What Marketing Can Learn From Sooty

Yes, you read that correctly.

I was watching the CITV retro weekend, and it struck me how Sooty has been successful for over 60 years. Apart from being brilliantly funny, more so than many adult programmes; I started to think about what made it special.

So yes, here are some lessons we should take from The Sooty Show:


1. Really Know Who Your Audience Is

Most kids shows set their audience as a blanket group of kids. Either young kids, tweens or young teens. Boys or girls. Sooty was one of the first kids shows to understand two important things:

• Kids watch shows together (Especially years ago), so you need to be careful about targeting just one age group.
• Kids watching shows are usually accompanied by their parents or older siblings.

The show always featured in-jokes and references that many kids might not get or be aware of, and combined it with jokes and action that kids would get. Sooty truly knew about the whole audience, and made sure to include something for all of them.

Some of the gags in here I didn't get until I rewatched them years later.


2. Don't Talk Down to People

So many kids shows are designed to be simple and slow, they treat kids as kids. But most kids want to be older than they are, it's why they place so much importance on how old they are. As soon as a show talks down to someone, they alienate them.

Sooty always treated kids with respect. It had scenarios and situations that were relevant to them, but always spoke to them as if they were real people, not in a manner that kids programmes were usually seen to do.

I watched the show as a kid, and then with my little brothers. The respect it showed for the audience meant you could still enjoy it even as a cynical grumpy teenager.

Far too many campaigns treat people as if they are incapable of understanding basic metaphor or symbolism. Or think that the only way to get attention is to lack any subtlety whatsoever. If you look at the campaigns that people love, and the campaigns that people respond to, they almost always treat people as intelligent.



3. Don't Let People Ruin a Good Vision

For most of it's existence, Sooty has been looked after by people who really care about the show and the characters. Except for the time between 1996 and 2008 when HIT Entertainment bought it, and gradually changed the show in a way that led to it's cancellation after over 50 years.

Since the show was bought back by long time fan and presenter Richard Cadell, it has returned to the vision that made it a success, and the response from audiences has been much better.

It's too easy to make concessions that damage the work we do. If we believe in our work we should fight for it every step of the way. If we don't believe in our work, why are we doing it?


4. Details Matter

The little details matter because they signify how much care has gone into what you are making. Take Sweep. Most shows would just have a puppet that made squeaky noises, but the Sooty Show made sure that every squeak was fully scripted. This meant that the character felt more a part of the action, and also meant that people could laugh at what he said before the punch line, creating a double gag.

Care for the details also makes it far more palatable to see something a number of times. Which if you are creating an ad, is a useful thing to have.


5. Make it Good. Don't Make it For Money.

Many kids shows are designed to maximise the profits from toys and licensed merchandise. Sooty was created out of a love for performing and a real desire to entertain, not to make something profitable.

Make it good and the success will come. A lesson I wish more advertisers would learn.

This also goes for shows and campaigns that are essentially designed to mimic the good work of other people. Just don't.


6. Pushing the Boundaries is What Drives Us Forward

The Sooty Show has caused outrage on a few occasions. Notably on introducing Soo, in an era when it was thought to be introducing sex into a show by having a boy and girl together. Similarly when in one episode where Soo pretended to be pregnant by putting a cushion in her jumper. People will always want to stick to the status quo, but we are in a creative industry, we are creative people, if we don't push things forward, then we will only go backwards.

The silly insults and slapstick violence, along with the above things may sometimes cause shock, but by doing so, the end product was right, and they matched what the audience wanted to see. Forget the status quo, we are here to do good work that works for our clients. If we have to break a boundary to do that, then bring on the boundaries.




Also. As someone who grew up wanting to be in advertising, the below episode is lodged in my head from start to finish. Cos Tooty Poo Smesh.

Blogger on blogging on a blogger

Yes, this is a post about a post on someone else's blog, referring to someone else's blog.

Scamp has done a great quick write up about the blog Canalside View. I suggest you take a look at both.

Always good to read people who refuse to accept the conventions or fashions, and instead focuses on what really needs to be done.

5 Things We Should Do More of in 2013

Five positive things from 2012 that we should all do more of in 2013.

1. Be Brave

We must never forget that in order to do great creative work we have to be brave. Bodyform demonstrated this brilliantly in 2012. Whether it was set up or a real response isn't overly important, the result was spot on.




2. Be Emotional

I think within adland, people are getting a little past the love affair stage with the John Lewis campaign. However the response from almost everyone I have talked to outside of advertising says real people still love it.
Going for emotions shouldn't be a target as such, it should be the by-product of strategy and creative idea that really connects with people. Emotive gift giving and reliability is perfect for John Lewis, but the lessons on achieving impact in this way for others should not be unlearnt or misinterpreted.



3. Have Fun

Engagement is often an over-used and abused word in our industry. Yet we should remember that nothing we do will achieve any recognition from the audience if it fails to engage. The rise in brands that understand that having fun creates a connection with the audience is fantastic. You don't have to be serious, not even to get across a serious message.



4. Honesty

We should always be honest. The first step on the road to a bad ad is having to be dishonest.
I love those strategies and creative ideas that really build on honesty. Whilst I don't think it is as strategically great as Persil's Dirt is Good, the new Ariel work finally gives the brand a tone of voice and strategy beyond talking about the product at point blank. I'm not convinced about the end line though.



5. Simple Strategic Brilliance

Sometimes simple bits of thinking are the very best. A Thai anti-smoking campaign used kids to make adults pay attention to the effects of smoking they usually try to ignore, and it was simply brilliant.

10 Advertising Things That Must Disappear in 2013

To end the year, here is a look at the bad things we need to fix. Next year will start with good things we need to keep doing more of. Happy New Year everyone!

1. Treating People Like Idiots

I can't believe we still have to talk about this in 2012. People are not idiots, we need to stop treating them as if they are. People can understand a point without the use of false setups and bad acting. Let's demonstrate this with an unbelievably bad ad from Colgate.



2. Using Songs in Place of Creativity

If you have a song that sums up your idea, wonderful. If you add a good song as the soundtrack to your idea, brilliant. Using the song as the sole idea in an ad that has no creative or strategic thought in it whatsoever... go away. See also number 10.

3. Using Ideas From the Internet in Place of Creativity

There are two ways to utilise ideas you find online. Firstly, you adapt or involve the original creator to produce something good. As with John West below.



Secondly, you just steal the idea or rip it off. This must end.


4. Unnecessary Copy

I'm thinking particularly of ads which think people are so stupid they have to be forewarned in advance of upcoming blunt metaphors. Colgate again.

"If you think about it, your tooth is a lot like..."

Why the hell do we need the first five words? You could argue that the rest are superfluous too, but the first bit is ridiculous. Remember the maxim that you should remove any words that aren't necessary to get the point across. Please.


5. Bad Faux-Customers and Respondents

Every time I see the Pounds to Pocket ad where the woman says "I'm so glad I went to Pounds to Pocket...", it makes me want to set fire to the TV. It isn't just them though, I've seen others with it too.

See also that horrific Colgate ad in point 1. They couldn't look any less real if they were made using poor CGI.


6. Gio Compario

I had hoped the change of agency would fix things, but instead of doing something with the character they just kept the annoying ad and bolted on an anti-character motif to it. The anti-character thing doesn't work if you subject us to the whole thing in the first place. The latest ad is a step in the right direction, but unless they take another few steps forward, this point stands.


7. Confused.com Songs

Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Not content with terrible songs, annoying cliched characters, and an apparent total lack of strategy... it even has a main character who appears to constantly pull large objects from her underwear.


8. Client Briefs Based on Existing Ads

"That John Lewis ad is good, give me one of those."

No, no, no, no, no.


9. UK Regional Bias

We live in the age of global instant communication. To see non-London agencies as inherently inferior simply because of their location is an out of date concept. If this bothers you, get over it. American agencies are in New York, Boulder, Portland. Australian agencies are in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide. UK agencies are in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, etc.


10. Replacing Song Lyrics

As demonstrated above by Confused.com. Stop taking well known songs and swapping over the lyrics to something inane or your brand name. It sounds awful, it makes the brand sound awful, and it does not suggest creativity or strategy. Please note this excludes cases where there is genuine strategy or creativity involved in parody or wordplay, rather than just swapping lyrics.

Christmas Round Up Part 2

Time for a brief round up of some more Christmas ads!

Waitrose

A nice idea, that seems quite in fitting with the overall ethos of Waitrose. I think it would have helped however, to include or have some kind of detail that says Heston and Delia didn't charge a fee for this ad either. As any doubt over that does dampen the otherwise nice message.



Aldi

You all know the John Lewis ad, that's why I haven't included it, however Aldi have ensured it sticks around a little more by spoofing it nicely. The idea of spoofing the ad, and the little low budget recreation is sweet, but the voiceovers really don't fit, and lose the spirit. A voiceless ad that used simple animation to show the (presumably already clearly understood by many) 'I like this one' message would have almost certainly been a little better.



Argos

I'm not a huge fan of the blue aliens, but it's still a lot better than what most retail stores do. This ad certainly does what it needs to do, makes bluntly clear that Argos have new apps and make it easy to shop on your phone or tablet. It doesn't get in your face though, which is nice. It just rolls up a clear message into an advertising style gag, and doesn't blast a Christmas or sale message at you. Another sign that the average retail ad this Christmas is much improved over recent years.



Boots

Just seen the new Boots ads today. Nice extensions of the individual stories in their first ad. The stories I have seen are shot well, and get across their gift strategy in an enjoyable way. Nothing amazing, but much more inclusive and emotive than last year's Here Come The Girls work.

Bravery Counts

Since I started the first draft of this post, Rob Campbell has put up some further comments on the topic of bravery here, I recommend you take a look.

I read some good comments (see above) on bravery, and I started to think just how important the ability to be brave is, across everyone involved in advertising and marketing, as well as all creative things.

In many respects, the ability to be brave throughout the process is one of the biggest differences between good and bad work. You need a planner who can find real insights and create bold briefs, you need creatives who are prepared to suggest the unusual and push for new things, you need creative directors who have the bravery to push big bold ideas, you need an account team who can sell in something scary, you need a client who had the vision to see how a new approach can work and sell it to the organisation, etc etc.

I have no doubt that most planners and creatives in weak agencies have the potential to do amazing work, they either just aren't brave enough, or are working with/for people/clients who don't let brave ideas through.

To paraphrase someone (I forget who): If the work you are doing doesn't in some way scare you, it's probably not that good.

In that spirit I thought I'd present some of my favourite ever examples of bravery:

TSW

Imagine now you are sat in a farm in Cornwall watching TV in 1981. For twenty years your local ITV station has been Westward, who looked like the picture to the right. Regal, smart and sturdy.

Then imagine on the first of January 1982, you switch on your TV and see this, the new ident and logo for Television SouthWest.

Apparently the TSW designers were told "Make it different from Westward." They succeeded magnificently.

Although the first ident was confusing, the revision a couple of years later got it spot on. The TSW logo is remarkable in that it created something modern and bold, and yet through it created an incredibly strong bond with the community it served. Taking the step back from the sea motifs that had stood for two decades and using the hills and rivers as partial inspiration for one of the bravest bits of logo design I can ever remember seeing. Most designers or clients would have rejected a logo that was so incredibly different from any other TV station, but by seeing the potential and being brave they created something iconic, backed up by a company that truly lived up to being proud of it's local area. For example: When the company lost it's franchise in 1992, they created an archive which preserved a huge amount of local footage and archive shows.

More info on it.


Nintendo Wii

It's 2006, Sony and Micro have launched their super powerful new consoles, each making a loss in order to grow the market share. The battleground between two powerful pieces of technology is fierce.

Then in comes Nintendo, who launched a profitable, low powered machine using cheap bits of motion sensing technology.

Ninety million sales later, and the Nintendo Wii, breaking every convention of console gaming, was runaway winner.

If you asked most gaming experts before launch if the Wii would be a success, you would have found mixed views at best. Launching a console that lacked high definition output and lagged miles behind on graphical output was seen as a death wish by many.

Nintendo though, knew what they were doing, and were brave enough to see it through.


Green Day

American Idiot is, for me, a masterpiece of bravery.

We have an American pop punk band from the mid-nineties, who have gradually become less important and less popular. So what do they do to get back to success?

That's right. In the middle of post 9/11 patriotic bluster, they released a concept rock-opera album called American Idiot, featuring a nine minute single. They also put American Idiot out as the first single.

It has now sold over 14m copies.


Virgin Atlantic

You needed balls of steel to take on British Airways in the 1980's and 1990's. Virgin had them, and still does.


Without Bravery

A few years ago, I worked on a smallish finance brand. We created a brilliant campaign that I have absolutely no doubt would have fundamentally leaped the company forwards. We worked with a tough client, but he knew what needed doing and had the guts to do it. Then sadly those above his head got scared and the ad never went ahead.

If they had aired it, I fully believe they would have got an incredible response. Sadly, not everyone has bravery, and that's why those who do need to use it.

How About You Decide? (Gaming Post No.2)

Pic from www.guardian.co.uk

The launch of the WiiU has caused a lot of debate around the gaming community. As with the first Wii console, the 'hardcore' gamers have been scathing in criticising Nintendo for producing something that isn't an all powerful technical behemoth, even though they haven't done that for any machine in over a decade.

Nintendo have always been smart at making the very most from their machines, taking something that is technically less powerful, but utilising it in a way that produces great end results, and importantly, is profitable. Sony got every major technical decision on Playstation 3 wrong, Nintendo rarely do.

The key question though, is what exactly IS WiiU? It feels initially like a machine that has had tons of things chucked at it in the hope that some of them will stick, yet on closer inspection it feels far more clever.

A touch screen in the middle of a gamepad, compatibility with the Wii controllers, it feels a bit like trying to cash in on iPad mania, until you look more closely at the details.

The handheld screen shows two bits of possible thinking that are beyond what Microsoft or Sony have previously done. Firstly, sales of handheld consoles are dropping. Ownership of phones and smartphone gaming mean fewer people are buying, and those that do are far less likely to play them outdoors. So suddenly this screen gives you the option to play your game in bed without having to buy a separate handheld machine and a new catalogue of games. You could also use it to watch Netflix in bed.

Secondly, multiplayer gaming in the same room has always been spoiled by the need to use split screen. The new controller screen finally takes that away, allowing two player gaming with one TV and no splitting of the screen. It also means the usual four player limit on games can go up to five.

Cute pictures and game related chat.
Miiverse even adds a tick to let you know if the person
 writing actually owns the game they are talking about!

Even Miiverse and it's ability to draw players into a simple online community around each game they play, without the horrific over competitiveness and conflict you get on Xbox Live or PSN. Several early users have said the Miiverse has become like Facebook, something they check each morning.

When Apple launched the iPad, there was a lot of talk about where it would sit in the world. People have laptops and smartphones, why would they want a hybrid? Apple, instead of trying to define a position for the device, just showed all of the possibilities and let people and developers work out for themselves what they wanted it to be. Nintendo appear to follow the same strategy in recent years, DS, Wii and now WiiU all take cheap and clever technologies and compile them together into a bundle that can be used in many different ways.

For example: The streaming technology means that the console can process a controller action, send it to the console, update the game, compress the image, send it to the controller and display it with less lag than the average high quality LCD screen. This makes it remarkably responsive, even when used several metres from the machine. It also opens up the WiiU to be used with technologies like Onlive.

So while it looks a little bodged together, what Nintendo have actually delivered is something flexible. A machine that gives developers and gamers a huge scope of choice in the way they wish to play their games. This is why, no matter how weird their machines looks initially, I always trust Nintendo to deliver something worth owning, they think better and they plan better than the competition. Now if only their ads matched up to that thinking!

If you are interested in more games stuff, I've also been doing some writing for a new Gaming Site - Voxel Arcade.

Gaming Post No1

Interesting to see yesterday the THQ Humble Bundle using a bit of behavioural thinking as part of it's charity offer.

Go onto the website and you can get a selection of well known and pretty decent THQ games for whatever price you choose over $1. Given that most of these games are £10-20 each on Steam right now, that's a bargain.

The smart thing, is that the best game is only unlocked if you donate above the average donation figure. Subtly dragging the average price up, and ensuring that people are likely to pay at least a few dollars for it. (Average was $5.70 at time of writing)

The second smart thing is that when you choose your payment amount, you can choose how the payment is split between the games publisher, the charity and the company paying for the hosting. This makes it unlikely that anyone would choose for the publisher to get none of the cash.

Thirdly. Pirate games on the PC are a huge huge problem. One publisher believed over 95% of the copies of one of it's games were pirated downloads. So offering a cheap and legitimate way for people who might otherwise pirate to get hold of these games is a sensible idea. After all, if they get £1 each from people that would otherwise have got it for nothing, that's a useful extra income.

It makes a huge change for a publisher to actually think smartly about things, rather than the usual shouting and ranting about piracy, which they usually solve by adding security that only damages real buyers.

If you haven't bought the humble bundle yet, it's a great package, at a bargain price. Nice to reward some good thinking too.

THQ Humble Bundle

Battle of The Non John Lewis Christmas Ads

You wouldn't think that Christmas ads would be ones to make me pleased about the return of creativity and connection, but compared to previous years we have a surprising range of ads based around one theme.

Well actually, it isn't really that surprising. Following the public and ad-land wide acclaim (for the most part) for the John Lewis campaign, we appear to have a whole chunk of the retail sector who have been strongly influenced by it.

Which leads us to a weird situation, where we have four major retail chains all going with ads that aim to appeal to us with more emotion. A weirder situation where Christmas ads are largely good. Plus an even weirder one where I have something not entirely positive to say about a W+K ad. God help us there's even a not entirely anger inducing ad from Go Compare, though that's not for this post.

So where to start?

Tesco

Edit: Happily having seen the other ads in the campaign, it's just this one execution where the offer doesn't quite tie. The rest work wonderfully, and the playfulness with the logo adds a friendly touch to Tesco that is has been needing for a while as the supermarket behemoth of note.

Let's start by saying this is definitely a marked improvement on what Tesco have done recently. A million million miles better than the Spice Girls debacle of yore.

The key idea is really nice, the connection of the right present with a good Christmas, the joy of finding the gift your kids are asking for with the minimum of hassle. Who could dislike a Furby singing a Lionel Richie track?

The issue for me is the way the ad jumps too much, I don't like the way it cuts from the lovely key idea, to a promotional message that doesn't feel connected to the main idea, back to the idea, then to an end frame with their usual strapline. It takes an ad that leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy and blunts it.

A lovely strategic idea that maybe would have worked better in a longer format, or perhaps by splitting the promotional message into a different execution.



Asda

After what feels like years of out and out price messaging we suddenly get something really nice from Asda. Making no bones about the effort and the hassle of Christmas, but with two reassuring messages that it is worth it, and Adsa is there to help make it less hassle than it would otherwise be. Lots of typical Christmassy problems, but an end result that makes you smile.



Morrisons

What's surprising about this is just how similar this ad is to Asda. They feel like they could have been made with the same brief. Whilst the Morrisons ad is less overtly about the supporting of mums, it focuses more on the trials and tribulations of getting everything ready for that special end result. The wonderfully absurd execution takes the same old Christmas problems and shows them in a way that creates a genuine warm humour. The bit with the Russian Doll cupboard is absolutely spot on.

I think this is my favourite of the three. Although as a friend of mine pointed out, the music ends on a dominant chord, which gives it a really unnerving awkwardness on what should be a happy moment. I am surprised no one spotted that.


Boots

"Here come the g..." Oh.

This is a bit closer to the typical Christmas ad, but the little vignettes are sweet, and feel far closer to reality than the slightly irritating cliche'd 'girls' ever did. It's also a nice strategic way to get around the perception (from how I saw it) that Boots gifts are mainly for women, and are small token gifts rather than significant gestures.

Warm, sweet and funny, great work. The little girl talking to the dog is just adorable.



The Supermarkets all focus on mum, as you might expect, while Boots have gone the other way and opened up more to men. I do wonder whether guys feel left out of Christmas, always in the way or bit part players, whereas I imagine (from my experiences at least) that these days there is a bit more of a team effort. The Asda ad is definitely weaker for this.

As always, knowing how people will react to them is hard to guess. There are a mix of positive and negatives scores to each video on You Tube already. I hope that, given the usual minefield of generic Christmas ads, these will have a positive impact overall.

It's lovely to see so many Christmas ads that make you feel something, and show the season with a sense of honesty, rather than the stereotypical cheesy images we usually get rammed down our throats.

In fact, if there is one problem, it's that by all improving at the same time, it's harder for these brands to stand out than if only one of them had improved. That though, is a great present to us from the retail sector and their agencies.

Should Planners Have Ideas?

An interesting twitter debate kicked off earlier today over the merits of a John Steele quote as tweeted by Dave Trott.

"It's not a planner's job to have ideas, rather to create an environment where others can have them." - John Steele

Followed by Mark Hancock (Holycow) responding to say he agreed that planners need to foster an environment, but that the stimulus planners give to creatives usually comes as an idea. W+K's official account also tweeted that they'd rather have people who create ideas across the board, from planning to HR. I've yet to see any response from Dave Trott, but I think it will be worth reading if he does.

I find this a fascinating topic, because while in many respects it feels like a case of semantics, it comes down to one key point for me:

If a brief is devoid of ideas, how is is likely to inspire creatives?

We can't exactly claim that strategy isn't full of ideas. If a strategy has no ideas, we'll just end up with boring cliche'd briefs that will nudge the creatives towards limited ideas.

If people across the agency are creating ideas, it helps to foster people working together better. Not only that if creatives see that the people around them have the capability to generate ideas then it must give them more confidence that the briefs and development around them are well thought out, and appreciate how they are going to produce ideas.

Personally I have to agree with the tweet from W+K. If you run a creative business, everything that you produce is based upon ideas. Strategic ideas to develop great briefs and real useful insights, creative ideas to bring the strategy to life, account handling ideas to ensure everything runs smoothly and efficiently. Why on earth would you not want anyone in that team to have ideas, to share them and create a culture that works together to create a whole that is massively beyond the sum of the parts. In fact if you look at the difference between the best and the worst creative organisations, I bet one of the key differences you will see is their openness to ideas and the culture of collective creativity that it can help to foster.

Of course John isn't bad mouthing ideas, and I doubt he means planners shouldn't have ideas, just that this shouldn't be the key thing we do. However I think ideas are such an intrinsic part of what we do, that we cannot possibly be great planners without generating ideas.

As I've said before, I am a firm believer that creativity comes from anywhere, and that while we are separated as planner, creatives and account handlers for a reason, that doesn't mean that we are incapable of ideas or feedback on those other areas. We inherently have to understand each others' positions to produce the best work. A planner should accept that a creative might have a great strategic idea, just as a planner might have a great creative idea. In a football team no one says to a defender "You should not score goals", you make sure they do their job of defending, but if they turn up and score, you applaud them for their cross team effort, just as you would a striker who makes a key tackle in the penalty area. (Sorry for the football metaphor, it seemed apt.)

I think perhaps the two things are very closely linked. Fostering an environment that encourages ideas is partly done by having ideas yourself. To cut off yourself from having ideas is to stifle any atmosphere of sharing and generation that you try to create. If you want to foster a relaxed culture, you shouldn't turn up in suit and tie every day, you have to live the culture you are trying to create.

I've seen John Steele present his core thoughts at work, and he is a compelling speaker. I don't want this to come across as a criticism of his work, because as we know, context is everything, and this is a quote out of context and without substantiation. I do think it's an interesting topic to debate further though.