Something often overlooked when people watch commercials is the quality of the sound and the mix. Of course, if done well, you shouldn’t notice the mix at all. One of the simplest pieces of mixing is volume – it’s easy to make the mistake of mixing something too loud or two soft. We’ve all seen commercials that are way too loud. But last night my wife and I saw a commercial that was just too quiet, and the simple mistake ruined the message.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of the company or find the commercial, but the premise is this – parents are sitting downstairs with the floor guy, and their daughter is upstairs in her hardwood bedroom tap dancing. The kicker was, you could barely hear it. So our natural assumption was that this was for soundproof flooring. Then the punchline jumps in “So, carpet for her room?” The point of the commercial was that carpet is quieter than hardwood – but because the sound wasn’t mixed properly, that message didn’t come through at all.

I can’t find the commercial, so here’s Gene Kelly tap dancing on roller skates (at about the 2:20 mark):

Always on the lookout for cool apps for my iPhone, I came across Sigmund, which is billed as the #1 paid lifestyle app in the United States. The brainchild of Harvard and MIT researchers, the app influences the content of your dreams by selecting verbal stimuli to be played during REM-phase sleep, below your waking threshold. So, for example, your subconscious brain hears “date, girlfriend, Paris” and you’re more likely to have vivid dreams along those lines. Note to self: also tell subconscious brain not to shout “Betty you are so hot!” while sleeping so as not to alarm wife. So, this weekend I’m going to download the app and give it a shot – but I’d like to invite you to select the content direction for my dreams. Please post your suggestions to this blog before end of day Friday, April 20th. I will pick the one that I find most intriguing, and this weekend I will keep a dream log of the results, which I will post here next week. What would you like me to dream about?

I have to say Alien is one of my all time favorite sci-fi movies, and I’m definitely not alone there. There’s a wide audience that has revered the Alien series over the last 40 years. So how do you collect that whole audience, along with fresh eyes, and ensure that they buy tickets on June 6th for Prometheus, the prequel to the Alien series?

Recently—and I’m seeing films do this more and more—Twentieth Century Fox has been releasing a slue of rich creative content designed to entice and excite current fans, and draw in new ones. They’ve released a microsite for the fictional and all-powerful Weyland Industries (including an made-up TED Talk), and slowly released four versions of trailers, each revealing more and more about the film. I’ve seen production schematics of the space ship “Prometheus”, and even most recently a fictional Corporate Video featuring Michael Fassbender, which you can see here:

These movie execs are making freakin’ cool content that drives fans like me bonkers with anticipation. What a great way to increase ticket sales. They’ve taken the blockbuster movie, and instead of just running the traditional trailers on TV (read: paid media), they’ve formed a whole world of content around the film that I can interact with, and feel like I’m part of. And they’ve made the engagement two-way, by releasing much of this content through their Facebook page. So now I follow them on Facebook, and they’ll share their content with me first, and remind me as we get closer to the date to buy tickets. I’m no fortuneteller, but this movie is gonna have one fat alien-cat of a theatre run.

 
If you consider the history of advertising, agencies were formed with the purpose of creating real measurable results for clients.  However, if you look at the current state of the industry I think you’ll agree that we seem to be producing and validating failure almost across theboard.  We are in the advertising age of hypocrisy. 
 
Inflated Media Budgets + Diminishing Results = Hypocrisy
 
Look at the common practice of media buying.  Achieving a standard CTR (click through rate) of 0.17% doesn’t make you a media expert…it makes you a simple-minded fool (but that’s just like, my opinion man).  Who decided that this level of performance was acceptable???
 
If you came into work and said good morning to every single person in your office and only 0.17% returned your salutation you’d feel pretty shitty right?  What if only 0.17% of your followers on Twitter actually cared what you had to say, or 0.17% of your friends on Facebook acknowledged your birthday?  These results are crap.  You wouldn’t pay for service like that.  Results like this would be considered an unequivocal failure by any common sense standards.  So why do we allow our agencies to keep spending our advertising dollars with validations like “that’s performing well against industry standards”? 
 
Now, I’ll grant you that there are a handful of shops out there trying to shake things up, trying new approaches.  But by and large we methodically support the deluge of confederated mediocrity in advertising.  Isn’t it time we tried a new approach and spent our time (and marketing dollars) on making things that are meaningful, things that provide value, things that provoke, and things that consumers actually want?   These “things” are called “content”.  

So, next time you’re allocating your marketing budget why not take a step back and take a moment to think outside the media plan? 

Let’s face it, we live in a commoditized world.  And the age-old adage still holds true: “you pay for what you get.”   There is a vast difference between a Big Mac and a prime cut of USDA Choice steak from your local butcher.  But, why?  Aren’t they both just beef?  The answer is simple; we put a value on quality.

So why is it so acceptable in the world of advertising for clients to consistently ask for prime rib at happy meal pricing?

And perhaps more importantly, why do we keep on trying to accommodate these requests?  We constantly seek out the best talent and are always trying to push the envelope of what’s possible.  But until we recognize the premium value of our services ourselves why would our clients?

I believe in being fair and transparent.  So here it is, it’s simple: Great thinking costs money. Otherwise, you’d do it yourself.

Two weeks ago, in preparation for Ted Page’s speech at Creative Mornings, I wrote a post about our creative process. And of course, being a video game nerd, I ended it with a quip about Jedi duels with Ted Dillon.

But for me, those forays into the Star Wars universe, Wii Golf, Wii Tennis, or a daily bout of Go are more than just a joke or a way to escape the world for a few minutes – they’re actually an important part of the creative process. Captains has the Wii, Antler has Big Buck Hunter, at the X PRIZE Foundation we had Dungeons and Dragons (yes, the old-school board game). All creative shops I’ve ever been to have games of some kind. Some people say that playing games leads directly to inspiration – that they get the creative idea in the middle of playing because they can look at the problem peripherally. I’m sure for them, they do. But for me, the brief periods of gaming give me an opportunity to clear my head for long enough to forget the challenge in the first place – so when I sit back down at my desk, still hopped up on the adrenaline of yet another epic Jedi battle, I can look at the problem in a whole new way. That’s when I do my most creative thinking – five minutes after I haven’t been thinking about the problem at all.

So if you want me to be creative for you, challenge me to a video game. Ten minutes after we’re done, I’ll have it.

I’d write more, but it’s my turn in Go.