This is not a real ad for Exxon-Mobil. It runs in the digital edition of the Fake New York Times, whose lead story (which I mentioned here) declared the end of the Iraq war.
Ads will never get close to this kind of language. But when you think about it, peace can be ‘lucrative’ –remember the Peace Dividend?– and have a ROI!
A blatantly honest sign (below) does the same thing.
Advertising is much more than a clever slogan tacked to the back of your truck. Branding is certainly more than a logo. I’ve regularly discussed this here and in my other writing –about experiential branding, and grass-roots marketing.
So I was glad to hear back from a company I had written about here on the blog. It’s a long comment, but fully worth a read. It’s about a form of “advertising” – a simple $12 dollar sign printed at Staples — people normally might dismiss as pre-Web 2.0.
Hollywood Alley is a family-owned restaurant in Mesa, (NE corner of Baseline Road and 101) For weeks I had noticed the signs were getting really creative –or at least intriguing. Yesterday I heard from John Wincek, who gave me the scoop about how a restaurant with “a kitschy style, and an off-kilter outlook on life-but other than that, we’re actually totally and completely normal!” created its own brand personality. He doesn’t use ad jargon like that, but that’s just what it is: DIY branding. No agency required.
The restaurant’s sign connects with customers, flagging them down, getting them to even come up with ideas for the outdoor signature. “We were suggesting food, but without screaming it at them. better yet, we were connecting through a common interest,” said John. It was not just a sign, but a game, something that made people think about the movie, the pun, and keep the restaurant in their minds.
But the sign can only get people in. The people and the product had better deliver. It is working. Check his story. It’s a great example of how to be creative to keep business humming in spite of the recession.
“YouTube is a clip culture … But we saw that there was a demand for longer form.”
“Start iterating– fast.”
“he displayed … intellectual vigor”
“What reality are you in?”
“It is an acceptance mark.”
“… we see that technology allows for new kinds of connectedness built around cell phones and the internet.”
Wal-Mart is not afraid of negative reviews from customers.”
“Be flexible, consider part-time work, take a paycut, work hard”
In a discussion with Rohit Bhargava last evening, the conversation turned to how everyone is an expert when it comes to design. I couldn’t help thinking back to the old agency days I left behind, when there was no shortage of experts on the client side when it came to typography, white space, logos and even media buys.
If you’ve ever watched a client excuse himself from the room to ask the rest of the office what they thought of a concept, you’ll know what I mean. The copy and the layout come back with all kinds of inane comments that makes you want to jump out of the window and do a George Lois. (“You make the Matzo. I’m make the ads.”)
So this vignette of the creative process by “Dave” and his team at an agency is hilarious but telling. Dave’s ‘baby’ is subject to all kinds of tweaks.
Don’t laugh too hard. You may catch yourself saying some of these things:
Meanwhile, Creatives are supposed to keep compromising, bite their tongue and move on to the next big idea. So watch this video one more time and think twice before bullying your creative talent into concept-producing machines.
Google’s done it again. A logo adaptation with Queen Elizabeth to mark her visit to the British Googleplex today.
Just to assure her subjects that she is into this video thing, she (or some lackey) uploaded one during the visit.
The Royal Channel is not exactly easy to find on YouTube, when you search for her by name. So here it is.
“We have not had this much FUD – fear, uncertainty and doubt – since 9/11.”
“Humour and juxtaposition.”
“I don’t write for FOX viewers.”
“Every time so-called citizen journalism muffs one, I get such calls, as if to say, look what your bratty kid is up to now. Funny, I don’t get them – as a journalist – every time a reporter messes up.”
“I was just trying to keep Tina Fey in business.”
“Our intention here is not to repeat the metaphors about the glass being half full or half empty. It can’t be…”
“Multitasking causes a kind of brownout in the brain. … all the lights go dim because there just isn’t enough power to go around.”
“It links everybody together in this unholy chain.”
This is an old video clip of a British skit by John Bird and John Fortune. It does a good job of explaining what the heck a ‘hedge fund’ is, and how risk, when given a nice name and packaged well was so easy to sell upstream.
Not so funny now, since we are in a global financial crisis that could make ‘packaging’ as culpable as greed.
No amount of advertising can repair the damage for some financial institutions.
In this week’s The Economist magazine, the powerful cover image (left) shows the cyclone sucking up brand names like Fannie Mae, AIG, Morgan Stanley, Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers and … Merill Lynch.
But the bull got sucked into the swirl by another means. Its full page ad inside (probably scheduled and printed before the news stories were laid out) ran with this copy:
“Merrill Lynch connects capital to opportunity…”Our 94-year history of leadership in the financial industry has been a source of confidence for our clients in both good and challenging markets.”
After you spend some time at a conference on sustainable practices and products, (titled ‘Green Summit’) the 5-letter word GREEN becomes wallpaper. How to break through the clutter? Here are two examples of people who go to great lengths to tell their story.
I admire the man, John Schaar, dressed up in scuba-diving gear (outside temp in Phoenix: 107 degrees) to promote what is basically a filtration system that produces drinking water out of the humidity in the room. (It tasted just like any other bottled water product.) The company, Xziex International, was situated in an aisle with a slew of green products, from drinks to cleaning products that are available today. A scuba diver who gives you a great elevator pitch is hard to forget.
Then, there was this guy Mitch Goldstein, with no product to sell but a message writ large. He’s a teacher from San Francisco, attending the conference to check the pulse, but also to tell his story that I will go into in another post. What I wanted to focus on is how he’s using a white shirt as you would a white board with the bullet points. The elements on his left and right sleeve are the two parts of his message that he says people need to know more about.
Advertising Age’s Bob Garfield dissected Microsoft’s Mojave Experiment much better than I did earlier this week. He says it’s dishonest, condescending of its audience and weak on methology.
It’s a good warning to anyone trying to latch on to a lab metaphor to dress up an weak advertising message: Don’t mess with human chemistry.
Hoipolloireport 