Bullshit Part deux: Complication
What actually happens when a client meets an agency for the first time?
‘I’d like to sell my chocolate bar to lots of people.’
‘Right. Well you’re going to need a 360-degree engagement campaign.’
‘Um…’
‘It’ll give you some conventional media along with the digital, social, experiential and DM that will make sure your engagement is fully holistic.’
‘Is that good?’
‘You can’t really do anything else.’
‘OK. And all the places will say ‘buy the new Astro Bar with toffee and toasted banana’?’
‘Sort of. On TV we might prefer to go for a brand message that talks about how nice chocolate is in general, then on Facebook we could have a vote on how many banana chunks you put in the bar. It’s pull rather than push, you see. Then we might create an app that is actually a game, perhaps an updated Space Invaders so that people can engage with the Astro Bar brand. Later, in the digital part of the campaign, we could get people to upload videos of themselves eating Astro Bars all over the world, and then we might upload an Astro Bar song to iTunes.’
‘Could we not just run a TV and poster campaign with a big shot of the bar and a nice clear line, like ‘New Astro Bar with toffee and toasted banana’?’
‘You could, but then you’d lose out on a big slice of the crucial 18-24 demographic that likes to use the internet.’
‘Do they not watch TV or walk past posters?’
‘Well, technically, yes. But surely you want something that’s going to get them more engaged, more involved in the Astro Bar brand experience?’
‘I just want people to buy the bar.’
‘That’s why you need to give consumers a chance to become part of the brand, to create the meaning of Astro Bar along with you, to feel some degree of emotional investment. To scale the giddy heights of brand saliency until they immerse themselves so deeply in the Astro Bar experience they are swimming in a pool of liquid engagement, picking fruit from the tree of real-time value justification and frottering their loins on the soft, spongy genitalia of long-tail impact analysis.’
‘Um. I think I’m going to try the other agency down the road.’
‘Be my guest, but they’ll tell you the same thing. You see, we’ve all agreed to turn selling a chocolate bar into an enigma of utter bollocks so complicated that it will make separating two spider webs in the dark, drunk, on a row boat in heavy weather seem as simple as blinking. By adding layer after layer after mind-crushing layer to the process we’ll be sure that you have no idea what you’ve paid for, how to measure its success or why things have reached this pretty pass. Yes, you might say, but humans are essentially the same things they were twenty years ago: they read lots of magazines, drive past posters and watch hours and hours of TV, but that would be missing the point. You see, we need to make a cunt-load of money out of this and unless we make up more shit for you to pay for we’ll be fucked. In fact, in many ways, we’re already fucked. Kids are making films for tuppence and getting them seen by hundreds of millions of people for precisely fuck-all. How can we compete with that? To be honest, we can’t. That’s why bullshit, more than it ever was, must now be the ordure (sic) of the day.’
‘Where do I sign?’
Here’s an idea. Let’s all carry guns and shoot anyone who uses the word “engagement” outside of a promise to marry. That will solve everything. Then we can start on “holistic.”
Great post.
Spots or stripes Ben?
Agree with post.
Although interestingly, it was the ‘360’ part of the recent Old Spice campaign that caused an increase in sales (the initial, although excellent, TV ad caused a drop in sales by 7%).
Come on, anonymous. I read those figures then I read something else that contradicted them. But figures aside, you seem like an intelligent person: do you really think that the TV ad caused sales to plummet then the very similar social media campaign made all those haters suddenly change their minds? No way on earth.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit…
And to casestudyvideo, I think Gold Spot then Red Stripe is the way to go. Or perhaps the other way round.
I guess you’ve just been briefed and are baffled. I don’t blame you but they’re really only asking you to be interesting. What’s wrong with that?
This sounds strangely familiar, not unlike the youtube interview between Harry Redknapp and William Gallas. It would certainly make a good script for that sort of treatment.
spekken ev spits n strips hez ennywin sin the fallon ostrich spit? i men whaathefuck it’s jez lik fekken bbc penguinz ya?
Anon 12:11- guess again.
6.45 – Strangely, think it was through Saatchis in South Africa.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11068438
as has always been the case. as an industry, we are devote in our quest to keep what we do a confusing mystery to outsiders.
don’t look behind the curtain mr client, there’s nothing to see there.
Ben, you can’t be serious.
“Yes, you might say, but humans are essentially the same things they were twenty years ago: they read lots of magazines, drive past posters and watch hours and hours of TV, but that would be missing the point.”
Errr, you missed out the advent of the internet in the last 20 years.
I love making TV, it’s my favourite bit of my job. But surely we have to keep with the times? Sometimes I think you’re denying to yourself that things are changing.
Personally I’ve always found the quality of thinking inversely proportional to the complexity of the language needed to convey it.
For me, we don’t need ordinary thinking and clever words.
We need clever thinking and ordinary words.
HEY MAN! Like sorry to raise my voice and all, but your bringing me down with these negative vibes, man. The next person who, like threatens my aura, I’ll ching my little thumb cymbals at and realign their chakras and shit.
No more Mr. Nice All Hippies.
Man.
Anon 9:44, Of course I’ve noticed the advent of the internet and all that. Look! I write a blog!
I was just exaggerating to make a point, taking on the ‘character’ of an innocent client, who might, quite reasonably, wonder why you can’t simply reach millions of people via traditional media.
Of course there are many other excellent avenues open to target people in a more specialised way, but can you answer the question: why not run a campaign that’s just on conventional media?
To be fair, I think you could say that most of the great ads were sold a similarly bullshitty premise.
“i want to sell my dunlop tyres. i want to say that they cling to the road like a motherfucker”
“good. you’ve heard of tony kaye”
“no. but if he can sell my tremendous road clinging tyres, I’m happy”
” forget the tyres. you want to think about the brand. now, do you like the velvet underground?”
“not really. a bit too darkly sexual for a marketing man like me”
“how about big gold painted laughing buddhas, falling pianos, sinister child nymphs, and a kind of houses of the holy stroke satanic look and feel?”
“will it show my tyres being sticky?”
“we’ll drive over some marbles, if that’s what you mean”
“well, okay, you’re the experts. just assure me one thing – no-one will mistake this ad for a pirelli ad will they”
“i promise”
it’s just exchanging one bullshit for another. it’s just not necessarily the bullshit we like. which makes us bitter.
Didn’t your bullshit end up with something good?
I don’t know how well it worked but it was known and remembered, and that’s a huge chunk of the battle won.
thanks anonymous 10:33. now for your marketing lesson.
it’s true that most people didn’t associate ‘that’ advert with dunlop tyres.
it was too cool and perceived as european.
so the cooler and european tyre brands took part of the credit. only part.
what it did do though, was grow the market in people who make a conscious decision about what tyre they have.
a branded tyre rather than factory stock.
this meant that the pie grew. lots of brands took there slightly larger piece of said pie. including dunlop. who took the largest piece.
it worked.
it pisses me off when i hear this tale, or galaxy outselling cadbury’s after gorilla, or the old spice bullshit.
look at the facts. then make a comment.
I meet and talk with marketing agencies every days and you are being too fair / kind on them Ben.
I have sat through more circular diagrams than a town an country planner in Basingstoke.
Oh and I own a share is a social media marketing agency where the word ‘engagement has been banned’.
GOUT LEGS
I adore that ad. I’m just giving an disinterested comment about the nature of bullshit. I would imagine when the brand revolution was happening lots of old school people were just as cynical about brands. You would snort at them, like the digibots snort at you.
Your dinousaurs would say that a USP and price benefit would sell and that ‘brand’ was an abstract agency invention designed to baffle the client and move away from empirical measurement of quality. Worse still, it led to the detriment of high quality product design.
I don’t that is a wildly controversial observation unless you have emotional equity in your own particular form of ‘bullshit’.
I think I can see the benefits in all the points of view.
Good piece Ben.
We talk about Campaign Architecture all the time here. And that’s the least bollocks phrase used during the day.
We’ve got two grads here at the moment. They said they never watched much TV at uni and still don’t.
Plus clients come to us these days and say ‘what can we do on Facebook?’. It’s not us shoving down their throats, that’s for sure.
grad here said the same
“i never watch TV”
i found it almost inconceivable.
sorry, i thought you were being an ignorant arse rather than a sarcastic pundit.
and terry, your grads account for 0.0000000000000000000000002% of the population.
and clients are as guilty as we are. mainly because they hear a lot of bullshit from the agency side about the great new thing they’re missing out on.
if a grad or prospect said to me “i don’t watch tv or read newspapers or magazines” i’d give them a dry slap.
(i’d do the same if they didn’t engage with digital media before any of you start)
“i don’t watch the x factor” media people snort with snobbery.
why not? there’s 10 million people you can understand better by watching.
I very rarely watch TV.
And when I do it’s usually catch-up stuff like 4OD and iPlayer.
But then I even more rarely give the first shit about any online marketing.
And yet I buy quite a lot of stuff and am loyal to a lot of brands.
I wonder what works on me?
I like X Factor, but I’m not gay (honest).
The X Factor will make you gay.
No, X Factor doesn’t make you gay, much. Strictly Come Dancing however, definitely does. And if you like the Ice Dancing one, you are a pederast.
re ben. 2.18.
probably good products and service.
Yes. Good shit and word of mouth.
Which gets pretty close to describing my morning.
Maybe the bullshit (from the accounts suits) is merely a means to an end? If it gets the agency the account and the creatives produce brilliant ads, don’t the ends justify the rather squalid means? It’s a grim world out there, so my trick cyclist tells me…
A lot of the campaigns that ask people to upload shit/create that/send in this are bollocks. As are a lot of ads that use conventional media.
But the good ones work for the same reason, they entertain people with an idea that makes them like the product.
Old spice started off as a great TV spot, but the follow up using social media gave people a way to interact with the old spice guy/brand that TV could never do.
Shit work will always be shit work, whether it’s a tv spot or a website, but if you aren’t thinking about how your idea can live outside traditional media, you’re missing a pretty big fucking piece of the puzzle.