HELSINQI CREATIVE

UnF–king Do-Gooder Advertising

Wednesday, 04 August 2010

Virtue needs to grow a pair. That's become an informal manifesto here at the HELSINQI International Tower (where, incidentally, you won't find much formal anything). There's an important place for the pure and the ultra-earnest in society. They keep us stretching for better, and for that my hat's off, no question. But there's also a place for those of us who prefer devil's food cake over angel food — so long as it's local, organic, fare trade, and rich & decadent as all unf--k.

Clearly, the (wicked) good people at UnF--ck The Gulf are devil's foodies:

Ad people (creatives, at least) have always been a sanguine lot, whether that shows up as a fun but totally irresponsible devil-may-care attitude about just giving 'em what they want or, in ironic contrast, as a wide-eyed (and not a little self-important) zeal for the role of advertising in improving the world. Check out these final pages from Frank Presbrey's History and Development of Advertising, published by Doubleday, Doran & Company in 1929:

In this field probably lies a future development of a magnitude which will give advertising full recognition as a great socializing as well as business force.... There are other big tasks of education. No newspaper or periodical can do such work in its news columns with the necessary persistence and maintain its popular circulation. Advertising, moreover, has form and methods which obtain attention for a subject that in the news columns would be skipped as dull reading by the class of people it is most desired to reach.

Advertising, by reason of its technique, possesses peculiar power as an educative force.... Who knows what it may some day be doing? A sociologist... finds that fundamentally there is one thing the matter with the world—ignorance. If everybody had all the knowledge that exists and is available, and applied to it, there would be very little unhappiness. His method for giving happiness to everyone is education of every human being in the sciences and all real knowledge. Then we should all know how to be happy.

His belief is that all wrongdoing can be done away with, and by means other than punitory restraints. The way is to make rightdoing in every action so pleasant that no person would have any desire to do wrong.

This ultima thule may some day be reached. The thought in introducing the subject here, in the closing paragraph of a book on advertising, is that modern advertising has made the life of the masses so much more pleasant by painting attractive pictures of the things that make it so, and has so completely demonstrated its ability to influence the thought of people of all classes, that when it comes to that big, all-comprehensive job of achieving an ideal social state the potent force of advertising will at least be one of the agencies through which it will be accomplished.

Now that's a flavor of optimism about the business you can't reproduce, coming as it did on the eve of the Third Reich, that immense triumph of the advertising & branding will, and WWII, the Bomb, etc. etc. etc. Or can you? Well, all that jacked-up modernist business about utopia through universal knowledge and science, quaint as it is, hasn't gone away exactly, though the conversation has branched and split and switched back dizzily in the intervening years.

But the optimism I'm optimistic about is all to do with transparency and multilateralism in communications. It trades the vision of a benevolent class of philosopher kings, whether in policy or advertising or wherever-you-like, for one of a lively, engaged conversation in which, hopefully, there's some tendency for merit to rise and BS to fall. I know, I know, going out on a limb.

But what I like about this limb is the implication that the way forward is a very canny, very creative combination of giving 'em what they want (lest they ignore you completely) with world-improving zeal — the idea being that ultimately what they want really is a better world.

In other words, time to bust out the angel-devil's food swirl cake — and eat it too.

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Incidentally, I'd like to imagine ol' Frank Presbrey would have been exhilarated by UnF--ckTheGulf, if he wasn't too busy being totally freaked out by it. ("Rats! I've created a monster!")

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.

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YWCA Leadership Luncheon

Tuesday, 20 April 2010

The YWCA of Greater Portland hosted its 18th Annual Leadership Luncheon fundraising event today at the Oregon Convention Center. It was a record turnout with 1300 participants.

Helsinqi participated as a Presenting Sponsor. Our Lives Changed campaign was in evidence, with nice big posters we produced, created from client interviews conducted by Anna Daedalus, photographs by our friend Kathryn Elsesser, and design by Leo Daedalus.

Our print programs spread the YWCA message, with design by Laurie Hotovy and creative direction by Anna and Leo. And our interactive Fortune Teller folded print pieces graced the tables, designed by Anna and Leo.

Helsinqi also provided a Lives Changed slide show, and we were gratified to have kibitzed with videographer Carol Koon on the Lives Changed video she produced.

Thanks to the YWCA of Greater Portland for involving us, and thanks to our sponsorship table guests for turning out to support this hardworking organization!

YWCA PDX chooses HELSINQI

Tuesday, 01 December 2009

The YWCA of Greater Portland has engaged HELSINQI for a major messaging refocus. We’re very glad to be working for such a great cause — with such great people!

This is a great opportunity for us as a values-driven, triple-bottom-line business to connect meaningfully with the community. It also brings Anna full circle, back to her days of social work in Portland in the 90s, when she ran a program for latina survivors of domestic violence. At the time, she surely had no idea how the insights she brought out of that experience would come to serve her — and our clients — as co-director of an integrity marketing agency!