Community is a new reality when you move from the busy city to a regional town. For me it happened 20 years ago but it was neverth less a culture shock. Suddenly the local issues, of which I was once blissfully unaware, exploded like cluster bombs around me and dodging the flak became a serious occupation. Yes, community is powerful and to be respected but relative to my line of work I see it as plain ‘dangerous’.
Among today’s ‘buzz words’, strategy has found favour with governments and businesses all over the world. It is conveniently ‘dropped’ into speeches and conversations, often in support, or defence of spending.
Call it what you like, but advertising is an investment. It’s your biggest juiciest stake in your business and how you treat it may easily decide the fate of your organisation.
Perhaps it is the malady brought on by watching shows like ‘Law & Order’ which has so caused business to literally swamp itself in litigation, but it seems to me that we are no longer responsible for ourselves and we need someone to blame for our own stupidity.
Every now and again advertising produces one of those really special moments which makes you feel you haven’t left the show that you were watching and entered the ad break. Those are usually the genius commercials which have been so finely crafted that the quality and the story have formed the perfect segue from entertainment to advertising.
I want you to imagine what it would be like to walk into your local Supermarket and find every shelf packed with nothing but Supermarket brands. No Heinz, no Kelloggs, no Robert Timms and no Coke. The familiar locations you dedicated to memory, where once the Arnotts biscuits proudly projected their brand, is now occupied by a badly designed pack of imitation Tim Tams, a product of Taiwan. Your Dorsogna ham is long gone, replaced by the cryovac facsimile of a Canadian product. That tin of Golden Circle Pineapples is now a golden triangle product from a province in Thailand. Unlikely? Don’t kid yourself!
Constantly accused of being a grumpy old man, I sat down last weekend to eat a plateful of humble pie. Like so many of us strange thinking wrinklies, I’m sensitive to the word ‘old’ but as I can do little about time I turned my attention to the descriptive ‘grumpy’. I soon discovered that being misunderstood, was not exclusively reserved for when I was sixteen. I concluded very quickly that being ‘grumpy’ was interpreted by alerting others to things which annoy the living bejesus out of oneself. Sure I let people know when something is up my skirt, but grumpy? Well that’s not what I call it.