example that I would like to add to the list: Slate's list of the 60 most generous.

The List came about, when in 1996 Ted Turner wondered about the influence the Forbers Richest List had on corporate America. "What if we could make charity as sexy as the Forbes list ?" (in a nutshell) was his idea.

Slate Magazine took up the challenge to find out. with some success. Althought I will admit that their is no evidence that is 100% waterproof.

"Whether by coincidence or not, philanthropy has blossomed since Slate's list was created. In 1996 the top donor gave away $100 million, or $121 million in 2005 dollars. But last year's top donor, Cordelia Scaife May, gave away $404 million, and the list (with 63 donors, counting ties) totaled $4.3 billion". (read the rest of a great article here)

So in the grand tradition of Michelline Guide, Guiness Book of Records, Slate has managed to create (lasting) change in the behaviour of the über-wealthy of America, kinda, sorta.

I guess greed is good, just depends what you lust for...

Salute Slate..

word is bond

2008-03-05T15:01:00.000+01:00

picture courtesy NY Times

“No matter what happens tonight, we have nearly the same delegate lead that we did this morning, and we are on our way to winning this nomination.”

Interesting quote Senetor Obama gave last night. Let''s break it down.

No matter what happens = why the hell are you, the voters, even bothering

We have the same delegate lead = It's not you that matters, it's the moneymen, so Yes We (aka team Obama) can, but you (aka the grassroots) will have to wait and see.

Perrhaps my cynical mind reads things into something totaly innocent, but I get the feeling that for Obama you could write down CEO or CMO speaking to their employees or parnters, and then people would find the shadows more believable, because most of us have seen it happen.

“No matter what happens,” the CEO said, “we have nearly the same profit margins, our stockprice will not suffer, and we are on our way to providing our customers with great product and services.”

Yes we will hold ourself to the highest standard, yes we will put the customer first, yes we will forget everything we said before once the power that be seduce us to compromise a bit..and a bit, and a bit...

Aritstole wrote that everything is done with an eye towards something else....but then again, sometimes a quote is just a quote...

Questions anyone?

note to self: stop being clever

2008-03-05T09:14:00.000+01:00

In this business, virtuosity is not what is required, because in this business that is a cheap commodity; what counts is being able to expressivly deliver the notes you hit, not the amount of notes u can play.

Chuck Plotkin, music producer

he sees the light, some more anyway (thanks, she sees red)

2008-03-04T20:40:00.000+01:00

Lauren, your post gave me some much needed glimpses, that time do make it better, thanks

Ben is back

2008-02-19T10:19:00.000+01:00

A little local news....Holland will see the return of Ben...a very succesfull telecom provider that was bought by T-Mobile....here is a link to their youtube channel

The agency that did all the great work the first time is Dutch pride and joy KesselsKramer.

They signed on again, minus Kramer who left the comapny in 2005. The campaign kicked of last evening with 3 minute commercials on tv. It was a great trip down memory lane...

My only question is: should they have done it (and probably make a shit load like al bands that reunite, ala Police & the likes) or should they have just pulled an Ian Brown and vowe to never bring back past magic... (and yes..I will use every excuse to bigg up King Monkey, no matter how far fetched)

Nostalgia is a fleeting sentiment to build something on, unless the product is that good....

to be continued

playing for a better future

2008-02-15T15:17:00.000+01:00

Free Rice was and is a great succes. in it's slipstream comes this , village the game. Or as they say in their own words:

"Instead of being mayor, be an entrepreneur. Build and run companies that transform lives. Village is a realtime strategy game for the PC that immerses the player into the role of an entrepreneur building companies to bring prosperity to the villages of the Third World. "

note to self: looking glass

2008-02-15T13:08:00.001+01:00

"The essence of design lies in the process of discovering a problem shared by many people and trying to solve it."

Kenya Hara

in the shadow of power lies influence

2008-02-12T09:03:00.000+01:00

It is primary season in the USA, so here is a nice article about the two men behind the Democratic candidates Obama and Clinton, Mark Penn (from the book microtrends) and David Axelrod.

From a marketing comms point of view very interesting stuff.

And to my readers in the USA (hahaha, ) whatever you do....do vote

why mentors matters

2008-02-07T22:18:00.000+01:00

So I am trying to break in the advertising world. being a client already I feel it's time to prove that I can do it from the agency side as well...

In my quest to get better at this planning thing I have reached out to various planners, asking for advice, feedback and general stuff. and sometimes I get a bit passionate and ask to many questions or (I feel) i take up to much time.

It always amazes me when I read the response I get.. Intelligent, insightfull, constructive, and most of all..I always get a response...

So if ever you think why you should keep doing what u do...below is a column from my favorite sports writer Scoop Jackson

Keep at it...and thnx

A fresh perspective on sportswriting

-- It began with an e-mail about four months ago.

A high school student hit me up, saying that he felt my work was slipping, that I was on the verge of falling off, that I "lost my swag," that I wasn't the writer that I used to be, that Jemele Hill was now his favorite columnist.

I challenged the kid. E-mailed him back. Disagreed with not everything he said, just 99.9 percent of it. I asked if he worked for Deadspin. He didn't get the joke. So I contacted one of the kid's teachers, asking, "Who in the hell is this kid to think he can try to check me like that???"

The teacher told me, "This kid knows you, it is you that doesn't know him." She told me she had others like him in her class. Several others in the school. She told me that they had spent a semester dissecting my work. Every story, every sentence, every misspelled word. She told me she had a group of kids who were more into sportswriting than they were sports, even though one of them was going to play basketball at a Division III school next year. She told me how intense her kids were when it came to breaking down my work, how they laid my columns out and went at them like Sean and Christian do bodies on "Nip/Tuck."

She said they do it out of love for what I do and how I do it.

She said that these kids were special. She said, "Scoop, you really need to meet them."

So I jumped on a plane to meet my fate. Had to come face-to-face with this savvy crew of kids who apparently knew the difference between aptitude in sports journalism and attitude, the difference between Bill Rhoden and Bill Plaschke. The deal was for me to surprise the students, catch them off guard, storm their classrooms, talk sports, defend my work. That was the plan. Instead, they surprised me.

I was met with applause and banners and T-shirts with ESPN logos and my name on them ("English Students Publish writiNg: Just Ask Scoop"). Treatment royale. And instead of the microscopic breakdown of the editing of my work I was prepared to be greeted with, I was met with introspective and in-depth questions about sports journalism that usually come out of the mouths of college seniors in J-school.

They never asked why. They asked how.

"How do you decide what to write, and how to write it? Or do the editors decide that for you? How does ESPN respond to some of the things that you write that they don't agree with? How does it feel to be one of a handful of black writers doing what you do? How do you deal with the negative reactions that you often get on the message boards and from blogs that try to discredit you? How do you or ESPN decide what sports story is necessary to write about and what isn't?"

Mandy Crawford (left), Mariah Mitchell and their peers posed difficult questions about the biz.

They wanted to know how the game was played off the field, how the sports media game is played. They wanted to know why -- 24 hours after Chris Mortensen broke the news about New England being caught videotaping the Jets' defense -- ESPN.com didn't have it as the lead story and why the coverage of it was so low-key on the site. They asked why the sports media seems to be so accepting of what Bill Belichick did and made such a huge deal over what Barry Bonds is accused of doing. They asked where the line between journalism and favoritism in sports is drawn. They asked if there was a "free pass" given to certain athletes and coaches from members of the media. They asked about the "Sunday Night Football" interviews with the commissioner and the Patriots' owner. They asked if the OBN (Ol' Boys Network) really existed. They asked if I believed a double standard exists in sports between those that are loved and those that are loathed, and if so, did we -- those who cover sports -- create it?

They asked about sexism and racism. They asked why it seems as if the only time major networks and newspapers pay attention to women's sports is during the Olympics. They asked why there aren't more women columnists on Page 2. They asked why Jim Rome, Mike & Mike, Stephen A. (since canceled) and Kornheiser and Wilbon ("PTI") have shows but no woman on ESPN does. They asked about the lack of women and minorities on sports talk radio. They asked about my relationship with Jason Whitlock. They asked what I thought about the Don Imus situation and the role it played in how we cover sports. They asked how I felt about using the word n-word.

They asked about O.J.

They thanked me for writing the stories I'd written. They asked if I thought Michael Vick was really that stupid and if Roger Federer was really that good. They asked me about specific lines I had written two years ago. They asked me if I strongly agreed with every stance I took or whether there were things I wrote that I didn't agree with but had to write because they were assigned. They asked if my non-newspaper background has had any effect on how I've been received at ESPN and in the business as an "official" sportswriter.

They came with it. Straight -- no chaser, no ice, no water back. They didn't ask about how this person was or what type of person that person was. What's Shaq like in person? Have you ever met Tom Brady? Is AI as cool as he seems? Who do you think is going to win the World Series? Is Derek Jeter really that cute in real life? None of that. They didn't come with the standard, star-obsessed questions that sportswriters usually get when we walk into a school full of young girls cute like Kaley Cuoco and young guys smooth like Shia LaBeouf.

Instead, they asked about the writing. The art of storytelling and meeting deadlines. Angles and ideas. They asked about the seriousness of what it is that we sportswriters do and how we approach our craft differently every day, so that we can continue to generate interest. They came authentic.

Over an uninterrupted, seven-hour period, I told them everything I knew and everything I could. I emptied my sportswriter's clip. Came real as the logo on milk and as hard as government cheese. I told them that a double standard in sports reporting exists, and that the media's handling of the Belichick situation was proof. I told them to always remember that sports journalism, just like sports itself, is a business first -- that the writer's goal is to provide meaningful content and the job of the company that employs us is to make money. I told them that no relationship exists between Mr. Whitlock and me, and despite our differences, they should still read him. I told them -- well, more specifically the young African-American student who asked me the question -- how in my mind using the n-word for us was more about lack of discipline than it was lack of self-esteem.

I told them of 6 a.m. deadlines, round-the-clock researching and the difference between SIDs in the NCAA and MDs in the NBA. I told them that my next column was going to be about O.J. and how I was going to question why such a big deal was being made over his latest alleged crime.

I told them I was going to end the story with the line, "It's not like he killed somebody." I told them -- as I had once written -- that nothing I write will ever be considered for "The Best American Sports Writing" because of how I write, but that should never be a writer's goal: "Learn to enjoy the process of writing and the end results will take care of themselves." My mouth to their ears.

I told them that as writers, we should believe in the craft first, self second. In that order. Always.

I told them any chance they have to get their hands on a Gary Smith story to read it. I encouraged them to read Charles Pierce, to read Mark Kriegel, to read S.L. Price. I hipped them to Roscoe Nance and David DuPree, I told them that Ralph Wiley was an inspiration to me and told them of the note he once wrote me that I use to this day as justification. I told them to read other writers outside of sports: Lola Ogunnaike, Nancy Gibbs, Allison Samuels, Rob Marriott, dream hampton, and the past works of Alex Haley. I clued them in on how great a writer Roger Ebert really was/is and how he has a Pulitzer to prove it. I told them that reading a variety of writers will help shape their own opinions and develop their own styles. I explained in detail to them that expanding their reading base beyond sports will make them better writers because -- as much as we'd like to think it is -- life is not all about sports.

Every question was answered. From "I really feel that tennis is better than college football," to "Yes, not having a newspaper background has had a negative effect on how I'm looked at." And how I can never let that affect the way I write because that's OPH: other people's hang-ups. I told them of how I grew up wanting to be Nelson George.

It was spiritual, cleansing and uplifting -- for me, not them. And by the time the end-of-seventh-period bell rang, I asked myself, what had I ever written to deserve a day like this? "Great things like this are only supposed to happen for the Bill Simmons' of the world, not me," I said to my boy Shawn, who shared the day with me. Why was I so lucky?

It was a day all sportswriters should experience but might never get the opportunity to have. A day where you are on trial for doing nothing wrong, but to explain to future writers of sports why you do what you do, how you do it. A day about them "learning" you and you learning something about yourself and how in the end you end up discovering they are the ones who can make us better writers, not necessarily the other way around. It is an extremely humbling and inspirational experience. Rick Reilly, you're up next.

Before I left Blue Valley Northwest in Overland Park, Kansas, Matt (one of the two students who sent me the e-mail that initiated this whole thing), still with the smile on his face that appeared the second I walked from backstage to surprise him at 8:30 a.m., said something to me.

"Scoop, you know the Belichick piece you just did? The one titled '22 Questions?' Well, I read it a few times and you actually have 25 questions in the story not 22."

"No sirrr," I said back. "I made sure there were 22 questions in that piece. Trust me, there's exactly 22."

"Sorry," he said while handing me a copy of the story he had marked up, as if he were already an ESPN editor. "There's 25, Mr. Jackson. I counted."

Which I knew he did. He was thorough like that. I knew he was right because I now knew that's who he is. That he didn't want to test me or check me, just make sure that in his eyes and in the eyes of every other student in the school I remained the best writer I could possibly be, that I remained his inspiration -- which is why his teacher knew I should meet him in the first place, why she wanted me to meet all of them.

Special was an understatement.

Damn kids.

weapon of choice

2008-01-31T20:47:00.000+01:00

I like gangs and honour stuff. whether it be in my choice of music, films, books and..as I have been discovering lately.. in my thinking.

There is something about the premise that it's you and the people you have known all your life achieving something agaist the odds...not just rags to riches, but sharing the wealth..

This all came to me as I was cleaning up my collections of music and motion pictures and I found all this stuff that I had bought and really loved

top albums recovered from clean up:

Born to run

Definitely maybe

reasonabe doubt

top movies I found while cleaning up:

Carlito's way

La haine

The pattern is now everywhere I look. from the Acount Planning assignments that I have made, to the real world marketing stuff I do at my job...when I can pick a fight (with another brand or whatever it is I want my brand to rally against) I seem to do good work...

So what I am really trying to figure out is: do personal traits belong in the work you do for clients, or should one always (much like an actor) get in character and think from the brand point of view? of course you should adhere to the stuff that's already there, but should you check yourself at the door?