Alice in Adland: Removing the Fear from Today’s Marketing
Reason & Whimsy #6
Before we begin, another quick announcement: I, also, have parted ways with Scooter Braun and he is no longer involved in my business in any way.
This is Part 2 of why reason & whimsy will help us overcome marketing’s certainty myth. You can read Part 1 here.
Today we’re gonna talk about fear.
When I was a kid, I was afraid of Alice in Wonderland. Of all the Disney animated movies, it was the only one I wouldn’t watch alone. I suppose it’s because compared to all the other films, which were very straight-forward about the bad guys and the good guys, AiW was too random, too surreal, too eerie. Too… uncertain.
Fear results when the desire for certainty narrows our perspective to things we think we can control, things we think can be sure about. That fear makes for an unpleasant movie experience for a six year old, but it’s devastating for a marketing organization.
Instead of me explaining, I’ll let the internet’s most whimsical format (some memes I found on Google Images) do the talking…
What happens when our desire to measure everything precisely intersects with a rapidly evolving landscape, the unpredictability of human nature, and the need to make choices not immediately apparent in the data?
Which leads to some great briefs…
And extreme hedging of bets…
And so all that super expensive data winds up being used in the same “spray and pray” manner we said we were shifting away from…
And creatively we lack authenticity because we are afraid to commit to an audience…
And even if we somehow get it right, our quest for certain results sets unreasonable expectations…
Because when all employees are concerned with the same single KPI, nobody is…
And what does that do to our employees?
Paradoxically, a culture that strives for certainty becomes a culture of indecision. When entrenched beliefs and metrics are confronted with the surreally unpredictable post-modern media ecosystem, marketers default to the lowest impact decisions with easiest-to-measure results.
Fear makes us choose certainty over success.
The remedy for that fear, of course, is whimsy.
As Alice spends more time in Wonderland (in both the books and the movie), she learns that the only way to overcome Wonderland’s nonsense is to be nonsensical, that to adapt to the absurdity she must be absurd. By infusing—and mandating—playful curiosity we not only create permission to fail; it’s our only chance to succeed in the increasingly absurd world of media.
Or as Alice said, “Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?”
That’s why I created Reason & Whimsy. To combine the strategic marketing expertise that I’ve acquired over the last two decades with the playfulness that is rapidly eroding from today’s “data-driven” system. To be clear, the data is still vital. But our views of that data will be focused on what new possibilities they uncover, instead of trying to bring more certainty to what we already think we know.
The most successful teams I’ve work on used humor and wit to find unexpected connections in the pursuit of ideas. Reason & Whimsy bottles that spirit and mixes it with our custom strategic frameworks & unique techniques to enable brands and agencies to embrace their inner Alice and bring their stories to life in the post-modern media world.
Now that I’ve said all that, next week we’ll return to the usual, less nakedly self-promotional nonsense. Also here’s my favorite marketing absurdity meme that didn’t quite fit in anywhere above:
This Week’s Whimsies
Random stuff that might trigger a new thought.
GQ’s profile of Harmony Corine (Kids, Spring Breakers, lots of random stuff most us have never heard of) poses a lot of great possibilities for art in a world of fragmentation of both audience and format.
This wonderful piece by Hugh McGuire (from 2015) is one of the best personal takes on digital addiction I’ve read, and it delivers some amazing words of love for book-reading.
I think we need to normalize Bravo-style “reunion” shows to be a part of every cultural moment. Imaging Andy Cohen hosting Trump and his cronies after the recent indictments or the NY Mets players and front office after this season or the Montgomery riverfront brawl participants. Hulu or Max needs to get a brand to sponsor this idea ASAP.
This sobering rumination on the risk of violence that business owners take by hanging Pride flags scarily recontextualizes the Bud Light/Target “backlashes”.
Apparently a lot of upcoming TV shows are period pieces.
Upcoming Topics
A quick preview of some thoughts that are coming together for future posts… If you have any thoughts on any of these topics I’d love to hear them!
· Analyzing the booming romance industry and related trends
· The mainstreaming of vice (ESPN gets into gambling, Dunkin’ sells alcohol, etc)
· Something about digital identity related to the French Revolution
· Prediction: When (and how) the “Streaming Wars” will end
· An Elegy for a Starcruiser
· Cultural Procrastination (not sure what it even means yet)