Analogue and Digital’s vocabulary gap

A frequent observation is that industries create their own
vocabularies to prevent new entrants and maintain the status quo.

Lawyers do it.

Builders do it.

And ad folk definitely do it.

And with the advent of digital marketing this became an issue for old
school TV types.

But that’s not really very interesting is it?

We all know that already.

What I want to talk about is the mindset that the simpler vocabulary
we use every day puts us into.

And this is where the real difference between digital and analogue
advertising comes in.

Traditional advertising has always been about the following:
– metaphor
– smilie
– exaggeration
Put simply, it’s about finding interesting ways to say something.

Digital on the other hand is about:
– demonstrating
– helping
– facilitating
Put simply, it’s focus is on doing.

And this is where the problem in advertising agencies who want to do
digital lies.

They have vocabulary gap.

They have lots of very talented people who think of interesting ways
to say things but struggle with the vocabulary of doing things.

And it leaves a wide open space for competitors to fill.

Agencies who accept that they’ll probably never do incredible entertainment.

Agencies that are more interested in making something that might be
useful or informative.

The irony is that most agencies have a load of people who can bridge this gap.

Who are equally at home in saying and doing.

It’s just that they don’t normally have the word “creative” in their job title.

Boredom and the joys of texture

“Boredom has always been one of the essential ingredients of sport.
Great yawning burps of migrainous frustration are the canvas against
which the finest excitements reveal themselves. Boredom is our staple:
the pasta to sport’s ragu, the bolus of rice that pillows its sizzling
bhuna. In practice teams habitually dismissed as being boring will
turn out to be anything but. George Graham’s notoriously boring early
90s Arsenal, for example, who under close observation turned out to
have such an air of reductive and unyielding nihilism that after a
while their boredom became oddly, guiltily thrilling.

“Let’s face it, being a multibillionaire must be a fairly glazed and
textureless experience, a business of shuttling continually between
airless, flat-screen, marbled, surround-sound bidet, iPod-socket,
seven-star hotel suites inside a chinchilla fur-lined helicopter while
wearing a solid gold hat. This is an existence without jagged edges.
It is in many ways the exact opposite of sport, with all its
galvanising fears and uncertainties. There is no sensible reaction to
becoming a billionaire’s plaything, but it must be a deadening – as
well as air-punching, high-fiving champagne-popping – experience.
After all, what could be more boring than having everything you ever
wanted handed to you on a plate?”

From the wonderful pen of Barney Ronay.

Mum, this is what I do.

henrylambert.com
+44 7941 588834

Just 1% better

“If there is a solution to England’s persistent under-performance at
major tournaments – if it is under-performance, which some, notably
Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, dispute – it probably lies in
ditching the messiah complex and instead turning to the theory of
arguably the most successful British sports coach of the last decade,
Dave Brailsford. Rather than looking to one great individual to lift
everybody else, he talks of “improving performance by the aggregation
of marginal gains. It means finding a 1% margin for improvement in
everything you do”.

The Guardian

Because bike racks get chilly too.

Your problem is the most interesting thing about you

Every brand in the world has a different problem.

But nearly every answer seems the same.

“Make people fall in love with you.”

So out spews fluffy brand ads that your mum/girlfriend/sister (after
all it’s probably aimed at one of them) can’t remember ever seeing.

But there’s a way to stop the saccharine rot.

Go back to the real problem.

Ask why a few times.

And then work out what your brand can do about it.

While the problem might be about increasing
penetration/share/profitability, it’ll be specific to your category,
to the context, to your audience.

So Old Spice might have had the same fundamental business problem as
Little Chef (high awareness but low and declining market share), but
the cultural context they operate in, the category and their audiences
all make the problem unique.

And a unique problem means a unique solution.

So that’s where you get to differentiate.

No one else in your category will have the exact same problem.

And no one else in your category will be have the exact same context,
history or reason for being.

Brazillification

From now on I want to be known only as:

Link

 

Last day in the old chair. I can’t wait to try the new one.

Nothing Good Comes Easy

via othercrowd

There’s honour in suffering.

“Cyclists talk about suffering a lot. There’s honour in suffering, in
digging deeper than you thought possible and carrying on against
screams of protest from every part of your body. It shows rivals that
you can’t be broken and team-mates that their work and altruism was
not in vain.”

From Michael Barry:

“In my teens, I found the point where suffering on the bike became
pleasure. Pushing myself to physical and mental extremes I arrived
home elated. To find the sublime there is a balance where elements of
pain and passion become equal: on a bike, pedalling in the
environment, a human being can find divinity.”

The Guardian