A Commercial That Totally Nails It (Totes McGotes)

Sometimes it just comes down to the on-air talent.

Imagine the #throwback status updates on these timelines.

And you know, that’s not easy to admit. We’ve produced enough TV spots in our time that we’re accustomed to sharing the accolades with everyone involved. The whole team contributes to success: the writers, the creative directors, the producers and certainly not least, the clients who green-lit the things in the first place.

But every now and then we see an ad, or a series of ads, that turns that formulation on its head. Sometimes the idea is so simple, or so unexpected, that it’s destined to be a great big clinker unless exactly the right people are put in front of the cameras.

Sprint’s recent campaign, created by the Leo Burnett agency, is a prime example. To highlight and honor the everyday importance of everyday communication, roughly 16 TV commercials (not all have aired as of yet) consist of little more than a couple of actors role-playing other peoples’ phone conversations, texts, and email exchanges.

Which could have generated a lot of shrugs, and maybe a few yawns. But they went and casted James Earl Jones and Malcolm McDowell to handle the emoticon-y reenactments.

Sheer genius. And putting them both in tuxes, on a spare and darkened London stage? Almost too awesome to contemplate.

So what we got was two veteran character actors, whose bodies of works are nothing less than legendary, taking on the personae of tween girls (to hash out, once and for all, whether Ryan is a ‘Hottie McHotterson’), and a couple of bros pondering whether to go out that night (“Probably not…but I might!”)

We’re not saying other actors couldn’t have carried it off. But with these two, a smash-hit was almost guaranteed. And it’s not solely because of their individual talent, remarkable as they are. No, there was synergy and interpersonal chemistry at work here, and it’s plainly visible on the screen. Industry buzz has it that both Jones and McDowell signed on only when they learned the other was committed. It’s also telling that these were the first TV commercials Malcolm McDowell has ever done.

The results are amazing (or as McDowell-as-‘Kim’ would have it, “amazeballs”). But truth be told, it probably won’t turn our industry on its head. We’ll go on creating ads much like we’ve always done: as a creative, collaborative effort between a team of professionals, with the input and informed consent of our clients.

We’d like to say this is because it’s a proven method that’s served us extraordinarily well, and there’s more than a kernel of truth to that. But this is also true: There are simply not enough James Earl Joneses and Malcolm McDowells to go around.

The C4:

1. Sprint and Leo Burnett swung for the fences, and delivered. Such a simple concept: have a couple of actors play off each other with the content of other peoples’ electronic communications. Similar ads have been tried before. We forget by whom.
2. What made this a winning campaign is very easily identified: James Earl Jones and Malcolm McDowell. Their vocal and personal gravitas, their commanding presence, their tuxedos, for crying out loud—created a shocking yet delightful incongruity, as they inhabited the vernacular of these 30-second roles.
3. Give credit where it’s due. Just like any marketing endeavor, this one had a lot of champions. Every stakeholder at Sprint and at Leo Burnett shares this success. But let’s not kid ourselves, because they’re surely not; the actors made this work. If anyone else had been in front of the camera, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.
4. We salute this success, but we can’t really see it changing how we work. We collaborate with our clients, and with each other, to create marketing that delivers exactly the right message to exactly the right audience. But having said that—Messrs. Jones and McDowell, you read our blog, don’t you? (Doesn’t everyone?) If so…CALL US.

Can’t See Your Desk?

“A cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind.”

How did such a filthy studio produce such clean paintings?

Whether you take umbrage at that statement, or whether you find yourself nodding in agreement, is probably a safe indicator of your own desk’s state of tidiness.
  
So we have here, once again, a clash. A dichotomy. Once again we have a way of dividing ourselves against ourselves. As if we didn’t have enough of those.

Those of the uncluttered persuasion will tell you that there’s a place for everything, and everything should darn well be in its place. It’s a matter of productivity, they say. Neatness and organization provide the tools and empowerment to get work done quickly, efficiently, and accurately.

Meanwhile, the denizens of the other end of the spectrum tell you that where you see clutter, they see an unconventional yet workable filing system. Of course they know where everything can be found — every pile and overstuffed desk drawer represents a logical progression of tasks and relationships.

Besides, they say, if you’re spending so much time organizing your workstation, how much work can you actually be getting done?

Sigh. Can’t we all just get along?

Here’s a thought: Maybe both sides are right. Now before you accuse us of being wishy-washy, let us assure you that this isn’t just a theoretical group hug we’re advocating here. We speak from experience.

Within these hallowed halls of Caler&Company (What? They’re hallowed to us…) you can find both cluttered desks, and desks that veritably shimmer with immaculateness. Some members of our team are called to alphabetize their paperclips, and some of us need to dig archaeological trenches to find last month’s expense reports.

And it doesn’t matter a bit. Not as long as we’re creating powerful marketing communications that get results for our clients. (We totally are.)

Because what works for each of us is, unsurprisingly, that which works for each of us. Trying to force our Oscar Madisons into Felix Unger-shaped pigeonholes wouldn’t just be futile, it’d be counterproductive. It would mess with this precious success-formula of ours. We can’t have that.

Maybe this philosophy would work for your business? It just might. Give it a try. Instead of driving wedges between your neatniks and your paper-hoarders, try just letting them be themselves. If they give you their best work, you know you’re on the right track.

And if you still need a dichotomy, then try this one on for size: If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, what's an empty desk a sign of?

The C4:

1. The hullabaloo between those who neatly organize their desks, and those who, um, don’t, is getting a little nasty. The two sides have gone beyond questioning each other’s work methods. Seems like they’re now questioning each others' sanity, patriotism, and commitment to the survival of mankind.
2. Which means we’re taking taking this way too seriously. It comes down to this: It’s your desk. Can you find everything you need? Can you get your work done? Can you not just perform, but excel? Then great — organize (or disorganize) anyway you choose.
3. That’s how we run things here. At Caler&Company, we’re judged on our results, not the state of our desktops. Makes sense, doesn’t it? There’s more than enough divisiveness to go around.
4. For example, much as we love our coworkers, would you believe that come Sunday, some of these people are going to be rooting for the wrong team? Now that is truly a sign of some kind of messed-up mind.

The Chief, The ’Skins & The Right Thing To Do

Maybe it's time.

We at Caler&Company tend to look at public-relations controversies in a couple of different ways. We’re interested observers, followers of news and rumors…and at the same time we’re industry insiders, always wargaming how we’d navigate similar challenges. “If they were our clients…” is how many a conversation ’round our watercooler begin.

Full disclosure: the Cleveland Indians and the Washington Redskins are not our clients. We have no say in how they handle the perennial (yet currently very active) controversies surrounding the Native American themes in their team names and mascots.

But if they were our clients, here’s what we’d tell them…

It’s true that political correctness can run rampant, far past the point of ridiculousness. It’s also true that a significant segment of the population, maybe even one that’s concentrated among the sports-loving types, reacts pretty negatively to political correctness. They value history and tradition, like the 66-year-old legacy of Chief Wahoo, and the 81-year-old history of Washington’s team name.

On those criteria alone, a public relations professional might be justified in telling the teams to hang tough. They could probably make the argument that the fans will appreciate their steadfastness all the more.

But the best public relations strategy, we’d tell them, always has to be this: Just do the right thing. And we’d ask them if retiring Chief Wahoo and the name “Redskins” is a matter of political correctness, or is it the right thing to do?

The traditions and memories those teams and their symbols are steeped in are overwhelming positive. Fans of those teams think of great times with family and friends, of thrilling triumph and crushing defeat, when they see the Indians or Redskins names and logos. Racial injustice and humiliation are surely the furthest things from their minds.

But that doesn’t alter the fact that “Redskins” is a slur, and Chief Wahoo is a gross stereotype.

If they were our clients, we’d tell them they could probably hang tough if they wanted to. They could probably thumb their noses at any and all who took offense, and most likely get away with it. For a while at least. Times and attitudes change after all. One day, we’d tell them, they could probably expect a reckoning.

Or they could do the right thing, right now.

Saying goodbye to the Chief, and renaming the ’Skins, isn’t the same as admitting that there was racism inherent in the long history of those franchises. We think even the most vocal critics realize that the teams’ management, players, and fans are motivated only by love of their sport and their hometown traditions.

And resist it though they might, we think even the most diehard fans will come to accept change, maybe even embrace it. New traditions are being born all the time, after all. If they’re born to replace ones best left in the past, then so much the better.

The C4

1. Public relations is a prominent offering on the Caler&Company menu. We love our close engagement with our public-relations clients, and the rollicking challenges that come with real-time PR operations. We can’t turn it off. So we analyze PR cases. The thornier they are, the more we analyze them.
2. We’re well aware, then, that the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians have had slow-burn public-relations trials for decades now, churned up by those who say they’re indiscriminately insulting American Indians. We also know that at present the controversy seems to be heating up a bit.
3. But who knows. Maybe it’ll blow over. Surely the PR pros at work on this know that’s a possibility. The teams very well might not have to change a thing.
4. But they should. The world gets a little better every time we discard a slur or stereotype. Kind of makes you wonder why we don’t discard them all.

Huddle Up, Stakeholders

We’re reaching out to you today so we can put a stake in the ground, grab for the low-hanging fruit, and think outside the box.

You may not have noticed, but there’s been this juggernaut of jargon that’s taken over the business lexicon.

Seems like a no-brainer now, but back when we started talking this way, we thought it was a game changer. A win-win proposition. We were speaking the same language, mangling the same metaphors, and we really thought every conversation would be value-added — bringing us more bang for the buck.

Well, it brought about a paradigm shift, all right. It moved the needle…but in the wrong direction. Turns out we’ve become parodies of ourselves. Irritating ones at that.

Drilling down into the problem, we find the stigma of cliché, and the way that the overuse of tired, misapplied jargon actually weakens our messaging. Dive deeper, and you see that talking like a rigidly programmed Business Bot destroys your differentiation. You become plain vanilla, just another face in the crowd.

You’ve got a lot on your plate, we know. This probably wasn’t even on your radar. We’re not asking you to reinvent the wheel, but going forward, maybe you can repurpose some of this drivel? Transition it into another role?

At the end of the day, your communications skills are seen by your customers, competitors and employees as key performance indicators, showing them just how much bandwidth you’ve got for your core competencies. If they think you’re just parroting the masses, well then you might as well be down the rabbit hole.

Death to jargon, is what we’re saying. Do we have your buy-in?

The C4

1. The definitive guide to effective communications, Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style includes every rule of English usage you can imagine.
2. Seriously, read it. It’ll make you a better writer and speaker. (And it will turn you against insipid jargon, forever.)
3. Its most vital advice, which if we follow it will end jargoneering for all time (amen), can be summed up in one very short sentence…
4. “Omit needless words.”

Instagram v. Vine

Which is better for your business?

Oh, our love of drawing lines and taking sides. Mac v. PC, Ford v. Chevy, Elvis v. The Beatles.

Somehow the choices we make have become dichotomies — we’re expected to embrace one, eschew the other, and develop a steadfast loyalty that’ll last forever (or at least until the next big thing comes along).

It’s happening in the social-media sphere too, and until we see that Next Big Thing, the opposing teams seem to be Facebook and Twitter.

Of course, there’s not much of a dichotomy there. Because those two social powerhouses are different enough, with different usages and potential reach, that business and casual users tend to embrace them both. At the risk of oversimplifying, we use FB as our storefront and Twitter as our megaphone. They’re synergistic, and we’re using them that way.

But now comes Instagram and Vine, properties of Facebook and Twitter respectively, bringing back head-to-head competition, bringing back dichotomy, alas, to our social-media choices.

Instagram has been around for a while. It started as a photo-sharing tool, with a bit of a reputation for hipsterism. Recently, Instagram has added video sharing capabilities, hosting clips up to 15 seconds long.

Which intrudes directly into Vine’s wheelhouse. Vine was designed from the get-go as a video app, hewing tightly to Twitter’s penchant for short, pithy messaging. Six seconds: that’s all you get to make your splash on Vine.

These are still early days for both, so they’re both still the domain of the dabblers. Business and marketing professionals are taking notice, though, and strategies are being created to make the most of each.

So what kind of appeal can you pitch in just a handful of seconds? A pretty compelling one, by necessity. You don’t have time for a narrative arc — you must get to the point, unambiguously, with some kind of call to action. You turn on the camera, state your case quickly, then yell “cut” and get it posted.

You’ve got a tad longer to do so on Instagram, with the added bonus of tying your messaging in with its massively popular photo sharing (currently approaching 20 billion pics, shared by nearly 150 million users). You can also easily integrate your clips into your business Facebook presence.

On the Vine side, if you can’t say it in six seconds, then you might as well give up. But you know what? You totally can say it in six seconds. Vine users are remastering what Twitter already taught us: cut out the fluff and let the message speak for itself. In six seconds you can communicate one funny, scary, enticing, or intriguing statement. Do that with your URL flashing on the screen, and you’ll probably grab some traffic.

So how about that dichotomy? Do we really need to choose sides? Well as you surely know, we’re lovers, not fighters (ask anyone). So we love ’em both.

Down with dichotomies. Down with either/or. Vine and Instagram, much like Twitter and Facebook, each offer unique possibilities for building brands, reaching customers, and sharing the message of the market.

We know not which course others may take, but as for us, give us Instagram and Vine.

The C4

1. Choice is what makes the market work. We love choice.
2. But for some reason, choice has turned into an either/or thing. If you select the one, you must disdain the other.
3. Must it be so for Instagram and Vine? They’re similar enough, with their strict limit of either 15 or 6 seconds per video clip. Aficionados of each are probably already sneering and trash-talking each other.
4. It doesn’t have to be that way. Instagram and Vine are similar, but not identical. They integrate well with their parent platforms, Facebook and Twitter. They can host messaging that dovetails nicely with your overall social media strategy. You can use them both to reach different audiences, in different ways. So do you have to make a choice? Yes — you can choose to use them both.