Be like Tony.

I was cleaning out my desk this morning, sorting through the hundreds of business cards I've collected over the past year or so (yes, people do still hand them out and you should, too.) when I came across this one.

Tony Swan, who passed away last year, was a writer, driver, racer, editor, bon vivant, and curmudgeon. I'd met him early in my career when I was an intern at Car and Driver magazine but came to know him a bit better over the past few years as a member of the Midwest Automotive Media Association. Some who read this blog may know that when I'm not helping companies with marketing, communications, and new product development, I write about cars for several websites including my own, Rides & Drives.

Tony was famous for many things, one was his personal motto...

"Drive fast. Take chances."

While Tony applied it to his time on the track and work at the word processor, it's easy to see how this simple phrase is crucial in business today.

The "Take chances" half of the equation is a no brainer. Business is all about risk, taking it and managing it. Without taking chances, ignoring the doubters, pursuing a novel idea, there is no progress. At some level, every decision we make requires a leap of faith no matter how many consumers we talk to or how may prototypes we test. That's where the "Drive faster" part comes in.

As the pace of change continues to accelerate, moving faster is a necessity. But it's not how just quickly you can get your product to market. Accelerating your time to profitability is crucial in a day where disrupters can enter the market from any direction and change the game seemingly overnight. That means a different way of innovating. Moving quickly with minimal investment, using MVPs to test the market, make adjustments, and move on.

This takes a clarity of vision, a commitment to strategy, decisive leadership, and an agile team. If you're mired by stages and gates, waiting for executive review committees, and fielding massive quantitative studies before making decisions, the market will pass you by.

It's time to run your business as Tony lived. Drive fast. Take chances.

A marketing miracle

By now, we've all seen this video of the amazing stunt marketing event from the Canadian Airline, WestJet.



Actually 19 million people have viewed it directly on Youtube, more on social media channels and millions upon millions have read about it thanks to all the press its garnered in just the week since it was posted.

How did they achieve such success?

Let's start with the concept. It's big. No, not just big, huge. I can barely get the shopping done for my family in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Buying Christmas gifts for 250 people in just a few hours is a massive undertaking.

It was executed perfectly.

Starting with Santa on video gathering wishes, to the army of employees who were sent to do the shopping to the decorations around the baggage carousel, they nailed every detail. It was magical from start to finish.

This effort was clearly genuine, heartfelt and relevant, promoting the company's real differentiator, service.

The result is that for less than the cost of producing a national TV commercial, WestJet was able to create international fame. This is an incredible marketing achievement that is sure to be honored at Cannes and every other advertising festival next year.

The question is, how can they take the momentum from this event and use it to build their business in the coming year? Their brand now stands for 'miracles' and they have to deliver on that promise on a regular basis, maybe not with grand stunts like this, but little gestures that demonstrate how much they care about their passengers. Otherwise, this big event is just marketing and all the energy it created will be drained as quickly as the batteries in a child's toy on Christmas morning.

I'm assuming that a company smart enough to create and execute this event knows that. So I'm looking forward to seeing what they do next.

The future is here

Samsung has hit its stride.

This spot for the new Galaxy Gear wrist computer hits just the right balance between intrigue and information, tone and truth. It works hard without trying too hard. Maybe that's why it was one of the few spots that aired over the weekend where people in the room I was in stopped talking about the game for 60 seconds and actually watched an ad.



One thing I like about this spot is that it seems Samsung have finally gotten over their Apple envy and are ready to promote their own products without bashing those of a worthy adversary. Maybe that's just because there is not equivalent Apple product or maybe, just maybe they're ready to sell their devices on their merit.

Either way, thanks to 72andSunny for concepting and producing a great spot and sparing me from another lousy car, truck or beer ad during the game. Now let's just hope the product actually lives up to the promise of those Hollywood gadgets that inspired it.

CEO No!

I wasn't going to comment on the new Yahoo! logo until I read this headline in Ad Age.

Wow, she worked a whole weekend on it!

No wonder it looks like it came right out of the 1980s.

Ms. Mayer, you are the CEO of a company that some say is worth $25 billion. Do you really think the best use of your time is playing with Illustrator? Every designer in America had to cringe when they read this quote:

"On a personal level, I love brands, logos, color, design, and, most of all, Adobe Illustrator. I think it's one of the most incredible software packages ever made. I'm not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous :) So, one weekend this summer, I rolled up my sleeves and dove into the trenches with our logo design team."

Well, at least she was right about one thing. Based on the result of this project, she is dangerous.

What is it with CEOs and their belief that there is no subject they are not expert in? Are they given a subliminal messaging tape in business school to play while they sleep that says, "You know everything about everything" on an infinite loop?

Here's a tip for CEOs everywhere.

Unless you went to RISD, CCS, Pratt or Art Center, leave the design work to the professionals.

I'm not saying you can't have an opinion, but believe it or not great designers aren't a dime a dozen. Designing a logo isn't as easy as powering up a Mac and opening Illustrator, even though the best designers often make it look that way.

Design matters as much as anything in business. Would you "roll up your sleeves" with your lawyers and help them file your patent applications? Would you dive into the trenches with your software engineers and help them write code?

If the answer is yes, you're going to have a hell of a time getting good people to work for you.

Do your job and let other people do theirs. You'll be surprised at how much better that works for everyone.

A teaching moment

I can only imagine how unhappy executives at Mercedes Benz were when they first saw this spec ad made by German film school students.

While this ad is clearly disruptive, memorable and demonstrates a new product feature, it is yet another reason why creative directors are critically important in today's youth obsessed advertising culture.

A good creative director has enough experience to understand there's a line between funny and offensive. A good creative director might also have a sense of history and know that there's a direct link between the Mercedes Benz, Hitler and the Third Reich – an association I'm sure the brand is loathe to remind people of. One can only hope that if the team worked in an actual agency a good CD would have reminded them of that fact and sent them back to the drawing board as their teachers should have.

I'm not even sure the students' basic premise makes any sense. Tobias Hunter, Jan Mettler, Lydia Lohse and Gun Aydemir, the creators of this ad were quoted as saying "We wanted to pose the question of what might happen if technology had a soul."

The ability to peer into the future and decide who lives and dies hardly qualifies as soul.

What this spot has me wondering is if those students have a soul between them. Otherwise how could they use the fact that millions of people suffered and died at the hands of Hitler and his disciples to sell a car brand that helped him even peripherally in this effort?

Hopefully they've learned through this little media brouhaha what they weren't taught in ad school.

It's not me, it's you

What Nike understands so well that few other brands understand is that it's not about them.

It's about you.



Their brand and this campaign is relevant after 25 years because it's not about their patented design, their special materials or even the sports stars that endorse their products. It's about that little voice inside of all of us that says, "Get up. Get going. Go further. Go faster." It's about our desire to reach that next level, whatever that level is for us as individuals, while acknowledging the possibility that our potential is beyond what we can even imagine today.

They found that truth about the connection between their products and their users and it became the core of their brand.

What's the truth about your customers? What do they want not from you, but from life? What makes them tick? How does your product help them achieve that? Answer those questions and you'll be on your way to creating a lasting brand.

A writer's writer

My connection to Elmore Leonard, though tenuous, goes way back to the late '60s.

He lived near us in Birmingham, Michigan when I was seven or eight.

Later when I was working at Campbell-Ewald advertising, I learned he had been a copywriter there as well. Rumor has it, he penned his first novel behind a closed office door while he was supposed to be writing copy for Chevrolet.

I only really knew him through his writing.

His work is clean, compact, and seemingly effortless. For those reasons, some don't consider him to be a great writer. I consider him to be great precisely for those reasons.

He knew how to grab attention, create characters, write dialogue and craft stories that sucked you in, all without drawing attention to himself.

He told the story, never getting in the way of it.

As someone who writes for a living – albeit at a very different level – I can only admire his work and hope to learn from its craftsmanship.

Over the past two days, I have seen many celebrations of Leonard's work, but this does it best for me. It's a compilation of all the opening lines he's ever written in published novels and short stories.

What can we learn from these? The importance and power of a strong opening.

They're so good, I need to reread those I've read already and get my hands the ones I haven't.

It's a good thing I have a lot of travel time coming up.

Living in the shadow of the past

I love the technique in this Honda video. I like that Honda is reminding us of all the great things they've done over the years. It's a great statement about the company's willingness to be innovative, daring, and human.



What I don't like is that their current automotive line up doesn't live up to this promise. While all their vehicles are solid, have the features you want and are made with excellent quality, they are anything but innovative, daring or human.

Let's hope a few of the 3.5 million people who have seen this video are the designers, engineers and program managers who are developing the next generation Civic and Accord. I'd love for their future be as interesting as their past.

It isn't over until we say it's over

Sigh.

Here we go again. Another article by a smart, successful articulate marketing professional on the cataclysmic shift that's happening in the advertising industry today.

The author argues that traditional advertising is no longer relevant because we all have smartphones and other wiz-bang technology, we can tell stories about people, and we are capable of inventing incredible new products that disrupt entire categories.

He, of course is right. Except he's not.

True, there are products that are so remarkable they don't need advertising.

True, great businesses are being built that change the way we think about the very business they're in.

And true, brands that demonstrate their benefit to their customers and relevance to their lives are more interesting and successful than those that talk only about themselves.

But here's the thing that Mr. Inamoto fails to mention:

It has always been thus.

From the moment the first images were painted onto cave walls promoting the exploits of great Paleolithic hunters, advertising has been evolving.

The printing press, radio, television, the automobile, the internet, smartphones have all changed advertising as we know it. And every new technology that's introduced will continue to change it.

Let's face it, if people are attending, watching, reading, interacting or otherwise involved with some activity, companies will find a way to insert themselves into the action to promote their products and services. That's what advertising is.

It's not just a :30 second TV spot selling trucks.

It's not just a four-color magazine ad selling beer.

It's not just a banner ad selling men's suits.

It's not just a guy jumping out of a balloon hundreds of miles above the earth selling energy drinks.

Advertising has always been adapting to meet the culture of the day's consumer and to take advantage of the technology of the day's media.

Yes, advertising as we've known it for the past 20 or so years is changing – just as it has been doing every day since the dawn of mankind. So let's stop with the histrionics. Let's refrain from the proclamations that we are in a special time of extraordinary transformation because here's what hasn't changed.

Companies that understand who they are, what they offer, how they benefit their customers and get that message to people in interesting, relevant and compelling ways using any and all of the tools available to them will continue succeed.

Advertising is dead. Long live advertising.

Gimmicks do not sell cars

When I saw this article in Ad Age, I had just one reaction. Ugh, aren't we over this yet?

Crowdsourcing ads makes about as much sense as do-it-yourself heart surgery.

The agency loses because these campaigns devalue the very product they're selling: strategic creativity.

99.99% of all participants lose because, of the thousands who will spend hours and hours generating ideas and producing materials without compensation to enter in the competition, only one will be chosen.

The client loses because instead of having the agency spend time uncovering insights and developing ideas to build the Chevy brand and sell cars, they're knee deep in consumer-generated garbage trying to find a few gems.

I have only one question about the campaign:

How does having aspiring film makers create a commercial on the Oscars lead to higher sales?

If the answer includes the words engagement, community, conversation, advertainment or any of the thousands of other social media buzzwords, you might want to start working on a new idea.

And the winner is...

The oh so ridiculously named Cannes International Festival of Creativity – formerly the Cannes Advertising Festival – got underway yesterday and this year's first winner is actually very creative.

Developed to help reduce the number of deaths around railroad tracks in Australia, "Dumb Ways To Die" is a campaign does everything great marketing is supposed to do.

It's disruptive.

It's memorable.

It's engaging.

It's shareable.

And best of all it's effective, reducing deaths by 21% last year.

The campaign starts with a great insight: nobody likes to be lectured to. That's what most public safety campaign do. Don't drink and drive. Wear your seatbelt. Don't smoke. Stop drinking 64-ounce sodas. All of these campaigns have one strategy; they nag, nag, nag – to the point where nobody listens anymore.

Starting with a perky happy pop melody and lyrics that are dark and disturbed, this video is impossible to ignore or forget.



Not satisfied with nearly 50 million views YouTube views. The campaign's creators worked hard to get the song played on local radio. They created a karaoke version that people have used as a foundation for their own videos. They printed coloring books and built a smartphone game for kids. And of course, they produced this fun, interactive and informative website.

It's the rare smart campaign that prevents humans from doing dumb things.

Fail forward

Yesterday during an online conversation I was taking part in, someone asked the question to the group, "What would be the topic of your TED Talk?"

For those not familiar with TED, it is an acronym for Technology, Entertainment, Design – and an organization that hosts conferences which feature inspiring talks by people from all walks of life. Here's a brief one from Richard St. John.



There were a lot of interesting suggestions from the altruistic, "How to harness Africa's potential" to the more educational "A history of Visual Communications."

After a little thought, I chimed in with an idea for a talk titled, "The power of failure."

I wasn't too surprised by the number of people who reacted positively to the topic. As one participant said, "I'm an expert in that myself." to which my reaction was "Every successful person is."

It's not about whether or not one fails – we all fail at one time or another in many parts of our lives – but how one handles failure that matters.

The thing I've learned most from the failures in my life (and there have been many) is that it's never as bad as you think. Pick yourself up. Dust yourself off and move forward putting whatever lesson you've learned in your bag to carry along with you on the road ahead.

Being comfortable with failure – notice I didn't say "accepting failure" – allows you to take the risks you'll ultimately need to succeed.

So even knowing that it'll probably be rejected, it's time for me to start work on that TED Talk.

When you can't win the argument, change the conversation

Last year, General Mills spent over a million dollars to help defeat the clumsily named, California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act.

Not long after when one of its bigger brands, Cheerios, ran an online campaign that allowed its fans to create their own ads for the cereal, this was – oh so predictably – the result.

So what do you do when a vocal portion of your potential target audience protests and boycotts for one of your signature products?

Try to convince them that GMOs are good? Sell them on the economic benefits of innovation? Ignore them and hope they go away?

If you're General Mills, you change the subject.



In this case, General Mills produced a commercial for Cheerios that was – oh so predictably – sure to bring out the unenlightened trolls who spewed vile hatred of the spot in the comments section on YouTube forcing General Mills to disable them.

This – just as predictably – has created a lot of positive media attention about Cheerios and a strong community of support for the brand.

So now Cheerios isn't the cereal that supports Frankenfoods. It's the cereal that fights racism.

Well played, General Mills.

Well played.

Super branding

The hardest thing a marketer has to do is change someone's opinion about a product or brand.

Imagine how hard that is if your product is chemotherapy and your target is children.

Borrowing equity from heroic characters who fight through pain and adversity in their comic adventures, the A.C. Camargo Cancer Center in Sao Paulo, has given the process a context that helps kids through the pain and adversity of cancer treatment.



While it doesn't make chemotherapy less painful, the branding and repositioning of the medication changes the expectations of the youthful patients, and that helps them become more willing participants in the fight against their disease.

The lesson here: if you can't change the product, reframe the context in a way the focuses on the benefit.

I love it when marketing is used to champion the forces of good.

Great campaigns are about more than just ads

You've probably seen the Farmers Insurance ads on TV. It's one of the better campaigns in the category, combining a great brand mnemonic with relevant humor and what I call a "that guy" strategy – commercials featuring that guy you recognize, but couldn't recall his name if your life depended on it – to create a disruptive, memorable and effective presence amid the clutter that is television advertising.



What I love about the campaign, however, is not just how good the TV spots are, but how watchable the long form videos they've created are.

If you have two and a half minutes, watch this.



While most videos of this ilk are dry and technical, Farmers' agency has created an informational video that fits the style of the campaign without using professional on-camera talent. It almost makes me want to watch more of them.

A crowning achievement for an insurance informercial.

Kmart steps on the gas

In a previous post, I wondered if Kmart's successful "Ship My Pants" ad was a campaignable idea or just another marketing one-hit wonder.

Well, they're two for two, and I actually like this execution better than their first.



"Big gas savings" works better for me because the promotion is more relevant. Gas is something you buy almost every week so providing a discount on this is a lot more compelling than free shipping for items not available in store.

Now the only question becomes do they do a furniture spot featuring a large convertible couch with the phrase, "that sofa king's awesome."

Claymation vacation

Travel advertising is almost always all the same: show me pictures of your scenic wonders, your wild nightlife, your awesome waterparks, your spectacular hotels, your indigenous culture.

Others have tried to do things differently without much success, including my adopted home state of Wisconsin.

Here's one that does.



It works because it stands out. It works because it captures the spirit and character of the UK in a fun and interesting way. It works because I'm hoping this is the first of many spots in which these two famous characters will be showing us their home country from their unique perspective.

It's a rare campaign that actually has me looking forward to the next spot.

Oreos are perfect

Sometimes a spot captures a brand's essence so brilliantly, naturally and effortlessly, it neither needs a set up nor an explanation.

This is one of those rare spots. Enjoy.

The best of the web

One of the beautiful things about the web, is that amid all the dreck there are gems.

Not every blog is about how to enhance your social media presence or five ways to increase traffic to your site. 

Not every app is juvenile game designed to distract you from the important things that are happening in the world around you. 

And not every video is a 15-year old girl showing you the uh-may-zing top she got for cheap on her latest trip to the mall, or some pseudo-celebrity's masturbatory exercise in self-exploitation.

Sometimes you find things like this and you can just take pleasure the talents, passion and craftsmanship of the subject and the filmmaker.

Shaped on all Six Sides from New Canada on Vimeo.

Enjoy.

Hyundai commits brand suicide

As a young ad writer, I created some pretty dumb commercials. I once proposed a campaign for a Chevrolet that used Imelda Marcos' shoe collection, the falling of the Berlin Wall, and the Tiananmen Square uprising as reasons for a year-end sale. 

But I never created anything this dumb.

Fortunately, I had a creative director who was smart enough to know that making light of others' suffering is not a great way to endear yourself to those you want to sell something.

Apparently no one at Innocean, Hyundai's European agency, got the message.

To be fair, Hyundai's American marketing arm quickly offered the following statement after this spot aired:

We at Hyundai Motor America are shocked and saddened by the depiction of a suicide attempt in an inappropriate European video featuring a Hyundai. Suicide merits thoughtful discussion, not this type of treatment.

You'd think it would be obvious, but after a string of incredibly tasteless ads, apparently it needs to be said. So as a public service to all the young creatives in the advertising industry, here's a list of just a few of insensitive and tasteless subjects in addition to suicide that should never be used as a foil for your message in an attempt to create a humorous ad:

1. Murder
2. Rape
3. Child abuse
4. Natural disasters
5. Brutal oppression
6. Torture
7. Drunk driving
8. Terrorism

Don't worry, that still leaves you plenty of stuff to make fun of. I hear David Hasselhoff is considering going on tour again.