This photo, from a presentation I recently attended, speaks the truth. And you know what they say about the truth:
1.) It hurts.
2.) It will set you free.
Today, brands need to focus on engagement and connection. People don’t like advertising for a reason. I see this as an awesome opportunity.
The recent dustup over NBC’s The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien has been nothing short of entertaining. Show business aside, this little episode of popular culture offers a unique opportunity to witness challenger brand positioning and public perception unfold on a grand scale.
What I’ve found particularly interesting is the inordinate amount of public outrage at NBC (and Jay Leno) and the beloved, nearly deified status that Conan has attained with even the most fair-weather fans. I think it boils down to a couple of things: the public has an innate sense of fairness, they gravitate almost uniformly to the underdog or challenger, and they love it when the underdog exhibits real backbone.
Would I necessarily call Conan O’Brien an underdog? Probably not in a vacuum. In fact, Michael Ian Black articulates quite well the irony of feeling sorry for Conan in his blog post, Norma Rae:
How did a Harvard-educated, multi-millionaire late night talk show host magically transmogrify into a guy who got laid off at the local car plant? The overreaction to Conan’s departure has been kind of astounding; as a nation, are we really that concerned about who hosts “The Tonight Show,” a television program that stopped being culturally relevant around 1986?
When you consider the Conan brand in the late night television competitive environment, maybe he is a challenger brand. Rob Sheffield, in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, describes Jay Leno as the Godzilla of late night TV:
Leno’s got the stomach for fights. Like Paul McCartney, another nice guy wrongly dismissed as a cream puff, Jay made his bones in the sleaziest, nastiest showbiz shark pools on earth. He plays nice for the old ladies, but his street-fighting instincts are off the charts. He’s left plenty of carrion on the late-night highway. Arsenio Hall, Chevy Chase, Magic Johnson — Jay knocked them all off the air, and you can bet he still savors the memory of their death cries.
Whether Conan’s ratings would’ve been better had NBC not led in to his show with a watered-down and (in my opinion) not terribly funny hour of Jay Leno will never be answered. NBC’s decision to revert back to Leno is seemingly the late night equivalent of Coca-Cola’s decision to yank New Coke off the shelves. The experiment didn’t work. However, that logic doesn’t hold up because, unlike New Coke, Conan has cemented his iconic status with existing fans and endeared himself to millions more.
The public realized he was getting a raw deal. They saw Conan as a put-upon underdog, and they cheered when he pushed back with weeks of (in my opinion) hilarious barbs at his bosses at the network. The fact that Conan’s exit speech was heartfelt and genuine sealed his canonization:
To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me, and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality, and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.
It’s simple. People love an underdog with tremendous heart and nothing to lose. And that’s Conan O’Brien. The patron saint of failed late night programming.
We go big for the holidays. “Why go big for the holidays?” you ask. I’m happy you asked, because I’ve been thinking about it. There is intense pressure to one-up the previous year’s effort, and let’s be honest: we’re in advertising, so we’ve been working on holiday promotions and campaigns since August or so. That’s an unfair jump on the rest of the population.
Before you cry foul, consider that by the time you are enjoying your white-chocolate-peppermint-mocha latte from Starbucks, we’ve moved on to Spring campaigns. We’re in a constant state of seasonal confusion. It’s the price we pay for holiday glory.
Stay tuned for our 2009 push. Should be entertaining.
Kate wants to draw your mixtape. I love this idea.
I love it for many reasons. What’s nagging at me and is hardest to articulate is this: you can’t draw an iTunes playlist. Which leads me to a bigger thought: what happens when there is no more tangible media?
Photographs, records, mixtapes, all of that stuff that now resides on your hard drive.
I went to a Yankees game in the new stadium this summer, and the tickets were print-outs from my email. I can’t wait to share that with my grandson.
Is it me or does lo-fi have more soul? Is the iLife lifeless?
Note: I realize writing this on a blog is ironic or hypocritical or both. Just a random thought on a Tuesday night.
Somewhere along the way advertising people have completely butchered the meaning of the word value. It’s been changed by overuse to mean “cheaper,” or at the very least, “less expensive.”
Value means worth. It’s the inherent or intrinsic worth of a good or service.
Just a thought that’s been tossed around the agency recently.
I’ve been reading Behance’s site The 99 Percent recently, and I really like it. Some smart thinking going on over there. Anyway, I flagged one article in particular from my weekend studying and have read it over a few times. It’s called “Avoid the Trap of Business Narcissism.”
It’s about human nature and our reaction to challenges, specifically thinking “there’s never been anything like this before” or “these are extraordinary times.”
Scott Belsky writes:
From all the times I have heard, “This is the most unusual X, the greatest period of Y, the new era of Z,” I was starting to think that, had I not been born in the last thirty years, I would have missed the most interesting years of business since the Big Bang.
He continues:
“Business Narcissism” is rampant. It is the leader’s default thinking that they are the exception to the rule. “Business Narcissism” is the tendency of all leaders and teams, across industries, to think that they are always encountering a special case.
The real unique opportunity is for leaders to internalize a grounding realization: not much is new and yes, you can adequately learn from the past. Saying “this is the time of opportunity” is narcissistic. Instead, take some perspective. Today never feels like it will be history, but it will. And more likely than not, we will look back and realize that we should have known.
Very interesting. I agree that we have a tendency to think like this. Everyone does. But I don’t necessarily find it narcissistic to view now as time of opportunity. I truly believe now is a great opportunity. We’ve got a chance to do really amazing things, to bring a little unconventional wisdom to the table, to rewrite some of the rules and to pull the country out of this mess.
True, it’s foolish to think there have never been times like these. But every challenge is an opportunity to do something awesome.
Yesterday we had a photo shoot at the University of Alabama’s business school (our agency has been working with the Culverhouse College of Commerce for about 7 years). It was a run-and-gun kind of improvisational shoot. Under the art direction of ACD Diana Nichols, our intrepid photographer, Miller Mobley, shot like a mad man. At the end of the day, we had covered 16 set ups and over 1000 photos.
I’m looking forward to seeing the shots, which I’m sure will be anything but typical. We’ll share the work when it’s finished in September.
(By the way, during one set-up, I realized we were in my old Accounting 101 classroom. Kind of weird.)
