Quick quiz:
You’ve got to let retailers know a whole bunch of information about how to sell a brand spanking new operating system to the masses.
Do you:
A. Write a boring brief full of “Solutionization” jargon?
B. Hire burly men in full Vista Armor to show up at the stores?
or C. Create a series of six disturbingly cute animations featuring tentacled creatures and aliens in suits?
If you said C, you get a gold star!
For the last few months, I’ve been working with the fine folks over at Widemile to create some funny and weird animations promoting Vista. The results have been, well, kind of cool. So cool that you should go check them out right now.
Windowsvistaretail.com
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You ever see that Simpsons episode where Homer designs a car? It’s got all the features the common man could possibly want and is a ungodly monstrosity that no one would drive (and that no one could afford.)
Which is just a tangent.
Yesterday I picked up a new cell phone. Never in my life would I have thought I wanted a cell phone that has a built in FM tuner. I bought the phone in spite of that feature, not because of it, but here I am rocking out to KEXP on election day.
Huh.
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I think 24 Hour Fitness is on to something. You see, when you call them up to cancel your membership, they put you on hold for LONG periods of time and occasionally have a sweet-voiced woman come on the line and tell you that “All lines are busy. We recommend that you call back later.”
And then when you call back later, it happens again.
I wonder how many people just give up on the whole idea of canceling and stay members because they can’t be bothered to jump through all those hoops?
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The Borat movie opens today and I’m so excited I’ll probably play hookie in the afternoon and go bask in its glorious gloriousness.
But first a blog post.
What does Borat know about marketing?
Just this: If you want to be successful in today’s business world, you’ve got to be ballsy and bold.
Borat knows that if you aren’t offending somebody, you’re probably doing it wrong.
Ciao.
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So once upon a time I took an advertising class.
It was a class all about how to concept print ads and come up with “creative” ways to sell products.
Every week we’d be given a product and told to go off and come up with ideas.
And the next week we’d post those ideas–crudely drawn on pieces of white paper with thick black marker– up on the wall to be judged.
And the teacher and the class would stare at them with quizzical, thoughtful looks on their faces, and eventually someone would say “I like it, but is it creative?”
And the whole class would nod.
Because in the ad world, “creativity” is what matters.
Which I always found kind of funny.
Because. . . I mean, I’m a pretty creative guy.
But aren’t we supposed to be selling stuff here?
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Ok, so if you’re in Seattle, you’ve probably heard the hubub about our new slogan.
I mean, heck, it was all over the papers.
And they painted it in 18 foot high letters on the top of the Space Needle.
And are spending something like 200 grand to promote it in an attempt to pump up tourism before the Winter Olympics hit Vancouver in 2010.
Of course it’s not really a slogan.
It’s a word.
A made up word.
A word that goes “Metronatural.”
A word that makes all my friends–most of whom are normal Seattlites who spend not one minute of their day thinking about branding and marketing–twist up their faces a bit and go “huzzuwuzzahuh?”
Or, worse yet, laugh.
They go like this. They go “Ha. Ha. Ha. Well, at least it’s better than ‘Say Wa.’”
And then they toss back a beer and a snicker and go on with their lives.
While I sit there and stew a bit with my thinking cap on.
So here’s the big question: As a brand building exercise–as an attempt to change the way the world thinks about Seattle–does “Metronatural” work?
Is this “bold new brand” going to rocket Seattle to untold heights of touristy goodness and forever wipe the scar of grunge from the face of our fair city?
Or is it going to go down in history as just another example of the folley of the ad world? A bumpy footnote that draws stifled giggles and head slaps from Seattlites for decades to come?
Because, honestly, the core strategy behind “Metronatural” is solid. Seattle really is a city where Urban meets Wild and Metro meets Natural. (Personally, I think they would have been better off just saying “Seattle: Where Urban Meets Wild.” It’s not perfect, but it’s got some legs and is a bit cheeky.)
But unfortunately the agency (which is full of good and smart people with good and smart ideas) got too cute and clever for their own good.
Or worse yet, they listened when the client said “ohh, I like that.”
And now us poor Seattlites have to pay the price for at least four years as ad after ad and promotion after promotion tell us that we are, in fact, Metronatural.
Which is kind of funny for a city with such a poor public transit system.
Maybe it just means we should all stop shaving.
Sigh.
Branding is dangerous. You should have to get a license to do it.
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I was at Liberty on 15th last night, bouncing on my heels a bit after having a huge meal with my brother and his wife. At one point a woman asked me what I did for a living. I said I was a marketing consultant and that I wrote copy — that I sell stuff with words.
Her whole face brightened up and she said “I do fundraising. So I do a lot of writing for that. But what I really want is to be a real writer. You know. I want to have my name on things.”
I guffawed.
Really, I did.
Because to me being a real writer means being someone who does something with words. Someone who has an effect.
But to her, it was all about fame (though not fortune), ego and a false sense of integrity.
I mean good luck to her, but I’d rather be right here on the ground “Really” writing and “really” making a living doing something I love.
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I’ve been working on a sales letter today. Here’s a subhead I’m particularly happy with:
“You Can Have Customers Coming After Your Products and Services Like Zombies After Braaaaaiiiinnnnnnnsssss. . . . ”
Sometimes I like my job.
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This one’s for all you copywriters in the audience. Come over to the corner with me for a second. don’t worry, no one else can hear.
Alright kids, I know. I know your plight. I know you wake up nights sweating, wondering how you can best serve your clients when your clients aren’t much interested in best serving themselves.
I know you worry about the age old question “Who are you writing for?”
Because here’s the problem. If you’ve spent any time as a wordslinger, you know that while you SHOULD only be thinking about what your target market is going to like and respond to, you ACTUALLY spend all your time thinking about what your CLIENT is going to like and respond to.
Because most clients–especially clients who don’t have any marketing experience–make the absolutely deadly mistake of thinking that what they like and what their target likes are the same thing.
Which is sort of like thinking everyone else likes pistachio and swedish fish ice cream just because you do.
It’s driven many a writer to commit ritual sepuku, slaving away on hard-working copy that pushes all the right buttons and uses all the best selling tricks only to have a client come back and say “Well, can we use optimize a few more times here? And I really don’t like the way you use “You” all over the place.”
So what do you do? How do you make sure you give your clients copy that’s actually going to work while still letting them feel like they’ve got a real hand in the copywriting process?
You get sneaky. You write the “First Draft of Over the Top Awesomeness.”
Now, this is a trick that should only be used in extreme circumstances. But if you’ve got a client you suspect is going to red-line your copy to death, and who thinks he’s the target market even when he obviously isn’t, you’ve got to write a first draft so far out there that he’s guaranteed to hate it. And I mean hate. You’ve got to get witty. You’ve got to get clever. You’ve got to steal whole passages from Finnegan’s Wake.
And then you send it off to the client.
And you wait.
And after all the comments come back, you go and write the copy you wanted to write in the first place. And this time? This time I’ll bet the client will be just thrilled, the target market will be all sorts of amped up and you’ll be able to sleep at night knowing you did your marketing best.
Happy Friday. Currently I’m slaving away on HWW #21, putting together a few proposals and setting up a brand new blog I’ll be sure to key you in on later.
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