Many moons ago I found myself walking down a narrow, crowded street in Brussels. Brussels is a vast city full of mixed cultures stemming from the Dutch, Belgian and, of course, the French. We all know what they say about the French.

I was a youngster at the time, about 19 years-old, fresh out of my first year at the University of Minnesota. At the time, I was an aspiring broadcast-journalist. I wanted to absorb all of the diverse culture I would encounter in my voyage across the pond. My home in Europe was the one and only - the home of Anne Frank, a never-ending chain of canals, windmills, tulips, red lights and those ridiculously funny looking shoes. Yes, oh yes, Amsterdam.

Contrary to popular belief, Amsterdam has much more to offer than just coffee shops, women, thick dark beer and euthanasia. But, only in Brussels do you see the Dutch and French butting heads and challenging each other to see who can be the most inappropriate. Only in Brussels would I find the most outrageous form of advertising. In my voyage, it became clear that Western Europeans are not afraid to show naked bodies and use profanities and drugs. There is nothing but honesty – sugar coating is absent and unheard of.

I peered up at a brightly lit advertisement in a store window. I did not take a double take, not a triple take, but a quadruple take. That’s right. Had I sat at that coffee shop too long? Because I swear that sign says… (insert your favorite curse phrase consisting of f!%$ing h$ll).

That was the single most eye-catching advertisement I had ever seen! How many times do you look at a banner ad four times? How many billboards have made your jaw drop?

At the time, I had no clue that three years later I would be working for a digital media/advertising agency. Today I look back at this moment and consider how censorship impacts advertising and society on various levels throughout different countries.

In the U.S., we would never use profanities to attract professional attention because we are a society driven by political correctness. It is a commonality throughout the U.S. that the media must avoid offending any person on any level. Are people really offended or harmed by the use of profanities and nudity or is the nation, as a whole, a little too sensitive? Consequently, does this sensitivity hinder or help society? It is as if through this “principle” of political correctness we create our own version of a naïve bubble-cushioned reality.

It is essential to point out that this meticulous censorship does not only impact advertising strategies, but also journalism. For example, I once attended a lecture given by a photographer for a well-known Minneapolis-based newspaper. He was in Iraq when an Iraqi family got blown up in a land mine. One small boy survived with critical limb injuries. The boy’s legs were gone. There was nothing but blood and tears. This was all captured by the photographer. The photographer was determined to have these photos in full color on the front page of the newspaper. But, they were not. Instead, the photos were cropped, faded to black and white and put on page 7.

Media, specifically journalism, is supposed to be society’s gatekeeper. News organizations are supposed to be bi-partisans reporting the truth and facts. But, how can this happen if our culture is so sensitive to the brutality that honesty may bring?

History and media coincide with one another as our media tactics and tendencies have evolved over time. Events in American history have dictated a large part of our media’s characteristics as the media consistently reached turning points as the nation did.

(Please note that it is not only in the U.S. where such censorship is found. But, there is stark contrast between censorship in the U.S. and Western European countries as mentioned.)

Censorship impacts our perception, knowledge and awareness. It may prevent personal offense, but it ultimately neglects society because it deters media from relaying the truth and demonstrating honesty.

After a month in Europe I became accustomed to the bluntness of the culture. It was something short of culture shock to return to the bubble cushion that is the U.S. Perhaps it is all perception, everyone’s perception is different and every perception is questionable. But, it is these varied perceptions that create the necessary discussion to mold the future of our media’s landscape.

So, let’s butt heads (oops, can I say butt?).

Welcome to As The Platform Fills, a series reporting on the latest sightings, observances, and events taking place right here — outside our office — in downtown Minneapolis overlooking the Nicollet Mall Light Rail Platform. The lives we observe are complex. The dramas we record are real. Things get weird. Stay tuned for more real platform action.

This casual male in a wooden rocking chair was observed by a coworker at Azul 7. I was out of the office one morning, and upon my return I heard murmurings of an interesting platform sighting. I was thrilled to hear someone took a snapshot of the occurance — a young guy, apparently waiting for a train — in a rocking chair. “Hmm… weird!”, I thought, as questions and theories started gathering in my mind, as I’m sure they are yours. Where do I begin?

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Welcome to As The Platform Fills, a weekly series reporting on the latest sightings, observances, and events taking place right here — outside our office — in downtown Minneapolis overlooking the Nicollet Mall Light Rail Platform. The lives we observe are complex. The dramas we record are real. Things get weird. Stay tuned each week for more real platform action.

#79: Orange Liquid, 50th Street / Minnehaha Falls Station, 8:13 AM

Mysterious. As I approached the ticket kiosk one cloudy morning — my GoTo card out and ready to swipe, wind whipping my freshly blow-dried hair into a nasty tangle — a white shape to my lower left caught my eye. I looked down. It was a white, Styrofoam cup — not your usual 12 oz size, but a bit larger, perhaps 16 oz. It sat there, perfectly centered at the base of a steel support beam, containing a small amount of an unknown orange liquid.

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I got some great feedback on my last blog post, “Why Advertising is Irrelevant.” It has spurred some great discussions with people I admire and who’s opinion I respect. I have to admit I wanted to be provocative because of the tired old approach of blanketing the earth with ad copy to get my attention, or worse, reading about work that puts gold statues on agency shelves but doesn’t help the client.

That said, I think I need to decamp for a moment. Everything in the marketing mix has it’s time and place. A TV ad still is probably the best choice for quickly gaining general awareness for some consumer audiences. My point is that we’ve got to start thinking differently.

Our goals as marketers should be to come up with great creative work, but it needs to be more driven by consumer input than ever before….and I don’t mean the kind of input that chooses the ending of Hollywood movies. I am talking using a measurement-driven marketing model to make the appropriate choices at the appropriate times by using input gathered from your customers.

This is easy to write about in a blog, but much more difficult to implement. This is hard stuff for most companies. Even most consultants who are talking about measurement-driven marketing, only get a piece of the puzzle (the left brain or the right) but can’t put the entire picture together in their own consulting company, let alone with the clients. You know as well as I do that internal silos, management structures and lack of clear directives are keeping measurement practices from gaining ground in most companies.

We’ve been thinking a lot about this problem and have been developing some alliances around this involving management consultant, analytics tools and design and development practices that are helping companies gain customer insight through metrics to improve marketing effectiveness. To steal a phrase from Mike Ackmann, one of our favorite consultants, the goal is “Data, not Drama.”

To meet this goal, we’ve crafted a different approach:

1) Strategy Integration
Develop integrated strategies involving key stakeholders across all disciplines in the company. Involving Marketing, Operations, HR, Finance, Technology and Sales.

2) Profitability Practice
Develop processes and practices to integrate customer interaction data into actionable business intelligence across the organization. We translate what is happening out there in the marketplace to what it means for your business.

3) Practical Application
Start simple. Measure what you can today and begin to develop a measurement/profitability practice within your organization. This applies to technology we choose as well. We look for the simplest, most cost-effective tools and technology to get the job done. Learn more about getting started ……

When working through a creative exercise, you have to be willing to fall flat on your face. Taking risks and making mistakes can leave us in a vulnerable place, but it also releases us to be creative. It is a part of making something new and different. If we need to create work that captures minds and does not let go, then we need to be creating work that is memorable, using new ideas that break out of the norm–going beyond safe solutions and creating fearless creative.

Paula Scher, a principal at the Pentagram New York office, creates fearless work that has infiltrated American society. Her work comes out of a courageous mindset. She completely trusts herself and relies purely on her instincts. In an interview for the AIGA Artist Video Series, Scher described how she approaches her projects. “I operate very strongly with my instincts … It is a very intuitive kind of process for me. I have never been a refiner. My best work has been big bold strokes that came very quickly.”

Working on an instinctual level can bring immediate results. Scher also states in her interview for the AIGA Artist Video Series, “How can it be done in a second, but it is done in second? It is done in a second and forty-three years. It is done in a second and every experience, every move and every thing of my life that is in my head.” Scher trusts her creative instincts and the reservoir within her mind to create fearless, fresh, engaging work.

But creating fearless, fresh and engaging work takes guts. Stefan Sagmeister, founder of Sagmeister Inc., creates work that is gutsy and far from being just another safe solution. His work has a transparent quality that leaves every beautiful flaw visible. In a recent interview for the AIGA Artist Video Series, Sagmeister talked about how he writes in his dairy as a way to reflect and improve. “I find the time when I write, I really am forced to look back and evaluate what went well and what did not go so well.”

Sagmeister takes every opportunity to learn from his successes as well as his failures. Engaging work comes when you push the boundaries, and I want to find myself in that place, creating something captivating and risky and avoiding what is truly detrimental–setting boundaries and creating limitations to try to prevent failure. Because mistakes are often a turning point. When a creative direction proves to be a failure, you are free to move on to a new idea and create something fearless and captivating.

So, I just saw an advertisement the other day for an idea that has been around awhile, apparently. Regardless, Wal-Mart is breaking into a pretty exclusive target audience for clothing retail. I honestly never thought a child (newborn through seven-year-olds) could ever have an opinion or be persuaded to care what they’re wearing or how they look (outside the direction of their parents). On the tail of the Abercrombies and Hollisters of the world starting to drill into the middle school age kids minds that what they wear says who they are, which seemed destructive enough in the easily persuadable mind of such adolescents, I thought that would definitely be the line in the sand never to be crossed. However, without breaking stride, another retailer (Wal-Mart) has proven me wrong.

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I’ve been talking to lots of advertising and marketing students lately about the future of advertising. I am probably the worst person to be talking to these kids about this. I don’t like advertising and never have. I don’t care about it and don’t find most of it entertaining or engaging in any way. If I want to be entertained, I will go to a movie, thank you. I don’t think most people are all that engaged with advertising. Oh, I think they will talk about the super bowl spots, because that is one of the main points about watching that game. Or they might mention a favorite ad to a friend because it makes them laugh. But I don’t think most look forward to their morning commute just because they will get to read the billboards on the way to work. I have to admit in my younger days (when I had more free time) even being a little vindictive with people trying to market to me. I’ve been known to fill direct marketers pre-paid envelopes with other direct marketers junk mail just to prove a point. I stole this idea from a good friend of mine. Don’t bother me with that stuff.  Thus my issue with talking about advertising … I don’t think there is a future for it…though I have colleagues who will disagree with me and that’s why I work with them. There is very little advertising in my present, let alone my future, because I use technology to avoid it.  Since I don’t have the advertising vernacular in my vocabulary, I’ve developed my own over the years as it applies to online media. And I’ve come to discover how close it is to the world of product development. When it comes down to it, we develop online products. These products communicate. They save time and they save money. They help people do business in new ways. We develop these products for people; people who want to save time, make their lives easier and find new information or ideas. We want to do more than help people pass a minute or 30 seconds of their time. We want to improve their lives, even if it is in a very small way. Think about things like finding out what salaries for your industry tailored to your location www.careeronestop.com or things like being able to get wine recommendations based on your taste and style www.artisanvineyards.com. I don’t think I am alone out there. Advertising has to shift its focus. In fact, the whole notion of advertising has to go away (okay, change) for marketers or business managers for that matter use the medium in a way that can affect their businesses the most. Here is some inspiration from one of the gods of advertising planning……Russell Davies to get you moving in the right direction!

In studying great advertising, we see visions of brightness: lightness, darkness, and the colored shapes of textures among the silences. We hear sounds and detect impulses awakening our inclinations to touch, engaging with our moods, our hearts, and our minds. Those surprise juxtapositions create meaning and tell stories that touch us. It is what makes us humans. They are our connections with what is good, what is wonderful in our world.

And great advertising can bring us to that wonderful place.

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Account Services or Creative Services, black or white, peanut butter or jelly, heaven’s forbid mix any of the two or you’ll get a whole lot of gray (and some brownish, purpleish sort of color). This is often how the world has spun. Well, it’s time to stop that world and spin it the other way. I came to Azul 7 destined to be a creative person, a writer with a passion to be heard, a journeyman with only one destination planned; the next ‘creative genius.’ Now, I can only stop in awe to that fact that I’m warming to this whole Account Services “stuff.” I’m not quite passing the buck on ever becoming some sort of writer, (even if that only consists of love letters and poems to Brett Favre, yes that’s right) but I’ll tell you things could not have blended so perfectly together if I tried. This whole idea I was engrained with about Account and Creative being so far removed that, “you’d better pick what you want now or you’ll never find yourself on the other side,” doesn’t seem to have any validity for me anymore.

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On Monday AdWeek published an article pondering the question - ‘Does Search Get Too Much Credit’. The article discussed the rising popularity of search engine marketing, how it relates to larger branding initiatives, and the tendency of marketers to apply too much credit to the “last click” leading to a sale or conversion.

From the article:

…if you go upstream from (search) clicks, a lot of users have been to the advertiser web site before because they’ve been exposed to other advertising…

This article couldn’t have come at a better time. Search marketing budgets everywhere are expanding and more organizations are devoting resources to the interactive space. It’s nice to see that a leading publication such as Adweek is taking notice, and their commentary on the last click debate sheds
light onto an increasingly complex scenario - who gets the credit for success?

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