The casualties of improvement

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Nothing that contentious about Newton's phrase, you wouldn't have thought, excepting the fact that all too many brands seem to find this impossible to acknowledge. More on this in a moment.

There often seems to be a sense of denial that anything that precedes an improvement - especially if this is an improvement over a brand / corporation / industry's own current offering - is inferior.

Take a look at this article on blood pressure (BP) management. The final paragraph is a masterstroke in undermining the advancement that's just been crowed about: 'Current practice is not wrong'. Yet the article has just talked about how current practice can lead to greater instance of stroke because fluctuations in BP are considered ok.

How can that be desirable? And how can both situations possibly be right? Either the current practice is, in fact, sub-optimal, or the new one is unproven. But to say that it is 'not wrong' fills me with worry.

To bring to bear another current gripe of mine, that of the bastard HMRC wanting to charge me for merely breathing it seems, perhaps I should state that my tax return for the last financial year was 'not wrong'. See whether the binary-minded crones from Maidstone, who have initials rather than real names, can struggle with that kind of language.

And now for that brand example: we do a lot of marketing for medical device manufacturers and they constantly - and understandably - strive to make better products. But the sheer amount of brain-ache caused by thinking of ways in which to say that a new product is better - but not that the old product is in any way worse - is beginning to rile me.

Yet what is so wrong in acknowledging advancement? Surely the inexorable march of technological and scientific progress is to be lauded?

I, for one, would find little solace in taking a drug via a device according to a treatment protocol that were all deemed 'not wrong'.

But: oh no. It would be 'damaging to the brand' to say that the new device in question is, in fact, 'simpler than our last model'. But then the brand (mis)managers in this case are also too chicken-shit to say that they're 'simpler than the competition's'.

So exactly WHOSE product are they simpler than? Or are they just 'simpler' than trying to insert the drug into your vein using a wooden spoon or a kango drill?

Thank [insert god here] for the common sense of Apple. The Mac Pro described on this page unashamedly says that it's 'nearly two times faster than the previous generation'.

Good. I like better. And faster. And I'm happy to dispense with the worse. Otherwise life gets too grey and cluttered with stuff in the not right/not wrong middle ground.

Knee-jerk banning

As Peter Griffin from Family Guy might say, 'what really grinds my gears' in this country at the moment is the immediate reaction on the part of Powers That Be to ban things.

Banning is dangerous in two main ways: it says 'you, the individual, are no longer free to do this'. And it also risks driving activities underground.

It's also a pretty blunt instrument as, let's face it, most Powers That Be tend to lack the resources to police their own bans. Plenty of under-16s have sex in the UK, for instance, despite its being illegal.

But aside from the rather fundamental issues of freedom and operability, there's the craw-sticking, gear-grinding feeling of knee-jerk stupidity.

Taking alcohol first, which is fast becoming a 'demerit good' to rival that of tobacco, I read an insightful article today on how alcohol advertising is being used by the Health Select Committee as a scapegoat to cover up the real problems behind increased alcohol consumption.

The subject of the article, Tim Ambler, posits that in a mature market such as alcohol consumption, the effect of advertising Carlsberg, for instance, would be to drive brand preference rather than causing people to drink beer in the first place - as opposed to tea, perhaps.

Analysing the HSC's decisions further, the 9pm watershed also seems a bit bonkers. Do we honestly believe that ten year olds, who are classed as at risk of drinking alcohol - for whatever reason, be it lack of parental control, peer pressure, glamour motivation - are tucked up in bed at 8.59pm?

This is not a useful ban: this is a ban that says: we don't know the real causes, instead we're just going to be seen to be doing something. And banning it has the air of something useful.

Looking now at a totally different example - today's banning of Islam4UK's march in Wooton Bassett - it's clear that Alan Johnson also subscribes to the 'if unsure, ban it' credo.

Whether or not this march is tantamount to spitting in the eyes of the family members who have lost loved ones in the war in Afghanistan, or whether we think this is a justifiable response to foreign policy ... or whether the group really does promote terrorism (which is the most mootable of points itself), the likely truth is that banning the march will do little more (if successful) than make the event go more smoothly on the day.

I'd argue instead that the media attention so far has already served the group's purpose, and the fact that Omar Bakri Muhammed has also indicated that this is a group whose efforts, if banned, will be driven underground, is also suggestive of a failed meta-strategy.

The real, underlying causes of each of the above examples are without doubt hard to ascertain, and they're not going to be attributable to a single convenient insight that might have been lurking undetected at the bottom of some policy wonk's sock drawer.

Referring back to the alcohol topic, an article in yesterday's New Scientist examined the difficulty that scientists have had in locating the underlying cause of its misuse - as well as identifying some of the convenient 'truths' that have been popularly aired along the way. Alcoholism is closer to being understood, the answers are multifarious and complicated, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve being reached.

And it certainly doesn't mean that we should be fobbed off by meaningless bans: they encumber the pursuit of the real truths, penalise many more than deserve it, and above all (for the sake of this article) actively demote the infinitely more valuable culture of rigorous and intelligent thinking.

Placebo morality

There was a fascinating article in Wired Magazine in August about the increasing potency of placebo.

On the face of it, that sounds like mad chatter: a pill that is little more than sugar increasing in efficacy? With no pharmacologically provable mode of action or reason why?

Physician: steel thyself. Drugs are not your only tools any more.

We could easily adduce philosopho-quackery commentary along similar lines to the author's conclusion, namely that: 'the brain is really clever' and 'we don't understand it all, Horatio'.

But that only adds fuel to the fire of pseudo-science, and as anyone with a Hotmail account will know, there are all too many opportunities to increase your penis size with a blue diamond pill made out of bits of dandelion and alsatian. Or worse.

At least, that was the reason I fled Hotmail for Gmail.

I digress. Because the thought I wanted to ponder in this post was not precisely about the above phenomenon, but about the moral conundrum of offering someone with a life-threatening condition a sugar pill.

Even in the face of (apparently) more placebo peculiarities like this one, when you're dealing with illnesses as serious as cancer there will still be a statistically significant number of people who will think they're being given a pill that could make them better, only for it (up until recently) to do bugger all.

The moral conundrum is made more difficult still when you compare people's willingness to take part in trials where placebos are given. This article, on a sample of women asked to be recruited to an HRT trial, suggests that - at least in situations that are not immediately life-threatening - willingness does indeed drop.

This is not just because of perceived risk to self, either, but also the sense that the altruistic and research purpose of the trial would somehow be less.

And all this is, to my mind at least, understandable. I just don't comprehend the fact that most trials are against placebo rather than an existing competitor drug - where you would at least have some hope of being treated.

It's not even as if proving yourself against sugar pills is as easy as it once was...

3rd March 2010 ADDITION: a interesting post on other Placebo morality issues - http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/03/placebo-effect-ethics-medical-treatment.html

Barometer dogs

I'm a big fan of alternative indicators.

About a decade ago, my Scottish economist friend and man of extremes, 'The Highlander', declared his favourite alternative economic indicator to be 'the number of cranes visible on the skyline of any given city'. The more cranes, the better the local economy.

This Monday, I spent the day at Pfizer's swanky Richard Rogers designed UK headquarters in Walton Oaks - which is its own village. Sod any of that being located in a village. Simply create one for yourself and use that fact, together with your sinuous, swirling, glass and steel atrium in main reception as an alternative indicator of your success.

On the way home just before 5pm I was main-lining some Radio 4 comfort listening in the car, and an article on 'dogs' cropped up, heralded by Loudon Wainwright squawking about how they're man's best friend. 

Original, Loudon, thanks for that announcement.

But, despite an unusually poor turn from the sire of such a talented musical family, I've started liking dogs more in the past few months as I've been introduced to some really rather splendid critters who've proved beyond reasonable doubt that they're not all slobber, bark and fart... 

...so I continued listening.

I was told that, since Tony Blair came to power in 1997, sales of cat food have overtaken those of dog food, with the inevitable conclusion that cats have overtaken dogs as the UK's most popular pet. 

The reporter went on to discuss the hackneyed attributes of feline vs. canine; about how one will spurn you while the other will always be waiting for your return; how with one you never know where you stand whereas the other is yours for life. 

He expanded out from there to observe (quite correctly, in my parents' view) that Labour, under Blair in particular, have been friends of the Town but not of the Country. Fans of fast and transient living rather spouses of long-baked traditions. 

Take-away vs. casserole.

And from the above points he rapidly drew the inference that the decline in popularity of dogs is a direct indication of how we, under this Labour government, have abdicated our sense of long-term responsibility to faithful friends and chosen instead the independent, sleeker and more changeling ways of pretty young felines. 

Dogs, he felt, were alternative indicators of a society that has lost its values. Slobber and all.

Polar bears and poor fundraising

This is a disturbing ad. And one that's garnering a lot of publicity today as the residents of Tunbridge Wells reach for their green ink and fashion numerous letters of complaint (365 to the ASA at last count) about animal cruelty and unnecessary violence.

Plane Stupid is a loose affiliation of climactically concerned individuals who want to stop excessive plane travel. They don't think the government is doing enough and so they're taking 'direct action' to stop it. 'Shocking' ads like these are a pretty good way of getting their point across.

You get the picture.

But what annoys me most is the utter lack of thought that's been given to the 'what happens next' bit. The fundraising bit. The pay-off. The proposition. The call to action.

Call it what you will.

So here I am, potentially sharing their concerns about plane travel, and so I find out who they are and go to their website. All very logical stuff. So TV ad has, if you like, worked. I'm happy to be one of those people for whom this works; someone who's not so turned off by the violence that I jam my fingers in my ears, cover my eyes, sing la la la and do nothing (and there'll be plenty of those).

Once I get there I naturally want to find out what they do. The 'about us' bit shows them waving a big banner of protest. Fine, I get that. They do protests. They do 'direct action' as well, which is a bit murkier and smacks of 'Fathers for Justice'.

But what should I, as a concerned individual, be expected to do - and why?

This is where the stupidity resides. Because they ask me to take a leap of faith. In their words:

'So we're asking for your money, which we'll spend on an action next spring, to remind them that we won't take their airport expansion plans lying down'

Now, hang on, you're not even going to tell me what this action is?! I've come this far and all you can be bothered to do in return for asking for my cash is promise 'an action' sometime next year?

What will it be? Another banner? A protest? More polar bear ads? How much do they cost? I've no idea.

Sorry, not good enough. Marketing - and fundraising - 'fail'.

If you're going to create a stir, at least make sure you've got a reasonable opportunity for people to side with you and do something meaningful.

Otherwise you might as well be a bunch of con artists, trying to extort cash from us on the flimsiest of premises. (Now there's an idea.)

Or is the mere fact that it's been 'on telly' enough to legitimise you? Hmm. Maybe that's what you're relying on.

I wish I could have written this in green ink...

Lipstick on pigs

I like this ad, but then it's hard not to: friendly music, beautiful people, dramatic landscape, emotive subject, touch of humour yada yada yada. Oh, and it's made in Argentina, so there's that Latin sense of flair we can allude to should we want to wallow in the backstory.

I found out about it from this site. They send me an email each week and occasionally I deign to take a peek at their proffering. And the reason I don't usually bother is the reason for this blog entry.

See, I reckon it's piss easy to make ads about chewing gum. You've got thousands of metaphors in the bank to draw on; you've got the obvious 'mouth' imagery to resort to; buying a stick of it isn't going to bankrupt you, and to the best of my knowledge, there are very few chewie manufacturers involved in sub-Saharan oil deals, military coups, drug denial, or who test their products on fluffy white bunnies.

Oh, hang on, maybe I'm being a bit unfair. Because someone in the last couple of years did make a chewing gum ad that courted controversy - remember the one about the Afro chap with a loud-haler? Apparently there were complaints to the ASA because he was being a bit racially stereotypical or somesuch nonsense. (I would link to the ad here but I can't remember the brand name, and YouTube don't seem to think that the search terms 'chewing gum ad afro loud-haler' are specific enough to conjure it up.)

Anyway, back to the point in question. The job of advertising can be described in as many ways as there are marketers alive, but the definition I'm going to use today is along the lines of: dramatising a brand's particular feature in a way that increases its audience's propensity to, at some stage, buy it.

So, well done, Topline, you've suggested that if you chew this gum it will make you so kissable that heaven and earth won't be able to pry you from your lover. And we've kind of enjoyed seeing this happen because it appeals to lots of emotions and senses - and that's why you've been awarded an average of 4.73 out of 5 by the voting public.

That, by the way, is a very high score.

Try achieving that with an ad about flu. Or cheap insurance (with the notable Meerkat exception). Or, in my case, ads about weird and wonderful diseases and drugs (usually ridden with side-effects, and costing a billion times more than a stick of chewing gum).

My point is that when you ask the public whether they like an ad, or reckon it's any 'good', they'll almost always go with the ads that involve humour, sex, big images, romance, aspirational and beautiful couple and so on. So if the product feature that you're dramatising is a 'nice taste' or 'fresher breath' then you've got a lot of potential stories and metaphors at your creative fingertips.

I doubt very much whether Top 5 Ad Forum will ever include a press ad about cures for pig diahorrea, growth hormone injections or replacement hips.

All subject matters are not created equal.

A challenge for us in the pharma marketing industry, maybe, but also an indictment on the easy job that 'Top 5' has.

And that's why I don't bother visiting the site that much: it's all pretty predictable.

The pursuit of happyness

I originally thought I’d use the above image only really for the film's name, and the fact that it suits this post’s thought, namely defining happiness.

But the more I remembered about the film, the more I felt it was appropriate. See if you agree...

I was listening to Evan Davis interview Warren Buffett on the Today programme a few days ago, and peppered within the discussion of his immense wealth were several aphorisms regarding happiness. Not a massively new tack to take, that of money vs. happiness, but never mind just this once.

The quotation I remembered was from Buffett, citing Bertrand Russell: ‘Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get’.

Not a new thought either, but, I felt, succinctly captured.

So much of what we (or, at least I) do is for the thrill of the chase. The end in itself may be totally benign or understandable, but do we really want what lies post-challenge?

This could apply to the chasing of ladies (a splendidly noble pastime) or, equally, the chasing and nailing of a business deal (less noble, but kind of necessary from time to time).

This is probably a more personal reflection on the way I’ve lived my life to date, but it’s been occupying my mind a little too much for comfort this week.

Discussing the concept with local sage-esse Alison, she said that Buddhists would make the distinction between pleasure and happiness. Sometimes the latter doesn’t always involve the former as regularly as we’d perhaps like, but there’s something intrinsically more worthwhile in pursuing it anyway.

We wondered whether these could be plausibly split short-term / long term; tactical / strategic.

Maybe.

So all of this led me to the conclusion that I’m a bit too motivated by success and pleasure right now. Do I really know what I want that will ultimately make be happy? Does it exist, or should we just try to achieve as un-broken a series of pleasures as possible?

Does it always resolve itself in having kids and a settled life? To what extent should one compromise on the partner one chooses / chooses you? Dammit, should one even compromise, or is it necessary to achieve the kids / settled-ness bit?

Metaphorically buggered if I know, but the fact that the thought won’t leave is probably a hint in itself.

The art of travel

I was reminded of the tagline of this Eurostar ad while journeying arounf Switzerland over the last couple of days: You carry your journey with you.

The campaign ran about three years ago, from memory, and although TBWA's execution of the ad is up for debate (as, frankly, are all ads; sod it, as is anything), the tagline stayed in my mind.

At the time I thought it sounded a terribly whimsical idea; I mean, you don't do that literally, and, although I'd travelled quite a bit, I'd never really thought about how the 'moving' bit affected the rest of my day.

And maybe it's a sign of getting older, or having to get on a plane every other week, but the insight behind it has finally struck me as totally accurate. Journeys are tiring - not the moving, but certainly the queueing - and it does affect your frame of mind for the meeting you're about to have or the extent to which you can be scintillating company over dinner.

But I think that I finally cracked it on this trip: I managed not to let the travelling encumber me too much. And here's why:

1. Leave a few minutes earlier for each connection or meeting; for someone who considers himself relatively skilled in the Art of Brinkmanship, this was a real change of strategy, but it made me a lot less sweaty on arrival.

2. Collect pretty notes: I now have a collection of about 5 different currencies in my wallet, so don't have to worry about finding a cash point or someone not accepting cards.

3. Go native - even if only for a sentence: I've mastered a few throwaway lines in French and German (and they didn't have these in Baudelaire crit essays at university) so I can actually make a cabbie or hotel porter crack a smile in some local argot.

4. I keep laptop, novel and Economist with me at all times - so can flick between them according to mood. It's important to indulge yourself a bit, and just because it's work time doesn't mean you're always in the right mood for worky-work. You did get up extra early, after all...

5. Spotify: I salute you: new tunes, on the iPhone, no download needed, reflecting mood changes instantly.

6. Wheeled cases: zero backache, but make sure you're listening to music to avoid hearing the swearing as people trip over your extended rear footprint.

7. Near universal WiFi at airports. Perfect for updating blogs, as I'm doing in Geneva International right now, and slightly less Byzantine in the log-on process than was the case in days of yore.

8. Perfecting the belt / liquid / laptop / shoe / coin removal at security. It's about as enjoyable as a jab in your inner ear, but try to take some Schadenfreude in watching those who get all flustered / a good groping from the men in gloves. Whatever it takes to find some inner Zen.

9. Don't get up from your plane seat until most people have left the craft: you'll be standing with your neck crooked longer than you think as some inept staff member tries to line up the step mechanism with the door. This does not, however, apply to JFK airport where you need to forget all politeness and dash out as fast as possible to avoid losing vital years of your life at immigration.

10. Play Matt Hindley's Escalator Game: you've got until you reach the top of your escalator to decide which girl you'd most like to sleep with on the escalator going down. Leave it too late and you'll be saddled with the last one you see. Serious game, that.

Right, am off to the boarding gate...

Temporary utility

Above you'll see two iPhone apps:

- one from Carling, the famous 'iPint' that used the motion sensor and hi-res graphics of the iPhone to make a simple game that most people seemed to download as a way of showcasing the phone's capabilities

- and one from Spotify, the internet music service that allows you to listen to whatever you want for free (with ads) or for a tenner month with no ads at all. Now available as an iPhone app, it recognises your username and picks up where you left off listening to music on any other computer you were signed into.

Both very clever, both capturing the 'technische Zeitgeist', and both offering a degree of 'utility', as economists might say.

It's this U-word that I'd like to think about, albeit briefly. Thing is, Spotify is changing the way I listen to music. I don't have to clog up my laptop memory with songs any more, I don't have to pay a penny more than £9.99 a month for all the music I could ever want to listen to.

And the fact that it's an app on my iPhone means I'll probably use it way into the future. It's got massive utility - in every sense.

I also had the iPint as an app for a while. I don't any longer. it wasn't bad - in fact, I got a lot of laughs out of it and felt slightly more impressed with Carling as a result (although I didn't rush out and buy their lager, weak piss that it is). It's just had its day, that's all.

Its utility was short lived, and as brands experimenting with apps, maybe that's all we should aim for right now.

Do it well, but accept that very few brands have a right - or even the ability - to achieve long term utility as an application.

OR ... do we do as the Nikes of this world have done and invest in a long term utility platform?

Whatever the weather, to approach branded apps either takes commitment or the acceptance that, at best, your app will probably generate a short-term buzz and then be forgotten about as the choice widens and deepens.

The rougher the better

Unless you've been living in a cave without wifi for the last few months, you've probably seen and maybe even smirked at the proliferation of rough sketches, mostly rude, that succinctly send up aspects of our increasingly technological and politically correct society.

I suspect that these will, in the style of Family Guy, become more risque as time goes by and the appetites of their fans become whetted for ever more dangerous or obscure humour.

But it does strike me that this cartoon strip sketch genre, having featured in daily newspapers for so many years, has upped its game with the likes of Modern Toss and Cyanide and Happiness. They're, to my mind, a whole load funnier and more pointed than some of the strips you see in Metro or The Mirror, which seem drab even without comparison.

And the joy of the obscure, chillingly and scratchily explored by David Shrigley, is the perfect antidote to the annoyingly perfect corporate images we're used to seeing.

And websites such as www.b3ta.com continue to be brilliant in sending them all up.

And maybe that's just it: we like these quick, rough, insightful images precisely because it's not what we're used to seeing.

They hit on a truth, and with the minimum of effort succeed in conveying a thought.

In which case, we're really missing a trick in advertising. If the fundamental tactic we use is disruption, then we're not half as good as disrupting as we might like to think. We spend more time perfecting things so that they blend in with every other perfect image and feel far removed from stuff that really matters.

Why not be a bit rough? Why do they want to look all mendaciously sleek? Let's face it, most of them don't answer the phone or give good customer service, so in truth they're pretty damn flawed in any case.

When Joel Veitch was commissioned by Mastercard to produce the Switch/Maestro ads a few years back, I really hoped that they would usher in an era of less perfect ads. They were memorable precisely because they were a bit weird and unexpected.

Oh well.