The Blog's Alive

How hard is it to keep a blog updated? Well, it turns out, quite hard.

When I first created this website, I told myself I'd write at least once a month. How hard could it be? I never expected how busy I would get.

The past year has gone fast. Here’s the highlight reel: I launched a storage company (not my own company, but you know…) I wrote about sea cucumbers and kooky furniture and I spent a wonderful 10 months as Freelance Creative Director at US megastar agency Crispin Porter Bogusky.

Score.

In my spare moments, I've been playing a LOT of chess. And not blogging. My rating has gone from 800 to 1200 (that’s pretty good, but about 2000 points off a grandmaster, which I will never be) (2023 edit - Now rated 1550). I was hoping to play in my first tournament in Frome, England, this May. Unfortunately, Coronavirus has seen that idea off.

But I am really enjoying the mental challenges and stimulation from what I call a 'healthy hobby'. I've noticed other benefits from getting better at chess, too. I've always been terrible at remembering directions, numbers, etc. But since I've developed as a chess player, I've noticed a marked improvement. I'm considering starting a chess blog to note my learnings and my path... But hey, let's try to keep this one updated first.

So perhaps it was playing chess that reminded me about this blog. And here I am, writing, determined that now Coronavirus has seen off a lot of marketing activity, I will be here more often!

Sam

How to Be Consistently Creative

Adland is a pretty ruthless place. Timelines are tight, briefs are challenging and standards are high. When teams are tasked with creating a killer campaign, they need to come up with game-changing ideas under high pressure, regularly.

But sparks of genius don’t happen without elbow grease. Any road to a great idea is fraught with road blocks, breakdowns and dead-ends. So it’s super helpful to have some go-to tools in the trunk. That’s why top creatives have methods and processes to make sure they get to their destination, every time.

If you need a creative solution to your business problem, or you're struggling to come up with a new product for your startup - employing these tried and trusted agency methods can help you break through and achieve consistent creative results.

#1: Just Go For Volume

The great advertising man Josy Paul, who created India's empowering Share the Load campaign, once told a room full of fellow creative colleagues:

"Leonardo Da Vinci made more than 300 paintings, sculptures and inventions. People only really care about three of them. Creativity is a numbers game."

To get to an innovative idea, you have to get through a lot of ideas. That means pouring them out. Empty your brain of everything it has, and it will run dry. Then you’ll either have something great or having got rid of all the obvious options, your brain can start the real work.

Anne Lamont calls this "The Vomit Pass." Allow yourself to come up with bad ideas - it doesn't matter. Just get them out and keep going. Kill your inner editor. The more ideas you let yourself have, the more chance one of them will be great, or you’ll get to a great one later on.

#2: Ask and Answer

This is simple yet highly effective, and the one that lead me to the best campaign ideas. Here’s what you do: pose your problem as a question, and keep coming up with answers.

When you run out of answers, change the question.

Let’s say the task is to create a campaign to show how Coke is a great Summer drink.

Ask: If Coca Cola is the ultimate feeling of summer, then… what happens when you drink it at -30?

When you run out of answers, change it:

If Coca Cola is so full of sunshine that it makes you feel it’s Summer in Winter, what would that look like?

If Coca Cola is spreading the joy of Summer all over the world, how are other Winter creatures reacting?

And so on. Your answers will trigger larger ideas. And new questions will open new doors.

#3: Go Subconscious

A Technique for Producing Ideas was first published in 1965 and remains a widely read book in the ad industry. (It helps that it’s short).

The paraphrased version goes like this: work on your problem until your brain starts bleeding. Do it until you can't possibly do it anymore – until you feel you’re torturing yourself. Then do something else. Something totally different. Jogging, knitting – it doesn’t matter.

Your subconscious keeps breaking down the problem and crossing the wires inside your brain. Then - in a flash of insight, the idea will come to you.

Sound ridiculous? There's a reason this book is famous, because the technique works.

#4: Metaphors & Similes

Metaphors are used so commonly in our world that we barely notice them anymore: Life is a roller coaster. A couch potato. She was a shining star. All metaphors.

As Roger von Oech says in A Whack On The Side of the Head:

“Metaphors help us to understand one idea by means of another.”

They're also a powerful tool to be harnessed.

Perhaps you’re struggling for a name, a headline or a logo direction for your company. Most people would start by saying “I want something that sounds…” Or: “I want something that looks…” Instead, try coming up with metaphors and similes that come from the core of your business, like this:

Our mobile app car-recovery service is like... a light at the end of the tunnel. (Logo idea)

Our casual, fun-first company culture is like... hanging with your college buddies every day. (Recruitment page photo and headline)

Our unbreakable locks are like… The locked jaws of a great white shark. (Name idea - SharkLocks)

#5: Try to be Wrong

Yep. That's right. Stop trying to be correct and try to be incorrect. Come up with the worst possible answers. Come up with the idiotic, the outrageous, the scandalous.

This is often employed in brainstorming sessions when creatives are exhausted and are taking a gallows-humour break from their real chase. But it's a real part of the process. Because it breaks open doors and avenues that cannot be found when you're trying ...

So don't shoot down the bad ideas in meetings. Embrace them. Make it a part of your process. When someone says: “What if the headline is: Don’t buy this, it’s crap.” Start riffing. What if it was something like that? How could you make that approach work?

Make it Messy

These are techniques I have learned from great teachers and that I have employed myself and seen agencies use. The road to a game-changing idea, whether it's in advertising, business or technology, is rarely a straight one. Use these methods as a mix and match, use one then move on to the other, as part of a messy process.

But just keep them in your toolbox. Tools are always handy.

Healthy Habits & Universe Food

Joining the gig economy means I can make my own time, which is both a blessing and a curse. I quickly found that being a productive freelance copywriter is about developing and maintaining healthy habits.

Bad habits include starting the day late (because I can) and then finishing late. After all, late finishes are one of the reasons I left advertising. How ironic that I found myself arriving home past 9 pm given my newfound freedom.

After struggling for a short period, I found the universe suddenly raining information on habit formation.

My wife pointed out a habits book she’d bought me a while ago that I hadn’t yet read. A copywriting podcast I listen to featured a habits expert that week. Blog posts popped up talking about habits. While researching for a ghostwriting project I came across industry leaders who attributed their success to their habits. E-mails reminded me that Ryan Holiday, one of my favourite thinkers and authors, has an entire newsletter about habits: Writing Routines.

(Side note - it’s not the first time in my life something like this has happened. I once went through a period of family illness and general personal turmoil, and the world kept feeding my information about stoic philosophy. It always seems to be willing to offer you the food you need, you just have to be willing to eat it.)

Be Better Than Before

I picked up the book on the shelf and found it was Gretchen Rubin’s Better Than Before (was wifey giving me a hint that I need to improve?) It’s highly personal but informative and it’s full of ideas. Out of them, I picked out a few key tips:

• Form the habit first. Start super small. If you want to read every day, or write every day, start with a sentence. Get the ball rolling.

• Don’t break the chain. Really. Ever.

• Recognise how best you keep habits. Is it with accountability? Is it by really understanding how well the benefit would help you?

• Make it as easy as possible for yourself. Remove every obstacle and possible excuse. Add in cues.

• Have a trigger for each habit if possible. Such as always reading when you get home from work, or on the train and have a reward in place.

There’s No Such Thing As Willpower

It was also interesting to discover that people with ‘strong willpower’ don’t exist. They are just the result of ingrained habits and the fact they have removed temptation as much as possible. They know how to put themselves in situations where all obstacles are removed and where all they can do is work.

Sometimes we might think of ourselves as not having that ‘strength’, when really it’s about knowing yourself and putting in the effort to limit your exposure to things you know are bad for you. Studies show too much temptation leads to eventual moral exhaustion, which leads to relapse.

Zadie Smith, one of my favourite authors, has spoken about how she can’t write with an internet connection, so she uses the Freedom app to shut it off or goes on writers retreats. In fact, many writers do. Someone once said that “No great work of art was ever produced by someone with a great internet connection.” The temptation for distraction is too strong. Willpower doesn’t come into it - its very existence exhausts the mind.

The Power of a Power Hour

One of the best things I picked up from Gretchen’s book was the idea of the ‘Power Hour’.

This is a time I mark out in my day where I do nothing but work. No internet, no phone messages, nothing. When it’s over, I reward myself with a break - possibly a guilty bit of YouTube, whatever. It’s amazing what I can get done, and I’m now marking out multiple power hours per day.

These new habit-making skills have also meant I’m working on my own personal writing projects for the first time in years. All by starting small and making myself accountable. I downloaded a simple app that’s really helped (I use Loop - Habit Tracker on the Android Store). Every day I just ‘tick’ that I wrote something, even if it’s just a sentence, and I make sure I don’t break the chain.

The First Step Leads into a Run

Like all the habits I’ve tried to instill, I’ve learned that starting small doesn’t mean accomplishing small things. It turns out that as soon as I write one sentence, I’m engaged and willing to write more. Or as soon as I read a paragraph, I read more. Starting is more than half the battle. And when you’re committed to just starting every day, you’re well on your way to whatever it is you want to do.

We’re living in an age where it’s never been more difficult to sit down, concentrate and produce something of worth. We’re constantly being pulled in a thousand directions by things designed to give us instant gratification and steal our attention away. So digging into the world of habits and arming ourselves with some knowledge can only be a good idea.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

Aristotle.

We're Doing It All Wrong and We Know It

Greetings.

It’s not often you’re walking the streets, tunnels or malls of Hong Kong and your head is turned by a striking piece of advertising.

Alas, perhaps it was typhoon Mangkhut or Autumn’s arrival, but does the tide appear to be turning?

I saw two such pieces this week, though I only got a photo of one due to the other being behind a speeding MTR train. Really solid stuff. And it made me think. About something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. So you could say I was thinking about thinking.

And then I thought, I should write about this.

And here I am.

So here it is: Why on earth, when we know and data shows that single benefit advertising is more profitable, more breakthrough and results in far higher consumer recall, do 99% of ads not stick to the rule"?

This was even the case when I worked in an agency. 9/10 briefs featured 4-8 benefits to be covered in one advertisement.

It’s just plain madness.

We often hark back to the ‘Golden Age of Advertising’, when good work was the norm not the exception. It was founded on a pretty simple premise: simplicity. Industry had a product but didn’t know how to sell it. Ad men found a benefit and then sold it beautifully.

A single benefit simply expressed. Memorable and effective.

Mad Men we are not. But we do appear to have all gone mad.

If you ask a creative team to write a TV ad that sells cereal and the single benefit is ‘crispy’, they can go crazy. And the customer is going to remember that ad for one thing: crispy. Talk about nailing your marketing objective.

The problem is these days, it’s not always about the marketing. Corporations are so complex, projects have so many stakeholders, that the effectiveness of the advertising comes second to the idea of pleasing everyone internally.

The product team need the ad to talk about how the cereal comes with 5 vitamins and Omega Fish Oil.

The sales team want it to include a discount and mention the free toy promotion.

The board feel the ad should also promote a sense of ‘community’.

The marketing team want it to talk about ‘crispy’. And now, unfortunately, all of the above.

What’s that ad gonna look like?

Just take a look around Hong Kong and you’ll see it everywhere.

You’ll see it, then forget it instantly, because there’s nothing there worth remembering. Because we only recall ads with a single benefit.

Who’s to blame? Nobody. And everybody.

Agencies don’t do a good enough job of showing clients how effective single benefit advertising is.

Corporations don’t do a good enough job of insulating marketing departments from outside pressure, or of simply insisting on effective, proven advertising methods.

Because let’s be honest, who can blame a marketing person with a mortgage and 2 kids for stuffing an ad with everything good their company has to offer, and pleasing everyone who holds a stake in it? If the ad goes wrong, they did everything they were asked.

If they hold to a single benefit, ignore and anger all the stakeholders, and the creative doesn’t turn out as expected - they’ll be clinging to their job.

It’s a problem that’s not easily solved.

So there I was, thinking about how I need to write about this. Because I came across two ads that made me stop and admire them. Not because they’re award-winning - because who cares - but because they are advertising done right. And that is a rarity. These days.

Cheese Checks In // Sep

What I've Been Doing:

I spent 7 wonderful days at a 4A's working on insurance briefs. Yes, insurance can be wonderful. Who knew.

My team (fantastic French and Japanese creatives) did some good work together. And it was nice to be back in the agency environment, cracking ideas, writing manifestos and breaking my three months without caffeine by drinking a ton.

Also, the ECD was for real. I'm sure he's going to be a huge success there.

What I've Been Listening to:

The Story Grid podcast. Shawn Coyne is a New York-based editor with decades of publishing experience, and he breaks down what it takes to write a story that works. This guy knows his stuff, and his co-host is someone trying to make it as a writer, which makes for a great combo.

What I've Been Reading:

I haven't been very good at this lately, owing to work. But I'm still in the middle of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. For someone who grew up in a working class background where money is something you spend, it has salient advice on money management.

What I've Been Cooking:

Continuing our theme of New York, I made New York-style dan dan noodles. Cooking the beef is interesting: you put the mince in a dry pan, no oil. (The last time I did that, the Head Chef screamed at me and I spent 2 hours cutting burnt bits off meat with scissors).

As I was saying, you put it in on a high heat and you keep it moving around until eventually it’s brown and crispy. Paired with fresh egg noodles from the wet market, some bok choi and freshly ground szechuan peppers, dark soy sauce, light soy sauce… fogeddaboutit. (Adapted from Jamie’s America cookboook.)

3 Amazing Ads that Show How Thailand are Killing it

Imagine a world where ads are so rich and enjoyable people want to watch them over and over again and they carve out a special place in their memory for decades to come.

Wouldn’t every brand want to create advertisements like that?

Well, we don’t have to imagine that world – because it’s Thailand. And it's the reason Thai advertising is the envy of Asia.

Honestly, they’re putting the rest of us to shame. And I use the word shame because they’re doing advertising how we all know it should be done. And it’s simple really: you take a single benefit and push it to its logical extreme.

In the relationship between agency and client in Hong Kong and China, we have lost that understanding – if we ever had it.

The result for Thailand is world class advertising that I'm sure is reaping world-class results. 

Here are three recent ads that show how Thailand are absolutely killing it.

Tiny Doll

Pete (AKA Thasorn Boonyanate) is a former colleague of mine who struggled with restrictions at BBDO Shanghai, moved to JWT Thailand and on his first project, won Lions (whoops, BBDO).

This video is a beaut. From the storytelling to the Inarritu-esque camerawork.

Pete & Thailand, you are killing it.

Friendshit

A real crowd pleaser at Cannes, coming straight outta GreynJ United Bangkok – this plays out like a hit offbeat indie comedy.

It has charm, perfect pacing and brilliantly understated lead performances – all building up to a benefit that’s hammered home with comedic effect.

GreynJ and Thailand, you are killing it.

 

CAPTURE

It’s easy to forget how arresting it is, as a viewer, to not understand what the hell is going on. It keeps us engaged until we can figure out what the deal is. This ad plays that masterfully.

Surprising, hilarious and socially relevant (for Thais anyway) – this video sure is a ride. 

Kudos to McCann worldgroup for the brilliant copywriting and simple, pared back execution.

McCann Thailand, you are killing it.

-

The Thai Golden Age of advertising shows no signs of stopping. And long may it continue.