Imagine we were electing a new world leader from three candidates.
Based on the following information, which one would you choose?
Candidate a) He’s been known to associate with crooked politicians. He’s consulted astrologers for help with decisions. He chain smokes, and drinks 8 – 10 martinis a day.
Candidate b) He’s been kicked out of political office twice. He stays in bed until nearly noon. He used opium in college. He drinks copious amounts of whiskey and champagne. People accuse him of being a warmonger.
Candidate c) He’s a decorated war hero. He doesn’t smoke, and only drinks an occasional beer. He’s a vegetarian and he’s never committed adultery. He’s a charismatic leader.
Now, based purely on that evidence, who would you vote for?
a) The chain-smoking crook.
b) The drunk warmonger.
c) The clean-living leader and hero.
It does look like a no-brainer, doesn’t it?
If we were trusting our future, our children’s future, to someone from that list, it would have to be candidate c) wouldn’t it?
On that evidence, that’s how I’d vote anyway.
But of course real life is never that simple.
Those descriptions are limited.
They’re taken out of context.
And look what happens when you judge anything out of context.
You get a totally distorted picture of reality.
In reality the candidates were as follows:
Candidate a) was Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Candidate b) was Winston Churchill.
Candidate c) was Adolf Hitler.
Once we know who they were, our entire view changes.
Because the context dictates the reality.
But if we only choose myopically, from selected facts, it looks very different to the reality.
And yet that’s what we do all the time.
We judge the big picture from selected facts.
We ignore context.
We judge commercials based on what they look like in the edit suite.
We judge posters based on what they look like on the boardroom table.
We judge press ads based on what they look like laid on the art director’s desk.
We judge radio ads based on what they sound like on massive speakers in a recording studio.
We judge advertising out of context.
That means we judge things as they’ll never appear.
Because in the real world they’ll never be out of context.
Recently, at a pitch, we presented some posters to a client.
We placed the layouts, one at a time, on the boardroom table.
The client wasn’t impressed.
The client said “We like the words a lot. But the visuals are just flat. They posters look sort of……..empty really.”
So then we showed them photographs we’d mocked up, of the same posters in situ.
On poster sites on busy roads.
With traffic going by and people walking past.
Amongst lots of other posters, road signs, buildings and trucks with logos on.
In the busy, overcrowded environment, the cluttered, over-communicated context they’ll actually run in.
The client’s eyebrows went up.
The client said “They look much better there don’t they? They really stand out. They’re very different to everything else around them.”
And they weren’t disappointed anymore.
They bought the campaign.
Because now they were judging the work in context.
Just the way real people will see it.
See, in the real world our ads are just another bit of everything else.
To have a chance we have to stand out from that clutter.
If we’re as busy and cluttered as everything else we just blend into everything else.
And then we become invisible.
Of course we could try reversing the process.
If we can’t judge our advertising the way it runs, we could run it the way it’s judged.
Paste it in the middle of a great big empty boardroom table.
Then invite all the consumers in, one at a time, to look at it carefully.
Just the way we do.
I bet, in that context, most advertising would work.
I think my life is out of context.
john woods - 10 August 2011 1:42 pm
Some say it’s a myth that Hitler was a vegetarian, propaganda spread by the party. “His asceticism was a fiction invented by Goebbels to emphasize his total dedication”.
And Stephen Fry says so on QI
Stuart Neale - 10 August 2011 5:13 pm
Great post, very few creative ideas get presented in situ these days.
Steve - 10 August 2011 8:23 pm
Great way to get your point across. Thanks Dave
Daniel Aguilar - 10 August 2011 9:49 pm
I remember reading that Dave Stewart of The Eurythmics used to play back all his mixes on an old worn out cassette player in his car. If it sounded good in that environment on that system, he knew he had a hit on his hands.
Learning from this, whenever I do the audio for a TVC or record a radio commercial, I always insist on hearing the playback of the final mix on the smallest speakers in the studio – usually the TV speakers. If the mix works there, it works in most places. I’ve also realised that the audio mix required for reproduction on in-flight entertainment systems needs to be different too because it can sound VERY different through the crappy headphones the airlines give you.
Conor - 11 August 2011 2:53 am
Whilst in Moscow, at one point I worked for a particularly
myopic group of people.
They couldn’t see a great idea if it punched them in the face.
Or could they? and just wouldn’t admit it,
and would nick it later
and call it their own.
So, just for a laugh, when I left,
I was clearing out my room and came across what
I considered some great posters I’d done that were killed-off…
…but that’s just my opinion.
So I put my own work to the acid test.
Instead of tearing them all up and binning them,
I left them on the windowsill
just sitting there…
Tempting Eh?
He He !
The management changed,
but they didn’t throw the ads away…
Two years later,
ads identical to my original concepts were published.
They ran a whole campaign off the line and won awards.
It kind of pleased me because I hate wasting a good idea,
but i also wanted to win something after I’d left just to prove a point.
That great ideas live beyond the individual.
We are not important.
It’s the idea that is,
if we can only see it.
Kevin Gordon - 11 August 2011 7:33 am
Conor,
I do that too.
Sound engineers often don’t like that.
What happens is the tiny speakers most people hear it on, maximise the treble, the mid tones and bass drops out.
So although they sound great in the studio, you won’t hear any of that in real life.
It’s also a good reason to watch commercials being shot on the video playback monitor, instead of standing by the camera.
That way you’re seeing exactly what the punters will see.
Dave Trott - 11 August 2011 9:17 am
Kevin,
On a similar note.
There is a (semi) famous story about a copywriter called Richard Cook.
As he was abou to change jobs he wrote a Citroen ad, and was worried that after he left, he wouldn’t get credit for it.
This was his solution.
Once the ad got into D&AD, he let everyone know they should read the first letter of every sentence.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-7Pj-czdq2xo/TYD7bk5V9uI/AAAAAAAADig/PDhkbefNYNs/s1600/RICHARD+COOK+WROTE+THIS.jpg
Dave Trott - 11 August 2011 10:15 am
Thanks, Dave – so this is the ad, I’ve heard about over the years. You know these days it ain’t going to work because the client/planner is going to change the copy.
Robin. - 11 August 2011 11:15 am
Brilliant Dave!
rachel carroll - 11 August 2011 11:26 am
Best ‘in context’ ad? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3bfO1rE7Yg
john woods - 11 August 2011 3:44 pm
Dave – u r @ it again… Another thought-provoking post from a long line of thought-provoking posts. I would personally like 2 say – thanks 4 putting so much thought + effort in2 them.
[PS - was about 2 heap ridicule on your spelling of MYOPIA, but fortunately realized MYOPIA is 1 of those words that always look wrongly spelled. It's also fortunate as the motor on my ridicule heaper is playing up @ the moment.]
Grilla Login - 11 August 2011 8:47 pm
Grilla,
A spare part for your ridicule heaper:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWOTpeBVML8&feature=related
Kevin Gordon - 12 August 2011 6:37 am
Unwinese… Thanks Kevin.
Grilla Login - 12 August 2011 11:41 am
I’d actually say that selective information is the cause of myopia here: you forget to mention the one very distinctive fact that in his whole being the most distinctive thing about Hitler was that he believed that he was a part of a master race and that only this race should survive.
That is not context, that is essence.
If you show an ad to a client who does not have the ability to look at it and think of it in the surroundings in which it shall take fruition you should ask if he/she is capable at his/her job. That is not context, that is essence!
koningwoning - 12 August 2011 1:10 pm
As John Pearce said: You can’t play chess with someone who can’t play chess.
Ciaran McCabe - 14 August 2011 11:16 am
Ciaran,
I love that, it’s like a Zen koan.
Dave Trott - 14 August 2011 11:42 am
ridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridicule [The spare part u sent appears 2 have done the trick, Kevin.] ridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridiculeridicule [Bet u wished u hadn't sent it now.]
Grilla Login - 14 August 2011 3:13 pm
koningwoning,
I guess Adolf was a pretty much ‘In your face’ kind of guy. He was also Austrian, so his adopted master race were in Sharpe terms “over the hills and far away”, but he never ceased to complain to the part of Germany that beckoned to his call that they had let him down terribly whilst ( and this is often ignored in history ) many Germans hated him too. We only ever see the Goebbels manufactured propoganda, even today 70 years after the event! Vile and detestable as it is, it still has to go down as the most impactful bit of PR campaign filming in living history. Millions of good Germans suffered during the war. Hitler’s main trouble seemed to be an anathema for failure of any kind, and yet failure is the building block of success, and so he failed, and the world succeded from his failures:- The flying Bomb and ME 262 created modern day Jet travel, The V2 got America to the Moon, and I’m sure there’s much more.
Kevin Gordon - 15 August 2011 8:40 am
Grilla,
Is that Myopia or Youropia?
Kevin Gordon - 15 August 2011 8:56 am
Kevin, it’s neither yours or mine – it is Dave’sopia. Let’s hope it gives him great pleasure.
Grilla Login - 15 August 2011 10:40 am
Hitler was given daily injections of methamphetamine – surely that would turn anyone into a raving paranoid lunatic?
Yup.
http://amphetamines.com/adolf-hitler.html
Shane - 22 August 2011 11:42 am