My argument with this piece is that the social contract that once existed between advertiser and the people being advertised to has been fundamentally breached. Short of a near-total reordering of our industry, there are no solutions.

Advertising has not historically been loved, but it has been tolerated. And on occasion even enjoyed. Now it is the least trusted of all industries (behind banking). Increasing numbers of people say they are over-targeted. Only 11% of people enjoy advertising, and ad-blocking continues to rise.* We are in dire straits and I have no three-step programme or five things we need to do to rectify the situation. Unless we abandon our faith in the catastrophe that is ad tech, things are going to get worse before they get better.

What’s changed?

Social contract theory (extremely simplified) holds that people willingly surrender some freedoms to authorities in exchange for protection of their remaining freedoms and the promise of law and order. In advertising terms, we permitted advertisements in our media (radio, print & TV), we permitted them in our public spaces (outdoor), and we more recently permitted them to be sent directly to us (direct). In exchange, we were informed about products, occasionally entertained, and often received value in the form of special offers.

Today, our permissions are routinely abused, often criminally. Retargeting, though comically derided, is, in reality, a sinister breach of the tacit contract between advertiser and consumer: you may try and convince me but don’t browbeat me.

Another corrosive aspect of ad tech is that it has fundamentally sidelined creativity. We’re in a horrible diminishing returns scenario where under-trained marketers have learned to distrust anything not quickly measurable. Pump out some quick ads on social… test, iterate ad infinitum. No need for an idea when you can optimize a thousand inklings. Breaking the social contract means advertisers no longer compete for attention, they simply buy it in increasingly underhand ways. In turn, this negates advertising’s costly signalling effect.

Others have more comprehensively outlined how the tech giants led the advertising industry astray. Part of the point with this piece is to try and strengthen the resolve of the remaining good-faith practitioners of advertising. That you can’t beat Facebook and Google doesn’t mean you have to join them. The heroes at Sell! Sell! are a prime example, staying true to the principles that have built brands for decades.

Where next?

Advertising historians will not look back on the last 20 years with fondness. Advertisers’ slavish addiction to short-term, metric-boosting direct response advertising was fed by a clever PR campaign decrying the death of ‘traditional’ advertising. The people spinning that lie were, of course, the same people selling ad tech platforms. Thankfully, the wheel may be beginning to turn once more.

Byron Sharp, Mark Ritson, and perhaps most conclusively, Les Binet and Peter Field are among those leading the charge for long-term thinking supported by a greater emphasis on brand-building advertising. Their evidence points toward a more rational future. I would only add a single emotional plea: the sooner we repair the social contract by not following people around the web or abusing their intelligence with risible creative, the sooner we can move on from this whole unedifying period.

*https://www.marketingweek.com/2019/04/09/ad-saturation-damaging-trust-in-brands/p

Backed by Lufthansa, Yilu is creating growth opportunities for hotel chains and airlines with an integration platform connecting them — and their customers — to hundreds of individual service providers. Oh, and there is also some machine learning under the hood. My job was to help them communicate all this in a simple but compelling way.

The task

Yilu’s business case and go-to-market model were razor sharp. They knew their potential customers, and how they were going to deliver value. Their challenge was communicating their story in a clear way externally. We agreed that the starting point had to be a value proposition that worked across multiple audiences, specifically potential employees and customers, and within the Lufthansa group. Once that was nailed, I’d write copy for their launch site and other channels.

The approach

Any good proposition is rooted in a product truth. Yilu’s challenge was that the nature of their product — essentially a single API connecting travel companies with hundreds of ancillary services — was somewhat complex. Compounding the difficulty was the need to ensure consumers, and not just Yilu’s direct customers, would understand the service.

I needed to get my head round the technical aspects, and the Yilu team needed to empty their heads of all the ideas they’d been discussing internally. We decided that I’d spend two full days in Berlin. Day 1 was me meeting the team and diving into the product. Day two was a workshop focused exclusively on value proposition development. Together with the head of product, I designed a day with a mix of discussion, and solo and group exercises geared towards stripping back their product and their business model in an attempt to reveal a single compelling truth.

Following the workshop I went away and focused on trying to connect the ‘smart’ aspects of what they were building with the eventual benefit. Initially we focused on how Yilu would make travel more pleasurable for the consumer but we realised we were straying too far from the needs of their actual customers. The decision at the board level was that the proposition had to encompass end user and customer. This led us to ‘The smart platform for travel’, supported by a simple articulation of what they were all about:

Yilu makes every aspect of the journey better for the traveller, while creating new growth opportunities for travel companies.

The outcome

With the proposition in place, we decided the best way to bring the platform to life on the launch site was with a step-by-step narrative. From a communication perspective, this simple pedagogical approach was critical. It gave Yilu a story to tell that has fed into all their subsequent material, from sales material to investor presentations.

As well as copy for the rest of the site, I helped the team with their social profiles, a press release, and boilerplate text. In essence, it was a starter pack that gave the team a solid foundation for the next phase of their growth.

“For Yilu’s takeoff, we sought a well-rounded strategist with excellent hands-on copywriting skills and that’s Aaron in a nutshell. He was a great partner during the crucial phase of translating strategy to relatable language and was able to quickly grasp the challenge, navigate the complexity, and provide quality deliverables within the agreed timeline.”

Frederik Cordes, Chief Product Officer, Yilu

Visit yiluhub.com

> > >

About Bateman’s

I’m an independent copywriter and communication consultant. I help startups and growing companies figure out what they’re trying to say, and how to say it in compelling ways. Get in touch if you’d like to discuss a project.

aaron@batemans.dk

Batemans.dk

Kasper Ottesen is a leading startup matters and venture capital lawyer who’s played a key role in many of Denmark’s biggest startup success stories of the past five years. Earlier this year he started his own practice — Highbridge — and he asked me to help craft his value proposition and write the copy for his site. It was a dream project.

The task

Kasper needed to move fast. As well as creating a new brand, he was moving into new offices and taking care of his clients. We agreed that the focus needed to be on creating a sharp value proposition and clear positioning — strong foundations would make it easier to craft the copy that followed, and would help define the scope of Kasper’s site.

The approach

The majority of Kasper’s clients are startups which gave an obvious starting point in terms of positioning. Figuring out what made his approach unique was a little more tricky. I sent Kasper a few basic briefing questions that helped establish the broad strokes of what he wanted to communicate, and then we started to dig a bit deeper in person.

Kasper identified closely with his clients’ entrepreneurial spirit, and he had the strong sense that flexibility, combined with his narrow focus, was a strong differentiator. Kasper also revealed that his less conventional approach — at least compared to most lawyers — helped put his clients at ease and created uniquely strong partnerships. These insights led to the idea of ‘an upstart law firm for startups’. Not strictly a value proposition, it nevertheless became the key line I could build the rest of the messaging and tonality around.

We used a Google doc to collaborate. Kasper’s input made it easy to adapt and adjust at speed: instead of me delivering ‘final’ copy with multiple rounds of feedback, a ‘real-time’ approach saved time and money.

The outcome

With a clear positioning statement established, we then detailed Highbridge’s specific services, and worked in a more traditional value prop: We take away the growing pains of growing companies.

We started working with Spring/Summer to develop Highbridge’s visual identity and website. The collaboration was speedy and efficient — Spring/Summer delivered wireframes, Kasper signed them off, and I was able to craft concise, precise messaging that held to the design. Communicating directly with one another meant fewer stakeholders and we were faster to launch as a result. Together we were able to develop a beautifully functional site with approved copy on budget and ahead of schedule.

“Aaron’s process was a great way for me to rethink my approach and he was very good at helping me express exactly what I was trying to say. It was a really efficient collaboration as Aaron was able to quickly understand the business and my approach to the market.”

Kasper Ottesen, Founder, Highbridge

Visit Highbridge.

>>>

About Bateman’s

I’m an independent copywriter and communication consultant. I help startups and growing companies figure out what they’re trying to say, and how to say it in compelling ways. Get in touch if you’d like to discuss a project.

aaron@batemans.dk

Batemans.dk

I saw a couple of house painters on my bike ride home yesterday, two young women, their overalls generously splattered with white sploshes. Anyone who’s painted a house knows that splatters are inevitable. But yesterday it struck me that they don’t represent mistakes or carelessness — they represent progress.

At the risk of inelegantly shoehorning in branding and marketing analogies, it made me wonder what our proof of progress is. Some projects feel so interminable, the deliberations so inconclusive, and the results so intangible that you swiftly begin to question the effectiveness of your own contribution, if not your sanity.

After a few months of independent consulting I’m more convinced than ever that the value I can bring to a client is clarity at speed. The clients I’ve worked with know broadly what they want to communicate — but they’re bogged down with internal disagreements, and insecurities about whether they’re doing the right thing. But — and here comes the shoehorning — you can’t paint a house without getting a bit on your clothes.

Inaction will only lead to stagnation and invisibility — so to move your brand forward you need to commit to a course of action. The market will soon tell you if it’s the right course and you can take steps to correct… but doing nothing means learning nothing. To quote my entrepreneur friend Victor Siösteen: ‘Progress, not perfection.’

Committing to a course of action (whether it’s a proposition for a new company, a new positioning strategy, or an ad campaign) is to some extent always a leap of faith. Big companies mitigate the risk with extensive research and testing. But not all companies have that luxury. The most important step — and perhaps the most underrated — is getting everyone on your team to agree on what the course of action should be. I take a pretty straightforward journalistic approach here. First I make sure that the people empowered to make decisions are in the room and then I start asking questions. Usually, the points of disagreement that emerge are pretty trivial and can be easily overcome with a reminder of what the overall objective is. The big picture outweighs the individual sketch.

None of what I’ve been doing with clients is revolutionary. It doesn’t demand complex branding models, or especially in-depth strategic analysis — often it’s about reminding the client of some of the fundamentals of marketing. We start with one question: What are you trying to say? And we work outwards from there:

Why do you want to convey this particular message?

Why do you think it will resonate with your target audience?

Is it in line with your business objectives?

Why should your audience believe you?

I usually do two or three value proposition development exercises to sharpen my clients’ thinking. By forcing them to be precise, and making them see the necessity of foregoing secondary messages, we pretty quickly arrive at a formulation that is closer to their intended meaning. The paint that sticks is the message that makes it into the market — whether it’s a payoff, new copy for a landing page, subject lines, or the first few slides of a pitch deck. Not everyone’s going to like the colour. But that’s just splatter. And, if nothing else, it’s the splatter that will make your next work better.

Can you tell me about yourself and your role at Isobar Magnetix…

I work as a Strategist. I have been with Magnetix for almost four years. I was originally hired as a ’Dialogue Architect’ but I have since changed course a bit as I did not see my self becoming a programmer.

I have a major in Media Studies and I have always had a preference for the humanities, which led me to trying to talk my boss at Magnetix into letting me work more with strategy and concept development. Luckily for me he thought it was a good idea as well, and here I am. Sorry, this wasn’t supposed to be my life story, but I think my background would explain my take on some of your questions.

On a day-to-day basis I try to help our clients navigate the digital marketing landscape. This means figuring out the strategic approach to a certain marketing challenge or how to approach their digital marketing as a whole. From there I help dig out the insights needed for our creative team to come up with an awesome solution. A lot of the time I take part in the concept development as well with the team.

Magnetix has long been one of Denmark’s most successful digital agencies — what do you attribute that to?

First I think the combination of digital and CRM, which is at the core of what we do, has historically been a pretty unique selling point and something that has worked to our advantage. Marketing has always had the funnel, but the direct application of the funnel activities through digital media is something that hasn’t been commonplace (at least I think) until recently, but has been really ingrained in the way the people who started Magnetix thought about marketing since the beginning.

Secondly, though Magnetix have not been known for being creatively among the leaders in Denmark, I think we have some insanely creative people who have produced some pretty cool work. I know I keep getting impressed every day by working with them, much more than I get impressed by seeing cases from Cannes or whatever.

And lastly, the people running Magnetix are just stone-cold killers. They are just really really good at what they do, making the business grow. I may not always understand or agree with their decisions, but they sure know how to run a company. Meaning, I probably would not have the slightest clue about how to run a business.

Can you tell me about a piece of work you contributed to that you’re particularly proud of?

I don’t usually find a sort of boastful pride in the stuff that I do. It’s not that I don’t think the projects I am involved in are good… I guess it’s more about the stuff that I do can sometimes feel very detached from the final product and so it seems weird for me to take the credit.

For instance, one of our clients just relaunched their website based on a redesign process that’s been going on for more than a year - Brødrene Dahl - a plumbing wholesaler. I am not sure, but I think it is the biggest eCommerce site in Denmark (with regards to revenue). I’m really stoked about the final outcome of the project, and I’m so happy for the guys and girls who worked really hard on it, but I don’t look back on the stuff I helped with and think — wow, that was amazing. It was good work, don’t get me wrong, the customer liked it, but some of the stuff the design and front-end team did was amazing. They were the ones pulling the heavy load.

I noticed from your personal website you believe that one of the main goals of any business should be to achieve authenticity. Why do you think authenticity is so critical, and what role do digital media play in achieving it?

To me, authenticity is about empathy. Being authentic is critical to any business, because when people believe you are authentic, they empathize with you. They believe in what you are saying and they understand why you are saying it, because what you are saying is a reflection of their own experiences. That sort of connection with a customer is what I would call a genuine connection. However, this is not the same as saying that there is a true and ‘authentic’ brand identity to each business, which they need to find in order to build the brand, which is how people sometimes understand the word authentic. Brands can still be built in any way the people building it see fit.

Digital media play a central role in this. So much customer-brand interaction happens through digital media, but the problem is that every medium is biased towards inauthenticity. When it comes to digital media, because of the inherent qualities of something being ‘digital’ (everything can be reproduced, copied, remixed), meaning and value are pretty much separated from the artifact. This means brands must be really coherent all the time when trying to be authentic, which is really, really hard.

One of the ambitions for this interview series is to hopefully bring a bit more neutrality and even-handedness to the discussion about the role of digital media in brand building. What’s your take — has digital changed everything or is its impact overstated?

This is probably where I need to point out that I have no formal education in marketing. To really answer your question, I would probably need one, but I’ll try answer it anyway to the best of my ability.

In my opinion, digital hasn’t changed anything. Brand building should still be done pretty much the same way it always has been by the people who are successful at it. Trying to use digital media to build a brand is hard though, because any sort of mediation of communication makes it hard for brands to be authentic, as I mentioned above. Another way digital makes it harder is by making it so easy to initiate a communication in the first place. There is practically no barrier of entry for anyone wanting to communicate online, which is great for democracy, but really terrible for marketing.

In the old days, you only had a fixed amount of marketing real estate to work with. This made it easier to grab the attention of the audience. Now there are so many things vying for the consumers’ attention, and brands are not holding back in flooding the market with messages. It gets more and more difficult to cut through the clutter.

Related question — broadly speaking, how do you see ‘digital’ in terms of the overall ecosystem of channels and tactics currently available to marketers?

Digital is a place where you can get easy access to a market, and its great for small businesses trying to get a foothold and an initial connection with a prospective audience. But as brands grow, so does the need for other channels and tactics.

Digital is also great for direct marketing, but has sadly been so misused as a direct marketing channel through the years that I would think people are getting pretty sick of it. Digital direct marketing is also great at communicating with existing customers, but as Byron Sharp tells us, most brand growth comes from focusing on new customers. And new customers are probably best reached through the more classic channels.

But in so many ways it does not make sense to talk about digital as part of an ecosystem. Digital is everything to businesses. As the already stale joke goes: In the old days, businesses used to have a Chief Electricity Officer, but since electricity is a pretty ubiquitous thing, it doesn’t really make sense to have one anymore. Same thing will probably happen to the Chief Digital Officer. Today, digital acts as the entire foundation businesses should be built on, being so much more important to businesses in all other aspects than marketing. However, marketing people are sometimes the driving force in facilitating a digital transformation in businesses which is why it is so exciting to be a marketer, but also really weird sometimes.

If we were to talk again in a decade what technology or platform do you think will have had the biggest impact on marketing?

A decade ago the answer would easily have been social networking sites, and with how Facebook and Google are still growing, consuming everything, I am inclined to say it will be those two. How they impact marketing (other than pretty much defining the tactical framework for marketers online) I am not sure.

I am not buying the whole hype around VR, AR and the likes. I mean its cool and all, but I have yet to hear a compelling argument for the strategic application of it. It will be a tool in the toolbox, but it won’t fundamentally change marketing. Maybe if it becomes ubiquitous within the next decade, which is entirely possible, but I don’t think that will happen.

Looking back at the history of new technologies and media being introduced, one thing has always been certain — no ‘old’ technology has ever really been ‘replaced’ by a new one. We still read the newspaper, watch TV, and write using pen and paper and so on. New technologies and new media just add to the mix of stuff that takes up our time. I mean, something radical needs to happen before we stop reading books. I think the same thing can be applied to marketing — something radical needs to happen before marketing is fundamentally changed.

Last question, will there come a time when we can stop talking about digital as something apart from everything else?!

Hah, yeah, like I mentioned above — I think there will. I don’t think we will notice it when it happens though. And when it has happened, we won’t be able to understand how anyone could ever have thought differently.

Previously in Please Make It Stop:

#1 — Ryan Wallman

Welcome to the first in a new and no doubt highly irregular series of discussions, debates and ill-informed rants about a topic that is boringly close to my heart… digital, and its ongoing impact on what was, and sometimes still is, known as the advertising industry. First up, a Q+A with one of my favourite tweeters, Ryan Wallman, head of copy at Wellmark. I’ve thought of Ryan as something of a kindred spirit for a while now, united in our burgeoning skepticism toward the grandiosity of the digerati. Enjoy!

Can you tell me a bit about yourself and what you do at Wellmark…

Well, I’m a copywriter, first and foremost. But I originally trained in medicine and worked for several years as a doctor before changing career to become a medical writer. Since my medical degree, I’ve also picked up writing qualifications and a Master of Marketing. So it’s fair to say that I’ve done more formal study than I care to remember.

As for what I do at Wellmark, we’re a communications agency that specialises in healthcare. My primary responsibility is to oversee all the copy we develop, which involves supervising a small team of writers.

My day-to-day work is a mix of creative direction, concept development and copywriting, with a bit of new business development in there too. And I write most of the copy in our own communications, such as our website, direct mailers, social media posts and so on.

Sorry if that was a mind-numbingly boring way to start — I’ll try to make the rest of my responses more interesting.

One of the frequent themes in your posts is that marketers today are too easily led astray by shiny new technologies and platforms. Why do you think this is — and what role are agencies playing in it?

There’s no doubt that many marketers have a fascination with technology and ‘innovation’ (ugh), at the expense of marketing fundamentals.

I think there are several reasons for it.

The first is simply the novelty appeal — a radio campaign is always going to seem a bit lame compared to virtual reality or Snapchat or whatever else is new on the scene.

The second is fear. You only have to think back to the hysteria around Pokemon Go last year to appreciate that (some) marketers are desperate not to be ‘left behind’ by these ephemeral obsessions.

And the third is related to marketers’ roles. Mark Ritson has astutely observed that very senior marketers worry about seeming ‘out of touch’, so they willingly swallow their young colleagues’ hype about new technologies — while mid-career marketers, who might otherwise be voices of reason, are caught in the middle.

As for the role that agencies play in it, they’re undoubtedly part of the problem. When you consider that only 6% of people in advertising agencies are over 50, it’s no surprise that agencies tend to favour newer technologies. What’s more, they have little incentive to question the value of online advertising, so they’re definitely not militating against this preoccupation with newer media.

Related question — are marketers forgetting the fundamentals of brand-building?

At an industry level, yes. At an individual level, I suspect many marketers never knew them in the first place!

There is definitely a trend towards ‘tactification’ (as Mark Ritson describes it), to the point that some marketers seem to genuinely believe that promotion alone — or even a single promotional channel — is synonymous with marketing. That’s a profound misunderstanding.

But it’s hardly surprising, perhaps, given the apparently large proportion of marketers who don’t believe in (and in some cases aggressively decry) the value of formal qualifications.

It feels like there’s a bit of a resistance movement emerging with the likes of yourself, Bob Hoffman, Mark Ritson and others among the first to articulate some skepticism towards the grand promises made by the purveyors of social media marketing and content marketing. What’s your take on the state of the debate around ‘digital’ at the moment?

Well, I wouldn’t say I was among the first, but I’m more than happy to be considered in that company!

I think it’s an artificial and unnecessary debate in many respects. To quote Tom Goodwin, ‘there is not a more meaningless divide and obsession than the notion of digital media’.

But if I have to take a side in the current debate between ‘digital’ and ‘traditional’ marketers, I’m firmly with the latter. We may be in a post-truth world, supposedly, but I’m more inclined to believe the scientific rigour of people like Mark Ritson and Byron Sharp than the fanciful claims of the digi-gurus.

As it happens, I’ve just seen a Forbes article listing ‘the top 20 influencers of CMOs’, based on the number of mentions and retweets they receive. You couldn’t make it up.

Bob Hoffman — who we both admire — often says ‘show me a brand that digital has built’ as a way of highlighting the shortcomings of digital advertising. How do you see the future of brand-building and what is the role of ‘digital’ in it?

Admire? I love that man, frankly.

As Bob has so adroitly shown, digital advertising is a murky area to say the least. And I don’t think that display ads, in their current form, have much of a future at all.

That said, it’s inevitable that digital channels will eventually become critical in brand building, given their growing ubiquity in our daily lives. But, again, it’s an artificial divide to consider ‘digital’ separately from the rest, and it’s one that will become increasingly nonsensical. I just shake my head when I see titles like ‘digital copywriter’ or ‘digitally led creative director’ — what the hell do those even mean?

If we were to talk again in a decade what technology or platform do you think will have had the biggest impact on marketing?

Honestly, I don’t think any technology will fundamentally change marketing. As John Caples put it: times change, people don’t.

But naturally the tactical mix will change, and in that respect it’s hard to go past the potential impact of the Facebook/Google duopoly. Their dominance will surely influence marketers’ choices.

And of course everyone is talking about the potential of virtual reality, including people whose judgement I respect. I’m still skeptical, but I really don’t know enough about it to give an informed opinion at this stage.

Wellmark works a lot with healthcare and B2B clients… what kinds of conversations are you having with them about emerging marketing channels?

That’s a really interesting question.

Our pharmaceutical and B2B clients work within tight regulatory constraints, which include strict limitations on what can be shown in the public domain, so they’re understandably wary about newer channels. There have been occasions when we have recommended the use of social media, for example, but it has been considered too much of a risk. I don’t think their caution is necessarily a bad thing, mind you — it’s certainly preferable to jumping into every new channel without thinking.

With our newer healthcare clients, who have more direct contact with consumers, the conversations tend to be quite different. Some of them have been using newer channels for quite a while without much tangible benefit, so we’re talking to them about the relative value of these compared to more ‘traditional’ channels (for want of a better word).

The common theme, however, is that we always talk about channels in the context of a communications strategy. That is, we never take the arse-about, ‘channel first’ approach that seems to be so prevalent in marketing now.

What are the chances of jaded copywriters like us being replaced by robots?

Ah, the million-dollar question!

I asked Drayton Bird about this a while ago, and he felt that robots may well replace copywriters for some forms of short copy (and would probably improve it substantially, given the woeful standard of so much copy that’s out there). But he thought that longer, more complex copy would be much more difficult to automate — and I agree. After all, good copywriting depends on empathy, which isn’t easy for robots to emulate. If chatbots are any indication, I’d say we’re pretty safe for now.

And the other point to remember is that we’re not just word monkeys. As Tom Albrighton articulated so well in his recent post about copywriting being undervalued, our trade involves a whole range of skills beyond putting words on a page. As he says, much of what we do is actually copythinking — based on human understanding and intuition — and it will surely be a while before robots can master that.

Saturday mornings I’d often wake up retching, my head pounding. I’d shuffle upstairs, try and swallow some milk and a few pills. A few hours would pass. The bar opened at 12 and that’s where I’d spend the rest of the day. There was nowhere else to be and I liked Henderson the barman’s company. That early, I was usually the only customer. The TV would be on low and there was nothing to do but make small talk as Henderson made the bar ready. He was an excellent barman. Watching him work the Saturday shift was to watch a pro in action. Unlike most of us, he was genuinely gifted at his job. The bar often showed two or three football matches at once and it would fill fast. Henderson could handle it all though. Some other regulars would help out collecting glasses from time to time but I decided against that. Too obsequious.

Those first few hours on our own weren’t unpleasant. Henderson would nurse me through them with Cokes and teas. I was a lousy drinker and could never pick up where I’d left off. I felt the need to cleanse first. But then the first beer. And soon more. And so on. And then Sunday. Always the worst day; the day when all the week’s deflations followed you round like smoke in your clothes. But I’m ahead of myself. Still Saturday. And the arrival of Peter. Hulking, old now, his legs filled with water, and his hair neatly parted in the middle and slicked. Probably not so different from when he was a boy. Watching Peter enter the bar provided several minutes’ entertainment. He carried a crutch in each hand which he used to sweep away obstructing stools or push open doors. Given his weight, the pressure on his wrists must have been immense. It took a mulish kind of brain to carry on the way he did. It would have been easier to stay in his apartment where he received his meals and the TV had many channels and there were no steps to navigate or bar doors to prod open. But here he was, an obstinate old sod. I trod over and held open the doors for him. He paused before entering and looked at me. Behind thick-lensed glasses, his eyes looked small and pale. Shifty, my grandmother would have said. “Is Henderson showing the rugby?” he enquired.

“Yep,” I answered, still holding the door. “It’ll be on the main screen. Your seat’s not taken, Peter. You’ll have the best view in the house.” Obsequious.

“Quite right”, he replied, moving past me. Henderson had already poured Peter’s beer and he placed it in front of him as he took his seat, an action which involved flailing crutches and manual positioning of immobile legs. It brought to mind the thought of a sealion thrashing atop a rock as it sought to retain purchase in the midst of a storm.

At first I’d dismissed Peter as a crank. But I came to respect the way he lived: forcing his will to something, even if it was just shaking his crutch at the screen and boring everyone senseless with anecdotes from his youth. He would not go quietly.

Settled, he sipped his beer and, without prompting, started telling me the story.

His son had left home at a young age. Peter had no idea where the boy had gone. There’d been no falling out. One day he was there, the next he was gone. He’d taken some cash from Peter’s wallet, a change of clothes, a book or two. Jeffrey was an only child and his absence proved intolerable for his mother. She stayed for a year, held together by hope, then the marriage quickly wilted. Peter endured. He remained in the same house. He worked and poured his resources into privately financing the search for his son. The years passed. Slower than I might have thought: “A daze. Pattern. Memory. I was a satellite to the world.”

No clues surfaced. No leads. Peter left the country for a period of work abroad and never returned home. As far as he knew his house was still there, now utterly devoid of human inhabitants. He thought of it from time to time. He remembered clearly the indentation on his son’s pillow. The absences on the bookshelf. He still has the same wallet. Another time, another place. He ordered another beer. We sat in silence for a while.

“What do you think happened to him?” I asked.

“He’s somewhere”, Peter replied. “He was an unusual boy, but resourceful, and rigorous. He asked me once if I believed in God. He’d been having religious studies at school. I said that I liked the idea but had decided there was not enough proof. Jeffrey said he would find it for me. The next day he brought another boy back to the house. He had apparently been cured of some terrible disease by prayer. I said that I was happy for the boy but that did not count as proof of God’s existence. Plenty of people who pray to be cured still died, I explained. Some time later Jeffrey came to me and said he had decided he didn’t believe in God. I asked why and he said his friend had died. Not from his disease, though. He’d fallen off his bike and hit his head on the curb. I think Jeffrey just realised earlier than most of us that we’re all very much alone.”

I’ve noticed I find it hard to focus on one task. I start trimming a bush and then see a weed that needs pulling, and then find I’ve wasted ten minutes picking up twigs and leaves for reasons completely disconnected from my initial objective. Another tendency that distracts me from the larger purpose comes in the form of trying to restore order to the many unsightly corners overcome with weeds and unraked leaves, and where spiders and earwigs have colonised piles of chipped bricks. My ambition is a tidy refuge that harmoniously blends stone and foliage and which wouldn’t look out of place in a picture spread I saw recently of a restored 18th Century Okinawan farmhouse — muted and functional but materially perfect. This is a completely delusional thought given I know no master craftspeople who could help make it a reality but I’m aiming high at least. Perhaps it’s just the scale of the task at hand that leads me astray. I’ve been a ‘gardener’ for six weeks and I’m learning how easy it is to get disheartened. Gardening is a good test of one’s mettle in that sense. Shrubs you’ve planted die, your vision stubbornly fails to materialise — do you give up, or do you persevere?

We have bishop’s weed — an invasive blighter that is notoriously difficult to eliminate, though I’ve been trying to dig it up in various fits of distraction. Late at night, or early in the morning while the rest of the family are sleeping, the sensation of uprooting one of these pesky weeds replays itself in my mind, over and over. It’s a satisfying feeling when you get one whole — the roots (rhizomes?) are an impressive entanglement of shoots and soil that the plant above fails to do justice to — but I’m not sure that’s the only reason I’m experiencing this particular sensory deja vu. That gardening is an addictive pastime is no revelation, but that I would find it so compelling is a lovely surprise.

A 38-year-old man who has been compiling a list of things he would like to buy is almost done with the entirely futile exercise, it has emerged.

The man, whose two children have eaten Spaghetti Hoops on toast for dinner on three of the previous six days, is believed to have placed an Audi S6 estate at the top of his list, believing that it combines family friendliness with ‘some serious ooomph’.

Top-of-the-line ski equipment for his entire family is a new entry on the list after the father-of-two recently underwent an excruciating evening being unable to contribute to a dinner-party discussion about the comparative merits of downhill versus alpine skiing.

Also featuring prominently on the list of things he will on no account be able to buy is a vintage CP Company goggle jacket, and a 1967 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia ‘for weekend trips to the Cornwall holiday home’ he will almost certainly never own.

At press time, the man was undecided as to whether the car would be hard-top or soft-top, though it is believed he was close to coming down on the side of the convertible.

I spent the past year of my working life bringing a software product called Beagle to market. Despite incredibly encouraging user feedback, a rapidly rising Net Promoter Score, and hitting our targets on active use, Citrix decided the product didn’t fit with its core strategy and closed it. We were code complete on the business model and ready to deploy when the plug was pulled. After a decade at agencies, this was my first time on the client-side and, as such, an opportunity to practice what I’d preached. Here’s what I learned about building a brand.

Be bold

It’s the easiest (and safest) thing in the world to be bland. Whether you’re a marketer or a creative, the vast majority of your output will be instantly forgettable drivel. The amazing thing is the amount of hard work which goes into making that drivel. It’s probably not your fault. Chances are you had to whittle down your idea to the point of invisibility at the behest of the client or product manager — some goon who sees life as a series of stock photos to be recreated as faithfully as possible.

I can’t believe I’m having to quote Bill Bernbach in 2016 but, in advertising, not to be different is to be virtually suicidal. Regardless of the output or medium (TV ad, Medium post, cat video etc) you’re battling for attention and impact against a tidal wave of pitiable sludge.

Us? We put a dick on Dribbble and we spent most of our marketing budget on an amazing landing page reasoning that one strategically informed big bet would give better returns than a bunch of smaller, less interesting bets. It’s not about being outlandish for the sake of it. It’s just about being professional. Think about your goals and then think about what’s most likely to help you reach them… a peashooter or a cannon? Most marketers go for the peashooter every time, usually arguing that the peashooter is never going to blow up in their faces.

Be really busy, not fake busy

The biggest mistake I made was not driving home my advantage. It’s dangerously easy to do nothing when things are going well. We got to 15,000 sign-ups pretty quickly, and we met our initial strategic goals of generating traction in the form of social media buzz, and inbound links. Looking back, there came a point when I started coasting. And that’s dangerous.

We were fortunate to have a budget for marketing. It wasn’t huge but it enabled us to do some promotion in the form of blog sponsorships and sponsored content while also paying the agency for the landing page. Once the money ran out I should have gone all out on keeping momentum through any means necessary — cross-promotions with other Citrix products, funny stuff on our social media channels, going door-to-door at agencies we hadn’t demoed for… whatever. Instead I got distracted with a lot of secondary activities — in-selling, analytics, and marketing to existing users.

A lot of marketing is like this and it’s mostly fluff. You’re basically going through the motions. Keeping your head down and keeping your job. The reality is that marketing never stops. There is always someone out there who hasn’t heard about your product and it’s your job to find them.

Build a brand (but don’t ignore unsexy channels like email)

We had an unfair advantage from the outset with Beagle in that we were able to piggyback on Podio’s existing user base. Beagle’s value proposition (better proposals, faster) was interesting to a lot of Podio’s users so we had a lot of people registering their interest very early. But that initial traction soon abated and we needed to find a way to stand alone.

I tried to make sure the basics were in place by articulating a brand footprint (a simple tool I adapted from working with a couple of Johnson & Johnson brands) that detailed value proposition, reasons to believe, features, benefits and so on. But brands aren’t built on paper and I’ve long believed that the marketers of software products have ignored the potential of classical brand-building activities as they’ve chased scale at any cost. Strategically, our marketing intent was to create a brand that resonated with people working at digital agencies. Just as product people talk about product/market fit, marketing people should be thinking about brand/market fit. We established a core brand value around the principal of craft. During the initial prototyping phase of Beagle’s development, we’d come to learn a lot about what drives people working in the creative industries. Here’s what I wrote to the team about how I wanted the Beagle brand to appeal to potential users (it’s a little overblown but I think the idea was right):

Walt Disney wrote that ‘people can feel perfection’. They can feel it when every single aspect of a brand, and every interaction someone has with that brand, is considered, genuine and, where possible, inspiring. Agencies aspire to create that level of perfection more than almost any other business. The reason they exist is to help their clients outperform the competition — so everything they create must convince and compel. And that starts with their proposals.

At its core, Beagle stands for craft. All agencies share a passion for craft to some degree. Any creative activity takes courage — your work is judged by your peers, by your clients, and by the public. We understand that bravery, and we salute it. We recognise the endeavour that goes into creating great work — the late nights, the self-doubt and the mental blocks. And we know that proposals are an important part in that process, because great work starts with great proposals. And because once the proposal is taken care of, you can get on with what really matters.

We had the above in mind with every little thing we tried to build awareness, whether that was giving people the chance to make origami beagles, or the creation of our mascot, Beagle Armstrong (that’s him in the image above). Beagle Armstrong featured in every one of our fortnightly emails to users and was drawn by one of our amazing product designers, Joy Leelawat. It might seem a little cutesy, and even trite, but I got plenty of feedback from people saying how they loved our newsletters because of the illustration style. They also fed back that they appreciated the transparent, down-to-earth, informative approach. By the time the curtain came down, our email channel was the single most important tool I had at my disposal. Each time we sent one, activation rates soared and, for the most part, people hung around as users. Did we need to craft those mails to the degree that we did? Perhaps not, but we did and I would do the same again.

That’s about it. It was a fantastic project to be part of, and while it’s definitely a source of regret that we didn’t get the chance to get out of beta, I’m still proud of what we achieved.