The hype has just begun. Warren G (the originator of Deez Nuts) has volunteered to become vice president for Deez Nuts. The search interest for Nuts has surpassed Hillary Clinton and is almost as high as Donald Trump.
Why Deez Nuts has become such a phenomenon?
It is funny. It is hard to think about more serious decision than selecting your new president. That does not mean that people would not want take the piss out of it.
People adapt to everything. Donald Trump´s candidacy shocked people at first, but now it is already old news. You need constantly some new stimulus or otherwise you get totally numb to the whole election (and we have not even entered the primary phase). There is so long time till the actual election that people will get bored to pretty much everything: eventually even to Deez Nutz.
Shareability. People share things that instantly make them laugh. If newscaster pronouncing “Deez Nuts” does not make you laugh a little bit, you must be too cynical for your own good. The name and the backstory is a perfect example of digital age and what makes people tick in 2015.
It remains to be seen how long Deez Nuts will remain hot topic in US election. For non-voting fans of practical humor hopefully quite long.
“The difference between stupid and genius is that genius has its limits”
– Albert Einstein
We have limits as humans.
Luckily we have not yet reached them in majority of things. But for example, baseball pitcher cannot throw faster than 100 MPH. Although pitcher could get stronger, his tendons and ligaments would just snap throwing it faster.
Throwing the baseball is one aspect of baseball, so that is why there will be plenty of evolution in the baseball. Scientists have calculated that even in other sports the pace of development has slowed down and we are approaching the limits. Actually in some sports like long jump we are getting worse.
Being an optimist, I take there is a still lot to improve for us in humans: whether in sports or in life in general (I don´t know why anyone would make a separation between those two). These developments will happen by either tweaking the small details or reshaping the big picture:
1. Aggregation of marginal gains
“The marginal gains philosophy requires you to look at every single aspect of what you do so you can try and improve it. It looks at every aspect of performance, and tries to improve each a little bit— even just a tenth of a percent . If you find a training technique that makes an athlete that tiny bit stronger , it alone might not have a huge effect on a race. But if you can stack those very small improvements on one another, finding a bit in tires and a bit in the wheels and a bit on the track surface and a bit in nutrition supplements— well, soon those marginal gains begin to add up to big gaps between you and your competition.” Dave Brailsford on aggregation of marginal gains
Dave Brailsford started as the general manager for Team Sky (Great Britain´s professional cycling team) in 2010. He had the concept laid down in the quote above: if you improve every area related to cycling by just a little bit (most commonly is used 1 percent), then those small gains would eventually add up to bigger improvement. These improvements ranged from the obvious (training, nutrition) to more surprising (every cyclist had their own pillows when they are travelling). The results were outstanding. Brailsford was wrong in believing that Team Sky could win Tour De France in five years. They did it in three.
This works when the competitive field is already mature. Cycling itself is quite established sports, so there is not necessary that much innovation (doping excluded) to be done.
The difference nowadays between agencies is not in the actual ideas, but in the craft. Similar ideas have gotten totally different reception in marketplace and also in award shows. When we essentially are doing the same things, the difference comes in small details.
Has our industry then just become minor improvements and tweaking in quite predictable playing field?
Not necessarily.
2. Disruptive leaps
Disruptive thinking has radically altered the sports. Quite often the change is driven by technology, but sometimes it is also about the different way to approach the challenge in sports.
a) Technology disruption “I think the players, I put in the book for example that we should go back to wood rackets, probably they laughed at me, I’m a dinosaur, but I think that you see these great players, have even more variety and you see more strategy, there’d be more subtlety.” John McEnroe (last player to win major tournament with wooden racket)
Technology has played huge role in certain sports, especially in golf driving distance. We are not talking about marginal gains in here; these technologies have truly revolutionized the sports.
Internet has changed the whole ball game in our industry. Either you have digital capabilities, or you are like a guy trying to play with wooden racquet in tennis court. Not only you look stupid, you will also certainly lose.
b) Approach disruption I adapted an antiquated style and modernized it to something that was efficient. I didn’t know anyone else in the world would be able to use it and I never imagined it would revolutionize the event. – Dick Fosbury (inventor of Fosbury Flop)
Not always you need a technological breakthrough to change the game. V-style jump in ski-jump or Fosbury flop in high jump are examples when smart individuals outsmarted the competition. They looked the problem from a different angle and found a totally new and more effective way to solve it.
Currently every agency is jumping with the old style, where the room for innovation is limited. When the playing field is the same for everyone, the only way you can win is to search for marginal gains. I truly believe that we could approach our business truly differently and take the whole agency business model to the new heights. It is time to rethink the whole jump.
(Full disclosure: These sports anecdotes were mostly lifted from the great book I just read. The book is done by Mark Mucclusky and is called “Faster, Higher, Stronger. Highly recommended reading)
I was reminded by this illusion of new & shiny, when someone commented that New Zealand safety videos are getting boring. Here is the latest one featuring All Blacks as Men In Black:
The reason was that they are nothing new and they did All Blacks video “already” four years before. Not to mention they have done funny safety videos for years:
Hobbit
Betty White
Safety Safari
That comment does not really make any sense.
Firstly, the insight behind those safety videos is really solid. No one watches safety videos, because no one really cares (until it is too late) and usually they are also utterly boring. The idea was just to make those formerly boring videos funny. And that is working really well. Majority of those safety videos are getting millions of views, which is quite a lot of more than your brand´s latest viral video.
Secondly Air New Zealand has kept on innovating within its formula. They target to different target audiences (old, young) and their passion points (Tolkien, sports, weirdness). They have turned a necessary evil into a marketing vehicle and if they are smart, they keep on doing it for the years to come. Also they are really showing these safety videos on flights, so on top of the YouTube views, they are actual a beneficial asset for the firm. That is quite a lot more than you can say about your latest “innovation” project, which might get a mention in PSFK if you were lucky.
In our desperate chase of stunts, we have totally neglected building of formulas. When you have a winning formula for ad, the steps for the success are simple:
If you find something that works, try to replicate it.
If it still works, replicate it even more.
Refresh and innovate but within the formula. No need to think outside the box, if you can rethink the box.
Repeat as long as your audience gets truly bored with it.
The last point is the most important one. If the agency gets bored with the formula, that does not matter. Change the team. If the client gets bored with the formula, agency should fight back to retain the formula (or try to change the client). But if audience gets bored to the formula, change it and fast. It does not matter if everyone in the boardroom likes it, if it does not resonate with the real people. Usually the challenge is opposite though. Because of the cyclical nature of ad industry, we won´t allow things to grow and instead jump over to new things without any sense of direction. Creating iconic ads takes time and too often brands don´t let proven formulas to flourish to iconic ad series.
Finnish coffee brand Paulig Juhla Mokka (The Party Mocca) has been running the same ad concept from the year 1979. It shows artisan honing his craft and then establishes the parallel of the same dedication being applied to their brand. Approach is simple, recognizable and still working.
I have mentioned earlier that I practice CrossFit. As a part of the addiction, I have become a victim of advertising and started spending on CrossFit apparel. When I started to train, it was ok to just go with regular running sneakers and whatever gear you had. Now I have different shoes for weightlifting and other exercises. I cannot even think of going back to training with normal (read: non-branded but equally functioning apparel).
Talk about taking your own medicine.
I was reminded of my Crossfit-addiction, when I noticed this ad on my Gmail:
I had not heard about the brand (Rhone) before, but it had the magic words that sparked my interest and also a discount. Discount is an interesting thing: if you are offered it, it already feels like bargain before you even know the starting price. Uncharacteristically I clicked on the ad (which was probably the first Gmail ad I have clicked ever).
The site offered apparently sweat and smell-proof shirts with quite steep prices. With my excessive sweating and vain ways I am of course the ideal target audience. After checking a while there came a pop-up which offered an opportunity to participate in lottery. Discount is interesting, but even more interesting is an opportunity to win something for free.
Naturally I signed up, so they have now my contact details.
After that I have been encountering Rhone advertising in my FB feed. They have been smartly changing the picture so I have noticed it every time:
Again uncharacteristically I clicked and again there was a pop-up with time-limited offer:
Nothing Rhone does is crazy innovative or cutting edge: just simple retargeting. They are essentially using the oldest bribes in marketing world: discount, rewards, exclusivity and lucky draw. If I would encounter as much communications from a brand in different field I would be super pissed off. Now I am more delighted and pondering should I actually test those shirts. That is exactly what smart marketing should do. From the starting point of not even knowing the brand, becoming a potential buyer within only a week is quite a feat.
So the lesson is: if you are able to find audience with natural interest, you can almost borderline spam them if you offer them something rewarding. People get touchy about marketing when it is totally irrelevant for them. It is not so much about what you say, but to whom you say it.
Although it would be disrespectful for the movie to label it only as an “ad movie”, it has one of the most realistic portraits of the creative process (not necessarily of the 1988 election). The film tells the story about Chile´s 1988 election, when Pinochet was eventually brought down. Both of the parties were promised to have 15 minutes of advertising time in national television. The incumbent had the more positive “si”-vote and the challenger the “no”. The whole film starts about making that a product that sells:
“By its very nature, ‘no’ was a negative concept; it was very difficult to sell. “‘No’ was not a person, not a candidate. It had no personality, no ethics, no aesthetics.”
– Eugenio García (the ad man behind Chile´s No campaign in 1988)
Some of the scenes felt almost like a candid camera would have been roaming in the ad agency. The movie has four important lessons for everyone working in advertising.
1.Creativity is not a democracy
There were 16 political parties in the coalition against Pinochet and of course everyone had an opinion. There are times for committees, but not when you are trying to do the great work. Eventually someone has to make the decisions and endless feedback loop from random people does not help it. Also it is easier to have opinion about advertising than for example accounting. It is impossible to take everyone´s opinion into account if you want to be single-minded and make your mark.
2.Solve the real problem for the real audience
The goal of the 15 minutes of advertising was to win the ballot with a single-minded message, not tell everything you know. The debates in the film are centered on the messaging of the campaign. The fictional ad man René Saavedra (played by Gael García Bernal, and based on Eugenio García) tries to show more of the joy, where as the committee members wanted to show the suffering that Pinochet´s coup-seized leadership has caused. Advertising is not necessarily about doing what is right, but doing what has the most impact:
“After years of polarisation, we all needed to live together in peace. We bet on the good nature of the ordinary Chilean; that they didn’t like violence, they didn’t like fear.”
– Eugenio García
Many people don´t understand simplifying the message. They want to cramp too much in every ad. The real showcase of your knowledge is to just tell that part what is interesting and leave rest out. Every extra word is an extra barrier for your message to go through.
3. When market leader starts acknowledging challenger, they are in the trouble
If you acknowledge your competition as a market leader, you are weak. People can also smell fear whether it is on sports field or marketing battlefield. If you are market leader, you have to be immune to criticism and just brush everything off. To make matters worse the “Yes”-party attacked campaign, which was based on hope, joy and happiness. Big mistake. By acknowledging your challenger, they appear more prominent than they really are.
4. Execution matters
The movie is filmed with ¾ inch Sony U-matic magnetic tape, which was widely used by television news in Chile in the 80s. It makes really unique feel to the film and also looks totally different than Larráin´s other movies. That also enables seamless mix of the archived footage.
Whether you are adman or not, this film is highly recommended to everyone.
Lemon lime soft drinks weren’t supposed to succeed against colas. It just didn’t happen. But then again, hip hop wasn’t supposed to succeed against pop, but that’s exactly what Sprite did – – and that sprite campaign is sort of a metaphor for what hip hop did. – Dan Charnas (author of The Big Payback)
Sponsorship is easy, right?
You just stamp your logo to famous musician, athlete, whatever and borrow her relevance to your boring brand. When done well, it works great. Unfortunately quite often sponsorship is quite ad-hoc (our CEO likes cricket, let´s sponsor it!) and the bigger role of brand is totally forgotten. Brands have to stand for something and believe in something. That cannot be changed quarterly.
Brands change their sponsorships too often. Last year you were about music, now you are about start-ups and next year about parkour. Because of the short tenures of CMOs, brands are struggling to keep consistency and sponsorship is definitely something that is too often just an add-on. Brands are trying to desperately collaborate with the current hot thing but at the same time forget for what they are standing for.
It makes sense to have focus on your sponsorship. Find a passion that suits your brand and then stick with it. It is better to go narrow than too wide. Instead of being about sports, be about football. Instead of being about music, be about hiphop. Be sharp. If you are everything for everyone, you are more likely nothing for a few.
And speaking of hiphop, one of the greatest examples of sponsorship has been Sprite. They have been connecting itself with hiphop for over 30 years:
That commitment to hiphop has also been something that has made business sense. In 90s Sprite was challenger brand, so it had to find its own voice in sponsorship as well. They made a bet on hiphop and that bet has paid off during those years. What is underground today, will be mainstream tomorrow.
Obey Your Thirst, which within two years doubles Sprite’s market share, and makes it the fastest growing soft drink in America, and eventually, in power of Sprite, they take away the NBA sponsorship from Coca-Cola.
– Dan Charnas
Brands need to have consistent behavior, whereas tone-of-voice can vary. Sprite was a challenger brand and it collaborated with challenger musicians. It´s collaboration with hiphop went deeper than just having hiphop music on Sprite ads. They understood and respected the culture. When you have right partnerships and sponsorships they make your brand stronger. When Sprite has been moving away from hiphop, it has been a mistake. Stick to what you believe in and where you are good, instead of trying pathetically to reinvent yourself every time.
What the Obey Your Thirst campaign did for corporate America was that it proved to corporate America that, it’s okay Proctor and Gamble, it’s okay IBM, Sprite took a chance on hip hop and it’s beating everybody. It’s at that point that Sprite sets the archetype for dealing with hip hop straight on. Dealing with black culture and by extension black people straight on, rather than trying to water it down, make it slap happy, and that was sort of a feature of some “minority geared advertising” for many years. Hip hop helps to change the tone of that.
– Dan Charnas
The Sprite ads were “content marketing” before that horrible term was coined. Other soda brands had hiphop artists in ads (leaning towards the pop side), Sprite let the artists shine where they were good at.
Pete Rock, CL Smooth and Grand Puba are freestyling on the studio. Funny part is that CL Smooth is dissing “commercial rappers” in commercial. Talking about meta-level:
The consistency and commitment is also apparent with the rappers they work with. With Nas they have worked from 90s and with Drake over 5 years:
Nas & Az over Wild Style beat
Constructing Drake
The assimilation goes deeper than just ads. Sprite has held hiphop talent competitions, pressed vinyl records and now their newest campaign “Obey Your Verse” showcases hiphop verses on the Sprite cans.
The selection is a nice mixture of classic lines mixed with their current brand ambassador Drake.
Sprite connects with the passion of our their target audience in a way deeper level than many other brands. That makes sponsorship a part of brand behavior and not just an afterthought. No need to change your course annually: stick to what you believe in and roll with it.
“I’ve never met anyone who has seen a vending machine reward them for laughing, I’ve never walked through a door marked ugly, got a Coke from a drone, or been offered a crisp packet with my face on. I’ve never had a friend share their personalised film, I’ve not seen outdoor ads that are also street furniture or had an ATM give me a funny receipt. I’ve not received a magazine with a near field communication thing and I’ve not had a virtual reality experience outside advertising conferences. I’ve not once seen a member of the public 3D print anything.”
– Tom Goodwin (Senior Vice President for Strategy & Innovation, Havas Media)
The biggest problem with the advertising industry is not the lack of innovation, but the lack of distribution of that innovation. Ad industry is overly obsessed by the niche “marketing innovations”. At the same time the advertising for the masses has become utterly boring. As we are desperately trying to find something new, we are failing to move people.
When I was a kid, ads from Nike and Levi´s shaped my whole identity. Current ads don´t make feel anything (although I am exposed to them more than ever). There is a divide between relevant real work and totally irrelevant stunts. Big campaigns are researched and focus grouped till death. Stunts are driven by the inner need of us to win awards, not by real consumer need. When worrying about our internal politics and external professional image, we forget our main stakeholder:
The consumer.
Quite often we say that people hate advertising. That is not true.
People hate when they are conned.
People hate when their time is wasted.
People hate when they are interrupted.
Although the technology has developed, we are still having our old bad habits. More desperate we are as marketers the more we are wasting people´s time, the more we are interrupting and the less authentic we are.
People will notice and even care about advertising when it is either meaningful (giving you a tangible benefit, for example) or moving (makes you feel something: laugh, cry, whatever).
If your next campaign is neither of them, why even bother?
“Turnstile has to make a sound, it might as well be beautiful”
– James Murphy
Last week I wrote about sponsorship and one point I forgot to mention was how brands are the patrons of this modern age. Catholic Church used to support the great artists. Now many of the great projects would not happen without the support of beer brands. And that is why I am supporting beer brands by consuming their products.
We can rationalize on how the project to turn subway turnstiles to play music with James Murphy fits into Heineken´s brand onion (or diamond for that matter)*. Whether it is good for the brand or not, does not change the awesomeness of the project. It also makes perfect sense for subway commuters. We have taken for granted that those turnstiles have to make certain sound. That certain sound is currently unobtrusive at its best, invasive at its worst. It actually feels totally weird that they do not play melodies.
Other great lesson about this project is that there are so many hidden opportunities around to rethink conventions. Some of them are opportunities for brands, some for art and some are in the intersection of both.
*They have this thing about improving cities, so I would say it is nice fit for that one.
Essentially you are doing what your supposed to do, but with a flair.
Sometimes you have to state the obvious, but do it with interesting way instead of trying to find your idea from the obscure.
Great speakers are not necessarily having the most original and inspiring thoughts, but they are delivering them in the most original and inspiring way.
That is the magic we have to bring as agencies. Because quite often people just need the obvious, but they have to be lured to hear that.
No matter how interesting your product is, the obvious can be truly boring. Especially product demos, which can be a total bore even for the most interesting products (take whatever Apple ad). If you have gift of the gab, you can do exciting, attention-grabbing and fun product demos for mundane products as well:
This Droga5-campaign for Under Armour won at Big Show (Best Interactive & Best Social). It features Gisele Bündchen punching and kicking a bag and same time projecting comments (both positive and negative) about the partnership:
Using celebrities is not an idea. It is an effective tactic, when done right. And to be honest, for many brands using well-known people is the only way to elevate their brand to rockstar level. By paying celebrities you upgrade your brand´s appeal, but it is not about slapping some mundane celebrity endorsement to your boring product and expecting to become interesting. It is making most out of that collaboration with celebrity: not just having a pretty face, but having the right pretty face (who can kick ass as well). Essentially the above Under Armour ad is a product demo, just that the person using the products is way more interesting than you.
This ad from Nando´s featuring Mac Lethal showcases that you can even make reading your menu sound interesting:
These examples show that often you don´t need a surprising insight, complicated transmedia storytelling or even a drone to create cut-through. You just need to what you are supposed to do, but do it with style.
I could not put the following ad to Anatomy of An Insight –section as it is a little bit too in a meta-level. I also have had too many Foot Locker ads featured in here in any case (although they are all pretty much awesome):
Brilliant ad nevertheless and based on equally great ad as well. Now the situation has naturally changed and the match will be happening. Or is it?
Sequels don´t work in advertising, when you just try to duplicate the success of previously successful ad. However if there is opportunity to continue the story and it is still based on strong insight and great idea, you should not change your focus too soon either. The most challenging part in advertising and life in general is to know when it is time to turn on a new leaf.
Stand-Up Strategy 