Meme Huffer would like to thank Dave Trott for unearthing this (and many more) in last week's Campaign Private View (oddly, not online). I've been shamelessly stealing that McLuhan line for years, but had forgotten the source.
Photo courtesy: Sr. Arrastrao
Regular readers will know that we have a fondness for Ballard up here in Huffer Towers, and we mourn his passing over this past weekend. The world has lost one of its true visionaries, a man who was unafraid to examine that which scuttles back into the darkness when the rocks of our civilisation (or should that be "civilisation"?) are overturned.
We'll leave you with a selection of thoughts and quotes from the man himelf:
If you want to avoid being involved in yet another beer (or cider) in which three guys walk into a bar with ensuing hilarity (note that it's always three -one would be a lonely alcoholic loser and two could be gay... and its best of one could be black, while you're at it please), then please heed Mencken's advice:
Dig deeper. Question the obvious. And, please, avoid "conventional wisdom" like the plague.
For me, this quote nails one of the joys of planning -figuring out what people really think, need and want.
All too often, the lens of the focus group will distort the subject of your enquiry and the statistics can obscure rather than reveal the truth (it is true that the average person has one breast and one testicle, but that doesn't help us much).
So get out there in the real world. Don't just sit behind glass. Talk to people about what makes them tick. Be curious. Notice stuff.
I've just discovered (literally, on my suit's bookcase) a book called "Kiss & Sell". It is not only full of great crit of real-world press and poster work, but its also peppered with useful quotes from everyone from Lao Tzu to Bill Bernbach. I was about to strip-mine it for GQFP, but got stopped dead in my tracks by this paragraph from Steve Hayden's foreword:
Now, I've worked in agencies run by gentlemen, and also in agencies dominated by talented assholes. And I'll take the latter everytime.
Yes, intelligence and politeness will allow an agency to deliver a consistently 'good' standard of work. But this same culture can also inhibit the leap from 'good' to 'great'.
Better a culture that accepts the need for challenges and questions, a culture which believes in for tempering strategies and creative work in the fires of argument and review. A culture that refuses to settle for 'good'.
image of Hunter S. Thompson via ffffound.com
A lot has been written about "Brand Obama" lately, about the importance of taking a cohesive values-based position vs the Clinton-esque (well, Mark Penn-esque) micro-targetted, focus-grouped scattergun approach. About the importance of the Obama campaign's seamless embrace of all things digital. About his use of iconic brand images.
I was putting together a presentation for a client last week, where we had to impress the importance of a new brand positioning on the wider organisation, and this bite from Obama's speech in Wisconsin from February last year really crystallized it for me.
As planners, creatives and marketers, we spend an awful lot of time creating brand models, discussing brand attributes ('are we "authentic" or "natural"') crafting propositions and honing endlines. Yes, we have moodboards and steal-o-matics, but the most powerful tool that we have is words.
But for these words to work, they have to have real power. They have to be true to the brand, not mere puffery. They have to resonate, both with the consumer and with all other stakeholders. So we need to choose these words carefully.
Because words matter.
If we keep doing the same thing, we'll get the same results. We need to be unafraid to experiment, to try new approaches. And we need to be unafraid of cocking up and of failing.
And we need to be unafraid of people saying this:
image borrowed from Michael Roulier (do let me know if you object!)
Loving this, found over at ffffound but originally from Mark Malazarte
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