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Hello! So this week I've been exploring new sets of colours for Salmon Theory, despite having absolutely no training in branding (like that's ever stopped me from doing stuff). This is where I'd like your help: I've put together a few options, and I'd love for you to comment on which one you like the most here. A "+1" will do, thank you! Right, on with the show.
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I don’t believe in the truth. I believe in truths. Plural. It’s probably a contentious thing to say in a world of fake news and “alternative facts” (though spoiler alert, fake news have always existed for nefarious purposes), but it reflects that I see around me. Not just today. But from stuff I’ve read about history – or rather, histories.
Look around whatever historical period, especially tumultuous ones, and you’ll find multiple versions of the truth. Look inside the world of science, and you’ll find not an assumption that research tells you the absolute truth, but rather a view that “this is true until it’s not”. The truth is a symptom of our need for certainty, and that is a part of human nature. I get that. But I’ve also come to recognise that the world is too complex for absolute certainty, and therefore the truth is more of a moving target with an expiry date. Truth changes.
“Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it.” – André Gide
If that’s true, should we all give up in our search for it? Of course not. It’s like saying that just because 90% of everything is shit (Sturgeon’s Law), we should stop aiming to do the best possible job. It’s important to have an ideal even if there’s never an “ideal world” – or maybe precisely because of that. It’s what keeps us going. But I do have a problem when people cling on to truth too aggressively, and leave little room out for imagination.
To quote Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo in Narcos: Mexico (great), we focus too much on “what is”, not “what could be”. Which means that as we navigate the ever-changing world of digital communications and the weird and wonderful textures of internet culture, we settle for best practice. Often at the expense of creativity.
The point of best practice is to establish rules for how stuff works, and that’s important. But there’s a difference between blindly following best practice and trying to be creative within it. The other day I was part of a discussion panel at where we talked about the merits and pitfalls of short-form video, and this compromise of best practice at the expense of creativity became apparent. Just because the average dwell time on a platform is 3 seconds, doesn’t mean all advertising needs to last exactly 3 seconds. And for goodness’ sake, it doesn’t mean “the future of advertising is six-second ads”.
Best practice is truth found. But as creatively minded people, we’re always seeking new truths. I hope this tension never stops existing.
Now, it’s all well and good to poo poo on those models and not offer an alternative, and a big part of my job is to figure out the role of short-form video in integrated campaigns. So even though I don’t subscribe to the narrative that “if people only watch this much, make it no longer than that”, I do think it’s an interesting constraint.
Movies are obviously different from advertising, but a good example comes from trailers like Spider-Man: Far From Home. Movie trailers, like emotional ads, need time to build up a story. But if they were to blindly follow best practice and the narrative that “the future is six-second ads”, they’d try and cram a trailer in six seconds and hope people end up going to the cinema to watch the rest. What they do instead is make use of the first five seconds (the unskippable part) to land the key message (title, couple of key scenes, call out it’s an official trailer), and then proceed as usual.
Now, movies are different from advertising, in big part because people choose to watch them. But even there, they respect the fact that most people will probably skip them anyway. And if they do, fine – they tell you the key thing to remember. But if you don’t, then there’s a larger payoff, in that you get to watch the trailer and geek out about it on Twitter. Or despair for the future of humanity in the YouTube comments (never read the YouTube comments).
There’s such a big lesson here for advertising, because we seem to have forgotten that our jobs are about recall (the first five seconds), but crucially about payoff (the rest, whether it’s 10, 20 or 90). Yes, “if the content is good enough” people will stick around, but if they don’t (and most won’t), then at least we’ve done the recall job. Is that end of the story? Fuck no. Though “the truth” suggests it is.
Best practice limits the chances of fucking up. I get that. But there’s a difference between trying to squeeze a piece of communications in a timelength that ensures optimal viewability, and using that as the starting point to then work out what other ways we can offer people a payoff. Some might argue that an ad can get pretty clunky as you show branding upfront and then tell a story, and I get that. Is it as elegant as doing a magnificent build up in TV? Nope. Is it better than stuffing six seconds with crap that looks good in reports? Yep.
"Best practice is truth found. But as creatively minded people, we’re always seeking new truths. I hope this tension never stops existing."
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