A POV on TOV

Pretty much every brand has a Tone Of Voice document of some sort these days. Done well, they can be quite useful. In my experience, they are rarely done well. And every single one of them has the same maddening ‘WE ARE...BUT NOT...’ slide. This slide lays out a series of adjectives that describe the brand personality, along with a series of related adjectives that do not. I’ll give you an example that - I swear to God - has been in every TOV doc I’ve ever read:

WE ARE Confident BUT NOT Arrogant

Thank goodness for this clarification - I was about to plonk down at my keyboard and bang out a 200-word eDM that was absolutely dripping with hubris and conceit. Forgive my sarcasm, but surely it’s obvious that no brand would ever identify as arrogant - so the linguistic guardrail you have given me is useless. Often, the adjective in column B is just the excessive form of the adjective in column A. The above example could be rephrased as follows: WE ARE Confident BUT NOT Too Confident. When you phrase it like that the full banality of the statement is laid bare. Obviously no brand wants to be Too anything! So if your statement fits that format, consider rewriting it, or binning it.

But the crimes aren’t just in column B. The above example also errs in column A - ‘Confident’. Point me to a brand anywhere in the world that wouldn’t say this describes them. You would have a hard time doing it. Confident is like Authentic, Optimistic, Positive. These traits are in every single brand document. So how can it possibly be helpful to include them in this one as well? It just wouldn’t make sense for a brand to be Meek, Fake, Pessimistic or Negative. So attaching to their antonyms is pointless. It is like a band describing their music as Tuneful, Melodious, Rhythmic. 

So, a fairly simple test to apply: when describing what your brand is, try to use words that some brands wouldn’t. When describing what you brand isn’t, try to use words that some brands would.

If you adhere to those two rules, your tone of voice document is going to be clarifying and useful to a copywriter.

But you know what else is an amazing TOV document? An ad! I would argue that sending over a few print headlines or social posts, that the marketing team agrees are bang-on tone - that is as good as any TOV document.

Ideas are like batsmen

I’m sure every creative has different theories about the order in which to present ideas to their boss/creative partner/suits. Personally, my strategy is similar to that of a test cricket batting order. Your openers are not your best ideas. They are good, solid, they play a straight bat/clearly answer the brief but they are not super exciting. Once those first two have taken the shine off the ball/convinced my colleagues that I’m not an idiot, then I present my best idea. In cricket it’s known as First Drop - a spot occupied by Waugh, Ponting, Smith. Let’s face it, sometimes that idea is more of a Rob Quiney, Shane Watson or Shaun Marsh - but it’s my best shot at running up a decent total. My fave is generally followed by another one I really rate, although not quite as much. After that comes an Adam Gilchrist idea. Something non-traditional that absolutely swings for the fences. Client will never buy it but the ambition is impressive. Not long after that comes a Warney or a Mitchell Johnson - it’s no Gilchrist but who knows, could chip in with a handy cameo? Rounding out the side are a couple of Glenn McGraths - valid inclusions but that’s really all you can say about these last ideas. Occasionally they top-edge one over the keeper’s head to the boundary, but generally, they are just making up the numbers. Hopefully old Quiney is down the other end, hitting them cleanly.

So that’s my approach when it comes to presenting work internally. When you go to client, there are much fewer ideas involved so the strategy changes a bit. Anyway, if anyone has their own techniques, I’d love to hear them.

Shit, haven't blogged in a while

Got to be more disciplined. I’m keen to have one part of the site that isn’t static. So many portfolio sites are just like a museum. The problem is when I sit down to write a blog it starts with a simple thought or observation...but then as I unpack it, it always seems to morph into a career-limiting rant about some former client/colleague/brand. So I have all these screeds piled up as drafts...but nothing on the actual blog. From now on I’m going to try and blog more but have them be short and sharp - just in and out with a quick take and minimal slander. The blog gets about 1 hit per month, and dammit, I’m going to make sure that person gets them some fresh-ass content.

BANNED INSIGHTS

Spotted this on LinkedIn and it was too good not to share. I think I have worked to just about all of these.

MARKET BETTER

I’ve been watching a bit of the Australian Open tennis, with the ever-present on-court signage of the major sponsors: KIA, a Chinese brand called 1573 (I looked it up, they make a bottle of liquor that - at 52% alcohol - will not help your crosscourt backhand), and Emirates. Neatly placed below the Emirates logo is their bland - excuse me - brand platform line: Fly Better.

As positionings go, they don’t come any more generic than that. It makes me laugh, but also wince, to imagine the wringer the agency went through in arriving at that. And not because it was hard to come up with! I’d be willing to wager that they came up with hundreds of lines before this one. Months of strategy went into it. Late nights, weekends. The agency would have put forward round after round of lines that were a little more ‘focused’ and ‘ownable’…but they ended up with something about as pointy as an A380.

The client probably frothed over the incredible flexibility of it. It can speak to any proof point! The CEO will love it! You can put it on a napkin, and it works! And I suppose it does ‘work’…but how hard?! I would argue it’s an absolute bludger.

Went it was finally sold in, I imagine the agency high-fives after the meeting were a little limp. A platform is finally sold in, but now you’ve got to deliver brand work to a slogan that - in an attempt to do everything -doesn’t do anything. You could be forgiven for forgoing a high-five, and opting for a generous glass of 1573.

Judging New York Festival (from Beaconsfield)

I’m going to be a judge for the New York Festival Advertising Awards in 2020. I’m on the ‘Grand Jury’ - sounds impressive, doesn’t it? In reality, it’s just the online jury. There will be no junket to NYC, I’ll just be watching a lot of case studies online. I explained this to a mate yesterday, an engineer. His take: “They should call it something more accurate, like ‘Online Jury’”. I laughed and tried to explain that the preening peacocks of my industry would not be suitably fluffed and flattered by a name like that, and wouldn’t rush to be a part of it or add it to their resume. FWIW, I would do it regardless of the name - just because I’ve never judged an international show before and I think it will be interesting. I would do it, but I probably wouldn’t be posting about it if it were called the Online Jury. It’s funny the difference a word can make. It can make peacocks of us all.

Siren Awards

In the controversy that surrounded the Sportsbet ‘Foolproof’ film campaign, the radio component didn’t get a lot of attention. But they were some nice spots, co-written with Ben Clare from Emotive. So I was stoked to see them pick up Best Campaign in Round 3 of the Siren Awards. I think we’re a long shot to win the trip to Cannes but who knows. Winner of the Best Single Ad was a bloke from Adelaide who looks like Ian Botham

http://www.sirenawards.com.au/current-round-winners

IKEA 'Silence the critics'

Saw this cracking Xmas spot from IKEA UK yesterday. It’s a complete ad - the insight around ‘home shame’ is spot on (and home shame is a shared experience, so there’s a good chance you will share this with your wife, flatmate etc). The writing is razor sharp. The craft of the direction, the post, the music - all top notch.

It’s the kind of script a lot of clients would reject, saying something like ‘We feel this concept focuses too much on the negative. The positive and the product only appears at the very end of the script. Can we leverage the ‘home shame’ insight in a more positive way?’ There is a whole blog post to be written about that persistent bit of feedback, I will save that for another day. The main thing is the client did buy the script, they embraced a musical genre that you rarely see in advertising, they paid top dollar for Tom Kuntz…and I think all of those decisions paid off handsomely. Don’t you?

YEAR ONE

I put together a reel of the campaigns I’ve worked on in the first year of the AMOK experiment. It’s certainly a lot more than I thought I would get out. There’s probably too much comedy - and there are definitely too many dick jokes - but overall I’m really proud of it. I guess the only thing that’s disappointing is how film-heavy it is. Over the years, a lot of the ideas I’ve been most proud of have been the big non-traditional ‘acts’ that I’ve developed on various briefs. That’s the kind of work I love, but it so rarely gets made. Anyway, all one can do is keep trying! Here’s to the next 12 months.

AMOK BLOG

As someone who works from home, most of my venting is to my wife and toddler, both of whom are sick of it. So instead I plan to use this blog as a home for my crusty musings, humblebrags and general career-limiting rants.