This branching video from Tippex is a clever use of youtube.

Though beware the blue language in the set-up video.

To me, it’s not only a touch gratuitous but also a rather uncomfortable fit with the brand it’s promoting.

This just dropped into my inbox from my esteemed colleague Mr Chris Andrew.

Subject: Now I’m no Fire Safety Inspector…

Body:

…but there’s something in this scene that bothers me:

My boss often likes to suggest he taught me everything I know. My standard rejoinder is that he’s only taught me everything he knows. Such is the hilarious quip-foolery that makes working at WMW like an unending episode of Friends. Hellish.

But here’s an example of something invaluable I did learn from Our Dear Leader: the value of a silly question.

In my salad days, I would sit in high-powered meeting with clients listening to the jargon fly back and forth, desperately trying to keep up so I could at least chuckle in the appropriate places. My highest aspiration was to make a relevant (if anodyne) comment during a natural pause in proceedings.

I suspect it’s a feeling many of us will be familiar with.

Just occasionally, a more rational and less anxious part of my brain would pipe up with things like, “But surely they’re overcomplicating this?”. Or “Aren’t they rather missing the obvious?”. I would of course quash it instantly, confident (or the opposite thereof) that it was all well over my head.

But then an interesting thing would happen.

Our Dear Leader would calmly and confidently interject with a question just as naive as those posed by my own inner voice. He didn’t even have the common decency to frame it in suitably ostentatious language. The first time it happened I was actually a little embarrassed.

But then another interesting thing would happen.

Everyone would stop throwing around the corporate gerunds and blink. Then the whole register of the conversation would change into something more human, something more honest and – dare I say – something much more effective.

By asking the silly question, Our Dear Leader had given everyone permission to dispense with the highfalutin terminology and actually focus on the problem at hand.

I mentioned this phenomenon to a friend of mine who’s a Big Deal in the world of media planning. He told me about a little trick they find useful. When a problem is proving hard to crack by the specialists within the agency, they’d pull in someone who knows absolutely nothing about it. More often than not, that person would ask the silly question that everyone else was too clever to see.

They even had a name for such troubleshooters: Naive Experts.

Next time you’re in one of those meetings that are 5% conversation and 95% obfuscation, take a deep breath and try asking a silly question. Who knows? You might just get a sensible answer.

I’ll be popping on a more constructive post shortly, but sometimes something catches your eye you just have to share.

In this instance, it’s the intro copy to an app for a certain well-known vendor of American college-wear. Before going any further, I strongly recommend you brace yourself. Whiplash from the inevitable cringe reflex is a real possibility. Ready? Deep breath. Here we go:

Hey, you made it! Thought you’d like something to look at while you party with your friends! This is a great way to live ******, and it’s pretty cool when you can take the brand with you on all of your crazy nights. You’re welcome! No, but really, check out what’s goin’ on–it’s good stuff. Feel free to take your time and really get into it; if you look good, no one will care if you’re late, right? So, here’s what you can expect: Check out our latest iconic photography, see what’s happening with our brands, the latest in ****** style, Flagship openings, along with where you can find a store near you. We also have excellent information about who we are as a family of brands. That should give you an idea of what we have to offer–okay, get your plaid on and make it happen!

Is this a spoof? Please tell me it’s an arch, post-modern spoof. It’s not a spoof, is it?

There is doubtless some kind of lesson in here about the importance of authenticity in your brand. But I think it pretty much speaks for itself.

Though, to be fair, it is ‘pretty cool when you can take the brand with you on all your crazy nights.”

I have literally no idea what that means.

A neat little bon mot from one of the many creative how-to guides (apologies to the uncredited coiner) goes as follows:

“At all costs resist the urge to start writing.”

That is to say, only start executing an idea when you’ve thought it through properly. If you have, the copy will flow easily because you know exactly the story you want to tell.

This line of thinking can be usefully applied all the way through the creative process. For example, I’ve literally never worked on a project when too much time was spent thinking through the brief and too little time was spent tinkering with the execution.

The most popular approach is to express a general intent and then use numerous iterations of creative work to flesh out the strategy. When the right approach would be to hone the brief to a lethal point that the creative work delivers just as sharply.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but there’s no such thing as too tight a brief (briefs, maybe). The worst case scenario for any creative team is to be told hey, great news, the brief is really loose so feel free to play with it and see what you come up with.

In most cases, what they’ll come up with will be a plethora of hesitant, unfocused ideas that try and cover every angle instead of just attacking the right one.

Or, if they’re really good, they’ll come up with the brief you should have given them in the first place. And look justifiably smug.

At all costs resist the urge to start briefing. Trust me, you’re not ready yet.

Today a member of the Client Service team wondered over with what he purported to be a new brief.

“So what’s the message?” I enquired.

“They just want something generic,” he replied.

At this point I ambled to the nearest available corner, curled up into a foetal position and started singing ‘Row, row, row the boat’ in an unnerving falsetto.

It’s not the first time this has happened. But you don’t want to hear about my hilarious idiosyncrasies.

It’s also not the first time we’ve been asked to come up with a ‘generic’ campaign.

Just think about that for a moment. Could there be anything more antithetical to good communication than a generic message? What in God’s name is a generic message anyway?

Was that the brief behind the iconic Nike campaign ‘Just Do Stuff’?

“We don’t have anything to say. But we do rather want to say something.”

Presumably the second action point from that meeting was to hire someone on a six-figure salary to push a boulder up and down a hill for the rest of eternity.

To neutralise my acerbic acid, here’s a three-step process to effective communication:

1. Have a reason to say something.

2. Have something to say.

3. Say it.

Actually, it’s amazing how often at least one of those steps gets overlooked.

Secretly, I’m a nerd. I say ‘secretly’. I think my weekly Amazon delivery of sci fi books and videogames mean the creative team is on to me.

(Seamless segue approaching)

If you’ve ever bought a PC videogame, you’ll have seen two important pieces of information on the back of the box. The first is called Minimum Requirements. The second is Recommended Requirements.

They specify exactly how good your components need to be to run the game. Your graphics card, processor, memory and stuff.

If your PC meets the Minimum Requirements, you should be able to get it working. But you’ll have to turn all the bells and whistles off. And even if you do the game will stutter along joylessly.

But if it meets the Recommended Requirements, you can ratchet up the quality settings and everything will run smoothly – making for a much more enjoyable experience.

(Don’t worry. This is what’s called a metaphor. Watch…)

To my mind, employee rewards are much the same as Minimum Requirements.

(See?)

They’re fundamental. That is, they fulfil a basic expectation of every employee i.e. you remunerate me fairly for the hours and expertise I put in.

But they’re not important. That is, in the vast majority of cases, they are not the driving force behind people’s motivation at work.

They are the world of work’s Minimum Requirements. Few people would say the thing that excited them most about their job is the money. Sure, they’d be pretty miffed if they didn’t get any. But it’s not what truly stimulates them.

Despite this, organisations place a huge emphasis on communicating the tangible rewards they offer, instead of articulating their Recommended Requirements – the stuff that actually creates a great career experience.

You know. The Big Idea behind the organisation. The contribution you’ll make. The things you’ll learn. The people you’ll work with. The future opportunities. The lasagne in the canteen, even.

Get your rewards right, then get them out of the way. You might just find you’ve got more interesting things to talk about.

Together with our friends at O2, we’ve been shortlisted for a PR Week Award in October.

Must not drink too much at the ceremony.

Max Clifford would have a field day.

A common theme in the world of communication is ‘simplicity’. You know, making complicated stuff simpler so it’s more easily digested.

But, while simplicity is a prerequisite of effective communication, alone it’s not enough.

We’re not simply (there it is again) in the business of making things more easy to digest, after all.

Marcus Wareing doesn’t just fillet, scale and cook the reassuringly expensive halibut you ordered. He adds a sprinkle of magic (or maybe saffron) to make it not just digestible but downright delicious.

It’s the difference between a cook and a chef. Or a copy editor and a copywriter. Or even an average agency and a good agency.

Just to clarify my butter, the difference I’m talking about is the addition of an idea.

By which I mean the thing that unites and ignites whatever information you’re trying to convey. That changes a disparate set of messages into a logical, compelling story. That provokes interest rather than merely avoids disinterest.

It might be a memorable strapline. It might be a distinctive visual treatment. It might be a clever way of using the media. It might be an animal metaphor, a reference to an old 70s TV show, or a gorilla playing the drums.

Whatever it is, once you’ve got it, everything else falls into place.

Take my own day-to-day job: copywriting. It actually involves a surprisingly small amount of actual writing. Or, rather, writing copy takes up a disproportionately small amount of my time compared to sitting in a room talking in ever decreasing circles about the idea.

Because, once we’ve got the idea, the execution itself is relatively easy.

Sometimes it takes technical skill. Sometimes it takes artistic flair. Sometimes it even takes money. But, compared to conjuring the idea itself, it’s a cakewalk.

Simple communication is good communication. But only an idea can make it great.

A couple of months ago, I applied for a job. This is what the ad said:

The onerous tasks
Right now, we need a copywriter to join our incredibly busy but remarkably friendly (and indecently talented) creative team. It’s a chance to work on all kinds of internal brand communications – from posters and brochures to events and viral campaigns to online projects and recruitment advertising to workspace branding and… well, you get the gist.

Apart from being just the job I was after, something else stuck out: the tone the ad was written in. Unlike the majority of job ads, there were no stock phrases or clichés. No one was asking me to be ‘passionate’ about writing; no one was demanding that I had ‘strong interpersonal skills’; and no one was calling the job details ‘specifications’.

All too often, companies forget how important it is to get their tone right – even when word counts are limited and time is tight.

Getting a copywriter to craft your shiny new brochure is all very well, but you’ll come across as two-faced if you sound completely different in other places – in your job ads, in the letters you send to the clients who owe you money, even in the sign on your recycling bin.

What’s more, there’s no point adopting a tone that doesn’t reflect what you stand for as a company. (You only have to look at all the brands trying to copy innocent’s chummy tone to see that it doesn’t work.)

Now that I’ve been at WMW a month, I’ve seen that the tone of voice in the job ad wasn’t just for show. What sounded like a fun company, is a fun company. What sounded like a sense of humour is a sense of humour (the flamingo wallpaper gave it away). And what sounded like mild sarcasm is, erm, just Grant.