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Nonvertising

This was a Pizza Hut
Now it's all covered with daisies
you got it you got it

--Talking Heads, "(Nothing but) Flowers"


What is the future of advertising?

Here's an idea: reward customers by relieving them of the burden of seeing ads. It's based on the not-particularly brilliant insight that most people avoid advertising if they can. So if you're a marketer and you're trying to forge bonds of loyalty with your customers, why not give them what they want: nonvertising.

Here's how it works. Let's say you're Coors Light. And let's say you're on track to hit your numbers for sales and profitability. To thank your loyal customers, you give back the 8 minutes of time you bought on the NFL game of the week. You don't sell it off to another advertiser. You give it back to the customer and tell them you did so.

Conversely, if sales or share starts to slip, the advertising returns. And your target is made to see inane re-edits of NFL coach press conferences until he puts down that Bud Light and locks and loads the Silver Bullet instead.


This, of course, is the exact opposite of what advertisers do now. As their market share goes up, brands tend to increase their ad spending. This, ultimately, becomes counter-productive because--did I mention?--people don't like advertising.

Nonvertising is already happening at the margins. It just doesn't have a name yet. Think about when your local NPR station does its fundraising drive. They tell you before it starts: cough up your contribution and if we get enough money we'll cut the fund drive short by a day. Ira Glass and the Car Talk guys know you don't want to sit there and hear them yammer about public radio's funding shortfall and the big bad Federal government meanies. And they leverage that fact to their benefit--and ours.

Another example: ad-free "premium" versions of websites like Pandora. You want a clean, clutter-free environment? Pay for it.
Now this isn't a perfect analogy because the advertiser has no say (and no upside) in whether the customer is subjected to his ads or not...it's between the site and the user. But still, the basic thinking is the same: use your customer's desire not to be bombarded with ads as a way to increase traction.

There's a lovely old science fiction short story by Frederik Pohl called "The Midas Plague." Written in the 1950s, when post-war American prosperity was really ramping up, it imagined a time in the not-too-distant future when the greatest challenge society faced was material over-abundance. If people didn't consume in large enough amounts, at a fast enough rate, the wheels of commerce (which in those days largely meant manufacturing, of course) would grind to a halt. In this future, our notion of wealth and poverty was turned on its head. The poorest people were saddled with the most material goods. Their lives were a constant grind of purchasing and consuming, played out in enormous gilded palaces and huge cars. Those at the apex of society, on the other hand, had the means to avoid this misfortunate, and lived in the luxury of austere simplicity.

Now substitute "advertising" for washing machines, lawn mowers and color TVs, and you have the world the way it is (or at least, America the way it is): the well-to-do watch PBS and TV on demand, drive through streets lined with trees, not billboards, and listen to satellite radio in the car. Their Macs are a shimmering expanse of aluminum, 100% decal-free. They prefer environments and media with few or no ads, and pay for the privilege.



Advertising does not suffer from lack of efficacy. It suffers from too much muchness. Brands that figure out how to lessen that, in a way that customers can identify with that brand, stand to benefit greatly.

Something in the water.

These are versions of a font called Neutraface. Look familiar? They should. The Neutraface font family was introduced in 2002 and has increased in popularity every year since then, with 2009 being some kind of tipping point. Now you see it everywhere. Here's an ad currently running for Wells Fargo:



That's Neutraface slab in Roman and italic. Here's AT&T Wireless:



Neutraface demi text italic.

Between these two brands alone, Neutraface probably has north of $200 million behind it.

Why am I geeking out about a typeface? Because type is one of those unseen forces that shape fashion in graphic design and advertising. Back in December, I wrote about how it is that ads wind up looking like other ads, often in unrelated categories to different audiences. I touched on factors as lofty as parallel evolution and as banal as common thievery and client dictate. But the fourth factor, which I called "something in the water," I left for a later post. Well, type is something in the water. You toss it in, everyone drinks it and in a couple of years, art directors everywhere are showing the symptoms.

Color is another unseen hand. Every year Pantone and a few other influencers decide what the on-trend colors for the next year will be and everyone from fashion designers to paint manufacturers to designers take a swig. Here's this year's color, by the way:



Honeysuckle. Bet you didn't see that one coming. But now that you know, keep your eye peeled. You'll be amazed how often you see it.

A last thought on this subject (for now): how many adjoining boxes containing type, background colors and artwork did you see in ads before Quark, with its text and picture boxes, appeared in the mid-90s?

Really?

Tina Fey, Creative Director

I guess even people who write (hilariously) for a living need a writing outlet and lately Tina Fey has chosen The New Yorker as hers.

In last week's essay, entitled "Lessons from Late Night," she talks about things she's learned from Lorne Michaels about managing creative people; and while I'm sure neither Miss Fey, Mr. Michaels or anyone who's ever been on SNL means advertising writers and art directors when they use the term "creative people," the lessons were fantastically apt.

Ipad technology, subscription firewalls and a healthy fear of intellectual property lawyers keep me from linking you directly to the article, but let me quote one especially insightful passage and then recommend you pony up for the real deal, in print or in Conde Nast's beautifully designed app. Here, the first thing Tina learned from Lorne Michaels: producing is about discouraging creativity.

A TV show comprises many departments--costumes, props, talent, graphics, set dressing, transportation. Everyone in every department wants to show off his or her skills and contribute creatively to the show, which is a blessing. You're grateful to work with people who are talented and enthusiastic about their jobs. You would think that in your capacity as a producer ylur job would be to chum up creativity, but mostly your job is to police enthusiasm. You may have an occasion where the script calls for a bran muffin on a white plate, and people from the props department show up with a bran cake in the shape of Santa Claus sitting on a silver platter that says "Welcome to Denmark" on it. "We just thought it would be funny," they say. And you have to find a polite way to explain that the character is Jewish, so eating Santa's face might have negative connotations, and the silver tray, while beautiful, is creating a weird glare on camera, and maybe let's just go with the bran muffin on the white plate.

R.I.P.

Most Deadheads are familiar with this logo. Few knew its provenance until the Owsley obits started coming out yesterday. Fewer still (including, at this point, me) knew the nickname came from early-onset adolescent hairiness. From such random beginnings do brands grow.

Well met in Hell.

Even when a site's only reason for being is to aggregate and sell eyeballs by pimping stories to Google search bots, it can create a strange beauty. Here, a screen grab from HuffPo a few hours ago:

The Bachman Effect.

How stupid should advertising be to accurately reflect and connect with its target?

Depends on who you ask. David Ogilvy famously wrote, “the customer isn’t stupid. She’s your mother.” Well, we’re not going to touch that one.

In many categories, the rule of thumb is to write to a sixth-grade education. I can live with that. Sixth graders know all sorts of facts, some useful and some not. U.S. history is pretty fresh in their heads, and the kids not stuck in Kansas or some compound in Utah know about evolution. More importantly, they are at an age where they are beginning to understand the adult world and its rules are not what they seem. Their BS meter is on high alert.

Yeah, I wouldn’t mind making ads for sixth graders. What I do mind is writing ads for people who forgot everything they knew in sixth grade, and are damn proud of it because it frees them to make shit up, or—if that requires too much mental effort—believe without a moment’s hesitation the shit other people make up.

Which brings me to Michelle Bachman, the jesterU.S. Representative from Minnesota. Gail Collins accurately characterized her a few weeks ago as, essentially, Tracy Flick hit by the stoopid stick. I don’t want to go into a long recitation of her lies, malapropisms and shaky grasp of historical fact. This is an advertising blog, after all. So let me bring this back to the subject at hand.

Are we making ads for people for people so fucking stupid, they think Michelle Bachman has something useful to say? If so, can we rock it Bachman-style and just make crazy claims and accusations?

Here’s one:

Tide’s bulls-eye design is a secret Al Quaeda missile-targeting program. Buy Gain instead and fight terrorism.




Or how about this:

Ten out of 12 signers of the Constitution preferred Pappa John’s pizza to Dominos. Pappa John: the Founding Pappa pizza.

I don’t think Fox would have a problem with either of these, do you? And if other networks’ Clearance departments have a problem, perhaps we can ask them why they see Michelle Bachman’s lie-strewn diatribes as “news” and make no effort to fact-check?

Coincidence or rip-off?

These two ads were 50 feet apart in the 68th Street station on the #6 subway station. Besides both being tagged by a certain Mr. "Tasty," they share the use of overlapping color layers containing reversed-out white type. The layers themselves are similar organic, rounded semi-blobs. The resemblance, at least to people who ponder art direction in public places, is startling.

And for clients, vexing. Like furious socialites at a charity event who show up rocking the same expensive couture frock as a competitor, at least one if not two CMOs are asking their agency WTF?

Well, WTF usually has one of four possible answers. Here they are:

1. Parallel evolution. Subject different designs to the same evolutionary forces and demands, and they will evolve similar solutions. The classic example used to illustrate this phenomenon is the similar shape of sharks, dolphins and F-15 fighter planes. Fish, mammal, machine, all evolved to be able to hunt, track and kill moving at high speed through a resistant medium.

In the advertising world, parallel evolution means: give reasonably competent creative teams working on different brands the same brief, stuffed with the same "insights" from asking the same questions to the same focus groups in Paramus, subject their work to the same testing methodology, and you will get more or less the same results, arrived at independently, no copying involved.

That's why you typically see this type of imitation in work within the same category, and usually in a category where there's a lot of research and testing. It's why you'll see four different campaigns for diabetes products, all of which have people in the ads saying "I took control." Listen to enough patients suffering from diabetes say "I don't feel in control of my life" and that's what happens.

2. Agency-driven imitation. This is an ugly subject but ripoffs happen.Walk down the halls of any large agency creative department and you will see someone feverishly flipping through recent One Show and CA annuals looking for "inspiration." The thinking usually runs along the line of, Well this ad won an award for a mountain bike brand. If I use it for my small regional BtoB office supply account, what's the harm?
Besides which, we changed the original Franklin Gothic to Meta Bold!

This is not good, but it has its evil counterpart in reason number three:

3. Client-driven imitation. If you haven't been in a situation where a client has said to you, "Give me something just like that Old Spice guy on the horse," you haven't been in the business long enough. Rough-around-the-edges clients who didn't go to corporate finishing school or who are so senior or so rich they don't give a shit, will tell it to you that blatantly. The MBA types are a little more subtle: they'll send you a link or a clip of ad they like. They'll causally drop a reference to the fact that their boss, or their boss's boss, thinks the new Snickers campaign is great, and if the next round of work doesn't show the product logo being used in a playful, iconic way, they'' drop another hint. Eventually, someone in agency management will dope-slap the creative team and the imitative campaign will be dutifully presented...and bought.

4. Something in the water. The last reason similar ads, or similar approaches to graphic design problems crop up has nothing to do with anything as obvious as the desire to copy or moving with the herd. It is something more mysterious, more ineffable and--because it doesn't just affect advertising but also fashion, art and science, much more interesting. Interesting enough to deserve its own post, which hopefully will appear soon.

I heard you the first time.

In the first commercial break after start of play in last night's Giants-Vikings game, a new commercial from Chrysler was shown in 3 of the 6 slots.

Is that the "no matter how long your piss break is, you're gonna see this spot" media strategy? Kind of like a roadblock buy, but a urethra-block instead?

Jesus, people, do your homework: viewers don't leave a game until the 4th quarter or unless it's a blowout. They'll see your spot! And if you have that much money to burn on the buy, do all the agency creatives, producers, gaffers, grips and post houses a favor: shoot a 2nd spot.

It's not the assignment. It's what you do with it.

I was going to post about the unbelievably annoying Quiznos spot, but that would just be spreading garbage around, not confining or destroying it as it warrants.

Instead, a shout-out to a little bit of loveliness:




While creatives whinge about the confines put upon them for their next million-dollar campaign, someone—maybe a package designer, maybe a freelancer, maybe a waiter at Redhead—saw a way to take the humble “Use by…” freshness-dating requirement and turn it into a totally unexpected delight.

Of time, salt, and the power of randomness.

I read foodie magazines and this month they all have ads for Morton Mediterranean Sea Salt, the Morton people being no fools and also readers of the same titles they advertise in. So they’re getting with the program, keeping their brand on trend, etc. etc.

The ads are neither good nor bad, just workman-like expressions of the carefully calculated marketing strategy that informed them. They carry a whiff of focus groups reacting to mood boards full of Tuscan revelry, picnics in the vineyards, whitewashed seaside villas, figs and olives.

One thing they never could have focus-grouped their way to, however, was the Morton icon, the 100-year old little girl in the rain with her umbrella and her freely-flowing salt.

When it rains it pours. That sounds so lovely, doesn’t it? Like Emily Dickinson meets Peggy Olson.

The parallel “it”s, the riff on an old saying (old even in 1890), the succinct expression of product difference (Morton invented the process to keep table salt from caking in humid weather). It’s so…good.

But if the Morton girl and her tagline were not an accident of history, beloved and beyond harm from change-agent CMOs and the Peter Arnells of the world, could she be created now? What brief could lead a creative team to this girl, too young to be the purchaser, outside in the rain away from kitchen and cupboard, carelessly wasting the product as she walks?

This, I believe, is what Mark Fenske meant when he wrote “Nobody ever did a good ad by writing to the strategy.” Strategies are rational; focus groups, absurdly so. The little girl, carrying her mother’s purchase home upside down as little girls do (or did, when the store was down the block instead of at the mall, and children were still allowed to go do errands without an adult riding shotgun), splashing happily in the rain: she is not the product of rational process. She and the other random happy hand-me-downs of brand history are a precious gift.

That rarest of things: a good banner ad

Instead of a takeover, a dripover. Much more interesting, much less intrusive.

10 Ads I don't want to see in #-D

With 3-D TVs already in stores at prices that are hurtling down towards the magic $1000 level, it's time to think about the implications for advertising. 3-D opens up new vistas for product demos, sexual come-ons and intrusive spokespeople you didn't want in your living room even when they were flat. Here, for example, are 10 spots I'm glad were made in the pre-3-D era and which I hope never return dimensionally enhanced:

1. Calvin Klein underwear. TMI times 3.

2. Olive Garden. Looks disgusting already.

3. Mohegan Sun. At least now I can look away.

4. Cialis. Ew.

5. Charmin. Too close for comfort.

6. Carl Paladino for Governor. Don't tase me, bro!

7. Carnival Cruise Lines. No escape.

8. Mucinex. The stuff of nightmares.

9. Lysol Toilet Bowl Cleaner. Not going down that hole.

10. Progressive Insurance. Surround-Flo would be overwhelming.



"So that's what occasional irregularity looks like."

Adventures in ad placement, cont'd.

Seen in the Scottish Highlands. Maybe not the best place to advertise a thrilling adventure ride in a tricked-out Land Rover, laddies.

Please familiarize yourself with the safety information in the following commercial.

The new Delta campaign from Weiden & Kennedy is shot in docu-black and white, so you know it’s serious.

Serious as a heart attack, actually. I don’t have a transcript of the actual copy, but here’s what I remember: after posing the rhetorical question “What does it take to fly?” (violating Feinberg’s rule of never starting a conversation with a disinterested party by asking a fake question), the VO goes on to say something like you have to head into the wind, or you won’t be able to generate enough lift to take off. And we see someone who’s clearly a flight instructor making the point to a nervous-looking newbie pilot.

Now, being a writer of copy, I know this whole thing is just a big, winged metaphor for the newly-merged Delta/Northwest entity fearlessly facing stiff economic headwinds and embracing change. I get it, I get it. I don’t care, but I get it.

Still. I was on a plane going to Scotland from JFK last week, waiting our turn to take off, and all I could think was, Are we facing into the wind? What if we’re not? Did I pack too much shit in my duffle? Is my life insurance paid up? How cold is Jamaica Bay this time of year?

This is not what you want your flying public thinking about with your, um, launch spot. And the theme line—“Keep climbing.” Sweet Jesus! Who wants to hear that snatch of cockpit chatter?



Climb! Climb, dammit!

My life in pictures

Two campaigns I'm intimately involved with, one now and one back in the day, cohabiting the same transit billboard.

To the reasonable question, "Can't you do anything that doesn't have a blue background and big headline-as-art?" the answer is yes, but I agree you wouldn't know it from this, er, mini-portfolio.

Thanks to Peter Hubbel for noticing and capturing.

Dispatch from Social-Media Loserville.

What happens when you join Facebook and get alternately creeped out and annoyed by it so you have no "Friends"?

You get publicly humiliated.

My daughter was kind/cruel enough to show me what popped up on her Facebook homepage last week:



I have no idea how many other zillions of people saw this. And please, no mercy friendings. I don't want your digital pity.

Accidental truth in advertising.

Some advertisers get so twisted up in their own lies and are so tone-deaf that they wind up inadvertently speaking the truth.

Consider if you will the new campaign from United Healthcare. The theme line is “Health in numbers.”

Why would a managed-care organization ever say something like that? Are they insane? Did a bitter proof-reader or disgruntled studio person remove the words “is not” between “Health” and “in” after one too many denied claims?

Numbers, after all, are not the solution, at least not to the average person. Numbers are the f****** problem. Policy numbers, claim numbers, phone numbers, reason for denial numbers, annual cap on benefits numbers, and the ever-rising number you see on your paycheck every 2 weeks that gets paid out to maintain your coverage.

So did United Healthcare and its agency have a massive wave of contrition, and decide to confess the truth—that healthcare insurance has been reduced to a dehumanized, soulless algorithm?

I’m guessing no. I’m guessing they got clever. They decided to cleverly turn a liability into an asset in the grand tradition of Volkswagen and Benson &Hedges, and make “numbers” mean something good.
If you can choke back the bile long enough to dig into the advertising, you’ll see what I mean: numbers=size=leverage=data=more benefits for more people.

And just to make sure you hate not just the words but the pictures, they plaster numbers all over people’s bodies and foreheads, conjuring up everything from concentration-camp tattoos to UPC codes to some grim near-future dystopia where we truly are nothing but numbers.

But why quibble? Once they used the word “numbers” in the same sentence as the word “health”, they were screwed. Too clever by half, they went 180º from the truth and wound up being honest entirely by accident.

Santa or else.

SPOLER ALERT: DON’T READ IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED MAD MEN SEASON FOUR EPISODE TWO.

The haze of liquor and cigarette smoke that hangs langorously over Mad Men doesn’t obscure the piercing truths about our business that still have the capacity to hurt.

Last week’s episode, when the Lucky Strike client Lee Garner, a good ol’ boy and closeted homosexual (he had Sal fired in Season 3 when his advances were rebuffed) forced Roger to put on the Santa suit at the office Christmas party, it tore at my heart.

In a beauifully nuanced escalation, the client went from jovial “suggestion” to more insistent request to a chilling command. And it was made all the worse by playing out in front of the entire staff.

And by the fact that it was Roger.

Choosing Pete would have meant nothing. Steeped in self-loathing, Pete would have seen donning the Santa suit as an escape from himself, not to mention a career-enhancer.

Don? Wasn’t gonna happen. And Lee knew it.

Burt Cooper? He already plays the jovial fool.

No...to exert maximum authority and to inflict maximum pain, the client chose Roger...elegant, patrician, unflappable Roger. Roger, whose ties to American Tobacco go back a generation on either side. Roger, whose inherited relationship occasionally lulls him into believing he is something other than a vendor.

Put on the suit, Roger. Put it on so I can remind you of exactly where you stand in the order of things. Put it on for your wife, your partners and all the employees with their stricken expressions to see.

As I sat there and watched in sick fascination, my wife turned to me and asked if anything like that ever happened to me and my partners.

A highlight reel of slights and humiliations, verbal cuffings and inappropriate demands unspooled through my head.

Not that overtly, I said. But do some clients look for and exploit opportunities to make us choose between our dignity and our paycheck? Yes.

We may just have to put on the beard, or carry the sack, or bellow “Ho, ho, ho,” but it’s putting on the Santa suit, it’s still uncomfortable, and the alternative, the unspoken “or else” is still terrifying in its unknowability.