Angus (my first partner, almost 50 years ago was named Angus. He taught me to say 'F-ck a duck' and I never properly thanked him) Tucker and I met on LinkedIn.
For the past few years, he's been leaving comments or likes on my posts, and I've done the same with his. I found him like-minded. There's a phrase in Latin "Vox clamatis in deserto," that sums up how I think a lot of us feel a lot of the time. Vox clamatis means "A voice crying in the wilderness." Angus and I found a kinship because we let each other know we weren't alone.
But Angus and I really connected over a series he's been writing for the past couple of years, called "How to Write Gooder." (I love a person who slaughters the language for purposeful effect. See duck above.)
Angus and "How to Write Gooder," also prove a point--my belief that one of the two things true creative people have in common is their generosity. They want to make the world better, and they'll give with both hands people who want to help.
Thank you, Angus, for your generosity and for your kindness and for writing today's post.
Reading Angus is a good way to become Gooder.
Stunt-ing our Growth.
A few days ago, I saw something I haven’t seen in advertising for a long time: an ad campaign. It was for SkiptheDishes, a food delivery service here in Canada.
By campaign, I mean it had a bunch of things to it – a video (aka, a TV ad), a whack of outdoor executions (billboards, subway ads, transit shelters), and social posts. What was so strange about it was that there was a symmetry in messaging across the different media choices. The point was the same in each ad: Skip to the good part (that is, the food, rather than the gridlock, the schlep and inconvenience of picking up the food yourself.)
It also did something that advertising rarely does these days – it lived for more than a day.
The Skip billboards I’m seeing around town have been up for three weeks, which these days, is about as rare as one of those prehistoric Coelecanth fish that are still swimming in the ocean depths 66 million years after they presumably went extinct. They exist, but you don’t see them very often.
I used to see campaigns all the time. For a long time, that was all you worked on in advertising.
One-offs were for the interns. If you saw a kid’s book that was full of one-offs, it was a quick “come back when you can show me some ideas” and they were out of your office. ‘Any idiot can stumble upon a good one-off’ we’d tell them. But the real test of an idea is whether it can support years of ideas. Even decades.
We’d reference campaigns like Guinness’s “Good things come to those who wait” or ESPN’s “This is Sportcenter” as examples of the kind of work that built careers, but more importantly, brands. I read once that the Sportscenter idea was so popular, famous athletes would tell their agents to get them into one. They’d even waive their fee because the cool factor was worth way more than the money.
Then along came stunt-vertising.
Initially, stunts were interesting because they had no pretense of longevity. The intent was to pop in, get some quick attention, and then go away. They were eye candy – a quick burst of dopamine before your thumb scrolled to the next little hit on your phone.
Stunts were originally intended to work with campaigns - providing some short-term attention while campaigns did the long-term lifting of changing how people felt and thought about a brand. But then, like the cordyceps fungus from The Last of Us that invades and gruesomely kills the host, stunts took over.
To be precise, they took over advertising.
The rationale was that “in a social world, brands need to move at the speed of culture”. Only brands that could insert themselves into the cultural conversation would be the brands that young people want to be associated with.
But we made the mistake we always make with new things. We think they replace old things. We think new is better than old.
Which might explain why I haven’t seen a good Guinness ad in about five years, but I did see a stunt Guinness did this year where they made a winter boot that leaves bootprints in the snow that look like pints of Guinness. Ok, so I guess “Good things come to those who wear boots to the pub after a light dusting of snow?”
I’m not against stunts. They have a place.
But when that’s all we aspire to do? When clients and agencies forsake a long-term vision (and media investment) in a brand in favour of a series of stunts that we hope is going to stand out from the avalanche of posts that show up on my phone every hour?
I saw a post this morning where someone put together George Michael singing ‘Careless Whisper’ in Arnold Schwarzenneger’s voice. I don’t care what stunt you’re working on right now, it ain’t beating that.
Culture moves at the speed of light and to think a brand can keep up with that is more than a bit delusional. Maybe we’d be better served to slow it down a tad, and figure out where the brand is going first. If a moment arises during the year when a brand can take advantage of a cultural moment, have at it.
But for that to be the marketing plan?
That’s moving at the speed of stupid.
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