What’s wrong with advertising and agencies? Go Daddy spot says it all

Now that the dust has settled from a mediocre game with very mediocre advertising, and we’ve been inundated with analysis of both, maybe we can see things for what they are.

Simply put: the Go Daddy spot and the analysis that followed, given by ‘advertising and marketing experts,’ together highlight the absurdity of advertising and agencies. Advertising is meant to be part art and part science... isn’t that what we tell ourselves and our clients? These past few days we’ve seen the man behind the curtain and he ain’t pretty or smart.

A few very clear observations we all should have made:

1. The Go Daddy kissing spot was weak by any measure: not very creative, not well done, average at best. Here’s one way you know this -- all the hype the agency put out about the ad prior to the game tells you that they knew it was ho-hum. They built up the ‘45 minutes of kissing’ with a supermodel in hopes of getting the audience to ‘understand’ the coolness of the concept.
 Even more telling, a spokesperson for Go Daddy reported the highest level of phone calls ever during the 24-hours after the ad ran. But s/he wouldn't release any numbers (telling those of us in the industry that this is a little white PR lie).

2. The audacity of some ‘experts’ to claim that, “since we’re still talking about the ad it was successful” is damn nonsense. This is the excuse that advertising losers use to keep their jobs and validate their salaries. If, as an industry, we can’t universally ‘condemn’ the ad for being boring, trite and unimaginative (or better yet, a waste of money) -- then we have no standards by which to judge our work. Rather, we are shysters hiding behind a concept of ‘creativity’ that’s as simplistic as saying, “anything that stands out is good.” If that’s the case, then any 10-year-old can be an ad executive or run an agency.


3. Look, it’s essential to stand out, but that alone is nothing more than being a carnival barker. And for any agency to claim success based on this lowest common denominator is ludicrous. You know, you can ‘stand out’ for being exceptionally stupid or exceptionally crass or exceptionally uninformed. In claiming the lowest ground you are as special as another well-endowed pole dancer in Las Vegas.


4. We either have standards or we’re hacks. Either Picasso is a great artist or his work is no better than any first grader. Either “The Sun Also Rises” is great literature or Barbara Cartland and Ernest Hemingway are just two more pulp fiction writers.


5. Anyone who plays devil’s advocate and claims that “the ad might not have been to your taste but it was successful because we’re still talking about it,” is a fool.

C’mon -- successful executives will tell you that in any meeting you should do something to make your presence known. You don’t want to be anonymous in a room. How, then, to accomplish this? Well, one way would be to prepare for the meeting and ask an intelligent question. Fine. You’ve been remembered. Or you could stand on the table and pull down your pants. That would be very unforgettable. And you’d be a Go Daddy advertising jackass or a partner in Deutsch New York. (The agency is still tap dancing about the ad... rule #1 of PR, never admit you might be wrong.)

NOTE: On one agency site (PPBH) I found this sentence about the Go Daddy ad: “This is the commercial that we all love to hate, but of course can’t help but talk about.” On another site, one ad executive asked if the ad was meant to be 'purposely bad,' and a paradigm of a new style of advertising with built in errors to engage the public.

Do you see what's wrong with agencies?

Left Brain or Right Brain? Stay Right If You Want To Create Mythic, Memorable Marketing

Every once in a while and more often than parents admit, our children teach us things, particularly when they’re grown and have the advantage of a good education. I can say that about both of my children. At times we have conversations that sound like a college classroom. I taught college for a long time and was always lecturing around the house. Now they lecture me to the point that I’m getting headaches trying to keep up.

Here’s the latest revelation.

We were speaking about marketing and advertising and movies and wondered what makes something stick with you… be it a painting, an ad, a joke, a sporting event or just one of life’s random moments?

My argument is usually less scientific, more humanities based, so I’m generally talking about Jungian archetypes and myths: the more mythic an idea, a story, the ‘deeper’ it hits your psychological home and the more likely it will find a place to stick. When a story reaches your archetype you can’t help but pull it in.

My son who is just out of UCLA with an Master’s in Film Production agrees, but thinks it has to do more with right side/left side of the brain. Maybe. After all, it’s common knowledge that the left side is logical and the right side is more intuitive (for right-handed people, of course).

Long story short, after watching Jill Bolte Taylor on TED, she of “Stroke of Insight” fame, he says: “The left side of the brain is ‘me,’ my ideas, my ego, it’s exclusive; while the right side is ‘us’ what unites all humans, what makes us the same… the great ‘Oversoul,’ the universal mind, the collective unconscious.”

I never thought of it quite in those terms.

He continues: “The ‘me’ side of the brain limits information input to only what’s important to me. The left side is full of bullet points. The ‘us’ side, on the other hand, accepts more information; it’s inclusive and pulls in more data so it has a fuller picture of the universe and fills in with a broader, more inclusive brush that adds depth. The right side tells stories.

OK – stay with me. So, the question then becomes, “What makes a master: Bankei, Picasso, Einstein, Muhammad Ali, Hemingway, Godard, or David Ogilvy? Talent and intelligence, sure. But a lot of people are smart as hell and have talent. It’s more than that.

The ‘master’ resides in the right side of the brain, more in the ‘us’ than does the common man. He or she is inclusive and sees unlimited resonant connections… to cultural myths, universal human stories, common symbols and shared fears and joys. That's why a master can write about a female character living in 18th century Madrid and make it stick with you while he sits in 21st century New York. It’s all about what makes us the same. It's 'enlightenment.'

We live, for the most part, in our tightly-focused left, logical world with just a small foray into the right intuitive side. Our daily work is mostly logical. And we need a degree of logic to live. Remember, Taylor’s stroke left her living totally in the right side. She was happy, overjoyed, one with the universe, with heightened senses; yet, she needed help feeding herself.

Problem is, we in America and Western Europe have all but abandoned the intuitive right side and it’s to our demise. The result? We work but feel unfulfilled; we have things but don’t have happiness; we sense something is missing but we don't know what. This was the argument of The Modernists like Pound and Eliot and why Surrealists and Dadaists, (and Lady Gaga, come to think of it) try to blast us out of our rationality. Why Jim Morrison wanted us to break on through to the other side.

Interesting, but what’s the marketing point?

When trying to connect with people – be it through advertising, poetry, novels, art or movies – the ‘master’ tips the balance strongly toward the right side, the intuitive side, the shared experience side.Here's where memorable emotions are made.

The rational side wants to bludgeon people with facts; it wants to win the argument at all costs. The intuitive side simply wants to point out universal truths we may have missed. And when we see these new connections we’re astounded, overwhelmed, sometimes moved to tears… and these ‘revelations’ stay in our psyche.

“The Godfather” sticks while “Maid in Manhattan” does not. “Where’s the beef?” is a phrase known by 300 million Americans, many of whom weren’t born when the old lady made the commercial. But that simple line cut through the rhetorical bull of most advertising and remains a part of contemporary myth and symbolism.

A mythic movie or advertisement literally remakes the relationship between the artist and the viewer, between the consumer and the brand. And this relationship cannot be shaken by all the facts in Wikipedia or the Encyclopedia Britannica.

When you’re writing and trying to evoke a reaction you need to tip the scales strongly to the right side of your brain and lighten up with the left side. Hemingway did. Einstein did. Great athletes do. It's not easy but it is essential.

Remember: You can’t really change anyone’s perceptions until you connect at a deep human level. Facts aren't made to do that.

Let me end with a quote from Mr. Einstein:

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

Or my favorite:

“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”

Great art, great marketing help reveal the ongoing, universal monomythic miracle. 

("Monomythic?" you ask. "Is that even a word?" Hmmm… you haven’t read your Joyce, have you?)
 

New Wave Marketing 101: Hemingway, Cezanne and What To Leave Out

This is deep: so much so that at first glance it seems easy. It’s not. It sits at the heart of artistic and creative endeavors, not the least of which is the marketing narrative.

Hemingway claims that he developed his terse, poetic style by looking at Cezanne’s work. That sounds a bit romantic and perhaps apocryphal. [We all realize that great artists often give enigmatic answers because they don’t like the idea of talking about art.]

Later, Hemingway said that the key to good writing is understanding what to leave out. An expert can leave things out because he knows them… the less knowledgeable and less talented leave out important things and include the obvious and the unnecessary.

These ideas mesh if you think long and hard.

As an impressionist/post-impressionist, Cezanne was obviously not trying to be realistic. Not every detail had to be exact or included. He painted only those colors and strokes and images that were needed to create the physical effect on the optic nerves and the emotional impact he was seeking. Not one stroke more or less.

You already know that Hemingway was the same. Read “Hills Like White Elephants” and notice how little description it takes to convey the emotional tension between the man and woman. At first glance, it appears that Hemingway has told you nothing of importance. The dialog is like eavesdropping on a couple at dinner. “Would you like a drink?” “No, I’m not thirsty.” “Hungry?” “Perhaps a little.” “It’s a simple thing, really.” “Yes, it’s always so simple.”

There’s seemingly nothing there, yet we’re emotional wrecks by the end of the story. That’s art.

We know that good marketing is both factual and emotional and I believe more emotional than facts because these days consumers hear so many contradictory facts that we’ve lost all scientific certainty.

So let’s say we’re trying to build an emotional connection with our audience by describing a scene… a couple on a park bench. Think – there are thousands of words and pictures we can use to describe the park, the sky, the couple, the bench, their clothing down to the color of their socks… skin texture, grass, birds, squirrels, etc. It’s endless.

You’re getting it. The artist takes a long hard look and chooses to describe only those things that best convey the emotion he or she is seeking… let’s say one close-up photo of the couple’s feet barely touching and short descriptions of their posture, the rickety bench seat and a child that goes running past. That’s it! From all the limitless possibilities (again, the weather, the sky, their complexions, the sounds, the smells, virtually millions of things) the artist has chosen the three or four essentials that few others have noticed, and has left out all the rest. That’s Cezanne; that’s Hemingway; that’s great marketing storytelling and design.

Most of us include too much of the obvious… and ironically we still manage to leave out the essential bits that someone like Hemingway picks up on. Why? Because he ‘knows’ about couples the way Cezanne knows how two colors placed side by side make a third. All the rest is just so much unnecessary bull that clouds the mind and kills emotion.

Plus, Hemingway and Cezanne took the time to really see; and they never describe the obvious things we all grasp at first glance. To do so is to be trite and tired.

Marketing is the same. You need to be an expert in humanity and emotions and have a keen eye for subtleties that contain the whole truth (all of this takes years); you don’t really need to be an expert on the product because you’re selling emotion more than facts – and consumers can easily find any fact they like.

Tell and show the consumer only those few, simple things to best convey emotion – and little else (facts here and there are fine, depending upon the product, if it’s B2B or B2C).

Be more like Cezanne and Hemingway and less like the directions you get in a box of IKEA furniture.

NOTE: This has nothing to do with length! It might take you 1,000 words and 10 pictures to convey a simple emotional truth. Rather, this has to do with your ability to get to the core of a product or a service or a cause with as few unnecessary words and obvious images as possible.

No one said this would be easy.