Showing posts with label strategic planning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strategic planning. Show all posts

Wednesday 12 July 2023

Strategic Failure










The Pentagon has news for you about Ukraine. It's game over. Strategic failure as confirmed in Helsinki last month. If you notice the meeting at NATO with Zelensky at the top. He is isolated and will be dumped accordingly. If he is executed, you can be sure a lot of Ukrainians are going to tell you the side of the story they could not, due to the Nazi occupation we tried to informed you about.


We know through the Panama papers that Zelensky the comedian has a sprawling property empire round the world, but I guess the Miami residence would be his first pick.


They're going to need a news psyop to cover this affair and the current BBC attempt I don't think is going to cut it. Before Ukraine the news was 24/7 Covid and only a few nutters are masking up now.


I've included the female's testimony as so many of you fell for the Mariupol trauma porn. We will return to censored voices in due course. 


If you fell for Ukraine what else have you been suckered into?


Wait till you find out about the child trafficking and organs market.


Please notice our politicians at the NATO summit clutching each other like old friends. They just threw Zelensky under a bus and these people you trust and vote for would do the same for you and for me. That's the final lesson on the 'international community' the vapid think they belong to.


Update: The Times reports on the British Secretary of Defence and Ukraine fall out accusation.




Saturday 17 July 2021

Benny Hill, Southampton & Censored Protests



The image above is of Benny Hill when he was a milkman in Southampton, his hometown and the place where he was buried (opposite the hospital where my mother finally died after the horrors of Chemotherapy, Brain Surgery, Steroid induced Diabetes and a mind that drifted from consciousness to unconsciousness irrespective of whether she was awake.

The policeman is Nephilim sized so I'm quite sure there's a bit more to the image than what it appears to be.

The average consumer and/or direct or indirect corporate fluffer will have no idea of the number of demonstrations held in London against the lockdown, forced vaccinations and so forth, including one that according to respectable estimates was between half a million to a million (four miles long, of 30 people width marching). The media don't mention it, so you don't know unless your bus got caught in it.

As ever, it's the activists with a sense of humour that cut through the preposterous nature of what is easily approaching Nazi-population blindness-to-the-truth.

It's not the facts that colour their mindset, it's the moral cowardice to call it out for what it is. A clear cut case of violation of the Hippocratic Oath, Nuremburg Code (1947), Human Rights Act (2000)UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights.




Saturday 25 February 2012

Arundhati Roy - অরুন্ধতি রায় - Our Strategy



Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness -- and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling -- their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.


Sunday 20 July 2008

Too Many Cooks

I particularly like the part about primary and secondary markets. It's complete bullshit but a lot of marketing people have plenty of slides droning on about those. Don't forget to pretest too!

Thursday 1 May 2008

Stephen King - JWT

Have you ever wondered what the father of 'Account Planning' looked and behaved like? I first heard of the existence of this video in JWT London's weekly meeting and recall Guy Murhpy's (JWT Global Planning Director) face lighting up at the description of 'hammers' as examples of product parity in utility.

I then saw it for the first time at the launch of
'A Master Class in Brand Planning' with Merry Baskin and Judith Lannon back in November, and was taken aback at how plannery Stephen King was. Which of course makes complete sense. Here we can see the enthusiasm for the abstract from way back in this marvelous clip that Guy has released and which also includes the remarkable Jeremy Bullmore who shared with me the inside story on that JWT clothing allowance that John Grant talked about over on Brand Tarot here. Jeremy told me in London before I came to Beijing that the allowance was a tax break and that it was a choice between a lawn mower or a clothing allowance and not as suspected an elitist perk for the Toffs. I think this is as good an example as it gets of confirmation bias, narrative fallacy, silent evidence, and epistemic arrogance which are all weaknesses that planners should be conscious of struggling against when forming conclusions.



Tuesday 8 April 2008

Emperor's New Clothes

I love this quick presentation by Anil Dash. There's something pernicious about the powerpoint effect that for many clients goes something along the lines of 'for each change of slide' we are getting agency value-for-money'. No it's not, its illusory value.

Sunday 6 April 2008

Chinese Advertising

One planning topic that needs some understanding in developing economies is media literacy. Mary Goodyear has looked into this subject extensively, and you can read all about it over here and Fredrik did a splendid post related to the topic over at his.

From the outside it may seem that the creativity is often lackluster in this part of the world and for sure, it is in the main, like pulling teeth to coax the clients (and agencies) to go the extra mile and explore some of the dimensions of advertising that can be achieved. Forgive me if this seems like I'm pulling out unremarkable ads but this is one of the first commercials I came across that stood out.



This is actually quite a big deal for a paint ad in Asia. I can just see the spreadsheet marketer saying stuff like "you want to show people throwing my paint around?" or "what have birds, hay and diving got to do with my brand?", "why isn't there a paintbrush in the picture?", "can't we have a basso profondo voice in the ad?" and so on and so forth. The reason is that the people who frequently manage marketing and advertising in Asia are often the kind of people who can cope with high volume but really struggle with ideas like metaphors, feelings, emotions and expression. I should call a halt to this right now because I could go on and on but suffice to say that a lot of people have made a lot of money managing that huge growth and volume over the last 15 years or so and are at the top of their game without actually ever squeezing out a creative puppy.

So I think its a big deal that Saatchi & Saatchi advertising got this through and I believe it was subsequently awarded an Effie which pleased me if only because championing creative is so hard and because it won for those very same reasons I listed above, that I believe most China based marketeers and agencies are simply not geared up for. Clearly Chinese customers felt differently than the average marketing whizz often does, because they voted with their wallets and gave a 46% increase in sales value of high end products nationwide and more than doubled the targeted 20% increase. There are however a few problems before we pop the Veuve Clicquot, because the ad is way clearly an homage at best, and rip off at worst to the Fallon ad for Sony Bravia, which I think is even better than Balls. Here it is.



So you can park that Effie and all the planning plonk that goes into saying how good the agency and/or planner and/or creative and/or client were because all they did was probably add extraneous process between looking in the right direction for inspiration and actually getting on with ahem 'copying it'. I would however like to see more emulation of the good stuff and a stiff brush to sweep away the marketing mediocrity that needs to make 5.5 (million dollars) by 55 years of age....you know who you are! The problem is that a certain genre of adman has made a tidy living out of punting the lamest of the lame creativity and the emperor needs calling out on the absence of threads.

Sticking out is a big deal in Asian culture. There is an expression that the nail that sticks out gets hammered in, and yet it is my belief that this cannot pertain to advertising. The nail that stands out gets noticed in advertising or can even be outstanding. I've spent a lot of time listening to greatly opposing forces in meetings with spadefuls of advertising spiel and waffle that talks a good game on words such as creativity, brand values and vision but all boils down to the infinitely bland. Why is this happening? Take a look at that Joy Island's photography and the last few seconds of the Nippon paint ad and you'll start to make the connection because as soon as I saw it on the web, I knew I needed to know the story and find the photographer.


Lovely isn't it? There's more...


Brutal huh? Probably not for marketing communications but maybe another day as one of my more challenging traits is that I like to press buttons. Its only when someone explodes that I know their breaking point that I understand what they care about. One of my closest friends had exactly the same characteristic as me. We were both political junkies and we'd be at each other's throats over CNN and BBC world news. As early risers this would sometimes happened before before 6 AM when we shared the same apartment. Great times looking back, but returning to my point, through a process of saying the wrong things and seeing where the greatest sensitivity lies I've uncovered an uncomfortable truth about the powerhouse economy which isn't really a brilliant insight as its all been said before. It is however the most raw nerve in China. Innovation is not a trait that springs to mind in the PRC but the one that created the darkest face was when I rationalized the extra 40 slides being asked of me as along the lines of "so what you're saying is to copy other brand's mediocre strategy?"

I've since found that the "copy" word is like a red rag to a bull, like spilled blood to a boxer, like throwing paint around to a paint marketer (ok I'm exaggerating) because in the absence of innovation all that is left is correctional marketing and 'the middle way' between too much emotional and too much rational in a brand. Then stick it through the research process designed to remove any of the interesting bits and lastly link test it so that if there is a shred of an idea remaining, we can drill it out and stick in something the respondents wanted instead. I ask you, why don't we just give our TARGET market some pens and watch them under the cross hairs with a snipers bullet until they have written the ads themselves?

Maybe this is why some people don't want the blue collar migrant workers as their customers because WHO would want those people in our nice focus group room with free snacks and refreshments, even though they are the backbone of the country. I mean, their media literacy sucks anyway doesn't it?

I always thought that the point of really good advertising, as with any facet of popular cultural expression is to lift people in some way through humour, feelings or observation because ulimately it elevates us all in the end doesn't it?

Or as a very clever and young person said to me last year. Confusion makes you smarter.

Thursday 20 December 2007

Looking for a Planning Director

We're looking for a Planning Director to work in China and run a department, but not directly for me. Which is probably a very good thing. If anyone has any suggestions please leave a comment or go to the 'about me' me section for my email. Japanese recruitment agencies might want to pick up the phone unlike these fools.