« January 2008 | Main | March 2008 »
I've been really fortunate to have worked mostly with Creative Directors in "The Genius" camp. But, I couldn't resist poking a little fun at some of the other archetypes.
This cartoon is a response of sorts to this other cartoon I drew a while back.
And, come to think of it, my first ever Brand Camp cartoon was in this vein too.
A few weeks ago, I was lucky to meet Michael Braungart (who co-wrote the thought-provoking book Cradle to Cradle about ecological product development). He helped expand our thinking about eco responsibility to being less about one attribute or another, and more about a holistic approach of thinking through the past, present, and future of every product.
In the group discussion, it came up that someday environmental responsibility won't be a marketing position, it will be an aspect of product quality in each and every product.
Until then, we're in a really confusing stage where just about any product can claim some level of eco-friendliness. For example, many brands have been cutting back on packaging for years. The reason was margin improvement, but now those projects can be touted as environmentally driven.
The next time I trolled the supermarket, I was really struck by some of the confusing eco claim one-up-manship. So many products were suddenly trumpeting one eco claim or another, and much of seemed ridiculous, confusing, or disingenuous. Like personal care products that are "92.4% Organic", even when most of the product making up that percentage is water.
It reminded me of an arms race. And inspired this cartoon.
I drew this cartoon thinking about some of the debates I've seen about squeezing just one more product benefit on the front of a package. Insisting on too many benefits front-and-center cuts back the impact of any one. It's often hard to agree to the lead benefit, so products become the result of a peace treaty. Also, many benefits have become so commonplace, they lose their meaning entirely.
All of that clutter made be think of it as attribute soup, which reminded me of that old "too many cooks spoil the broth" quote.
I then trolled my pantries for a handful of products to get these specific attributes.
"Never needs winding" came from one of my favorite Tom Waits songs about marketing called "Step right up". Here are a few choice lyrics.
"...That's right, it filets, it chops
It dices, slices, never stops lasts a lifetime, mows your lawn
And it mows your lawn and it picks up the kids from school
It gets rid of unwanted facial hair it gets rid of embarrassing age spots
It delivers a pizza and it lengthens, and it strengthens
And it finds that slipper that's been at large under the chaise longe for several weeks..."
I've been thinking lately how communication can sometimes get a little squirelly inside companies. Something gets interpreted out of context and then passed along down the line just like that telephone game we all played in kindergarten.
I think this gets even worse with geographical distance. I worked at a company once with the R&D center a full 5-hour drive from where all the brand managers sat. Things used to fester all the time. The only way to keep communication smooth was to meet face-to-face as often as possible. We sometimes used to hop in the car, drive 5 hours for a 2 hour meeting and then 5 hours back in a day.
Anyway, I'm definitely feeling this a bit lately now that I'm in a satellite office in London and the rest of the team is in San Francisco, 8 time zones away. So, I nursed my frustration by drawing this little cartoon. Ah, now I feel much better.
