Author: Me

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What I Think

Where Your Brand Ends Up

Companies spend thousands and millions on making you love them. Carefully curating every nuanced association to ensure the impression ingrained into your memory perfectly aligns with your values, both conscious and subconscious.

So how do you think your potential or even worse current client or customer would feel when they discover that you think they are ‘muppets‘, ‘punters‘, ‘fatties‘ or ‘paupers‘?

Gasp, you wouldn’t dare say that out loud. Of course not, but might you name an email database list something similarly derogatory out of frustration or perverted humour. Or laziness. Never for a single moment imagining your hard-fought but not yet won customer would ever see you teeny little joke at their expense?

Well, it happens all the time. Check the whole URL of a website and you’ll be amazed at what some coders and designers think is hilarious. When unsubscribing from a Mail Chimp email list check the database name. You may have been subscribed to a company that really doesn’t appreciate your patronage very much at all.

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What I Think

© Now

It’s one of those details which means nothing and everything at the same time. The copyright year on your website is the kind of detail which, if remained unchanged would not mean the end of your business or attract a fine from the ATO like failing to lodge your BAS on time (BASTARDS!)

The year after the copyright symbol on your website does speak volumes. Think about the last time you saw that symbol combination number. How did you feel about that business?

If the copyright year was for the current year then you were reassured that the business was:

  1. still in business
  2. the information, including pricing and specifications, was up to date
  3. and they pay attention to detail.

If their copyright year was not current then you probably had a sliding degree of enthusiasm for that entity based on how out of date the © is. Or was.

The greater the time between this year and the © year on the website the lower the perceived value of the information available.  Doesn’t mean it is wrong or even out of date at all. But in branding, perception = reality and for the sake of a 60-second task – Nike it!

This works in real life too. Car dealers hate having plated stock made in the previous year on the yard or in the showroom. That’s why they have January sales; to sell the plated stock from the previous year even though they are only months old. People have an aversion to buying the old stock at full price. In 99% of cases, IT’S THE SAME CAR!

This is repeated across any industry where NEW = GOOD like white goods, electronics and fashion.

Bottom line; put a  reminder in your calendar for every 31 December to update the © year across all your websites (and downloadable documents).

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What I Think

Satisfaction Guaranteed*

*Fine print is for weasels.  If you have a marketing offer make it simple. What you get. What you have to do. By when. Simple.

There is more to lose when marketers add fine print. Look at the reams of qualifications, rules and exemptions in a Frequent Flyer program. Pages and pages and pages of fine print that the program owners love to use to get out of paying up. They keep changing the rules and never in favour of the consumer. Which is why a rewards program is a double-edged sword. If you ask any airline CEO they would gladly get rid of them immediately. The value on their balance sheet of outstanding points in some cases exceeds the value of the airline. So when the airline fails (is old, merges, collapses) those points disappear into… thin air!

BOGOF is the oldest promotion ever; probably the first. By One Get One Free. (My version remains the best ever although in the age of #MeToo is outdated, to say the least.)

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What I Think

That’s a great idea!

Having a great idea is, well, great. Family and friends will stroke your ego and say how clever you are and how much money you’re going to make. Get used to hearing the word ‘killer’; it’s a killer idea, it’s a killer app, it’s a killer product/solution/service. You’re the next, Facebook, Uber, Airbnb.

But what’s the next step to getting ‘it‘ out of your head and into the world? And the next step? And the next? And the one after?

Maybe you need a patent, prototype or plan. What’s your marketing strategy, sales strategy, exit strategy?

You’re an expert in your idea. And we are experts in the next steps.

Let’s chat and see if we’re a fit, Killer.

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What I Think

Here’s what I think about the new Nike ‘Dream Crazy’ TVC featuring Colin Kaepernick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq2CvmgoO7I

Why the fuck would anyone care what anyone thinks about this ad? Adland has gone nuts on reviewing this ad.

Want to know what I think? I think 13,482,216 in 36 hours (at the time of writing) is amazing. They made it emotive because that’s Nike’s brand voice. They used Colin Kaepernick because they wanted to be controversial and that is how you get news media to pick your ad and play it in prime time news, over and over, without spending a single cent. Did they have to use him; of course not. Apple’s groundbreaking ‘Here’s to the Crazy Ones‘ TVC which is in almost the same mindset, used actor Richard Dreyfus.

The only people whose opinion matters about this ad are the target market. Everyone else is nothing more than a bystander.

 

 

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What I Think

What’s in a Name? Details

Yesterday someone vandalised the sidewalk star of Michael Jackson with red paint. So Paris Jackson cleaned it. About now you’re thinking that Paris Jackson cleaned the Hollywood Boulevard Star of her late father.

But there’s another star marking another Michael Jackson.

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Essays I Wrote

Protected: Capstone Project Producer’s Report

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Essays I Wrote

Protected: How to Make Your Future Production the Next Big Thing: Using Big Data and Artificial Intelligence to Decrease Risk in Film, Television and Game Production

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Essays I Wrote

It’s A Funny Business: A Case Study In Comedy

For all the passion and skill and talent and blood and sweat and tears and risk that producers bring to the mix the one most often looked over yet is the most important is that of business person. Because when the lights go out, the talent and crew go home the business of film and TV really starts. Like all businesses the goal is to make money. It is something that ‘creatives’ don’t like to talk about because their driving force is the ‘art’ or ‘craft’. In the pilot of ‘Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip’, Aaron Sorkin writes ‘…there’s a struggle between art and commerce. Well there’s always been a struggle between art and commerce and now I’m telling you art is getting its ass kicked.’ In the scene the producer of a Saturday Night Live style sketch comedy show angrily laments the way in which the network panders to their conservative, vocal, right-wing, Christian minority audience in an effort to not offend anyone while simultaneously limiting the breadth of creative input the show requires to be appreciated by the masses.

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Essays I Wrote

The Three Roles Architecture Performs in Michael Mann Crime Films

Neil looks out over the empty ocean from his empty post-modern home.

VINCENT

"You can ball my wife if she wants you to, you can lounge 
around here on her sofa in her ex-husband’s dead-tech, 
post-modernistic, bullshit house if you want to, 
but you do not get to watch my fucking television set."

(Mann, M., ‘Heat’ 1995)

Michael Mann has cultivated a distinctive directorial style throughout his filmmaking career. This style relies on many techniques and one of the most important is his use of architecture. More so than merely stating the location of a scene, in a house, in an office, at the railway yards, in LA’s South Central or New York’s Upper West Side, etc, Mann carefully uses domestic, commercial and industrial architecture as well as infrastructure, streetscapes and cityscapes to reflect and enhance his character’s traits and unspoken tendencies.

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