Brand, Like Humans, Need To Be Nurtured

It’s pretty easy to think of the brands you love.

But not so easy, I suspect, to recall the ones you don’t really like…

Advertisers are finally getting it – the most powerful brands connect on a human level.

And, done well, social media blurs the lines between digital and human interaction, which can immediately amplify the connectivity between people and brands.

Isn’t that the one thing we’ve always wanted as marketers?

That’s why social media is one of the most amazing tools we can leverage for our clients today.

Not convinced?

I manage several digital channels. But unlike many brands out there, the channels I manage begin from actual events. Events were real people meet and share their passion.

So all these people are united – at their core – by what the marketing people call ‘passion-points’.

And it’s a brilliant thing too, because this is where the brand comes in as an enabler. An enabler that unites people, in-person and via digital channels.

It highlights people via social media, telling their story and sharing their passions while connecting them: before, during and after the event. Again, in-person and digitally.

On one hand, we still have traditional brands with products that are hard to define, with nebulous functions. And on the other hand (another extreme), we now have ‘social influencers’ that are just about themselves, trying to shoehorn a product that doesn’t really fit into their lifestyles.

Yet as disgusting and fake as the second category can be, I see many refreshing learnings coming from this end of the lens.

Because the reality of life remains: we all just want to connect on a human level.

Alex is building the Grapple Asia social channels and hopes you’ll check them out.

It's Not So Much What You See...

You really do have to know why you’re here – in Ad Land, I mean.

For me, there’s much excitement in the creative process, especially the moment the idea unlocks.

It starts as a pinhole of light – barely perceptible, but there nonetheless. Slowly, as the minutes and hours tick by, it begins to materialise, finally moving centre stage bit by bit.

It was nice to hear an intern say: “Let’s just do what we do best, and write some lines.” What a great way for a young writer to get his head around the brief.

So off they went to start cracking out headlines, platform lines, and discovering copy bits that might not have fit into either of the above, but still made great body copy points.

And from there, with a bit of pushing, a bit of itchy-scalp-syndrome and a good measure of procrastination, the idea for the campaign simply unlocks.

Sometimes it’s like that nagging feeling you have just after leaving the house that you forgot something, but you’re not going back anyway because you’re not sure what it was in the first place.

I’ve seen it hit like a tsunami, and you just know you’re there. You jump up at your desk and exclaim something highly irrelevant to everyone around you, and no doubt they all think you’re crazy. But you don’t care.

Other times, it’s mostly there and staring you right in the face, but for whatever reason you don’t fully see it. Until it rears its head again in another form and makes itself painfully clear. You probably slap the table and chuckle quietly to yourself, and here again your sanity is called into question.

Some call it ‘The Eureka Moment’.

Then you just lay out all the thoughts that work best for that idea, tweak the ones that can be saved, and happily exclude the ones that don’t fit into the group.

Getting there, though, sometimes seems a chore. You have to know where to look, and I think that simply comes from experience propelled by persistence.

So you let it go… but then it comes back, and finally you start to see the bits and pieces of information on a wall in front of you. And slowly, slowly, your subconscious connects the dots until a clear picture is revealed.

I heard a story many years ago from a senior creative I have always admired. He said he went to India and decided to buy one of those little hand-carved elephants used as an ornament or paperweight.

So everyone he asked said that one particular old man’s famous ‘elephants’ were the best you could get. He found the man and bought one. And it was true; it was a remarkably perfect wooden elephant.

Amazed, he asked the old man: “How do you make your elephants so perfect?”

The old man replied: “I take a block of wood. I take my knife. Then I remove everything that isn’t the shape of an elephant.”

And then that’s it. You know you’ve found it. All that’s left is to build it and push it forward and really make it come to life for others to see.

I like the sentiment that the some ads almost write themselves. This thought suggests that we, as thinkers, are merely architects of the ad, and the content for it has always been there anyway – all we are doing is putting it together in a fresh or meaningful way.

The answers are there, all around us, I believe, it’s just a matter of finding a way to see them.

Anyway, this job isn’t just about answers, it’s also about how you get there.

Alex enjoys the process, even if it is occasionally painful.

Who killed TUNA IN WATER?

Here's another one.

“Can we have a generic look?”

“Can we have a generic headline?”

What does that mean? Do we not have a USP? There is, at the very least, a logo on this ad somewhere…

Remember the generic branding of the 80s? The whole idea was that if consumers didn’t have to pay for advertising, they’d save on costs, and that certain products like BEANS, or BEER, or TUNA IN WATER, or CHOCOLATE CAKE MIX, were all basically the same in terms of their so-called generic contents.



A generic product does not have a logo on it and almost always has a black typeface on a white background. Many foods were available as ‘generic’ in the 1980s. They have now been replaced by house brands, which are non-marketed brands that mimic the name brand items.

But consumers didn’t like it. They wanted ‘Planters Peanuts’. They wanted to have a ‘Coke and a Smile’, not a COLA. They wanted ‘Clorox’, not BLEACH. They wanted ‘Evian’, not MINERAL WATER. (Insert your own examples here.)

Even drugs, like Tylenol, or Advil were their own brands – although one could argue that the molecular makeup of these items were basically still the same.

Most ironically of all was that the generic look was incredibly recognisable and created amazing cut-through.

When every can of soup in the aisle is coloured red or yellow, and then you have a generic soup that just says SOUP on it in Helvetica black, visually, it will pop right off the shelf.

The prices were good too.

Still, consumers didn’t buy it. They reached for the brands they knew. The ones with the catchy jingle. The ones with the special ingredients. The ones with a USP.

Consumers drive demand, and they’re always willing to pay for the brands they love. The brand killed ‘generic’.

So too is the case in the office. The ad/work simply must start from the product, or at least an audience insight that links to the product. There’s no way around it. And there’s no such thing as ‘generic’, so please stop using that word.

I’d be a lot happier making the logo bigger – at least that’s about the brand.

Alexander remembers that even his dog didn’t like generic DOG FOOD.

Your Work Stinks, But It’s Not Your Fault

So you’ve finally made it into advertising. Now what the hell are you doing here?

It was bound to happen – the initial euphoria finally wore off. The designer furniture turned out to be uncomfortable. The espresso machine ceased to satisfy. And that suit’s absurd high-heels somehow lost their shock value.

So why are you in advertising in the first place? Obviously, because of the work.

Only problem now is that the briefs are crap, the timeline is tight, the budgets are miniscule, (and most distressing of all), none of your ideas seem to be getting through.

I have seen it happen many times with younger creatives: they forget why they’re in advertising and take the easy way out, pushing the job through with uninspired work. But it’s not really their fault; they just didn’t look hard enough to find the opportunity.

No doubt, everybody wants to see his work in print, on TV, online or wherever, especially if it’s something he’s proud of. But the fact is, for every really great idea you see come to life, there’s a whole whack of ‘almost great’ ideas hibernating in a drawer.

So start by acknowledging that the creative process is inherently one of trial and error, and that success only comes from failure (or at least the attempt to be great).

Does it really matter if the client can’t accept your ‘big’ idea. Do you really care if the suit didn’t sell it through? And how important is it for you to see your idea run as DPS anyway?

If you focus on the finished product – for instance a high-budget idea-based photo shoot with minimal copy, clever benefit and clear message – as your only objective, mentally you move your creative energy to a goal that might not be realistic. That becomes frustrating because you can’t control the agency, the client, the brief, the budget.

However, if you focus on the process itself, you can find triumph and success in every job you do, even when you have the foresight to recognise that your idea will never see the light of day.

Knowing that you will find the answer – and pursuing the job to its logical conclusion, is far more rewarding than spending the rest of the day idly checking out high-heels. Besides, you can do that while you’re working anyway.

Alex is a creative who always enjoys his jobs, even when the job is to figure out what the job is in the first place.

Hard And Fast Rules To Live By

Hard And Fast Rules To Live By
One of the many funny things about advertising is that everyone seems to think their way of doing things is the best. So they come up with rules, many of which I’ve noted are contradictory. So with that thought in mind, I’ve laid out some of my own hard and fast rules for approaching the creative process...


Lower your standards.
Don’t be too critical of your work. If you do, you may never get anything done. Taken to the extreme, high standards can cause writer’s block. So just start writing. Never mind that it’s absolute drivel. The point is: you’re working on it. Once you get past the junk ideas you’ll find the real gems.

Elevate your standards.
Don’t ever be easily pleased with your work. In the hard light of day, it may well turn out to be ghastly. But after you’re up and running, you’ll start to have a good pile of ideas. Keep ‘em all. Push those forward and you may have something. I call it: “The idea before the idea”.


Own your work.
You’re passionate about your work, but you also have to sell it through to your CD, account servicing, the marketing guys and whoever else has a voice. So present it internally and explain it with a good story people can remember.

Don’t own your work.
Don’t love your words or ideas – they don’t love you. Detach yourself from your work and look at it with fresh eyes. Ever wanted to be Creative Director? You are, of your own work. Great that you wonder what your CD would say about your lines, but so much the better if you can look at them first and know what he’d say, then amend them until he has nothing to say except “well-done” or “ok good, send it out”.


Never stop writing.
There was one time I was teamed up with another writer (who incidentally was also named Alex – Alex Dobrokronov) as a copy/copy team in the StarHub unit of Batey. Naturally, we did what any copy-copy team would do: we started writing headlines. So I said “let’s each do 20 headlines and see what we have”. The other Alex replied: “Why does it have to be 20?”  The difference between a junior and a senior writer is when they stop writing. One stops much sooner than the other. Extend, extend, extend. One you get the ATL campaign and the TVCs, go on to brochures, digital, social, mobile media, OOH, guerrilla, ambient, events, stunts, SMS, and beyond.

Quit while you’re ahead.
Once you’ve beat your horse till it’s dead, forget it. Get lost. Go play some pool. Chat up the new receptionist. Or just get out of the office for a long lunch with your art director. Free your mind, but keep you pen and pad with you. Suddenly, when you’re least expecting it, a new idea will come. Taking the pressure off of your shoulders is the most liberating feeling you can have, and this is where the real work begins.


Never trash anything.
Never kill off anything. The purpose of your weak ideas is to help you evolve past them and unlock the lateral thoughts. They’re also a record of where you’ve been, which means you can always come back to them and maybe see something new on a rainy Monday morning.

Throw it all away without a second thought.
Kill it all off. Start fresh. The empty box is a liberating place to live in.


Always, always, follow the brief.
The bloody brief is there for a reason. The first reason is to give you a job to work on, so be thankful for that. The second reason it’s there is because the client or agency has a problem they need to address. Whether the brief is horrible or not doesn’t matter. You have to get to the bottom of the fundamental goals of the job. A lot of times the answer to that won’t be in the brief, but the suit knows the answer. So figure it out, because when you do you can then respond with work that never occurred to them. I’ve noticed that ironically, the answer is sometimes so obvious solution that no one even saw it… or maybe they simply didn’t ask the right questions.

Forget the brief.
Answer the brief; then forget it. I worked on a pitch once where there were three creative teams. We all started from the same place. The job called for local insights in relation to a local beer brand (okay, it was Tiger), and two of the teams were ‘local’. The third team was foreign, so they just said, ‘well, we don’t know anything about Singapore, so forget this brief’ and completely ignored the whole job requirements. But their work was good and the CDs didn’t hold it against them, although you can be sure we did.


Stick to your guns.
If you’ve done your research, explored all the paths you can realistically examine, and done a bit more after that, then stick to your position. You know what you’ve created, and more importantly, why you’ve done it. You’re probably the only one who has been through this creative process, so defend your work. An ex-Ogilvy CD who’s frequently at Gem on Club Street told me: “Present your work like you’re standing naked out in the middle of the street.” You have to believe in it.

Compromise isn’t the end of the world.
In about 2000, I worked with Anthony Redman at Batey Ads. He said: “Compromise is a big fat stinking pile of shit”, or something very close to that, and I wouldn’t ever disagree with him. But sometimes it’s just easier to let the small jobs go, and it’s okay to amend things slightly, if it doesn’t detract from the idea, to get the job through. There’s no need to fight account servicing on every minute detail. Get it done. Have a beer. Go home.


There are no rules.
Self-explanatory.

You have to follow one rule.
The only rule is… see above.

Alex is a copywriter who loves what he does when he’s not trying to rationalise why he’s doing it.