Book Competition - Chief Culture Officer

It feels like there's an air of unreality and hyper reality colliding in a mid jet-stream spectacular of post-modernism meets earnest-but-pedestrian commercial cheese. 

Well anyway that's how I would start writing a critique of the above video before tapering off into silence, because the task Grant has set out to is challenging but definitely not humourless.

All you need do is head over to Grant's blog Cultureby because he's giving away a copy of his warmly anticipated book Chief Culture Officer which is easily the most compelling argument for pinning down the stiffs and psychopaths in the boardroom and letting the humans of our species inside. You know it makes sense.

Espresso

A few days back I noticed Grant McCracken tweeting a bit more than usual and took notice of his observations which are always top notch given he's one of the most authoritative (and through his blog) accessible anthropologists (Chief Culture Officer) on the planet. In a subsequent recent post that taps into the his latest idea  of the Culturematic, he talked about the train journey from Chicago to Detroit where he was doing the tweeting. It resonated on so many levels and so here goes in trying to explain.

Sad to say but I was a train spotter as a youth and although I enjoyed the linear and meticulous checking off train numbers (especially the diesel locomotives) I think it was the freedom of running around the UK with a legitimate reason and a bunch of friends who were into it as well. Even Slough Train station is slightly exotic to a 12 year old. I remember well the first air skirmish for the Falklands war was announced by one friend who in admirable news-trainspotting manner, was carrying a pocket radio with him.

I guess since then I've learned that flying is not so glamorous as people might believe. The last time I was living in Hong Kong a few years back I spent so much time in the air, mostly between Chek Lap Kok and Shanghai that I was eating airline food most of the time and didn't even know that the Island I'm now living on existed. I thought Hong Kong was all about the bustling metropolis when in fact, a lot of this wonderful island is well preserved from insatiable property developers and has delightful sleepy fishing villages that I talked about in my Sok Kwu Wan post. Here's some more pics.

Sleepy Hung Shin Ye Beach

Feet firmly on the ground at Pak Kok

Time on my side.

Sand, rock and sky.

Horizon where it should be.

Kit on the beach.

City in the distance.

Trekking pony at the ready.

Whichever way we wish to 'cut the data', it's a leisurely life that proceeds slower (we can't save time, only spend it) and I've long felt that train travel is a more civilised affair than the cattle prod bullying that takes place in the air. Of course some trips aren't possible without air flight, but if there is an alternative, the train is more human and humane.

I don't know about you but I'm not in a rush to be a pensioner. I've got all the time in the world.Is it an illusion of our times, that we need to achieve more and more, faster and faster. The present is being created and destroyed at the same time isn't it?

So do we need to be smarter instead of faster? Going slower saves time is a counter intuitive truism that the Kingdom of Thailand taught me. In Siam, rushing is seen as vulgar. Though I'm still a novice at keeping a relaxed pace. Because it takes awareness and discipline.

So you can delineate for yourselves the tension between slower train travel and the fastest 'regular' train service in the world where I suspect I may well have broken the land speed record for tweets (which is awesome and ironic) but I'll just leave that thought hanging as obscurity and ambiguity challenge us to think just that bit harder than certainty. Or so the 48 Laws of Power once informed me.

And so I break another law starting a sentence with and. Warren Buffet the arch investor of our time (who has mastered the art of folksy image yet ruthless investor) just recently plowed an awful lot of bread into 'America's future'. If you're not paying attention, then don't say you weren't warned. Here's a clip of what I was trying to convey last year at 204.43112224608285 Miles per Hour

And so slower, is slowly getting better. 

Believe.

McDonalds & Family Guy

I shouldn't say this given my pseudo Neo-Marxist and anti Globalist/Corporate sentiment but I'm fascinated by McDonalds. No really; practically obsessed with them and particularly their breakfasts which (when I wrote this post and put it in the draft folder) I'm just waiting for some jeans to tumble dry (naughty given I'm in the tropics) and then I'm off for one of the finest precision breakfasts on the planet. The Sausage and Egg McMuffin with hash brown and coffee. I've also been squeezing in a couple of hot cakes with syrup after but you don't need to know that, because I really don't want to think about it.

So let's start as we mean to go on and shoot straight, because I think what McDonalds knows about themselves and what they don't know about themselves is the gap that I'd like to help them out on if a chance avails itself which is unlikely given I have a problem with Ronald McDonald. He's got to go; or at least maybe lose the clown suit, the make up, the big feet, the voice and that fucking red wig. I mean, we all know that a person better have a great personality if they have ginger pubes in much the same way that if born black in American it's a good idea to stay as far away from the law enforcement officers and their testosterone pumped, steroidal spiked aggression issues. That doesn't mean I don't like red hair. On the contrary; along with a Jewish Princess girlfriend I alway keep an eye open. You know, just in case.

 

I will come back to Family Guy a lot more, because when Faris wrote a while back that sport and religion have a wider remit than just playful competition and spiritual fulfilment I agreed with him and then some. I wrote back here that I think football performs an interesting social function when observed as conversation in pubs, and say, back-of-taxi discussions. I'll be using Family Guy for the same purpose in the future, as a tool, but first I should explain that even though I've only watched Season Five I'm convinced I'll be able to explain a lot of stuff using these types of clips that don't really exist legally on Youtube and yet are a poweful way for content producers to 'showcase' their stuff in much the same way as advertising works.

The one above serves it's purpose for me to dramatise police agression and also introduces some more people to Family Guy. If FOX were smarter they'd have every known  humorous scenario of 5-10 second clips available on a searchable database for free so that people could use it to explain stuff. Same applies to the Simpsons or indeed any content such as the ghastly Friends or infinitely hipper Seinfeld. Both of which I've never watched much of but get the gist.

Back to McDonalds because I read this tweet earlier by Saul Kaplan who I often disagree with, but more in terms of scope than sentiment. The thing is that while it's easy to bash McDonalds for being the archetypical globalised brand with rapacious corporate in-sustainability, it is not so well know that McDonalds is one of the more progressive global brands when it comes to moving in the right direction. Sure they may have some farming methods which are mind boggling huge but they actively work on their responsibilities much harder than many so called mega corporate brands. We too have our responsibilities as I wrote back here and I've been using the same plastic knife and fork they give out as it's no trouble to reuse.

But what really excites me about McDonalds is that I think they are one of the few brands that almost ticks off the religious devotion that is, like my breakfast addiction, probably irrational and yet as I've learned in many different countries I think McDonalds also has the ubiquity of understanding globally that means it's here to stay and which is why I want to be on the inside and not on the outside.

Let me explain.

All over the planet I will have problems asking for different basic words in different languages. My Cantonese is rubbish so I'm struggling to ask for essential things like 'water', or 'food' or 'somewhere to sit down' or 'coffee', and yet it doesn't matter where I am on the planet, even if the country has no McDonalds. Everybody understands what I mean. It's global language and that is a powerful idea which we need to nurture and try to work on so that it retains some sense of dignity and that too is where I get excited about McDonalds.

I first got to thinking about this stuff the last time I was in Hong Kong because I have a deep respect for a global franchise that hires a person with learning difficulties. I've blogged about this elsewhere but can't find it in either posts or comments so I need to repeat that when enjoying (and I do enjoy them) a Sausage and Egg McMuffin with Hash Brown and Coffee I think it's great that while I'm not quite so comfortable having my table wiped by someone with learning difficulties, who reminds me of the sadness in the world, I'm moved and humbled by brands that employ people with challenges in life, who might otherwise remain anonymous and day by day lose their ability to integrate with the world. So thanks for that McDonalds because I respect you and your more open minded employment policy. But there's also a lot more to you.

I was reminded only a couple of weekends ago on a Ferry ride away in Aberdeen, Hong  Kong because I got talking to more local Cantonese than any other time in my life. The Chinese are often held to be inscrutable but in my experience public life interaction is culturally different and like any other culture there's always going to be a latent resentment of other dominant cultures. But the subject is massive so don't sound-bite me on that or even thin slice me because I've got a massive post brewing on handwritten paper to try and flesh that topic out and it's both enormously sensitive and one of the trickiest to tip toe around without sounding like a pampered white boy - which I am. It does need typing up first though.

My first conversation with a retired but smartly dressed Chinese guy nearly made me fall off my stool. He paid no attention to the black nail varnish I've occasionally been wearing this year or even my silly hat and scarves affectation I've moved on to.  But for Asians they mean a lot, because the nail that sticks out gets hammered in and yet this chap proceeded to engage in broken English conversation. After introducing myself and explaining a little of what I do, he did something that is anathema for many people let alone an elderly Asian gent having a conversation with Gweilo as we're referred to in this part of the world (it means ghost and is semiotically up there with Farang in Thailand though like Thailand, it's ubiquity has softened it's tonality).

He explained to me that his son was lazy. That his son's wife was fat and that they both were not working full time although his son had some cancer that prevented him from working some times. He described to me how fat the wife was and how they both turned up at his house religiously each evening for a cooked meal that his own wife had prepared because they were too lazy to do so themselves. He didn't explain it with malice. It was pure matter of fact and then he went on to describe that he was disappointed in his son who had received an education in England and from his not unreasonable Engineers salary had received a reasonable number of opportunities in life. I couldn't help but correlate that I was his own sons age and that we had talked about how I could be so mobile. It was  a lovely converation while we drank our coffee together waiting for his wife to return from a bit of shopping in an area that I can only reference as being the Bull Ring of Hong Kong in terms of it's urban tonality and yet oddly enough I noticed it was completely void of teenagers. Babies and Pensioners yes. But no teens.

I guess it was me going back for some more of those hot cakes with that maple syrup they do which t led to my next encounter. Sitting next to me was a young and attractively dressed woman with two gorgeous toddlers clambering all over the seats and demanding attention in that way only really cute kid can pull off without appearing tiresome and boy these two kids were cute. We got talking and the mother used the opportunity to remind the lovely little urchins that they were both doing English at school  and so could say hello and give me their names. I spoke briefly to the mother who I admired because it was evident she was working in some capacity during the week, taking care of her children and both managed to look presentable as well as having delightfully cute kids. The apple hadn't fallen far from the tree in this instance.

I've no idea why I knew she worked in the week but it's a skill I've picked up over the years reading peoples clothes to know this sort of thing. Lots of little indicators like the watch, shoes, makeup and accessories. Accessories tell us a lot if we look hard enough.

Anyway, mission accomplished I dispensed with the ferry ride back and caught a bus into Hong Kong central as I'm determined to cover as much ground as possible while I'm here and get to know the whole place. The bit that kept me ticking over was the good luck to have proper interaction with locals. There's little chance that I could have done this with both a young mother and an elderly gent in places like Starbucks or Pret a manger and it's that social interaction permission that I think is a powerful part of the future of McDonalds because they've nailed all that outstanding value breakfasts which cut right through demographics and geography. I think it's time to start figuring out both more of the role they play in the social fabric of all the communities that they fulfill a role in. Which in this age is really a highly fractured and increasingly atomised nuclear family structure. The ability to faciliate more meaning in the world means, I believe, that they need more meaning management. Something I'm quite keen to do for them.

Meaning Management - Grant McCracken

I had one of those 'oh shit' moments about planning recently. I follow Crispin Porter reasonably closely, more because of the cultural framework of the United States that their work illuminates than the brilliance of their creative. I get the feeling Crispin understand the macro task more than most and that gives me a kick. I like it that their work annoys people and yet they still get hired. I believe they play a broader and more intelligent game than just the commercials that the industry obsesses about.

Big Bucking Chicken was very memorable. A mate I grew up with in Southampton, and I would endlessly goof around saying 'bucking hell, for bucks sake, buck me' the list goes on and it's nice when an ad agency can deal the obscenity card with charm.

Getting back to my epiphany, I've followed the run up to, and execution of the long awaited Microsoft work by Crispin because I had strong views on how to solve the Microsoft communication challenge which sounds arrogant (and is) but there are some basic denial dimensions when it comes to Microsoft that nobody discusses openly and yet they are the issues, that if addressed can shift the brand to where it needs to be. Embracing the truth is a brilliant start. It's also the most challenging isn't it?

So when the Seinfeld and Gates work came out, contrary to the widespread chorus of derision I was up for it. It may not be as brilliant as we perhaps expected, but a quick deconstruction ticked off a few valuable boxes and then I subsequently wrote about it here just as the follow up work came out which was much stronger in my view. Whatever anyone says, it got talked about an awful lot. More than say an incredible brand like Nokia who have failed to deliver an ad that resonates.

The first endorsement I came across the Seinfeld and Gate's work, that added to my own thoughts was from Grant McCracken's blog Cultureby. It's often a challenging blog. It can be uphill to grasp some of his conceptual conclusions. His posting is prolific, and can seem daunting when there is a backlog of RSS feeds to catch up with, but they are best digested distraction free with time to go over the points that at first glance can seem either cryptically elusive or elliptically bloody simple. Maybe they're the same thing sometimes.

In any case, because I've been dropping by his blog for some time I'm quite fond of Grant's writing, it's the strength of conviction, spectrum of creative writing styles and unequivocal impatience with mediocrity - the man does not suffer fools at all. Like it or not Grant has an ace way of demolishing even his own academic peers. I'm sure this must be quite incendiary for the colleagues it's aimed at, but it pleases me no end that making chums is not the point of his Blog.

So anyway, Grant identified that many people were confused by the MS work. What was the point? And this is where Grant sort of says his plain stuff that has much more depth then is easily captured. He wrote: "The microsoft spot has a clear task: to rebuild the the Microsoft brand. It is using Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Gates and a particular situation to perform an act of "meaning manufacture"

That's the first pointer at a really important reframing of the quality end of planning. "Meaning manufacture" As if the fundamentals of signifier and signified can be remanufactured, hammered into shape, retooled for fresh purposes or stripped bare, skim the head gasket, grind the valves and rebore the cylinders to achieve new tasks or maybe it's time to deliver on tougher and evolved performance expectations.

He goes on in the Microsoft post to say "We can say it is good meaning manufacture. We can say it's bad meaning manufacture, But we can't be mystified a) that this ad exists, b) what it means to do, or c) what it has to do with "selling computers"

I agree, how can anyone not grasp what is being done. Sure the inexplicable is present in the narrative, but isn't that de rigeur for any self respecting piece of communication to leave gaps for the individual to fill in, or if struggling, to enjoy amusement through absurdity. Who cares? Most of it is as it is. But then the killer words emerged for me.

Grant writes "Microsoft is utterly out of touch with contemporary culture, and Bill Gates is, as someone once said of Dick Cavett, "spectacularly gentile" which is to say, utterly out of touch with contemporary culture. The Aquatic Life was a world too far. Some day. Perhaps someday this will be the 'sufficient act of meaning management.

This is where Grant serves up a bit of intellectual corporal punishment. I've had to look up Dick Cavett. My mobile is not playing fair and it seems from the clumps I caught that he's an inner circle Television celebrity from the golden era of American TV. I'm not sure how an Emmy Winner can be spectacularly gentile; I'm genuinely confused but if I were looking for an off the cuff comparison could the same thing be said about Mrs Palin? Ostensibly an executive fishwife with a nose for plain talking that fits sweet in a barren nature reserve with puffy fingered politicians in denial of Russia's proximity and the whole country of Canada before the U.S. really starts?

I could go on. Grant refers to "The Aquatic life" too. I'm stumped for the time being and so is the concise search engine results on my phone.

I'll get back to the point I want to make. It occurred to me that at the most cerebral end of advertising planning our job is 'meaning management'. I looked back into the archives and saw that there were many references to this reframing of the planning function and realised that it had slowly but surely seeped into my brain. So there it is. In my opinion we're either flogging stuff or working at a higher level and it's called Meaning Management' and Grant McCracken owns it. I wrote to him a quick mail to explain that I think it's ironic it took an anthropologist to explain my job to me and I hope you are as enthused by the term as I am when looking at tasks that fit the bill.