http://www.dmnews.com/a-call-for-creativity/article/199952/

I wrote this short piece after what seemed like a year of not being able to get anything down on paper.

With the meteoric rise of social media experts, emerging technology gurus and new data adventists, there has to be a push against the growing thought that good (and successful) marketing can be produced through the use of data and technology only.

That might seem (I hope) like a strange concept to some folks: that technology is advancing at such a pace that traditional creative expertise is becoming obsolete. But unfortunately, it’s quickly becoming a rallying point for so-called data and tech gurus.  

I have another piece on honesty and accountability when talking about new and emerging technology that I’ll follow up with in the coming days.  

The clip above is from gordonandthewhale.com via Harmony Korine’s facebook page.

I’m not sure what to make of this interview aside from the fact that there’s something scarily brilliant about the way Korine thinks.

The first part of the video is Korine playing a word association game – awesome.

The second part is Korine talking about his upcoming full length release “Trash Humpers.”

Hard to believe Liberty Mutual let him shoot a couple of spots for them a couple years back. They’re beautiful though:

And the trailer for Trash Humpers:

“We can no more respect and tolerate vast differences in notions of human wellbeing than we can respect or tolerate vast differences in notions of how dieses spreads or in the safety standards of buildings and airplanes.”

Interesting take for sure, but how does this affect our work as marketers?

First, let’s take a look at where he’s coming from to get a better understanding about what he’s saying.  

A lower level moral theory class will often focus on three major (and oversimplified) theories of normative ethics: Utilitarianism, Deontology and Virtue Ethics.

• Utilitarianism follows the train of thought that an action is “good” if it creates the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. Read: Bentham, Singer, Mill.
• Deontology, or more specifically, Kant’s Categorical Imperative states that you should “act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” Read: Kant and Rawls.
• Virtue Ethics, born out of Aristotle’s work titled, Nichomachean Ethics, generally focuses on the concept that people and societies “flourish” when their actions fulfill a duty or purpose neither to excess or deficiently. Think: “everything in moderation.” Read: Aristotle.
  

(Sorry for the philosophy lesson).

The road block to applying each one of these moral theories practically is the charge of moral relativism. Of course each philosopher addresses how their particular theory overcomes relativity, but when two theories butt up against one another – the argument, with out fail, reverts to: who are you to say you’re right and I’m wrong (not without a sense of irony).

Harris, on the other hand, is adamant that science can defeat the moral relativism road block. If there is a right and wrong way to treat a disease and a right and wrong way to build a building, then why can’t we use science and neuroscience to say something like: “it is wrong to murder your daughter if she is raped” or “it is right to provide people with access to clean drinking water.”

From Harris’ talk: “Just admitting that there are right and wrong answers to the question of how humans flourish will change the way we talk about morality. And will change our expectations of human cooperation in the future.”

Hmmm. This certainly implies that there must be a right and wrong way to do business, or for our purposes, a right and wrong way to market a product.

It’s not unfair to say that corporate America and big business in general seems to have adopted a set of morals bound only by the maxim: if we’re making profits our actions are good.

One only needs to have scanned the headlines of any major publication in the last 10 years to see that corporate malfeasance is rampant and, in some cases but not all, the marketing industry is complicit.

Aside: I’m not saying all big business and all marketers are consciously engaging in immoral activity. However, “I was only doing my job” didn’t work as a defense in 1945 and it doesn’t work now.

What does this mean for marketing?

I think it means that we need to pay closer attention to the relationship dynamic we create with our clients. No one wants to be a Yes Man, but sometimes we lose sight of what’s right and wrong in the greater scheme of things. If we forge ahead as business partners and marketing advisors, I think we’ll find that we’ll move further and further away from being letter shops and web site developers.

Individually, if we stay current on what’s happening around us and seek opinions and information that resides outside of our disciplines – like Sam Harris’ TEDTalk – we’ll be better able to identify the tough questions and perhaps even venture an answer.

If you work at a marketing agency, tech company, major consumer brand or you’ve studied philosophy in the last fifty years, you probably know what I mean by Impotent Jargon.

You’ll be walking down a hallway, in a meeting or sitting in a lecture when you’ll hear people string together buzz words and phrases that have no real world application. Here’s a small sampling of what I’ve heard/read in the last hour: “accepted notion of media diffusion,” “decoupled employee-engagement and digital-engagement initiatives,” “previsualized the media product possibilities,” “exponential development in the way consumers interact with content in a dynamic setting” and finally, “engaging with the market dynamics.”

Now, I could spend the next ten minutes going through word by word, explaining or attempting to explain what each of those phrases mean, but that’s preposterous. What’s so important about marketing that we need to coin self-indulgent jargon to describe what we’re doing?

On Sunday I was browsing nyt.com when I came across an article by Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti titled, “Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/world/asia/15contractors.html?emc=eta1).

It wasn’t that I was surprised by the fact the US Defense Department was funding private special ops contractors to track and kill militants in Afghanistan (although that is alarming), it was the front companies the DoD was using to do this:

“Among the contractors Mr. Furlong appears to have used to conduct intelligence gathering was International Media Ventures, a private “strategic communication” firm run by several former Special Operations officers.”

International Media Ventures you ask? http://www.imediav.com/

It’s a digital marketing and media company being used as a front for special operations! And look at the words they use on their website: “the way we communicate transformed exponentially moving rapidly from linear processes of the Industrial Age to the global conversations of the Age of Knowledge” and “the activities are in compliance with statutory guidance and instruction.”

When covert operations are using your industry and the language of your industry as a front operation, you should take that as a hint that a lot of what we’re doing is bullshit.

The adoption of complex jargon is a sign of weak mindedness and the people that use it are sheep. If we don’t stop and think about how we’re talking to each other – when the wolves come (and judging by the nyt article above, they’re already coming) they’ll be wearing our clothes.

As a discipline and an industry, if we want to innovate and survive, we have to start communicating clearly and effectively with each other.

In the worlds of Pharcyde, we need to “get on up off of that bullshit.”

Great thinking about the most difficult problems thrives in the grey areas. Once we get past the fact that we’ll never find the black and white, cut and dry solution to whatever great problem lies ahead of us, the more successful we’ll be in solving that problem.

In other words, the light is either on or off, but whether the room is well lit is another question entirely. I think the same principle applies to advertising, marketing and what I’d like to call the Brand Universe.  

I’m going to set some rules for the Brand Universe so I can talk about it: it’s made up of people, places and things. It exists (and is moving) in time and space; and it often expands and contracts. It operates similarly to the world around us.

At the center (it’s not fixed remember) lives the ideal brand-state/consumer-state. Let’s say: My product is ideally the best one of its shape and size and it’s going to make people feel great. Before I even begin to create this product I have to have an idea of what it is.  

Now I need a way to create it and the marketing that goes around it. I rent office space, computers, get in contact with some vendors and hire some marketers too. This is my company and it produces my product.

After some long nights and hard work, the product starts to roll off the line and it turns out that it is really the best of it’s shape and size. I test it out with some prospective customers and they say it makes them feel great.

I start telling people that my product is the best of it’s kind in size and shape and that it makes people feel great. More people buy my product.

That’s the Brand Universe in short. But there’s a problem. This is too general and it assumes too much. Brands don’t operate exactly in the way I illustrated above. For example, what do we do with a multi-national brand that has a wide range of products that already exist? Perhaps their credibility is damaged and their customer no longer trusts that their product is what they claim it to be.

Start at the beginning.

Every brand has a brand vision or promise. At the Marketing 101 level, it’s the fulfillment of that promise that makes a happy and loyal consumer. In Jonathan Salem Baskin’s recent adage.com article, “What If Giving Up Your Brand Really Means Giving Up?” he writes:

If we renewed our commitment to selling based on credibility, authenticity and utility, maybe people would trust what we tell them, respect our corporate reputations, and give us their purchasing loyalty. Maybe if we stopped thinking we can give up responsibility for why they should buy, and start acting like David Ogilvy and sell to them once again, they'd find comfort relying on our communications as well as the subsequent iterations through the social echo chamber. This might unleash the ultimate promise of social and empower people to know, discuss and change the way businesses function, not just blather on about marketing blather.

He’s describing brand transparency. A brand has to take responsibility for it’s product – the “why they should buy” before it starts deciding how to communicate with it’s customers.

In the end, how you’re communicating with your customers isn’t going to amount to a hill of cannellini beans if what you're saying can’t be trusted. Go back to the Brand Universe. Get your message right, make sure everyone in your company is on board, ensure that your product matches what you’re saying; and then say it.

Eventually that outer ring won’t read “potential customers” - it’ll say “customers” and your customers will be your advocates.