When was the last time you did something different?  Never-mind the time you wore the tutu in Central Park -- I'm talking to advertising people, here, and I'm just asking, "Done anything different lately?"

Advertising and marketing, since I've been in the business, has always preached the virtues of difference, while secretly espousing a culture of sameness.  I've directed hundreds of TV spots.  Literally.  Hundreds.  And on exactly two occasions, the agency asked me to make something that they had no previous reference for.  Twice.  Every other spot I directed -- every one -- had a reference that came from the agency, and every one of those references was for another, usually competitive, spot.

Creatives, theoretically, strive for difference to make the client's brand stand apart from the competition. (And the competition doesn't just include other things in the brand category, but all competition for viewers' attention, at least when we're talking traditional advertising.)  Yet how many creatives leap onto the latest trends they find in CA?  Let's not just pick on creatives here.  How many agency owners wish their agency could be just like CP+B?  Or Goodby?  Or...it doesn't matter who.  You get the point.

Enter the web.  And on the surface, it gets worse.  Because the truth is, a lot of the structure of what we need to do on the web requires a certain amount of sameness.  It's one of the things that frustrates traditionalists most when they tiptoe into working on the web.  You don't know how many discussions I've had with designers, art directors, writers -- creatives -- about why navigation needs to be what navigation needs to be.  They want to do something different.  And to their credit, well, they want to do something different.  Navigation isn't, typically, the best place to apply that quest, though.  I know there are exceptions.  But in the world of the web, those exceptions are few.

As an aside, here's how I explain the sameness of navigation, and how it doesn't close off all avenues of creativity:  Ever live in/stay in a place where the faucets are set up wrong?  Hot on the wrong side, or maybe the valves turn different ways?  Maddening, isn't it?  Does that mean, in order to make a brilliant architectural statement, an architect should completely redesign the way the faucets work in a home?  Clearly, it doesn't.  A statement can, in fact, be made -- with faucets that work the way people are used to them working.  Once in a great while, an elegant innovation comes along, and changes functionality -- like the motion-sensitive faucets in public restrooms.  But even those get implemented over time.  And even those are simply another type of sameness.  You won't find the motion sensors on the wall behind you.

If you're questing for a difference in details like navigation, or faucets, for that matter -- it's probably a sign that your overall concept has way too much sameness going for it.  You should be looking to broader strokes to create a point of differentiation.  Much broader strokes.

Compounding the difficulty is the emergence of social media as a marketing force.  One hundred and forty characters is one hundred and forty characters, no matter how you count it.  Nonetheless, there have been numerous innovations in ways to use those characters to provide a different experience for the follower.  Ditto Facebook apps, widgets, iPhone apps, and all the other stuff we play with every day to try to improve the perception of the brands we work on.

The fabled "Horse of a Different Color" has to come earlier.  In the positioning, the big idea, and in the concept -- of the spot, the ad, or of the experience you want a prospect to have.  That's the place to apply what Seth talks about in Purple Cow (I find it amusing that the horse in the Emerald City was also purple.)  If your concept is just like everybody else's, no amount of innovative typography, photography, illustration, animation, or music composition is going to be enough to make it stand out.

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I'm writing so much these days about advertising and marketing for so many different publications, online and off, that today, I decided to take a bit of a break from that here, and simply share a piece I wrote for my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Straight. She turns 90 in a couple of weeks, and part of the plan is to put together a scrapbook of notes, memories, etc., for her.  I'll return to regular programming next post.

Mrs. Straight ran a small private kindergarten from her home in my little hometown in the 60s.  Back then, in Lake County, Florida, at least, kindergarten wasn't mandatory, and wasn't even available at many schools, public or private.  We went for half a day -- there was a morning class and an afternoon class -- and we learned not only enough to prepare us for "real school," but plenty to prepare us for life.

This is my submission for Mrs. Straight's 90th Birthday scrapbook:

Fuzzy Memories, Lasting Lessons
Stuff I learned in Mrs. Straight's Kindergarten.

To begin, I want to make one thing clear:  Danny hit me first.

When I think back to kindergarten, I must admit, the pictures of most things, and many people, are a bit fuzzy.  This, clearly, has nothing whatsoever to do with my own age, and the fact that kindergarten, for me, was forty-ish years ago.  Those hazy memories are simply a byproduct of my extraordinarily hectic schedule these days, which is completely filled with responsibilities for extremely important things. I try to keep telling myself that. When I remember to, at least.

Through the haze, though, there are one or two, or maybe three, incidents that remain crystal clear.  Two of them involve Danny Seabrook.  And all of them are ultimately, about the wisdom of Mrs. Straight.

For my birthday that year, I received a flying Batman.  Never mind that everyone knows the real Batman can't fly. My Batman could.  He was, essentially, a thin plastic molded glider, shaped like Batman.  He came with a rubber-band powered launcher, and if you worked the thing exactly right, Batman would fly fast and far.  You had to be careful, though, to not point Batman at anything or anyone.  Not because there was any concern about putting out an eye or anything (there wasn't -- that's why we have two eyes instead of one), but because Batman, being made of really thin plastic, might break.

In the car, on the way to Mrs. Straight's, My cousin Greg, Danny, and I were discussing the possibility of the use of my Batman at recess, since I had brought it for show and tell.  I confided to them that I did not wish to take my Batman out at recess, because (and we all knew this) David Shipes would want to play with it.  David, whom I'm sure has matured into a fine and productive member of society, had, at the time, a penchant for wanting to play with anything and everything anyone brought for show and tell.  A few things brought by other students had suffered some significant damage in David's charge, and I didn't want my Batman to be included in that list.

At Show and Tell, I showed and told about my Batman.  At the end of the relatively succinct presentation (you pull it back, and he flies), Mrs. Straight asked me if I would take him out at recess so the class could see him in action.  But Danny, doing his best to cover for me, announced to Mrs. Straight and the whole class, including David, "Ernie doesn't want to take it out at recess because he doesn't want David to break it."

I, of course, was mortified.  Partly because I thought Danny understood the confidential nature of my communication in the car, partly because I did not want David's feelings to be hurt, and partly because I thought Mrs. Straight would make me let David play with my Batman. But Mrs. Straight, seeing my mortification -- just like my Batman, flew to the rescue.  She said that perhaps we could take Batman to recess, but that only I would be allowed to actually make him fly, because the operation of Batman was most certainly a complicated process that only the official owner could understand.  This immediately diffused any hard feelings and fears, as far as I could tell.  The lesson?  You can protect other people, and the things that are important to you, all at the same time.

At the end of every class day (which was in the middle of the day, as I was in Mrs. Straight's morning class), we gathered on her front porch to await pickup by our parents.  Every day, Tammy Lanier's father would pick her up in his Rolls Royce.  I, like any young boy of the time, loved cars of all types.  I especially liked hot rods.  I didn't really know, completely, what was a hot rod, and what wasn't, though, so I assigned the term, "Hot Rod" to any vehicle that didn't look like my mom's sedan, my dad's truck,  or the station wagons some of the other moms drove. The Rolls, in my view, was a Hot Rod, and I was pretty vocal about it, on a daily basis.

Tammy, apparently, didn't like me calling her father's car a Hot Rod, but I was oblivious to that fact.  I thought of it as a compliment, so I didn't understand why anyone else would not.  Apparently, she expressed some visible indignation I failed to perceive, which I'm sure is, in part, due to the fact that I was five.  But, I must admit it might also be one of the earliest known examples of me, as a male, not picking up signals of irritation sent out by the females in my life.  It has happened with astounding regularity since.  While I, like most men, have never been able to completely overcome this deficiency, I have learned how to mitigate its effects, thanks in part to Mrs. Straight's admonition: "Tammy doesn't like it when you call her father's car a hot rod."  Clarity.  The lesson here is twofold:  Words matter.  And, well, a Rolls is not a hot rod.

On one particular day, while we were all waiting on that same porch, Danny Seabrook hit me.  I don't know exactly why he hit me, but he did.  There was no animosity between Danny and me.  We were friends, and frequently rode together, along with my cousin Greg, in Greg's mom's car, to kindergarten.  Nevertheless, Danny decided, for some unknown reason, that this particular moment, and this particular place, presented the perfect opportunity to punch me in the arm.  It kind of hurt.

I had been taught by my parents, and have since taught my own son, that it's not a good thing to hit people.  Also: Never, ever, hit anyone first.  But just as importantly, if someone else hits you first, you have the right -- the duty -- to hit them back, hard enough that they won't hit you again.  Now, I recognize that times have changed, things are not always cut and dried, and this lesson actually has the potential, in today's school environment, to produce situations that result in litigation.  So, for my son, the lesson, like his young life as compared to mine, is actually far more complicated.  We won't go into that here.  Because here, we're discussing the facts of one particular case.  And the fact remains: Danny hit me first.

Of course Mrs. Straight had no way of knowing this fact when she turned to witness the exact moment at which I threw a roundhouse to Danny's upper torso.  She immediately called me on it.  "Ernie, don't hit people!"
I pleaded my case.  "But Danny hit me first.  And my parents told me if somebody hits me first to hit them back."
The case was closed immediately.  The violence was stopped, yet justice had prevailed.  Danny never, ever hit me again, and we all learned the following lessons: Force is only to be applied in situations where it is justified, and there is almost always more to the story.

The more to this story is: Although the number of kindergarten teachers I have had experience with totals four (because my daughter has had two in one year,) I'm confident there has never been, and will never be, a greater kindergarten teacher than Mrs. Straight.  Simple lessons make perfect building blocks for much greater concepts.  Mrs. Straight knew that, and applied it in a way that I will never forget.

Thank you, and happy birthday, Mrs. Straight.