As a writer, I find one of my natural instincts is to resist perceived wisdom. Sure as eggs is eggs, if somebody were to say something is true I find myself taking the opposite view. In defence, I might argue that it helps me resist cliches and view things differently.

Mostly it makes me annoying during any discussion.

One such slice of “truth” is that the old as-seen-on-tv sticker aids sales. Years ago, whenever I saw one, I would wonder at the sort of people who could be swayed by such a message, as though the marvel of TV was enough to add lustre to a product.

I was missing the point of course. This wasn’t one of those cliches to avoid or subvert. I only had to be asked to purchase one of those nice gooey chocolate puddings “off the telly” to understand, on a practical level, that it acted like a pack shot, aiding recognition to drive in-store sales.

That such a simple trick could have eluded me, that its use could be misconstrued as some kind of old fashioned trope best avoided, showed me the importance of not reacting against everything simply because it was in common usage. It is like avoiding rhyming couplets in a poem on the basis of them having been the mainstay of poetic form for hundreds of years. If they are appropriate,use them. Use them for the effect they have.

When exploring the form your message is to take don’t dismiss the obvious. And don’t throw out those “new and improved” stickers yet either.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

All too often marketing tries to push out a message without asking what it is the customer wants to hear.

It’s understandable. Of course it is. I want everybody in the world to know that Head First can produce really exciting and effective creative. I can shout about it. I can stop product managers I’ve been stalking for months and tell them that. It won’t necessarily convince them though. Or even interest them.

They might, for example, be a little more interested in whether we can be cost effective, or manage projects efficiently, or meet deadlines. No, no and no.

Only joking, of course we can.

The point, of course, is I can’t just force my message on them. It’s why some companies mistake this message with “brand” but that’s a topic for another rant time.

Discovering what it is the customer wants to hear means gaining insight. It means admitting that not every customer will be interested in what you have to offer because insight often tells us we have nothing in common.

But when we do have something in common, when understanding what it is they need leads to a better understanding of how our product can meet that need well that, that is exciting. That is the start of a bond, a shared value which, after all, is what brand is really about.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

When it comes to understanding technology I like to think of myself as no slouch. I’ve done my share of programming from Z80 Assembly to Action Script and I know how to set the video recorder. The washing machine baffles me and fax machines just plain annoy (which side down again?) but overall I’d say I’m comfortable with using it and discussing it.

Yet sometimes I understand how my mum feels.

The big companies mostly get it. Apple, Canon, IBM, even Cisco – they all know that you don’t advertise the technology, you advertise what it can do for you. What  works for hair care products doesn’t, oddly enough, work for products that boast the most advanced engineering processes on the planet. Maybe Intel’s next chip should feature pentapeptides, I hear they are very good.

Many companies don’t take this approach. Maybe it’s because everything is vetted by the chief technology officer whose knowledge built the product to what it is today or maybe it’s just a desire to impress us, like when the owner of a new car tells us what the engine is capable of. Hey, as long as it’s capable of moving then all I’m really interested in is whether or not it will keep my arse warm in winter.

Recently, a job slipped its way into Head First. It was technology based but not game related. It was the kind of job we love because it enables us to apply our experience in new ways.

Trouble is, at first I didn’t have a clue what the product was.

They said their product is “the market leading social media platform for brands and agencies.”

I said, “what?”

I felt a bit thick.

If I bought it, what was I buying? Was it something I installed or something I stood on?

What did it enable me to do?

I wasn’t sure.

After five minutes I understood. They built websites on which their customers could share ideas, stories, videos – anything they wanted to really.

So I said, “ah” (I did, I really did) “you mean that with your software I can be my own Facebook?”

They said “yes”.

So why didn’t they just say that?

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

It was the last place you might expect to experience marketing in action but really, it should have been amongst the first.

When I think of the word “marketing” I think of companies such as Nike or Coca Cola. Companies with millions to spend on advertising. I think of acronyms like ABTL and AIDA. I think of (and this is probably where I’m completely alone) ads directed by John Woo and the high production values of London agencies.

I also think of Head First of course.

Every time I think in that way I know I’m making the same mistake many agencies make. The same mistake many marketing people make.

I’m thinking marketing is somehow a profession.

So back to the first place I ought to have expected to experience marketing in action.

Back to my local butchers.

At the weekend I had gone to buy a cow-full of meat for a barbecue. I needed just enough burgers to pay my way into the party and gain me access to whatever booze other people had brought along.

The butcher, however, had other ideas.

It began with a simple request: “let me just show you our special offer in the cake section”. After that I was hit with a fast patter of friendly sales talk, low key enough to not be pushy and yet slick enough to make me salivate with everything those cakes could offer me. He was friendly, he was chatty, he was inquisitive. He was more than counter staff, he was a marketeer.

Two minutes later I was walking out (after paying) with far more than I’d intended to.

And I felt great about it.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. These kind of shops, rare though they might me, are the heart and soul of what marketing is. True to the origins of the concept they remain rooted in the traditions of the ordinary market place. They are fuelled by the spirit of patter and bargains, of quick deals and friendly banter. They are expert in knowing the customer and adjusting their pitch to remain appropriate. In an age where marketing companies claim to herald a new age of social marketing, they practise it on a personal level the likes of which social websites spend millions of tech dollars trying to emulate.

If you ever want to write an ad or plan a marketing campaign, my advice is to butcher it.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

It’s like those novels that roll along in a particular fashion that is easy to read, contains all the right references to history (usually as studied to A level) contain a shocking twist and which turn out, nine times in ten, to be written by someone with an MA in creative writing. They’re not bad,  quite the opposite in fact; they are just all targeted towards a very specific audience.

Advertising can also fall into this groove. Many of us want to write a VW ad or a Honda ad and, as a result, a tone can be detected when it really oughtn’t to be.

I have written headlines I don’t like. They don’t appeal to me in the slightest. And every time I write such a line, I feel as though I’ve done something well. Something appropriate. Because I’m not every type of consumer and some products aren’t aimed at me. And even when they are, they aren’t just aimed at me.

Creatives need to look beyond “like”. That often means understanding the kind of person we wouldn’t, under normal circumstances, be seen dead associating with.

Recently I overheard two young women talking on a train. They were well educated, studying to work in Law from the sounds of it, and clearly financially quite privileged.

They were talking about women who had a tattoo on their back, the sort just above their backsides and which can often be seen peeking out from under a short cut T shirt.

You might know what I’m going to call these tattoos, I hadn’t heard of them referred to in this way before but you might.

They called them “tramp stamps”.

It was a magnificent, condescending put-down. Not just of the women who had themselves tattooed in that way but of a whole class of people. By drawing attention to them so quickly, I was given a clear picture of the clothes, the music, the backgrounds of these women.

I don’t mix with anybody who could be snubbed in that way but I do know I’d be able to write ads for them. And enjoy doing so. Because I know they have their likes and dislikes, their cultural reference points and motivating triggers the same as the two women whose words so comprehensively dismissed them.

There is more to writing ads than coming up with a clever line to appeal to broadsheet readers and University students. When we write ads for well educated clients and ignore the wonderfully diverse audience out there, creatives can be just as dismissive.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

There was a period, a long period, back in the history of advertising when certain things held true. An ad could give advice, for example, or have an opinion and the agency would be pretty certain it would be received as intended. If they made a claim that doctors smoked cigarettes because they were good for your health then you and I would simply just accept this as a fact. If the agency, on behalf of their corporate overlords, assured us that the oil pouring out of a hole in the seabed was actually beneficial to the sea life, well, who could doubt the printed word?

Authority was absolute. At least for the purposes of selling.

The change in behaviour, however, was coming. Our relationship with consumerism and the companies which provided us with product after product was bound to be affected by mass media which showed us different cultures and the impact of our actions upon them. We were given the means through which we could see, test and then question the decisions our political leaders made and we could organise like never before.

These insights into how authority operated affected our relationship with advertising. Like seeing the flaws in a parent as we get older, so were we able to see how misleading the claims of advertising could be.

The past ten years has seen change of this sort again but at an unprecedented pace. The Internet has begun to affect us in ways we were not prepared for and still don’t truly understand. It may well be decades before we adjust to modern life, if such a thing is even possible anymore.

Businesses, and the advertising agencies which represent them, have reacted in different ways. A tiny few have embraced, and appear to understand, the responsibility granted by social marketing but many still adhere to the Authority model, filling their pronouncements so painfully with jargon as to make it appear archaic.

The reasoning, I believe, comes from too much love.

The people who work with these brands all respect the process too much. If a decision is made to make bottled water from tap water then, because they understand the process then they respect the decision. It’s the same logic that swallows the line about a company’s interest being its customers so why would it ever do anything to jeopardise that interest.

The balance comes not from cynicism, however. This leads to being unable to sell what the company has to sell. A cynical creative is one not in a position to see the good in a product that might lie beyond the jargon-filled nonsense.

The balance comes from questioning authority, from demanding it to explain itself in terms you can understand and by using talking points and conversation starters, not declarations.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Forgive the headline. I just wanted to be sure I got your attention.

It’s graduation season when, as the doors open and hats settle, us employers are treated to an onslaught of applicants seeking out “opportunities”.

Most of your applications take the same form: an email expressing hope for any opportunity and urging the reading of the attached covering letter, cv and portfolio.

Your letters are earnest and hopeful.

Lazy bastard students.

I don’t want earnest and hopeful. I don’t want a covering email telling me to read a covering letter. I don’t really want your CV but if you do send it then design it to have impact. Your one brief in this is to sell yourself. From email to portfolio. Sell sell sell.

Why?

Because I want to notice you.

I want you to show me you can think up the sort of concepts I have to sell to clients.

I want to see what you might be capable of.

Why?

Because I’m a lazy bastard employer.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Microsoft seem unable to commit

Now you see it, now you don’t. Microsoft released their new branding device and company tagline yesterday.

And then withdrew it.

It drew the usual polarised opinions on Twitter and then, just a few hours later, was taken down. The tagline was for real but the logos, which showed the Microsoft product family, were not, in fact, new logos. Rather, they were an example of “a standalone treatment to show the flexibility of joined brands” (Engadget).

The opinions, the polarisation, the hate, all of these are de rigeur for any new brand these days. When opinions (such as mine) can be released and propagated within seconds, it’s inevitable. What’s interesting, to me at least, is that Microsoft chose to withdraw them.

Brand design is such a personal art. You either love the logo or you don’t really care. Even the haters will continue as usual once their bile has sunk back again.

So why would Microsoft back down?

When it comes to creating logos to reflect brands, many companies, large or small, want to please everybody. They want something that (as Steve Jobs once proposed) becomes a jewel. Everybody loves jewels. They sparkle, attract our attention and are worth a fortune.

What’s more, we love them instantly.

Open the box and what do you see? That’s right, treasure. And desire plays out upon our faces. It’s the reaction beloved of companies.

When that reaction is lessened, for whatever reason, a company can be thrown into turmoil. They sense a lack of love and fear that will reflect upon their business.

It’s easy to see why Microsoft would do the same.

With Apple being the… ummm… being so well loved by consumers, Microsoft feel threatened. Witness the constant faltering and self doubt over many of their product launches lately. They get buzz but then lose it through the self doubt and inaction. Apple announce a product and then release it. Apple love themselves, Microsoft don’t.

They need to realise that many people are happy with what they produce. It might not be passionate, it might not be vocal.

But they show commitment nonetheless. They should understand that self doubt is infecting their brand more than any perceived criticism.

A little self-love would inspire far more confidence than the efforts of analysts and graphic designers.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Many years ago, I thought I wanted to be a teacher.

The idea of engaging with young minds, being inspirational and starting my own religion and army certainly influenced the decisions I was making around that time. The application form seemed like a formality.

Wanting to capitalise on every advantage I might have in order to wow the course leaders I drafted in the assistance of my sister, already a teacher and a formidable and persuasive presence in her own right.

With her help I wrote a letter filled with the terminology of the day. She knew what boxes to tick and I wasn’t afraid of ticking them all. Attainments, engagements, inspirings – I grabbed them all.

Secret weapon deployed I sat back and waited to be called for interview.

Now, if you are with me so far then you’ll be expecting there to be no interview. You’ll expect me to turn this around and show how getting someone else to do all the work for me didn’t pay off in the end.

If that’s the case then you’d be wrong.

I did get the interview.

Within weeks I was sat in a room at Manchester University going through my application with two of the course leaders.

They asked me a question, a simple enough question:

“Why do you want to be a teacher?”

Easy.

I’d had the same question back on the application form.

I couldn’t, however, remember what I’d written. Something about shaping minds, being interested in educational development – that sort of thing.

So I started to talk.

I opened up about why I wanted to teach. I told stories of the teachers who had inspired me. I talked about my genuine, heart-felt love of English.

I don’t think I mentioned wanting to raise an army.

But I had their attention.

It was only a matter of time before I had my own school. Screw post-grad diplomas. I was on fire.

At the end of my outburst one of the teachers asked me why I hadn’t written all that in my application letter.

That floored me.

So I told them the truth.

I took a deep breath and explained that my sister helped me because I really really wanted to be a teacher and because she was a teacher she knew what other teachers wanted and why they wanted it. She knew the language used in all the literature and then copied by other teachers and so, I explained, I assumed that using all that knowledge in one massive burst of jargon would help me get an interview.

The course leaders listened and then told me one thing: that I nearly didn’t get called for interview because my application was so obviously not my own words.

It was quite the lesson.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Sometimes, when I’m reading through a website or a brochure, I wonder what the writer was thinking about.

I’m not sure it was about the job in hand because more often than not it feels as though the writer doesn’t believe in what they are selling.

Which would be fine if they weren’t a writer.

Consumers are allowed, expected even, to be cynical about a product.

Writers aren’t.

They must be the most gullible people in the world because they have the hardest job.

They need to convince themselves that a product is the best thing since sliced bread.

Sometimes that isn’t easy.

But really, when you think about it, it’s something we all do. A lot of the time at least.

Look in the mirror in the morning and within a few minutes you’ll have convinced yourself you are the best looking dog in town.

And you’re not. I’ve seen you and believe me, you’re not.

Not that it matters what I think of course. It’s your face and if you think you’re the best looking dog then you’ll find it a lot easier to convince others of that.

Copywriting is the same.

We get all manner of products thrown our way and many, on the surface, seem a little, well, rubbish.

We can’t tell the client that of course. The evil mercenary in us just wants to take the money and run.

So we have to look a little harder and find what it is the client sees in their own product.

Along the way we’ll produce a list and perhaps end up seeing more than one great thing about it.

We’ll have convinced ourselves.

Convincing others is easy.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.