Like most great advertising decks/books/talks/blog posts, it takes what we already suspect and does a good job of articulating it, backing it up and bringing it to life. In this case: brands don’t matter in people’s lives, they aren’t paying attention, they won’t ever be devoted to one brand, so you need to make interesting things to get their attention.
There’s a lot to love here. But my favorite slide is the one where he quotes Paul Adams from Facebook:
Heavy “immersive” experiences are not how people engage and interact with brands … Heavyweight experiences will fail because they don’t map to real life.
I’m going to suggest having this tattooed on the back of everyone’s eyelids at new hire orientation.
Flying to Dallas last week, I had one of those flights where you pay for all of those lucky breaks enjoyed throughout the travel year, like vacant middle seats, random upgrades, and arriving early. The flight was delayed 45-minutes after we boarded because they had to take all of the cargo off and then out it back on. Also: I was (un)lucky enough to be completely surrounded by 50 or 60 girls from a middle school travel soccer team. It’s the sort of thing that would happen in a headache medicine commercial. Except it was five and a half hours long.
It would be difficult to pretend that it didn’t transport me back into the horrors of being 13. The cool girls all had a row to themselves. Then there was the one who was just on the edge of being in the cool group sitting one the row behind. She kept trying to talk to the cool girl in seat C one row up, who answered only with monosyllabic dismissal. I’m sure that uncool girl was trying to work out in her head why they always seemed nice to her when hanging out alone, but were completely awful when the whole clan got together. I’m sure she’ll be the one driving the others to parties in a few years.
I was struck by the sheer amount of painfully bad decisions and long years that lay ahead of them.
But I was also struck by the fact that I was in a middle seat with a 70-pound little girl sitting in the window seat and another in the aisle seat. They didn’t even take up the whole seat pad. It was like flying with really loud Smurfs. At least half of the group could’ve shared one seat. Meanwhile, my adult sized frequent-flyer self was stretched from armrest to armrest. Hardly seemed fair.
So at the risk of being called a fascist, I’d like to propose a new seating regulation: we need to start seating the smallest people in middle seats. Everyone would be more comfortable. Small people don’t touch the sides of their seats anyways. It’s just good, common, fascist, sense. It’s only a matter if time before they start stacking us like chords of wood, anyways, so we might as well enjoy the time we have left.
After missing every Account Planning conference (before it was put down like an injured horse), every Planning-ness (sorry Mark), and every SXSW (before advertising people ruined it), I finally have the chance to get to Austin this year. I’m incredibly excited … ready to dive into some burritos, inspiration and maybe a couple cold ones. Also, it’s almost been 10-years since the last time I pulled off a burrito-trifecta (breakfast, lunch and dinner), so It’s probably time to renew my vows. Although it sounds like a Taco Trifecta might be more appropriate for Austin.
Wanna meet up?
Any recommended talks or panels that are off the beaten path?
I’m all ears.
Also, I promise to never forget to say the southwest part of the name.
Dave Grohl is one if the reasons why I bought a drum set in 5th grade, which means I can probably blame him for playing in bands, skipping class, not doing my math homework, and consequently working in advertising. I’ve loved pretty much everything he’s ever done, and it turns out that I like the way he thinks.
