Another blog- Never a Day Without a Line

I started another blog: Never a day without a line. This is translation of a latin proverb Nulla Dies Sine Linea. I recently wrote a post on this topic. \

Disciplined Creativity had advertising and marketing focus, although many times I deviated to write random thoughts. The purpose of Never A Day without a Line to write anything, just anything. Bad writing will happily find a place in this blog, and, sometimes, good writing will walk in.

Show business has a phrase: The show must go on. Writers could have similar phrase: the keyboard must continue to sing.

Rules

Rules are not meant to be broken- they are to contain nonsense of the unruly to himself. If someone aims to break the rules, he has to first obey them, then think above them, and then make new rules which will make life of many people better.

Good and wonderful

Good is what makes you smile, wonderful is what takes your breath away.

Nulla dies sine linea

I picked up a book by Donald Murray- he was an award winning writer who mentored many writers. I was not looking for a book on writing, but this one just came in front of me, and it had many useful tips. The motto of Donald Murray was ‘Nulla dies sine linea’, which means ‘never a day without a line’. He argues good writing comes from bad writing; we just have to keep on writing, without striving for perfection. He quotes John Jerome, ‘Perfect is the enemy of good’. He also quotes William Stafford on writer’s block: “I believe that the so called writers block is product of some kind of disproportion between your standards and you performance…It is easy to write. You just shouldn’t have standards that inhibit you from writing.’

I like ‘Nulla dies sine linea’. This is in fact a latin proverb. I would also like to add: ‘Never a day without a page’. Writing is the product of imagination, and reading beautifies imagination and brings form in it.

What advertising people can learn from the photographers?

An ad men might say out rightly: we use photographers as a part of our projects, what can we learn from them; however, there is a learning from every sphere of life, and the art of photography has some learning for advertising as well. A good photograph has either of the two things, or both: 1) Beauty and 2) Story. A good photograph may be merely showing something stunning and beautiful which can be a person, nature, culture, wildlife, building, art or anything else. The photographer captures the beauty as is, or adds an angle to it. The other type of photographs tell a story which can be a painful and disturbing story as well. Here is what an advertising people can learn from photographers:

Beauty: Many ads just show the product in a fascinating way that the consumers are impressed and cannot forget the ad. For example, the Sony Bravia ad for colourful fountains over a huge building is an impressive ad that shows beauty of colours in a stunning way. There are many other examples of similar ads, for example Coca-Cola happiness factory ad shows a fairytale like situation of what is going inside a Coca-Cola vending machine. The beauty aspects can never be undermined, a food product ad that shows the food in irresistible format does the half job, the same way, a hair care product ad has to show the beauty of hair that are being promised. The marketers of luxury products know the value of beauty, and never miss a chance to show the product in a beautiful way, be it a car or piece of jewellery. A lot of sports products ads e.g. Nike and Adidas show the beauty and passion of a sport moment.

Story: The story in advertising can be related with an interesting way to present the brand or a point of view on the brand benefits. A story makes the simple and memorable. Many times story is also used to give a personal touch and human angle to the brand story. Toyota Corolla ads show the dependable quality in a series of stories in which they show that a Corolla doesn’t break down.

Focus: A photographer doesn’t try to show too many things in a one photograph, but there is clarity and focus on what is being shown. Most of the times, a good photograph can be described in a sentence. The photographer is clear about what element he wants to highlight, and what angles he wants to show. The same way, good ads have to have focus and clarity of purpose. An ad that is trying to say too many things might cause more confusion than conviction.

Thought of the day

It’s not whether you can prove your point or not, its whether you need to prove your point or not.

Brand Action vs Brand Behaviour

These are some of the thought bubbles that were floating since a long time between heart and mind, and now I decided to exhale them. The thought is about brand action vs. brand behaviour. A lot of writers talk about the ‘brand behaviour’ and ad agencies especially focus on the ‘behaviour’ part because that opens up scope for brand image and personality, and makes it much easy to differentiate the brand and tell stories about the same. However, what sustains at the end of the day is 'brand action': how a brand performs, or delivers experience for the user. Any amount of projection away from this real action may not hold long term appeal or credibility. The analysis of brand action brings the core truth on surface, and if further aspects have to be added in terms of values, personality, behavior or image, they should be based on the real brand action. FMCG companies tend to follow marketing by the books, and a lot of times their advertising messages are solely focused on the brand action; for example Reckitt Benckiser advertising is consistently focused on the key brand action; the same way Gillette, P&G and even Unilever advertising is also rooted in the core brand action or advantage. The values and personality comes in the packaging of the same. So, to summarise, the first question that should be asked for any brand positioning is: ‘how are we making a difference in the lives of the consumers?’