Newsletter Exclusive Intro
THE NEWSLETTER IS BACK! YES!
EVERYBODY DANCE NOW.
To the oldies: How have you beeeeeeeeeen?
To the newbies: Welcome, do you understand what you have let yourself in fooooooor?
That's right friends, Five (it's never just five) things on Friday (you'll be lucky) is back post summer and it is once more IN YOUR INBOX. Lovely.
The summer break has been gorgeous over here. A mixture of time out with my children, time out from work, and time out from the Internet (we'll come back to this later) has meant that overall, it has been a very joyous summer indeed.
I sincerely hope yours has been good and while you may've been crying into your cornflakes every week as this thing didn't arrive (I know at least one of you got grumpy with me) but hey, it's back now so EVERYTHING IS ONCE MORE RIGHT AND GOOD IN THE WORLD.
On that note, shall we crack on WITH THE THINGS?
Yes?
LET'S GO!
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1. MICHELLE YEOH
aka: the section where YET again James kicks off FToF with ANOTHER GQ profile piece (but it's another stonker).
Michelle Yeoh is a badass. A bloody good actor. An incredible athlete. And above all, seemingly a super lovely woman.
Definitely take some time out of your day and read this fantastic interview.
Bonus thing: While we're are it, 'In conversation with Kathleen Turner' is also worth gifting your eyeballs to for a good reading; there is SOLID GOLD to be found in this one.
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2. HOW WHITE PEOPLE HANDLE DIVERSITY TRAINING IN THE WORKPLACE
This article (edit: it's a section from a book), written by former professor and now facilitator and consultant, Robin DiAngelo, goes into the real experiences she has come up against when running diversity training for white people in the USA.
Unpacking superiority, fragility, and more - it is provocative and prompts self-examination.
A recommended read.
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3. COME ON THEN, LET'S TALK ABOUT THAT LISTERINE INSTAGRAM THING
Full disclosure: I was asked to contribute to a piece for this last week and missed the deadline (Sorry Stephen!) this section is some of what I wrote and some further thinking.
Did you see/miss this?
It's been all over the trades these past two weeks and I'm kind of unsure what ELSE there is to say about it.
Oh how people cried!
People blamed: the Instagrammer, the client, the brief, the platform... and of course, it being a big Twitter viral thing, everyone piled in and had a pop or a moan.
Truly, what else is there to say about the poorly briefed, poorly executed, and poorly received Listerine activity also known as '#BringOutTheBold'.
Last year, Marshall Manson and I wrote about ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ (slide 43 onwards). It theorised, and not without evidence, that for influencer marketing to succeed in the future then it would require brand marketers [and their agency partners] to take more ownership over influencer activity.
The point being, per the late 1800s economic theory the trend referenced, when it is in everyone’s interest to pull as much as they can from the opportunity available, no one will maintain that opportunity, and the well [of money, from brands] will run dry. After this week's epic moan-a-thon, you can see it happening.
Let's address the blame game (it's stuff like this that makes me question the sanity of my entire industry at times).
First, it is entirely wrong to place any blame at the feet of the influencer. Entirely wrong.
Here is a person is out to make money from their craft. If a brand wants to throw money at that, then fair play. If the armchair critiques literally pressed their thumbs two, maybe three more times then they would've seen that, irrespective of product placement, Scarlett London's ENTIRE FEED is clearly the work of someone who enjoys creating quaint hyper-real model shots - and that's entirely OK because this is their choice and their Instagram account is theirs and they can do whatever they want with it.
IMPORTANT POINT: Those choices also include the moment when brands want to stick a product in because y'know because that's how they make money. Cool? Cool.
SECOND IMPORTANT POINT: If anything, Scarlett London should be applauded for being able to get a mouthwash brand to pay for something that the poster does every day:
‘I post whimsical photos of my life with balloons’
‘Here’s some money’
‘I post whimsical photos of my life that now feature mouthwash’
👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻
Next up, you want to ridicule someone/something (because maybe, just maybe, you can't move off the sofa today without feeling clever because you said something cutting about someone/something you've never met or worked on then OK) then ridicule the brand. This whole 'bring out the bold' campaign point is just so... blergh. Somewhere someone at Listerine wrote several PowerPoint presentations talking about the value of Influencer Marketing. Meetings were had. Budget was pitched for, allocated, and spent. And this is what they've ended up with.
I don't understand it.
The (my) problem with marketing generally is that idiots ruin it for everyone else. A mouthwash commissioning content that barely speaks to their brand strapline of MAKE BOLD CHOICES (which, when you think about it, is almost the exact opposite of what you want a mouthwash for - surely a better line would be 'MAKE THE SMELL OF LAST NIGHT'S BOLD CHOICES GO AWAY') is terrible. And the problem is - as Marshall and I extolled at the back end of last year - content creators will keep content creating. It's up to brands and agencies to both understand how to work with influencers and WHEN. Or else you'll end up with stuff like this and the tragedy will be that influencer marketing will end for everyone.
/rant
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4. COLIN KAEPERNICK
I love everything about this.
'But James! The brand preference has dropped so suddenly!'
'Yeah, piss off - sales are UP'
...
"Consumers don't think how they feel. They don't say what they think and they don't do what they say" - David Ogilvy.
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5. POSITIVE ACTIVISM FTW
I love this for so many reasons.
1. They noticed a gap for art and filled it.
2. They noticed a lack of Asian diversity on display in McDonald's and fixed it.
3. The BTS video is brilliant - watch it.
4. AFAIK, this photo is still hanging.
5. I used to work at McDonald's - and the idea of something like this happening at my own store puts a huge grin on my face (especially given the amount of OTHER STUFF that went on while I worked there - ask me about that over a pint some time).
Well done everyone.
Gold stars all round.
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THE ESSENTIALS:
If you're new here, the section known as THE ESSENTIALS is about highlighting the stories that continue to come to light in regards to the #MeToo movement. It's been here since it began and will remain so until it ends.
This week, your essential reads are:
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THE BONUS LINK SECTION OF BONUS BONUS LINKS
SING! OH MY GOD IT'S BACK AGAAAAIN.
Like the end credits of Bad Influence that you had to record and hit the 'still' button the VCR to read the lot... the bonus section is coming atcha in five, four, three...
..
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