Sausages (Book Review)

Unless your product or service is actually useful in some way to somebody, you're wasting your time and money with loads of marketing guff...





David Taylor has written quite a few books about brand marketing - brand gym and brand vision to name a couple.

Those other two books are worthy guides to brand marketing, full of bullet points, ten-point guides and other stuff that you can copy into presentations.

But 'never mind the sizzle...' is a much nicer read. It's told as fiction - a story of a guy from sales on a year placement in marketing at a flailing UK company who make sausages.

Bob (our hero) discovers the marketing team developing a product extension (pizzas with sausage on top), wasting time and money with an expensive ad agency. Brand diamonds, meaningless focus groups, media stunts, celebrities, over-the-top ad shoots and a ridiculous tag-line prevail....

But Bob sees the value in their core brand, reigniting it with solid research, genuine insight, and connecting to real people. Oh, and he gets a great job done by a hungry small design agency with no fat expense account.

It's an obvious story where Bob saves the day, the marketing director loses the plot and the ad agency drown in champagne at their soho members club.

But entertaining and strangely instructive nonetheless.

And to be honest, it's a valuable reminder to all of us in ad-land to take a step back on what we're doing and think about how absurd it all is. And that we really are meant to providing a service to people...

Rather sadly, I give you two recent examples....

• My girlfriend works at an agency who have a large mobile phone handset company as a client. She was in a focus group the other day where people asked after about 1/2 hour -
  'can you actually use it as a phone?'

• I sat in a meeting last week where we (yes, I'm complicit in this one), honestly recommended 'getting cool people to create art that symbolises the product'.
  

So heed the warning, ad agency folk. If clients read this book, watch out.

Gage's Library

People who know me know that I read a lot of books. Amazon Prime is made for me, and not a week goes past without the aesthetic beauty of the brown cardboard box landing on my desk at work.

I promised Jo at work that I would write some reviews and overviews on my blog. Most people don't have the time to read some of the crap that I do. And let's be honest, most books can be easily summarised:

The Long Tail - fewer numbers of people like stuff that's less popular, but the web means that even the least popular things can be matched up to the weirdos that like them.

The Tipping Point - a few people influence loads of others. Get them and you're made. The web makes this easier.

Wisdom of Crowds - lots of average people together are better than individual experts. The web makes this easier.

Herd - people do stuff instinctively and there's no 'maven' or 'leader' required.

Blink - your first thoughts and ideas are usually right.

Purple Cow - unless your product or service is different, you're buggered.

Brand Innovation Manifesto - unless your product or service is different (in one of xx helpful types defined by John), you're buggered.

Green Marketing Manifesto - unless your product or service green and normal (in one of xx helpful types defined by John), you're buggered.

The Black Swan - there's no point predicting anything. Ever. Other than unpredictability. (400 pages down to one line there, now that's being succinct)


This saves time and hopefully means more people can spraff on like planners in meetings...

(remember to cross your legs, put your fingers into a steeple, and close your eyes whilst musing....)

Odd hobbies?

Marketing Direct are running a piece about people in the industry with unusual hobbies - so our PR agency suggested I submitted a piece. It seems that writing some music at home is unusual in the direct marketing industry. I wonder what a normal hobby is for people who read Marketing Direct?

Appreciating new things...

I was putting together a nice film on the sorts of things that people take time out to appreciate in life. 'Personal Appreciation' being a comms platform that we're working towards for a client brief.

We filmed a bunch of people around the agency chatting away about their passions... including Mr. Hancock and his love of vox amps.....

I was kind of inspired after editing the film (& maybe hearing Mark go on about getting particular sounds), so thought I'd write a new piece to go with it. Bit of a change of direction - got loads of orchestral sounds... violin, cello, trombone, brass section, timpani. Had quite a lot of fun remembering my cadences and key signatures from studying music structure and composition.

I couldn't stay completely with the classical style. Notice that I sneaked in a classic dub bassline in there. Soundclash is sooo easy...

As usual, the finished piece is uploaded on the website here.

Ealing Comedy

I'm carefully packing up all the music equipment for the the big move. Obviously I couldn't do this quickly and efficiently. Instead I felt the need to write some more stuff...

So hop it over to the website and have a listen to two new tracks.

They should run in the browser. (Right click, save target as to bring into your lovely itunes!)

1. Last and Final Willow - named as the last and final song written in Willow Road.
2. Three Come Along - named after my perpetual waiting for the E3 bus. Never again, I hope!

Email me on gagey501@googlemail.com with any comments, thoughts and ideas.

I hope I can remember how to plug everything together in the new house!!!

WH Smith in 'great experience' shock

The other day I was at Paddington station and needed to buy a card. (yep for valentines!)

So I picked up a card in Smiths and went to the queue. It was ten people long and I had 5 minutes to get to my train. Decision time - do I stay or do i go?

Just as I was about to leave I heard one of the four cashiers yelling:

'come on, come on. keep it up. these people have trains to catch. keep it moving, keep it moving'.

And all of the other cashiers were smiling, and I was rapidly moving towards the front of the queue. They were even tossing bags of change to each other to deal with the inconsiderate commuters who had obviously just got a twenty out at the station.

Amazing.

I was reminded of the the old training video from video arts 'Fish' which was designed to show people that even the most mundance jobs could be good if you injected a bit of fun, energy and team spirit.

SOLD!

I know it's been quiet in the Commune. But I've been carrying on the path to petit-bourgeousisedom and bought a house in East Dulwich. It's been a 7-month ordeal that culminated in lots of hassle and pain in the last two weeks to exchange.

Soon, I will contributing to the East Dulwich Forum, throwing my hands up in annoyance as another 'high street' brand moves in. Although I'd better watch out... they say that the first sign of an area losing its character is when the advertising folk move in. It'll be accountants next.

Everyone's got some horror stories to tell about buying and selling property. The annoying estate agents. The painfully slow way in which solicitors work to a different theory of time to anyone else. The unhelpful banks and mortgage providers.

Don't want to boast, but I reckon I've got all the stories covered.

Foxtons: were evil, then actually started to be quite good (when the sale was going through)
Lloyds TSB: brilliant service and genuinely looked for solutions.
Ealing Council: as inefficient as ever
ICE Save (high interest instant saving account): Very unhelpful and inefficient w*nkers