Do Analogies Still Work?

 

This ad about 'Marmite Neglect' is great, but it's copped a lot of flak (over 400 complaints so far) because some people apparently think it's disrespectful.  

I find that quite sad. The subject obviously isn't animal neglect at all, it's just an analogy.

But analogies seem to have a bad rap at the moment.

The current mega-trend is 'reality advertising', and analogy-based ads get called addy or contrived.

In fact I think there may be a broader cultural rejection of analogies going on.

If so, the slide began with Swiss Toni. For anyone not familiar, Swiss Toni was a car salesman character in sketch series The Fast Show, who compared every experience in life - whether it was selling a car or preparing a cup of coffee - to "making love to a beautiful woman". Yes, the sketch was primarily skewering a certain type of sleazy middle-aged man. But I feel it also satirised the very concept of analogies.

I don't know if it's just my imagination - but I get the feeling that analogies are no longer considered an impressive form of argument. I'm sure it used to be possible to win an argument - or at least score a big point - with a witty or clever analogy. But I'm finding they don't work that well any more.

Some people think that if they can find an inconsequential aspect of your analogy that doesn't resemble the situation at hand, then they've won - forgetting that 95% of the analogy is still valid, and an argument that is 95% valid (in the 100% non-scientific world of advertising) is actually a pretty good one.

And there are even people who don't seem to accept that analogies create a valid argument at all. For example, I was once arguing that even though the product we were advertising was inherently appealing, we needed to do more than just show the product, we needed to make the ad itself appealing, and I used the analogy that even though dogs find bones inherently appealing, the dog-owner still waves the bone in the air to attract the dog's attention before handing it over. The response I got was "but our product isn't a bone, and the consumer isn't a dog." 

I'm considering dropping analogies from my life entirely. Like someone you got on well with at school, but don't want to be seen with at university.

Will The Next Person To Use The Word 'Storytelling' Please Report For Their Slap

What we do is increasingly being called 'storytelling' but actually I think that definition is completely wrong, and it's really starting to annoy me.

Yes, ads do often have a narrative. This brilliant spot that came out last week, for Devondale Dairy Soft butter, uses many common narrative techniques - it has an 'inciting incident', comedic misunderstanding, and even a twist. Not bad for a film that's only 30 seconds long and also sells a product. But it's still not a story.


 
A story - lest we forget - has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Ads very rarely conform to this definition. The only one I can think of, off the top of my head, is Chipotle's Back To The Start. (Interestingly, it was also produced by the Hollywood agents CAA rather than an ad agency...)

But I would argue it may actually be a bad thing for an ad to tell a proper story. Reason being that a proper story has a definitive ending. E.g. at the end of Titanic, Jack dies. (Apologies if you're a teenage girl who unaccountably hasn't seen it yet). This is why sequels are nearly always worse than the original - the original story has finished. But brands don't want their story to end. They want it to go on and on.

Another important difference is that a story is about a character (or occasionally a group or community) that undergoes significant change. E.g. at the beginning of The Lion King, Simba is a naive young cub. He then goes through a period of adolescent irresponsibility ("Hakuna matata") before finishing up as the wise and mature leader of his tribe.

So although a brand 'has a character' e.g. it might be fun-loving or stylish, we don't want that character to change, we actually want it to stand for something fixed, so that people know exactly the role it can play in their lives. 

Brands often have an 'origin story' (example - Innocent smoothies "we made smoothies at a festival and put up a sign saying 'should we quit our jobs to make smoothies instead?' and had two big bins marked 'yes' and 'no' for people to vote with their empty bottles"). But this is normally better told through PR rather than advertising. Innocent should stand for naturalness, not entrepreneurialism.

Please note I'm not arguing against interactivity, or what is today being called 'letting consumers be part of the story.' Interactivity is great, but what consumers should be interacting with is not 'a story' but 'a quality of the brand' or 'the brand's point of view'. 

For example, IKEA's fantastic Facebook Showroom app, which allowed people to tag an IKEA item online with their name if they befriended the store's manager, was not about letting consumers be part of a story but rather enabling them to experience a quality of IKEA ('quirky good value').

Yes, the use of the word 'storytelling' is probably just a language issue, and advertising has long been the victim of a succession of stupid buzzwords, but I do worry that incorrect language can lead to a proliferation of wrong behaviour. In our case, a bunch of charlatans jumping out of the woodwork claiming that we all ought to be 'storytellers'.

Or am I getting upset about nothing?

The Onion Unfairly Maligns Us

So The Onion wrote an entertaining story about last week's Omnicom/Publicis deal, headlined 'Merger Of Advertising Giants Brings Together Largest Collection Of People With No Discernible Skills.'

"These two ad behemoths will have the industry’s largest and most formidable talent pool of people called ‘creatives’ who have never created a single thing in their lives," the piece went on.
 
And we were all amused, in a crying-on-the-inside kinda way. 

But I think they got it wrong.
  
Granted, most of The Onion is funnier than nearly all ads are. And there's hardly an ad ever made that deserves a spot on the same stage as the best movies, books, paintings, or TV shows. Though a few surely do.

But the fact is we are playing a game that's of a higher order of difficulty to the game played by comedy writers, novelists or film-makers.

Because not only are we attempting to make our work funny, dramatic, or beautiful... but we must also make it a compelling sales message for a brand.

I'd like to see the folks at The Onion try that. Ain't as easy as it looks, fellas.

I mean, just imagine how terrible certain well-known movies would be if they were also ads for brands.

Actually, no need for you to boot up your imagination. Behold once again my amateur Photoshop skills:

First up, a classic tear-jerker if it also had to act as an ad for Philip Morris products.

Brad Pitt in 90-minute commercial for Spanish fashion chain:

Hey Pixar: let's see your guys write a story that's equally engaging as your normal ones, but you only get 30 seconds, and it has to make people want to visit a particular supermarket chain.

In conclusion, we are not worse than the people in other creative industries. If our product often is, that's because we just have a harder job, do we not?

There's Something About Mazda...

This is going to seem like I have a vendetta against Mazda. Genuinely I don't. But I just can't let their new print ad go unpunished.

I've seen so many briefs over the years where the product is described as "revolutionary"... "a paradigm shift"... or "a real game-changer."

And the example often used is the Fosbury Flop, the 'backwards-over-the-bar' high-jump invented by American athlete Dick Fosbury in 1968, which was a complete departure from the previous 'straddle' technique. 

In fact the Fosbury Flop is such a cliched metaphor for 'revolutionary change', I never thought anyone would be so crass as to actually make an ad out of it.

But Mazda have!

The saddest part of this story is that the Mazda 6 actually seems like a really good car. It's well-built, looks great, and is excellent value for money. But it's no Fosbury Flop, and the comparison is a ludicrous over-claim.

As a creative, when you get the "it's a game-changer" brief, your first task is to get everyone to calm the f*** down, and then hunt for something concrete to talk about. Buried in the copy here, and mentioned in passing in the TV ad, is talk of 'skyactiv technology', which could probably have been the basis for distinctive and believable advertising, but they didn't pursue it.

It also begs the question, now they've wasted the Fosbury Flop metaphor, what are Mazda's ad agency going to do if the company comes out with a vehicle that is genuinely revolutionary?

If anyone from the Mazda design team is reading this, I have come up with a few ideas of my own, that I modestly submit really would 'change the game':

 

Skyactiv technology in action

By the way, as regular readers will know, I'm from a copywriting background, and this is only the second or third time I've ever used Photoshop. How'd I do?

How Do You Go About Writing Something This Bad?

I've always been perplexed by ads like this new global spot for the Mazda 3.

Clearly it's an extremely bad ad, in the sense that it will not perform well by any of the common metrics such as recall, persuasion, or effect on brand perception scores.

But what confuses me is that it is not a bad ad in the sense that it was trying to be good, and failed. It isn't even trying to be good.

Nowadays, thanks to technology, we can make advertising that consumers can interact with. They haven't tried to do that. In the 1960s, Bill Bernbach showed we can make ads that are insightful, engaging, and entertaining. They haven't tried to do that. Pre-Bernbach, there was a belief that a good ad focused on a USP. They haven't tried to do that.

They basically haven't tried to make a good ad at all, they have basically just shot the brochure.

Why?

Are they scared of interactivity? Were they worried that if they tried to be insightful, engaging or entertaining, that would be bad?

Was there even an agency, or did Mazda just lend the car to a production company? 

If there was an agency, did Mazda direct them not to include an idea?

Was there a script? If so, I don't even know how you write a script like that.

But just as an exercise, I'll have a go.

I'm guessing it would go something like this:

We open on a Mazda 3, on a rooftop. A man approaches. He walks around the car. Cut to a shot of the interior. Cut back to an exterior shot of the car; the man touches it. Close-up of his eye. Cut back to interior of the car, the man is now inside. He presses the 'Engine start' button. Cut to a driving shot of the car. Cut to another driving shot of the car. Cut to another driving shot of the car. Cut to an interior shot, the man turns a knob. Cut to the instrument panel - he has selected the Facebook option on the onboard computer. He has received a Facebook message from a friend. Cut to the speedometer. Cut to another driving shot of the car. We see under the car's 'skin'. A super appears, 'Skyactiv technology.' Cut to machinery inside the car. Cut to another driving shot of the car. Another super appears, 'The all-new Mazda 3.' Cut to logo.

So... did someone write this? Did an actual copywriter sit down in front of a computer and type those words?

It's like they're playing a completely different game.

If anyone knows how ads like this get made, please enlighten me.

Ideas By Committee

 

A statue of a committee

It was G.K. Chesterton who said: "I’ve searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees." Well, he was wrong. Blogger Jennifer Dziura found this one in Ecuador.

I'm reminded of the quote because there's a new ad blogger in town, my friend Julian Watt, ECD at GPY&R Sydney, who is writing some beautiful posts at A Creative Meander.

His most recent piece is a wonderful observation about how everyone on the bus nowadays is "praying to their electronic devices." No one daydreams any more. Julian recommends daydreaming, as an opportunity for ideas to waft in. I am going to attempt this. Despite my current addiction to the fiendish iPhone game known as Candy Crush.

In an earlier post, Julian also pleads that despite the modern proliferation of brainstorms and workshops, we must "keep good respect for that one individual who opened their mouth and said, “What if we did this?!?” That first utterance is what starts everything. And without it, what do you really have?"

Very true.

I'm actually coming around to the idea of workshops. Although an idea can only happen inside the brain of a single individual, and not simultaneously in the minds of a committee, it is definitely fruitful to have other people around at times. They prompt ideas in me. Who knows, maybe I prompt ideas in them.

So, check out Julian's blog. There's a lot of smart thinking there. Not least of which is his decision to give it a title beginning with 'A'. Working to the principle of those plumbers who call their business AAAAA000000011111 Plumbers, he will appear first in many blogrolls.

How's Your Crack Rate?

It's crucial for an agency to have a high crack rate, since 'going again' on a brief effectively means you are doubling your costs. 

One of the many smart initiatives at BBH London is to carefully monitor the agency's crack rate. They realise their best chance of making money is to crack briefs first time - this is also strongly correlated with high levels of client satisfaction. Accounts where it is regularly not happening, can expect an inquiry.

But if you're a creative, the situation is more ambiguous. Superficially, a super-high crack rate may seem great. You will be seen as extremely reliable.

On the other hand, as the old saying goes... if you're not failing occasionally, you're not trying hard enough. The only thing that will give you a long-term career, as a creative, is occasionally doing great work. And great work is hard to sell. So a 100% crack rate could be a warning signal, that you're playing it too safe.

Some creatives are more comfortable being useful, cracking every brief, and hoping that one or two will turn out great. Others prefer to take a wild swing every time, and don't mind that they often strike out, knowing that occasionally they will bust the piñata wide open and be showered in candy. 

Which is right? Whichever you're more comfortable with, I guess. Though it has to be said that option 2 are a dying breed.
 

Do Craft Awards Count?

Last week a friend of mine said on Facebook: "Craft awards don't count. Fact."

I sniggered at that.

 

Maybe because I was brought up to believe that 'the idea is king'. Maybe because I'm from a copywriting background. Or maybe because I'm mildly disgusted that Cannes gave out over 100 Lions for Craft this year.

 

There's even an entirely separate category for Film Craft, added in 2010. I can't deny there have been some worthy winners. Philips 'The Gift' won the inaugural Grand Prix. In 2011 it was won by Puma 'After Hours Athletes', in 2012 it was Canal Plus 'Bear, and this year the visually stunning 'Meet The Superhumans'.

 

But do they count as much as the non-craft awards?

 

Well, John Hegarty always says: "It's 80% idea, and 80% execution," and he normally knows what he's talking about.

 

And maybe we under-appreciate craft, since the art of it often lies in not drawing attention to itself.

 

For example, I was recently chatting to someone involved in the post for Sony 'Balls'.

 

The whole intention, he told me, was to make it seem real - like there had been no post.

 

But in actual fact there was loads. That ad was in The Mill for weeks.

 

They took out the mortars that fired the balls. They took out the nets that caught the balls. They took out the balls themselves, in places where there were too many.

 

And they took out the strings that pulled the frog.

 

 

That's right - the frog was on strings.

 

Blew my mind, when I heard that.

So I Was Dissed In Cannes - By A Client

It used to be just us.

Well... us and the production companies - who organised all the fabulous parties, and paid for our drinks.

But this year, several agencies I know sent more Account Management types than they did Creatives. Is that wrong? Probably.

There were many Planners too; even the Head of Planning at London's Karmarama was there - an agency which has a policy of never entering creative awards. (He just wanted to see what Cannes was like).

And there were many hundreds of clients... one of whom dissed me.

It wasn't a major diss, it was just I could tell he wasn't that interested in talking to me. He has his global I.T. brand to look after, was there with his team, and had little to gain from talking to some random creative director.

But at Cannes I'd always felt I was among my people. Whoever you ran into, you'd have common ground with, and most likely have a good chat with. Does it mean we need to have our guard up at Cannes now?

Would it be better if Cannes went back to being just for creatives?

Actually, no. Thinking it through, I realised that clients suddenly descending on Cannes is about the best thing that could have happened to our industry.

For example, I read an article in one of the international trade magazines which described some of this year's winning work as "client-funded scam". Interesting phrase.

In another piece, an international marketing director talked about giving his agency a special, 'shackles-off' brief, with the aim of winning at Cannes. A European ECD told me that one of his clients had paid the agency $100,000 to make a campaign that both sides knew would not run widely, but was intended to win at Cannes.

Now, I don't want to get side-tracked by the scam debate here. If a client requests an ad campaign, pays for it, and runs it... then that work is legitimate. Even if it is not answering a real business problem. You can think of it more like experimentation. After all, car companies put millions into making prototypes for the motor shows. And these are not just a form of PR, the manufacturers glean important information from the exercise.

We've always argued that clients should be bolder, and invest (at least some) money in highly creative ideas. Now they're doing it. Great work is being made as a result. 

Part of this may be because the business case for creativity has solid evidence behind it nowadays. But I believe most of it is because clients have discovered Cannes, and like everyone who attends, they realise the rosé tastes better when you've won.

And if the occasional diss on the Carlton Terrace is the price I have to pay for clients investing in great creative work, it's surely worth it.

Cannes Stripped Bare - Day 5

This year's seminars have made it very clear that advertising is now all about data.

So, since I've lost my phone and can therefore no longer post photos of what I'm doing, I thought why not just provide the raw data. Quite basic, but I'd say it depicts Cannes 2013 quite well.

Cannes Stripped Bare - Day 4

Auditorium where delegates listen to a speaker pontificate on the future of advertising. Full.

Auditorium where delegates watch the actual advertising work entered into this year's awards. Not so full.

By the way, I must apologise - I had actual pictures of these, but have had to re-create them using Google Images, because I left my phone in a taxi last night. And I wasn't even drunk! Just wearing shorts with wide pockets.

 

Cannes Stripped Bare - Day 3

One of the highlights of attending Cannes is that everyone gets a goodie bag, just like at the Oscars.

At the Cannes film festival last month, attendees were provided with a swag bag containing handcrafted jewelry, spa and bath products, fine art photography and more, in a package valued at $1,180.

So it was with some excitement that I opened the Cannes advertising festival gift bag.

And I wasn't to be disappointed.

Every delegate receives this exclusive plastic fan, kindly sponsored by Korean Air.

No more sweltering at the beach. Simply move the fan in a back-and-forth motion for an immediate cooling effect.

Also, this ball.

Crafted from hand-selected polyurethane and designed to fit perfectly in the hand, it's not just an advertisement for kiip's Mobile Forum (Tuesday, 9.30am - unfortunately I wasn't able to be there) but also a versatile entertainment system, which can switch seamlessly between either throwing or bouncing mode.

Those who claim the 2,500 Euro cost of attending Cannes is excessive, may not be aware that as part of the package, each attendee receives a specially-designed T-shirt. The T-shirt is available in a variety of sizes - I went for Medium.

And finally, at the Cannes festival of creativity, no delegate need go hungry. So long as he or she likes marzipan. There was also a weird chocolate pie thing, not shown because I ate half of it in a weak moment.

Cannes Stripped Bare - Day 2

As Advertising Creatives, we are permanently searching for the new and innovative - our job is a neverending quest to do something that no one else has done before.

And that's why we refuse to follow trends.

Sorry Google Beach. Sorry Grand Audi Room. Sorry Spotify Garden. Sorry all the other brands that are trying to gain currency with creatives in Cannes. Ray-Ban owns this town, with near 100% top-of-shirt awareness.

All pictures from last night's Campaign Brief cocktail party.

Cannes Stripped Bare - Day 1

So here I am in the SOF, where many delegates are writing informative blog posts about the state of our industry. I thought about doing that too. Then I thought 'nah'.

Welcome to 'the other side of Cannes' - guaranteed no coverage at all of jury rooms, seminars, or award shows.


Those of you who are stuck back at the office, working, may be feeling ball-shrinkingly jealous of the glamour we delegates get to experience.

And so you should!

Check out my hotel, for example.

 

Situated on an award-winning industrial estate just outside Cannes, it's right across the street from one of the region's most prestigious tile manufacturers.

A

And a bus-wash.

But this is no ordinary bus-washing facility. That's a Mistral XB2 right there. State-of-the-art stuff.


Now let me take you inside the hotel.

Thirsty? Not a problem. Simply select a beverage from the minibar.

This place has every amenity.

Be sure to check back tomorrow, for my first party report!

Is The Era Of Scam Coming To An End?

One of my favourite campaigns at the awards this year is DDB New York's 'First World Problems' for WATERisLIFE. It's brilliantly clever, and brilliantly executed.

But interestingly, five years ago this campaign would have been scam.

It would have been entered in the TV category, having run once on an obscure TV station at 3am. No one would have seen it other than awards juries. It wouldn't have got PR, and it wouldn't have raised any money for charity.

Today, it's real. Over 2 million people have seen the film on YouTube. Many others have interacted with the idea via Twitter. It's got tons of PR, and raised real money for the charity.

So a welcome side-effect of the rise of the internet is that good ideas can become real, be seen, and actually have an effect in the world.

They don't have to be scam.

In fact since any video can be put on the internet and potentially find an audience, there is by definition no longer any such thing as scam in TV, which is a really welcome development, I reckon.

Though the press category is another matter of course...

Likeable Ways To Die

So D&AD is this week, and Cannes next week, and it looks like 'Dumb Ways To Die' is going to clean up at both.

In all the discussion of why it's so good - great animation, great song, clever strategy - there's one aspect that's been overlooked: it's just so damn likeable.

We don't talk about likeability much; perhaps we should.

It's a better-understood concept in Hollywood. Producers there are acutely aware that most popular movies are built around a likeable character - e.g. Han Solo, anybody played by Bruce Willis, Tony Stark, anybody played by Tom Hanks.
 
I met John Mescall (creator of Dumb Ways To Die) at an awards do recently and was struck by what a likeable chap he is. In fact, one of the industry magazines voted him 'most likeable person in advertising' last year.

So it's perhaps no surprise that he created such a likeable ad.

But what if you're not the most likeable person in advertising? Is there a formula for making our work likeable? What are the ingredients?

I'm going to suggest two (happy to hear more ideas also).

The first one is vulnerability or failure. Superman (as Clark Kent) is shy, and he is also vulnerable to Kryptonite - these help make him likeable. Indiana Jones is afraid of snakes. The characters in Dumb Ways To Die are all idiotic failures. 

My old mate William Fowler has written about how we are drawn to failure. "Let’s try a quiz," he writes. "What was the name of the boy who flew too close to the sun? What about his father, whose flight was successful? Name the two sister ships of the Titanic. Name one perfectly upright tower in northern Italy."

The difficulty of course is that clients always want to portray their brands as perfect. Worth bearing in mind that as humans we recoil from perfection, and find the wonky appealing.

The second factor is attractiveness. We like Jerry Maguire (even though he's a bit of a cock) because he's played by Tom Cruise. We like James Bond (even though he's a bastard) because he's handsome. And we like the characters in Dumb Ways To Die because they're cute.

Northern Planner was getting at something similar when he wrote a post about how the best archetype for a brand was "Victoria's Secret model."

So there you have it. Of course we still need to worry about things like media strategy and messaging. But let's not forget to be likeable.

The 37 Richest People In Advertising

Businesser Insider have just released their annual list of the 37 best-paid people in advertising.

There is only one woman on it (No.17 - Mercedes Erra, the 'E' in France's BETC). Right, because science has proven that possession of two x chromosomes is a huge inhibitor of advertising ability.
And all 37 executives on the list are white. Surely fair - advertising talent and skin pigmentation are clearly correlated.

Interestingly, the list finally resolves a question we've all pondered: "Who earns the really big bucks - suits, creatives, or planners?"

Answer: none of the above.

The best-paid people in advertising are the finance guys!

Digging into the backgrounds of those on the list, we can observe that only three are former account handlers. Five are strategy types, but before any of my planner friends get excited, none of them are ad strategists - all five are from consulting. 

Three are lawyers (Omnicom group general counsel, etc), one is from a marketing background (Kevin Roberts, worldwide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, at No.9), three are media types, and two have backgrounds that I couldn't determine, during my approximately ten minutes of total research.

Meanwhile, a whopping 18 of the 37 highest-paid folks in our business have a finance or accounting background. Hurrah! And what's more, the bean-counters score four of the top five spots, with big guns like Martin Sorrell, John Wren, and Michael Roth (the head of Interpublic).

But I've saved the biggest flaw until last.

It's outrageous, I'm sure you'll agree, but somehow a creative person has snuck on there (Jacques Seguela, the 'S' in Euro RSCG, now chief creative officer of Havas Worldwide, at No.28). A creative person, on the list of the highest-paid people in the ad industry? But what possible value do they add?

To the young creatives reading this who harbour a desire to one day pull down a million dollar a year salary, the path is clear - chuck in your job and get an accounting qualification.

And most of all, please bin your skinny jeans, get rid of that ridiculous facial hair, and try to model yourselves a little more closely on the true heroes of our industry - men such as David B. Doft, and Randall J. Weisenburger.

David B. Doft,  CFO (chief financial officer)

of US-based network MDC Partners

(No.36, earned $714,144 last year),

 Randall J. Weisenburger, CFO of Omnicom

(No.5, earned $10.6 million last year)

I Can't Wait Until Data Takes Over

Most creatives aren't excited about data. But I actually think that 'true data' is going to set us free.

Right now, because data-gathering on advertising effectiveness is in its infancy, we are living in an age of seriously shoddy data.

We are measuring things like 'recall', which may or may not translate into sales. We are measuring things like 'persuasiveness'... which we can only measure after we've deliberately exposed someone to an ad, so we have no way of knowing if the consumer would have looked at the ad if we hadn't asked them to.

Which is why so many of the ads that pass research are 'saying all the right things' but don't actually work in the marketplace, where they are competing against (in the case of TV) seven other ads in the break, a toilet, a smartphone in the viewer's pocket, the conversation of someone else in the room, and the chance to make a cup of tea.

I am hugely encouraged by the data being generated from YouTube's relatively new 'skippable ad' feature.

The average skip rate for YouTube ads is greater than 80%. Source.

But an insider tells me that within that 80%, there's a huge variation. The most popular ads are skipped only 10% of the time. While the least popular are skipped 90% of the time. In other words, some ads are NINE TIMES as engaging as others.

This just confirms what we creatives have known in our bones, since time began.

That creativity works.

In the future, technology and data will be able to tell us exactly who saw a marketing message (in whatever medium) and then, from their subsequent purchasing behaviour, whether that ad was effective.

When this happens, creativity will finally triumph.

All the advertisers who thought that it was enough to simply say whatever they wanted to say, and gave insufficient thought to engagement, will be shown empirically to be wrong.

And on that day, I propose we hold a massive party.

There is no Year 2

On being presented with a piece of work, clients, suits and planners are inordinately fond of asking us to "demonstrate that it's a big idea."

For this we have to prepare multiple executions, in multiple media... and above all, "show us how it would work in year 2, year 3 and year 5."

But in reality, Year 2 never comes.

When I was a young copywriter, nearly every brand seemed to have a long-running campaign. Just off the top of my head there was 'Heineken refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach', 'Australians couldn't give a XXXX for any other lager', 'No nonsense' for John Smith's, 'Good things come to those who wait' for Guinness... and that's just in the beer category.

Cars, department stores, food products...they all had proper campaigns.

But today, very few brands do. There are one or two exceptions, such as Snickers' 'You're not you when you're hungry', but the vast majority of brands just do a series of one-offs.

Snickers - last of the great campaigns?

Even some series that people think are campaigns, and cite as campaigns, really aren't. For example, the excellent John Lewis ads are all really one-offs, held together by a tone of voice. So are the Skittles ads, all Volkswagen ads, and BMW ads. 

So why the change?

Maybe agencies have less patience nowadays. Maybe it's to do with marketing directors moving around faster than the wurlitzer rides in a funfair. To be honest, I don't know.

But I actually don't care. I just wish everyone would accept that this is the case, and let us get on with making a series of cool one-offs. As long as they're all on-brand and on-tone, what does it matter?

Nike have almost never had campaigns. Nor have Apple.

So I suggest we all stop spuriously worrying about whether an idea will have longevity, and concentrate on the far more important question of whether it will have impact. 

We Are Now Literally Talking To Ourselves

Is this what advertising has come to?

A snarked-up copywriter hunched in a darkened social-media war room, lobbing jibes at another copywriter in some other bunker in another city, both overseen by their respective clients pecking nervously at a soy macchiato.

Yes, it seems that instead of a brand sending a message to a consumer (traditional advertising) or a brand giving people a way to interact with it (modern advertising) we are now seeing brands just talking to each other.

So at first, I was royally depressed by these examples (from 'Creative Newsroom: Brand Storytelling At The Speed Of Social' by EdelmanDigital).

But you know what? At least they're actually funny.

And best of all, no rational messaging.

I've long been a believer that people buy brands primarily because of their badge value (owning a VW says you're a person of wit and intelligence - the ads work because they're witty and intelligent, not because they inform you that the vehicle has park assist or whatever).

These tweets will enhance the brands' badge value, therefore they will work, therefore even though we're merely talking to ourselves, it's still okay. I'm correct here, no?