Thoughts on @BPGlobalPR
By now, you’ll have all seen the fake BP Twitter account (typical examples of it’s tweets have been made into posters by http://www.iridetheharlemline.com, some of which are in the slideshow below).
Now, some people have been suggesting that this is a perfect example of the danger for brands who aren’t on Twitter – the conversation about you is not conducted by you, but instead by anyone with an axe to grind and an internet connection (in this case, a talented if not rather blunt satirist).
But BPGlobalPR is a parody of a BP twitter account because the very idea is completely absurd. My God, I mean, what on Earth could BP tweet to get out of this one? Are you seriously suggesting, if only BP was there to @reply every negative remark with a message of corporate condolence, that perception of the spill would be any better? Of course it wouldn’t – it would be a tasteless insult, to the victims of this spill and to anyone above dormouse-level intelligence using Twitter (let’s dodge an obvious joke about the lack of people above dormouse-level intelligence using Twitter).
But really, this is why I love new media: it is a great leveler. BP can’t shout any louder than anyone else, and when they fuck up, no amount of tweeting is going to change that. No one suggested the Iranian government should join Twitter at the time of the protests – this is no different.
The spill’s cost, to everyone and everything in the Gulf of Mexico, is devastating. The rage and fear of the coastal communities there is palpable, even half way around the world. There is no getting around this. No press release, tweet, or blog seeding will make it go away.
But some things are so terrible, depressing or upsetting that I find thinking about them is like staring at the Sun: every ounce of self-preservation in my body wrestles me away, sensing no good will come of it. Empathy is an essential human faculty. But callously ignoring the suffering of others, consciously or not, is essential as well.
Traditionally, I think, this is why activity on the ‘morally dubious’ side of the scale – and I think we can safely put BP’s work here – lends itself so happily to branding. Naturally, we don’t want to think about the bad things that our thirst for oil is doing. If companies provide us with an attractive, happy, easy to swallow lie, we lap it up. And in traditional media land, it was hard to stop them.
BP can splash out on the media spend (they’ve deep pockets, after all) and come out with something as rage-coma-inducing as this:
Without many people realising, adverts like this have lost all power. Commercial messages designed to push a company line in the face of reality will not succeed, whereas once they might have.
Go and see what some American teenager has written below that ad on YouTube: ‘Fuck you, BP’. We can all say it. ‘Fuck you’. No amount of money can stop that being written on the Internet; no amount of money could stop those two simple words from totally undermining the global ad spend of one of the world’s largest corporations.
This should make everyone in advertising very, very happy. This isn’t a reason to pack up and go home, it’s an excuse to create an industry founded on trust, honesty and value. If that doesn’t sound appetising… there’s probably a PR job going at BP.
Making boring interesting
Here a little powerpoint presentation I made, about making boring interesting. Rule one: don’t use powerpoint.
First of all, this John Lewis number from Adam & Eve. It almost makes you want to settle down, and be completely normal and middle class in every way, doesn’t it.
I think a lot of companies trying to pull this of would fail terribly. But two things help it become something really quite beautiful – the music, and the brand. John Lewis stated the ‘unusual cover version’ thing with the acoustic Sweet Child O’ Mine Christmas advert, which was similarly sentimental. It’s a pretty good trick – you recognise the track (although perhaps not where from), but it doesn’t seem like a brand is lazily associating itself with a famous song, nor does the song dominate the ad.
Second, it’s a touch edgy, in a not-at-all edgy BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge sort of way. And Fyfe Dangerfield has genuine music credibility, so for the few who recognise him John Lewis can snaffle that as well.
More importantly, John Lewis can get away with it. We know they’re painfully middle class. We know they’re a partnership, who share profit equally amongst their staff, and not some evil multinational. And we all know their reputation for solid, unimaginative products backed up by lifetime warrantees, and old-fashioned shop floor customer service. Basically, they’re old fashioned and very trustworthy.
So, rather than coming of as a cynical ploy for our money (as it would with most), this completely preposterous advert is almost believable, and genuinely moving. Pats on the back all round – very, very clever, and effective.
Our other entry is similarly ridiculous emotional blackmail, this time from Leo Burnett on behalf of the WWF:
Highbrow and slow moving, I very seriously doubt this is going to save many monkeys, or do much to combat global warming. But we can all enjoy it anyway, I think.
Now, excuse me, I’m off to harm myself.
Robots, Corporate Personality & The Uncanny
Rather than link you to it, I thought I’d introduce this post by quoting straight from the Wikipedia page for ‘uncanny’:
“The Uncanny (Ger. Das Unheimliche — literally, “un-home-ly”) is a Freudian concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange.
“Because the uncanny is familiar, yet strange, it often creates cognitive dissonance within the experiencing subject due to the paradoxical nature of being attracted to, yet repulsed by an object at the same time. This cognitive dissonance often leads to an outright rejection of the object, as one would rather reject than rationalize.”
For example, objects that look too human (but not completely human) are uncanny. Shop mannequins are uncanny. Dummies are uncanny. They look human, but clearly they’re not – so they can be quite repulsive, or unsettling. But objects still need personality.
Designers know this, and try to give things personality without the direct imitation of human features. As far as I can see, most cars ever made are designed with a strong personality in mind – some aggressive, some happy, some elegant.
But, cars are always only suggestive of human features – never just a face drawn on the grille. I’ve often thought this goes some way to explaining the Edsel disaster. Who wants to own a car with a face even a mother couldn’t love?
So apparently, as a race, we’re furtively narcissistic. Things sounds be made in our image… but not too much.
Things brings me onto brands. In the old days of broadcast media, brands didn’t have to pretend to be your friend. But new media increasingly gives then the opportunity, and temptation, to behave like individuals in our lives. Befriending us on facebook, following us on twitter.
And, it’s creepy. It’s familiar – they interact with us in much the same way as real people – but it’s always different to the real thing.
So if brands think it’s a winning policy, they should think again. As Freud argued long ago, the uncanny is very powerfully repulsive. A corporation getting matey is an enormous turn-off.
But, that doesn’t mean brands can’t have personalities. To successfully humanise a brand is a great thing, for customer and company.
But brands should know – and acknowledge – their place. Not our friends, but our tools. So, let’s have more ASIMOs, and less Actroids in the world of brands, please. Thanks.
Social Media: rareified Consumerism
So, advertising people present the new predicament of brands as their being forced into dialogue with consumers, when they used to simply broadcast to them. Agencies, it follows, who used to do the broadcasting, must now manage the dialogue.
Like, today I read this interesting list written by Simon Mainwaring (find it here), about what agencies must do to stay relevant in the short and long-term.
Now, generally, although I’m sure this is all very scary for ad people, it’s seen as something positive. Rather than bombard people with whatever message they choose, companies must become more honest about their products – the “brand truths” planners seem to talk about a lot.
If companies try and ‘get away’ with something, they can’t – just look at the Nestle #fail.
Consequently, social media is usually presented as a people’s rebellion against the powers that be – breaking the proverbial chains of imprisonment, or removing one’s lips from the warm tit of branding (as Rory Sutherland colourfully presented it in his excellent TED talk of some time ago):
But, of course, the purpose of such effectively tailored consumerism from a company’s perspective is to sell more stuff – if people are able to tell you exactly what they like, don’t like, and want more of, well, all the better for clever people selling stuff.
Now you can, like me, believe in the possibility of mutually beneficial capitalist relationships. But, let’s be a bit more honest about them – brands aren’t on the run. Well, only the stupid ones are. The good ones are about to make a killing.
The Internet of Things
It’s a funny phrase I heard today, in relation to this: http://bit.ly/8dnhqn
Quick background about the idea on Wikipedia – http://tinyurl.com/5qr2nq (or click my hand-drawn expression of confusion at the concept of the Internet of Things!)
Public discourse about the internet seems to have been groping it’s way towards this point for some time, and so in a sense the concept of the internet of things is nothing new.
I think it’s been quite a few years now that the concept of internet ‘portal’ or ‘device’ has replaced the idea of ‘having a computer’, with cloud computing, streaming music, Kindles, iPads, Line2, and all the rest falling neatly into place as the technological capability opens up.
Clearly, augmented reality is another huge part of the blurring of lines between what the internet is, and what it isn’t, although as far as I’m concerned it’s nothing more than a novelty until technology catches up with current aspiration (10 years, perhaps?)
And the idea, for me, clarifies many of the difficulties that ‘traditional’ digital agencies are having – it no longer makes sense to concentrate on the internet as something separate from the rest of the world, or indeed our daily lives. So why have separate agencies to deal with it?
It’s funny, actually. I studied theology at university (along with philosophy), and a very popular conception of God is that He (or indeed She) is ‘everything and nothing’ and ‘nowhere and everywhere’ – if God is everywhere, He cannot be said to be anywhere, and if God is everything, He cannot be said to be specifically anything. In the 90s, the Internet was a thing. You went to a computer, and surfed it.
The Internet, increasingly, is not a thing – it just is. So – and I don’t mean to sound completely facetious – people and technology are actually turning the web into a Deity. Ever present, and woven seamlessly into life.
So there we are – the Internet of Things. Exciting times, people, exciting times…
So, I saw some people tweeting about this today and finally got round to watching it:
I don’t know. On the one hand, of course ‘traditional agencies’ cannot survive going along as they always have done. But, seriously, are we really expected to believe that most of them haven’t heard of the internet?
And how many agencies really are carrying on as they always have done? One suspects very few – and those most worried about not changing quickly enough, are presumably the ones shouting loudest about change (yes, I’m looking at you Saatchi & Saatchi, if this really was your doing).
Secondly, any person or organisation with a vested interest in appearing creative is always going to want to say something that sounds ‘different’ from the crowd – criticising other agencies for being stuck in their ways the most obvious way of doing this. But everybody – I mean absolutely everybody – is talking about exactly what this film is getting at. So..this just comes off as a bit lame.
Finally, I also think there’s a very sensible reason large agencies still concentrate on print and TV – because in most cases, these media still make the biggest difference to a client’s bottom line. For now, anyway.
Package Holidays..
Today, I saw what is by most accounts a pretty uninspiring advert, for First Choice holidays –
What struck me however was the brilliance of its simple, but effective, strategic thinking. It’s not hard to imagine that a perceived problem with the concept of package holidays amongst much of the holiday going public is their association with families – specifically, families with young children. Being stuck by the pool, or on a flight with, noisy children seems to be one of those things permanently fashionable to complain about.
Thomas Cook tried to counter this with it’s Redknapp ads..
..but as far as I’m concerned, they came off as just a little smug, and pandered too directly to younger, childless couples.
What First Choice has managed to do is appeal to those younger couples, and families as well. By stressing that catering for children benefits everyone – the children (obviously), but also the adults, who get to relax without them.
By implicitly admitting a perceived weakness, and inverting it to a strength, I actually think it’s quite a subtle ad. And far, far better than Thomas Cook’s, whose celebrity endorsers presumably means it cost about ten times as much…
Hello world!
Hi,
My name’s Max, and I’ve just started as an account executive at 7thingsmedia, a great affiliate marketing company based near Smithfield market in London (www.7thingsmedia.com). Here’s where I’ll share my thoughts about affiliate marketing, marketing, advertising, social media, and anything else I fancy!
Please, say hello, leave a comment or some feedback, follow me (twitter.com/maxjgold), tell your friends about me, or indeed do none of the above.
the market square 