As community events go, the totality of the eclipse eclipsed more than the sun. It is estimated that more than 30 million people within the path of totality tuned into the sky. Many more, perhaps in the millions, traveled for hours to glimpse the phenomenon, driving in cars, riding in buses, flying in specially chartered aircraft, even ships at sea took to the skies. It was an event that moved millions of us to action.
Today, images of the eclipse were streamed, posted and shared all across the globe to be seen by countless millions more. A truly stellar experience for the world.
We shared something special on April 8, something bigger than all of us, something that brought us together with excitement and awe and a lingering sense of our tiny existence.
Back in the heyday of TV, programs like All in The Family, one of the most popular shows in TV history, averaged 120 million viewers a week. Beyond the once yearly Super Bowl or other super sporting events, those kinds of viewership numbers are a distant and unimaginable achievement in the world formerly known as TV. This past Super Bowl 123.4 million of us tuned into the the game. As communal events go, those number would please Archie Bunker himself. Imagine achieving those numbers weekly?
On any given day over 2 billion people use Facebook. 2 billion people a day is an incomprehensible number of people, millions of us carved up into chunks of user data, cohorts of likes, interests, associations, networks… yet nothing of the experience suggests even remotely the sense of community we experienced today.
What the solar eclipse gave us today was each other. Nature is an amazing teacher.
The other day, I was listening to a popular marketing podcast. This was a post super bowl episode, and the topic was the commercials. Guests on the show included various brand managers and agency folk. They were talking about a common theme of their work which they all agreed was the big driver of their success.
They waxed on in glorious terms about their achievements in large part due to this major insight. It was if they were the first to discover electricity or the Beatles or something…. I turned up the volume.
The driver of their work, the holy grail, the golden nugget, the secret sauce…”it’s all about the customer.”
That’s it. The customer. They managed to fill over 40 minutes of airtime talking about why it is essential to keep the customer first in all they do and how it affects the strategy and the work and the success of their work.
Maybe these folks were raised by robots. The notion that the audience is central to their success seemed a revelation. Hello? These were all articulate people but to me they missed an opportunity to have a more nuanced and valuable discussion about their audience insight and not limit themselves to the cleverness of the work.
Audience, Brand, Creative – the ABC’s of advertising.
As one of the last truly large-scale communal cultural events, super bowls ads are no longer simply about advertising, they are part of the show, the cultural moment, let’s go all-in and call it a high point. But the real game is away from the ball. The real game of advertising is being won and lost in the trenches, day-in and day-out. It’s the integrated campaigns that have the legs to live in the media, where the customer lives every day that will be the real winners. The Super bowl happens once a year, the super segmented social super bowl (say that 10 times fast) happens 24/7, 365. There is no getting around it. Targeted media to your Audience, the Brand relevance, and the Creativity to make it stick.
After reading the rankings from Forbes, NY Times, Boston Globe, iSpot TV, USA Today’s Ad Meter and others, it’s clear that if you are in need of support to justify your personal top 5- 10 spots you are bound to find it. Only a couple of the rankings mentioned consideration of the game away from the ball; the knock-on effect of the social impact of a strategically integrated idea, an idea with its hooks in culture. The more thoughtfully integrated ideas have potential for real shelf life, the rest are at risk of just being part of game day entertainment.
Perhaps being entertaining is enough, but to quote a famous film about football, Show me the money.
According to Inside Higher Ed, The College of Saint Rose is not alone in the sinking ship of colleges floundering on the reefs of change.
From Inside Higher Ed: Saint Rose’s closure was preceded by similar announcements from other institutions this year, including Magdalen College, Lincoln Christian University, Alderson Broaddus University, Alliance University, Cabrini University, Cardinal Stritch University, Finlandia University, Hodges University, Holy Names University, Iowa Wesleyan University, Medaille University, Presentation College and various for-profits. Though it has not announced a closure, the King’s College in New York City has ceased its academic offerings and was stripped of accreditation earlier this year.
For the sake of brevity, I am not going to attempt to outline all the contributing socio-economic factors that are dramatically impacting higher ed these days. Running a college is like running a small country, no easy task. There are near countless factors that contribute to the sustenance of a college. The ultimate expression of success is the ability to attract more students than the college can handle in any given academic year; keeping demand high. But what keeps demand high in higher ed? Where did Saint Rose go wrong, where are all these colleges and many, many others going wrong?
A few years ago, I was privileged to judge marketing and creativity awards in higher ed. These are recruitment campaigns designed to entice college bound students to choose for themselves the “perfect college.” With rare exception, most of these campaigns were undifferentiated. It would be quite easy to remove the names and logos and not be able to tell one from the other. All the same types of pictures of smiling students, shiny new buildings, earnest student – instructor interactions, clubs, events, sports, food porn. All of it the essential table stakes in editorializing the institution.
At some point in the not-too-distant past, colleges began an arms race of infrastructure development. Money was readily available, and loans were easy to get. I can hear the marketplace research, “students and families are wanting a different experience, we need to make these improvements to keep them looking our way.” The rationalizations, no matter how justified and legitimate, failed to grasp the bigger picture, that this is a treadmill that is hard to get off, especially when it becomes what you are selling. And that is exactly what began happening. Colleges began selling shiny new buildings, dormitories as nice as any hotel, state-of-the-art fitness facilities, etc. For institutions without the marketplace momentum and financials to play this game, remaining in contention is going to be a herculean task.
9 years ago, we responded to an RFP from a college, which will remain nameless. During the process, the college held an open Q&A for all those responding to the RFP. There were approximately 30 people in the audience with another dozen or so seated at the front of the room giving the briefing. This is already not a good sign, too many opinions on the selection committee. During the briefing, what became apparent to anyone really listening was that one of the main criteria for a successful candidate was the ability to demonstrate that you could do exactly the type of work that was done before.
When approaching Manhattan, from any direction one is inevitably struck by all the towers of the skyline. Gleaming beacons, with distinctive architectural styles.
Colleges would do well to remember that when someone takes the decision to ride to the top of the Freedom Tower, ultimately the view matters more than the building.
Scrolling and clicking, clicking, and scrolling, the mobile economy is surely a boon to retail brands. Strong brands are not defined by sales alone. Strong brands are built on a feeling.
None of this is new or news, yet the media environment and the metrics associated with algorithms of mobile media would appear to favor sales at the expense of brand building.
There is more than one way to build a brand. All brands want to achieve sales. The differences in approach to building a brand often have to do with its origins. If you built your brand out of your garage, then sales are essential to keep building and growing and keeping the lights on. In this scenario, sales are essential to keep funding the operation. If your product or service is good and your sales grow, you’re a success at creating something of value. Why need awareness advertising and brand building efforts? Let’s call this garage scenario brand A.
Let’s consider another scenario, we’ll call it brand B. You’re a well-established entity that has already achieved scale and you have a new idea for a product or service, and you have budget. You can build demand for this brand through an awareness advertising campaign that demonstrates or implies the value of your new idea. This will be the lead driver of sales. In scenario B, you are investing in a feeling, in the aspiration of your idea as an integral part of the life of the consumer. If the advertising is effective and the brand idea is good and the product or service delivers on its promise, you’ll begin to grow your brand and sales too.
How do you measure the effectiveness of one approach over the other? Let’s conduct a thought experiment. If your brand were to disappear, is it easily replaced in the lives of consumers? Would it be missed in a manner that people would find disturbing?
Most brand managers don’t like to answer this question.
If the world wakes up tomorrow and the Apple brand is gone, is there a replacement? Nike? Amazon? Prada?
Functionally you may try to argue there are alternatives. Emotionally, if you’re being honest, your response will be no. This is the signal of a true brand, it’s irreplaceable in hearts and minds.
Why? Brands and branding are not simply about driving sales. It’s about making deep connections with your audience. Connections that head for the heart. It’s these connections that drive more than sales, they drive loyalty above all other choices, they create advocacy among users; spokespeople who recommend your brand. They defend against upstarts, build positive association that protect against the odd mishap and build equity. This equity shows up as brand value that support brand extensions, partnerships, and new offerings in an ever-present response to evolving consumer needs. Most importantly, brand drives market value.
If you can only speak of your brand in terms of sales, chances are pretty good it can easily be replaced in the lives of your customers. You can start with scenario A and build a substantial bottom line but failing to invest in the brand building approach of scenario B leaves your business open to the vagaries of ruthless competition with little more to protect you than price.
Price alone is a race to the bottom.
One thing I’ve noticed in this semi-post pandemic work world is that despite demands by many companies that people return to the office, many people continue to work with a remote mindset.
There seems to be an aversion to getting together in the same room and hashing it out, whatever it is. Physically, on days back in the office, people are not taking full advantage of the opportunity for being in the same place at the same time, working on the same stuff, solving problems together. And, most importantly, learning from each other.
The world is suffering a virtual hangover.
Poor habits from the home office abound. For example, chatting via text or slack, slacking off is what I’m calling it. If you’re a senior manager, you have the obligation to guide junior team members, who may lack the experience as well as others who should know better. It’s your job. Get the ball rolling, help your teams appreciate the benefits of getting into the same room and hammering out a solution.
No more slack time.
If you’re running a brand, a marketing team, agency or even a production company, I can offer you this insight. There are members of these teams who are junior and have no idea what they are doing. They are wasting a great deal of time and probably costing you money. They need leadership, management, and mentors.
Tools like Slack are effective when used with intention and clear purpose. In fact they can save time and create efficiency, but they are terrible for training your team on the ins and outs of producing great work.
I’m happy to bill you for my time.
A friend of Henri Cartier Bresson once said to him, “you do not work, you take a hard pleasure.”
While I often feel I’m working very hard and certainly too long, I must admit I take a pleasure in the work. At its best, it’s inspiring to stare down the proverbial blank sheet of paper.
The work of crafting a simple, expansive idea that holds the power of attention and provokes the desired emotion is where it’s at.
A simple idea can be expressed in many forms and therein lies the charm. This is the hard pleasure, seeing the elegant idea.
As a photographer Bresson was credited with the idea of the decisive moment. He did not come up with these words, but he certainly delivered it with his eye and his camera. He could see and anticipate the decisive moment to press the shutter. To capture the emotion and energy of a moment.
I’m charmed by this. Working, searching out the ideas, seeing them come to form. When I’m lucky, I can admit to anticipating the outcome of my efforts, the moment when I click the shutter in the mind and the idea snaps into view.
Bresson would go deeply into his chosen subject, immerse himself completely for weeks, months, years. It is this devotion that allows the decisive moment to be understood. It is the same behind the cameras as it is behind a blank sheet of paper. Total commitment to the subject allows the ideas to surface, to be seen. It is not usually a happy accident. Ideas are a byproduct of the effort of immersion. Of a selfless giving over to the subject.
Whether I have a camera at the ready, a script in hand or a blank sheet of paper, it is a devotion to the subject that renders the outcome. The ideas, the images, flow from a river of details large and small, from vague associations, references, past experiences, seemingly unrelated events, the song of a bird, a passing road sign, overheard conversations, the sound of the subway, a cold shower, a book well read, or a film watched yet again.
Images… ideas emerge. Devotion, immersion, life.
The rise of Ai and its impact on image making has me rethinking what it means to create photographic work. It’s true that images have been easily manipulated since the earliest days of photography, but each day it gets tougher to tell the difference between fiction and non-fiction. It’s wonderful and discouraging at the same time. Photography is not illustration. Ai, to me, is more akin to illustration. This post image was captured approximately 23 years ago during a trip to Andros Island in the Bahamas. I was on a fishing holiday and during down time wandered the island with the Holga. For the uninformed, the Holga is a medium format camera (plastic lens, no light meter). Finding focus is no small task either. Everything by eye and importantly, feel. The B&W film was processed, and I pulled a contact sheet. I would scan the contact sheets because I did not have a film scanner. Other than scanning the contact sheet, no manipulation was done to the image. It is as I saw it, as I captured it. It’s an accurate representation of reality. It is non-fiction.
Ai as a tool of fiction does not diminish its value or potential but to me, it is not photography. It is commercial, it is industrial, it will change many things but for the moment at least, it lacks an easily achieved celluloid negative, proof positive of a life more tangible.
For brands seeking to connect with an audience seeking authenticity, like Gen Z for instance, Ai generated images represent the exact opposite. As consumers we may all get fooled once, but great brands deal in authenticity. It’s true that many a brand has leaned heavily into illustration to tell its value, but those illustrations are also authentic works aligned with the authenticity of the brand. Little opportunity existed for the consumer to question if the talent is a real person, no matter how retouched.
The Dove Real Beauty Campaign is a perfect example of consumers seeking authenticity. There is no room for a lack of authenticity with Dove consumers. Hint, hint, there’s none for your brand either.
An Ai rendering of a person is a complete work of fiction. Is the spokesperson, the influencer real? A lack of authenticity will eventually reveal itself as fiction. Even in the sugary perfection of most advertising campaigns, the greatest brands are anchored in their authenticity. If the lived experience of the customer does not align with the promise, the authenticity of the brand, the customers will vote with their wallets.
Ai generated images make a great case for film capture as a validating providence for images anchored in authentic origins.
Lately, the economic climate is beginning to feel a bit unsatisfactory. We’ve lived through and survived economic downturns before if that’s what this is. Marketing in a downturn is never fun. Budgets get cut and tougher questions get asked. Inadequate answers abound. Suddenly, the marketing wunderkind down the hall has lost the hop in her step.
Solid advertising works, even in a downturn, because it’s built on solid fundamentals, not on style alone. Real practitioners know the difference between insight driven creativity and the sugared-up confections of transactional engagement.
If yours is the only budget getting cut, the first to go, it’s a sure sign that your management has no idea or faith in success of your advertising and marketing. Real success is measurable and the time to start asking the hard questions is when the sun is still shining.
Patience and Fortitude in tough times.
During the 1930s, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia named the lions that sit astride the entrance to the NY Public Library, Patience and Fortitude, for the qualities he felt New Yorkers would need to survive the economic depression.
Patience and fortitude are two qualities that should be cultivated in every discussion of advertising and marketing. True brand growth takes time and a steady, unwavering commitment to the brand idea. It’s been my experience during tough economic times that not only do budgets get cut, but clients will begin to chase sales through tactics that do not align with the brand. This erodes the brand idea and results in the pursuit of ever more transactional tactics to boost sales.
It’s a race to the bottom.
While in New York City, I took the opportunity to visit some old haunts. I hadn’t had the chance to step inside the renovated Hotel Chelsea, so off we went. I’m not claiming I was a denizen of this much celebrated bastion of creativity in residence. I wasn’t. In the late 70’s as an art student in NY, it was one of those places we’d occasionally end up. A very real New York experience. The Chelsea remains a place for creativity, in fact, while my wife and I were visiting, as if on cue, a small film crew was packing up.
The renovation is spectacular in its thoughtfulness and restraint. Honoring its past and fully embracing its future, a ready canvas for new stories. It’s spot-on-brand and reveals its treasures to the curious. See it for yourself if you can. It’s a powerful example of brand stewardship. As an experience brand, pictures alone will do not do it justice. The warm inviting tones of the piano room, for instance, are enough to make you want to book a room, a shoot, an event, dinner at El Quijote or all four. Experience brands grow through word of mouth and the shared positive experience of its users. Here you have it. The piano room inspired this curious portrait of my better half.
By stark contrast, a short distance away is Hudson Yards, a modern spectacle. Cathedrals of glass that skyrocket while playing with light. Monuments to the moment, bold statements of power and daring and, I’ll add, a bit cold. It’s a different city. It could be anywhere in the modern world. It’s difficult to imagine it will gain the legend and lovely patina of the Chelsea.
The Chelsea remains a testament to itself, the perseverance and resurrection at the hands of its new owners deserves a round of applause. The Hotel Chelsea is part of the fabric of old New York. The richness of its character perhaps never more appreciable than after a day of wandering this ever-changing city, to stand at its lovely bar drinking in its history.