Catfoa Musings

Tonight's CATFOA got me thinking enough to actually write down more than 140 char.

Like most good self help, rousing speeches or pep talks, Michael Lebowitz didn't tell us much we didn't already know. He did reawaken the groggy throughts, and made a few things a little stickier in their articulation. While there were other yeah!yeah! moments, these stuck out to me.

STICKY 1: Advertising is the business of growing business.
Sometimes it thinks it's in the biz of winning awards, getting noticed or making the "rock stars" he talked about.

STICKY 2: "If I tell someone about your brand.. it's [because I like them, not your brand]"
Like he said, when's the last time someone repeated a tagline to you?

STICKY 3: A brand is the sum of its actions.
Most still talk incessantly about themselves, too much and too loud. Granted, in Mpls that probably wouldn't get you punched in the face, but it would make for lonely happy hours.

STICKY 4: Marketing is a value exchange.
A Zeus Jonesian observation about how the process should be looking at what people care about and trying to make it better.

STICKY 5: People appreciate complexity.
How I wish clients embraced this one. Like he said, no one walks out of a movie and marvels at how clear it was. I'd add, unless you're unhappy about how predictable it was.

STICKY 6: Don't try to solve a problem that never existed.
In the race to create content, apps, etc. a lot of needless things are being created. Good point - just because it's digital and it's not a print ad doesn't mean it matters.

STICKY 7: Don't outsource
This seems a bit controversial, as the legacy agencies tried to build capabilities, fail, and point to Crispin & Barbarian or Sierra Bravo and Mpls. I wonder if this came up after I left in Q&A

STICKY 8: You can't really get mgmt to care.
That was my net in the Q-n-A. Maybe you really do need to cut bait.

Scary, but I realized the last two CATFOA guys don't have deep, gilded resumes with rock star pedigree.

To paraphrase a tagline that many briefs and ad people HAVE repeated over the years -- they just did it.

TV is not dead

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOhcAe1NCAY

See above.

Where are the Grown Ups?

The title (if not the content) if this David Brooks column, multiplied by recent reckonings with my own arrested adolescent behavior got me thinking about the lack of grown up ANYTHING in our culture. Brands, branding, advertising, "experiences" included.

The Brooks column is a little twisted, relishing in Lincoln's depression/mental illness/potential denial of other true parts of his nature. But this jumped out:

"Candidates get elected by telling people what they want to hear, leading them by using the sugar of their own fantasies."

Hmmm... in other words, marketing?

From creepy media like "Moment of Truth" to man-vertising to the elevation of pro athletes as gods to the ironic t-shirt or gross-out pizza product introductions, the sophomoric, the junk or the cheap thrill often seem to win.

Are there honest conversations or higher appeals happening out there? Weight Watchers and Dove come close, but the little things left unsaid make them ultimately unsatisfying, at least to me.

Which brands, cultural movements, etc. are making adult appeals? Or is entertainment ultimately what brands must be, and may escapism reign?

With gas prices, credit problems, the weak $, the Middle East, etc., maybe we will be forced into a grown up moment. Then again, maybe it'll be a bigger boom for junk escapsim to forget some more that it's all happening.

Change

Isn't this a bit short-sighted?

Sleeping with the enemy is a better way to affect change. (insert "from within" joke here)

My boyfriend has now voted Green party AND democrat and hasn't gone by the R-word in years. And that was pre-W term 2.

Iraq - the worst branded anti-war ever

Forget the playlist, one thing I like about long drives is the random radio scan - especially on two-lanes or in the south.

Yesterday I had such an opportunity and actually listened to "Peace Train"

Which made me think, "How come there have been so few protest songs for Iraq?"
Which made me think, "How come there have been so few protests of any kind for Iraq?"

The most powerful anti-war branding msg I saw was at the end of a Flaming Lips show a couple of years ago. War Pigs, faithfullly covered with a montage of the Bush-Cheney administration and the most graphic scenes of war carnage I'd seen.
Pretty easy, since you see so few.

One thing you have to give the baby boomers, they branded their youth and their cause well.

People are more uptight now about compact fluorescents than Iraq.
I wish there was a new biz pitch to jump in on this.

Blah blah blah

I never wanted a blog because I felt like ad bloggers all talked about the same things.

And talked talked talked more than did.

Now that I've seen someone get paid, published, followed, friended and ranked for doing it, I realize I was right.

If you can't beat 'em....

I am officially uncool

Yes friends, I am an official correspondent for
theuncoolhunter


Destiny, I am one step closer to you...

Flickr goes Video

Ferris Wheel
Originally uploaded by Chaddles

It'll be interesting to see how Flickr Vid develops vs. youtube.

Relevance, Hip Hop Ballet & Lagerfeld Theft Auto

As old-guard remixes cultural relevancy, agencies talking about breaking conventions feels really conventional.

Big Boi's ballet in Atlanta

apparently, Atlanta Ballet has also staged Great Gatsby & a project with Indigo Girls


HD Opera live at the cineplex on Saturday afternoons - from the Met
(next one: Saturday, April 26, 2008)

Karl Lagerfeld as a charater, VO and DJ on the next Grand Theft Auto Vice City
Quote: “They (the video game guys) had written a politically incorrect dialogue,” the designer says of his new gig. “I loved it, [particularly] in a time when everybody wants to be so politically correct when they talk.”

Suddenly a billboard doesn't feel all that "convention breaking" does it?

Help is on the way

I'm sucker for good design with wit. But the genius of this isn't just the insight that all remedy medication is likely to make a head pound or stomach turn worse.

It's the "I'm bored" section. If you don't LOL, don't come to my happy hour.

xox