Question Obscurity

ShillFest 43

For the second straight year I sat down on a late January afternoon to watch a few commercials and a football game broke out. Granted, as a born-and-bred Browns fan, it felt a bit treasonous rooting for my rust belt rival Steelers. But I just couldn’t get behind the Little Red Bird Heads. Football is meant to be played on the banks of frozen bodies of water with names like Cuyahoga and Monongahela. The Glendale Cards play in a desert where they compete with Cactus League baseball for the local resident’s retirement funds. Kurt Warner was probably living in a Dell Webb community outside of Flagstaff when they called him up. And I don’t think they won a game all year in a climate where they could see their breath. So, in the end, I was glad to see The Burgers stretch out and hang on for the fingertip victory. Cold weather fans in town’s like Pittsburgh earn their wins and deserve heroes.

But, enough about the game. Let’s fast forward to the commercials.

Now, plenty of ink has already been spilled about this year’s Super Bowl ads. More so, as seems to be the trend, than the actual game. It’s like somewhere in the mid-XXV’s Super Sunday evolved from a football game into America’s Official National Television Holiday. A celebration centered entirely around the TV set. A high holy day for the influence industry’s most ineffective media buy. The one day a year when we all get to sit around and play Clio judge. I’d say the whole thing has gone off the rails, but here I am adding yet another layer to the endless cycle of absurdity by editorializing about the over-editorialization of the non-newsworthiness of the whole shebang.

So let’s take it from the top.

Hyundai bought the Kick-Off Show to assure us of a couple of things. First , if they sell me a car I can’t afford they won’t call in the lawyers and come confiscate my only way to get to a job interview. #2: Hyundai Genesis (I assume Gabriel era) won North American Best Car Of The Year. I can understand why all the big foreign automakers are up in arms. Hyundai is Korean. Not North American. Plus, who got Best Car for All The Americas? Some new sub compact from Uruguay? Think about it.

The Budweiser Clydesdales trotted out next with yet another cheesy anthropomorphic heart string tugger. So I trotted out to grab a beer I could actually taste. It’s way past time to put those old workhouses out to pasture.

Then there was this really weird spot where Lebron James signs with the Cleveland Browns. He was scoring from everywhere and there was this hot cheerleader, and Al Sharpton was there. Then, all of a sudden, we both woke up. And I still have no idea who sponsored that commercial.

Turns out, not only is the Hyundai Genesis the best car north of the Rio Grande. I can go to a web site and edit commercials of it driving around. Great. Can I then go to the client’s Marketing Review Panel meetings where it gets second-guessed into yet another parody of the Wally-like junk heap of bad car ads? Just to make it more like a real advertising experience?

From the Explain This To Me Category: Pepsi buys Dylan and will.i.am to define yet another generation while Conan doing a commercial is some kind of artistic sell-out. I don’t get it.

I do get the Cheetos spot, though. Throwing your day glow orange puffed chemical crisps to the pigeons is a way better idea than actually eating them.

Castrol wins this year’s I’ll Have What They’re Smoking Award with their Grease Monkeys spot. They got their client to spend $3 million to air some dolt with an air filter on his head kissing a chimp. Strange days indeed.

At halftime I was one of the unfortunate 95.3 million (out of 95.4) without 3D glasses. So all I saw just before Bruce rocked my jeans off was a few forgettable commercials with an odd blue blur in the background. Like seeing someone’s aura or the faint photographic proof of a ghost in the room.

But in the second half the commercials came back. Denny’s made its case as a better place to plan a murder. Monster.com reminded me that, in my current position under the Giant Moose’s Ass of American Capitalism, I may want to consider another job. (This preferred over CareerBuilder’s take it out on your steering wheel and helpless marsupial approach.) And Coke showed just how beautiful it is when you pass out in a diabetic coma, knock over you soda pop, and the bugs get it.

Kellogg’s got flagged for intentional disingenuousness when Tony the Tiger tried to convince me that rebuilding ball fields somehow makes up for selling caramel coated corn to kids. For breakfast.

But, in the end, Hulu.com pulled it out with a spot so funny I actually went online to see what the heck it is they do. The TV turns your brain to mush as part of a sinister alien plot to destroy the world idea was spot on. I only wish more people got it. But then, what would we talk about on Super Monday?

A Brand Manifesto For America

Did we just elect the world's greatest copywriter?

Somewhat overlooked and somehow underappreciated in all the way more than well deserved adulation for President Obama is his uncanny ability to see a big idea and elevate it with the fine art of language.

Now, I happen to prefer his particular flavor of Kool-Aid so, admittedly, I indulged a bit tonight. But I have some experience in word craft and can attest to his merit in this area. The guy has a tenor of oratory eloquence to which I can only aspire. His cultural barometer appears pretty spot-on. He spoke like he'd asked some really tough questions and thought long and hard about the answers. To me, that's as big of a relief as it is an inspiration.

So here's an idea. I'm going all in. I'm going all post-advertising-as-a-force-for-positive-change and appointing myself Secretary of Marketing Morality. A voice for advertising's collective conscience. That's right. We're entering a new era of personal and corporate responsibility. So from this day forward I pledge to help steer my industry towards the path of righteousness. 

We have to do something, right? Because just voting for the smart dude didn't automatically fulfill our obligation to help change things for the better. The big idea, to me anyway, is that we all have to do it together. Only he said it way better.

No, Chevron, we will not join you.

Part of making advertising a force for positive change in the world is calling out our industry at its most disingenuous and destructive. Case in point, Chevron's  Will You Join Us? campaign. Among the umpteen ironies of this abject lesson in brand insincerity is the way it challenges us to do our part in reducing dependancy on fossil fuels. Excuse me? This from a company that has historically and vehemently resisted anything that would impinge on even the smallest percentage of their staggering profits. This knowing perfectly well that their prices will adjust accordingly to any decrease in demand. It's like they have us on the treadmill of petro-dependancy and now they're telling us how fast to run as they fine tune their price-at-the-pump Shell game (and BP and Exxon and all the rest). 

It's pretty obvious, but rarely discussed, that there's only one potential kink in the hose of the dinosaur driller's smooth running profit pipeline. It's the offhand chance that some brave politicians go far enough out of the mainstream to do the only thing that could conceivably create a financial incentive for sustained conservation - wrest away their power to set prices. Hence the campaign's ultimate but completely unstated target audience: lawmakers. The key message: Hey, we're part of the solution. See, we support technologies that threaten our monopoly and convince people to buy less of our product. Nothing to see here. Everybody just move along now. 

It's mass market lobbying is what it is. But instead of hookers and blow we get asked to make the little sacrifices that help us all. 

Okay. I'm venting. Thank you for allowing me to momentarily yield to one of the few indulgences that doesn't wreck the planet. Now let us rejoice in this encouraging display of media activism from the League of Conservation Voters. Too bad they'd don't have big oil's ad budget.

   

Piling On

Did advertising kill a man at a Wal-Mart holiday sale?

Yesterday a lawsuit was filed implicating a retail store’s marketing campaign as at least partially culpable for the death of a security guard trampled at the opening of a Post-Thanksgiving Sale.

Let’s not even get started on the cruel ironies of Black Friday that converge here.

This is a sad story. Sad on so many levels. But ultimately it’s a story about bad strategies.

About retail marketers using (and yes, abusing) the old Rush technique. Letting slip that there’s gold to be found in the creek beds and aisle displays. But only if you get there before all the good claims are staked.

Then consumers, figuratively and unfortunately, literally falling for it. Going into Blitzkrieg shopping mode, which rarely results in: a) satisfying shopping experience or b) an actual value.

But it is worth discussion in the context of advertising’s societal role.

First, the good news. That anyone is acknowledging advertising’s ability to push people to acts of mindless desperation and incite near-riots is an acknowledgement that what we do really works.

(Now if only we could channel that kind of passion into acts of social and environmental activism.)

It may also signal a step towards a more interesting public dialogue about the true cultural effects of our profession.

But nevertheless, whether the suit succeeds or not, all the rest of the news for our industry is bad.

It was a bait and switch strategy that falls back on a sucker-born-every-minute mentality. It’s a pretty clear case of what works trumping what’s right. And I hope our industry comes to see that.

We should be making people more informed and aware in their purchasing decisions. Not more desperate and anxious.

People waited outside the store through a freezing night then rampaged when the ones who stayed in their cars rushed the doors. They crushed and killed a 6’5” doorman then complained when the store had to close. Don't we as an industry have an obligation to at least consider our role in that? 

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON ADVERTISING

Pondering the implications of biometric research.
By Tom Kavanaugh
There’s this (I think it’s) cool (anyway) analogy I’ve bantered around for years about the inexactitude of advertising. It goes something like: This stuff’s not brain surgery. It’s way harder. If only you could just reach in there and jiggle the purchase mechanism or flip the switch for brand preference. Because, compared to brain surgery, our tools for changing minds are clumsy, blunt and imprecise. We have truth and beauty, rationale and emotional appeals delivered through an omnipresent but ultimately dismissible range of media. And so, besides making products chemically or emotionally addictive (i.e.: tobacco, booze, coffee, People), there’s still no proven way to physically make somebody like your brand enough to buy your product.
At least not yet.
Then I come across this article about companies that track and measure brainwaves and other biologic data in response to ad messages. I knew this kind of thing had been dabbled in. But the closest I’d come were vague references to eye-tracking studies that purport to identify where people look while flipping through magazines. And of course, like all agency creatives, I’ve done my time behind the one-way focus group mirror bloating myself with Peanut M&M’s and trembling with perverse voyeuristic distress as the proverbial man-on-the street shredded my creative ideas. Haven’t we all.
But this is different. We’re talking electrodes glued to the head here. Which means, when you ask someone how they feel about an ad there’s no wading through the inevitable minefield of ego and posturing. You just monitor brain activity, heart rate, skin temperature (salivation?), breathing and blinking and apply a few algorithms to calculate emotional response. Then, I guess, print a receipt.
Surely I’m not the only one who finds this way more than just a little creepy?
Now, as you may have guessed, I’m no big fan of ad testing in general. Beyond the unique form of soul crushing, creativity-trampling torture mentioned above, there’s something just plain wrong about applying objective scientific methods to something so inherently subjective. And I’m sorry, but people perusing ads in a natural environment are not simultaneously searching for something seemingly intelligent to say about them. Which is why I find traditional ad testing about as helpful as re-explaining your jokes.
But brainwaves?
Do we really want marketers to better understand how to navigate our neurological circuitry? Not that they don’t already. But we can adapt natural defense mechanisms to outside stimuli. We can consciously defend ourselves against the blunt instruments. It’s the silent dog whistle that scares me. The TV spot that haunts me for reasons I can’t explain. The weakness for a product that never satisfies but remains inexplicably irresistible.
Plus, what happens when they get really good at this stuff? Forget warrantless wiretapping. I can see the bumper sticker now: P&G OUT OF MY CEREBELLUM. And what’s the new Nielsen box? An implant?
Okay, maybe I’m overreacting. (I suppose my brainwaves are off the Richter scale right now and my hi-tech mood ring has gone all day glow.)
Most likely, as with all “new approaches” to ad testing, even neurological brainwave mapping will accomplish pretty much the same thing as all other forms of pseudo-scientific creative research. It will confirm the client’s hunch that the logo should be bigger and the product should be mentioned more often. And earlier.
Still, if you happen to notice me salivating involuntarily, please, tell me.

BOWLING FOR DOLLARS

A Cynical Semi-Serious Critique of This Year’s Super Bowl Ads.
This was, admittedly, a tough year to review Super Bowl ads. For one, the game was actually pretty good. I have no vested interest in either team, but it seemed like so much was on the line for both. More than most years, anyway. More than some big chrome phallus or gaudy ring.
For NY, there was respect. It was good to see a gang from New York show the world that respect is still something you earn. Not just fight and die for.
For New England it was history. The chance to become the most boringly predictable, blandly efficient victory machine since Bill Walsh traded the scrappy soul of the Niners for a Rolex perfectly synchronized to get its opera glass touting fans out of the crisp Candlestick sunshine with a win before the chill was off their Chardonnay.
In the end, though, you’ve got to give it up for the East Rutherford WhatExits. And while I’d never question New England’s patriotism, we may have just learned a valuable little lesson about getting too cocky when you think you’re the sole superpower.
Still, even for a game with so many original storylines, my top-line impression of this year’s crop of commercials was a decided lack of original storylines. So let’s run through a few that stuck with me for one reason or another (click here if you want to play along at home):
1. My biggest laugh of the day came from Tide’s talking stain spot. The gag was genuinely funny, and the execution was oddly, frustratingly impossible not to pay attention to. They put a comedic face on an anxiety we all harbor. That everyone is looking at that gerb on my shirt and wondering what it is and what kind of grotesque I am for having created it. And what kind of dork I am for not having noticed and removed it. I laughed out loud. (score: 4 snot bubbles)
2. Talking babies would probably fall into the category of Only Done About 87 Times In Commercials And 4 or 5 In Feature Films so let’s give it a go. But a few things kind of worked for me in the E-trade spots. For one, the web cam. Besides a great way to mask a CG mouth that was never going to look real in HD, it gave a needed cool factor to a baby that never blinked. And then the kid’s voice. Best casting, by far. The spit up was silly in the first spot, but the line of the day for me was: “I really underestimated the creepiness.” (3.5 snot bubbles)
3. The screaming critters in the first Bridgestone ad. I had to call my kids in knowing they’d get a kick out of that one. (Which doesn’t speak well of their targeting considering my 4 and 7 year old aren’t big tire purchasers.) Then, by using Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons in their second spot, Bridgestone checked off the two most commonly used easy laughs in advertising – making critters talk and making over the hill celebrities look even more ridiculous than they really are. (Score: 2 snot bubbles, 2 screaming kids)
4. Remind me to thank Pepsi for fulfilling a personal fantasy of getting to watch Justin Timberlake dragged through the streets and beaten. (1 cynical snot bubble, one snidely snicker)
5. The Bud Clydesdale/Rocky spot wins this year’s Way Funnier Than It Was Supposed To Be Award. As I’m watching the dog train the horse to overcome the crushing disappointment of losing his place on the team I’m thinking, “Cool, they’re playing this super-sappy. It’s going to be awesome when they pull the rug out at the end.” But in a twist of shear unintended genius, they don’t. It’s just a sappy feel-good spot about working hard to achieve your dreams. Get it? (Score: a mild scowl caused by my increasing imperviousness to gratuitous tear mongering)
6. Hyundai then actually tried to make fun of the predictably unpredictable ending with their first spot. After claiming their new car was somehow comparable to BMW and Mercedes they tell us that this is where the big twist comes in. But guess what? The jokes on them. It’s a Hyundai. Thanks for telling me before I actually considered buying one. (Score: sigh of relief)
7. The Breathe Fire and Ability to Fly spots for Bud Light are notable because of how unsubtly unfunny they were. Since you’re not allowed to poke fun at the actual effects of beer drinking, Budweiser had to imagine new, more outlandish side effects. After watching these spots I couldn't help but long for the endless slew of awkward office party and beer goggle schticks (see below) that would surely propagate if you were allowed to actually tell the truth about why people drink beer. (Score: 2 hiccups)
8. Cashews that make everybody around you so fall-down-drunk that they actually consider you attractive. You gotta hand it to Planters. Not to be outdone by Emerald Nut’s Robert Goulet spot last year they take home the I Want What Your Creative Team Was Smoking Award. (Score: a lingering cough)
9. Not last, but certainly least in my book, is the Dell (Red) spot, where a kid gets endless adulations for having purchased a Dell laptop through a program (Red) that donates money to fight AIDS in Africa. Now, normally I would just give this spot the Your Brief Is Showing Award for its ham-handed portrayal of what some clueless planner told them is that jubilant feeling you get knowing your purchase goes to a good cause. Because, let’s face it, the real reason we do good things is so lots of people will like us, right? Great message. But that’s only part of what I found so disturbing about this spot. (RED) is a good organization that, on some levels, I wholeheartedly agree with. But they never even told me what the good thing is. Save Lives, is all it says. At the very end. Which means they spent a few million dollars to reach a few million people and never bothered to mention that (RED) helps fight a savage yet preventable epidemic in Africa that’s killing millions of innocent people. (Score: a wag of the finger to Dell, RED, and Mother NY, the latter two I would have expected more from)
10. Less seriously, pitching a goofy movie and weak beer at the same time, Will Ferrell said that a lot of sweat goes into making Bud Light. Which makes me wonder if somewhere there’s an elite fraternity of creative people laughing themselves into fits about who got their clients to say the most disgusting thing about their product on marketing’s biggest stage. (See 7 & 8 above.) (Score: Okay, I’ll laugh to that. 2 snot bubbles.)

Can Advertising Make The World A Better Place?

A personal quest for advertising’s conscience.
By Tom Kavanaugh
Like a low-watt fluorescent light bulb flickering on over the heads of corporations all over the world, the idea that being a good company is good for long-term profits is finally catching on.
There may even be, dare I say, a trend towards companies taking a considered look at the social and environmental implications of their endeavors. But, instead of hiring lawyers and propagandists to hide the untidy by-products of commerce, they’re actually looking for tangible ways to clean them up.
Hallelujah.
And while I can’t remember ever being so cautiously optimistic about the forces of capitalism, I’m once again confounded by my chosen profession’s glacial reaction to a rising sea of change.
Sure, some forward thinking agencies are helping clients define and make good on sustainable corporate visions. That’s great. But nowhere within the marketing community, as far as I can see, has anyone even attempted to seize the moral high ground by addressing the full societal implications of what we do. And how can we consider ourselves qualified to preach the doctrines of corporate honesty, openness, citizenship, compassion and common goodness until we’ve put or own ethical and ecological house in order?
That’s why, here in the influence industry, if we ever sincerely want to become a driving force for positive change in the world, we have to openly address not just our carbon footprint but our cultural one as well.
Yes, its finally time for a serious discussion about the real hidden truth in advertising - that we are in the business of manufacturing desire. Taken collectively, we mass-produce the misconception that happiness can be bought. Our job is to cram our client’s brand into the nooks and crannies of peoples’ brains and set up shop there, constantly reminding the host organism that these products offer security, esteem, virility, acceptance, euphoria, relief, release, retribution, enlightenment and any number of other primal impulses.
We create desire relievable by purchase, and the natural by-product or our industry is a culture of consumerism. A powerful though rarely discussed driving force behind so much of the waste and social and environmental degradation at the very heart of the greatest challenges we face today as a civilization.
There. I said it. And yes, I feel better. Thank you.
Now what can we do about it?
It’s daunting. True. We change minds. Not planets, right? But I would argue that you couldn’t do one without the other. The power of advertising to influence behavior at a societal level makes it potentially one of the most effective and underutilized forces for revolutionary positive change available today. So it’s not just important. It may be imperative.
Fortunately, to get there, all we should have to do is apply the same simple formula being used by successful forward-thinking companies in virtually every sector of the economy. Let’s identify our true stakeholders and build a business around doing what’s best for them. All of them. Not just the ones who fund our ventures or send us monthly checks.
Starting with our selves. And I mean that in the collective sense. From global agencies to creative boutiques. From investors and CEO’s to writers and receptionists. We need to ask ourselves a simple question: What in the world, besides making money, are we in business to do?
That’s the big question, the answer to which is inciting a new generation of dynamic entrepreneurialism. Getting it right is igniting the kind of innovation that’s a natural accelerant for making money. It’s a critically important and deeply personal question. So I won’t claim to have the answer. (At least, I won’t give it away here for free.) But if every marketing communications company in America called a meeting tomorrow morning to discuss it we’d be well on our way to understanding what our role may be in making the world a better place.
The next critical stakeholders are clients. They expect us to move their products not channel their auras. So we have to prove, if they don’t already believe, that sustainability applies to the economic health of companies as well as it does to naturally evolving ecosystems. Like our planet. But that’s the easy part.
The more difficult task, by far, for our clients, will be building a Good company, not just a Good brand. So we, as marketers, need to be responsible and selfless in our counsel. But we also need to ask the really tough questions and get honest answers directly from the people setting the corporate trajectory. Because it’s not just about putting a face on a company anymore. It’s about holding a mirror up to it for all to see. Until a company has a sustainable vision and the structure to make it work, they’re just not ready.
Last and, sadly, least discussed is our culture. The monster we created and stashed in our collective closet. But fear not. This one may already be working itself out. Victims of our own success, media skepticism is on the rise. Before long, the old models will be obsolete anyway. Too much transparency. Too many choices. A new kind of brand awareness is emerging that includes an understanding of a company’s true intentions, not just its marketing messages. The Internet, while revealing stunning new opportunities to engage consumers, is simultaneously enabling new ways for them to peak behind our proverbial curtains.
It’s quite possible that a populous enlightened by the power of interconnectivity will come to realize that every dollar they spend is a vote in the great electorate we call free market capitalism. And they’ll shop accordingly. Then, when conscientious consumerism goes mainstream, the concept of Brand will be invariably altered. Positioning your company for The Common Good will cease to be a hip new trend. It will become an economic necessity. At which point we’ll all have to get right with our Holy Unspokens and ask the world if we’re worthy of their patronage.
The question then won’t be if advertising can make the world a better place. It will be about who does it best.