My advertising strategy killed Dr. Seuss

As a newly-minted account executive at Leo Burnett, in a meeting with our clients at Keebler, my copy strategy presentation for Quangles multigrain chips was built around the well-known Dr. Seuss story, Green Eggs and Ham.  

The killer visual

This approach made sense at the time, because consumer research indicated that heavy snackers wouldn't love the idea of a multigrain chip. So we likened the challenge to Sam I Am convincing his target audience to eat Green Eggs and Ham.

Rather than write umpteen Power Point slides, most of my presentation was a dramatic reading of two or three passages from the book, and a single presentation board featuring the story's climactic moment. We passed around copies of the brief when I was done.

My boss at the time, Jeff Hiller, encouraged this approach and had me rehearse it a few times to maximize the effect. And what an effect it had.

We sold the strategy.

Then the next day, Dr. Seuss died.

Later that week, the client jokingly asked me not to feature him in future presentations.

I'm not sure if my advertising strategy killed Dr. Seuss, or if he's rolling in his grave this week, but he left a lasting legacy. Regardless of how you feel about Dr. Seuss Enterprises pulling six of his books, remember that his many other works - including Green Eggs and Ham - still have incredible value.

Book Review: If Then by Jill Lepore

If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

By Jill Lepore

Liveright Publishing, 432 pages

The guys who invented predictive analytics never saw failure coming.

That’s the upshot of Jill Lepore’s latest book, If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future. 

Ostensibly, it’s the story of Simulmatics, founded in 1959 on the idea that with enough data collected in one place, everything and everyone would become predictable. The name is an attempted portmanteau combining the words “simulation” and “automatic.” You’ve probably never heard of Simulmatics because it folded in 1970, but during its short history it played a role in electing John F. Kennedy, mismanaging the Vietnam War, seeking answers to 1960s social upheaval, and speeding the presence of mainframe computers at advertising agencies.

If Then: Book Summary

The founder of Simulmatics was Ed Greenfield, a midcentury ad man, but not like Don Draper. Lepore delightfully introduces him: “He was like a ten-million-volt Looney Tunes electric magnet, a giant red-handled iron U that pulled everyone toward him.” His personality, his ability to influence others, was what propelled him. As evidence, the story includes a lot of bold-faced names, especially from Democratic Party politics, which is what Greenfield cared about most.

Indeed, he built an impressive team. Lepore introduces the other main players early, and efficiently. Harold Laswell, the influential communications theorist. Eugene Burdick, novelist and self-styled adventurer. Alex Bernstein, mathematician and computer programming pioneer. Ithiel de Sola Pool, a social scientist specializing in technology. Bill McPhee, a FORTRAN programmer – and this is such an emblematic aspect of the story – who wrote “the core intellectual property” of Simulmatics while he was committed to Bellevue. Yes, a mental hospital.

Punchcards
on parade

Like any startup, the group had big plans. They bragged they had invented “the A-bomb of the social sciences.” They called it a “People Machine” that could predict the outcomes of advertising campaigns and government policy initiatives. Sadly, they couldn’t get out of their own way. They overplayed their true role in JFK’s winning presidential campaign of 1960. They overpromised how they could help the New York Times analyze the 1962 midterm elections in real time. They overestimated, tragically, how Western-style social science techniques could understand Vietnamese culture. They oversold their value to blue chip brands but opened the door to a legion of market research providers still selling soap today.

One gap in the story: What projects did they actually finish? The only projects fully described were the political ones, and there was only fleeting mention of having sold studies to various corporations, like Bristol Laboratories, Philip Morris, P&G, and some others. Simulmatics was always starved for data, so most of the projects had little effect. Still, it would have been interesting to read more about those episodes.

Eventually Simulmatics folded, although some of its work survived in projects undertaken by individual team members, thus laying the groundwork for today’s data-driven marketing. They accomplished just enough to push things forward, but not enough to get pinned with credit or blame for what we have now. Oddly, Simulmatics’ most accurate predictions came not from data but from the very human insights of Ithiel de Sola Pool. He envisioned with eerie accuracy the role of technology in our lives today: the interconnectedness of the World Wide Web, the ubiquity of social media, and the rise of “mobile computers,” today’s smartphones.

Why Simulmatics matters now

Lepore’s book is thoroughly researched and well-written. It’s a solid history, which is why Simulmatics matters: because we learn from history. Here’s what I took away:

• No data. It shouldn’t have been surprising, but was nevertheless shocking, how Simulmatics never seemed to have data that were complete or accurate. In an almost poignant moment, Lepore writes, “Pool raised the question that Simulmatics would never really answer: ‘What is the data we would need for this model?’” Ad agencies, which had data, filled the gap, bringing in their own IBM mainframes and offering the services to clients directly. Today we have plenty of data, but we still have to answer the question: Which data do we need to solve this problem?

• No humility. The Vietnam phase of the book is a troubling read. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in 1962: “Every quantitative measurement we have shows we are winning the war.” That might have been all too true; Lepore points out that military progress was measured by “the number of insurgents killed,” with the implication that indiscriminate killing ran up the numbers. Humility is a function of introspection. Are we thinking things through? Are we seeing the big picture? Are tracking the right metrics? These questions are relevant to the work we do today.

• No humanity. Lepore points out that computers can simulate a flight because physical laws like F=ma are constant. “But the computer simulation of human behavior … is much more difficult. Behavior is not a law.” If, as some Artificial Intelligence experts say, the brain is just a very sophisticated machine, then eventually we will create a machine that can think like a human brain. But there is a (so far) unquantified human element that no series of If-Then scenarios in FORTRAN, C++ or Python could ever predict.

Simulmatics failed where other succeeded. There’s still lots of room for modern failure, which is why these lessons from the past are important.

Automatic Advertising: We Take Spotomate for a Test Drive

Software can make your 30-second TV commercial.

You knew this would happen.  Not just because technology makes the software possible, but because newly-available media makes it necessary.

There's the first screen (TV), second screen (computer), third screen (mobile), fourth screen (digital signage) and all of them are hungry for content -- and advertising.

Technology has been busy democratizing the science of advertising.  Small business is able to do SEO, SEM and Social Media without an agency, as did my friend the garage door expert.  So why not video advertising creative?

Along comes Spotomate, which via its partner Shakr, offers a service allowing small- and medium-sized businesses to make "your own agency-quality video advertising spots".  They're targeting operators of digital signage networks (see industry coverage here and here), but I decided to experiment with it myself during a free trial open until Thursday.

Voilà… Ad Majorem's First Ads

How it works:  You pick one of their pre-set templates, it runs you through the places where you must write copy or provide a visual asset, and automatically sequences these with graphics and a music bed.  So here were two attempts using our masthead copy and experimenting with different visuals.

Here's What I Thought About Spotomate

Agencies, for the most part, shouldn't worry.  True, I did once have a colleague who believed in "campaign construction", i.e., every 30-second TV commercial for a brand had to have the same sequence of scenes, but most big advertisers want customized treatment.

Small- and Medium-sized businesses will love Spotomate, though.  In fact the templates may help inexperienced advertisers to organize their thoughts and force decisions as to what should or shouldn't go in the ad.

In other words, one still needs a smart brief, and I'm not sure that will ever be automatic.

What do you think of Spotomate?  What did you think of my, uh, "ads"?  Go ahead, hit me with your best shot in the comments section below.

Book Review: Creativity, Inc.

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

By Ed Catmull

Random House, 340 pages

I hate business books because they are usually very long memos that could have been written in 14 pages.  You suspect they started as memos or even power point slides.

I love books that tell good stories.  Creativity, Inc., by Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull, tells a good story and in the process teaches us a lot about how to tell a good story.

Not Just a Story about Toys

Ed Catmull was a kid with a dream, to produce animated movies using computer technology.  He wanted to work at Walt Disney.  They turned him down at first, but he kept on following his passions. 

Catmull’s path led through some interesting places and people.  He studied computer technology at University of Utah, one of the four original institutions on ARPANET, the precursor to what we now know as the Internet.  His early, groundbreaking computer animation work led to a job offer from George Lucas.  While at Lucasfilm, Catmull hired Pixar’s other co-founder, the animator John Lasseter, and what they built was spun off to Steve Jobs in 1985.  The new company’s main business was selling the Pixar Image Computer.  They were in the hardware business. 

As we all know, they eventually joined forces with Disney and became the animation studio that produced Toy Story and many hit films since.  Like those films, the book tells compelling stories.  Inner-circle, name-dropping – jaw dropping – stories of how these hit films made it through the creative process and the business process. 

And as this story unfolds, you see Catmull evolve from a technologist to the head of one of the most creative organizations ever built.  Every chapter illustrates a Pixar mantra, “Story Is King.”

Trust the Process.  Not!

Pixar had another mantra, “Trust the Process”, which meant Pixar’s process, very different from the corporate one at most Hollywood studios:  “Pixar was a place that gave artists running room, that gave directors control, that trusted its people to solve problems.”  To me, this sounded more like “Trust the Culture”, not “Trust the Process”, but it seemed to work for Pixar.

Indeed, it served them well making Toy Story, but not so well when simultaneously working on A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2.  They had grown.  Suddenly more people were involved and Catmull and Lasseter were pulled in different directions.  The mantra lost meaning; it “morphed into ‘Assume that the Process Will Fix Things for Us’.”  Unfortunately, Toy Story 2 lost meaning, too, and they realized they had to rewrite it just nine months before theatrical release.

What did they learn from that experience?  The process only works if the people are working well together, and while that was Pixar’s biggest superpower, they weren’t using it at this critical, early stage of their maturation as a company.  They got back on track by establishing a “Braintrust” that regularly reviewed how a story – a film – was coming together.  They didn’t go back to Process so much as they went back to Culture.

They also learned that words can be empty.  “People glom onto words and stories that are often just stand-ins for real action and meaning,” he writes.  Tellingly, he uses this occasion to criticize our industry:  “Advertisers look for words that imply a product’s value and use that as a substitute for value itself.”  Ouch.

So is process good or bad?  When we think of “process” in Ad Land, it’s often a linear, stage-driven timeline, which isn’t how creativity really works.  You need a process, of course, because the alternative is chaos, but how to let it roll?  The Toy Story 2 experience taught them how to strike a balance by returning to their natural strength in collaboration.  It makes sense to “trust people to solve problems” when they’re doing it in a group, not in separate silos.

Three Lessons Advertising, Inc. Can Learn from Creativity, Inc.

Although this book can teach a few things to any creative enterprise, here are three lessons for Ad Land.

• Story trumps Technology.  Catmull’s childhood dream wasn’t to bring new technology to animation; it was to make animated movies using technology.  Everything he invented was in service of telling the story.  His biggest satisfaction in the success of Toy Story was how audiences and critics loved the story so much they barely mentioned the use of computers to tell it. 
• Feedback diagnoses, not prescribes.  You’ll appreciate the many vignettes of Pixar’s “Braintrust” meetings to discuss films in development.  They built such a strong culture of mutual respect and focus on the work that every session was about what to address – not how to address it.  (In the last chapter, “Notes Day”, we see how this culture improved the company as a whole.)  In contrast, they discovered that Disney’s Michael Eisner didn’t even discuss; he just issued lists of “mandatory notes”.
• People create Ideas.  This sounds obvious but Catmull points out that many leaders confuse the need for Great Ideas with the need for Great People.  He concludes:  “Getting the team right is the necessary precursor to getting the ideas right.”  (This reminded me of the only business book I ever liked, Good to Great, which made exactly the same point in its first chapter.)

Which brings us to Steve Jobs, the deus ex machina in this story.  Jobs was smart enough not to push his way into scripts, storyboards and edits, though he certainly had that right.  He invested heavily in Pixar – and he believed in it and he stayed loyal to it.  Catmull mentions Steve when he’s relevant to the story, and that was often enough that I planned to mention it in this review.  Then I got to the end of the book, and saw Afterword: The Steve We Knew.  It’s a beautiful tribute to Jobs and an appraisal of his impact on Pixar.

Read this book, people.  At minimum it’s a good story you won’t want to put down.  But it also teaches us a lot about how advertising people can work together and tell a good story.

Results Also Matter in Startup Land

Decades ago the Ad Land pioneer Rosser Reeves asked, “What do you want from me?  Fine writing?  Or do you want to see the sales curve start moving up?”  We may argue, half a century later, as to how widely Ad Land holds that sentiment.  Startup Land depends on it – or at least depends on the sales curve rising fast enough to beat the burn rate.  

Or does it?

Years ago, Eric Schmidt described Google's business strategy as “URL” -- Ubiquity first, Revenue Later.  That worked for Google, but many venture capitalists who invest in technology seem to take it literally.  There is a lot of money poured into companies that may still be in the red for years, like Amazon, Pinterest and many others.

Dollars and Cents

Sadly, most people in Ad Land are insulated from business results until the moment when agency layoffs are unavoidable.  Agencies have been slow to embrace results and accountability.  One pundit says clients are complicit.

Last of a series

Because Startup Land is for the most part small and nimble, it’s impossible to be insulated from business results.  Everything is very out in the open.  If your company hasn’t gone public, you’re still accountable to your investors, whose money you’re spending to grow the business.  Our investors hold us accountable, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  

Traveling in these circles, however, I am struck by how few investors really do their homework on the day-to-day operations of the companies they invest in.  Some are far more interested in financial instruments – credit facilities, warrants and the like – than in what makes the sales curve go up.  Many investors love seeing stock prices rise on the possibility of future results.  (Today's news suggests that caution is order.)

Kiss a Lot of Frogs

There’s an old saying, repeated often in Startup Land, that you have to kiss a lot of frogs before getting to the prince.  It applies both to raising capital (which we recently did) and raising the sales curve (which we are always doing).  As I’ve mentioned a couple of times in this series, it’s easy to get impatient.

Impatience may be a virtue, but don’t lose focus.  Whether you’re in Ad Land or Startup Land, focus on delivering results, not just the promise of them.  It's the only way to create real value.

In Startup Land, Management Really Is Nimble

Maybe it’s just because startup companies are small by definition, but management really is nimble.  In our company, “management” is three people:  the CEO, the CTO and the CMO.

I’m still not sure if we’re nimble because we can be (there are just three of us) or if we have to be (market forces move so quickly these days).  Maybe a little bit of both.  I do know that big companies want to be nimble.  When Google founder Larry Page took over as CEO, he said he wanted “the nimbleness and soul and passion and speed of a startup.”

Interestingly, that quote lists four characteristics that form a sine qua non daisy chain of Startup Land merit badges.  You can’t have any of these without the others.  In other words, you’re not nimble if you don’t have soul or you lack passion or speed.

Dance, Startup Boy, Dance!

Happily, things in Startup Land move much faster than things at a big holding company in Ad Land.  When we took over our little company, it was clear we had to put costs in line with revenue, modify the business model and clean up the code.

Fourth of a series

Coming from Ad Land, “costs in line with revenue” is usually a synonym for “employee layoffs” but that wasn’t the case here.  As in many startups, the company was just burning through too much investor cash on things that didn’t really drive the business.  You see those things quickly when there’s no bureaucracy hiding them.

We also very decisively focused the company’s business model.  We’re winding down a legacy business in managing proprietary hardware – call it “owned media” – for institutional advertisers.  We stopped licensing software to clients, which yielded very little revenue and more than a few operational issues.

We inherited an excellent software platform, but like any such platform it needed regular updating.  The CTO started a project, working closely with Marketing, to release new versions every four to six weeks.  This allowed us to prioritize what we needed and get it to market faster, rather than waiting for One Big Release that might come months later.

Some things just can’t get done right away.  You only have so much time and talent available.  For example, we are only just now revising the website.  But we made that decision ourselves versus being held hostage to a corporate process.

Impatience Can Be a Virtue

In the first post of this series we mentioned that Startup Land requires patience, and that’s still true.  Impatience, however, drives nimbleness.  You want to make things happen quickly, so you do. 

To resolve this apparent paradox:  Be impatient with what you can control, and patient with what you can’t.  Which leads to our next post.

Next:  Results Also Matter in Startup Land