How to turn an out of the box idea into a boring cliché
Skittles leaking from a ceiling: startling, ingenious even; gems bubbling up from the ground? Sadly, not groundbreaking. Reworking the classics may be a good idea if the rework is slick, it takes the idea to a new place, and, of course, you start with a classic. But a change of sets with a jingle that sounds like an escapee from Sesame Street is only going to attract the wrong kind of attention. Not the kind of publicity a brand like Cadbury should be seeking.
Skittles may have gotten away with it, no doubt supported by the same kind of audience so enamoured of the ‘Buuud’ burping frogs, circa 1990. Cadburys, unfortunately, haven’t exactly hitched their wagon to a classic. In fact, it’s not even cheesy – that saviour of ads powered by pun driven banalities. The jingle is good for one thing though, a cue to change channels or take a bathroom break.

judge for yourself:

the original, with candy leaking from the ceiling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqvtg7tRl8A 

the wannabe - candy gushing from the ground. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqvtg7tRl8A 

Job hopping is good for the creative soul

and wallet.

We live in a world where change is routine, why should our careers be different? As every serious job hopper knows, pay raises come faster – and are bigger- with judicious jumps than with old-fashioned loyalty.

Nowhere is this truer than in advertising. For an industry that routinely serves up use-by-date fare change is not only desirable it is necessary. Job hopping is good. It throws you in contact with different people, different working styles, different processes, different clients, different ideas and, not least, different expressions of familiar ideas.

Who would you rather work with: the eclectic who’s seen and done it most of it, if not all, or the old faithful whose expertise comes from a familiarity with his own individual rut?

Forget loyalty, it’s not just outdated; it’s a one way street. When times are bad, who do you think gets dumped? The job hopper who blossoms productivity with fresh ideas or the old-faithful who studiously ploughs the same barren patch?

St Augustine describes the world as a book and the non-traveller, an ignoramus who reads just one page. And what is a change of jobs if not a form of career-travel? Employers claim to love employees who display the most loyalty, I say, “If you love them set them free, if- and when- they return they will come bearing gifts of productive creativity.”

Quality Conscience; how conscious is yours?

‘Conscious’, as we all know is the opposite of ‘unconscious’; to be awake, or at least give the impression of wakefulness. A zombie, for the purposes of this argument, can lay claim to being conscious, but barely. It’s like being tolerant. What’s so great about being tolerant? Let’s face it: we only tolerate that what we cannot change. A baldy tolerates his shining pate – and the inevitable jokes it attracts. He doesn’t like it, he definitely doesn’t seek it. But he tolerates it. What else can he do? Get a wig, and some more ridicule?

We’re all quality conscious people; even the laziest, most inept, unimaginative amongst us. And we recognise the need for it, especially in others. But the willingness to actually get up and actively embrace it, calls for more than merely being conscious - it demands having a conscience. Not the kinds sported by Manson or Bundy, those will let you get away with murder. But the kind that will not let you rest until satisfied; the kind that keeps you awake at night when you haven’t done right by it. It’s also the one that gives you the greatest sense of accomplishment and righteousness, and when you’ve got that you’ve got it made.

But there are folks who don’t let their conscience get in the way of their quality consciousness; whose idea of emulating quality is to simply copy from the best; guys who confuse plagiarism with inspiration. Advertising is the great place to meet them. Like this one Account Manager we keep around here, he collects old campaigns and ad. concepts like a squirrel collects nuts during winter. Then he tries to peddle them to unwary clients. It rarely works. Even on the builders - who are probably the most unscrupulous of the lot. After all, they may lack a conscience, but they're not unconscious!

Everyone wants to be Steve Jobs -

but nobody wants to do what he did.

The average Indian – and I am increasingly coming to believe that there is no other kind – is all too happy to settle. Good enough for us means Good! Chalta hai is a way of life. And far from being a tolerant attitude – as it is often viewed - it is in reality downright dangerous: this is the attitude that forces us to live with sub-standard infrastructure, allows politicians to get away, literally, with murder, subverts our integrity; and perpetuates the conditions that permit mediocrity to thrive.

Jobs was notorious for sending scripts, products - even canteen menu designs- back repeatedly, until they satisfied his model of excellence. – the results are there for everyone to see.

Stories of his obsessions are the stuff of legends; especially amongst the geeks who worked for him, a number of whom, predictably, opted out: Since Silicon Valley is conspicuously full of Indians, one can only guess at the origins of the guys who fled Steve’s acerbic drive for excellence.

In truth, mediocrity through sheer weight of numbers will always overwhelm excellence and Steve Jobs story is no exception. His penchant for quality alienated the majority of the ‘tribe of average’, until they forced him out of the brand he himself had built.

Score one for the average gang?

Happily, or sadly - depending where you cast your allegiance - No. We all know what happened to a Jobless Apple. It got chewed up! By Microsoft, the undisputed king of the heap during the nineties.

And so they bought him back – because the only way they could get him to return was by acquiring the NEXT company he built.

This is not a call to arms in a battle for excellence; this is merely a wake-up call. Few of us can survive the unrelenting demand made by perfection; fewer are even keen to. You can’t be Jobs by merely doing your job. That’s for folks looking for a career, not the stuff of legends.

The Dirt on Real Estate advertising.

“I can’t get no satisfaction” – Mick Jagger

A certain developer who won’t be named, at least not until someone makes it worth my while, has plastered Pune with billboards that claim ‘Satisfaction is just a word’. Two weeks later a rival builder cleverly retaliated with, ‘Satisfaction is not just a word’, in the process thoroughly confusing the local population, many of whom weren’t intending to buy a flat with either of the two developers, anyway.

Now when Pune’s home buying population is confused they dig in their heels and refuse to sign on the dotted line, so business naturally slumped. It got to such a pass that bankers stepped in to try and mediate a solution. A spokesperson for the local populace said, ‘it’s not that we’re looking for satisfaction. But to be told this to our face is just too much. Buying a flat from these guys can be so confusing it makes Einstein’s theories relatively simple. The last guy who tried to differentiate between carpet area, built-up area, super built-up area and the granddaddy of them all, saleable area needed medication and 40 hours of counselling and he still sweats nervously when any of those words are mentioned within hearing.”

The company that claimed that satisfaction was just a word defended their stance saying, ‘Well it’s perfectly obvious it’s just a word’ I mean it doesn’t really do anything does it? Just sits there waiting to be read. Which makes it a word. As opposed to say, a brick or mortar or anything else. We were merely stating the obvious. And it doesn’t have anything to do with our projects or anything. As any of our customers will tell you.

All unarguably true. But why put it up on a billboard?

“Well you could think of it as a public interest campaign, we were only doing our bit to try and educate everyone out there. Now they know that satisfaction is a word, we were planning to follow it up with an entire series: dedication, quality, armadillos, and so on.... But we’ve shelved that now.

A representative of the company that had retaliated by claiming that satisfaction wasn’t just a word, argued that if you looked carefully one would see that satisfaction wasn’t just a word – it was at least five! namely, ‘sat’, ‘is’, ‘fact’, ‘act’ and ‘ion’.

Also true.

The search for the truth finally led us to the agency that came up with the idea and the copywriter who wrote the ad said, ‘Actually that line doesn’t have anything to do with any of you at all. None of our ads do. You see, I’d just had my appraisal that day and I wasn’t quite sure whether it was satisfactory or not.” “But considering the press it has received, we’re considering sending it for the Cannes Ad Festival.”