Akio Morita was the founder of Sony.
One of his earliest products was the first transistor radio.
By the standards of the time it was tiny, about the size of a paperback book.
Akio Morita wanted to call it the first Pocket Radio.
And he wanted his salesmen to demonstrate it would fit into a pocket.
The problem was, all salesmen worked in shirtsleeves.
And his radio was just a little bit too big to fit into a shirt pocket.
So he had lots of shirts made with oversized pockets.
Then told all his salesmen to wear them when making sales calls.
That way they could slip the radio into their shirt pocket, to show how small it was.
Was that clever?
Or was that cheating?
For me, who cares, it was creative.
Anytime you change the rules in your favour you give yourself an advantage.
Any advantage is an unfair advantage.
Otherwise it wouldn’t be an advantage.
And if it’s ‘unfair’ it must be cheating, right?
But even if it was, is that bad?
What’s the big problem with cheating?
The problem is surely what you use cheating for.
If you use it for a bad purpose, then it’s bad.
But then anything is bad when used for a bad purpose.
For instance, prayer is good, right?
How about if prayer is used for a bad purpose?
Is prayer still good, or is it bad now?
How about a gun, that’s a bad thing right?
How about if you use a gun to stop a mad dog killing a baby?
Is that still a bad thing?
We’ve become too attached to the words, and that’s stopped us thinking.
We automatically think ‘cheating’ is bad.
But why?
The Allies used massive deception to win World War Two.
Was that a bad thing?
Should we have fought the war without cheating, and lost?
Would that have been better?
Again, it depends what you use the cheating for.
The purpose defines whether the end is good or bad.
The method (cheating or whatever you call it) is just a vehicle for getting there.
This is the relativist position.
Nothing is defined in limbo, everything is defined relative to its context.
Which is pretty much the opposite of Kant.
Immanuel Kant believed the intention was more important than the result.
So, for Kant, lying was always wrong.
But what if a friend of yours was being chased by a murderer?
And your friend came to your door and asked you to hide them.
Then the murderer came to your door and asked if your friend was hiding there.
For Kant, you would have to tell the truth.
Even if it cost your friend their life.
This is not how I was brought up, in east London and New York.
This is the opposite of Bauhaus thinking.
Believing that intention is always all-important.
That the means justifies the end.
That Function should Follow Form.
These are the people who tut tut and say cheating is always wrong, without considering the circumstances.
For me, what you do depends on the result you want.
And you must take responsibility for that result.
As long as you consider it a moral result, you should be creative in how you get there.
You should look for an advantage.
And all advantage is unfair.
That’s creative.
And that’s cheating.
And that’s just a word.
Get over it.
This doesn’t sound like the gospel according to Clough.
john p woods - 16 April 2012 9:03 am
Clough said “Before any game, I’d sell my granny for 3 points.”
Dave Trott - 16 April 2012 9:26 am
Judging by the final state of Clough’s liver, he must have sold Granny a hell of a lot…
Tom - 16 April 2012 9:33 am
Sorry, Brian, misread ‘points’ for ‘pints’. Wishful thinking on my part. Apologies to Clough and Granny…
Tom - 16 April 2012 9:37 am
I think that’s how this whole scam business started. Creatives started entering work the clients never approved – or ran – for awards, just to show how creative they are.
Nothing wrong with that, right?
Trouble is, these winners then become Creative Directors. But because they have awards but not enough experience, their judgement isn’t that sound
There’s also a bigger problem. Why work on real briefs when you could scam your way to stardom? And bigger salaries?
I know teams who celebrated when research killed their ideas because that freed them to work on scams
Lastly, it’s a question of consistency. We tell clients ‘creativity is an agency’s most valuable asset’. Yet give it away for free. No surprise clients don’t take agencies seriously.
Robin. - 16 April 2012 9:46 am
“Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” by Albert Einstein
Presumably this made him a bit of a cheat. Ah well.
Pete Camponi - 16 April 2012 9:50 am
Watching the Rory Sutherland clip I put on my blog last week, he makes a fascinating point about placebos being considered cheating, even though they work brilliantly. So no one does any research on placebos and people stay sick longer.
Ben - 16 April 2012 9:51 am
It’s true Ben.
The western ‘scientific’ mindset treats everything as mumbo-jumbo if it doesn’t know WHY and HOW it works.
Consequently logic is our superstition.
Dave Trott - 16 April 2012 10:01 am
A yellow carpet of banana skins will greet the Barcelona team bus be4 the game @ Chelsea.
If CFC r accused of cheating, I will refer FCB to this post on your blog.
Many thanks, Dave.
(PS – Roman wanted 2 use explosives but I talked him around.)
Grilla Login - 16 April 2012 10:08 am
Grilla,
I’m with Roman, it’s the only chance.
Dave Trott - 16 April 2012 11:05 am
I agree it depends on the intent of cheating.
Which puts us back to defining good, doesn’t it?
Often businesses encourage ‘bad’ cheating, to hit a target for example. This is what sales people (have to) do. Hit their target by hook or by crook. The financial collapse is a prime example. The target gets hit at the expensive of quality or ‘good’, if you don’t you are fired. The system actual encourages ‘bad’ cheating.
Which causes more problems down the like, an example consequence being the growth in call centres to handle problems / waste. And the ubiquitous “your custom is important to us please hold you are number 8 in a queue, shortly you will speak to someone who doesn’t understand your problem.”
Good cheating is the reverse – focusing on quality and delivery and then the numbers follow. I like what you said (the other week) Dave re profits being a bi -product.
Jim - 16 April 2012 11:42 am
Selling grannies for 3 pts doesn’t constitute cheating in my book but then like you said it’s all down to interpretation.
john p woods - 16 April 2012 1:19 pm
Does this mean I can fake my portfolio if I know I’m right for the job?
Lucas - 16 April 2012 1:30 pm
Up to you Lucas, but I did.
Dave Trott - 16 April 2012 2:52 pm
It’s all about timing, I think. Back then, when Akio-san chated on pocket size, people were probably upset. I mean, who won’t be? You buy a radio because the salesman’s fitted his pocket. But when you go home, different story.
Now, if Morita-san tried the same trick, we can be sure he would be flamed on facebook, twitter etc etc.
This also reminds me of the time the government was suggesting pay cuts for the masses when the economy was weak. My pro-government friend reckoned that while ‘a pay cut was bad for me, it was good for the nation.’
Later, he almost got retrenched. It was very hard for me not to send him a ‘losig your job is bad for you but good for the company’ email.
Robin. - 16 April 2012 4:15 pm
Even Shakespeare nicked ( sorry, borrowed) all the stories for his plays.
rachel carroll - 16 April 2012 5:06 pm
For 3 points, I’d sell his Granny, too. Relativism does have it’s limitations though. And it’s ardent supporters are guilty of abuses just as much as their puritan counterparts. How’s that for muddying the waters.
Tim - 16 April 2012 5:43 pm
The wheel defies friction
Where would we be without it?
The rocket defies gravity
How else is man supposed to reach the Moon?
Morita-San’s pocket was a great product demonstration
it inspired a world of miniaturisation.
Mix em all up
add a little silver foil et voila
Satellites.
They cheat the curvature of the Earth.
I can hear everyone saying
nobody cares
take em all away for a day.
Stock markets would be in dissaray
no Twitter
no Facebook
no weather forecast warnings
no plane take-offs and landings
no railway signalling
Just a planet spinning at thousands of miles per hour in space
all because we didn’t cheat?
Even Jesus felt momentarily cheated when he was crucified
when God let Abraham’s son off the hook.
If it’s good enough for God
It’s way good enough for me.
Anyway, we’re only talking about advertising,
we’ve cheated all the time
it’s not open heart surgery.
Kev - 16 April 2012 5:47 pm
Kev,
Advertising is capable of making our hearts skip a beat.
john p woods - 16 April 2012 7:54 pm
Sometimes you have to cut off a finger to save the hand.
john p woods - 16 April 2012 11:16 pm
“He sat quietly, waiting. Waiting was something you got used to. He hated it, but sometimes you made other people wait; it set them on edge, so you did it. Any advantage was worth whatever it cost you. It was strange, but he disliked making other people wait just as much as he disliked being kept waiting homself. But he did not any more allow it to disturb him. They were trying for an advantage, and when they did appear it would be natural for him to seem nervous, anxious, even irritable, so they would think the advantage was theirs. Of course, once you had them thinking that, the advantage was yours again. That was what made him as good as anybody; he gave away nothing.”
William Goldman, Marathon Man.
MikeH - 17 April 2012 10:36 am
John,
Looking at a few jobs recently and the pile of nonsense jargon written in expectation of finding a godlike person to perform a simple task of communicating from one group to another, whilst juggling bananas and UX blady bla architect data mining networked bollocks.
I think It’s easier to cut off the hand and keep the finger. Advertising seems to be getting sucked into a massive black hole of content-led noise from which it seems unable to escape.
Time better spent wasted at a Star Trek convention where people pretend to be real.
Beam me up Spock and get me outta here!
Wahtever happened to being human?
Cheat like hell!
Pull the plug.
Trip the switch.
Turn off the lights.
Before this black hole of Myotonic dystrophy disappears up it’s own posteria.
Kev - 17 April 2012 11:08 am
Kev,
Just make sure it’s the middle finger that you keep.
john p woods - 17 April 2012 11:29 am
Or he could have used his reality distortion field ala Steve Jobs to make the Sony engineers come out with a radio that actually fit into a shirt pocket.
Elmas - 17 April 2012 12:42 pm
The name ‘Banana’ was derived from the Arabic word 4 finger.
Grilla Login - 17 April 2012 12:43 pm
Grilla,
And the circle is complete.
john p woods - 17 April 2012 12:52 pm
John – It is now:
غير أن يو راديو الموز موريتا في جيبك أو سعداء فقط لرؤية لي؟
Grilla Login - 17 April 2012 3:35 pm
Grilla,
If we are finishing on innuendo best be careful not sit on it or it could be inn-u-endo.
john p woods - 17 April 2012 7:08 pm