Here’s lazy Kato, being, well, lazy.
I want to come back as a cat.
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Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you know something’s the right thing to do, it doesn’t matter how compelling the evidence is, you have to show how it’s worked for something else.
It’s a bit like that silly rule some clients have about only shortlisting agencies with experience in their category.
It’s the ultimate planning Catch 22, you’re looking for a fresh approach, but ever now and then, you’re compelled to prove it’s worked for someone in the past. Right now I’m trying to show, beyond the data, how there doesn’t have to be a choice between product and price advertising and so called ‘brand’ ads. And I’m using case studies.
While I think it’s dangerous to use them as inspiration for your own thinking, they can be very useful to prove your point once you’ve got your ideas. I don’t like using other people’s work to get my own through, but if that’s what it takes, it’s worth it.
During my adventures, I re-read this KFC case study (Download kfc.pdf ) to show how a retail brand can talk THROUGH the product.
While were at it, it also shows how you need to be brutal with yourself. They found a differentiating truth about product quality, only to ask more questions and find product quality wasn’t compelling for the problem KFC was facing. Many teams would have stopped there.
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I’ll be loitering in London for a bit next Thursday (4th Oct) afternoon if anyone’s around for coffee and stuff. Predictably I’ll probably be in the Breakfast Club.
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Rob’s post about that Vodaphone Groundhog Day ad reminded me of why we’re all doomed to repeat our mistakes. And the value of doing research with people in real time, at the event.
It’s sort of obvious we’ll avoid repeating something that went badly wrong, but it’s just not that simple, since our memories are very good at misleading us and dooming us to making the same cock ups.
We don’t really remember everyday stuff, we remember the unusual. That’s why you can say where you were on September 11th but not 10th. That’s why we think we always pick the slowest supermarket checkout – we only remember the times it was a bad wait, not those times it was pretty okay. How many times have you gone WOW! This is average! Brilliant.
In other words, the least likely experience is the most likely memory. When you think about missing a train, you don’t call up those days when another one came along soon after and nothing much happened, you remember the day it really messed up your day. That makes experience very hard to learn from. How can you predict what is likely to happen if so much of is is based on what happened least? And it gets worse.
The biggest impact on our memory is the ending. That’s why couples who break up find it hard to remember when they were happy.
They post rationalise the whole relationship based on the painful end. That’s why the little the added gag after the call to action in TV ad can be so useful. You really don’t want someone remembering ‘subject to status, terms and conditions apply’ as the most powerful memory. Russell talks about ending well in presentations (Download toptentips_for_presentations1.doc ). Makes even more sense now doesn’t it?
Even scarier, cultural memes translate memory for us. We actually misremember our own past feelings and experiences based on what society has taught us to believe. Parents will tell you their children are lifes greatest joy, yet tell a researcher they are at their happiest doing things that don’t involve kids.
Like how so many people believe OTHER PEOPLE were more emotional than them when Diana died, since they believe themselves to have a stiff upper lip, thanks to how the British tend to view themselves. In some cases, if you ask a female how sad she felt after an event, she’ll believe she was more emotional than she was, so powerful is that cultural fallacy that women are more emotional than men. It can work in the opposite for men.
We even say yes to things in advance and regret it just before the time has come. Like babysitting -we agree wholeheartedly a week in advance since we’re thinking good about WHY we do it – to help, to be charitable, to be nice. But the day before we think about WHAT we’re doing – dealing with a screaming infant, missing a Saurday night out and stuff, so it doesn’t seem so appealing.
So you can’t always rely on your own experience, in fact you can’t rely on the advice of other that have gone through it, they’ll mis-remember too.
You can talk to people who are going through it right now though. I think this kind of stuff if interesting for the sake of it, but it also shows the value of being careful where you do your research in your job, and who with. The further you are away from the real experience, with people who are not going through it now, the less valuable it will be.Like they say….
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I heard a great fact about expertise on Radio 4’s Front Row last night. Apparently, no matter how much talent you have, it takes 10,000 hours of practice and learning before you become a world class expert. Athletes, musicians, trapeze artists, philosophers – planners even.
That’s why reading things like Adliterate, Scamp, Russell, Gareth, Rob or any other home for experienced thinking is such a double edged sword. It’s seductively easy to quote them so much you end up believing the words were yours, or pinch some strategy instead of banging your own head against a brick wall.
And who can blame us? We want to do great, inspirational stuff too. Problem is, we have years to go before we reach that level (if we ever do) – and by definition, what’s right for one brand will be wrong for another. It’s so easy go insane not being able to make you’re thinking watertight thanks to the start being an APG case study rather than a good observation.
Of course, we should all be striving to litter every single creative brief with gold, no matter how dull received wisdom tells you the category might be. The bar is that high precisely so we can strive to reach it….someday.
One of the most rewarding clients I ever had was a B2B client who created computer software for labs. It was a victory to simply understand what they did, let alone turning it into a brief that sang. The work was good enough to make you weep and MY GOD IT SOLD! And what a way to learn.
So don’t expect it to be easy. And anyway, getting there is half the fun.
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In case you missed it, Boney M ended up beating the Smiths 2-0. Each vote was close, but history will record that there was only one winner.
It got a bit heated at one point, after The Smiths camp pulled an ‘Obi Wan Kenobi strategy’ – "You can’t win Darth, if you strike me down you will make more powerful than you can possibly imagine". But hopefully Marcus is still talking to me.
No one else will once I sing on the web.
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Gareth’s done his feedback for his Account Planning School of th Web project. Not only a stupendous job, his comments are a great refresher for useful for most of us too I reckon.
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Most of the world now lives in city, so it would be very easy to look for some connections between the brand you’re working on and the oppression of too much noise.
That’s why I like this article from The Observer. It tells us that some city sounds are actually welcome, comforting and soothing. Like the thud of heavy nightclub bass on the street, or the distant roar of motorway traffic.
There’s always something truer, less obvious and far more interesting if you are prepared to look harder.
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Sometimes you do take the easy route, take the short cut. Who will know? It will turn out okay, so what’s the point? But sometimes it’s worth doing it right.
Like when you make tea, quick boil of the kettle, swill the bag in the mug with water, dash of milk. Done. Easy. So much quicker.
But that shows little respect for the people you’re making it for, and for yourself for that matter. It’s the world of McDonalds for breakfast, ready meals and those funny belts that send pulses in your stomach – instead of a good walk.
This is how I drink tea at work. A couple of extra minutes to transform a functional act that you don’t really think about into a warm act of love.
Ethnographic studies show that coffee is high powered meetings, sophistication and speed. Tea is about warmth, care, companionship and simplicity.
Making proper tea requires a few key steps. This is how my sorely missed Grandma taught me to do it:
- Make sure you have decent quality teabags. Ideally Yorkshire Tea.
- Boil the kettle with freshly drawn water.
- You must use a pot – warmed by leaving hot water to stand in it while the kettle boils.
- One tea bag per cup with one extra.
- Pour the water in the pot while boiling (having removed the warming water obviously).
- Do NOT stir yet. Leave for five minutes.
- While you’re waiting, warm the cups with some left over boiling water. Empty 1 minute before the tea has brewed, put in the milk. This will warm the milk a bit.
- Just before you put in the tea, give it a stir.
- Finished.
Rituals make us who we are. This is one worth keeping. You can really taste the difference and enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done.
By the way, you can tell when tea has been made in a pot by the little bubbles in the side of a cup. I often wonder why this never gets talked about more.
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A friend of mine was moaning about the inevitable victory of Boney M over the Smiths. He made a good point about how bad is really good.
The Smiths should lose, it’s what they were about. If they won, they’d be popular which would be plain wrong.
So a vote for Boney M is actually a vote for the Smiths.
We win.
NORTHERN PLANNER 