Truth in Advertising (Euphemisms)
April 5, 2011 • 7:16 pm • POSTED BY David Burden
Anyone in the agency business for more than a few minutes has heard or uttered the phrase “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” at least once. This gem, from non-ad-guy Charles Caleb Colton is right up there on the agency dogma list with “Everything good has been done before.” (a variant of Goethe’s “Everything has been done before, the problem is to think of it again.” ) and “There are no original ideas left.” (a variant of Barbara Grizzuti Harrison’s “There are no original ideas. There are only original people.”). Now I could go on and on about the irony of ad people bastardizing and co-opting original quotes for their own purposes, but thats a blog post for another day. Or is it?
The fact is that these euphemisms are usually uttered and heard reactively, when agencies realize that a piece of work is either derivative (adding “Oh shit.”), or has been copied (“Those f*&%*# bastards.”). In the great Greek mythology that is advertising, this is surely our Sword of Damocles. Because there is a lot of really great original work out there that inspires us both consciously and subconsciously on a daily basis.
So when we launched a campaign back in 2007 for a small, private liberal arts university in Northeastern Pennsylvania with a concept that was so simple in its brilliance (using mass media to communicate with single person, thereby communicating with the masses), we were sure it had been done before. We just couldn’t find any examples. So we did it. And then people discovered it. And The New York Times wrote about it. And after a while we realized maybe we had done something truly original (and great). And then we went back to work, figuring what else we could do.
And then in 2010 Dominos Pizza debuted a decidedly familiar concept. Right down to the billboards, banners and pizza boxes. With nary a mention in the (mainstream marketing) media that was hailing the novelty of the premise.
And now in 2011, it is being done again. This time by Wheat Thins, who through the power of social media is bringing it to a whole new level.
Now since “We all live in glass houses.” (Billy Joel), this post is not to throw stones. Except at the ad media, which could have done just a little bit of homework… or a simple Google query… and at least noted our original approach. At least one blogger did. In fact, we have a lot of respect for the agencies that are responsible for the campaigns above and have certainly been inspired by their work along the way. And whether they were inspired by our work or not, they both took a concept initially applied to a small liberal arts college and turned it and scaled it really well for national brands. Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the agency responsible for the Dominos campaign, actually did do a personalized billboard campaign for new Mini owners sometime back in 2007 right about when our Wilkes campaign launched, though it required little information or insight about the drivers, as it cleverly used embedded RFID technology to throw them big LED shout-outs.
Its really just to point out to anyone reading this blog that there are still simple, original, beautiful ideas left. For big brands and little brands alike. And where Ms. Harrison is correct is that they don’t just come from a certain name or a zip code. You need just need the right people. Because its not just about the idea, but also the gobs of talent, intelligence, rigor and fortitude (like the ability to explain to a high school principle that flying a banner over a high school graduation will not evoke the second coming of 9/11 in Hazelton, PA) required to make the idea reality. It takes people like Jim, Steve, Brendan, Ro, Tim, Leslie and especially a guy at Wilkes named Jack.
And for the copycats, if you are out there, “To thine own self be true.” (You can quote me on that)