The Genius of Boldness

The ad world is abuzz with the Wieden + Kennedy ad for Chrysler during last night's Super Bowl. I am struck by how bold a move that was.

A. Lot of time to fill. On the one hand, long form copy is easier to write than short form. You can take a little time to get to your point, and you can meander around any nuances you want to make. But that's completely different when it comes to television. I picture being the creative director whose lap receives this plum assignment. First thought: "HUGE opportunity. Hooray for me." Second thought: "Oh, fuck."
B. Not cheap. "Less than $9 million" for 2 full minutes. Which means more than $8 million. That's a lot of room to fail. Not to mention production costs.
C. The flip side of "lots of room to fail" of course is "lots of room to succeed." Which I suspect they have done.
D. "Imported from Detroit." Just brilliant.

Hats off!

Take a Breath… Heck, Take Seven and a Half

The life of a freelancer is like a teenager learning to drive: full throttle, screeching halt, full throttle, screeching halt… Ad infinitum. When it’s slow, you’re dying for some throttle, and when you’re at full throttle, of course you’d give anything for a break.

I’ve been pleasantly full throttle for two months now, which makes me very optimistic about the economy. But also is currently leaving me depleted. Which is why I had to remind myself to take a breath.





If you're like me when you’re swamped with new projects, it's very easy to procrastinate on that much-needed battery recharge. "Well, only another week and then this project will be done. I'll take a break then." But the day before you deliver the project, something new comes up, or there's a last-minute addition that means you have another week's worth of work. And no break. What to do?

Take a breath.

And I've learned that one breath is not enough. I can’t tell you the number of times when I've said, “I need to take a moment.” And I take exactly that: one moment. And then immediately get wrapped up around whatever was on my mind in the first place.

I utterly missed the point of the exercise, n'est-ce pas?

So take seven and a half of those giant gulps of air. Seven and a half is the designated number because it's not a neat, round 10 or five: you will get a little bit out of your head just by keeping track of the count. And keep doing it until your mind has wandered on to something delightfully meaningless and irrelevant to your immediate work. (If you are afraid you're going to forget something important, you should be keeping notes written down somewhere other than that tightly wound brain of yours).

Lastly, it never can hurt to ask for time. I got an email from a designer three days ago inviting me into a project she’s working on. "The copy's not right, and I’ve gone back and forth with the client several times. We could really use your help. He wants to launch on Friday." I emailed the client and said I couldn't get to it for a week, fully expecting he'd go find someone else. Instead, he said no problem.

And I could breathe a sigh of relief.

Tribe

Seth Godin, speaking at IAB Mixx, made some interesting comments about "cutting through the noise" to reach consumers.

Give up. (I'm paraphrasing here.)

It's hard to contradict the venerable Mr. Godin, and I'm not going to try. It's very interesting, though, to suggest that we've all been "branded to death." Going further, if consumers are going to choose a product not merely based on the message, but in order to belong to a tribe--how are they going to identify with that tribe? Social media? I'd like to think that the best product will win--at least the first consumers will be analytical about the product, before the followers come.

On a related-but-not note, I was speaking with a colleague who is 21 years old and was among the first Facebook users, and she was predicting the demise of Facebook: "I find I don't use it as much anymore. We're all getting too open. It's too much information."

If we don't have Facebook, how will we find our tribe? Fundamentally, the drive to belong is primal, and s/he who figures that out holds the key to the future, whether it's Facebook or something else.

Best B2B Voices: Part 3

A few days ago I mentioned I’d found 2 great B2B voices. Last week I talked about IBM (which still surprises me how well written their site is—though I should clarify that’s not because it’s sooo head-and-shoulders above the rest, but rather I still hold onto an apparently inaccurate IBM stereotype).

The other voice is TribalDDB.

In the agencies where I’ve worked (which is to say, not big ones), their agency website was always an afterthought since between billable hours and non-billable hours, billable is going to win every time. Apparently that’s not true for biggies. (Huh. Putting as much effort in your own site as you would a client’s. Smart. Maybe that’s why they got big.)

At any rate, what’s working in their voice? TribalDDB makes what they do sound exciting. They don’t overwhelm with too much information. And they speak in metaphor that distills the potentially dry service offering into something easily understood as beneficial. For example, describing SEO/SEM the headline is “Hey needle, time to burn the haystack.” SEO/SEM is spectacularly boring except to people who really understand its power. And guess what? That headline describes its power.

Why aren’t more B2B voices like that? Is the problem that TribalDDB doesn’t want to spend as much time getting to know it’s clients’ benefits the way it does its own? I sincerely doubt that. More likely clients won’t hand the reins over. They’re scared to be too different. And maybe it’s right to be afraid of being different. But standing out is also how you beat the competition.

Best B2B Voices: Part 2

So quite a while back I posted that I’m looking for great B2B
voices. They are hard to come by, in my experience. Over the course of the past few months I’ve looked and have 2 good examples, though I don’t think by any means this is the conclusive list.

Let’s start with the one I found first: IBM. I know, crazy, right? They have nicely humorous TV ads (which, as I mentioned, is where B2B often has fun), but who knew they could nail their voice on their website, too? If you’re interested in this stuff, which you must be if you’re reading this, seriously go to ibm.com.

They do a wonderful job of delivering the facts—which are of course heavy in technology systems and other topics that could easily become tangled, boring and jargony. They manage to avoid that very well. In fact, they are great at keeping it simple, warm and friendly—maybe not compared to a consumer product/website, but certainly compared with the competition.

The most important part is that they place a terrific focus on you.

The design (which is not my focus, but of course is relevant), is simple, clean and lets the content come through. Tabs at the bottom of the home page make for quick scanning of the volumes of info available on the site. Information on deeper level pages is also well divided into digestible chucks for the average scanning user.

Lastly, while their TV ads and website have a very different voice and look, it’s not too radically different. It feels consistent. IBM has a great UX and content team. IBM, give them a raise.

2 Great Ads

I get shivers when I see great ad copy. Just saw two today:

1. Billboard for Group Health Cooperative. For those who don’t know, Group Health is a big coop in this area. It’s a health care option that’s commonly offered especially at tech companies (last I heard, it’s still on the menu at Microsoft). The billboard had simple copy: Live Long and Prosper. Talk about nailing your audience AND benefits AND humor!
2. Small delivery truck for Staples. We all know the office supply company, so this doesn’t need explaining. The copy is “I break for empty staplers.” Brilliant. I love the double entendre of staplers as in the handy little device, and staplers being people who use Staples delivery services.

Always inspiring to see great work.

Blog writing vs. engineering: don't be a frog

Mark Schaefer wrote a good post this morning that discusses a key point in blogging today: about how so many bloggers (or, as I may call them, "blogbots") engineer their blog posts based on keywords.

In my humble writerly opinion, content engineering is a slippery slope that may turn the relationship building aspects of social media into... meaninglessness. It used to be that only those who really had something to say went off and blogged. People who followed them were interested in hearing it. Now many are doing it not because they have something to say, but instead are focused on the delightful end result of
page views --> brand building --> sales.

Ideally, these keywords bubble up organically through what you would normally want to talk about on your blog. If you're forcing it, then you're going to sound funny. Robotic. And unless you're JPL, that's probably not the voice you're looking for.

While such a focus may yield short term benefits, you may well end up sacrificing the relationship part. And it makes the consumer kiss more frogs before finding their prince.

The moral of the story is, don't be a frog.