scott goodson's writings

A story of positivity: Jen Stark

The end of the year is always a good time to watch a story about a creative mind that is doing something amazing. Creativity that brings out a good feeling in people. She is a 24 year old contemporary artist that makes jewels out of the most ordinary of basic things: construction paper.

Charitable Giving Gets Boost with Innovative Television Ad Campaign

This interview comes from Beet TV:

Starting today and for the next two weeks, Beet.TV's 800 videos will feature a 30 second post-roll ad campaign for "Changing the Present," a nonprofit organization that connects consumers with a choice of 1500 charitable gifts.

Earlier this month, I interviewed Executive Creative Director Kevin McKeon of StrawberryFrog, the highly regarded advertising agency responsible for the campaign.

The ads begin as conventional commercials for pricey cars and jewelry and then there's a shock, the new Lexus is a lamb - it is in an appeal to provide funding for livestock for impoverished farmers. A jewelry box contains a hypodermic needle in an appeal for funding for polio vaccinations for entire villages.

"It's just to get people to think about gift giving in a different way and to do it in a way that's unexpected for that category," he says. "They're usually very sappy or make you feel guilty. [Our purpose is] to bring a little humor to it, to not make people feel like you're a bad person if you don't do it, but just to get them to remember that idea."

These are great ads for an important cause. We are pleased at Beet.TV to host the ad for the next couple of weeks. We hope that our colleagues in the online video content creation and syndication will integrate more public service messages into videos. It is important.

Anant Rangaswami - Lunchtime chats

In my series of lunchtime chats, I've had a lot of fun speaking with the personalities who are shaping the media and cultural landscape in different parts of the globe. Today, I wanted to chat with someone in Mumbai who I met almost a year ago and who I immediately clicked with. His name is Anant. He's a prolific writer, a poet, a philosopher. But more he's an enthusiastic and vocal supporter of the Indian advertising industry. He helps to set the yardstick against which ideas are measured. He inspires Indian professionals to greatness. He's a tough critic and, in his way, is helping to set a new standard in one of the most interesting advertising markets in the world.

Tell me about yourself

I’ve had fun. Born in Kolkata, spent the first 22 years of my life there; shifted to Chennai, then Bangalore, and now in Mumbai for the past 14 years.

I’m divorced, with two lovely kids, Rohan, who’s doing his postgraduation in engineering at Manchester, and Anya, who’s doing her graduate design program at National Institute of Design. I read anything that has ink on paper.

Tell me about your career

Ran a bookstore that shut down after 7 years, got into advertising and then into media sales (STAR TV, Sony Entertainment Television); moved to Mumbai with the Times of India, got back into advertising with TBWA; became a journalist with Impact magazine, now editing Campaign India.

Stuff no one knows about

I have over 800 published cryptic crosswords to my credit. I write poetry, mostly for myself. Nonsense. Literally and otherwise. I drink about 850 liters of beer each year. I’m a Scrabble fiend.

Great people and work

My father, particularly because I am what I am because of him. My tastes in music, in books, in movies and in work discipline is all inherited. Peter Mukerjea (now of INX Media, formerly of STAR TV) and Arun Arora (now of Edvance Learning, formerly of The Times of India) both of whom I have worked under are extraordinary human beings. I’ve learnt a lot from them.

Work?

Making Impact a good magazine is something I’m proud of. I joined the magazine when it was putrid. Making Campaign India the pre-eminent magazine in the space within 6 months has been fun. The most fun, though, was creating an event called ‘The War of the DJs that I created when I was at the Times of India. In advertising, winning the Foster’s beer account without a strat presentation – we converted one half of one floor of TBWA into a bar and took the client through the experience we would create if we were awarded the account.

Where’s it all heading?

It’s going to be tough. But not half as tough as the media suggests. There will be more pressure on needing to deliver measurable communication solutions. TV will not disappear – nor fade too much. Cost will be an area that the entire industry, worldwide, will spend a lot of time on.

Ideas will rule; not marquee names. This will be the age of opportunity for youngsters with talent. The internet will help them draw attention to themselves – and clients will notice them. Interesting times.

What defines you professionally?

Workaholic. Love the work I do ( have loved all the work I have ever done in all the jobs I have had the privilege to hold). Motivator. Team builder. Fun. Fierce competitor.

Who are your heroes in life?

Locomotive drivers in India. Child labor anywhere in the world. Victims of war and terrorism and natural calamities who manage to pick themselves up and fight.

Five years from now, who will survive and who will die?

Lazy companies and people will die. Companies and people rigid in their thinking will die. Inward-looking companies and people will die. Bottom-line managers will die.

Nimbleness, flexibility and a clear customer-orientation will be the hallmarks of those who make it.

What are the greatest challenges for the ad/marcomms industry?

For the listed companies, the holding companies, the challenges are peculiar. They need to staff themselves based on the medium or long term; this is in direct conflict with the need to keep shareholders happy quarter on quarter. Forecasting revenues accurately and, therefore, maintaining this balance is going to be the key.

For independents, the challenge will be the ability to scale up without giving up independence. Forecasting revenues will be as much a challenge for these agencies and shops, but they do not have the luxury of reserves to dip into to pay salaries and other bills if the forecasts go awry. Imaginative models to attract new talent and retain existing talent will be a huge challenge. ESOPs are worthless – what’s the substitute?

What are you up to now?

On a short holiday, to avoid burnout. Just finished the biggest issue of Campaign India since inception – the Agency Report Card.

The year ahead

We live in interesting times. They remind me of the last economic downturn, the time we started StrawberryFrog in Europe, before we opened in New York and Sao Paulo.

Back then, virtually every major international advertising campaign was done by the huge holding companies.

A change in the economy focuses clients. It opens them up to new solutions, new ways of doing things, because the rear view mirror vanishes.

Back then clients cherished a few things above all others: better, faster, cheaper ideas, that cut through the clutter, that save time during the development process, that hit faster and harder. Clients wanted experience and credentials, but also innovation and a hell of a lot of agility.

These are the things which are highly valued by clients during economic volatility. It was true the last time around. The same is true in 2009.

Essentials for a lasting relationship

Someone sent me a direct Tweet today asking "what are the essentials of a lasting client and agency relationship in these new economic times?"

I don't think they've changed much from the advice Mary Wells wrote about in her famous book about account management.

My list includes:

- Honesty. Whatever happens, client and agency, need to tell each other the truth.

- Trust and mutual forgiving of mistakes, which are unavoidable on both sides.

- Absence of fear. Nobody can produce great work, under a Damocles sword.

- Acknowledgment of jobs well done.

- Mutual agreement that carrots produce largely better and more work.

- Openness from wherever ideas come from. They often come from the client.

- Close involvement at the top of client and agency. The big picture must constantly be clear to everybody.

- Nobody is permitted to waver in the belief of the essential values of the brand.

- Try to always bring fresh perspective to the table.

- A sense of humor, which allows both sides to have as much fun as possible, in the interest of outstanding commitment and work.

This is reality, warts and all

Brands live today in an environment where you can't hide behind the plasma screen. It's warts and all world.

Case in point the rising debate about "Clean Coal."

For the past year, we've all seen many TV commercials and print ads attesting to the new clean coal industry being built for the future. Here is an example from the campaign:

Today I came across an ad in the New Yorker called "This is Reality" which stated quite bluntly "Coal is one of the leading causes of global warming. But it hasn't stopped the coal industry from advertising clean coal. Yet, the truth is there isn't a single commercial coal plant in America today that captures it's global warming pollution." The ad ended with www.ThisIsReality.org so I got off my desk and went to my mac and surfed the blog. Effective advertising for sure.

Turns out this site is made by a group called "The Reality Coalition" a project of the Alliance for Climate Protection, Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the League of Conservation Voters. They claim to be challenging the coal industry to come clean — in its advertising.

Whichever side you believe in this debate, one thing is certain. Big budgets can no longer drown out a naysayer. Now, anyone can spark a cultural mass movement with a crystallized idea and, with a keen understanding of social media, accelerate it's rise among a hugely wired and activist population.

The way things spread (the opposite of what Gladwell suggests)

The word is Mark Earls is Malcolm Gladwell on Speed. Last year, he wrote a book called "Herd: How to Change Mass Behavior by Harnessing Our True Nature" available here.

The excellent book essentially says we've misunderstood human nature - we're a social creature not the independent decision-maker of classical economics and Anglo culture. It's the interaction between individuals that primarily shapes mass-behavior (not what we with our cleverness do). This leads us to rethink marketing, management etc

Today on Twitter I dropped a tweet about brands depending on the kindness of strangers to pass on information.

Mark wrote me on my Tweet and we started an exchange on the topic. "We do what we do because of other people, whatever our minds and our culture tell us about the independence of our decision making." And he sent along one of my favorite scenes in film.

He recently wrote a terrific article in Admap about this very topic, which says in short:

Things spread through populations the opposite way to that which we (and the likes of Gladwell) suggest. They always have done and always will

I.e.

Pull not push (based on humankind's no.1 learning and adaptive strategy - copying)

Without copying, nothing really spreads.

Behavioral (it's what other folk do - not so much what they say - that we copy)

Things don't tend to spread through the "hub-and-spoke" (as Keller etc suggest) but through other type of social network...

It's when look over time & across a population (or any reasonably sized group) that the characteristic patterns of different kinds of copying are easy to discern

Big change to what marketing needs to do as a result: most of all, we need to stop thinking about marketing as something we do to them (or even with them); instead, let's start to think of it as something that can help them be the social creatures they are...

There was also a very admirable post on Faris Yakob's blog about the same topic.

Viral is a thing that happens, not a thing that is.

If people pass your communication on, it's viral. If they don't, it's not. Sometimes I get calls saying this viral isn't performing very well - what's the problem? We've seeded it to all the right places, it's on youtube and everything - where's our traffic? The problem is usually that they've made an ad that contains nothing people consider worth showing to their friends.

Unless you would be willing to send whatever it is to your mates - it's not viral!

This metaphor is very seductive and very hard to get rid of. It lets us think we understand. And specificaly, it re-affirms the structure of control. It implies all you need to do is create something that is 'viral' enough and it spreads through populations like, well, a virus - it self-propagates.

This is simply untrue.

What we mean when something goes 'viral' is that LOTS OF PEOPLE CHOOSE TO PROPAGATE IT. It requires people to do something.

Parents worldwide are naming their babies Obama

Talk about a Cultural Movement. Obama is of course the President Elect. But as a word "Obama" is beginning to take on a universal meaning for "yes we can", "overcoming adversity", "change", and for those underprivileged people worldwide...inspiration.

The Associated Press released a story today about how people are giving their new born babies the name "Obama' across the globe. Parents worldwide, especially the underprivileged are naming their babies Obama.

Super nice tunes