There’s an old saw in show business about the five stages of an actor’s career. It goes something like this:
Marketing
Once Upon a Time…
…there were a bunch of people called “marketers.” Marketers were the storytellers of their age, and what stories they did tell! But unlike the storytellers of old, marketers stories were not told simply to entertain, but to motivate the people of the land to part with their hard-earned coins in exchange for stuff. [Read more…] about Once Upon a Time…
G. vs. E.
Opposites are funny things. When I was a kid, I was an avid comic book reader. My favorite back then was Superman. A number of the Superman plotlines revolved around someone called “Bizzaro Superman” who lived on Bizzaro Earth, as I recall. There, everything was backwards. When Bizzaro Superman came to (our) Earth, he did everything backwards, at least from our point of view. (Stay with me…this is going somewhere.)
The problem is that sometimes opposite and backwards are two completely different concepts. The opposite of open is close. The opposite of dark is light. If you wanted to do something “backwards” you’d enter a room and turn off the light, and turn it on when you leave. However, consider the concept of “love.” The opposite of love isn’t hate – it’s indifference. If I love something, that means I care passionately about it. If I hate it, the same is true (different emotion – same intensity). If I stop loving something, I simply cease to care…therfore the opposite of love is indifference. [Read more…] about G. vs. E.
Pay Attention.
When I was a kid, I lost count of the times my father (mother, teacher, adult, grandparent, etc.) said “Pay Attention!” to me. Not that it mattered. I’ve always been something of a dreamer. It’s where I get my best ideas. Anyway, it seems that they were onto something. Attention, I mean.
It goes something like this…no matter how rich or how poor, how powerful or how weak, how young or how old, there is one common denominator in all our lives. Time. Each of us has the same 24 hours per day – no more, no less. How we spend this time is what occupies our waking hours. When I was a kid, time was a pretty simple thing to manage – get up, eat breakfast, go to school, come home, do homework, eat dinner, go to bed. What free time I had, I could choose to read (my personal favorite) or watch one of three TV channels, or listen to a handful of radio stations. Occasionally, I could go to see a movie or a play. That was about it. Now consider my daughter. This seven-year-old is growing up in a world with hundreds of satelite TV channels, ditto for satelite radio. Add to that dozens of magazines, CDs, DVDs, podcasts, MP3s and a host of other stiumuli. She has literally hundreds more choices in entertainment than I had at her age.
Pause with me for a nanosecond. [Read more…] about Pay Attention.
Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam…
I don’t want to get off on a rant here (with apologies to Dennis Miller), but I feel compelled to say a few words about SPAM. I’m not talking about the all-purpose food from the fine folks at Hormel, nor am I making a Monty Python reference. No, gentle reader, I’m talking about unsolicited email, and nefarious bastards that are behind the practice. Unlike the Feds “we don’t know how to define spam, but we’ll know it when we see it,” I can define it. It is the moral equivalent of 4th class advertising. Unsolicited, unwanted, and unnecessary. Ever wonder why you get so many unsolicited ads in your (snail) mail box? Because they are A) cheap to send, and B) work.
Pause with me for a nanosecond. [Read more…] about Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam…
Yelling “Movie!” in a crowed firehouse.
In January 2006, The “King of All Media” (a.k.a. Howard Stern) moves his blue humor act from terrestrial radio to Sirius satellite radio.
Yawn.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to hold my breath that Sirius is going to see some huge uptick in sales, as Stern-iacs sign up for satelite radio to get their daily fix. (A) I don’t care, and (B) I know something Sirius doesn’t.
Consider parents with a youngster who suddenly discovers that he can get a rise out of his parents when he uses a “bad” word. What happens? Well, in my family, the child is told “we don’t approve of that kind of language.” If the language persists, the punishment begins. Eventually (even in families that equate a lack of discipline with “loving” the child) the novelty of the bad word wears off. Eventually, the child must either give up, or look for an even more shocking word. Eventually, even that falls flat, and the child has nothing left to do for an encore.
Pause with me for a nanosecond.
Monkey #3.
One of my favorite stories concerns scientist studying monkeys. As the story goes, there’s an observation room with some one-way glass, overlooking a room where the experiment is carried out. In the room there is metal plate on the floor, in the center of the room, which can be electrified to deliver a mild, but somewhat painful shock. Suspended above the metal plate by way of a string, is a bunch of bananas. [Read more…] about Monkey #3.
Confessions of a Car Dealer Advertiser.
Okay. I admit it. For a year and a half, I created ads for car dealerships.
It’s funny. When I began writing and directing car ads, I quickly discovered that there are reasons that most car dealers have ads that…how can I put this delicately…um…bite.
First of all, the budget for car ads is about $300. That covers talent, videography, post-production, and everything from script to screen. That’s not much money, and it doesn’t allow for much in the way of wiggle room for talent, props, sets, or anything else.
Next, let’s add to this mix the fact that most car dealers want to use their sales staff in the commercials. It’s been my experience that most sales reps aren’t really comfortable in front of the camera. And it shows. Lastly, lets examine the “we’ve always done it this way” phenonmenon as it applies to car ads. The industry mantra is that the manufacturer sells the car, the dealer association sells the promotion, and the dealer sells the deal. That’s why you see dealers running ads that show one or more vehicles with payments or “off-MSRP” pricing, instead of ads that try to convince you why you should deal with a specific dealer. [Read more…] about Confessions of a Car Dealer Advertiser.
Uniqueness.
Once upon a time, Steve Martin used to do a gag in his stand-up routine, where he’d get everyone to repeat the “Individualist’s Oath.” He’d say, “repeat after me…I promise to be different…I promise to be unique…I promise to stop repeating things other people tell me to say.”
Funny stuff. As with most of Martin’s stuff, there was a serious point underneath the veneer of lunacy. Everyone wants to be unique, for being unique is a great way to be noticed. It’s what Seth Godin talks about in his book, Purple Cow.
Why is unique better, and why do so many people settle for “just like”?
I have a theory. (Big surprise.) Unique puts you apart from the rest of the pack. Unique is uncomfortable – at least until the rest of the pack acknowledges it, and copies it. Unique is…difficult.
Ries & Trout made their careers in marketing talking about mindshare – being first in the public’s mind when they think about a category. Without mindshare you won’t get marketshare. So…how do you go for “unique”? [Read more…] about Uniqueness.
Everything Old is New Again.
Most things work in cycles, like the swinging of a pendulm. Hemlines go up and hemlines go down. Pants legs go from flares to straight and back again. The country swings towards liberalism and back to conservative values. Some cycles take longer than many people observe in their lifetimes. To understand those cycles, we must study history. For instance, did you know that there have been several periods in American history where the two sides were as polarized (if not MORE polarized) as they are today? There are periods in our past where politics were even more nasty than what we see today – with more dirty tricks than Watergate, with more scandals than the Clinton era, and with more bile than a Howard Dean speech. [Read more…] about Everything Old is New Again.