Linked in - The ultimate giveaway

You always know when someone is looking for a new job, because suddenly their profile gets ludicrously updated, right up until that one meeting last week where they did something really well and their current boss totally overlooked them.

Mark my words, next time one of your colleagues radically updates their Linked-In profile, they'll be gone within 3 months.

2 double shots?

Come on, NHS - this advert is NOT going to stop teenagers drinking or look up information on safer drinking habits, either.

All they're going to do is laugh in your face for suggesting that 5 pints will make you piss your pants, and 2 double shots will see you coated in your own vomit.

Those stats must've come from the client because there's no way anyone in the ad industry would think that amount of booze would have such consequences.

What is wrong with you?!

I went on some very good training in Digital advertising today. I was, however, astonished at the lack of knowledge about even the most basic internet phenomena amongst my peers and colleagues.

I'm not talking about anything advanced like coding your own website or fiddling with meta-data (incidentally a phrase no-one had heard of) but I was incredibly disappointed that my fellow admen and adwomen needed to be shown how to use Twitter and what iGoogle is. These were people in their 20s.

I have no words...and they're wondering why their agencies aren't picking up more digital briefs, or why they're struggling to sell in digital ideas to clients. Maybe it's because you're using a FUCKING TYPEWRITER and FAXING the work over to them?

Rant over.

Bags for life

 

You know when you’re in town, or in the supermarket, or at bingo, you know anywhere with a high quantity of old women, you see them with their big carrier bags. They’ve got strong handles, the sort of bag you will actually exchange money for, they’ve got patterns and pictures on them, and emblazoned across them is the motto of the biddies that carry them: BAG FOR LIFE.  I can't help but think to myself "You certainly are, love. You certainly are."

The scariest product demo ever

Anyone seen that advert for Senokot constipation cure? It's essentially a demo ad, but it is an incredibly scary one that has me crossing every part of my body that I'll never get constipated. There’s a woman with a big handbag and it goes “imagine this bag is your stomach, over the day it’s getting full of food” and so on, and this woman’s carrying around this big handbag full of food and other crap representing her constipated stomach.

And then it goes on to advertise the magical cure they’re selling and that you’ll be free of constipation: seems straight forward so far. The thing is, to demonstrate how it works, the woman gets the bag, the bag that’s full to the brim with food, and tips it upside down into the bin! 

Imagine that was your stomach! WHUMP! There ya go! All your fucking stomach contents BANG, straight out of your arse. You better be near a toilet when you take these tablets cause you’re gonna lose a fucking kidney! I couldn’t believe it. I’d rather be a big bag full of food than have the entire contents of my stomach leave my body in under a second. Fuck that!

Creativity today

I love the internet. I've spent so much time on the internet that after a lifetime of perfect vision I have rather prematurely started to need glasses to see properly. Admittedly I'm not too cut up about it because I now look more like a planner than I used to, and have seriously increased gravitas, particularly when I remove them as I unleash a powerful insight. Or at least that's how it looks when I practise in front of the mirror.

Where I was going with this whole internet thing, though, is that it is seriously hindering creativity in the advertising industry. Not through any fault of its own, mostly because some lacklustre creatives are using it for ideas, instead of actually having their own. What used to be an exercise of cracking a brief to bring a brand alive has now turned into an exercise of finding the best way to crowbar that cool thing they saw on the internet into their upcoming campaign.

Yes, stealing off the internet is the new in thing! It's fast, it's exciting and it's a piece of fucking piss. Thankfully, the majority of the unwashed masses don't spend so much time online and they haven't seen the latest viral, cool video or funny image that has been sent around, so when you present it to them as an ad campaign they'll happily lap it up and think whoever created it must be a fucking genius. For the geekier among us, who have reached the end of the internet several times, it is painful to watch and painful to hear people talking about. It's mostly bad because when someone is harping on about an obvious internet steal, there's really no way to answer truthfully without coming across as a cock:

"Yeah, but they stole the idea off the internet"

"I saw that online 3 years ago"

"Do you not go online?!"

And so on and so forth.

Now, I present to you my 3 worst offenders for internet thievery:

At number 3, it's Berocca:

 

Which is a direct steal from this song by OK Go, which became much more of a hit online than it ever was in the charts, due entirely to its superbly awesome video:

There are a few reasons why this one is quite so painful: the first being simply that it's so obviously a rip, down to the number of treadmills and the moves they are doing. At least if you're going to steal an idea try and make it your own, this ad is more like a cover-version than a tribute. If they'd used the OK Go music it might not have seemed so cheeky, and would instead have been a little nod of the cap. Actually, who am I kidding, that'd still be fucking rude. 

The second thing is that it really doesn't have anything to do with the product - You on a good day? What the fuck has that got to do with twatting around on a few treadmills in the middle of the street? That's not me on a good day! On a good day I sit around the flat in my pants drinking beer and watching Red Dwarf repeats on Dave. If I found myself in a busy square, wearing a suit and skiing on a treadmill in front of bewildered onlookers I would consider myself to be having a very bad day!

Next on my list of outright thievery is Saatchi & Saatchi's much loved T-Mobile advert where they had the extremely original idea of doing a flash mob, because someone heard that flash mobs were really cool (about 5 years ago). 

I have to admit, I love the execution - they did a really good job of executing a truly unoriginal idea - because it is a well done flash mob, it's funny, it took people by surprise, and it created a lot of buzz for the agency and the brand. Apparently, it also worked incredibly well as an advert, and the weekend after it ran T-Mobile enjoyed the most visits to their stores they'd ever had on a Saturday.

What I do not love, though, is that they clearly just had an idea they really wanted to do and so they crowbarred it into the brand's current campaign as awkwardly as possible just so they could justify doing it. The brand's current slogan is of course "Life's for sharing" which apparently ties into this flash mob because some people there were filming it on their mobiles, phoning their friends and sending texts to talk about it. Apparently.

They weren't sharing life, they were probably ringing their boss to apologise that they'd be late for their meeting because a bunch of muppets were blocking the way to the platform and they'd missed their train! Yes, life is for sharing, and apparently really old ideas that took off on the internet are for sharing, though whether or not they'll be sharing any of the credit is even more questionable than the idea that none of the "members of the public" on their phones were stooges.

And third on my list has to be this BBC6 advert:

Really cool, eh? But not quite as cool as the original, which was not only better executed, but also had that little thing that originals tend to have that elevates them above copies: Originality

"6 music...Get an earful"...An earful of what? Guilt? Unoriginality? Chlamydia? Should a youth radio station not be trying to be original, fresh and exciting instead of copying something they found on the internet and doing a half arsed job of it. 

Now, I've singled these 3 out but there are countless others out there and I'm worried that it's becoming far too much of a trend among younger creatives (or maybe they're older and lazier, but it seems more likely that it'll be the young internetty types). It seems far too many are seeing cool, funny, original, innovative ideas on the internet and instead of thinking "wow, I wish I could do something as cool as that, I'm going to try really hard to be that creative" they think "I bet no one at the office has seen this yet, and the client definitely won't have. They'll think I'm well fucking creative if I present this to them." 

STOP IT!! YOU'RE NOT FUCKING CREATIVE!! IF YOU ARE COPYING AN IDEA YOU SAW ON THE INTERNET YOU ARE A FRAUD AND YOUR PARENTS WOULD BE SPINNING IN THEIR GRAVES IF THEY KNEW. IF YOUR PARENTS AREN'T DEAD THEY WOULD DIE OF SHAME IF THEY WERE EVER TO FIND OUT!

Thankfully none of the creatives I work with have felt the need to steal creative ideas off the internet yet, because they are all very talented and original thinkers. Also, if they even so much as try to present an idea from the internet to me, I will publicly depants them as the unoriginal bastards they would be. They wouldn't stand a chance, because I've seen so much of the internet that I was bored enough to actually sit here and write some more internet so that I would have something else to read next time I go on the internet. 

Edit: Just watching TV and I saw another rip of the original living graffiti: this one REALLY has nothing to do with it, they obviously just wanted to use the cool idea for something - ANYTHING. These thieves know no bounds.

Unileverage

Giant umbrella company, and all round enormous conglomerate Unilever is to start putting its logo in adverts for its products, which until now have lived completely separate  lives.  http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/884449/Unilever-debut-logo-consumer-ads-March/989BD06090ABCD5E84FC9234B1061C03/

I have blogged previously about Unilever and a disparity in its communications from its sub-brands. See the post "Unilever Hypocrisy" to read about how one savvy consumer connected the line between Dove - real beauty - and Lynx - real sexy ladies gyrating for you with a single spray of deodorant. 

This previous incident wasn't really an incident at all, because although Dove and Lynx are owned by the same parent company they are completely separate brands, run by completely different chains of command and with the Unilever logo appearing only on the packaging, there was really no Unilever brand to speak of, nor to be damaged. To 99% of the public, the Unilever logo was (and still is) something of a mystery. It's something that appears on the back of a lot of their products but it has no real meaning.

Now, adding it to television advertising (presumably to be followed by print, outdoor and in-store media) will start to create a brand. Unilever will start to represent something, and the previously innocuous logo that hid shyly at the back of the pack will be standing proudly forward with something to say. 

Unilever's reasoning is that their research shows that if a consumer already buys products from them, they are more likely to buy another product if they know it is by the same company. What I think they've neglected to think about is that while people who regularly buy Uncle Ben's rice may be more open to buying Uncle Ben's sauces, the same logic doesn't necessarily apply one tier higher up in the branding hierarchy.

• Is a lover of Skittles more likely to buy Sheeba for his cat if he knows they're both owned by Masterfoods?

• Is a guy who always shaves with Gillette going to be more open to buying Ariel detergent if he knows they're both owned by Procter and Gamble?
  

The answer, surely, is a resounding no. So why do Unilever think that slapping a logo in their adverts is going to increase brand loyalty and turn Dove users into PG Tips drinkers (incidentally, I think Procter and Gamble should buy the PG Tips brand and rebrand them P&G Tips).

All they're going to do is open themselves up to a level of transparency that they aren't used to, and they'll open the doors for a thousand more connections being made between their brands that aren't so friendly. 

• Got a laundry brand talking about environmental friendliness, but also own a battery company doing nothing to prevent millions of disposable batteries being sent to landfill each year?

• Own the leading ice cream brand AND the leading diet food brand? 

• Do you have one brand telling women they're beautiful as they are and another telling them to slap more make-up on?

You bet your arse the big 3 companies do, which is exactly why they ought to keep their mouths shut if they don't want to unleash the wrath of the savvy shopper. Just to pick one example of terrible crossovers in the brand portfolio - how exactly does Unilever think it's going to look when people make connections between Pot Noodle and Weight Watchers. On the one hand you have "the slag of all snacks" and on the other you've got "who ate all the snacks?".

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I think in the age of the internet and the savvy shopper, with power more firmly in the hands of consumers than ever before, Unilever may be opening up a huge can of worms and causing itself far more trouble than it's worth. Now is not the time to connect all your brands that have vastly different messages, and it certainly isn't a time to bring the messages of your brands closer together to fit snugly under one corporate umbrella. 

Now is the time to strengthen the brands you already have, to make them stand more firmly for what they stand for than ever before. Denigrating their strength by highlighting an overarching hypocrisy and lack of consistency seems like a very bad idea indeed.