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If They Don’t Buy It, They Won’t Buy It

When I was a kid, growing up in the UK, wrestling was big. So were the wrestlers; larger than life grapplers like Big Daddy, Kendo Nagasaki and Giant Haystacks – a seven-foot, six hundred pound man-mountain of blubber, beard and badness.

It was more pantomime than sport. When Big Daddy floored Giant Haystacks, little old ladies watching at the ringside would jump up and beat him with their handbags, umbrellas, tyre wrenches… They were so absorbed by the spectacle that they completely suspended their disbelief. They bought it. How do we get our audience to do likewise?

Talent with a Capital T

Okay, jargon alert! I’m going to talk about T-shaped people. While I’m there I may throw in the odd reference to silos, pushing the envelope and fluffing the sausage. So get your jargon bingo cards ready and eyes down for a full house…

Nothing is the New Anything

I recently read a compelling New York Times Op-Ed piece by Susan Cain entitled, “The Rise of the New Groupthink”. In it, she highlights a dramatic trend in business, education and religion that moves us away from individual thinking to an almost forced collaboration, something she calls “The New Groupthink.” It’s an intriguing comparison between the solitary efforts of “lone geniuses” and the seemingly homogenization of the work that occurs with endless meetings and brainstorms.

Anything Is Possible

The holidays are upon us. And I have been good this year. Very good. (My wife may disagree yet she still went along with it.) So I decided to cross an item off my bucket list and purchase a 1957 Porsche 356 Speedster.

Don’t Create An Ad, Create A World…

I was fortunate enough to be in New York a couple of weeks ago for a DDB global chinwag. We talked about advertising and DDB’s philosophy towards advertising, which the network has in spades thanks to its founder Bill Bernbach. He revolutionised the industry, he taught us that advertising was about insight, originality and engagement. Everything he said back then is still powerful and true today.

Christmas. The World’s First Global Campaign?

Aaahhh, Christmas. That time of the year when we’re all expected to be happy when the truth of the matter is that deep down you’d rather slit your own wrists than listen to your drunk uncle desecrating Boney M songs.

Personally I don’t like this time of year. Wherever you go, the festive mood is being shoved down your throat – tinsel in offices, Christmas lights on main roads, midgets in elf costumes and of course, the horrendous Christmas ads currently plaguing our TV screens.

Don’t Call it Advertising, Call it Redemption

I’ve just completed a mountain of work. Or was it a volcano of work – we clambered up the steep slopes of effort whilst account men, test groups and anyone with half-a-say hurled lumps of molten opinion at the creative work. We’ve created a 360 campaign, or maybe it’s a 720 campaign – after all we seem to have done everything at least twice. But what was interesting about this process was that everything traditional felt a bit forced. Traditional advertising feels like cooling lava, once red hot and powerful, now slowing, solidifying and cooling. Whereas the activation ideas, the “Subservient Chicken” style thoughts, the “Will it blend” type thinking leapt off the page – sparked, crackled and ignited our imaginations with possibilities and potential.

Every Age Gets The Creativity It Deserves

In the post-digital age of multi-dialogue, multi-channel, multi-platform confusion, our profession has to reassess the nature of its driving force. Creativity, the power to turn “what if” in “what is” has to adapt in order to survive. The challenge and the responsibility of today’s communicators are to extend the nature of “creativity,” rather than merely its application. To put it simply, if every era gets the creativity that it deserves, what kind of creativity does our age deserve?

The Hunt For The New

One can argue that we’re moving from paid media to owned media through sustainable ideas more so than before. And that we’re leaping from traditional advertising to applications and services driving design and innovation, with the goal of ultimately transcending what the audience perceives to be advertising.

A Great Idea is Nothing Without Proper Execution

A friend shared this video a few weeks ago, and since then it has been a fixture on my mind. The video is nearly two years old, and has over 10 million views, but it was the first time I had seen it.

This is such a perfect example of how a great idea is nothing without proper execution.

Too much emphasis is put on the idea. Execution is just as important, and I’d argue more so. I don’t know when the “big idea” became the goal to reach, but it is foolish.

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