The trials and tribulations of a wannabe rodeo clown from Titahi Bay :: Stuart Parker :: NZ :: New Zealand :: www.stuartparker.com :: Stuart Gordon Parker
Pour money into establishing a pretty cool campaign (buy beer and get cheap flights to Oz), using digital and media agencies who are too stupid to insert the destination URL into the banner, and too lazy to test in the live environment (click the banner to see what I mean).
FAIL!
Despite never being broadcast, this ad has been viewed 12 million times and just landed an Emmy.
What’s more, it really makes me want a Bud Light. Very good job.
This is pretty much an exact remake of the classic ‘Flaming Logo’ IBM ad from about 10 years ago. It’s amazing to note that while so much has changed in the interim (for instance, our planet went from a warming to a cooling cycle – with no help at all from Al Gore), so much remains unchanged in the void between agency deliverables and client needs.
Thankfully there are notable exceptions, and I have been (very) fortumate to have spent most of my career to date working for two of them. After a brief (yet at the same time far too long) stint at one of the worst agencies I’ve ever encountered, as of this week I’m thrilled to once again find myself surrounded by brilliant, creative professionals who – get this – actually give a shit.
Yep, I am one lucky son of a bitch.
Shell has recently started showing this commercial here in NZ, although I gather it’s been in use internationally for over a year.
I’ve noticed a fair bit of online chatter about this, much of it generated by eco-bastards decrying the expensive promotion of oil consumption in the age of dwindling oil reserves and man-made [sic] global warming (which, by the way, we all know is bullshit but few are prepared to say so publicly because of this McCarty-ist persecution of ‘deniers’ that’s been going around).
Anyhoo, the ad rubs me the wrong way as well, but not for the reason you might think…
The oil supplies are going to run out regardless of any steps to reduce consumption. It’s not like they’re asking us to stop or reduce our consumption of whale meat or timber to allow stocks to replenish and thereby guarantee supply for future generations – they’re not making any more oil, and running out was always going to be a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if’.
Those of you who have been reading for a while may recall a post from last year where I observed that if oil supplies are limited and the use of petroleum products is detrimental to the environment, then it would actually be in our interest to increase consumption to make the oil disappear sooner. Sure it may get smoggy for a while, but then there’d be ZERO oil-related pollution and surely that’s good for the environment, right?
I’ll grant you that it’s a pretty tongue-in-cheek assertion and that personally I’m not looking forward to the day the oil runs out, but at the same time I also think it’s a healthy perspective, in that we need to focus on the one undeniable fact that’s being clouded by all this eco-bullshit:
The oil is going to run out
All this malarky about reducing consumption implies that if we reduce our reliance on oil we’ll be ok. Well actually, we won’t. If we’re even partially reliant on oil when the wells run dry, we’re going to be totally screwed. These hippies remind me of an unemployed guy’s mother telling him to reduce his spending or he’ll burn through all his savings. He’s going to run out of money eventually, and what he really needs to do is get a job and/or move back in with his folks. In the same vein we need to either produce more oil or stop using it altogether. The former is impossible, and the latter isn’t going to happen while hippies cloud the issue with self-satisfied sermons about how much they love their hybrids, and pseudo-scientific doomsday prophesies.
So to clarify my position (God forbid I should be mistaken for one of those tree-hugging, cardigan-wearing, sprout-munching whale-humpers!): Yes, dwindling oil reserves is a problem but reducing consumption isn’t the answer. At some point we’re going to have to stop using oil altogether, and maybe running out is the only way we’ll be sufficiently motivated to develop and adopt alternative fuels. Think about it people – if the oil ran out tomorrow, we’d have affordable alternatives immediately and you know it! The opposite is also true – if we figure out how to stretch the oil reserves for another century you’d better not hold your breath for an affordable hydrogen cell, ‘cos it ain”t gonna happen.
As such – and I’m dead serious here people – you might as well smoke ‘em if you got ‘em (drive ‘em if you can afford ‘em).
While I’m on the subject, it also cracks me up how anyone with a straight face could try and convince me that a Toyota Prius is an acceptable alternative to a Porsche 911 GT3 RS. A car is just a tool for getting from A to B? That’s like saying having sex is just a process for making babies!
Anyhoo, the thing that really bugs me about the Shell ad (apart from the cacophony of hippie dissenters) is this. As a result of this ad, some pony-tailed wanker in New York probably got a nice awards ceremony to go to and a trophy for their mantlepiece; the agency got a new addition to its reel for use in new business pitches; and the client will have been taken to exotic restaurants, bars and brothels all over the world during filming. But here’s the rub – the ad may be a visual masterpiece, but did/will it help sell any more fuel? My guess is no.
When I’m contemplating a fuel purchase the only criteria I have in mind are how much it will cost (by far the most important factor); how much fuel I have left (and can I make it to a cheaper gas station before I run out); and – a VERY distant last – what other needs can I satisfy while I’m there (e.g. BP gas stations tend to have better toilets, but the food and coffee is better at Shell). Do I give a shit that Shell provides fuel to Ferrari F1? I drive a ‘91 Sierra! What, if I use Shell fuel it’s going to develop another 300 bhp, shed 400 kg and miraculously grow a PussyMagnetTM?
The ad cost $5m to make and yet addresses NONE of the factors influencing my purchasing behaviour. I’m not writing about this because I’m surprised or alarmed by the ad. I’m writing about it because I’m not. This is the same tired old bullshit ad agencies have been churning out for so long that we (clients and consumers) no longer care or expect any better. Orwell once said that “advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill pail”, but I disagree. Advertising should be the rattling of a stick inside a swill pail – at least in that instance we have a relevant and compelling message, an appropriate and cost-effective medium, and a receptive audience. What we have these days is a swill pail, an orchestra playing Sprach Zarathustra, fireworks, celebrity endorsements… you get the idea.
Interesting observation of the day:
Type the following phrases into Google, and count how many paid ads are presented along with the search results (ok, I’ll do it for you)…
Cheap Fuel NZ (1)
Cheap Petrol NZ (1)
Cheapest Petrol NZ (5)
Gas Station NZ (2)
I think it’s fair to assume that a sizable proportion of people using these search phrases has a fuel purchase in mind, yet none of the advertisers targeting fuel-related search phrases are fuel producers, brands or retailers! Why? Because their ad agencies would have them believe that we’re more receptive to their messages while we’re at home trying to watch CSI New York than when we’re actually looking for information to support a purchasing decision.
On the up-side, this makes it a hell of a lot easier for people like me to earn a living. You see, if you can show a client – using irrefutable data – that the money they pay you yields a substantial improvement in their bottom line, they will do anything to keep you on board. That’s why I’m doing quite nicely, thank you, while my former colleagues (from my brief and yet far too long foray into the advertising industry) are facing round after round of layoffs. Dude, I dodged a bullet when I got out of that game!
Ok so this doesn’t just apply to copywriting. Have a look at the ad below, form your own opinion about the product, the client and whoever created the ad, and then click on the image to see the rest of the copy.
I’d like to think this was already widely understood, but apparently not. Let me spell it out for you folks:
If you say something is ‘classy’, it isn’t. And neither are you.
I’ll leave you to digest that while I watch me some Springer. Now THAT is classy!
I’d like to think it was obvious, but apparently I’ve managed to piss off some really good friends lately so maybe I’m too subtle for my own good. To clarify…
The observations leading to my recent ranting and raving about the shortcomings of digital agencies were based on my experiences looking for work in London at the start of the year, and on my return to Auckland last month.
Having spent nearly 5 years working at Marker, it was a complete nightmare finding an agency in London that was even worth talking to. There are hundreds if not thousands of digital agencies in that city, and of the dozens I had dealings with only one, Conchango, came even close to the level of professionalism, creativity and thought leadership I had come to know in my time at Marker. Conchango is without doubt the best agency in Europe, and I was very fortunate to be offered the chance to work there.
So I’ve been lucky enough to work with two world class agencies – why the ranting? Simple. Marker and Conchango are two notable exceptions in an industry plagued by mediocrity. Having worked with the best and once again set about seeing who’s around and what they’re up to, I don’t know which way to turn. I feel like an athlete who’s won Olympic gold at an early age – where do I go from here? Do I settle, and take a well-paying job in a mediocre agency? Or do I make some noise, shake things up and try to achieve some meaningful change in the industry and for our clients?
I choose the latter. I know it’s the right thing to do, and stand by everything I’ve written. But I do regret any possible inference that my comments may have been directed towards past colleagues or employers. Humble apologies etc.
While in Chicago recently I was fortunate to be invited to a presentation given by David Armano, VP of Experience Design at Critical Mass. There was also a great speaker from Microsoft (IIRC one of their professional evangelists), but I can’t for the life of me remember what he spoke about so I’ll spare you that one).
A friend just sent me a link to David’s presentation, and I’d really like to share it with you for a number of reasons:
First up, delivery method. SlideShare is really neat – kind of like a Flickr for sharing presentations. This makes sense to me on so many levels. For a start, it makes it easy to share your work without worrying about having it ripped off (believe me, it happens). Like Flickr and YouTube there’s a one-click feature for embedding in blogs (as you can see below), which is a hell of a lot more compelling than simply providing a link to a ppt file. Together these mean that if you really believe in your message, it can find an audience beyond those who attend in person (case in point – this presentation has had 8,707 views so far, which is a hell of a lot more than you can squeeze into the ballroom of the Hard Rock Hotel). I also think it’s a good way of honing your presentation skills. If you don’t feel comfortable sharing your presenation with your online community, you probably shouldn’t inflict it on anyone at all.
I also really like the visuals. I am sick and tired of the same old ‘Header-Bullet Point-Sub Bullet Point…’ format. It’s boring, lazy and quite ineffective. The purpose of any presentation is to take your audience on a journey from where their thinking is at the start, through to where you want their thinking to be at the end. PowerPoint can be a great help in that regard, but your visuals have to SUPPORT the presentation, and not be the presentation itself. (John Steel makes this point a hell of a lot better than I do in his recent book, “Perfect Pitch: The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business” – I really recommend it). Anyhoo, to cut a long story short I’ve seen quite a few presentations lately in a similar style to the one David used (one point per slide, juxtaposed with relevant supporting imagery) and I really like it. Enough information so you can follow his jist, but not so much that you get confused or stop listing. I’ll definitely try this the next chance I get.
Finally, of course, I really like the point he’s making. It’s a pretty simple one, but at the same time critical and largely overlooked at this point in time. Our industry (this whole crazy Interweb thingy) is evolving, and we need to evolve also. ‘Website development’ is now a commodity business, with sound design and development a zero-one proposition (looking good and working properly are required just be in the business, and are certainly not a solid means of differentiation). David proposes the need for us to be ‘fuzzy’ in the way we approach and do our work – blurring the lines between areas of expertise (to be honest I found this point to be quite a relief, as I have often had difficulty explaining to people what I actually do – I guess I must be one of them ‘fuzzy people) and ‘unlearning’ our old methods in the drive to be innovative.
We can no longer afford to over-analyze our challenges. We must try to get things launched—learn from these experiences and refine. We must define ourselves and what we do more broadly while retaining the potency of our our crafts. It’s about going from left brain to right brain and ending up on “light brain”. We must become “fuzzy”.
(Being fuzzy) is about unlearning everything we think we know—so we can actually learn and adapt. It’s about less focus on rigid tasks and job descriptions and more focus on bringing our efforts together in the overlaps—where our skills compliment each other. It’s about being more nimble and adopting “fuzzy” processes to compliment our tried and true methods that have served us well in the past.
The Fuzzy Tail is my way of saying “we won’t become the blacksmiths of our time”. It’s about pushing past the commodity—the end product or service which can be outsourced. It’s about putting aside egos, getting out of silos and mixing it up with each other—I mean really mixing it up. Planners who think like designers—designers who obsess about business—information architects who write—writers who act like strategists—project managers who can direct creative and creative directors who are willing to let them. People who are willing to let others play in their sandbox.
I will concede that he puts it a lot better than I do, but this meshes well with my own thoughts on why most digital agencies are fucked (see posts 1 2 3). Times they are a changing, and the old breed (of digital professionals and agencies) just aren’t going to cut it. So let me ask you, and be honest:
How fuzzy are you?
One of the things I really dig about this whole crazy Interweb-thingy is that if you know how to look you can find just about anything. Not only is it impossible to eradicate information (especially video – just ask Pam & Tommy Lee), it often seems to me that ‘forbidden’ content is the easiest to find and probably the most popular.
This morning’s Herald (I only buy it for the crossword, I swear!) covers the recent axeing of a Charlies TV commercial that features a couple of boys playing silly buggers with fireworks. Possibly not the best imagery to be circulating at this time of year, but piss-funny nonetheless – and once again the safety nazis got their way.
Or did they?
Apple’s 1984 ad heralding the launch of the Macintosh (directed by Ridley Scott) is arguably one of the most famous commercials ever made, yet it was only aired once, during Superbowl XVIII (there were many subsequent airings of course, but these were generally on viewer-request shows, documentaries etc and were not paid for by Apple). Many believe that brevity of its publication contributed largely to its appeal, and that if it had been shown repeatedly it would have slipped into history unnoticed.
So far the Charlies ad has had 166 views on YouTube, and the ads are also posted at the Charlies website**. My guess is that viewing numbers will increase dramatically over the next few days given the accompanying brouhaha about responsible advertising etc, and I’m beginning to wonder if there might be a valuable lesson there.
Putting an ad on TV can be useful for getting peoples’ attention, and pulling it can be just as effective. Once the ad has been pulled (assuming it’s sufficiently noteworthy) its online popularity can grow exponentially, yet online broadcasting costs are precisely zero. Is that the game now? Was that the intention all along? I’ll let you make up your own mind re Charlie’s, but let me take this opportunity to coin a phrase that I believe will soon be well-known in the lexicon of modern advertising:
‘Prank ‘n Yank’: A campaign that deliberately breaches advertising standards (in terms of legal codes of conduct and/or ‘good taste’), designed to stimulate online interest with the inevitible controversy surrounding its questionable / illegal broadcast and subsequent cancellation. Contrary to popular belief this is actually an online advertising concept, the TV element being little more than an expensive – yet highly effective – publicity stunt
Update:
20 minutes after posting, YouTube views are now up to 209.
2 Days after posting, 2,906 views.
I rest my case.
**Sorry, but I can’t link directly to the ads within the Charlie’s website, ‘cos some idiot built the entire thing in Flash. Is Flash.com built entirely in Flash? No. And there’s a good reason for that. Examples like this REALLY piss me off! (See my earlier rant about digital agencies not acting in the best interests of their clients)
Welcome to the third installment in what is essentially a one-man brainstorming exercise. To cut a long story short, I’m kinda having a Jerry Maguire moment. Having recently had the opportunity to step back and take a fresh look at things career-wise, something about the way digital agencies engage with their clients really rubs me the wrong way. I’ve laid out the first two parts of what I hope will eventually form a coherent argument below, and will attempt to refine these over the next few days.
If any of you would like to put in your 5 cents’ worth please feel free – I just ask that you try and look at the point I’m trying to make, rather than nit-picking with specific exceptions to the supporting premises (e.g. ‘It’s not always just the Marketing or IT people who commission the digital agency’. Really? No shit?). The more I think about this the more I’m convinced there’s a valid point in here somewhere. So bear with me and hopefully we’ll get there soon…
If you managed to follow me through the posts below, let me try and pull it together for you as simply as I can. There are certain inherent constraints at play within any typical organisation. These include a general lack of understanding of digtal media (particularly in the higher echelons), and functional siloing. These are manifested in a lack of support (budgetary, creative, and logistical) for digital projects, that more often than not dooms them to failure.
At this point I’d like to elaborate on this ‘failure’ thing. It is my opinion that the majority of digital media projects fail, and they do so on one or all of the following:
There was no valid, pre-determined measure of success
Before you disagree, look at the two key words in that sentence: valid and pre-determined. Going back to the client with a list of page views, user registrations and enquiry form submissions doesn’t count – unless a rigorous consideration of the client’s business drivers and KPIs had indicated these as the most appropriate metrics to target. Did you go through that process? Or did you just try to convince the client that these metrics would suffice? Guess what – odds are they didn’t believe you.
The don’t achieve anywhere near their potential
If you proposed a solution within the existing problem situation / brief / system (whatever you want to call it) as it was presented to you, rather than trying to understand where the inherent limitations lay and how they could be overcome, you haven’t even scratched the surface. I won’t elaborate here, and there’s really no point in doing so – you know I’m right.
Regardless of outcome, no learning resulted from the project
At this point I could easily wade into a comprehensive account of organisational learning, but it would take too long to provide anything worthwhile. If interested (it’s bloody fascinating – trust me on this) see Peter Senge’s bestselling The Fifth Discipline, or my Master’s thesis, which provides pretty solid coverage in chapter three. All I really want to say on this is that if the only thing the client learned was whether or not the project was a success (and like I said, they probably didn’t even find that out), they didn’t learn anything.
Why is this important? You’re the agency – if the client gets too smart they won’t need you at all, right? Calamity!
Pay attention now kids, ‘cos here’s the big point I’ve been building up to:
The behaviour exhibited by any system is determined by the (check out the Organisational Learning links above) ‘Mental Models‘ of those involved. If you want to change the behaviour of the system, you have to address the mental models. (i.e. to find the right answer, first you have to ask the right question!)
What does this have to do with digital media projects and the role of agencies? Simple: I put it to you that in the majority of client organisations, conditions are not conducive to the succesful design and execution of digital media projects. In most cases there is an inherent lack of understanding and support for digital media throughout the client organisation, which leads to failure on at least one of the criteria laid out above. The role of the digital agency should be to address these (systemic) limitations, fostering organisational learning and bringing about a set of conditions (mental models) that are conducive to success. In short, agencies should be building their clients’ capability to pursue the wealth of opportunities afforded by digital media. But they don’t.
*phew!*
Ok I got there, and while it’s a bit rough I’m confident that there’s something to it. At this point it looks like I’ll need two more posts to tie this up: One more to flesh out the ‘what the fuck am I really challenging agencies to do’, and another to summarise in a form that makes a little more sense. Stay tuned…
If you’ve just dropped in, you might want to read part I first.
Ok so let’s recap: The client doesn’t know what they want or need, and has probably been filled with a bunch of bad ideas by their other agencies, who resent the shit out of having another player on their patch and are most likely pitching against you. The person who initiates contact with the digital agency doesn’t have the authority to commission anything that impacts anyone outside their own department, and will encounter resistance from all corners if they try (from above due to a lack of understanding of digital media, and from other business units for the usual reasons – functional siloing, feifdoms etc).
Note. I’ll use the terms ’strategy’ and ’strategy development’ quite a bit in this series of posts, and it might seem like I’m one of those wankers (I’ve met more of them than I care to remember) who throws the term around without really understanding what it means. I promise you that I have something quite definite in mind, and I’ll elaborate on this later. While you may not agree with the terminology (not that I give a shit), I hope at least that you’ll agree that whatever you want to call it, it’s what digital agencies should be doing instead of this ‘design and build’ bullshit. But I digress. Please read on…
Sometimes a cold call will make good, and once in a while the Yellow Pages ad pays off, but often as not some kind soul makes a referral that lands the digital agency in front of the client. This is it – the golden opportunity. And what happens?
They cave in and whore themselves out, just to get the sale.
Don’t believe me? Check out the website of any digital agency. Web development, text messaging systems, mobile applications – it doesn’t matter. Click on the ‘About Us’ or ‘Services’ link (they always have one) and you’re sure to find some guff about how they ‘partner with the client’ to develop a ‘best-of-breed’ ’strategy’ based on the client’s ‘business requirements’, ‘user-centric design’ etc. Then you click on the portfolio link and it’s all the bloody same.
Let me tell you the dark and dirty secret of the digital agency. The purpose of that first meeting is to find out how much and what kind of budget is available. Then they come back and present some pretty pictures of what they want to do, and others showing swell work they’ve done for other people. There’ll be some evidence in there that they’ve done this kind of thing before without killing anybody, and a proposed budget that’s *surprise surprise* pretty much exactly what the client had budgeted for this project.
Sometimes a separate ’strategy’ or ‘consultation’ budget is proposed, but often as not the budget will be design and build only. The agency will tell you it’s because they consider strategy development to be part of the pre-sales process that they can recover from the build, but we know better. There’s no figure shown, because there’s no strategy development. There’s no strategy development because the client only has budget for design and build. There’s only budget for design and build because the client organisation as a whole doesn’t understand or value digital media in the same way as it does TV, Radio and Print. And that lack of understanding and value is because nobody has really tried to take them through a good, robust strategy development exercise.
At this point it might read like I’m ripping on digital agencies, but I’m not. It’s not some insidious plot to squeeze budget out of the client, any more than the clients inability to do anything truely ground-breaking is due to them being lazy, stupid or criminally inept. It’s systemic – the client is encouraged to pursue short-term mediocre projects, and the agency is encouraged to deliver them. Everyone’s happy, right?
Wrong.
Blame whoever you like, but by far the majority of digital agencies (and don’t think I’m just breaking balls here at home kids – it’s the same all over the world, trust me on this) are selling design and build. That’s it. They talk about strategy development, thought leadership etc, but at the end of they day they’re just churning out project after project after project. And here’s the rub – that window is closing. Fast.
How’s that? Simple. Design and build services are becoming commoditised. Your work looks great? Good for you. Your shit doesn’t break, and does what you said it would? What do you want – a fucking cookie? The old joke was that developers are the bus drivers of the information superhighway. I’m not sure that analogy holds any longer though, ‘cos you can’t really outsource bus driving to India at a lower cost and with a better result for ths customer. A similar thing is happening to design – it has to be good just to be in the game, and certainly isn’t a solid means of differentiation.
So how do you stand apart from the crowd? When all your design and build jobs start heading offshore, what have you got left to offer? What you have is what you should have been doing all along.
Next up: what is this ’strategy development’ thing I keep talking about?
