Wisdom must be caught not taught
I'm in love with the aphoristic form as you well know. And I think they are extremely handy in our business. Certainly in persuading people of a point of view or course of action - such as David Ogilvy's why keep a dog and bark yourself, or Bill Bernbach's we must stop believing in what we sell and start selling what we believe in.
The are also great in framing strategies, approaches and ideas - no one is interested in your positioning, they only want to know your position or Coherence is more important than consistency for example. And on occasions great brand thoughts can take an aphoristic form, I'd argue they are the ones that get remembered best.
So imagine my delight when Russell gave me "The World in a phrase - A brief history of the aphorism" by James Geary.
Quite apart from being a concise history of the greatest aphorists of all time from Lao Tsu to Dr Seuss, Mr Geary also gives us a little ready reckoner for our own aphorisms, those expressions that in Mark Twain's definition offer the minimum of sound to the maximum of sense.
1. It must be brief - "When you find yourself in extremis, aphorisms tell you everything you need to know", how about Baltasar Gracians' attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult and difficult tasks as if they were easy?
2. It must be definitive - "Aphorisms assert rather than argue, proclaim rather than persuade, state rather than suggest" like those of Dr Johnson famous for the phrase Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoudrel
3. It must be personal - Aphorisms must bear the hallmark and ideosyncracies of the aphorist otherwise they are simply proverbs - aphorisms that have lost any trace of the mind that originated them.
4. It must have a twist - Ideally they should have a sudden sting in the tail that gives you a jolt, a punch line like that of a joke. Witness Chateaubriand's An orginal writer is not one that imitates no one but one whom no one can imitate.
5. It must be philosophical - "They are like porcupines, bristling with prickly philosophical spines. Rub them the wrong way and you are in for a surprise". Nietzche's good and evil are the prejudices of God is a pretty decent example of that if you ask me. Chamfort's celebrity: the advantage of being known by those who do not know you is pretty good too.
But perhaps the best thing about it is that in one short little book the life and works of some of the greatest thinkers are delivered up in digestable form. No idea about Wittgenstein? Seen all those quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson on the internet but no clue as to who he was? Want to be able to use Confucius in your next pitch? Then this is the book for you.
Now thats what I call collective intelligence
A while ago Gavin Heaton and Drew Mc Lellan asked a bunch of us bloggers to contribute to an e-book about the Age of Conversation. We were each to contribute a chapter of 400 words about our take on the subject. As more people got excited about the project and spurred on by the idea that the profits would go to a children's charity more bloggers got involved, with just over 100 of the world’s leading marketers, writers, thinkers and creative innovators finally co-authoring the book.
Not only is this likely to be a bit of a ground breaking read (I certainly liked my 1/100th of it) but its also a fascinating experiment in the wisdom of the crowd and and ferocious speed of collective self publishing. A book that is about half the length of an average novel has been conceived, the authors found, written, edited and published in hardback, softback and e-book formats in about 3 months.
And if it is all nonsense (which I would really suggest quite strongly it is not) then Variety gets stacks of dosh out of it.
Buy a copy now.
No really buy a copy now!
You can get the link to buy and all full list of the authors by continuing to read below.
Splash the cash here.
The Age of Conversation authors, that list in full:
Gavin Heaton
Drew McLellan
CK
Valeria Maltoni
Emily Reed
Katie Chatfield
Greg Verdino
Mack Collier
Lewis Green
Sacrum
Ann Handley
Mike Sansone
Paul McEnany
Roger von Oech
Anna Farmery
David Armano
Bob Glaza
Mark Goren
Matt Dickman
Scott Monty
Richard Huntington
Cam Beck
David Reich
Luc Debaisieux
Sean Howard
Tim Jackson
Patrick Schaber
Roberta Rosenberg
Uwe Hook
Tony D. Clark
Todd Andrlik
Toby Bloomberg
Steve Woodruff
Steve Bannister
Steve Roesler
Stanley Johnson
Spike Jones
Nathan Snell
Simon Payn
Ryan Rasmussen
Ron Shevlin
Roger Anderson
Robert Hruzek
Rishi Desai
Phil Gerbyshak
Peter Corbett
Pete Deutschman
Nick Rice
Nick Wright
Michael Morton
Mark Earls
Mark Blair
Mario Vellandi
Lori Magno
Kristin Gorski
Kris Hoet
G.Kofi Annan
Kimberly Dawn Wells
Karl Long
Julie Fleischer
Jordan Behan
John La Grou
Joe Raasch
Jim Kukral
Jessica Hagy
Janet Green
Jamey Shiels
Dr. Graham Hill
Gia Facchini
Geert Desager
Gaurav Mishra
Gary Schoeniger
Gareth Kay
Faris Yakob
Emily Clasper
Ed Cotton
Dustin Jacobsen
Tom Clifford
David Polinchock
David Koopmans
David Brazeal
David Berkowitz
Carolyn Manning
Craig Wilson
Cord Silverstein
Connie Reece
Colin McKay
Chris Newlan
Chris Corrigan
Cedric Giorgi
Brian Reich
Becky Carroll
Arun Rajagopal
Andy Nulman
Amy Jussel
AJ James
Kim Klaver
Sandy Renshaw
Susan Bird
Ryan Barrett
Troy Worman
S. Neil Vineberg
Book review - Ad Land by Mark Tungate
One of the more unfortunate characteristics of the advertising business is that every generation believes itself to be the first.
Or at least every generation believes itself to be the first to break the rules, take risks, create brave work and do anything much interesting.
For most people there is a dim recollection of the ‘greats’ of the past – a sense of what Ogilvy stood for or what Bernbach achieved. However, by and large most people in advertising are supremely ignorant of their heritage and the story that has shaped their agencies and industry.
This is exacerbated by the endemic neophilia that pervades the business – an obsession with the new that is scornful of the very concept of looking at the past to help understand the future.
You are unlikely to find this attitude in many other industries. Architects for example aren’t disrespectful of the past, for them a grounding in the lineage of modern architecture is considered a pre-requisite for practice even amongst the most avant-garde.
That is what makes Ad Land by Mark Tungate (a former Campaign journalist) essential reading for those commited to the future of this business.
Lets be frank, this is a business book from a business publisher. And, in the irritating parlance of the time, it is what it is. Don't go expecting a romp through advertising's colourful history with Malcolm Gladwell or Steven Johnson.
But what Ad Land may lack in style it more than makes up for in substance as it chronologically takes us through every significant development in the advertising business, every significant agency and every significant nation in advertising’s history right up to Naked, Droga 5 and bizarrely enough DraftFCB.
And it's that story that makes the book fascinating reading as it chronicles the birth of the Madison Avenue aristocracy like JWT and Y&R, the emergence of the creative visionaries of the ’50 and ‘60s on both sides of the Atlantic, fully acknowledges the importance of the French advertising tradition exemplified by Publicis, RSCG and BDDP, notes the contributions of the alternative agencies of the ‘90s (like HHCL and Mother) and maps out the great schisms and consolidations of the past century and a half.
Sure some of these stories will be familiar to you, maybe because you work in a place that is proud of its heritage (like Leo Burnett or DDB) or because you have picked up bits and bobs along the way. But for the first time in Ad Land someone has attempted to tell the entire saga, and that’s why this book is significant.
Wherever you work you are part of a tradition that has never placed much store in the traditional. For me it is vitally important to understand what yesterday’s revolutionaries did to shape the business we work in and the work that we make today. In particular how their entrepreneurial zeal and vision provides us with the inspiration and impetus to take this industry forward and change it in the ways it needs to changed. Every great agency that exists today (no matter how dull and sterile it may seem) does so because its founders resolved to change our business at a time when it was tired, lazy, complacent and resistant to change and in doing so showed others the way forward.
Not only is this book a fascinating insight into the people that made ad land a wonderful place to work, it is a kick up the backside to those of us that want it to stay that way by adequately facing up to the challenges it faces.
And while you won't be giving this book to your father for Christmas, if you work in ad land you will walk a little taller having read it.
Ad Land by Mark Tungate is published on 26th July by Kogan Page.
You can order a copy here.
Douglas Holt has come to save us all
Some books I read and some I chew on. Chewy books are those where the thinking is so profound or ideas so counter intuitive that they are tough to digest. Douglas Holt's How brands become icons is a chewer.Some books I read and some I chew on.
Chewy books are those where the thinking is so profound or ideas so counter intuitive that they are tough to digest.
Douglas Holt's How brands become icons is a chewer.
Holt’s belief that brands achieve iconic status because they provide real identity value for consumers is pretty much received wisdom. However, the concept that they do this by resolving a fundamental contradiction between the expectations placed upon people by society and the reality of their day to day lives is a little more challenging. He does this with brands like Budweiser and VW which make loads of sense but it’s when you try to apply this to your own examples that things get interesting. Is Apple a run away success because of great products and great marketing or because the brand allows millions of people to feel they are part the creative economy when the reality of their lives is very different?
Add to that his challenge to the dreary dogma of relationship marketing and you have a book that messes with a lot of our assumptions about the way brands achieve and maintain iconic status.
One day this book will make it onto my bookshelf but for now its still in my bag close at hand for a daily chew.
For an overview of his work click here. Or to take a leap into the unknown and actually purchase the thing using the link to amazon in the books section.
Books I keep by my side
Confessions of an ad man - David Ogilvy
This book was written in 1962 so in some respects you have to take it with a dose of salt, but take it you must. I cannot believe that it has taken me 16 years in advertising to get to this wonderful book. I implore you to buy it - its cheap, its short and it is the work of a genius that stands the test of time. Here you see the aphorisms and cliches of our industry being penned(from paying peanuts and getting monkeys to the pointlessness of keeping a dog and barking yourself), here you see some of the best advice on winning and keeping clients you will ever come across, here you will witness a rollicking good story about the foundation of a great agency and here you will witness glorious and refreshing certainty about the way advertising works. But above all this book reminds us of the thing we are all so close to forgetting, that 'we sell or else'.
The Brand Innovation Manifesto - John Grant
To be honest I wasn't massively impressed with John Grant’s first book ‘The New Marketing Manifesto’. I read it dutifully but got little out of it and have never returned to it. As a result I didn’t read his second book ‘Beyond Image’ which I am beginning to regret, since in hindsight it seems right up my street. But his third book ‘The Brand Innovation Manifesto’ is absolutely outstanding.
Read it in two ways.
Get stuck into the first half, it is dripping with powerful new ideas like John’s definition of a brand as a ‘cluster of strategic cultural ideas’, like his critique of the cult of trend watching and like his real breakthrough which is to portray brands as molecules made up of multiple cultural ideas. And the thinking don’t stop here, I love John’s attack on consistency replacing it with the idea of coherence – infact I used it yesterday in a meeting with Sky. While I am reassured that he still sees the need for a brand to have a point even though it maybe made up of multiple cultural ideas, since the whole brand as Velcro argument is trying my patience with the new brand thinkers.
But only dip into the second half. Personally I find the classification of 32 cultural ideas way too much like hard work and I can’t imagine this part of the book was much fun to write either. But as a collection of 32 pithy case studies of brands that have created or maintained their position through real innovation it rocks.
In all this book is a significant step on in our thinking about brands and the first 86 pages are probably the finest you’ll read on marketing this year.
Visual and statistical thinking - Edward R. Tufte
This is more a pamphlet than a book and is one of Edward R. Tufte's more beguiling works. First off you get the incredible story of how the water bourne nature of cholera was first understood by plotting cholera deaths in Soho. Then you get the story of how the misuse and display of data led to the shuttle explosion. As ever with Tufte the pamphlet is not only awesome and fascinating but beautiful to read - having his usual attention to typographic detail. You will love yourself for buying this.
A theory of everything - Ken Wilber
What can I say - don't you just have to have a book with such a devastatingly holistic title. I have never finished it but it is another one of those chewers - always inspiring if you need a little mind fuck. Hey and next time someone asks you if you have read Eat Big Fish or some such plannery tome you can answer "nope but I'm half way through the theory of everything"
How brands become icons - Douglas Holt
Look I never shut up about this book. If you haven't got the point yet then there is no hope. As I have always said Douglas has come to save us all.
The marketing pocket book - The Advertising Association
I went through a phase of thinking this was rather plonky and pointless and then I saw the light. I now carry it everywhere and every year I buy one for every planner in the discipline and do spot checks.
Cool Memories V - Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard's fifth collection of memoirs is a constant companion, executed as it is entirely in aphoristic form. Rather than a chronology of events this is simply a record of the stuff Baudrillard thought - some of it eternal some topical. Also makes you seem clever on the train.
Helmut Krone the book - Clive Challis
An utterly mesmerising book about the legendary DDB art director Helmut Krone who was responsible for both the Avis and VW campaigns from that agancy but more importantly was the father of modern art direction. At DDB he led a revolution that put concept rather than execution at the heart of the way adveritisng is designed. As if this wasn't enough the book itself is a work of great beauty, showing as it does enormous reverence and respct for the work it celebrates.