ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE

The advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi said this in the 1970s. At the time it seemed an optimistic view of life but now it intrudes into counselling. To an overweight child:
“you could be an Olympic athlete if you tried hard enough … anything is possible” .
Only it isn’t. Except in a Japanese ad.

I was wondering if this made me a cynic recently when I got up early to catch a plane. As I put on the façade of “I’m awake …I like it…I’m invincible…anything is possible …ha! No it isn’t”  I heard on the radio – “and now a piece on AI”.

Excellent …in a world of rapid change AI and robots we need to better informed. Time to pay attention - even though it’s 5.30am. A calm voice spoke to me “We think AI is the answer. Now we’ve subdued him and as you can see I have hold of his penis. I’m inserting it into the plastic vagina and yes…we’re good to go. Great , wonderful. Yes we have enough semen there for between 200 and 2,000 impregnations.”

Strange how slow on the uptake tiredness can make you.  It was ‘Farming Today’ and they were masturbating a bull on air in the interests of AI. Artificial Insemination. I decided to give breakfast a miss.

My week has been full of little surprises. The piece in the Times about an undergraduate doing work-experience for a broadcaster and being told as an intern she would of course be unpaid. Her research project? “Modern slavery and the suppression of women”. You couldn’t make it up.

Talking of which if you haven’t yet seen Matt Damon’s impression of Brett Kavanaugh On Saturday Night Live (it’s on You Tube) please do. My problem (there are many) with Brett is he seems so unsuitable a candidate, his dodgy youthful escapades apart. Brett when, as they surely will, they confirm you remember to say “anything is possible.”

Much of my past week has been involved in exploring issues around change and culture. Most of us are immune to the thrill of change and increasingly we see evidence of our wanting things to remain as they were. To many the thought of a revival in coal mining would be wonderful.

But not to 10 year olds who see progress and inventions as a joy. To them anything seems possible. In the rich and verdant world of their imaginations great things happen. I heard a solution to world famine from a Formby High School team of 10 year olds on a Summer School. The solution is easy. Issue a jelly bean everyday to everyone on the planet, a special jelly bean which contains all the basic nutrients, vitamins and minerals a human being needs.  I love the simplicity of the solution and the sense of its being, well, possible.

Not everything is possible but amazing things can happen. So why not be an optimist?  Call this the week that I became a believer.

WHO'S IN CHARGE?

“For the first time the consumer is boss, which is fascinatingly, frightening, scary and terrifying because everything we used to do, everything we used to know, will no longer work.”That was what Kevin Roberts of Saatchi said.

And then there’s the story of investors in the early days of the web demanding to be told who the CEO of the internet was – “there must be a CEO. Who is it? Why’s he hiding?”

If someone isn’t in charge we get worried.

As children it’s our parents and our teachers who are in charge and those incorruptible authorities…”I’ll call the police and they’ll take you away.” My grandsons think the police are quite wonderful…they’ll learn.
Journalists used to call the Prime Minister “Sir” – he was seen to be in charge. And he wouldn’t have dreamed of going to Tuscany for a holiday – why do they do that?

And now?

This dilemma certainly distressed pundits on the Today Programme recently as they demanded to know who was in charge of the EU.

The answer is everyone and no one.

The accepted wisdom is “let the markets decide.”

And yet we know a thought becomes a  rumour becomes gossip becomes an urban myth becomes fact now in a blink. The marketplace rather than the market decides sitting round the metaphorical well in the town square on the web.

No amount of leadership beats that crowd.

We live today in a state of perpetual intellectual riot.

Decisions are made by focus groups “they don’t like your voice Ed…fix it”; “they don’t like immigrants Dave get them outta here” or they aren’t made at all until enough money, opinion or noise makes something happen because…”the public is expressing outrage.”

Liberal democracy is a wonderful thing but it has a downside. Loonies like the Tea Party and the Norwegian Breivik get to express themselves and begin to think they can actually be in charge.

The world it seems is managed by market-confidence yet politicians would clearly not even pass GCSE in psychology (were it an optional subject) if they believe you can preach “austerity” and expect your voters to rush out shopping, simultaneously.

In the end Kevin Roberts is right but as we know in marketing, consumers don’t really know what they want until they get it.

Everyone’s waiting for someone else to make a move.

Anyone who’d like to be in charge this week, just call.  Otherwise leave it the experts (again).

ADVERTISING AND MARKETING R.I,P.

Advertising Age recently had this article by Paul Ashby whom it transpires is pitching interactive marketing as the saviour we all need.

Here are some of the juicy bits.

“Advertising Age has just claimed that we are living in the "Post-advertising age"…… Actually we're just stuffed. Marketing & Advertising hit a tree….. There is no replacement advertising model for us to drive off in. We must bash out the dents, clear the broken glass, remove the bumper from the front wheel, and limp on as best we can. We should accommodate ourselves to that prospect…..

But behind the curve, and banging the table as ever, the marketing gurus all have not yet latched on to the rhetoric of the "new economic model"…. They are still trying to kick life back into the old one. But it becomes apparent even to the Marketing & Advertising community that there is to be no return to that golden decade of no hard choices and uninterrupted growth….. This recession is not a failure of market economics. It is a reassertion of market economics after a decade in which we paid ourselves more than we were producing, and funded it precariously and temporarily, together with a total lack of accountability so that it took a while for the market to rumble…. Now a prosperity that always baffled ordinary citizens has collapsed.”

Fair enough but it’s a touch cynical. Clever and effective marketing is exactly what the world needs right now in whichever form it takes. Marketing creates the confidence and the relationship between brands and that consumers that helps make this world go round. I am proud of being a marketer and not ashamed to say to people I’ve advised “sometimes it’s smart to spend less – it’s always smart to zig when the others zag”. I agree with Maurice Saatchi who said:-

“Creativity is the last, legal way to secure an unfair advantage”