Blog Action Day: Don’t give in to the Dark Side of the “We” #BAD2012

Today, October 15, is Blog Action Day. It's an opportunity for bloggers around the world to post simultaneously on a single topic that relates to social issues or social change. This year, the topic is "The Power of We":

We choose this theme for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the popularity of the your suggestions; Community, Equality, Transparency/Anti-Corruption and Freedom, in our theme poll. Secondly, The Power of We is a celebration of people working together to make a positive difference in the world, either for their own communities or for people they will never meet half way around [t]he world.

When I thought about how I'd represent this idea in a marketing context, I have to admit that the first thing that popped into my head was an ad almost as old as I am, from of all advertisers, Coca-Cola:



Times have sure changed. Now, "Big Soda" is the enemy of activist marketers like former CP+B  creative demigod Alex Bogusky. But, consumerism aside, was this hippy-dippy "we're all in it together" dream ever even achievable? Part of me really wants it to be possible.


As the father of a third-grader, I try to encourage my son to view all fellow humans as brothers and sisters. Growing up in a multicultural community, he has not yet learned to categorize people by skin colour or cultural affiliation. When I ask him to describe a classmate or adult in his life, he describes them based on their personality and actions, rather than appearance. It's nice, but I also realize it will not last.

Perhaps he will not grow up with the same racialized context I still work hard to leave behind, but as he grows he will join tribes of interests, location or politics that will inevitably bring him into conflict with others.

"We" humans are tribal. There is no getting around it. Social experimenters continue to replicate the same results when they create artificial or arbitrary tribal differences between groups of strangers. For example, diversity trainer Jane Elliott is able to turn brown-eyed and blue eyed groups agains each other. Tribalism is so engrained in our very biology that it threatens our world and future as a species. While it can express itself in (usually) harmless ways, like fanatic team loyalty in organized sports, even that can turn into violence. "We" in this context is another way of saying "us over them".

This idea of "we" exists in nationalism, religion, politics, even what band you like. And it's killing us. In the Middle East, "we" are under threat from a corrupt western civilization that insults our religion and wants to turn our daughters into prostitutes. So "we" attack and kill foreigners in their embassies, and even in their own cities.

In North America, "we" don't believe in biological, statistical, economic or climate science, so we oppose measures that would reduce our impact on the climate, help the poor and sick, and prevent unwanted pregnancies. It goes on and on.


Membership in a group is usually defined by opposition to other groups. And to protect our tribal identity, we naturally dehumanize outsiders. The most extreme cases are in war. But it happens every day when we make generalizations about "those people" or fail to treat our own tribe's agreed-to "truths" with healthy skepticism.

Which brings us to the world of cause marketing. Tribalism can be an incredibly powerful source for change, especially as the internet allows formerly isolated individuals to gain strength from a positive group identity.

A good example is the It Gets Better project, in which Dan Savage's attempt to reach out to LGBT youth at risk turned into a massive outpouring of support from both LGBT and straight ally communities.

What was great about this effort was its inclusiveness. Anyone was welcomed to join the tribe, as long as they had a message of hope and positivity for the youth. But they were still defined by a common enemy: homophobia.

The other good thing about that campaign was that it was based on hope, rather than fear. In fact, the enemy was fear.

Usually, when an enemy is defined, exaggerated fear of that enemy (rational or not) is used to rally the troops. And once rallied, those troops start to lose any sense of logic or common sense.

This can happen in any movement, whether its members consider themselves conservative or progressives.

This Blog Action Day, as a blogger, social marketer and human being, I would like to urge you all to embrace the positive side of "The Power of We". Welcome your friends. Understand and empathize with your enemies. And don't get sucked into the dark side of the We.

Cross-posted on Change Marketing and Osocio Academy.

PR people define their profession, jargon ensues

Image via this blog

A PR person I follow on Twitter shared this NY Times article about how the Public Relations Society of America decided its profession had a PR problem.

The initiative, known as Public Relations Defined, began in November and drew widespread interest, along with not a small amount of sniping, snide commentary and second-guessing. 

The complaints grew loud enough to produce a response from an executive of the organization that was leading the effort, David C. Rickey, who described the criticism thusly: “Nothing more clearly illustrates the reason why the profession hasn’t arrived at a ‘de facto’ definition in more than a century of existence.”

Indeed, the attempt to croudsource a definition of what PR people do, among PR people themselves, generated no fewer than 927 definitions in about two weeks!

The PRSA somehow pared it down to three finalists:

¶ “Public relations is the management function of researching, communicating and collaborating with publics to build mutually beneficial relationships.” 

¶ “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” 

¶ “Public relations is the strategic process of engagement between organizations and publics to achieve mutual understanding and realize goals.”

Yes, they're jargony. As someone who preaches the religion of plain language to clients every goddamn day of my working life, I am both amused and horrified that this is the clearest my PR friends could be about what they do.

They voted on it, and chose the middle one. But I'll bet my readers could do better. Are you up for it?

Slutwalk and the complex politics of activism

Photo by Ivy Cuervo

I wrote a lot about Slutwalk earlier this year on Osocio — from its inception and inaugural march in Toronto to its spread around the world.

The whole thing started as a visceral reaction to one cop's poor choice of words when addressing women, that they "should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized". The women who organized it simply wanted to take to the streets and express their rage against victim-blaming by authorities.

From the beginning some critics noted that Slutwalk appeared to be a movement of privileged white women, noting that the participants did not reflect Toronto's famous diversity. Nonetheless, the movement spread as slutwalks sprung up, in localized versions, as far afield as India.

But the criticisms continued, hitting a crescendo with polarized reactions to a NYC Slutwalker's decision to quote Yoko Ono's early feminst slogan (via John Lennon, who wrote a song about it):

The Racialicious blog noted, "But can you appropriate a term like nigger if your body is not defined/terrorized/policed/brutalized/diminished by the word? Can we use it in a context that is supposed to belie gender solidarity, without explicitly being in racial solidarity? I think not. And I am not alone."

Last month, a partnership of activists representing black women's issues in the US and Canada wrote An Open Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk in which they explained why they felt excluded by the movement:

"We are perplexed by the use of the term “slut” and by any implication that this word, much like the word “Ho” or the “N” word should be re-appropriated. The way in which we are perceived and what happens to us before, during and after sexual assault crosses the boundaries of our mode of dress. Much of this is tied to our particular history. In the United States, where slavery constructed Black female sexualities, Jim Crow kidnappings, rape and lynchings, gender misrepresentations, and more recently, where the Black female immigrant struggle combine, “slut” has different associations for Black women. We do not recognize ourselves nor do we see our lived experiences reflected within SlutWalk and especially not in its brand and its label.

As Black women, we do not have the privilege or the space to call ourselves “slut” without validating the already historically entrenched ideology and recurring messages about what and who the Black woman is. We don’t have the privilege to play on destructive representations burned in our collective minds, on our bodies and souls for generations. Although we understand the valid impetus behind the use of the word “slut” as language to frame and brand an anti-rape movement, we are gravely concerned. For us the trivialization of rape and the absence of justice are viciously intertwined with narratives of sexual surveillance, legal access and availability to our personhood. It is tied to institutionalized ideology about our bodies as sexualized objects of property, as spectacles of sexuality and deviant sexual desire. It is tied to notions about our clothed or unclothed bodies as unable to be raped whether on the auction block, in the fields or on living room television screens. The perception and wholesale acceptance of speculations about what the Black woman wants, what she needs and what she deserves has truly, long crossed the boundaries of her mode of dress.

We know the SlutWalk is a call to action and we have heard you. Yet we struggle with the decision to answer this call by joining with or supporting something that even in name exemplifies the ways in which mainstream women’s movements have repeatedly excluded Black women even in spaces where our participation is most critical. We are still struggling with the how, why and when and ask at what impasse should the SlutWalk have included substantial representation of Black women in the building and branding of this U.S. based movement to challenge rape culture?"

What's interesting about this letter is the assumption that Slutwalk was some kind of carefully organized and branded American movement that had gone forward without full consultation.

In a response posted today, the Toronto organizers tried to set the record straight:

"SlutWalk Toronto has endeavoured from the beginning to not operate outside of our knowledge and experience, which for us has meant doing our best to not cross geo-political boundaries or speak for communities and SlutWalks outside of our home city of Toronto. We are not a formal NGO, or non-profit organization, and what has happened across SlutWalks as a movement to date has been a collaboration. While SlutWalk Toronto as the inaugural SlutWalk is often looked to as the ‘head’ of SlutWalk, we are not involved with organizing other SlutWalks and we are not structured to oversee and determine what all of SlutWalk will look like. We do not envision our activism as a hierarchical dictation of our ideas upon others, whether across Canada or across the world. In recognition of this, SlutWalk Toronto is committed to engaging with our community here in Toronto for direct feedback, so that we can hear more from people in Toronto what criticisms, concerns, feedback and ideas they have, and how they’d like to see SlutWalk Toronto move forward and evolve as we hopefully move collectively towards organizing our second year in 2012. We’ve been having many conversations and exchanges to better understand the experiences and criticisms of people within our own city and outside of Canada and now we would like to turn these conversations into actions to make SlutWalk Toronto better, more anti-oppressive and more inclusive."

In other words, they are not responsible for what women in other cities do with the "brand" because it has been given away freely. They don't even have a structure or formal organization. They did, however make broad promises to do everything they can to be more open and inclusive.

Personally, I found both letters full of polite attempts at trying to be respectful of each other, but at the end of the day every Slutwalk organizer has to make a decision about what they want to say. The message, in Toronto and in other early Slutwalks, was all about the word — and concept of — "slut". It was a re-appropriation of women's sexual identities, in public, to make the point that sexual dress and behaviour should never be seen as an invitation to sexual violence.

Slutwalk may not be about branding, but I am. And I think they need to hold their ground on this one. Just be what they are, and say what they set out to say. If that message attracts supporters from only some socioeconomic and cultural groups, so be it. Nobody can be all things to all people. Instead of one anti-victim-blaming-movement that has its message determined by a completely diverse committee, the activist world is more enriched by many movements that clearly and concisely express a diversity of views. There is no need for everyone to agree.

Take FEMEN, from Ukraine. They do their feminist and anti-corruption protests topless because they say that it's the only way to get noticed. Other feminists, worldwide, might applaud or denounce their sexualization of activism. They don't care. They just do their own thing and find allies along the way.

In my opinion, "solidarity" is overrated in activism. It means compromising the complexity of your unique vision to create the appearance of a hive mind. Just look at Occupy Wall Street's struggle to agree on why they're camping out in the first place. Everyone has their own ideas about what's broken.

Agreeing to disagree on some issues, while still teaming up to take action towards reaching common goals, is far more respectful of human diversity. Even if, to quote Facebook, "it's complicated".

Is this what childhood has come to?

I get the ads. I just hate them.

Why? Because they are telling the truth about what these little boxes do to kids. They isolate them from normal external and social stimulus and make them into obsessive couch potatoes.

Many parents might love the convenience of plugging your kid into personal digital media. Hey, they aren't running around causing trouble. They aren't talking at you non-stop. They aren't really asking for anything, except the latest game and some Kraft Dinner once in a while.

But you know what? Kids are supposed to be hard work. They learn by asking, interacting, and getting into all kinds of real world mayhem.

Yes, some games can reinforce mental skills, coordination, etc. But so does being in touch with the outside world. Kids need the right mix of both to grow up healthy and happy.

These ads may be intended as funny, but they're way too close to the reality I see around me to make me chuckle.

Ads via IBIA.

The dirtiest word you can say in advertising

It's "formula".

We all do it, on occasion. But it's not to be talked about. It's a dirty secret that there are a number of "best practices" for creating a moderately (but not phenomenally) successful ad in any medium, but don't call it a formula!



Oh, shit.

Stock photos, and footage, have always been with us. But I have always been turned off by the content that tries to hard to dictate the concept. What the hell are WE here for, anyway?

But that's the whole point of Kelly Mason Productions' ad templates.

"While working with Getty Images, we noticed something interesting: customers would often buy multiple stock shots and piece them together to create their own, commercials. This gave us the idea for our commercial templates; we saw a market niche that was not being filled. So we decided to create pre-made, high quality commercials and sell them to advertisers at a highly competitive price. We want to give everyone the chance to have professional video content on their website. Our commercial templates allow this by drastically reducing the cost of creating powerful and engaging creative content."

Powerful, engaging, and.. generic? Look, I get it. There are many advertisers out there who believe that they just need to get good-looking branded content "out there" to keep up with the competition.

But here's the problem: just because your brand is superimposed on it, that doesn't mean it's your brand.

There is a reason big advertisers don't used canned content for anything but low-level tactical campaigns. Custom creative isn't just some guy coming up with a bunch of fluff; when done right, it's the result of a disciplined process that starts with your business objectives and builds around it.

Watching a bunch of artsy footage of twin women in a shower (clothed) while someone covers vintage David Bowie might look like something that will get you views, but then what? What impression has it left? How is your story being told?

I'm not worried about being put out of a job by this stuff, because smart clients will always want to be unique. But it still bugs me, because I believe it will result in someone wasting money that they could have put into a more honest engagement strategy.

Can we re-imagine meat as a luxury good?

For someone who loves cheeseburgers so much, I actually have a lot of respect for vegetarians and vegans. Not so much on ethical grounds as on environmental ones. Many of them are living more lightly on the land than I do.

But I continue to consume meat. For me, it is a natural and healthy food if sourced responsibly and consumed in moderation. Julia, my wife, has gone 2/3 vegan with her "Vegan Until 6" lifestyle. But she's still an omnivore at supper.

What we try to do is to choose locally-, small-scale-, and naturally-farmed meat whenever possible. This is more effort, requiring visiting open-air markets and farm gates, and it is certainly more expensive. But I've come to decide that that's a good thing. It makes us value it more.

It also makes us think about the animals we eat. Julia's grampie used to raise cattle in New Brunswick. (Her uncle there still does.) Family farmers who have small herds really get to know their livestock. They love them. But when the time comes to slaughter, they do it, because farmers' pragmatism overrules their sentimentality. (Despite the fact that they tend to have a lot of both!)

We're raising our son as an omnivore, and he's a child who is not afraid to feed clover to a cow one year, and have it as a hamburger the next. We are fortunate enough, here in Ottawa, to be able to visit the Canada Agricultural Museum whenever we want. He gets to see, touch (and smell!) the creatures that make up his hamburgers, hotdogs, and chicken sandwiches. I like to think it teaches him to respect them.

And "respect" of the animals we eat, in the Noble Savage myth we all imagine where the hunter-gatherer's life is a shared journey with his prey, is what I'd like to see more of. But how?

Well, here's a crazy idea: What if we purposely made meat more expensive? 

Imagine if our agricultural standards and regulations cracked down on the many industrialized practices that keep meat cheap: confined animals, medicated feed, growth hormones, feedlots and factory slaughterhouses. Imagine if livestock had to be raised the old fashioned way: pastured, slaughtered and butchered by many small businesses.

Gone are the mass meat recalls (since small-scale meat packing limits spread of contaminants). Gone are the disgusting massive pig, chicken and beef operations. Back are the entrepreneurial family farms.

Could it work? If hamburger were $10 a pound, would you eat less of it? Would you really value the taste of a well-prepared burger?

And in case you're rushing to the comments thread to tell me what an elitist prick I am, I know what the gaping holes in this idea are.

First off, rising food prices are causing unrest worldwide. Why would we want to make it worse? Economically vulnerable people already struggle to feed themselves. And as easy it is to suggest that they learn to cook and eat beans and rice — like the rest of the world — and minimize meat. But there would have to be a major social change for people to adapt to that. Cooking is not a skill that is in the toolkit of many of Canada's urban poor, and people are used to feeding themselves on McDonald's for cheap.

Secondly, my Libertarian friends are experiencing fits of outrage at the idea that the government should force the change. I understand that. But don't worry — the industrial food lobbyists would never let it happen anyway.

No, the only way to really do this is with consumer power. Making individual choices about how our food gets from gate-to-plate that allow us to enjoy that bacon sandwich with full responsibility and little guilt.

And it is elitist. The stuff is expensive. I really do pay $10/pound for my hamburger to get naturally-raised, dry-aged, local beef from Aubrey's Butcher Shop. 

Here is their pitch:

From “Field-to-fork”..... this traditional butcher shop prides itself on its extensive knowledge of the meats and the farms they come from. It begins with a time honoured history of providing the highest quality products from dependable local sources … that means Farmers, not factories. Some of the relationships with farmers and suppliers extend back over 40 years. Meats are prepared and cut by true butchers trained on site. This ensures that all products meet Aubrey’s high standards and more importantly, exceed the customer’s expectations. In short, at Aubrey's, you will get exactly what you want cut skillfully to suit.

It tastes much, much better. And while I end up making burgers less often, I really put care into preparing them because that meat is valuable stuff.

In short, it's a luxury. Just as meat was a luxury food for our ancestors, from the early modern period right back to the hunting and gathering days. Meat was not to be taken for granted.

So my question to all my omnivorous friends is, are you willing to pay more for less meat? And to all of you: do you think it will make a difference?

Or am I just a smug food snob idealist?

Adult Content?

A couple of things have happened recently that made me go "hmmm..."

Last Thursday, as I waited to board at the Ottawa Airport, I was reading through my favourite ad blogs when I received a strongly-worded pop-up about violating the free Wi-Fi terms of use regarding "adult content". The site? Copyranter.

This morning, I saw that Adland, another favourite, has just lost all of its Google Adsense placements because of "adult content".

I have had a couple of panics lately when Osocio posts that contain nudity (considered completely acceptable in the advertising world) have had embedded images picked up and published on Facebook by the site's automatic updater. (And all we know what a hate-on Facebook has for breasts. Especially non-sexified ones.)

Finally, I have received plenty of "feedback" (most sarcastic, but some sincere) about posts on this blog which contain nudity or sexual contexts.

What a harmless, wholesome and family-friendly ad might look like.

This got me thinking about what "adult content" means. Usually, it is an implied euphemism for porn. But in all of the cases above, sexualized content was usually used in the context of a grown-up discussion about the use of sex in advertising. In many cases, the posts are critiques of lazy, exploitative, and even offensive "sexy" ads.

"Dabitch", the outspoken voice of Adland, faced a 72 hour deadline to "clean up" her site after Google was alerted to an old post criticizing an ad by underwear advertiser Sloggi, which contained an image of bare bums.

Taking the high road, Dabitch said "if we're going to be able to talk about advertising here, some of [the ads] will have butts and boobs in them, and often be harshly criticized because they do."

But that is not the way Big Internet thinks, apparently. The mature attitudes about sexuality of Europeans (and some Canadians, and New Yorkers, and others) are crashing into the wall of America's "won't somebody please think about the children" anxiety.

The argument is that this is a public forum: "There are kids on here, for God's sake!" But then again, these are the same kids who are exposed to the very ads we critique. If they are going to see T&A anyway, at least we provide instructional context on how to tell the difference between sexual exploitation and body-positive normalization. (Plus, I doubt any child would bother to visit an ad blog just for the nudity — there are much better ways to get around a net nanny.)

This might be pornography. I saw "Lawless" in the title.

My six-year-old surfs YouTube, and sometimes Google Images. I filter his searches, but still sit over his shoulder so I can click away or explain any awkward discoveries. (But then again, he's seen his mom and me naked, and it's no big deal to him.) Look: The internet is a rough neighbourhood. Why would you let a little kid wander around it alone?

And then there's the "NSFW" argument. Once again, let's talk about context. If your employer is okay with you taking time at work to read an ad blog, it probably counts as professional development. And ad professionals — whether agency, client, or production — cannot afford to be prudes. We are in the business of playing with powerful human ideas, instincts and emotions. We can't avert our eyes from a frank discussion of one of the greatest and most persuasive forces of all.

So let's take a look at that term, "adult content". If I wanted to be disingenuous, I'd say "makes sense... this is content suitable for a mature audience!"

But we all know what it really means: porn, smut, and at best "erotica". It's part of the unfortunate epidemic of black-and-white, zero-tolerance thinking that rules certain societies these days. Everything is either "wholesome" or "dirty". (Interesting to note how often casual violence and hate ends up on the "wholesome" side, isn't it?)

I simply don't think that way. If today's burning ad issue is something with nudity in it, you may see some skin. I hope you aren't permanently psychologically damaged by it. I'm trying to have an adult conversation here.

Science Rules!

Google's doodle today celebrates Thomas Edison's 164th birthday birthday.

(Go to the homepage. It moves.)

But this is not a great time for science in the United States. Tomorrow is Charles Darwin's birthday. The "father of evolution" is a key figure in our understanding of ourselves as a species and as ourselves. And yet he is still a controversial figure down south.

In an interview with beloved TV science educator Bill Nye "The Science Guy", Popular Mechanics confronted him with the following:

In a recent survey of 926 public high school biology teachers across the nation, only 28 percent of teachers taught evolution as a well-supported fundamental idea of science. Meanwhile, 13 percent openly supported "intelligent design" in the classroom, and 60 percent fell somewhere in-between. This majority presented evolution cautiously—by including non-scientific viewpoints, by limiting discussion to genetics, or by saying that students only needed to learn the material to pass exams.

Bill's response was "it's horrible."

"Science is the key to our future, and if you don't believe in science, then you're holding everybody back. And it's fine if you as an adult want to run around pretending or claiming that you don't believe in evolution, but if we educate a generation of people who don't believe in science, that's a recipe for disaster. We talk about the Internet. That comes from science. Weather forecasting. That comes from science. The main idea in all of biology is evolution. To not teach it to our young people is wrong."

So what went wrong? There are many who will blame fundamentalist religion for the anti-science movement, but as a humanist I can't give religion any more credit than any other man-made form of persuasion — including politics, fashion and advertising.

People aren't stupid. They are allowing themselves to believe that the universe was designed, and is being ruled, by an anthropomorphic, omnipotent king. But there are many others who believe in other unknowable things, too. faith and superstition seem to come along with the human mental package.

No, I think that the reason people turn away from scientific explanations is because they are overwhelmed by the cold complexity of it all.

Which do you prefer?

You are a beloved child of God, put on this planet to serve Him. Submit to His will, and whatever happens to you here, you will have eternal bliss in heaven with everyone good who has ever died.

Versus

You are a product of random genetic mutation, shaped by environmental conditions, that just happens to be self-aware. However, many of your thoughts and actions are probably due to heredity. You live on a tiny, fragile planet in a vast nothingness, and the entire existence of your species is an insignificant blip in time. When you cease to function, your thoughts and experiences will terminate and the only purpose of your life will be the genes and memes that you have propagated.

But there is another way. Faith does not preclude science.

Pretty much every religious person is of the "salad bar" variety, picking and choosing what tenets to follow. (If you don't believe me, read this.)

And the entirely rational human being does not exist either. We are all affected by superstition and magical thinking. (If you don't believe me, read this.)

It is not a one-thing-or-another game. Scientific education just makes people more appreciative of the world they live in. In me, and also in my young son, science opens a world of wonder and discovery. Every day, some new secret is unlocked that helps us understand who we are, why we are, and what we can do to make a difference.

The problem for me is education. And it's not the teachers' fault either.

Bill Nye said, "They're doing their job but they're under tremendous pressure. The 60 percent who are cautious—those are the people who are really up against it. They want to keep their job, and they love teaching science, and their children are really excited about it, and yet they've got some people insisting they can't teach the most fundamental idea in all of biology."

But there's more to it than that. And Canadians are not immune. Education has become commoditized. Instead of celebrating teachers who invent creative ways to inspire students about science, we are concerned about standardization and "accountability". These are political solutions, not educational ones.

If we can't fix the curriculum, I think its up to science champions to bring science education to the mainstream media. Behemoths like BBC, National Geographic and Discovery help, but those serve a niche market. Teaching kids about science should be embedded into everyday media experiences. It should be interesting and accessible. It needs to be a Schoolhouse Rock or Hinterland Who's Who for this generation.

Who's with me? I know of a few local museums that could certainly champion this cause. Call me.

The marketing word of the year is "SLUT"

It's an acronym I came up with after reading an article about yet one more brand losing out on a unique, free, global branding opportunity because they failed sharing in Kindergarten. They should have been a SLUT.

"Hey! Knock it off, ya big palooka!"

It's short for "Share, Learn, Understand, and Teach". These are the four most important things any brand must do online if it is going to survive the next few years.

First of all, let's talk about Sharing.

An interesting post on the Post Advertising blog detailed how the Columbus Dispatch completely failed to catch the free ride offered by the viral rise and fall of Ted "Golden Voice" Williams.

You can read the first part of the story on Osocio.  Basically, a man who was living on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, was an ex-radio voice talent who had fallen on hard times. The Dispatch did a video story on his unique panhandling pitch, and when someone posted it on YouTube the video "went viral" in the advertising blogosphere. Not wanting to miss a great PR opportunity, KRAFT soon snatched him up for work.



the sad ending of the story was that, while Ted retained his professionalism, he also carried all the baggage that put him on the street in the first place. After tearful reunions with family, he ended up getting in trouble with the law over altercations with them, and sent to rehab.

Now Ted's story is both inspiring and tragic. But cynical marketing pros saw a whole other tragedy unfold when this happened right in the middle of the golden meme's viral rise to fame:

Post Advertising explains the epic failure:

The original video, uploaded by a user named “Ritchey,” got nearly 20 million views in less than a week. But now that video is nowhere to be found. A YouTube search for “Ted Williams Homeless” turns up plenty of videos of the homeless man with the golden voice, including one from Russia Today which has over 9 million views, but nothing from “Ritchey.”


According to an article posted on CNET, the Columbus Dispatch had the viral YouTube version of their video —which prominently featured Dispatch branding— removed, citing copyright infringement. They still host a page dedicated to the story on their site, and they re-uploaded the video to YouTube with even more Dispatch branding in conjunction with the Associated Press.

To their dismay, they couldn’t harness the buzz around the original video. The updated version of the video shows up well below the fold in a YouTube search for “Ted Williams Homeless” and nowhere on a Google search for “YouTube Ted Williams.” However, the CNET article that originally reported the removal does show up in a search for that term. All the momentum and exposure that The Dispatch was getting for breaking their story had flatlined, and it was their own doing.

Now let's talk about Learning. Have you learned anything about the Dispatch's failure to share? I sure hope they did.

But it's a lesson that many other brands are learning, both the good way and the hard way. I have written many times about how last year's most celebrated viral PSA, "Embrace Life", almost missed the boat because they wanted to force people to visit their site to see the video. Even now, I have campaigns of my own that I can't really seed to my blogger network because their copyright owners don't want to share their content with the world at large. This is a shame.

(And yes, I know I could have made the L for "Listening", but listening is worthless if you don't actually learn from it.)

Understanding is the key. You need to explore and map the new digital marketing and media landscape daily if you are to have any hope of navigating your brand where you want it to be. To say that "everything has changed" is an epic understatement. The most powerful brands in the world are in the hands of the most activist and organized consumers, and you can no longer simply buy their loyalty. You have to earn it by coming down from your tower and partying with them down in the mud.

Then how do you maintain brand leadership, when you're just one of the crowd? By Teaching what you understand. If you overlook his more mythical aspects, Jesus was on the surface just "some guy" who had a deep understanding of his audience and who gained followers by teaching them how to live better. (He taught by storytelling, too, which means he would've been very well-prepared for social media!) Buddha taught. Confucius taught. Socrates taught. Are you getting the point?

 If you want to be a leader in the current environment, you have to be a teacher. People want to follow other people who make them feel smarter and better informed. Brands can do the same — although they may not have the benefit of being able to perform miracles.

So there you have it. If you want to succeed, you have to be a SLUT. It's the intellectual equivalent of the free love movement. And it's going to put both the prudes and the prostitutes out of business.

"Sexy business?"

Why my office is always a mess

I know that my office is an affront to tidy people everywhere. Papers strewn about the desk in an ad hoc "piling system" and shelves full of random books and pop cultural artifacts, empty liquor bottles, and presentation boards from rejected campaigns.

Sometimes, I think I was only given this office to keep my chaos contained. When I'm away, and there has been a client tour of the agency, I often find that my door has been discreetly closed.

But according to Malcolm Gladwell, this is totally just evidence of my creative mind:



I especially like this part:

"Their imaginations are messy. Why? Because they don’t want to throw anything out. Why don’t they want to throw anything out? Because they believe on some level that there is always something of interest or value in whatever they encounter. They know enough about how mysterious and serendipitous and unpredictable the creative process is that they realize that it’s dangerous to kind of make too hasty a judgment about the value of anything that they come across."

That's right, folks. Look on my works, ye haters, and despair!

The full bottle of Tahitian beer is 13 years old.
And they don't even make those Beau's bottles anymore...

It must be October 2010 somewhere, right?

There's a good story behind the enormous pink bra on the door.

I am in both the Sleeveface and Fark books.
Not yet in the ad ones, but give me time.

No office is complete without a lard bucket.

You don't say...

Know your audience. It's the most basic rule of advertising, and yet it's one that's broken so often and so publicly by professional admen (and women), over and over again.

Today, a collaborative Tumbler set called "Things Real People Don't Say About Advertising" is making the rounds. It's funny to many people, but it also hurts to be reminded of how often we lose touch with our audiences:

Both agency people and clients spend hours pouring over an ad, and tend to forget that for most of the audience it is a disposable communication. We argue and tweak, and tweak and argue over minutiae which — although together do affect the ad's overall effectiveness — are often really just power struggles between individual subjectivity.

Ad people are actually incredibly conservative by nature. What we do isn't really all that scientific, but as professionals we tend to cling to "the rules" as we learned them when we started in the business. One of these rules was that consumers are stupid, and will not act on your message unless they are explicitly told what to do. People still regularly ask me to write "for more information, please visit [url]", when the URL alone will do. Hell, you don't really even need a URL if your SEO is good enough.

The rules have changed. Consumer behaviour has changed. Get over it.

Look, I'm a big fan of branding. I advise people on continuity and standards all the time. But people in the industry (agency and client) tend to take branding far too literally. It becomes more about graphic standards and key messages than it is about common sense.

A brand that intuitively knows what it's all about will always generate work that is "on brand". It doesn't matter if two great ads or campaigns are wildly different from each other. The brand experience — like beauty — comes from the inside. This is why real brand champions matter.

I really hate doing standard banner ads. Enough said.

Take the pickle out

As a career social marketer, I really believe in what my clients are trying to accomplish. At the same time, I feel it's my duty to help them understand the realities of their target markets' world. For example, "preaching to the choir", or appealing to extreme activists while alienating the general public, can be a waste of good media money. Or even worse, a barrier to mainstream change.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the fine balance between educating the public and overplaying your message. Partly because I see this ad during every morning's transit commute:



Let me be clear that this is not a cheap shot at the worthy cause of preventing stroke, or even at the agency that created the campaign. I'm sure they're all very determined to help Canadians reduce the salt in their diet.

But "Sodium kills 30 Canadians each day"? That's kind of hard to swallow.

I checked out the web site, looking for the research behind the claim. In short, it's this:

* Excess sodium raises your blood pressure.

* Optimal blood pressure is less than 120/80 mmHg.

* A blood pressure of greater than 140/90 mmHg is the clinical definition of hypertension. One in four adults in Canada has hypertension.

* Reducing your blood pressure by just 10/5 mmHg by lifestyle change or medication reduces your risk of heart failure by 50 per cent, stroke by 30 per cent, heart attack by 15 per cent and premature death by 10 per cent.

I have to assume the 30 people killed are actually the reverse of the 30 people who will die of heart attack, stroke, and related premature death today who could have been saved by reducing sodium. But beyond downloading and reading the academic PDFs and doing math (I was told there would be no math!) as lazy consumer I remain unconvinced that salt will be directly responsible for 30 people dying today.

Of course, I also have to admit to myself that death stats on smoking may be derived much the same way. And that's a hard comparison to make as someone who has campaigned hard to reduce smoking rates. (Truth be told, my personal focus is on secondhand smoke around children and captive audiences, which also has to do with human rights.)

Of course, death statistics are rarely isolated to one cause. It's hard to control variables for heavy smokers, since their high-risk behaviour and socio-economic factors come into play. That doesn't mean that a decrease in smoking won't save lives. Quitting, cutting back, and keeping it out of other people's lungs will still have a powerful effect.

With salt, it could be that the highest consumers are also living off of fast food, which is also full of fat, sugar, and not-nutritious filler. Plus they may also be inactive, overworked, or just plain uninterested in their own health.

For example, the linked article on "salt and obesity" cites a study with this conclusion:

The authors conclude that the increased intake of salt, through its effect on thirst, has lead to an increased intake of high-energy beverages, which has in turn remarkably contributed to the increase of obesity in the United States.

...which is the sugar problem once again.

I guess lifestyle issues will always be complicated. And just as with any health issue, the dangers of salt has its detractors.

So why does this campaign bother me? Is it because the health issue about salt is not yet on my radar? Because salty foods (homemade and artisinal, mostly) are a lifestyle sin that I'm just not willing to give up? Am I a hypocritical skeptician?

Maybe it's just the mainstream social marketer in me that feels uneasy with the broad claims of the campaign. I'm not advising anyone to eat more salt. But I'm just not sure telling people that pickles, pizza and pasta (all based on God-knows-what recipe) are deadly poison is really the right approach to changing behaviour. Nor is the deceit some other unrelated campaigners in the U.K. have practised. I always believed that mainstream campaigns should be forthright, credible, and asking for achievable action.

I'm just not ready to take the pickle out of my diet yet. I might even eat poutine again. I'll just do it all in moderation, keep exercising, and try not to panic.