Comments on: Does IBM have elves? Do ads bleed meaning? (muddles in the ad biz model)

By: Grant McCracken

Grant McCracken — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:47:11 +0000

Johnson, This is a rare fellowship, those who pour over ads as if they were crucial texts. All we need is a secret handshake. And a tie. And a clubhouse. And a latin motto. And were there. Thx, Grant

By: Vaughn

Vaughn — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:29:45 +0000

I don’t a whole lot of marketing or advertising based deep insight to shed on this topic, I simply found this post after searching the internet to see if I was the only person who seemed to notice “Hey, the Castrol Guy is an IBM Lab Doctor too?”

All I can really scrounge up to say on this topic is that I feel that proper timing has been missed. I have no problem with accepting an actor in multiple roles, be it Movies, Television, and/or even Commercials. But for me, I’ve never had to accept two versions of an identical person at the same time. I go back to the Brad Pitt “Benjamin Button” comment by Arvind. I don’t have trouble separating the characters but I’m also not forced to. In this case I think a similar Hollywood situation would be going to the Cinema and having to choose which of the two Brad Pitt movies you wanted to see, or better yet, buying tickets to a double feature with the Brad as the headline actor in both. Sure, actors carry a certain persona with them from gig to gig, but in the case of the Castrol IBMer Mr. Bjorn Johnson, its the terrible parallel timing that bothers me most.

I also want to say quick that I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this with someone, its so difficult to find people with the same habit for over-analyzing commercials .

By: Grant McCracken

Grant McCracken — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:22:27 +0000

Arvind, but I think actors do build lets call them continuities for themselves. And not just the bad ones, though the bad ones, the Steven Segals, really make themselves prisoners. Isnt this why we have these painful exercises when an actors decides to play against type and take a role that lets them stretch. And everyone goes, What? There are limits within which most actors can play because otherwise they take meanings with them as they go from roll to roll, and this means there are some places they cannot go, not plausibly anyone. Thanks for a great question. Best, Grant

By: Arvind Venkataramani

Arvind Venkataramani — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:14:58 +0000

the question to ponder, though, is why that is not a problem for, say, hollywood actors. when you see brad pitt in ‘benjamin button’, does he reek of ‘Snatch’? how is it that a 30-second ad can be accused of bleeding meaning when we comfortably accept 2 hour long character transformations? is there a continuum from bleedable to agnostic?

By: Dr. Tom Guarriello

Dr. Tom Guarriello — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:07:11 +0000

Nice one, Grant. Reading this I was reminded of a voice over guy from the 80s-90s. The guy did tons of ads. There was something unique in his enunciation, something almost palpable about his speech pattern, meter, sonorousness (sonority?) that jumped out at me every time. I think he must have sold a bazillion products of all kinds. Hell, he reeked credibility. I wish I knew his name. Anyway, he was a great example of the meaning-bleed you’ve written about here.

Oh, and great to come across Mark here. He’s always been one of my favs. Been too long.

By: mark brady

mark brady — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:05:12 +0000

Just responding to the catalyst, my man. Love your good riffs!

By: Grant McCracken

Grant McCracken — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:41:51 +0000

Mark, dude! fantastic! Another case of a comment surpassing the post it’s a
comment on. So it really is a comment (of another kind.) Thanks! Grant

By: Grant McCracken

Grant McCracken — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:33:45 +0000

Jim, great example, thanks! I wonder what Kraft then did with him? Hard to
protect this budget line from the sharp pencils who say, “making meanings?
what are these meanings of which you speak?” Best, Grant

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:22:45 +0000

When Nabob coffee was in the process of stealing massive market share from Kraft in Canada, they had a spokesperson who was paid an annual fee. He was allowed to do no other commercials, they were very careful to protect all the meaning he stored.

If memory serves me correctly, they grew from a 2 share to a 16 share, when Kraft finally gave up and bought them out.

By: mark brady

mark brady — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:15:27 +0000

Thought, and emotion, provoking. I must say my fave MadMen is the Kodak Carousel, with Draper’s riffed pitch capturing the essence of what many products really are: totems. And now I wanna get Levy’s book, so thanks for that. I should blog this, but I’m here so… Grant, my job used to often entail taking what guys like you do and putting an accessible public face and personality to it. Account svc led to acct planning evolved to ethnography. And, for my money, it was a betterment along the way. Now, I make the occasional ad but spend lots of time trying to pry open the minds of decision-makers to have them see that their products are vessels that convey or turf-up emotions (in their employees as well as consumers) much like Draper showed to those Kodak wonks in that darkened conference room. In a world surplus with “facts” it is feeling that we crave and it’s almost a sacred trust, or should be, for those with the tuning fork to divine and megaphone to act on this truth. Hugh MacLeod says the market for something to believe in is infinite; I use a table of elements to make my meta point; you plumb the depths of identity and commerce as having meaning beyond the material good. Do ads bleed meaning? When any trust is misused–an empathic story, like your IBMer example–there will be blood.

But we’re way beyond the caution tape here, and I find your Stephanopolous example perfect for this: When he switched to ABC news back in ’95 or thereabouts, very few blinked. He traded his persona as insider and began a parade of fungibility and confusion that we witness today–Hank Paulson? Geithner? Tony (RIP) Snow? Joe Scarborough?–who’s really in, or out for good, and what team are they really on, and whose side are they speaking for now?

Maybe my point is unclear with all the exposition: The last 50 years have seen some remarkable changes since Rosser Reeves and “Don Draper”, and the last 30 have seen some remarkable recalibrations of terms like the buck stops here and the captain goes down with the ship. Those latter terms, concepts really, have been with us since communal fire, yeah? It’s tempting to believe that the “IBM white shirt” is a fine metaphor for armor and, yet, a poor replacement for the code that used to go with wearing that mettle. As we purveyors of message have learned the secrets of fire, we’re treating it with less and less respect. More (narrow) self-knowledge, less and less discipline. The if-it-feels-good-do-it hippies of the 60s who followed draper didn’t stay in Marin, they became CEOs.