The100: Mondeo Man, museum of brands, and Malcolms 

Soccer moms and NASCAR dads

“A common trick to make a target group sound like it’s worth focusing on is to highlight what is distinctive about them, at the expense of what is important.”

I came across that piece of source code in an article about the ‘Mondeo man’ and the myth of such political target groups.

Related, a US governor’s way of defining blue collar vs. white collar jobs:

“Someone who’s held jobs where you shower at the end of the day, not at the beginning.”

When brands were very much alive

I was at the Museum of Brands in London the other week. Seeing how consistently some have applied their codes is quite something. Nostalgia aplenty, but a big learning experience on renovation and revitalisation.

Worth the visit if you ever get the chance.

The top quartile of effectiveness

As part of his forever-excellent Firestarters series, Neil Perkin chatted to Kantar’s Dom Boyd about advertising effectiveness. Highlights include the erroneous move from humour (10’27”) and the importance of qual (8’41”):

“When qualitative insight is used in the early stage it doubles the chances of being in the top quartile of effectiveness. When you talk to real people and get real qualitative, stronger foundational insights it leads to stronger provocations and truths which you can infuse creativity with.”

Hello! We’re over here…

“Check the vitals”

The question isn’t whether advertising is dead, the question is who killed it?

“The advertising industry did. We killed it when we invented the word client services. We killed it when we prioritised selling time, cost and speed over our most precious gift. We killed it when we stopped asking why clients had really come to see us.”

It wasn’t dead during the era of car adverts in print. Amazing.

And maybe it isn’t all about creativity after all (yes, him again). 

Gratuitous Malcolms

The Malcolm is a folksy, lengthy anecdote used to begin a chapter. Named after Malcolm Gladwell who “uses them beautifully”, they’ve nonetheless become overused and of questionable quality.

“A writer also needs a good grasp of what sort of anecdotes their reader will find surprising, rather than trite or hackneyed […] To avoid this trap, you need to have a pretty good idea of what your typical reader will already have read, which is not easy.”

Storytelling – so simple when you know how

Here’s what @Bertrom shows in his Film Industry and Synergy class:

And finally…

Reckon you’re good at spotting a liar? I got only 63% correct.

Whatever happened to Middle Age? If you find out, tell me. Although I do like the Collins definition:

“the period in your life when you are no longer young but have not yet become old’

Once a day, when you open a new tab, Glance Back will take your photo. My esteemed colleagues like to tell me that I make a very, ummm, “unique” face when I concentrate. So we could have quite the collage on our hands.