Dear Coke, Goodbye Creative Directors

Dear Coke (or similarly monstrous multinational),

Looking for a new ad campaign? Something fresh, exciting, young, hot - you know, all those words you bandy around the boardroom as you look to pat each other on the back for an idea well done?

Or, looking to save a few bucks on all those Creative Directors that, well, might not be that creative? Why hire them at all when you’ve already got mountains of film that could be creatively re-purposed to launch an entirely new (and fresh, and exciting, and young, and hot) spin on the TV, Web or (please…no) pre-movie ad?

Here’s a hint. Consider it the tip of an iceberg - something to melt on while I’m sipping Pepsi.

 

Sweet Spots

One of my ‘bosses’ (he’ll probably shudder when he reads that) is fond of referring to someone’s particular interest zone-cum-skill set as “your sweet spot.” Kinky, huh? Recently, he’s been luring me ever deeper into a few projects at Idea Couture Inc. with the temptation, “Morgan, this is really your sweet spot.” As someone who based his start-up partly on hiring an eclectic group of creatives, he definitely knows the value of drawing projects into our space (he’d definitely shudder if I called it an ‘office’), giving them a custom makeover and then harnessing the right person to lead them into development with the Charles Darwin treatment.

In the rapidly evolving and prototyping realm of Interaction, Innovation and Incubation (and the design, research, experience, interaction, strategy etc. etc. that bind its molecules), you might say that the sweet spot is akin to - if not the inspirational core of - the ‘creative type’ banter currently making the rounds in the current cultural cocktail party that bloggers in this sphere are attending to refashion the future of branding, advertising, stragegy, yadda yadda yadda.

In fact, I’d say the sweet spot (and you’ve got to be able to conjure something from your interests and passions, not just ramble on about them after hitting the Volcano for the night) is so important it should be part of every job hiring. Imagine Sweet Spot being the first section on your CV - not your x-amount of years in Experience Design or your grad studies in anthropology or the million dollar start-up you just sold off or that collection of Boy Scout badges gathering dust in a garbage bag somewhere in your basement. Instead, what are the passions and interests that drive you? That you’ll work double on?

Funny how, in your typical HR interview, interests and ‘hobbies’ are almost an after thought. Before starting at the space with the ‘boss’, I’d gone through a brief tour of duty searching for and courting other job offers. I have to thank him (and the other two ‘bosses’) for letting me into the space because I can’t imagine what a dark night of the soul it might have been had I been offered and/or taken those gigs where I would have been figuring out tribal cultures for the military  (yes, a Canadian spin on Human Terrain was a possibility), spying (whoops, I mean ‘researching’) on corporate execs for investors (very Human Terrain-ish), fighting the qualitative fight on  the quantitative battelfield and such. Imagine stealing fleeting moments in my cubicle penning odes to the sweet spot that might never have been.

To that end, a tribute to the sweet spot, a Top 5 if you will.

#1: TWEEN CULTURE

In my day I was into the Bay City Rollers, the Bee Gees, Earth Wind & Fire, Rush, Captain Stubing, Herve Villachez and Cher. I tell my daughter about the dark days of TV, when Sunday afternoons were limited to Davy & Goliath’s barely concealed Christian propaganda.

Today, Tween Culture is arguably so much more robust than it was in the 1970s that it has become the most powerful driving force in pop culture. Case in point: Miley above. Who’s one of the biggest selling artists today, if not the most ‘popular’? Her. Why? Lots of reasons.

First, Disney had to get its shit together after all that Princess crap it was coasting on through the 90s. They stumbled on (or strategized or hired the right person) a formula that has served them well across their spectrum of Suite Life, Corey In The House, Raven and so on: Neil Simon goes kid. That’s right - the recent Disney show formula isn’t a sitcom, it’s a Neil Simon play on TV for kids. Don’t believe me? Drop by your local high school for the year-end drama presentation and you’ll see.

Second, music. For all the pain & suffering the industry has gone through over the past few years, music is alive, well and thriving as the pop culture engine it has been since the Fab Four invaded North America. Hannah/Miley taps into that tween pop pleasure in a way that Britney Spears only imagined. The lip synching and singing to back-tracks isn’t my thing (us adults are too hooked on that authenticity thing), but given my own tween guilty pleasures of Donny & Marie I can let it slide.

And third? The Christian thing. Yup, it’s like Davy & Goliath are back to haunt me. It’s not big on the show (and the Hannah show is where’s it really at!), but every time Miley gets in front of a TV camera she never fails to thank the good Lord for all the shit he’s done for her.

Disclaimer: it’s one of my sweet spots because of my daughter’s age. Can’t wait for the teen years. Until then, thanks to the ‘boss’ for the first tweeny project.

#2: SEPARATIST VIOLENCE & ISLAMIC MILITANCY

Gotta love that segue, huh? Having written my MA thesis on the campaign against India waged by Kashmiri separatists and pre-Qaeda Islamic militants I’m still very much hooked on the theme. The photo above is, I believe, from a Hizbul Mujahideen web site. That’s an interest-work conversion right there, because the first time I was in Kashmir there was one working phone accessible to foreigners to call out of the state. The second time I was there it had been bombed. And the third time I didn’t even waste my time trying to call home. That HM has web sites calling for actions, posting photos of militants killed in battle etc. is a testament to the speed at which the technology I took for granted in the early 1990s has become accessible. That, and the fact that my friend can now call me from his cell phone up in the Himalayas from a village that had electricity 2 hours per day back then!

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your take on the client), this particular sweet spot likely won’t get flushed out in the work space.

#3: WINE

I still can’t really afford the super-good stuff, but I’m always willing to make budgetary room for something I can’t totally resist. I bought this Viognier in Vancouver while I was out doing a client ethnography. I walked into the shop, asked the clerk for something I couldn’t buy in Ontario, and this was one of my scores. Still haven’t had it yet, but it might make a great intro to the Oregon Pinot Gris my buddy Stanley brought me back from his third or fourth trip into Nike HQ.

Wine is, as I’m finding out, such a rich terroir for Interaction, Innovation and Incubation. This sweet spot is getting sweeter.

#4: DANCEHALL

I’m still waiting for the Miley Cyrus/Ninjaman combination on the “Cherry My Baby” riddim, but until then I’ll tribute this sweet spot for: being a favourite musical genre (less of a 45 buyer now, but still a fan); being a favourite performative genre (rich anthropological territory for understanding culture, language, gesture, membership, conflict etc.); and being a hotly contested cultural domain. Recent controversy revisited has once again positioned dancehall as violently homophobic. No dispute there. In addition to rampant  hyper-sexualization and a mythologizing of gun culture, Jamaican music of late (and much of past too, lest we forget) has been full of calls to bun down the batty man. Like much of the Rasta business, I don’t cater to this. But I will say that this latest spin on the ‘clash of civilizations’ theme that the media tends to fall back on when it’s too lazy to truly investigate a culture is, like Pad Anthony’s “Conference Table,” a great place to meet and discuss/debate ideas about cultural autonomy, expression, appropriateness etc. etc.

#5: ADVERTISING

Yes, I’ve heard the bells tolling for this industry across the blogzone, but I still can’t resist the call. I agree that so much is changing because of 2.0, TV’s cancer, the death of print; advertising is not only transforming right now but will continue to do so in order to deliver whatever it does to its clients (and, by the way, to pop culture - because it will always be relevant in whatever shape or form). To that end - and in typical 2.0 fashion - I’d like to suggest that while the interactive renegades, boutiques and start-ups poach all sorts of business from the lethargic monster firms, why can’t we do the same with the ad agencies?  Creative is as creative does, right?  Find somebody else to do your buying etc. But when brands with age-old presences are ready to have some real fun (and it can still be had on TV) at a slice of the usual agency cost and are ready to make themselves culturally relevant again, hit me up. I’ve got some sweet (spot) ideas

 

What about jocks & cheerleaders?

Anyone who appreciated the skills that the crew from Revenge of the Nerds had beyond the football and dating fields knows that geeks always had a cool quotient, albeit one that was very covert in the 1980s. That characters like Lamar have since gone on to play a huge role in defining our culture’s assumptions and aspirations regarding what is currently cool is something of a table-turning victory celebration: injecting archetypes into the realm of stereotypes, it’s now common practice to credit nerds with everything that’s evolved in the hip intersections between society and technology since their boners first saluted the Commodore 64. (See: Bill Gates).

Today’s matrix of technology, interactive, design, strategy, research, interactive, innovation etc. is brimming with folks who probably didn’t score touchdowns and date cheerleaders in high school. Many of them – like the former and/or practicing DJs, rave promoters, comic artists, font freaks, and connoisseurs of tea, wine and chocolate who populate this realm and generally stand united against the alpha-male jock villains of 80’s cinema – have some degree of coolness under their belt. Some of them are even designing the next application, device, site or campaign you will think is cool.

As an anthropologist, that interests me. My apologies in advance for raising the specter of such an over-haunted theme, but I have to wonder if this professional matrix has become so enraptured by its own culture of cool that it has spawned an ethnocentricity that’s now reaching full maturity.

Case in point #1: I’ve recently been involved with an industrial designer in a single volley debate over the value (or meaning?) or ‘ordinariness’ on Idris’ blog. I understand that few, if any, designers strive for the ordinary; however, having done the ethnography, I am very familiar with those ‘consumers’ who prefer, if not thrive on, the ordinary.

Case in point #2: a recent posting on Dino’s blog led me to a Slide Share by Paul Isakson. Two of the slides read: “Great. But my product isn’t cool. What can I do?” The answer – and its simplicity isn’t that surprising considering Paul is one of those hailing the impending (if not accompli) ‘death of advertising’ - is “Well, frankly you’re screwed.”

I’m not so sure – about being screwed or about what ordinary is. Designers chasing the next iWhatever can’t be faulted for wanting to create the next cool thing. But who decides what cool is? And when did ordinary get set in stone?

The many on-screen humiliations suffered by the Lamars of pop culture served to dramatize our rooting for the underdog and the stark demographic reality that most of those watching are more like the pocket protector crew than the alpha-male jock villains of 80’s cinema. And while it’s far sexier to conduct ethnographies on the cool, I’d just like to stick up for the voice of those poor jocks and cheerleaders who might be forgotten as they shop for tube socks, bath mats, paper towel and all those other products that have slipped through the cracks of cool. Roland Barthes would not be pleased with this exnomination of the nerds.

 

Neuromarketing + ads = duh, again

Jennifer Wells’ article in The Globe & Mail’s Report on Business section (“Advertising’s Holy Grail,” Saturday March 15) illustrates how truly little of a shit some marketers and advertisers give about consumers as human beings – especially those companies who think they’ve taken a major leap into new strategic space by replacing focus groups for neuromarketing. As Wells points out, measuring brain waves or blood flows to determine responses to an ad’s music, imagery, brand messaging etc. isn’t exactly a spring chicken methodology. But, as the thrust of her article, the announcement 4 weeks ago that Nielsen Co. “had made what it called a ‘strategic investment’ in a theretofore unheard of California company called NeuroFocus’,” it looks like the chicken’s got new gravy.

Other firms are similarly working this new gravy, er, methodology. Along with Neilsen, Wells points out that ESPN, Virgin Mobile USA and Starcom MediaVest (and there’s far more to boot) have all recently cut cheques to them to mine the deepest recesses of the consumer mind. But are they? Really?

Positioning your services as an alternative to focus groups? Isn’t that like cancer calling the plague black? I’m all for kids getting $20 to taste a chocolate bar or two and tell Cadbury’s it’s shit, but focus groups haven’t been a ‘best practice’ for any firm with a brain worth scanning since Puma-wearing 20-somethings early-adopted that phrase, like, whenever. Tsk tsk to Jennifer Wells (if she did) or NeuroFocus (if they did) for setting the best practice bar so low at focus groups. Like, who can’t jump that high?

This approach to probing the ‘consumer mind’ (literally) for deep insights will fly, for a time, because most of the 1.0 marketing and advertising crowd are quantitative junkies so unsure of their product and promotion (and, I guess, their people) that they’ll only place their bets once the Vegas odds are sold to them in their favour. They’ll pay for the service because the companies that offer it boast a more accurate or detailed or nuanced read with – get this – fewer test subjects. Yes, it saves money and it’s quicker than focus groups! But it still seems focus groupy, just with a big discount coupon, wires on heads and cool EEG readouts to throw into a Power Point deck.

Remember brain wavers that claimed they could crack the emotion & meaning of music or peer into the predator’s mind as he watched porno in jail?

How many times a man farts after eating chicken tikka doesn’t tell you anything about how much or where, why, when and with whom – never mind the stories he might regale you with from his restaurant experiences or childhood memories of the family tandoor as young boy in the Punjab – he is socially, culturally, personally, emotionally or gastronomically engaged with and by chicken tikka.

I guess what really irks me is that some companies or brands and their research lackies would even think of hooking lab consumers up to wires. What’s next? Rubbing shampoo into kids’ eyes to see how much they cry?

Or maybe it’s the title of Wells’ article. I guess she’s a fan of the Dan Brown/Tom Hanks version. Sorry, though, I’m still not convinced the secrets can be read through wires. You won’t find them in the blood or, for that matter, the brain as mechanism. And even if you could, one brain does not make a market, a community or a culture.

 

UFC invades Canada

One of my favourite brands is finally coming to Canada. After grappling with various athletic commissions through the years over the weight of gloves, the ‘brutality’ of the sport and a few dodgey illegal fights on a First Nations reservation or two, the UFC (that’s Ultimate Fighting Championship) storms into Montreal’s Bell Centre on April 19 for the welterweight fight of the century (so far): Saint Isidore, Quebec’s Georges St. Pierre vs. Long Island, New York’s Matt Serra.

If you’re not one of the 13,000 fans who purchased tickets on the first day (eat that UFC record Mandalay Bay!) or one of the millions more across North America (the huge Spike TV and PPV market) or the U.K. (another PPV market), you probably don’t care. Maybe you even find the sport tasteless, too violent, etc. etc. Fair enough. It’s not always pretty. But it is exciting, especially from a brand/business perspective: underground to mainstream, controversy to commercialism, the ‘end of boxing’ etc. etc. If you have any doubt, just check out the rush of sponsors jostling for space on Spike’s ad breaks, on the Octagon’s mat and on the T-shirts of fighters big and small.

You can get a sense of the rise of Zuffa (UFC’s company) and my own struggle over the pain-pleasure principle of why some love the battling brand in a cover story I did last year on Georges St. Pierre (before his shocking title loss to Serra) for my old gig with Peace Magazine. And you can check out my GSP update, complete with an exclusive Matt Serra interview and double-welterweight photo shoot by Craig Boyko in the mag’s March ’08 issue.

That’s right, after handing in my resignation and sending notice of it round the world, Peace publisher Harris Rosen new my weak spot to get a contribution out of me. I can’t quite explain why it worked. I’ve interviewed thousands of people in my life, a range of folks that reads something like Iron Maiden-Shabba Ranks-Debbie Travis-Bryan Adams-Paul Oakenfold- Jodie Foster’s Army-Slayer-Gregory Isaacs-DJ Keoki-Nate Dogg-Hizb ul Mujahideen-hundreds of ravers-a few CEOs-and beyond.I’d thought I’d finished doing it in the pop realm, but there’s just something exciting about talking to one man about punching another man out, and what kind of a life that man leads. Extreme interviewing?

 

Pepsi shows some ability

Chances are you’ve already caught the buzz over this Pepsi ad airing on Superbowl Sunday (go Giants!?), especially if you’re into accessibility issues. I had to throw it up for three reasons.

1. Accessibility

No, not the ‘we want to make our website easier/a great experience to navigate’ accessibility but the cultural challenge of accessibility or, in translation, the lip service that the ‘mainstream’ pays to the ‘marginals’. Deaf people on TV (deaf people other than Marlee Matlin) using sign has so many layers that two of them - hearing folks accessing deaf culture (and humour is a great culture coder) and deaf folks (or at least the actors and people behind the scenes who came up with the spot) accessing a hearing medium (sorry Voice Print) – illustrate just how well Pepsi gets the whole ‘community’ thing that brands are hungering for. Rather than pursuing the somewhat/sometimes artificial strain of community that’s architected on a web site, this ad illustrates how there are still so many communities that have yet to be linked in. As a peripheral participant and having done some work in the accessibility/disability community, I have to give props to Pepsi for all the talk and signing they’ll generate over this. I only wish they’d skipped the preamble of the ad. Like narration in a Hollywood flick, it sort of dumbs down the whole experience.

2. Humour

I still enjoy (and see the mini-genius behind) some TV ads. Unlike those who like to eulogize the 30-second spot, I still find some of them very funny, touching, original and – given how many viewers the game will have – an avenue that still offers a decent ROI to communicate with consumers. This one is funny, original and sly enough that a few dummies might not get the joke.

2. Pepsi

As a consumer I’m not much of a brand fanatic. My short list would include Mac, Google, Becks, Studio One and…Pepsi. No time to explain: it’s a history, memories, mother, Jamaica kind of thing. But Pepsi is a big part of my consuming life, even if I have successfully cut down since those PhD writing day. As someone with a great deal of loyalty to the brand who has seen little of interest over their TV spots except, to a minor extent, the Flock Of Seagulls-era Diet pitch, I’m just glad to see Pepsi stepping up to the small screen with something refreshing, culturally relevant and, yes, funny.

 

Ethnography: PARC’s ‘in situ’ research

Here’s a little ditty from the Palo Alto Research Center that speaks to where and how those trained in anthropology fit into the world of developing Consumer Insight beyond ‘market research’…

“To stay ahead in today’s rapidly evolving, saturated marketplace, companies must engage in strategic innovation. Ethnography – which is based on the systematic observation and analysis of people within their natural environments – catalyzes corporate innovation efforts. It helps companies better identify and address market opportunities, anticipate emerging trends, deliver superior products to customers, and create new businesses while minimizing risk.”

The blurb speaks to PARC’s work on a mobile gig they did for Dai Nippon Printing Ltd. There’s more info on their ‘in situ’ research approach (something still quite foreign to many north of the 49th) at www.parc.com/ethnography.

 

Is the Persona still a Best Practice?

The PhD candidate in social anthropology wakes up in a cold sweat after a nightmare of existential proportions. Like one of those dreams where you take the Grade 12 math exam in the nude after not attending a single class the whole year, she has typed up hundreds of pages of data, findings, conclusions and insights from 2 years of fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands only to realize that her detailed analysis of marriage rites, lineages recounted by informants and corresponding kinship charts have been replaced by..

“Remy is our Gardening Tastemaker. An early adopter of new yam farming techniques, he has a collection of shiny spades and hoes that make him the envy of his neighbours and a detailed attention to soil acidity that makes him a leader in the local horticultural scene. A family man with three boys who would rather play Wii than cultivate yams, Remy worries that an introduction of potatoes from eastern Canada will dramatically impact the local environment, economy and culture.”

Of course, it’s just a dream. No anthropologist, however young and green, would dare to substitute the rich detailed lives of field subjects for such a condensed amalgamation of those subjects’ experiences and expressions. That is, unless she found herself in that other betwixt-and-between realm of Best Practices. But is the Persona still considered a Best Practice?

Observing from the sidelines and eavesdropping on agency talk about encouraging clients to enrich their Customer Experience, it looks like the Persona is in the middle of an identity crisis. Sure, big-money research still has it in its tool kit; a recent phone call I took with a major U.S. software/tech firm looking to understand music consumers and their downloading practices revealed that its years are, in part, being plotted with help from a number of Personas. But others consider the Persona a case of Insight Lite, user changelings like Soccer Mom and Early Adopter stunt-doubling for fleshier consumer presences.

One recent indication of this comes in the form of “Persona Non Grata,” a white paper that’s been authored by Steve Portigal and circulated among commercial design and research geeks. The founder of Portigal Consulting (www.portigal.com), a boutique agency ‘that helps companies discover and act on new insights about themselves and their customers’, he writes that “personas are misused to maintain a ‘safe’ distance from the people we design for, manifesting contempt over understanding and creating the façade of user-centerdness while merely reinforcing who we want to be designing for and selling to.” Add that to a ‘sanitized form of reality’, ‘smug customer-centricity’ and his equal distaste for market segmentation, and Steve seems to have fired a shot across the bough of this Best Practice.

So, is it a fair shot? Is the Persona going the anthropological way of structuralism, functionalism, structural-functionalism and all those theories and practices no longer considered Best? If so, anybody interested in paying soccer moms to hang around the UX and IA people while they work out the kinks?