New Wave Marketing 101 - Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Let's agree: marketing today is a mess: amateurs, cowards, copycats, and dead boring B2B. So stop complaining, I say to myself, and offer a solution.

Well, I have one... thanks to Roger Waters and Stephen Mitchell. You know the former Pink Floyd genius but not the latter. Mitchell is the author of numerous books on religion, zen, history, and poetry and did the absolute best translation of the Tao, hands down, bar none (see http://www.stephenmitchellbooks.com/transAdapt/taoTeChing.html). And his translation of Rilke's poetry can bring you to tears if you're so inclined (see http://www.stephenmitchellbooks.com/transAdapt/poetryRilke.html).

The advice these two gave me applies to Zen, music, and marketing: shine in your original brilliance, as Mitchell put it. Shine on you crazy diamond, says Roger Waters.

What does this mean? Well, the keywords are 'original' and 'crazy'. Once upon a time, we were brilliantly unique. Then circumstance, age, and experience made us dull and common—just like marketing today.

But I think Americans, in particular, not only (I took an advanced degree in American Culture, so I'm prejudiced), can slough off the dust with a playful shake (paraphrasing Walt Whitman) and return to our original brilliance.

How? Well... what made you want to be a writer in the first place? No one ever said, "I want to write so I can compose tired, dull ads that are mostly lies." No fledgling graphic artist ever said, "I want to copy other people's work and turn art into a commodity."

None of us ever sought to maintain the status quo. We all, at one time or another, wanted to push the boundaries, didn't we?

I'm not here to explain why we lost our brilliance. I guess most answers would start with fear: of losing our jobs, of not making a payday, of facing angry clients, or of failure itself.

There's no blame to place. Let's all agree that, say, we do something once a week for the sheer hell of it... something extraordinary to flaunt our talents, push the limits, and make people laugh, scream, or cry. Just once a week, let's promise we'll return to our original brilliance... the ideas, talents, and passions that made us want to be in this business in the first place.

If our brilliant work goes nowhere, so what? Unenlightened clients won't like it, but that's their loss, not ours. Let it be our way of showing that commercial success isn't the only thing we care about. Let it be our gift to younger generations... let them see what we once possessed and still possess. Let's show ourselves that we still have talent regardless of age, economic status, or level of success.

Once a week, show your original brilliance -- shine on you crazy diamond!

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?)
 

Marketing 101: If You Meet Buddha on the Road?

Marketing is full or irony. Or maybe it’s just a Zen activity that lends itself to statements like, “If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him.” That’s a simple Zen puzzle which means, in essence, that if you see something you think to be Buddha, kill it (in your mind) because it is not Buddha (and it is keeping you from realizing the REAL Buddha essence that’s inside you).

OK, enough with the puzzle. Here’s my Zen/Marketing puzzle, ironic statement, of the day:

In anything you do vis a vis marketing and advertising, if the majority of people like the concept then it is not new enough and thus not good enough!

Chew on that for a minute.

The wisdom of this statement flows from several ‘facts’ about consumers, be they B2B or B2C.

1.    Consumers only want what’s new and what’s hard to get, they rarely want anything else.

2.    New, by definition, is something unseen and unexpected... the first iPhone, for example.

3.    Now here’s the irony – while people want new they don’t like new, at least not at first. New is disconcerting by the fact that its not immediately understood.

It should be coming clear: when you present an idea for a marketing strategy or new ad, not everyone will like what’s truly new and different because of statements #2 and #3 above. Eventually they may love the idea, but at first they will not; and to support their dislike, the fear of the unknown, they will criticise and naysay to cover for the lack of insight and courage they are demonstrating. It’s human nature. We all do it more times than we care to admit.

So, any supposedly new concept that everyone likes is, by definition, not new enough… and thus given #1 above, it will fail to capture the consumer’s interest.

As the song says ‘Isn’t It Ironic?’ And I can tell you that from an agency point of view, it gets hard to keep presenting new idea after new idea only to have each shot down, or worse, watered down until everyone in the room likes it.

Again – if everyone likes it, it’s not new enough, not good enough. Have the courage to challenge your customers and your management with something that is truly new. The rewards will be great.

Here’s a true story. Many years ago we did a series of proposed ads for a client with a product that measured the temperature on a circuit board through various stages of a reflow oven to guarantee that necessary levels were met and not exceeded and components weren’t either toasted or ready to drop off.

Our headline (which I still recall almost 20 years later):

It’s board #16, 515 through the oven… how do you know it’s been soldered correctly?

This was the clear winner of the six ads we presented on the day. The guy looks at the ads, tapes them up on the wall and asks about a dozen employees to have a look… including, now get this, the woman who happened to pass by as she was sweeping the floors and dusting the offices. Honest to God!

Needless to say he went with the concept they all agreed was best… we vehemently argued our case, but the client gets what the client wants (and will pay for).

The ad did OK… covered the cost of running it. The superior ad, however, would have pushed sales and the company image off the charts (the technology was first rate and could live up to the claim). The company is still in business, still struggling in the middle of the pack… probably still afraid to kill Buddha unless the cleaning lady gives them the nod.