Suger Pie Honey Bunch

Lamont Dozier (of Holland-Dozier-Holland fame) wrote this song in 1965. It was made famous by the Four Tops and hooray for Mowtown hit factory, pop music and all that...

What's interesting (I think) about this song is that the pressure inflicted on the song writers of the time was so immense that every ounce of inspiration was being exhausted.  So where then does inspiration come?

Dozier tells the story of his father and how he ran a boutique/hair dressers and was a bit of a ladies man at the door way. He'd great his regular customers with 'Sugar Pie' and 'Hello Honey Bunch' and Dozier growing up would hear this and have stick in the deep recesses of his mind and memory.

Like everything we get exposed to, our mind records it all.  It's always recording like a tape player (remember them?) and the red light never goes off.  If we keep revisiting the same material, we're essentially over recording the same tune and our minds aren't much of a useful ideas centre. That's a comment for another time.

The point I make on this occasion is that before you search for inspiration for your next idea, look no further than the deep recesses of your mind.  It might take a while for something to bubble up, but I promise there is a gem there.

I'm not a song writer but I imagine I’d have a few lyrics if I wanted to tell a story on life by weaving the lamentations of my Dad into the narrative!

I do facilitate ideas sessions though and everything that people say has the potential to unlock and idea.  It's just a question of getting relaxed enough to share and not judging anything you were once told. Having a great idea is also about playing with something that’s been sitting in your head for a while.  Listen to what it’s saying and soon you’ll hear the song...

Suger Pie Honey Bunch... you know that I love you... (catchy eh?)

Dont pass anything by your grandmother...

I worked in an agency once were we had the 'mum' test or the 'granny test'.

The idea being you ran copy or current client briefs past your granny and if she couldn't understand what was being expressed or written, then your content needed a revisit.

For me that equation doesn’t add up.

Most grannies – especially my own at 90 – are more than literate, have acquired vast amounts of knowledge and understanding of the world during their lifetime and have of course developed quite an extraordinary vocabulary being able to drop words like apostasy and encomium into sentences without pausing for breath.

I’ve confidence that every granny can hoover up the bullet points on our slide decks and correct our use of apostrophe at the same time.

We shouldn’t be arrogant to ask the rest of the world to catch up with our marketing or internal comms. It’s our duty to use our intelligence and rubric to appeal to the world. Given the average age of our supermarket reader is 11 – yes, 11 – words and terms such as leverage, going forward, ring fence, sanitise, strategic have no place in any written form between us let alone pushed into the world.

If the shift from email to tweets is true then why waste our 140 character space on those words... we should perhaps ask our grannies to write it for us.

why a 'professional' isn't something we should aspire to be

Spent a great deal of my time with people this week who describe themselves as 'professional'. This is either in the literature of the business, websites or in their language.

I hate the word.

It doesn't mean anything.

A guy came round my house once to fit the carpets. He had 'professional' on the side of the van and did shit job.
My solicitor describes their service as professional - they are constantly sending me the wrong paper work or missing the details I need right now.
The 'friendly and professional' service I was promised by my ISP wasn't either.
The trust fund I rang up earlier in the week who described their service as 'professional' couldn't help me on the phone as the password I read out from the letter THEY SENT ME wasn't on their system and it was up to me to write in to them and explain why...!

I don’t want to be a professional it means doing all I can to follow procedure, work to rule, follow the process, sit on the fence, avoid confrontation, hold back opinion, apologise for things out of my control or hold back in point of view.

Professionals don’t stand for anything.
It’s a brand that’s lost its meaning and impact.
It’s unimaginative, boring, dull, safe, compliant, stale and chaste.

For me it’s a hygiene factor. It’s like advertising a gas oven as safe.  I expect it to be safe without question in the same way I expect a car to have wheels and a house a front door.  Some things go without mention.

Being ‘professional’ isn’t something that attracts me or will catch my eye.

Go bang a desk.
Go have a point of view.
Go love someone.
Do something!

But don’t be a professional.

small signs make matters better or worse

Whilst out in the week I bought lunch.
Millions of people do that every single day across thousands of cities in hundreds of thousands of outlets worldwide. There is product, staff, customers, tills and maybe even decent service.

There is also the occassional insight into the way some of those high street chains operate.

On the floor of GREGGS the bakers (I know - dirty boy) I saw a sign that had perhaps fallen off the staff side of the till. I can only assume because of the grease build up. It said 'Dont forget to ask the customer if they'd like a drink with that!'.

This tells me a great deal about the mindset of Greggs and the way it develops it's staff.  Taking them out of the workplace and into their own homes, I'm sure each and everyone of them would offer me a drink with anything I ate in their company so why when it's their job and front of mind in each customer interaction would they forget to ask? If the queue at the tills wasn't long enough then I'm sure I could rely on my own thirst to tell me whether I needed quenching.

Perhaps this sign had been taken off to allow another asking for payment to be fitted in it's place.

Touch points like this are brand building opportunities, they count toward the thousand actions that make up the unique picture of something or someone in my mind. It's just a shame any personality at GREGGS the bakers is knocked out of its staff with signs like this...

so what to do?

Give people an idea of how customers should feel, nothing more.
Dont tell your staff what to do, but how to be.
Dont put up signs as they fall on the floor and when you have to communicate to your staff or customers, think personality...

Fear (only exists in your head)

have been involved in two high profile projects recently where two or three people have to make decisions on material that will broadcast to many thousands of people.  There is obviously a lot at stake.  Reputation, brand, engagemnet, senior reaction, stakeholder (hate that word) reaction, shareholder value and so on.

This is all factual and unavoidable.  It's impossible to so a 'something' in the business context with out an  reaction from the business as that 'something' happens.  It would appear the laws of physics seem to translate into human behaviour however.  Why is the 'something' always going to be met with an equal and opposite reaction?  In other words, why do people who make decisions often (but not always) default to the "if it could offend, it will"?  As a result, all the creative language, metaphor, expression and re-expression, freedom and anti message is swiped away and the final idea is... well... beige.  Boring. unimpactful. bland.

Everything appears like the walls of a new home.

It's almost as if people are rewarded for NOT upsetting people and avoiding failure, rather than praised and rewarded for thinking differently and creating the un-expected. As a result, the marketeers, the internal comms professionals and the brand ambassadors all go back to the Monday meeting with the same challenge they had at the start of the project.  Only this time they've the experience of executing a thoroughly unoffsensive campaingn.

Maybe fear is just in our head.  I've never known anyone get the sack for doing their job.  I have heard of people get the sack for shagging someone on the photocopier after hours, but not for trying things differently.

Fear isn't part of the project.  It doesn't arrive in a box. it is though energetic. It is passed on from one person to another and it grows when more people are born into the idea of failing.

I'd ask we all suspend the biological default.  There are no more tigers at the mouth of the cave so it's okay to step outside.

Only the good die young.
Only the safe projects get forgotten.

xa

why not insult your consumer in the instruction manual.

I bought a window mount for the sat nav in the car.  It's a plastic sucker thingy with an arm that extends from the windscreen.  It takes about 30 seconds to assemble the parts, clip on and enjoy the Sunday drive.  The USER MANUAL for this device has 8 languages. 8! each chapter identical to the next in illustration spans 10 pages and features handy comments like 'position cradle to your linking' and 'when finished with the device, remove it'.  OHMYGOD! we're driving a car and despite the occasional idiot on the road, most of us have the skill and control to manage a motor vehicle.  This isn't for the challenged. Yet the folk at Belkin (maybe under the instruction of a HR and Health and Safety Legal quango dept) have decided to insult the intelligence of their consumers with the instruction manual.  These guys aren't alone.  I had a friends who told me once his kettle came with a manual that read CAUTION: THIS DEVICE GETS VERY HOT.  Oh and there was me thinking a kettle is for keeping fish in. This is an example of poor design - shit design in fact.  The product answers a simple request from the consumer. They'll be savvy enough to work out from the box whether the product will suit their needs, yet the packaging, advice and 2 year warrenty simply distract from the very thing that will bring satisfaction.  Consumers want to 'get jobs done'. in doing so life becomes faster or easier, happier or richer. They'll thank you for it in repeat purchase. Dont insult your consumer for buying your product and dont assume they wont know how to use it. have your pressed EVERY button on your t.v. remote? There is no need to correct consumer behaviour past the point of sale. If they're doing it 'wrong' its good enough for you and that makes a 'right'.

another missed opportunity, another lack of effort...?

Spent half my week in a hotel. A great deal of my life is spent in hotels so I get to appreciate good ones and spot where others could do even better.  One of the first things that can tell me a great deal about the hotel, the brand and it's people is of course the environment. A little obvious dont you think? have a look at this little gem however!

So here is a beautiful old Red Call box (designed by Giles Gilber Scott who I think penned Battersea Power Station..). Anyway, hidden within this great British design icon wasn't further aesthetic delight but a copy of the menu for the hotel restaurant (a mere 100 yards away).

What glorious dissapointment.

Far from the menu appearing delicious, it looked weathered and tired, the paper faded from the sunlight and the elements. The hotel poster on the wall had also gone away with the wind and the cutlery looked like a set of abandoned tools rather than a fine arrangement of polished steel enticing the prospective diner to take seat.  All that was missing from this sorry ensamble of clutter was the original working phone from which I could make an escape call and a dominoes pizza.

For me this whole thing said more about the hotel and it's relationship with creative thinking than anything else. Why have it? seems someone somewhere went ooh that's a cool thing, an old fashioned letter box, we can put it in the hotel grounds and add character and charm. This will differentiate ourselves from all the other hotels.  Perhaps the brainstorm ended there or the first idea that came out won - let's put a menu in it.

I just can't imagine it appearing on the minutes of the DeVere or a matter arising - what to do with the Red Phone box...

.. if it were a solution to advertsie the restaurant, then like most projects, there wasn't enough time spent on the brief.  The restaurant was the only choice available in the entire complex.

maybe I've got it wrong though.
Perhaps it's an outdoor table and the Red Phone Box is simply a cover used to keep it dry in the rain.

ax