There’s an episode of The Simpsons where Moe opens a new bar.
His scuzzy old regulars come in and they’re confused.
The new place is strange and unusual.
Homer points to a picture of an eyeball which completely covers one wall.
“What’s that?” he says.
“Oh that: that’s Po Mo.” Says Moe.
They look at him blankly.
He says, “Po Mo: you know Post Modern.”
They still look at him blankly.
“Okay, weird for weird’s sake” says Moe.
That explains it.
I have a Dilbert cartoon pinned to my office wall.
The Chairman is introducing a trendy film director to the board of the company.
He says, “This is the director who’s going to make our new commercial.”
The director begins to describe his vision, “I see a cloud, it changes shape, and changes colour” he says.
“And while it does, there’s music. No wait: just a noise.”
The Chairman hesitantly says, “Then you mention name of our company, right?”
The director says huffily, “Sure, if you want to ruin the ad.”
That explains it.
I saw a brief last week, from another agency.
They were about to launch a product that had a significant advantage over the competition.
The brief went into massive detail about the brand.
The history of the brand, the vision for the brand, brand loyalists, brand rejectors, etc.
I had one major problem with the brief.
It didn’t tell me what the product was.
It didn’t even tell me what it did.
The whole brief was just about the brand.
Apparently the product is so irrelevant now, you don’t even need to mention it in the brief.
Because, according to conventional marketing wisdom, people only make choices based solely on brand.
Well not any more.
That may have been true in the WAG economy.
When everyone had so much money it didn’t matter.
All that mattered was what a brand said about you.
But that’s just ended.
People are going to have to make their money work a lot harder for them now.
Which means products will need to work a lot harder.
Which means advertising will need to work a lot harder.
Because right now, we’re moving into a Po Po Mo economy.
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Hello Mr. Trott.
Talking of brands and products. Do you think your product (your blog) is clouded by the company name being the thing you have to go through to get to it?
Why is it not just Trottblog.com for example?
Or is it a case of, it promotes the agency so it’s ok for you to do it on company time?
I somehow only get briefs (if I ever get one) like the one you described Dave. Sometimes it’s a valid point though, because a Coke doesn’t have any real benefit over another nice and cold glass of sugary water. It’s the brand that drives the product and you have to advertise that, like every coke commercial out there does.
Today I got put in charge of the awesome task to design new labels for the Coke bottles and make them look in a certain way. Like Coke with anti aging ingredients, Coke with calming ingredients etc. you get the point. The AD in charge keeps correcting my stuff and pushes it more and more into the direction of his designs to the point where I am so frustrated with it that I want to just tell the wanker to go and do it himself, becausy obviously I don’t have his vision of what it should look like. It honestly feels like he is standing behind my shoulder all the time telling me to push it .5 inches to the right and then it will look good.
Sorry, had to blow some steam there. These labels are 3×1 inches so there’s no alot you can do on them.
Anon 1:27
Yup.
Some know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Cadbury’s Gorilla- Po Po Mo?
Cadbury’s Gorilla- Poo Poo Mo!
Hope not too late to join in. The 1st post - I’ve always thought Dave is a big part of the agency. Not to down-play the contributions of Gordon Smith and the others. But every brand/company has something that stands out. So, even though Pepsico makes more than Pepsi, it’s the drink that makes it famous. And even though Sir John’s name appears last, it’s Hegarty people think of when BBH is mentioned. For me, Dave’s blogs are what makes cstadvertising.com worth going to. and that’s his genius, I reckon. I mean, you go to (m)any ad agencies and their work is SO old, you wonder, why even have a site? Dave’s blogs/cst site is honest, relevant, fresh and helpful. And no, I’m trying to get a job with him. I lost that chance years ago.
pardon my ignorance… what is WAG economy?
WAG - Superficial and frivolous.
As my father would say, “all this faffing around (my term, not his!) will have to stop.” As Irish estate agents, we embraced a similar advertising model to that described in your post. Lots of happy couples in idyllic settings under cloudless skies, when the reality was a mucky building site in a rain-sodden Tipperary village. It worked, but it has had it’s day…for now. The credit crunch has forced everyone, retailers as well as property agents, down the value route. At the moment value means price rather than benefit. This will change as the newly-scroogey younger generation become accustomed to valuing posessions, rather than replacing them, but it will take time. For now instead of location, location, location it is price, price, price.
Riki - re: WAG economy. The ‘fake tan/big nails/bigger handbags/just buy it cos Posh has got it/Cheryl’s got it/Alex has got it/therefore I need a £900 scarf,’ mentality. Although I disagree that this economy has gone. The footballers still earn obscene amounts of money and the WAGs are still helping them spend it. It’s the rest of us that will feel the impact of the recession.
I have written anything because this has been a very interesting exchange of comments.
Both intelligent and funny.
Just what I wanted. Thanks.
thanx everybody. I got it.
@Pat Quirke: you’re right. most briefs I get nowadays are hard-sell.
how this will affect vaule/replacement thing you mentioned I don’t know.
but I’m sure that who ‘WAG-ged’ it best in last few years will still profit more with hard-sell.