No man can serve two masters

Woolworths, plastic crap and your core competency

2009-11-16T22:02:29+00:00

I read yesterday that there is a £2 billion windfall awaiting retailers this Christmas given that there is no Woolworths nowadays and that is the amount of Christmas shopping that has historically been done there. £2 billion. How could it be that a company that commanded so much of the nation's purse have gone so badly wrong?

Thinking of the times I had been in there in recent years I recall a catalogue of disappointment. In the past they had been the place to go if you needed a small screw or some new tupperware. In recent years they had been seeming to specialise in the sort of plastic shit that no-one really needs. Inexpensive kids toys, crappy homewares, that kind of thing.

You can see how it happened, plastic shit is very high margin. Probably some young thrusting exec got hold of some shelf space to stock some new lines, and bingo, it made a fortune. So some more and then some more again was given over to this plastic gold, until so much was going through the shop that they forgot what they were all about.

It's very common to talk about what your 'core competency' is – especially in these difficult times – but it is not so easy to see what it actually is. For instance Bosch are in many different areas of industry seemingly; kitchen products, construction, gardening, you name it, but they actually understand their core competency very well – the production of small electrical motors.

Woolworths core competency was comprehensiveness, you could get whatever you needed there for your home, no matter how small or strange. As soon as that promise went unfulfilled, it was irrelevant how much shiny plastic stuff they had, no-one wanted to go there.

So I guess the question for business today is; are you selling plastic shit or electric motors?

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2009-11-07T00:00:00-08:00

4T2 multimedia:::

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2009-11-05T00:00:00-08:00

16 Week Olympic - 2x Balanced

I'm a Mac and I'm a bully

2009-11-04T18:56:27+00:00

Macintosh, the brand of the outsider, the creative mind, the free thinker. Think different was a spectacular campaign which wonderfully encapsulated this philosophy and flipped the thinking of the historical big enemy IBM on it's head. (IBM had been running their very successful 'think' campaign for many years).

But how much longer can this go on for? Is Mac really still the elite brand for the in-group? Perhaps it is, there are still a relatively small number of cravat wearers who flourish their Mac in Starbucks, but the worm may be about to turn. Since iPod is now such a massive global brand with untold millions of units shipped around the world and I think around 80% market penetration in the MP3 player market and iphone trouncing all over the mobile handset market I think they need to be very careful with how they are perceived.

This year their I'm a Mac / I'm a PC campaign got a response from Microsoft. In a change from the standard approach of the market leader which is to ignore the competition in communications, the big blue monster came out with their own 'I'm a PC' campaign that tries to show PC users as the full range of creative, scientific, working and playing people that make up their users. Given even now, at their lowest point they still control over 92% of the home computer operating system market it shows they are taking the threat seriously.

People's perceptions of a brand health a lead indicator of future sales and onwards to customer satisfaction. Apple had been cutting into Microsoft's market share in tiny, but reliable bites and they need to deal with it if they want to stay at no. 1.

The I'm a PC campaign that broke over the past year is a really fantastic piece of work making the corporate Ogre that Microsoft had become come across as human, self effacing and even funny. Perhaps even a little bit what Mac was like back in the day.

Compare this to where Apple are now with their perceived weak points - that they are expensive, value style over substance, a somewhat dodgy hardware reliability reputation and now to top it all off picking on the geeky, bespectacled, socially awkward kid, they are coming across a little bit like a bully. I just found that Charlie Brooker has said this a lot better than I can when the campaign first broke in the UK, drawng the analogy of the UK actors roles in Peep Show

"in which Mitchell plays a repressed, neurotic underdog, and Webb plays a selfish, self-regarding poseur. So when you see the ads, you think, "PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers." In other words, it is a devastatingly accurate campaign."

Why am I bringing all this up now? Well Windows 7 has just been released. Amazingly, to some acclaim. It will be interesting to see how people react to Windows 7 now that Microsoft is acting with a bit more humanity. Their strength ironically is in their fallibility, if they can successfully show that they care about the people who use their products and are doing their best then that would likely be a powerful antidote to Mac's supercilious elitism. Aspirational is probably a losing tack in tough times anyway and as a typically British lover of the underdog, I hope Microsoft sticks it to them. Never thought I'd say that.

Having an idea is the easy part

2009-11-04T16:30:24+00:00

One thing I´ve been thinking about while we´ve been away is that while getting a great creative idea is not exactly easy, it is probably the easiest part of the creative process. It is what happens afterwards that is the difficult thing. Anyone who has ever done anything as simple as draw a picture on a piece of paper has realised that what you see in your mind is generally poorly reflected in what is realised. (the irony is, the better the end product, the more intesely you feel this).

The idea is just the start of a long journey to prevent your idea and the campaign from dying, or worse, being crap.

Over the past few years in the ´blogosphere´ there has been plenty of attention on strategy - thanks to the value the discipline of blogging has had to planners, helped along by many prominent and enjoyable blogs, and more recently from some interesting creative perspectives, but I am keen to find where is the good stuff about actually making things happen, and happen right?

This surely is the third part of the holy trinity of insight, idea, execution, and like the trinity each exists as part of the others. There was a great chart that I remember stealing from somwhere which is a virtuous circle between ´thinking´and ´doing things´.

I hope I can remember how to use PowerPoint

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2009-10-21T00:00:00-07:00

C&M* Hot UK Online PR Agency: PR & Social Media Agency Re-Mixed & Re-Thunk

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2009-10-20T00:00:00-07:00

Asus Eee PC Tweak Guide
Can Hulu Save Traditional TV? | Fast Company
How Rewards Can Backfire and Reduce Motivation | PsyBlog
IPA Social: 10 conversation starters / we are social
Group of barbers suggest you need a haircut ;) Good summaary of IPA social shenanigans from we are social
dailyvitamins : your daily digital dose from vitamin water
Go Find It
Little break, Big difference

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2009-10-13T00:00:00-07:00

LayerGlue ActionScript Library

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2009-10-09T00:00:00-07:00

Casa Felix | Diego Felix
Eat dinner in someone's house. Five course menu for 110 pesos
Bar De Roberto

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2009-10-08T00:00:00-07:00

Originality is an effectiveness issue

2009-09-21T23:43:02+01:00

Every now and again you hear about how some famous piece of advertising or marketing work has actually been directly 'inspired' (or copied) from something else that previously existed. Notable recent examples include Honda's 'cog', Sony 'bunnies', the road safety basketball one and that Aero one with skateboarders in the swimming pool. In fact it is now the fun game du j0ur to see if people can spot the artistic or cultural references that spawned the commercial.

It is particularly important to creatives, the people paid, and are often under pressure to develop ideas, who prize the creation of something totally new so highly. Somehow, to be directly influenced by something that has gone before is cheating. However we are here to make money, not art and the end point of the journey is not the glittering diamond we release onto a virgin and untrammelled world, it is a change in the business fortunes of our clients, ultimately (dare I say it) sales.That is not to say by any means that originality isn't important in the development of creative ideas. To create a difference between you and the competition, as David Ogilvy put it - “the burr of singularity” is vital. We humans delight in the novel, think on the truism that you and I are basically living inside the bodies of cavemen, we are always looking for the colour of a tasty new fruit, or the red flash of danger in the forest. The sea of green blends into the background. To create something new and different screams to our psyche, and that is why we as marketing people need to do it.

Bill Bernbach agreed, “In communications, familiarity breeds apathy”

So while I agree that distinctiveness is vital (the Trifecta of Ogilvy, Bernbach and Law cannot be disputed), it is not necessarily that case that total originality is required, simply rather that the majority of the people you are exposing the work to consider it to be different enough to warrant attention.

Now we live in a recombinant age, but as pedants the world over write, was it ever thus. John Webster was well know for taking inspiration from situations in the street, other art work or references in culture. Who cares? William Shakespeare nicked all sorts of things including the whole idea of a number of his stories, as well as passages, characters from the classics and contemporaries. They used to have a name for it, it was called the renaissance. It is worthwile noting that there has never been a successful court case for plagiarism in advertising in the UK, and that is because, contrary to popular belief, copyright does NOT extend to ideas. Copyright applies to a tangible work, not to the idea behind it, so if you use a similar idea, but execute it in a different way (ie. Not a direct remake), no copyright infringement exists.

The point is not that there is nothing original any more, it is that whether it is completely original or not is not important.. The important question is whether the majority of the target audience will consider it to be a novel stimulus, if they do, it is original enough, and we should then content ourselves with evaluating is the work itself effective at its stated aim. Stat.

Maybe Smash Martians was a shit ad?

2009-09-21T23:31:50+01:00

Has anyone been to the supermarket recently? Did you see a gondola end stacked with powdered potato? No you didn't because powdered potato, while it makes pretty good mash, is nowhere in the modern cookery lexicon. It's brief spell in the sun came in the 1970s, before fading from popular consciousness, presumably now forever. The product itself is not bad.

In fact recently on the wife and my big cycle trip we ate quite a lot of it. It is cheap, relatively calorific (a good thing) and easy to transport dry. Ideal for cycle touring. Aside from that however, it is also very good at making a tasty mashed potato product, almost indistinguishable from that made fresh. I just checked with the Mrs and she backed me up, saying “I could tell, but I wouldn't grumble [if I ate it again].”

So why, dear reader has this happened? Now I am not going to tell you that the actions of the entire population of the UK over the last 30 years in eschewing freeze dried potato are down to John Webster (peace be upon him) and his magnum opus “Smash Martians”, but it could be argued that it mis-read the attitude of the time, which had negative long term implications for the fortunes of the brand .

Think back my friends to 1974, the OPEC oil crisis had just ravaged the world economy, half of the country is on a three day week. The nation is collectively thinking about the need to get back to the important things of life. John Seymour, author of the Fat of the Land and The Complete Guide to Self Sufficiency is coming to the public attention on his smalholding, and we are a couple of years before the debut of the Good Life on television.

The Smash Martians was doubtless a great ad in capturing the public attention. Webster (pbuh) had a unique knack of creating catchy communications that entered the consciousness of ordinary people. The campaign itself formed a light moment in a dreary decade, and the ad ran for eight years, and has repeatedly been voted the industry's and people's favourite. So why are we all not eating Smash with our dinner?

My humble assertion is that maybe the aliens had excessive focus on the space age features of the food, doubtless inspired by the recent moon shot, misjudged the opportunity to become a meme with the potential for long term relevance and life.

Of course as an account man, and an enemy of all Good Work, that is what I would say. However the end result is still fairly conclusive. Once the ads stopped running priming people to sales, what was left with the brand focused too much on a cold, hard, technological focus on the process of creating Smash, rather than the earthy smell of the soil and the life giving goodness of the potato. The brand has disappeared into irrelevance as a consequence.

Against process

2009-09-21T23:19:16+01:00

For the whole duration of my career every 18 months or so there is a renewal of "The Process", the agreed procedure for how the company internally organises and codifies the relationships between the different departments. A series of events that brings a heavy heart to all who hear its name. I suspect that this will continue until the day I retire, have a breakdown or drop off the perch, whichever comes first.

Since I have spent most of my career focusing on digital communications, I would be interested to see if the same thing happens in direct or 'ATL' agencies, as their workflow is more established. However, since a lot of the friction and the proposed changes are due to the shifting power relationships between different departments as much as they are around the quality of the output I would imagine they will be.

Ultimately, the intention of any formalised process for doing things is to create an environment in which great ideas can flourish and not be killed as they are born. The difference is whether this is an idiot proofing of the system, to prevent ineptitude destroying good work, or whether it is a collection of best practices to help people create better work

This is an important distinction as competent people (and you should be working with competent people) do not need a process. If you are working with incompetent people, you will never achieve anything so get out of there as soon as you can.

Nothing is ever comprehensive enough to cover all of the potential situations that may arise anyway. Suppose you are close to your deadline, the client requests copy changes that will make you go over budget and the only way to get them done is to feed them directly into the final website or artwork. The creative director has an alternative copy version that will mean the layout needs to change slightly and you will probably need to do this on Saturday morning. How can any piece of paper tell you what to do, or in which order in this situation? And this isn't even that uncommon a type of occurrence

Countless hours have been spent constructing impressive looking documents, which are gret if that is what you need – to impress clients for example, but in practice they are just not used by the vast majority of people doing their daily business. While they are potentially useful tools in learning the craft of managing a creative business, I do not believe they are useful on the whole in actually carrying it out.

Paul Feyerabend was an influential philosopher investigating how scientific developments came about. His seminal work – Against Method – rebelled against trying to codify or contain the creative endeavour of what is essentially an anarchic process. Essentially, in creative matters "anything goes"

Scientists do not solve problems because they possess a magic wand - methodology, or a theory of rationality - but because they have studied a problem for a long time, because they know the situation fairly well, because they are not too dumb (though that is rather doubtful nowadays when almost anyone can become a scientist), and because the excesses of one scientific school are almost always balanced by the excesses of some other school.

People stumble on the right answer often over the course of a project, and while awards entries encourage Olympian levels of post rationalisation suggesting that the only successful campaigns are the ones that run like clockwork with a well thought out big idea that arrives fully formed some time after the creative brief and before you start finalising any artwork. The truth of the matter is that you never have the strategy completely nailed before the creative work is on the table, the concept is only half done when you go into production, and changes that right at the end of a project make all the difference between success and failure. I would contend that not 0nly is this the only realistic way of doing things, it is also important to the creative method, and the way things should be done.

So what are the important features of a process? For one thing, a process acts as the statement of a philosophy or way of doing things. At the very least you would understand from it if you are living in an authoritarian regime or not. Acting as a 'playbook' from which you adapt and use the relevant parts is a good way to go. Dare have the somewhat happy clappy 'good and nice' philosophy to recruitment policy which filters through to the key stages process. This is infinitely better than a massive document that nobody uses.

I had a previous client who was beside themselves that the agency I was working at could not produce an encyclopedic process document. We ended up writing one, which was 90% made up on the spot, to my shame we didn't but should have insisted that we work to a series of waymarkers based on our own experience, an make the rest up as we go, and that is the best thing to do. I wonder what they would have said.

Creative destruction

2009-09-21T23:11:51+01:00

View more documents from Chris Sandström.

I read a great book while I was away about how we are entering a deflationary era in part as a result of the massive technological changes in industry and society, meaning that the cost to produce and bring to market products is always decreasing (Deflation, Chris Farrell). The author talked about Joseph Schumpeter's theory of 'creative destruction' meaning this is not necessarily a bad thing as new means of doing something more efficiently is actually a good way of allocating resources in the economy over the long run.

Just today by chance I found out that Simon Waldman from the Guardian / GMG is in the process of writing a book about creative disruption, and had referenced a great presentation about Schumpter's theory, which I have put an embed of above. The book looks like it's going to be great and I'm looking forward to it. Check out the blog too, as there are some interesting case studies there.

Ants search for intelligent life

2009-09-18T14:03:51+01:00

http://xkcd.com/638/

Where am I?

2009-07-01T07:50:06+01:00

Gap in posts partly through laziness at first, but now because I have gone cycling for a few months. You can keep up with my transamerica cycling blog

DSC00143 [Flickr]

2009-06-16T14:52:09-07:00

mattyboomboom posted a photo:

Bicycle about to go into box [Flickr]

2009-06-16T14:51:53-07:00

mattyboomboom posted a photo:

Wrapping [Flickr]

2009-06-16T14:51:40-07:00

mattyboomboom posted a photo:

Taxi GP car on Brondesbury Rd [Flickr]

2009-06-16T14:51:21-07:00

mattyboomboom posted a photo:

Bathroom in progress [Flickr]

2009-06-15T11:54:50-07:00

mattyboomboom posted a photo:

We are all monkeys

2009-06-03T16:01:16+01:00

Brilliant example of the power of a committed minority. Thanks @herdmeister