HELSINQI CREATIVE

The Inopportuneness of Being Earnest

Tuesday, 13 July 2010

One of the pitfalls of marketing by principled companies and organizations is Deadly Earnest Syndrome, a tragic condition that afflicts the well-meaning. It drives them to decide they have to distinguish themselves from unscrupulous advertisers by means of “pure” messaging untainted by humor, cool, style, attitude, smoke machines, or anything else that smells of dog and pony. In other words: marketing without any of the art of marketing.

DES is caused by deep ambivalence about marketing and advertising, which the afflicted associate with roguishness and duplicity: they see it as a force for evil. Which, hey, it often is. But that’s tough to reconcile with the bald fact that marketing is necessary. If marketing weren’t necessary, no one would do it. End of thought experiment.

Faced with that ambivalence, they try to promote themselves without resorting to the “tricks of the trade.” They try to market without marketing. And they wind up creating strange, conflicted monsters — messaging that’s typically either sanctimonious or tedious, or both.

I was intrigued to come across the “Tom’s of Maine Goodness Philosophy” long-format ad, on Hulu. The message is essentially a mainstream paean to the triple bottom line (of people, planet, and profit, except not so much the profit part) — which is certainly an interesting development, culturally speaking. Unfortunately it’s delivered as an artificially sweetened lecture on virtuous capitalism, whose relentless brow-knitting goodyness made me want to gnaw my own foot off.

The ad pushes itself as a heartland anthem, like a lowest-common-denominator domestic car ad, only with meditating blondes on the beach. The voice-over is quintessential Deadly Earnest Syndrome. It tries so hard to be simultaneously uplifting and concerned, hammering away at honesty and integrity and goodness, that it overshoots the mark and leaves a cloying aftertaste of… what is that, exactly? Desperation? But the coup de grâce is the score. As ham-fisted grabs at the heartstrings go, it really is over the top.

The ad’s duration is problematic. At 2:47, it’s about two and a half minutes too long. If I’m going to be disrupted for 30 seconds, it had better be good. But if you’re going to hijack my brain for the duration of “I Got You (I Feel Good)” — James Brown, 1965 — it had better be freaking superlative. It could begin by being informative, for real. As it stands, there might be 30 seconds of ideas in the piece, rolled out to ponderous, redundant flatness. Good God, y’all! And that’s a shame, because the basic message is an important one.

How do things like this happen? They happen because of a lack of trust. It’s deeply ironic. Sufferers of Deadly Earnest Syndrome succumb to the ideology that virtue should sell itself. When it doesn’t, they have to dip their fingers in the noxious swamp of marketing. (Ick.) But at that point, they’re so busy bending over backwards to distance themselves from normal advertisers (read: scoundrels) that they forget how human beings really communicate with each other, when they do so with integrity: creatively, openly, engagingly, and with genuine feeling, not the plastic kind.

Good, integrity-driven communication starts from trust. You trust in what you have to offer, and you do your audience the courtesy of trusting and respecting them. If you can’t or won’t do either of those things, then you’re not in a position for integrity-driven communication. Best to go back to the drawing board. But the DES-afflicted never get as far as this analysis. Instead, they power through the trust gap on ideology and… what is that, exactly? Desperation? So you end up with music that makes Hollywood tearjerker soundtracks seem disinterested, and writing that sounds like Baby’s First Orwell Novel.

Consider the narration at the 1:53 mark of the Tom’s ad. The narrator announces, “And while we haven’t always made the best decisions, we’ve always had the best intentions.” Wait — what?! Bad decisions? Did somebody do something ill-considered with minty-fresh asbestos? This line was supposed to disarm me with candor and humility, but it’s so clumsy that it just creeps me out. If you’re going to make a feint at radical transparency, for Pete’s sake, man — be specific!

And don’t tell me about your good intentions, unless you’re paving a certain road. That only digs your hole deeper. Look, if you have something to confess (and who doesn’t?) tell it to me straight. If you really do have the best intentions, speak clearly and trust me to give you a fair hearing. That’s real transparency, and that would win my respect.

The net result of all these compounded missteps is a longwinded video about important ideas by what I take to be a decent company*, which comes off as a parody of cynical propaganda, leaving a dust cloud of alienation and ridicule in its wake.

On the ad’s YouTube page, two commenters concur that when they saw it they immediately thought of the hyper-smarmy ads by Veridian Dynamics, the ultra-evil fictional company from the TV show “Better Off Ted.” Ouch. That’s a hell of a misfire. Pretty much the utter antithesis of what Tom’s was going for.

Tom’s of Maine would appear to be in an excellent position, poised for big things in the coming decade. They shouldn’t squander it. Advertising-wise, though, they need a complete and utter, 100% rethink. And, there is one thing they could borrow from Veridian Dynamics: a sense of humor.

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*Tom’s of Maine makes good products as far as I can tell, and is one of the venerable successes of mission-driven business. They’re what you brush with after eating Ben & Jerry’s. However, since 2006 they’re 84% owned by Colgate-Palmolive, albeit with stipulations to retain their original policies. Hmm. This Veridian Dynamics vibe has a Colgate-Palmolive feel to it. Dubiousness? You’re soaking in it…