Lawyers and Research Ruin Everything

For those of us on the creative side of advertising, there is nothing more infuriating than having an idea nibbled to death by ducks. It doesn't take much to turn something good into shit.

Just one wrong word, one extra word, or one bad thought and an idea that's unique and memorable becomes just one more bad ad.

A million years ago, there was a very effective campaign for Band-Aid. It consisted of kids singing a silly jingle:

"I'm stuck on Band-Aid,
Cause Band-Aid's stuck on me"

I admit, it ain't "Hamlet", but it does have the elements of effective advertising: it's simple, it's memorable, it's clever. The other day I was watching tv and I saw the latest iteration of this campaign.

"I'm stuck on Band-Aid brand
Cause Band-Aid helps heal me"

I wanted to kick the tv. I'm just glad I had nothing to do with the original campaign, cause if I did, I would hunt down the agency and shoot everyone involved. The one thing that made the commercial palatable-- the parallelism of "stuck on/stuck on"-- has been removed and replaced by a focus-group approved "reason to believe" -- helps heal me. Which is what language?

The insertion of the word "brand" just serves to remind everyone that they're watching a commercial. Kids singing "Band-Aid brand?" Bullshit.

I know some lawyer told them they had to put "brand" in to protect their copyright, but you know what? You're allowed to say "screw you" to lawyers.

Thats's what Tiger Woods would have done. Just before the U.S. Open he and his caddie went to see his doctor. His doctor told him he had a torn ACL and two stress fractures of his leg and that he couldn't play in the Open. Woods said, "I'm playing, and I'm going to win. C'mon Stevie, let's go."

Afterthought:
I don't know why I get upset about an idiotic jungle. Does this stuff bother anyone else?

PostAfterthought:
It's Monday and I have to go to Denver. Maybe I'm just cranky.

Einstein On Advertising

Albert Einstein was a pretty smart guy.

What most people don't know about Einstein is that in addition to uncovering the laws of relativity, the equivalency of mass and energy, and predicting that the speed of light was constant, he also said -- without knowing it -- the smartest thing ever said about advertising.

After his amazing successes as a young man, Einstein spent the rest of his life searching for what was called the "grand unified theory" -- a theory that would unify the four known forces of nature: gravity, electro-magnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. Scientists believed -- and most still do -- that these four forces must be different manifestations of one underlying force.

Einstein worked for 40 years on this problem and failed in his attempts to uncover a grand unified theory. To date, no one has found it.

Near the end of his life he was being interviewed. The interviewer asked Einstein if he thought a grand unified theory would ever be found. He said, "The answer to this problem, when found, will be simple."

No matter how complex a marketing or advertising problem seems to be; no matter how much convoluted research has been done; no matter how many conflicting opinions there are; no matter how many "decks" have been written and Powerpoint presentations have been made, the correct answer, when found, is always simple.

Simplifiers and Complicators

About a thousand years ago I wrote a piece for ADWEEK called "Simplifiers and Complicators". It was so long ago, ADWEEK wasn't even called ADWEEK. It was called MAC.

Every now and then I run into someone who reminds me of the piece. It happened again last week.

I can't remember the specifics of the article, but the point was that there are two kinds of people: people who simplify things and people who complicate them. In most businesses, complicators are annoying. In advertising they are ruinous.

Every time you create an ad there are a million things to say about the brand or product. The key to producing a successful ad is in understanding what is essential and what is extraneous. Simplifiers have the ability to cut down the weeds and clear a path. Complicators cannot distinguish between the pertinent and the irrelevant.

If you're working with an account exec or a creative director who is a complicator, you understand the frustration involved. If you're working with a client who's a complicator, you're probably thinking about that fry job at Burger King.

In an ad agency, one highly placed complicator can undo the good work of a dozen simplifiers.