There’s a saying in football, “Let the ball do the work.”
Younger footballers are aggressive and energetic.
When a pass comes to them, they trap the ball.
Stop it, take possession of it, then decide what to do with it.
This takes time and wastes energy.
And it’s not always necessary.
Sometimes the ball is going the right way anyway.
All you have to do is let it run and follow it.
This uses less energy.
Which means you’ll be able to play for longer without getting tired.
Most goals come in the last ten minutes of the game.
When defenders are getting tired.
So it’s smart to conserve your energy.
That way you can take advantage, as others get weaker.
By doing as little unnecessary work as possible.
In other words, don’t work hard, work smart.
In the morning I wake up to Christian O’Connell on Absolut FM.
As a radio show it’s nothing special.
Just some MOR music in the background while I come alive.
But what does impress me is his promotions.
A while back he had one called ‘We Pay Your Bills’.
What listeners do is send in a monthly bill: credit card, electricity, mortgage, whatever.
He puts them all into a box, mixes them up and draws one out.
Then you’ve 15 minutes to call in and get your bill paid.
After that you’ll be too late.
So he tells everyone to make sure all your friends and family are listening.
So they can call you and tell you if your bill is chosen.
To make sure you don’t miss it.
How clever is that?
For everyone that sends in a bill, he gets at least another dozen listeners.
So if a hundred people each send a bill in, he gets another thousand listeners.
He uses his listeners to do his recruiting for him.
And he only has to pay one bill.
Let the ball do the work.
He did a similar thing a few months later.
He had a promotion called ‘Who’s Calling Christian?”
If his listeners spot a celebrity, they should go up to them and explain that they could get £20,000 for their favourite charity.
Just by calling Christian O’Connell and doing a phone interview.
At the end of which they can do a pitch for their favourite charity.
And, at the end of the month, all the listeners would vote on who did the best interview.
And so which charity to give the money to.
How clever is that?
They get their listeners to act as their celebrity spotters and arrange the phone-ins.
They get an interview they can broadcast as often as they want.
And they get to appear to be doing it for humanitarian reasons.
By giving the money to charity.
And of course, no celebrity can be seen to resist the chance to raise £20,000 for charity.
So he got some amazing phone interviews.
Some of the celebs his listeners got to phone in were: William Shatner, Henry Winkler (The Fonz), Barry Gibb, Boris Johnson, Simon Cowell, Dawn French, Liam Gallaher, Teddy Sheringham, Rod Stewart, Roger Moore, Kiefer Sutherland, Kate Winslett, and Tony Blair.
In fact it probably works out to less than £1,000 per celebrity.
Plus all the good will.
And no one at the radio station has to lift a finger.
How brilliant is that.
Everyone wins.
Similarly, if you ever travel on the tube in the evenings you’ll know about the free papers: London Lite and TheLondonPaper.
My son told me he preferred London Lite.
He said he liked the column called ‘Get It Off Your Text’.
I usually look around in the tube carriage and, sure enough, this seems to be the first thing everyone turns to.
It’s a column made up of about 20 short text messages.
Apparently the public send loads of them in during the day.
Then the staff at London Lite pick the best ones.
So you get your readers to actually write your best feature for you.
Readers even send texts replying to the previous day’s texts.
Sort of like a newspaper version of Twitter.
Which means all your readers turn to it straight away.
Which means they pick your paper instead of the competition.
Which is maybe part of the reason London Lite’s competition, TheLondonPaper, has just gone out of business.
Brilliant.
Let the ball do the work.
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By letting the ball do the work, ive managed to get massive presentation on sustaianable advertising to become less boring and more interactive, why should i have to spoon feed my audience when i can let them figure out bits themselves. it makes them feel good knowing they have solve a problem all by themselves. it may nt be exactly be what your talking about but it inspired me to take it and use it my way.
Christian O’Connell used to be at Xfm. While there, the ‘Who’s calling Christian’ feature was called the Xfm Phoneranger. It was exactly the same format. They got calls from the public who had found someone famous to call in. I don’t think there was any charity involved in this one, but the idea still flew. It captured people’s imagination. Everyone knows someone, who knows someone famous. My mate Nick got Hank Azaria to call in. They got Kevin Spacey, Richard and Judy, Matthew Perry and loads of others. Although not the winner, the best one for me, was supposed regular member of the public, Chris Martin(!), who called in with his famous celebrity guest, Stephen Spielberg. For me, it could never get bigger than that! I was astounded when Richard and Judy won.
A few weeks ago Xfm announced Chicken and Mushroom Pie is the listener’s favourite British pie followed closely by Steak & Kidney. Pass to Asda, Sainsbury’s Morrison’s Tescos, Fray Bentos. It’s an open goal.
Hi Kevin,
I’ve just seen a story in The Sun that says the Network Rail boss is sending 200 staff 90 miles to a conference, by coach.
Because rail travel for the same journey is too expensive.
I think that’s National Express’s advertising for next year done, don’t you.
George,
I’m with you on Spielberg, but I think Hank Azaria is a very close second.
http://ex-blank-page.blogspot.com/2009/11/in-reply-to-daves-great-posts-93.html
Hi Dave.
Did you see the David Haye vs. Nicolai Valuev fight on Saturday night? Haye did the boxing version of ‘letting the ball do the work’ and came away with the WBA belt. The 22 stone giant kept expending energy moving forward and throwing jabs; Haye just kept moving out of the way, using the space in the ring and unleashing intermittent shots. In the end, Haye very nearly knocked out Valuev in the 12th round. And now a Londoner is the heavyweight champion of the world. Hurray!
Absolutely right Ant - same principle as Ali vs Foreman.
Hi Dave,
SFX (loud) : Ha Ha Ha!
Yes. I read the same story, and it reminded me of a Network Rail ticket inspector who keeps parking annoyingly right outside my friend’s house every morning and not leaving til midnight! The police have been called and they have almost had blows over it, but the man refuses to budge. Any goalscoring suggestions as to how we could get this moron off the space outside his house would be much appreciated for his one man campaign!
Maybe a National Express Holidays catalogue tucked under his windscreen wiper?
What do you think?
Network Railroad their staff.
Hi Ant,
The boxing and martial arts version of the line is ‘let the opponent do the work’.
If you oppose force with force, the stronger force wins.
That’s what Sugar Ray Leaonard did with Roberto Duran in their first fight, and lost.
In the second fight he played with him, danced around him, and Duran gave up in round six (I think).
Hi Kevin,
The principal of a burglar alarm is that you don’t so much stop people burgling your house, as make it look a bit less attractive than the house down the street (which doesn’t have an alarm).
You don’t solve the problem you divert it.
Your friend needs to make another nearby parking space look more attractive.
For instance, if there was a tree in front of your friend’s house, the ticket inspector’s car would always get bird crap on it.
So a parking space away from the tree would be more attractive.
Rory Sutherland’s TED talk includes some good examples…
selling potatoes to Prussian peasants
re-launching Shreddies
placebo education
http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_an_ad_man.html
London Lite’s closing too I’m afraid: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/09/london-lite-closes
It was round 8 that Duran quit in the second fight Dave, with Duran saying “I am not boxing with this clown.”
Perfect tactics.
Did the fight go something like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zskO9O3hF78
Hmmm….Interesting Dave.
Let the birds do the work.
Confluence rather than insurgence.
George - yeah, Ali vs. Foreman was the same principle, although Ali took lots more shots. He hadn’t actually planned to fight that way in advance, but on the night he felt like he didn’t have lots of energy so he came up with the rope-a-dope thing.
Dave - true, Sugar Ray Leonard definitely played to Duran’s strengths in their first fight by standing and slugging it out. (Duran had done a brilliant job of winding Leonard up before the fight.) The second fight was less of a spectacle, but much better tactics by Leonard. Another good example from that era is Tommy Hearns vs. Marvin Hagler. Possibly the best fight of all time in my opinion. Hearns would have had a really good chance if he’d jabbed and moved. But he hated Hagler so much (the feeling was mutual) that he couldn’t stop himself from getting involved in a crazy toe-to-toe brawl. That fight has always seemed to me to be the ultimate example of that classic rule in boxing (and in life, I guess): if you allow pure emotion (what you feel)to take over from logic/reason (what you know), you’re bound to make mistakes.
“not the one who plays better wins. it’s the one who plays smarter.”
Phil Jackson (LA Lakers coach)
People do try way to hard sometimes especially when in front of a prospect.
Sometimes the prospect end up talking way to much and gets pushed into doing free consulting. Also the prospect ask those game questions. Let the ball do the work and get out of the way.
A typical game play question is why should we hire you over ABC Inc?
The seller starts banging on about all their features advantage and benefits and awards, hoping to spot some buying signal, where in reality he’s probably just listing all the same things as ABC inc said earlier.
Relax let them do the work - “Great question Mister Prospect, maybe you shouldn’t, can I ask you something, from our conversations so far why do you think brands choose us over ABC inc?”
Perfect Jim.
like a lot of other people I could do with learning that lesson too.
Don’t let your emotions cloud your judgement.
I prefer to let myself go with the flow then to work really hard, I think that if your work to hard then you can miss quite a lot of things that can make life that little bit more easier.
on a side note, may i suggest that you read a book called “One Life. 6 Words. What’s yours?” by SMITH Magazine? its a good book, its about summing life up in 6 words, is a good quick read.
Work as hard as you need to and as smart as possible.
I am not against hard work btw.
The only person qualified to answer a stall or objection is the prospect.
Moving from football to tennis - whose half of the court is the ball in when a point is scored?
This new fad for letting punters come up with ad ideas - see Peperami now outsourcing briefs and paying a few grand for an idea chosen out of thousands. Is that letting the ball do all the work? Or is it ripping off great agencies who came up with the strategy and idea in the first place?
Rachel,
Could be both couldn’t it?
True Dave. And life ain’t fair!
isn’t crowdsourcing just the modern equivalent of those old competitions to write a slogan - “explain why you like brand X in so many words” ?
Good old aunt Sylvia made a small fortune out of those competitions in the 60’s. Literally. She won cash, cars, washing machines, holidays, year’s supplies of all sorts. I think she was in the Guinness book of records for a bit.
these competitions eventually went out of fashion -
maybe the approach started to make the brands who used it look a bit cheap
or maybe the results were just a bit crap.
Crowdsourcing will probably go the same way.
Just thought I’d come on and “run around a bit” for the last 5 minutes and get fit 4 life.
Dave,
This might be weird, and off topic (I am well-known for my discursiveness) but when I have something I must write, I read all I can on the topic and then do nothing for as long as possible.
Then, when I must write it flows out. I always think I take in the information I need and don’t start writing until it reaches my fingers. Then sometimes it comes so fast it almost frightens me.
My version, I guess, of the ball doing the work. Let it come to you.
There was a pretty cool ad done by two brothers who won $1 million dollars for their commerical that ran during the Super Bowl.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/admeter/2009-02-02-doritos-admeter-winner_N.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8QZo4mybGA
Sorry Dave, this could be too late. Re: the Borders’ blog. Came across an interesting definition in an Urban Dictionary (which I had bought). “Chapter Stealer” is someone who reads books at bookshops with no intention of buying. Apart from Borders, seems most book people are up in arms against “chapter stealers”.
A really nice point Rachel.
My question to peparami would be, who came up with the line “bit of an animal”? - was it an agency or a member of the public? Were you happy with that strap line? Did it work? Did sales increase? So why now change to asking member of the public? - The agency maybe at fault here more than the brand, have they demonstrated their value in specific terms, if not the brands may have said, “wtf, 4 words i.e. ‘bit of an animial’ how hard can it be” - I think we are familar with that one.
What peperami have done here is not let the ball do the working at all, they have a great solution and now they want another solution and my hunch is cheaper. Instead what they are doing is picking up the ball and saying I am going home, don’t want to play anymore.
Has the ‘letting punters come up with ideas’ worked yet?
I have no idea by the way. I would love examples of where they have and haven’t.
Talking of letting the ball do the work, conserving energy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvASnyOy5B4
Jim
Here is an example of punters getting lucky.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8QZo4mybGA
Hi Jim, I think you’re spot on. The client has a great solution and now they just want it cheaper. ‘It’s a bit of an animal’ ( what a great product demo of a line) was the agency’s line and strategy over ten years ago. And it’s brilliance makes it the prefect campaign to farm out because it inspires lots of ideas. Tragic for the agency though. And morally wrong of the client I think.
You’ll loves this article Rachel
Who got the Unilever Peparami job, to adland workers who’d be laid off.
http://www.utalkmarketing.com//Pages/Article.aspx?Title=Peperami%20%E2%80%98public%E2%80%99%20ad%20contest%20won%20by%20industry%20professionals&ArticleID=16157
Thanks for the reference Jim. Very interesting indeed. And a sign of times methinks.