On borrowed interest, mashed potatoes, and flowers

When I was in fifth grade, I rode my bike to school. The route I took went past a bottle brush tree –– at least that's what we called it. It had soft bark that came off in sheets like thick construction paper and white flowers that looked like, well, a bottle brush.

When the tree was in bloom, it smelled like –– and no, I'm not making this up –– the mashed potatoes at the school cafeteria.

We didn't have mashed potatoes every day, but the tree was in bloom constantly, for weeks. Maybe months. And eventually, I came to think that the mashed potatoes smelled like the tree.

What does this have to do with communication, you ask?

Well, I'll tell you.

One of the easiest ways to get consumers to infer certain characteristics with a brand is to associate your brand with another entity that already possesses those characteristics. A classic example is Grey Poupon. In order to be perceived as a luxury mustard, the advertising consistently put it in the hands of rich people.

If a guy with a snooty accent driving a Rolls Royce ate Grey Poupon, the unspoken logic argued, then Grey Poupon would be perceived as equally as luxurious as the snooty accent and the car.

But as much as a Rolls Royce can bestow attributes to Grey Poupon up, the inverse is true as well. Grey Poupon will inevitably bestow attributes to Rolls Royce.

So now let's talk about Timberland.

Timberland used to be all about chopping through the woods, living in a tent, wearing flannel. Then in the 90s, the brand was discovered in the inner city. Urban youth –– maybe being ironic, I don't know –– took it on as kind of a status symbol. And even though Timberland continued to associate itself with woodsy, northwest imagery in its advertising, Timberland increasingly got associated with rap-listening, bling-wearing images in real life.

Ultimately, consumers saw more Timberland products in real life than in advertising, and the brand became disassociated with what it tried so hard to cultivate.

This is the hazard of creating an aspirational brand. SUVs appeal to soccer moms for their rugged safety, but when you see an SUV on the road, do you expect the driver to be an independent, rugged individual? Nope. She's in her mid to late 30s and on her way to Chuck E Cheese's.

Nike keeps hyping its association with elite athletes, but when you see a huge swoosh on a T-shirt, is your first thought, "Hey, here comes a pro tennis player?" Nope. It's usually a fat person carrying a 32-ounce soda.

What marketers so often fail to realize is that advertising is only a piece –– and a very small piece –– of the message consumers get about a brand. Advertising is the part you can control. But you can't ignore the other stuff. The other stuff is more often than not what really defines a brand's perception.

Ignore the other stuff and you run the risk of having your flower turn into mashed potatoes.

Why most advertising sucks. (Part 4)

One of the greatest tragedies of the advertising business is that there's very little training. People with raw talent are generally indulged, exploited, and eventually promoted into positions of managing the next round of talented people, with no consideration given to how they'll lead. 

I know. I was one of them.

Some of the guys I came up with are now running the creative departments of the largest and most powerful ad agencies in the world, and I guarantee you that it's not because a single one of them had management training. Whatever any of these people know about leadership, it's what they learned from books or developed on their own. 

Some of them –– and I speak from experience –– didn't think it was important to read any management books or develop management skills.

As a result, lots of ad agencies are populated top to bottom by people who might be brilliant at coming up with ads, but crappy at bringing along people, developing others' ideas, or interacting with clients or others in the agency. Not all of them, mind you. Just way too many of them.

It's a shame, really, because good ideas –– like talented people –– don't spring fully formed into the world. They need to be, well, managed. 

Why most advertising sucks. (Part 3)

If I could tell one thing to clients I've worked with over the past 23 years, it's this: Say one thing.

One.

It's hard to stick to one message. Especially since articulating one message generally takes far less than 30 seconds. So clients think that if it takes five seconds to say that your snack food is make with no artificial ingredients, you still have 55 seconds left to add that it comes in seven fun flavors and four convenient sizes, is available in the snack aisle, has an exciting new label, is fun to eat, and is enjoyed by some celebrity who is utterly irrelevant to the message they want to communicate, but who they pay ridiculous amounts of money to in order to be photographed eating it.

The thing is, expressing what you want to communicate isn't the same thing as communicating it. Or to put it in a way that even some of my most bone-headed clients could actually understand, it takes less than four seconds to say, "Brian Belefant is incredibly good-looking." But I guarantee it'll take longer than 30 seconds to convince you that the statement is true.

Say one thing. And say it well. If once you've crafted your message you realize that you actually need less than 30 seconds to communicate it in the most compelling manner possible, don't screw it up by throwing more information at the viewers. Run shorter ads.

Why most advertising sucks. (Part 2)

If you only retain one rule about advertising, this is the one: Advertising is not sales.

I'm going to repeat that, just in case there are any clients reading this blog. Advertising is not sales.

Advertising. Is. Not. Sales.

Sales is about making a transaction. Customers give you money in exchange for your product or service. Advertising, on the other hand, is about creating a desire.

Advertising comes first. The more desire you create, the easier it is to close the sale. Which has huge implications, especially when you fuck it up and do it wrong.

Treating advertising like sales actually reduces your likelihood of success. If you haven't created any desire, your efforts to close come across no better than the guy in the third-world market barking, "My friend! I make great deal for you!" which if you've ever been in a market in Cairo, Ecuador, Roumania, or just about anywhere else in the world, you know roughly translates into English as "Hello. I'm an aggressive freak who's trying to rip you off. Run."

But even if that weren't true –– which it is –– from a practical point of view you can't close a sale in an ad. Let's say you're sitting on your couch, watching TV, and a commercial for a new toaster comes on. You want that toaster. You need it. What do you do?

You a) go to the store, b) go to the internet, or c) go to the phone. Doesn't matter, you aren't in a position to make a transaction, no matter how much you want to. You can't throw your credit card at the television. You must take another step, one that involves interacting with either a salesperson or an automated process. Who or which is there to close.

Is that clear? No. I know it's not. But I can't help but try.

Friends will let you starve. Strangers will give you work.

I was told this quote by Mary Knox, the executive producer at Curious Pictures, who attributed it to John Kamen, who runs @radical media. It probably applies to some degree in a lot of businesses, but it's particularly poignant in directing, where your professional fate is determined a single job at a time.

From a client's point of view, directing is a weird combination of fashion and vacation. By hiring the right guy (and it usually is a guy –– a topic I'll cover in another blog), people get to brush up against glamorous people like me, in glamorous locations like New York or LA.

The unintended consequence of this is that strangers are a lot more exciting to consider working with than friends, regardless how capable, talented, or easy to work with those friends are.

I learned this lesson the hard way, working for free and even putting my own money into producing jobs for friends and friends of friends who needed commercials but didn't have the money. The jobs always went well, the spots always came out beautifully, and when all was said and done, everybody couldn't wait to work together again.

Some of those spots even went on to win prestigious awards.

And yet, as soon as a project with a budget came along, those same friends hired big-name directors to shoot them.

It's been more than ten years since the last time I worked with these guys. And in the intervening years they haven't asked me to bid on a single project. Not because they don't like me or my work, but because they know me too well. It never even crosses their mind.

To be fair, this works in both directions. Most directors want to hire big-name DP when they have a big budget, in spite of the favors they've collected from the people trying to break in.

But if you know it –– and now you do –– here are two rules to live by: 1) Only do a favor if you're going to get something out of it. A spot for your reel, a trip to Buenos Aires, or an opportunity to try a new technique. And 2) don't resent it when your buddy calls up to brag that he got to shoot with some famous person.

Eventually, you might get to be that famous person.

As if being a good director wasn't hard enough.

I just got back from a week in New York, screening my latest film for ad agencies there.

At one agency, I got applause.

I don’t bring this up to brag, but rather to make a point. But before I get to the point, you’re going to have to sit through a little more background.

The film was the same at all the agencies. The conference rooms I screened in were more or less equivalent. The food was provided by the same caterers. And the people attending--copywriters, art directors, and broadcast producers--were all equally professional, experienced, and talented.

So how come I got applause at one screening and not the others? Here comes the point.

The set up.

In each of the screenings, I set up the film differently. In some, I talked about my experience as a director. In others, I talked about my background in advertising. And in others, I went into a bit about the film.

I’m not going to divulge which approach worked the best, not because I want to keep it secret, but rather because it’s not important. What is important is that the right set up creates a favorable expectation.

I was fortunate. I got to try out different approaches in person and come up with one that led to a really positive reaction.

But even if you’re not presenting your film in person, you’re creating certain expectations for it with every aspect you create. Everything––from the title to the poster to the typefaces you choose––contributes to the perception.

Don’t believe me? Look at Hollywood.

If you go by The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, all anyone seems to care about is a film’s opening weekend.

Guess what. Nobody who goes to a film on its opening weekend has seen it before. So they’re going not because it’s a good film, but because it’s a good marketing campaign.

Marketing creates expectations. In the same way that standing in front of a screen in a conference room does.

This is why Hollywood studios spend as much money on marketing as they do on production. And why so many films open well and then fall off to nothing.

Make a great film. But do an equally great job marketing it.