gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards"

british parties

[PART ONE:]

When I left college in London in the late 1980s, Margaret Thatcher was still the Prime Minister, and at the height of her powers. The Thatcherite Revolution was in full swing, and the changes she was making to the British social fabric would be even more profound than the ones Reagan was making to the US equivalent.

One name you associate a lot with that era is "Saatchi & Saatchi". They were the largest British ad agency at the time. They did the advertising for the Thatcher's Conservative Party, British Airways, Mars etc and boy, were they good at what they did. Since then their star has faded, but hey, things change.

My point is, back when I entered the job market, British advertising was synonymous with social change. You wanted insight about where the country, the economy, the world etc was heading, asking someone in advertising was as good a way to do it as any.

That, of course, is no longer the case. From National Regeneration to "Love Marks" in less than 2 decades. How sad.

We are no longer the rock stars. We are no longer the fighter pilots. We are no longer the crack troops, fighting for a better and sexier tomorrow.

We are a bunch of slobs with an expensive product that gets less useful and interesting by the day.

What to do about it? Sure, I have some ideas. So do some other folk. But they are mostly ignored by our former rock-star-fighter-pilot colleagues. They don't want to change what they're doing. They just want what they're doing to miraculously start becoming more valuable again, not less.

They just want it to be 1989 again. Not unlike the Grande Dame of British retail, Marks & Spencer's. Good luck to them, they'll need it.

[PART 2:]

At British house parties it's customary to bring a bottle of booze along and give it to the hostess. Sure, the host and hostess will supply a few bottles and the munchies, but everyone's expected to somehow add value to the equation.

[PART 3:]

Last Spring Joi Ito came to London, so some British bloggers got together and organised a blog dinner for him. I was there. Sure, the lovely Suw Charman did most of the organising/work, and Joi provided the raison d'etre to throw the party, but it was never "Joi's Party" or "Suw's Party". It was everybody's party, Joi and Suw were just two of the people who showed up that evening. When the bill came we all pitched in our £20 and went home. It was a great evening.

[PART 4:]

I make and sell Blogcards, and it's fair to say most of the people who buy them are fellow bloggers. I do not see the people who buy them as "customers" so much, and I sure as hell don't see them as "The Consumer". All the Blogcards are is the metaphorical bottle of wine I'm bringing to the metaphorical party, i.e. The Blogosphere.

[PART 5- WHERE ALL THIS IS GOING:]

All this rambling about Britain, advertising and parties has got me thinking:

The old "branding" way of thinking when I got into the business was akin to this:

1. The Nike Brand is the party.
2. Nike, the company, are the people throwing the party.
3. "The Consumer", the Nike end user, is the person who's invited, as a paying guest, to the party.

But it ain't your party anymore. You no longer have customers. What you have now are fellow party goers. What you have now are friends and allies. Your product and/or company is just the metaphorical bottle of wine you're bringing to the party. All "The Brand" does is focus the metaphorical evening, the way Joi and Suw did for us UK bloggers back in springtime.

British advertising, if it is to survive, if it is to book a seat on The Clue Train, has got to move away from "creative ways to express product benefit to the consumer" and move towards "powerful ways of expressing kindred spirit to their fellow party goers".

And not just British advertising. Heh.

Posted by hugh macleod at November 21, 2004 2:15 PM | TrackBack