I appreciate reinvention as much as I do invention, so when I caught a glimpse of the newish Excedrin “Go” campaign (specifically the spot where wharfy roustabout Neptune battles a sea-churning headache), I cheered the departure from commercials past. Long gone are real folks hunched over real kitchen tables, gettin’ real ’bout heads achin’ — Boss Saatchi hoisted the headache experience into the realm of ferocious headache pain as sufferers know it: unreal.
Yeah, the commercial was a real humdinger.
I was hoping to share this Excedrin spot with you. I figured that, after viewing it, we might engage in some discourse about the evolution of brand messaging, the potency of traditional advertising in a world of 800 lb. viral guerillas, or the evidence that artistic, well produced commercials will, for another generation at least, stand on their own merit.
Yep, I was hoping to share this Excedrin spot with you, but I can’t.
Everything is changing. As it turns out, brands don't "own" market segments. They are simply nodes in complicated human networks. And they're either influential in their networks, or they're not. To have influence, brands must become knowledge brokers. And they need to learn how from the ultimate brokers: humans. Your brand needs to learn to be more human.
I just discovered John Hagel’s Edge Perspectives and promptly subscribed to his feed. He’s seems like an utterly brilliant frood. Reading the first post I am giddy because I have been unfortunately orotund with all who will listen (or at least feign) on the subject of where I think marketing is inevitably headed. Dr. Hagel’s post (to the likely vexation of my compatriots, no doubt) has me more overwrought than ever. This post by the vampishly astute Strumpette has me additionally lathered (about the content).
So this is a blog. And a rather new one at that. Acting under the assumption that a blog is the proper venue for tempest-in-a-teapot grandiloquence, I intend now to unwind my narrative on new marketing. It will shake out into a number of parts, but I must to warn you now, fair reader: I have a penchant for a kind of looping, lateral storytelling which some (the lawyers want me to warn people with epilepsy) might find, well, obnoxious. So you’ve been warned and all that.