Medal versus Mettle

"Let's be honest-- 'standards' are cubbyholes for the fearsome."

I wrote that when approached recently about how I felt concerning ISO standards proposed for market research (e.g., ISO 20252).

What nonsense. In our frenzied run towards government-controlled lives, we are really becoming sheeple.

In market research there is always a trade-off between doing good quality research versus the speed of doing research at all. These things drive marketing efforts, which are always based on creativity... theoretically, unbounded and unbridled. ISO standards will not help deliver better "quality" research. We're always out to deliver a product to the buyer seeking their objective, NOT to comply with a bureaucrat whose purpose is to rubber-stamp an application.

That is how market research firms work. We should not shift focus just to navigate some false gamut of check boxes so we can gather ISO approvals like a collection of scout badges.

It's a sad western proclivity to look to the medal before the mettle. We turn off our brains to value by looking to the chintz. In the same way that schools eliminate all kinds of benefit for the students by insisting an instructor have a teaching certificate, we limit-- not increase-- veracity and value with false "standards."

In so doing we thereby ensure mediocrity propagates when we exclude the wild-eyed creative someone who didn't know the plodding rote of "the system."

Cheers
Lee

Wanna See My Marketing Wound?

Mr. Kilpatrick lived two houses down from my boyhood home. He must have been 20 when they sent him off to World War 1. At 90 he'd fearlessly assault my gang. "Wanna see my war wound?" I think he got it in France. Before the leather-jacketed teens could scamper away en masse he'd hike up his trouser leg and show us a long gash on his white, spindly old leg. It was horrendous... and it was fascinating. No, the wound was cool. Mostly it was horrendous because he was so old. And drunk. And incoherent. Mostly it was fascinating because he was so fascinated with it.

Really, really sad when someone is trapped in their era.

How has marketing and advertising fundamentally changed since the 1980s?

I've somehow survived "everyone" becoming "experts" about "everything." For instance, I have a huge library. It's the legacy of my entire life. I once bought a huge home that actually had library shelves and reading rooms and an unabridged dictionary on a stand... but books? Google it, bra. Or I learned music recording when recording was an art. Today any teen with Audacity on a laptop thinks they know the score. Photography was once a true profession. Physics of light. Reciprocity failure. Monochrome photos from Time and Life can still make us cry. The one-shot Crown Graphic with the single flashbulb that the photographer pre-focused and waited and waited and waited and waited to push the button of the knockout punch or the burning building framed by the two firemen. Today, little digital snapshots flood the world... capturing and portraying nothing of value, and many from our cell phones. Graphic arts? Naw... break open Photoshop. Change this, change that, and it's tweaked. Don't like it, do it again.

I saw the professions of marketing, advertising, copywriting, and design industries change over 30 years, too. Was it for the better? Are we producing ads for those who do not read, or reading ads from those who cannot produce properly?

Or, like Mr. Kilpatrick, do the ghosts of my memories haunt old marketing battlefields where the gains were measured by little inch-dollars? Seventy years of his moments of glory after Cambrai were exchanged for the pocketchange of teen titters and scornful guffaws, mostly caused by our insensitivity, but also because he clung so steadfastly to them.

Wanna see my war wound?

Cheers
Lee

Use Things and Love People

No matter how technology captivates me, I've not found anything that exceeds my full-time fascination with people. I study how they think, how they act, what they prefer to do, and why they buy what they buy. Year in and year out I watch them, tally their actions, and test them-- and thereby become enriched.

As a result, I have a demonstrated love for the related fields of sales, marketing, and advertising.

One might think these things are quite different one from another. However, they are simply facets of the same diamond: Providing people their proclivities.

For example, in advertising, I become like a mosquito-- targeting the warm vein of someone's interest. In the shortest period I take aim on the largest segment of the population. But in marketing and market planning I work behind the scenes at companies to ensure long-term production, delivery, support, and service. Nothing breaks the bank faster than rush production and delivery... constantly falling behind because of poor planning and follow-through.

And in sales (that dreaded word for most people) I can do what I love doing most: Help people get what it is they wish to get. I love being on the phone with people, especially when I can I aid them in achieving ownership, helping them move their own lives forward. That only happens when I know what it is they want... when I learn 'how they tick'... and then I help them get it.

And in my experience, nothing is finer than to have the power and authority at a company to provide service in all three areas: advertising, marketing, and sales. That comes full circle to loving them.

I was once counseled to use things and love people; sadly, some use people and love things. As our society becomes more and more technologically advanced, my counsel is to remember the warmth of a handshake, the joy of a smile, and the fulfilment of helping someone achieve their goals in life.

Cheers!
Lee