Recession is Serious Business for Ogilvy

Hence they’ve put up a site called Ogilvy on Recession, offering a variety of documents with generous tips and solutions for managing creative business in a downturn.

Hot titles:

• Optimising the marketing budget in a recession
• How to get more effective advertising
• Digital in a downturn
• The new PR- leveraging digital influence to drive sales and reputation
• Turning shoppers into buyers
• Improving sales force performance
• Optimising production expenditure and creative assets

Via the generous Mihnea from McCann Romania over twitter.

Also speaking of PR, via the same Mihnea the Tech Crunch ‘Death to the Embargo‘ article.

Clint Eastwood’s Learnings

This is by far the best argument as to why I read a men’s magazine like Esquire:

Clint Eastwood - ‘What I’ve Learned’ (Esquire)

• “As you get older, you’re not afraid of doubt. Doubt isn’t running the show. You take out all the self-agonizing. What can they do to you after you get into your seventies?
  
• Even in grammar school they taught you to go with your first impression. It’s like multiple-choice questions. If you go back and start dwelling, you’ll talk yourself out of it and make the wrong pick. That’s just a theory. I’ve never seen any studies on it. But I believe it. As Jerry Fielding used to say, “We’ve come this far, let’s not ruin it by thinking.”
  
• We live in more of a pussy generation now, where everybody’s become used to saying, “Well, how do we handle it psychologically?” In those days, you just punched the bully back and duked it out. Even if the guy was older and could push you around, at least you were respected for fighting back, and you’d be left alone from then on. I don’t know if I can tell you exactly when the pussy generation started. Maybe when people started asking about the meaning of life.
  
• I remember going to a huge waterfall on a glacier in Iceland. People were there on a rock-platform overlook to see it. They had their kids. There was a place that wasn’t sealed off, but it had a cable that stopped anybody from going past a certain point. I said to myself, You know, in the States they’d have that hurricane-fenced off, because they’re afraid somebody’s gonna fall and some lawyer’s going to appear. There, the mentality was like it was in America in the old days: If you fall, you’re stupid.
  
• You can’t stop everything from happening. But we’ve gotten to a point where we’re certainly trying. If a car doesn’t have four hundred air bags in it, then it’s no good.
  
• People love westerns worldwide. There’s something fantasylike about an individual fighting the elements. Or even bad guys and the elements. It’s a simpler time. There’s no organized laws and stuff.
  
• You should really get to know somebody, really be a friend. I mean, my wife is my closest friend. Sure, I’m attracted to her in every way possible, but that’s not the answer. Because I’ve been attracted to other people, and I couldn’t stand ‘em after a while.
  
• I’m not one of those guys who’s been terribly active in organized religion. But I don’t disrespect it. I’d never try to impose any doubts that I might have on anyone else.
  
• Children teach you that you can still be humbled by life, that you learn something new all the time. That’s the secret to life, really–never stop learning. It’s the secret to career. I’m still working because I learn something new all the time. It’s the secret to relationships. Never think you’ve got it all.
  
• Like Sir Edmund Hillary talking about why you do anything: Because it’s there. That’s why you climb Everest. It’s like a little moment in time, and as fast as it comes into your brain, you just throw it out and discard it. Do it before you discard it, you know?
  
• Million Dollar Baby won the Academy Award. That was nice, that was great. But you don’t dwell on it. An awful lot of good pictures haven’t won Academy Awards, so it doesn’t have much bearing. Letters from Iwo Jima was nominated for an Academy Award. We didn’t win it, but that picture was still as good as I could do it. Did it deserve it less than some other picture? No, not really. But there are other aspects that come into it. In the end, you’ve just got to be happy with what you’ve done. There you are.“

Tomorrow or Not

University blogging has seized for a short while as I had nothing very interesting to say apart from a few conflicts of interest, ego bruising and then various comebacks BUT right now I’m mildly pissed off as I so far have handed in two assignments, one for brand management and one for something called personal aspects of management. Which is a load of HR combined with forceful CV writing that we’ve been doing since GCSE level.

Either way, at the time of writing the brand management essay I was a bit disappointed as the subject was rather…vague? And even though I was aware it had to be about some models, I did it my way or the highway and wrote about consumer psychology more than theoretical aspects which sounded very clinical and not…lively…enough. I figured we’d gotten over the HIP/LIP times and started talking about other considerations. So I wrote about things like The Hero and the Outlaw and not Aaker’s ‘Building Strong Brands’. Microtrends rather than other things. I would have uploaded it as a PDF file had I received a good grade for it but…

…the assignment was (and is) nowhere to be found!

Few things did change from last year: last year we’d all search for our assignments in a box, now we have to stop stealing assignments from others and show a student card at some undergraduate office and have someone else look for us. This would all be brilliant, along with the fact that we now get email receipts to confirm our submission of work but when I went to check, there was an enormous queue and the office was late with opening. My assignment wasn’t there even though everyone else’s was so now I’m stuck waiting and hoping/praying that it will be there tomorrow when I pick up something else. I feel like I asked someone to hold a dress for me in Saks while I go talk to my financial advisor whether I can afford it or not. 

If it’s not there, I’m screwed. Literally.

Later edit: I passed one of them at least, not the one that really matter a lot to me. More to come tomorrow!

Tom Ford on Style + Other Things

“Time and silence are the most luxurious things today.”

Rules of Style by Tom Ford

Escape From Boring Coffee

I think this is rather clever and I also think coffee should be sacred and the last bastion of ad-free territory but look:

If the coffee is bad, I’ll probably think ‘Hey, great thing they advertise a trip to somewhere where they do real one’ too. If not, they’ll probably wonder how much better it might get in Italy.

Ben Looking for Work Placement Volunteers

If you think you’re up for the challenge or know someone who might be, it’ll happen some time in the next year, in January. You need to drop a comment on his entry and if he thinks you’re the right person he will get in touch with you. 

 

More details on his blog!

Not in Defence of CP+B

If you know CP+B and have heard a bit about the rumour spread by digicynic that Alex Bogusky asked his creatives to write press releases and not scripts, then you’ll probably think the new Whopper Virgins campaign is an enormous hit.

I think it’s not, and that’s not just my cynical, negative view on things, there’s actually some reasoning and thinking behind all this!

Video #1 is about some Romanian villagers.

Video #2 is about some Thai villagers.

If you think they’re controversial and also condescending you’re probably right. If you think of it in terms of “it gets people talking” you’re probably also right to believe in its…sheer brilliance. Why I now think CP+B are idiots and I’m not in their target audience according to them in this AdAge Article (yes I know there’s no point but isn’t that what advertising criticism is? Pissing in an ocean of piss?):

• If you can’t do controversial and cool in one you shouldn’t attempt it. Listen to more Simian Mobile Disco and practice zen meditation.
• If you live in Britain “warrior mums” are in the target audience or were in June 2008 at least according to this press release. What gives? If your restaurants are operated in a franchise system then who dictates your advertising worldwide?

“The premise behind the push sparked a backlash among nutritionists, anthropologists and parents, with critics claiming Burger King is exploiting poverty-stricken regions for marketing.” = FAIL

• If you’re not good with short term memory and recent events (like Borat), keep quiet, stupid. 

“We thought they came here to help us, not mock us. We haven’t got anything here. We haven’t got running water. We can’t even bathe,” a local said. “We are poor people, but we are still people.”

• If you’re even worse with history, even more of a reason to keep quiet, stupid.

 ”A strange phenomenon of collective psychology was the strong and enduring belief that the West and above all the USA would pull Romania from beneath the Soviet boot. ‘Vin americanii’ (tr. ‘The Americans are coming!’) was an expression that summarized a political attitude but also a state of mind. These resisted all proof of disinterest in Western capitals toward the countries left behind the ‘Iron Curtain‘ and only after the crushing of the Hungarian revolution by the Red Army in 1956, beneath the passive gaze of the West, did Eastern Europeans, among them Romanians, begin to abandon their hopes and face reality”. People turned to different ways of coping: flight, or the hope of flight; mental escape (Western music, yoga, bridge); and adopting Western lifestyles, to the extent this was possible.”

• I will laugh my ass off if Romania makes a comeback with a spoof called ‘Geography Virgins’ in which they go to any American state and ask the Burger King super fans if they ever heard of Romania (and not Budapest) to start with. Then the joke’s on them and Romanians get to hide behind the “it’s not cultural insensitivity” phrase when they say people in the United States don’t know geography, for instance. It’s just…in any international business book really.

So some planner tell me wherein lies the strategic brilliance? Since when does sloppy research account for awesomeness? I thought arrogance had to be earned. Or I might be wrong.

Such is Life

Work, more work, work alone, frustration, work with others, cancelling meetings, work again, more frustration, presentation, more excited than nervous lately, stress, feedback, pat on the back, congratulate people for work, eat chocolate, make friends, invites to birthdays, travel, write Christmas cards, buy loads of stamps, vote in congestion charge thing, wake up at five in the morning and have piping hot porridge with apples and cinnamon, hot shower, coffee on the run, agonise due to not having enough time for lunch, home again, call nan and tell her what a bad person you’ve been, stare at iPods before making a choice, save money for that 24″, daydream about Snowbombing, daydream about Dubai in summer, stare some more at iPods, wonder why you’ve suddenly stopped listening to music of any kind, book a sauna and massage session, pamper, sleep, more sleep, flying home, relaxing and then starting all over again.

Wee.

 

PS: The thing that made my day was when someone asking me what font I used because it looked “great”. (Font) nerd rage +1

Dating is Materialism

Exploring alternate answers to the question ‘why is the World in so much debt’ I stumbled across the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology that does pretty much what it says on the tin. If you fancy reading about why women are more likely to rate emotional infidelity as more upsetting than sexual infidelity in their partners you can have a quick look at this article.

But that’s not why we’re here! Same journal did some research on materialism in men that showed a few things:

• Men buy and consume to impress women.
• Women seem to buy this and date men who appear to have more money than they do.

I always thought of it being stupid that people spend more than they have, and try to look like they have a lot when in reality they can’t even afford what they are wearing but if it gets them a date then it’s good enough it seems.

Men who spent more (saved less) and who were more likely to shell out more than they earned reported having more sexual partners in the past five years and desired more future partners than other guys in the study.

 

Specifically, the 25 percent of men who were most conservative about spending had an average of three partners in the past five years and desired about one partner in the next five years. The 2 percent of men with the riskiest financial strategies had double those numbers.

“It is partially a result of our economic system and recent financial policies, but I really do think that our evolved mating strategies have an influence,” Kruger said. “Our competition for economic displays drives ourconsumer economy and culture of affluence.”

Yahoo LiveScience

 

Change But Don’t Change

I mean it would make sense if Aldi actually did brands we all know rather than their unknown brothers and sisters from other countries. Not that they don’t stock a few of them here and there but they’re not representative. And I don’t think it was aimed just at them.