4 Fuks Saké

Cheers Fred

In this post-Brexit era, one thing you’ll never take away from Brits is our ability to take the piss. Absolutely world class leadership right there with #WalkersWave.

Obviously you’ve seen it. The automated, boy-ish enthusiasm of Lineker (here in the Peter Beardsley, No 10 role) sets you up with cheer, positivity and warmth. He puts it on a plate – and bang – there’s the punchline. A smorgasboard of the world’s most depraved criminals – Fritzl, West, Britain’s most prolific sex offender Savile™, asking us to buy crisps.

As a self-appointed ‘industry leader’ – part two of this article should be 100 words about ‘lessons being learned,’ and “obviously our thoughts go out to the families involved.”

The real reason for the absolute glee of this isn’t the pain of the Walkers and client and agency team. God bless them, they’ve suffered enough.

The joy is in puncturing the pomposity, horrendous phrase ‘thought leadership,’ the pointless conferences, the every-Thursday-night award ceremonies, and second screen, hot-air bullshit that exists in creative marketing.

Inviting people to go to a football match in order to sell crisps ISN’T important. It isn't a real job. I should know I’ve been doing it for twenty years.

The brief. The strategy. The best practice workshop. The creative presentation. The amends. The PO. The build. The “we’re at crunch time,” panic. The sign-off and the eventual release. My “washup” would say that #WalkersWave is three, four, five months of tunnelled, bunker thinking – ignorant of a world beyond meetings rooms, and a Metro/iPhone on the tube.

We are privileged.

We are well paid.

Our jobs are fun.

We steal the tickets at festivals and Cup Finals.

We don’t save lives.

We don’t put our bodies on the line.

We think we know it all.

Fred West waving for Walkers is a gleeful wedgie to anyone that represents corporate brands/general Soho bell-endry; and a reminder to recognise to place our work in the real world.

Cheers Fred.

Women’s Sport Will Thrive – But Only If We Recognise The Universal Trait Of Male Stupidity

A winter weekend in February and for the armchair viewer it was very much one of two halves. (Lack of) ethnic diversity and LGBT representation was top of the agenda at the Oscars. For the sports fan, our viewer switched between the human M&S Blue Harbour catalogue of Six Nations punditry; and River Island’s Jamie & Jamie in Sky Sports HD. White middle class men were very much to the fore in daylight hours.

Yet, women’s sport – participation, exposure and financial health – is on the charge. Broadcasters are covering more live events. Editors are devoting more space and airtime to report stories. The major sports brands are featuring more and more female athletes in their Gotham City billboards. This weekend’s Rugby Special covered the women’s Six Nations before the men’s action in Rome and Cardiff. I’d wager that more sports fans would pick out Charlotte Edwards over Gary Ballance in an identity parade. The rise will continue. Sponsors, on the other hand, are lagging behind.

This isn’t a polemic around discrimination, fairness or misogyny – it’s not difficult to find those arguments. However, I would like to examine one of the institutionalised factors of the sports industry that women may never overcome: the stupidity of men.

A fool and his money are easily parted – and I’m perfectly happy to include myself in that. The blind loyalty and devotion of men to other men kicking or throwing balls is at the root of an industry that has mastered the act of designing, presenting and selling sport back to men at a vast expense.

As men, we have an insatiable need for belonging; to support a club, to get Spurs badges tattooed on our forearms, to wear our colours on foreign soil, to be respected. That seemingly exceptionally basic male need is so easily exploited – who wouldn’t want to turn that to financial gain?

Retailers today routinely talk of shoppers (predominantly female-skewed) being “savvy.’ £7,000 on a debenture to reserve the right to buy an international rugby ticket? Savvy? Turning up at Sunderland for a 12.45 kick off because the company you already pay £100 a month to says you should. Is that savvy? An unquestioning £7 a pint, or a £20 steak sandwich on top of a £100 match ticket at Lord’s? “Well that’s just how it is right?” I mumble to myself every June at the Nursery End.

Sport creates a state in which men hand over their money in awe to an institution at its turnstile. Still, an undercurrent of awe lies at the heart of many of the requests for sponsorship cheques. By its very definition, the antiquated term and device the sponsorship ‘right’ implies subservience to the heroic sporting body, resplendent in its blazer.

Progressive brands are trying to build narratives that show their commitment to their customers or a wider audience. They know that talking ‘at’ people – especially the savvy shopper – cuts no ice. The arrogant brand built on pomposity and prestige is un-liked. Brands that make peoples lives better or more meaningful are the brands that win.

Women’s sport provides a wonderful platform for brands wishing to follow that meaningful path. Women’s sport needs financial investment. It needs people and brands willing to invest time and offer practical support. It requires the ongoing support of established sports brands to promote the parity and - deliberate use of quotation marks here – “normalisation” of women’s sport.

So yes – you - SSE and the FA and your women’s football partnership. “We’re entering this partnership with one simple ambition – to make a difference to the future of women’s football and sport,” they clearly stated at launch. Their money and downright graft will create more access points for girls and women to enjoy the game across all levels and abilities. Who can argue with that?

Kia’s financial and practical investment is changing the lives and livelihoods of the England women’s cricket team. The team collectively drives 300,000 miles a year. Kia gave each squad member a car. The aforementioned Charlotte Edwards quit her job to become a full-time cricketer, earning a £40,000 a year salary off the back of the deal. “I had to pull my car over into a lay-by, and I just sat there, stunned. I never thought I’d see it in my time.” That’s Charlotte Edwards MBE speaking about the deal just two years ago. The cricket community will never forget.

There is a simple logic. Bold, brave brands that invest in women’s sport will improve the product. The better the on-field product, the bigger the audience. The bigger the audience, the greater propensity to grow participation. The bigger the participation levels, the better the product – and so it continues.

Above all, the greater the game grows, the more lives are changed through sport. Respect, love and warmth goes to the brand that helps change those lives in the first place.

Bravery ought to conquer stupidity. But as we’re used to being told by the expert analysis, sport is played on paper.

Televised Football But Not As We Know It

“Interesting. Very interesting!” screamed Barry Davies on Match of the Day back in the day. Who would have thought the same could apply to Adam Lallana running round in circles, or Martin Skrtel clearing his nasal passages?

On Wednesday evening Liverpool play Sevilla in the Europa League Final, Europe’s also-ran club tournament – and a chunk of UK football fans will be watching the game live on YouTube.

The match itself is unlikely to be memorable (although it’ll be enough for me to forgo watching the wash-up of Peggy Mitchell’s death). BT’s decision to make the game available as part of its “wider digital strategy”, throws up all manner of interesting thoughts and discussions about where sport, TV, digital platforms, broadband providers and hardware manufacturers are heading (other than the UEFA hospitality boxes in Basel).

There’s the digital platforms themselves. YouTube aren’t messing about, and their intentions are clear. CEO Susan Wojcicki got straight to the point with North American advertisers a fortnight ago, stating YouTube reaches “more 18-49 year olds during primetime than the top 10 TV shows combined.” Its claim for the mass audience – real people you meet in the pub, street or in the office – starts clouding things for the men running sports banking enormous cheques from TV companies.

Take the English Cricket Board for example. It picked up a BAFTA for its coverage of England’s last Ashes win, yet as Sean Ingle pointed out in The Guardian, more people watched a 1974 episode of Colombo on ITV3. In December, Joe Root failed to make the short list for BBC Sports Personality of the Year, and team sponsor Waitrose called it a day.

If YouTube is ‘normal TV’, where does that leave the likes of the TV companies currently staying in the game by borrowing money from the City?

It’s here we can poke around the “wider digital strategy” hinted at by BT. Whatever channel or platform the sport is on – it’s got to get into our home or onto our tablet somehow – and that requires a network. The greater the demand for content via a network, the stronger and more reliable that network needs to be.

So if you’re a telcomms company with a best-in-market broadband and mobile network, pumping stuff into peoples’ homes whatever its source; that’s not a bad place to be.

It also puts you in a more robust position. What happens if Tim Cook wakes up tomorrow and says, ‘right, next, let’s do Apple Sport?’ Or Google’s Eric Schmidt says to YouTube’s Wojcicki, “would you like me to call Richard Scudamore?”

On the one hand, they don’t need to. They may wish to wait and allow the sports bodies to continue to approach them. US sports continue to make overtures with the NBA big advocates of YouTube, and the NFL agreeing a deal to screen games exclusively on Twitter. Sport isn’t rational though – and it has a habit of making men do stupid things with their money, through the blind love of it all. Why else would we get up at 4am to go to Sunderland?

People in grey-glassed offices will start to shift uncomfortably – but for fans, that’s a day to be welcomed. More eyes on more sports at more accessible prices and on more accessible platforms? What’s not to love about that?

It's Intelligent To Dumb Down

Here’s a picture of Benny.

His owner Richard tweeted his picture, and Bob’s your uncle, Benny’s “the world’s most famous dog.” (Mail Online). Mail Online, is the world’s biggest English language newspaper site. Benny’s been shared 697 times. A story alongside on it, on the reform of the British welfare system is shared 243 times.

Without stating the bleeding obvious, or building on what Siobhan Sharpe might say; there is, what is often referred to in a patronising manner, "a lesson here."

Agency planners are paid, and build their careers on their intelligence. It is in their personal interest to build their personal brands with the trappings of that evidence. Data, intelligent publications, tweeting Economist and Harvard Business Review links to clients all do their bit to build credibility and sell an idea. Creatives too, lean heavily on culture for commercial gain. Work emanating from art, design and theatrical studios in cities across the world, end up in diluted form for commercial gain within 12 months.

None of that is to be sniffed at – just as long as the intelligenzia that help to shift consume products recognise the power that comes from the lowest common denominator. It’s a world where the written word is simply not needed. The copywriter becomes surplus to requirements.

An image that makes you laugh, fantasise or cringe, is your passport to worldwide fame and access to eyeballs. Benny is living proof and by dint of statistic, cannot be ignored.

The ingredients of imagery - useful for any creative session - include:

• Cats & dogs (Benny).
• Animals displaying human qualities (PG Tips, meerkats, page 3 of Metro every day).
• Physical disfiguration, (Cheryl Cole, C4’s Undateables, war).
• Wealth extremes (Kardashians, Benefits Street).
• Class divison. (Binge drink vomiting montages, Ladies day at Aintree, Kardashians).
• A bikini (Every newspaper site, notably Mail Online’s sidebar of shame).
• Cleavage (ditto).
• Attractive women in dresses (ditto).

In the search for intelligence – it’s best not to overlook what stares you in the face every day.

Cyrus, Jacklin, Higgs & Dignity

There are three stories from the past couple of weeks that are worthy of pulling together.

Cyrus / O’Connor

It’s been seven hours and fifteen days (approximately) since Miley Cyrus and Sinead O’Connor exchanged open letters on the subject of mental disintegration. Within a couple of weeks, Cyrus has transformed herself into a breathing version of Razzle, and reached the global Premier League of celebrity. Hard work? Music? Forget it. The 'tits out and trend' strategy pays an instant dividend, even if she’ll end up in rehab on Sinead O’Connor’s old ward in a year or two. 

Jacklin

Tony Jacklin – a man who would feature prominently in a review of the 20^th Century of European golf – wore purple glitter and was humiliated in front of nine million people watching Strictly Come Dancing. Richard Gillis, who in his own words "likes to take a          (pause)                 (arch eyebrow)                ‘sideways look’ at the sports industry”; picked up on a Tony Jacklin Q&A in Golf International magazine. “I’m told that these days you need to keep on reinventing yourself, to let people know you’re still alive and kicking.”

Higgs

Peter Higgs of Higgs-Boson has won the Nobel Prize in Physics. His response? To go on holiday, leave his mobile on the kitchen table and tell no-one where he’s gone. We won’t be seeing him in the Jungle this winter.

Questions. What has happened to the concept of dignity in the entertainment business? Is it possible for people who crave attention to still do so, and retain a sense of self-worth?

If your output is shit, perhaps it’s a struggle. A listen to the incidental part of Cyrus’s career – her music – would explain why she’s got them out.

Jacklin however, has stories no-one should tire of listening to or learning from (ref: Birkdale, Lytham, the Belfry, Seve). These carry value. The last thing that man, or any of us need, is reinvention. My advice Tony – take a look at the example being set to you by Peter. Less is (commercially) more.

Burger Porn War

Draw a circle on a map around Shoreditch and Soho. If you know people that live and work in it, you’ll be familiar with the terms "Five Guys" and "Shake Shack" from your social media feeds.

George Osborne goes to Byron. Everyone that hates George Osborne, is currently calling judgement on the two rival - authentic but slightly more expensive - burger chains. The tool of judgement is the smartphone.

There's only one way to call who is winning the war. Who is pulling in the largest volume of burger porn from its customers, measured by Instagram and Vine posts?

Early scores on the doors suggest two things:

1. Five Guys is on the back foot.

2. No-one is using Vine

Instagram

#ShakeShackuk 410

#Fiveguysuk 235

Vine

#shakeshackuk 0

#Fiveguysuk 2

(Written for Daily Espress)

Information v Intelligence

What do you get if a cross a Tory cabinet minister with a French new wave cinema starlet? Ordinarily a court order – but in this instance, something thought provoking.

First, Jeremy Hunt – a man not shy of a camera and a headline – has gone and done a Diana. The Health Secretary has got himself a surgical gown, a pair of latex gloves and a freelance photographer; and distributed images of himself working as a shift nurse in an A&E unit. (Presumably not one of the 14 underperforming hospitals earmarked in last week’s review).

Hunt’s angle though is admirable. How is he supposed to tackle thousands of complaints he receives over citizens’ treatment in the hands of the NHS without working on the front line himself? Cristina Odone in the Telegraph makes the point crisply: “The only way to learn is to do.” Correct (to a point).

Yes, we can learn by experience. Another way to learn is to convert information into knowledge.

Astrid Berges-Frisbey (pictured for reference) is the 27 year old French-Spanish actress and star of Juliette. Juliette – according to The Guardian – is the latest in a new wave of European films that depicts the stories of life for young people living against a backdrop of austerity and Eurozone meltdown.

The “grey-eyed and chain-smoking” actress (presumably not Lambert & Butler) looked out of the window wistfully and said, “We have more tools, more choices, and yet we live as if constantly paralysed.” Spot on love, (I’d say if I were her agent or northern).

In short, what she is hinting at is an argument being put forward by many others – including Baroness Greenfield. Her view is that our brains are beginning to function differently. Our click-click, always online, never satisfied information gathering is relentless, without allowing it to pause, permeate and be converted into knowledge (in the way that traditional education via reading and study, does). We sit smoking fags looking out of windows flicking an iPhone pouring thousands of images into our brain, but less and less of it is sinking in.

In short, what Hunt, Berges-Frisbey and Greenfield are showing us is that we’d do well to recognise the difference between information and intelligence. Getting a grip of Twitter and your RSS feeds is all well and good – but what you do with it is what counts.  

Work. Produce. Make Money.

A creative director quits and £40m is wiped off the value of a company. This is no egotistical bell-end packing up his moleskin and flouncing off for a Nicaraguan flat white. It’s Emma Hill of Mulberry who called it a day last month. Hill’s departure indicates the value in real terms – of real creativity. Of creating real products with real value.

In an interview last year, Hill said; “I’m from Wales and my family are bakers and miners, people who did things with their hands.” Ask Hill what she does and I suspect she’ll say “I make handbags.” You produce something, someone else values it, and they exchange money. Her arrival at Mulberry in 2008, heralded a five-fold increase in its share price.

Hill’s words and actions have a purity and a clarity about them that the marketing and communications sectors could learn from. Conferences, round tables and essays grapple with measurement and evaluation of campaigns – but it may be better to start at source and be a little clearer with what it is we are attempting to achieve, doing and producing in the first place.

I was once introduced to a female friend’s new boyfriend. She teed him up with the words: “he’s not that bright. He doesn’t have a job like yours.” The bloke was an aviation engineer, and tweaked freshly landed 747s at Heathrow before they flew out again. Pretty smart, and pretty clear I reckon. I’d certainly value that product. On the flipside, on any given day, I could counter with “I’m a strategist, a planner, a managing partner, a social media consultant, a content producer, experiential marketer or brand partnership consultant.” No-one in the real world has any idea or interest in what I’m talking about.

There are two elements to what we – as in you and me operating in this industry bubble -  do. We create demand and we create sales.

Walk into an Ogilvy office anywhere around the world and you’ll never be more than a minute’s walk away from a “We sell or else,” quote. Businesses only walk through the doors of agencies to grow their own businesses – no other reason. So if you can’t articulate how you’re going to grow a business, you’re unlikely to be much use to them.

Second, we create demand. This is where we learn from Emma Hill and start using our hands. Nothing can be said to be certain in this world other than death, taxes, Google and bullshit. If someone tells me that this is the best thing since sliced bread, I’ll be searching online and very quickly I'll find out whether I'm being bullshitted. What I need to find are things that make me go ‘wow’ or ‘hmmm.’

So we – the agencies - need to make those thingswith our hands. An app here. A film there. Something that makes your life easier when you’re about. Something that demonstrates what a brand or a product can do for me, when I’m hunting for info or sat on my arse on the sofa. In short, we make things that sell products. All we need now is a trade union, and the reintroduction of statutory fifteen minute tea breaks. 

(Pic: Kat B on Flickr)

Clarks Give The Rest A Shoeing

(Clarks and others brands in less 'meaningful' use). 

The 2013 edition of Havas Meaningful Brands is out today. It operates on a simple premise. Brands that make things better, lives easier, give you a bit of fun, or make your Mum happier will sell more stuff. Here is a shit load of smart methodology and research that proves it.

In the UK Clarks are in at number one, and an eyebrow raising ASDA at 3. (If you will set your stall out to drive prices as low as you can go, then expect to be popular).

Tuck in to the global and UK lists, plus a hub on The Guardian.

Into The Confectionery Stall And Out Again

I lost both my grandfathers by the age of seven. Today I formally request that Richie Benaud takes on the role. There is nobody out there in the aged 80+ bracket that I would rather turn to for professional, personal or spiritual advice.

If you have a job that requires you to communicate, I recommend listening to BBC’s Voices Of Summer now on iPlayer. In it, Richie explains how he goes about television cricket commentary.  If you have to carry a room of people with you to get something done, then the advice is equally valid.

Typically, he delivers his advice from the perspective of what he has learned from others. Professional, understated, but utterly in command of his craft.

If you’re not interested; “Welcome to the highlights,” as Richie would say.

- “Use as few words as possible. The best supply a caption to a picture. ”

- “Never ask a statement. Too many times I hear a statement that ends with ‘isn’t it?’ or ‘doesn’t it?’”

- "Never use the phrase 'Of course.'"

- “Always remember the value of the pause,” (taught to him by Australian PM Bob Menzies).

- “Never talk down to people.”

- “Don’t take yourself too seriously.”

- “Always have fun.”

Marvellous.