Finding a Voice for Every Person

When I was asked to write a congratulatory ad for a client being honored by The City of Hope, I was a bit dubious. I expected it to be one of those tired, boilerplate, “Congratulations. Job Well Done (insert name here)” pieces.  Luckily, it didn’t quite turn out that way.  My client was receiving The City of Hope's "Spirit of Life Award" for years of tireless fund raising efforts for this world-renowned cancer center. By all accounts, he had done a spectacular job.

More remarkably, in the middle of his tenure, his wife contracted a particularly virulent form of cancer and he was forced to discover first hand how skilled and caring these physicians were. His wife's treatment was long and painful, but together, family and doctors united to wrestle it into remission.  Their story had a deep impact on family, co-workers and friends alike.  They all wanted to express personal congratulations for his award along with intensely personal appreciation, admiration and affection.  They had stories they had to tell.  The more I was drawn into the story, the more I felt obliged to make each of the ads not only individual but also memorable and compelling. Clearly, boilerplate solutions were no longer even a consideration.

The inspiration for the tone of these ads came from a seminal statement by former City of Hope executive director Samuel Golter: "There is no profit in curing the body if in the process we destroy the soul."

City of Hope is a research, treatment and teaching center dedicated to defeating cancer. They talk about the disease as if it were a living, breathing enemy. They are painfullly aware that while cancer itself is deadly and debilitating, its very treatment wrecks havoc on the minds and bodies of patients.  To alleviate that, the physicians here, have created a culture that strives to both save lives and preserve the spirits of their patients and families. 

Not surprisingly, all of the individuals who asked me to help give them a voice wanted to say so much that they couldn’t fit it all into the few lines allowed by the constraints of a simple ad.  What I had to do was distill all the stories and emotions down to the bare essence of their emotional connection to their husband, or father, or son, or friend, or coworker. 

Of course, this is the essence of advertising, condensing the message of the client into a few powerful images, and it is a goal that any artist can relate to.  It’s not unlike the task of Robert Russin, the creator of the Spirit of Life fountain that welcomes families and patients to the City of Hope. He had to find a way to express a sense of hope without any false promises of guaranteed cures.  He chose a vision of joy.

As a writer, and as a son who lost a mother to cancer, I felt a special bond with these friends and family.  I was also filled with a sense of obligation to make their sentiments powerful enough to reach out and touch their audience.  I scheduled lengthy interviews to serve as the basis for each person’s ad.  Their stories and emotions served as both inspiration and the foundation for the individual voice 
for each ad. 

At the celebratory dinner, virtually every family member and friend thanked me for being so true to their meaning. Some shook my hand.  Some hugged me.  But the face that I remember most was a co-worker who took me aside and said, “When we first read your copy in our office, the ads from his children and his brothers and sisters made us all laugh.  The personal note from his wife to her doctor made us all silent.  But when we read the ad from his wife to him, I had to leave the room to cry.” And she thanked me.

But that wasn’t me.  That was them.  They made her laugh.  They made her think.  And it was his wife who made her cry.  All I did was help them find their voice.  I was honored that they’d asked me.  It was an assignment I will never forget.

What a Ride!

Sunday the 22nd, offered up a beautiful morning for a bike ride.  The air was clear and crisp.  The traffic was light.  The weather, gorgeous.  It felt good to be on the road.  Not to mention that at the end of the ride, I would get to see our billboard for the Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension.

The Foothill Extension, a section of light rail line bogged down in a bureaucratic morass for over six years, had finally gotten the go ahead. It had taken a lot of work and a lot of patience.  The Foothill Extension Authority, mayors, communities up and down the foothills, and their allies had put in countless hours to make this dream a reality.  Finally, the long-neglected San Gabriel Valley was about to get some relief from hours of infuriating, congestion-clogged freeways. Our agency had played a small role in those battles for relief, and had helped people in the valley make their voices heard.
Now Pasadena Advertising Marketing and Design had been chosen to make the long-awaited news public with a series of six billboards. We backed the boards up with souvenir packets of postcards featuring the artwork for each station’s billboards.

We designed one board for each of the six new locations along the route featuring architectural renderings of the site.  The first to get it’s own board was the Monrovia station.
When I got to the site, the board sat all alone at the south end of a sprawling, virtually empty parking lot.  The day before, the lot had been packed with people and politicians, reporters and dignitaries. Some were there to celebrate the prospect of relief from years of unyielding, bumper-to-bumper rush hours.  Others were there to finally claim their role in a hard fought victory over substantial odds.  Some were there to weasel out a little credit for which they had no right whatsoever. But, that’s politics.
I liked visiting the empty lot a whole lot better.
Off to the south east side of the lot, I saw the long forgotten Monrovia rail station that I had first seen over a decade ago, as it was being closed down and boarded up. Now it would have a second chance at life as a part of the new Monrovia Gold Line station complex.  That made this one little victory all that much sweeter.

I can’t wait to see it restored, and I’m sure there are more than a few long-time Monrovia residents who will rejoice to see it come back into use again. 
Every once in a while, advertising benefits people and whole communities. This is one of those times.  We in Pasadena only played a small role in this battle, but once we had been invited to join in the fight, we hung on for the whole ride.
I couldn’t be prouder of the end result.
________________________

This is the first of two entries in my blog about a month that has been both exhausting and exhilarating. Being a part of the advertising effort in the Foothill Extension fight allowed our agency to make a lasting impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of San Gabriel Valley residents. Advertisers are rarely offered that kind of chance, but after six years of wrangling, we have finally gotten a glimpse of a future we helped create.
Advertising is widely perceived as fun, and much of the time it is.  And challenging, which it also is.  And frustrating, which it is more often than any of us would care to admit. Yet very rarely, it can be deeply meaningful and rewarding.  In the last few weeks, we have been lucky enough to have two such moments. This was only the first.

The Flies Have It

I've been too busy this week to breath without an appointment, but I just had to share this.

In Frankfurt am Main, Germany, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the crowds were stunned, and more than a bit amused when Jung von Matt unleashed an advertising air force comprised of 200 banner-carrying, marauding house flies. To promote the Eichborn publishing house, von Matt attached banners to the house flies with a bit of wax and set them free inside the Convention Center (Messe Frankfurt) to fly about at will.  



Since the beginning of the year, von Matt has worked on relaunching the corporate identity of Eichborn - a literary publisher. They came up with a new branding vocabulary, a revised logo, color palette and redesigned book covers. The needed a breakthrough launch for the new ID, and the best place for that was at the Frankfurt Book Fair.  But if that was the classic location, the promotion was most decidedly not: A house fly air force. Von Matt and his team meticulously applied microscopic amounts of wax onto 200 house flies, attached an ultralight banner and set their buzzing waxworks free at the fair.

The banners were only a few centimetres across, but they played havoc with the beleaguered flies piloting skills. The extra weight kept the flies at a lower altitude and forced them to land more often. Bad for the flies, great for the promotion.  The encumbered flies were forced to spend most of their flying time at eye level.  Of course whenever and wherever they were forced to land, the banner was clearly visible. Naturally, in the air their zig-zagging flight paths attracted attention because of the flies' rapid movements.

I have nothing but high praise for this innovative and eye-catching launch.  However, as I have often explained to my clients: What is brilliant for one client, could well be disastrous for another.  For Eichborn publishers, this was brilliant.  For the Four Seasons restaurant, ... Wayall... maybe not so much.

A tip of the hat and flick of the swatter to Jung von Matt.

NEVER say “Yes” to a stranger.

While this is not exactly about advertising or marketing, it does revolve around honesty in communication. Yesterday, I wasted an entire afternoon arguing with aggressive, obnoxious phone agents, all because one of my employees answered a question, “yes.” Avoid that, and you can save hours of hassles and/or hundreds, even thousands of dollars.

Before I begin, check your last phone bill.  Really.  Do it now.  Right now.  Seriously.  Specifically page 6 or 7, listed under “OEM charges."  I’ll wait. See that charge for $40? That’s bogus.  You never authorized it. 
 

Yet, there it is.  Right there on your phone bill, and it’s probably been there for months.  Just a small enough charge that you wouldn’t notice it at first, yet substantial enough to bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent charges from unsuspecting customers.

Lemme ‘splain.

Let’s say someone calls you one day (or has already called you) to “check on your address,” or ”update their directory” or see “who handles your phone service.” Sounds innocent enough. “Are you still at 601 main street,” the disembodied voice would ask.  “Yes,” you would answer, because, what the hell, it is your company address.  And that’s all it takes.  It’s over.  It’s done.  Congratulations you just bought into a bucket of headaches, and expensive headaches at that.  The caller probably went on with a number of Yes/No questions, because it’s less suspicious, and it provides them with a variety of intonations that they can use later.
“Use how?” Glad you asked.
They record your “yes.”  And then they concoct a completely different conversation, record it and cast you as the star.  Their recording is of a sales call.  They insert your “yes” as proof of your authorization to charge you.  They will even play it back to you should you call to complain about a service you never ordered.  Their version of the call may sound something like this. 

"Hi I’m calling from (for instance) More YellowPages Online, and AT&T has authorized us to provide your company with added visibility online.  Are you authorized to make decisions about your phone service?
[Your voice] Yes.
For only $40 a month we can promote your company to web visitors around the world. Are you interested?
[Your voice] Yes.
Are you authorized to approve this charge?
[Your voice] Yes.
Congratulations.  You have made a wise investment. Starting this month, we will charge your AT&T account for $40.00 per month.  Do you understand?
[Your voice] Yes.
And you approve?
[Your voice] Yes.
Thank you very much."
They could have just as easily asked.
"Will you please bend over and grab your ankles.
[Your voice] Yes.
You understand, we will not either pull your hair or kiss you.
[Your voice] Yes.
Good bye."
Doesn’t that sound vaguely like fraud? Flagrant fraud? That’s because it is. And it is well known.  If you were to Google “More YellowPages Online scam,” you would get 550,000 results, many of which you will recognize as your own experience.

Of course, if you have a couple of hours to spare, you can get all the charges reversed.  But the hope of these online thieves is that you will not notice. 
How do you avoid it.  Simple, hang up.  Or if you have time and want to have fun with them, answer their questions precisely without using the word “Yes.”
"Is this your address?
It is.
Is this your phone number?
My phone number is correct.
Is this your company?
That is the name my company does business by."
(or just keep giving them your web address… they hate that)
Save money.  Save time.  Save headaches.  Save “yeses” for people you know.
Say “No” to fraud.
Never say “yes” to a stranger.

How Old Pasadena scares up customers in hard times

FREE candy!

Well, that about covers it. G’night folks. I’ll be here all week.

O wait. Free candy isn’t enough. Not in this economy. Lemme ‘splain.

On Halloween night, our Old Pasadena merchants will continue their long-standing tradition of opening their doors to kids for the district’s Store-to-Store, Safe Trick-or-Treat Night. Every year, hundreds of handfuls of free candy are doled out to the costumed kids of Pasadena. However this year, the Old Pas marketing committee suggested that the merchants add a little twist. The scope of the Halloween festivities will be expanded to include a full month of specials leading up to Halloween, and on Halloween Day, our merchants will be adding special treats for the long-suffering, too-long ignored Trick-or-Treaters’ moms and dads.

This year, select Old Pasadena stores and restaurants will be treating Grown-ups to hundreds of dollars in savings. Plus, the streets and alleyways will be filled with wandering spooks, a free, haunted photo booth, and more. On October 31, participating merchants will beckon visitors with Trick-Or-Treat signs in store windows. A photographer will take free haunted pictures of the kids in costumes among hundreds of pumpkins in the One Colorado Courtyard. Throughout the celebration, guests will also enjoy a unique opportunity to meet and greet with various popular (and non-threatening) Halloween costumed characters.

Of course, this expansion of the traditional Old Pasadena Halloween festivities is a rather naked attempt to get the parents of those cute little characters to come back and shop here. Oddly, this is the first year that the Old Pas merchants have taken advantage of their Trick-or-Treat Night candy give-aways to promote themselves. Perhaps the abysmal economy has something to do with this epiphany, but ironically, today the MediaPost “Engage:Gen Y” blog advised marketers “Don't Be Afraid To Embrace The Potential Of Halloween.”

Blog author Jason Bakker, inspired by a memorable, late Halloween night “visit” of some unruly teen candy addicts, wrote, “The more I looked into it, the more I realized how much fun there is to be had out there. Youth marketers should know that Halloween for college students is always a bull market, and for a very small amount of time each year, they need look no further than the local haunts if they want to reach this demographic.”

Of course, his target audience is not the same one that the merchant’s of Old Pas are trying to attract. However, the fact remains that Halloween, along with being a high holy day of pre-teens and their dentists, has a substantial potential to bring returning traffic back to eager store owners and restaurateurs. If the spike in hits on the Old Pasadena web site is any indication, that potential is working its Halloween magic.

To the Old Pasadena Marketing District staff and my clever marketing committee members, allow me to say, BOO!

Just because you yell, don’t mean I have to listen.

Dear broadcaster advertisers,
First of all, let me say I love broadcast advertising. I am especially fond of radio, because I can tap directly into the imagination of the listener. If I want to hold a world premiere with a cast of thousands on someone’s lawn, I can. With no need for "extras" or special effects.

Of course, even on TV, if I need to resurrect the dead to be my spokes-king, it’s not a problem. Broadcast advertising can be fun.

But really? Yelling, screaming, cranking up the volume? It’s not just annoying. It doesn’t really work that well, and it could work against you.
Anyone who has ever had children is already aware of this. Yelling doesn’t mean they hear you. In fact, with children of all ages, yelling seems to reduce their ability to hear exponentially. The louder you yell, the less they hear. Apparently, however, there are an overwhelming number of broadcast advertisers who either never had children, or are inexplicably unaware of this fact.
When programs pause to go into commercial, the volume seems to leap into the stratosphere. How many times have you been caught unaware when a commercial blared out, and you lunged for the remote to seek relief? We have all, at one time or another, said, “Thank God for the MUTE button,” but still the practice goes on. Is it possible, that someone has kept the existence of this sanity-saving button a secret from these advertisers? And if not why do they keep doing it?
I think there are two answers. Technology and desperation. While there are standards and practices in place prohibiting precipitous bumps in volume, recording engineers long ago figured out how to get around them. They just “equalize” the volume across all every available frequency, so that without violating any guidelines they can create a “wall of sound” without raising the volume. And as we all know, if you can do something, you do it.
The second component is desperation. “I want to sell this now. Right now. Right this twisty-legged second, and nobody’s gonna stop me.” The reason desperation works, is that motivated buyers sense the desperation like sharks sense blood in the water, and they pounce. It works so well, that some advertisers feign desperation, Crazy Gideon comes to mind.
But desperation only goes so far. Screaming ads rarely scream “quality.” And if your customers are not in the market to buy, or short of cash, or a bit desperate themselves, they don’t need to hear that. And they don’t have to.They turn it off and take a deep breath. Just like you do. The ads you like, listen to, or even look forward to, bear the product names that get under your skin and lie in wait until you are ready to buy. Those are the names that rise to the top of your mind or the tip of your tongue whenever you need them. No screaming necessary.
Now consumers have even more weapons in their arsenal to fight screaming (the infamous “mute” button, the DVR “skip” and “fast forward” buttons, and on-line viewing), so screamers not only don’t have to be heard, they don’t have to be seen.
Of course, if all you want to be is unseen and unheard, you can save a bundle on advertising!

Love, Tony

Now You’re Thinking Freely

This weekend “CBS Sunday Morning” examined the burgeoning “Free” economy that is developing on the Internet. On the web, of course, “free content” is the norm. It’s expected, even demanded. Free searches, free email, free bargain hunting, free classified ads, free dictionaries, free encyclopedias. Everything online is either free or marginalized, shunned, avoided and diminished in importance. Certainly there are sites that charge a fee, or share a fee, but much of that content is available elsewhere, either independently or from a pirated source.

And piracy is theft, right? You put time and money into your intellectual property and someone enjoys it for free like music on the radio… Wait. No. That’s a bad example. Radio was good. On the radio, recording artists gained an audience who would come out to their concerts or buy their records or both. It was just great advertising. Record companies paid DJ’s in money, drugs and scotch to play their artists on the radio. Recording artists made money. Recording studios made money. Everyone was happy, and no one was stealing the content, except for the vast majority of listeners who recorded and shared it on cassettes… Damn. My train of thought seems to be derailing.

Or I’m being facetious.

Sunday morning guest commentator, Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson showed how Google has mastered the art of profiting from the “Free” market. First of course is Google’s cash cow “free search,” which combines search results with highly targeted ads based on the user’s search term. As Anderson pointed out, searching for plants brings up ads for landscapers. Innovative, yet intuitive.

More interesting, the Monty Python gang, faced with a slew of “pirated” videos of favorite skits like the “Dead Parrot” and “Cheese Shop” on Youtube (owned by Google) chose not to sue or enjoin Youtube to cease, desist and remove their bits. No. Instead they started their own Monty Python channel which featured all these favorite skits. Then they used the channel to sell high quality DVD’s of the originals. As a result Monty Python DVD sales went up 23,000 percent. Free can be verrrrry profitable.

Another example of choosing to profit from “pirated” content appeared this morning in Media Post’s “Search Insider” blog. One of the most popular Youtube videos is the joyful explosion of wedding celebration, the “J K Wedding Entrance Dance.” That wild and raucous, devilish dance down the center isle to the alter is uplifting, moving and inspirational. But it could have subjected the happy couple to a devastating RIAA type lawsuit and cost them thousands of dollars in fines.

Sony's Jive label chose instead to link the video to Amazon and iTunes where users could download “Forever,” the song featured in the video which, oh by the way, “briefly climbed to the No. 3 and No. 4 most popular song on those two sites” and the official 'Forever' music video also had a spike in downloads. Now the video is being used to collect donations for violence prevention.

The choice, it seems, is make a profit or make a stink. The RIAA legal battles, which began with shutting down Napster, have resulted in horrible publicity and hundreds of thousands of dollars in uncollectible fines from students who can never pay them. Google’s “Free” market exploitation is resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits. Unless you’re a lawyer, the choice seems clear.

It’s a new world. It’s a new economic paradigm. The choice comes down to this: Get on board, or get left behind.

Stupid, Ugly, Stinky, Nasty, Dirty, Poopy, Words!

In Kindergarten we were all carefully taught not to use bad words. Negative was bad, bad, bad. Positive was good. But as every advertiser knows, nobody in Kindergarten has to move products.
I will be the first to admit that negative advertising works. Anyone who ever saw Clarke Gable in “The Huxters,’ has to remember Sidney Greenstreet hawking up a juicy wad of mucus onto a conference table. As he wipes the table with his handkerchief, he explains that although what he did was disgusting, nobody at the table will ever forget it. It’s been 40 years since I saw the movie, so I tend to agree.
But just in case there was any doubt about the effectiveness of negative advertising, the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience did a study which “demonstrates conclusively” that “information of negative value is better detected than information of positive value.” However the Institute didn’t investigate what the effect of wildly overbearing, disturbing advertising might have on a brand.
The Republican party is currently experimenting with pushing the limits of negativity and adding the dubious element of easily-debunked, outright lies and occasional looney toon allegations of the coming of the antichrist. While a hardcore minority of Americans is desperately trying to believe, the brand is suffering mightily.
Not that the Democrats oddly disjointed muddle of “positive” messages is faring much better. There is no central theme or lattice of reinforcement to support a single unified brand. But this is not new. As Will Rogers said, "I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!" At least the party is not making itself look ridiculous.
Negative advertising can of course be very, very good. And can be good for the brand. Apple ads come to mind, Justin Long & John Hodgeman are hilarious in the “I’m a Mac” ads. And in case no one noticed, they are blatantly ANTI PC. Brilliantly negative. And the PC campaign in response is as unfocused and mushy as the Democrats’ lame efforts to win credibility.
So, it’s not really a matter of negative or positive words and pictures, it’s the eternal quest for meaningful, memorable and effective. As ever, it is a simple choice of Badvertising versus good. Stupid versus smart.
If you’re going to go negative, be smart. And, apparently, if you’re going to go positive, be smarter.

How Old Pasadena Won a Food Fight with a Bad Economy

At my day job, I create advertising at Pasadena Advertising, Marketing & Design. However, in my spare time, I’m also the Marketing Committee Chair of the Old Pasadena Management District (OPMD). We’re a small part of the economic engine that we call Old Pas… and in case you missed it, the economy sucks.
Even in Old Pasadena. The merchants are suffering, stores are closing and even donations to our local charities are drying up. It’s undeniably bad. Yet it was far worse when Old Pasadena first began its breakout from decay in the late 80’s.
That was a desperate time. Block after block of boarded up buildings, and crime defined Old Pasadena. There was no Crate and Barrel, Tiffany’s, Apple Store or Gap. The only stores on Colorado Boulevard that paid their rents on time were three pawnshops and a Sex Store. But we not only survived, we thrived. There were no government bailouts, not even from the city of Pasadena itself. Our own business people, building owners and developers took direction action, and we pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We’re an ornery lot. We saw no reason why we couldn’t do it again this time.
OPMD decided to hit the doom-and-gloom despair head on. Economic collapse. Exploding unemployment. Homelessness. Helplessness. The end of the world as we knew it. We didn’t buy it. Our businesses needed customers. Our charities needed contributions. We decided to tackle both problems at once.

We soon realized that the two problems that seemed most basic weren’t our major concern. Yes, business was down. Yes, donations were down. But the central problem was “morale” was down. No one was having any fun. There seemed to be no relief. But one of Old Pasadena's greatest assets is an array of award-winning restaurants, and, as everyone knows, “food” equals fun. And that’s how the idea of “Old Pasadena Restaurant Week” began. The concept was similar to many other restaurant events. Restaurateurs would offer reduced price, prix-fixe, three-course lunches and dinners. Pretty standard event. The only real difference would be that 10% of the proceeds would be donated to Pasadena’s Union Station Homeless Services, celebrating 35 years of helping those in need.

The response from the district was amazing. Out of our 22-block district, more than 27 of Old Pasadena's finest restaurants offered to take part. Pasadena media gave us extraordinary support including magazines, newspapers and PCC, the local Public Broadcasting station, and soon even L.A.’s mainstream media joined in. We posted the special menus online and immediately noticed that our OldPasadena.org web traffic spiked to levels we hadn’t seen since the Christmas holidays.
Restaurant Week proved so successful that instead of just one week, OPMD extended the event for another week. Some owners reported increases of up to 80%, and many of the restaurants put their restaurant week specials on their menus permanently. Many non-restaurant merchants also noted a increase in business. However the real benchmark of success of that promotion came when OPMD presented Union Station with a check for $10,000.
Of course, the reality is that the economy still sucks. Business is still down. There are businesses that are still in trouble. But we’re not going away. Old Pasadena revived itself once, and we haven’t forgotten what we learned then. We‘ve found our bootstraps right where we left them. Now we’re just starting to pull.