A Few Strong Words…

Here’s an ad that caught my eye not too long ago. However, as I am beginning to realize, it did not catch my nose (a fact that I may be glad of…)

On the surface, this starts off as a great idea. Essentially, the ad is a plastic or vinyl sticker of a cup of Folger’s coffee that is placed over a manhole cover. Holes are punched through the sticker to allow the “steam” of the coffee to waft up from the cup. The campaign was designed for NYC; the tagline encircling the coffee cup reads: “Hey, City That Never Sleeps. Wake Up. Folgers.”

The visual is quite amusing. But then you start digging a bit deeper and wonder how it holds up in the real world. First, I think that the vinyl will quickly become dirty and/or ripped from all the traffic. Yes, I’ve seen stickers work before (grocery store stickers leap to mind) but this is outdoors, and covering an uneven surface.

Second, the smell that often wafts up from sewers is not one of coffee… If the association doesn’t put you off coffee, it might at least make you think twice before you reach for the Folgers!

There has been some discussion about whether or not this ad campaign was real, or at least implemented. Many have suggested that this image is simply a mock-up the marketing agency drew up for Folgers (Saatchi & Saatchi was the agency, apparently). However, it was all true — this was a real campaign.

You got to wonder what they were thinking. A huge company like Folgers, and a respected ad agency. Someone must have realized this was a bad idea.

If this was a city-wide campaign, then yes this would be a very bad idea. But dig deeper still and consider this. The marketing agency placed just one sticker on one manhole cover, and even that lasted just a couple of hours. In that time, passers-by took photos of it, sending it viral on the Internet. The campaign also got coverage in BusinessWeek, the New York Post, AdFreak, and other publications. It reached millions of people — more than it could have reached on that New York street corner alone.

And here we are, two years later and still talking about it. Not only was the ad itself creative, but the execution was just brilliant.

I think that ad did its job, don’t you?

~Graham

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Today I am exactly the same age as John Lennon was when he was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman.

In his last major interview done before he died, he said that he had heard once that life begins at 40, and that he believed that. He was looking forward to his life ahead.

I was 12 at the time, and I didn’t really understand what he meant — after all, here was an ex-Beatle who had travelled the world, written some of the best music of all time, and somehow managed to take off five years of his career to raise his son. What was he waiting to begin?

I sort of understand it now. I think it has something to do with confidence. How many times have we said to ourselves “if I knew then what I know now…” I know I do all the time. At 40, you reach a point in your life where you have many of the answers. Old enough to know what to do, and young enough to still be able to do it.

One thing I definitely understand now was an incident he described in that same interview (it was with Playboy, and they published the complete transcript in book form after his death). I don’t remember the story verbatim, but it goes something like this: John and Yoko were sitting in a restaurant and he heard a song come onto the radio. He happened to mention that he liked that song, at which point Yoko reminded him that he should, since he wrote it. The song was Glass Onion from the White Album — he had totally forgotten all about it.

I found it hard to believe back then that you could forget a thing like that. Although it isn’t nearly the same scale, I’ve actually had similar incidents where I’ll read something and go “hey, I really like that!” and then realize I wrote it years ago. Kind of a great warm feeling, with a bit of messed up rolled into it.

I am somewhat envious of John Lennon. I mean besides the obvious: who wouldn’t want to be a Beatle? Who wouldn’t want to be able to play the guitar and be that creative and that rich and to be able to say “I wrote Strawberry Fields Forever“?

What I’m most envious though is that he had the time to be creative.

For me, creativity takes a lot of time. I can’t just snap in and out — if I’m working on something that demands creativity, I am basically a vegetable for anything else. Don’t give me phone messages, don’t ask me to take out the garbage, don’t give me any information I’m supposed to hold onto. And unless you are happy with vacuous “uh-huhs” after every sentence, don’t even try to hold a conversation with me.

The worst though is when you have to stop because the kids are getting off the bus or you have to get milk or the million other reasons that pop up. You can try to catch that wave again later, but almost every time it is already gone…

John Lennon didn’t need to deal with the real world. Not like we did. He had drivers and shoppers and housekeepers and personal assistants, so he could float through most of the day without worrying too much about “real world” stuff. Oh sure, he had his own pressures more than likely, but hopefully you take my meaning here…

I will say that yes, a great light went out with his death. His last album Double Fantasy hinted at new depths to his creativity that we will never fully know.

But rather than wallow in these thoughts, I prefer to think of it this way. My life is “beginning” now, and I still have creative depths that I haven’t explored. His work inspires me, and yes damn it there should have been more from him to come.

There wasn’t though.

So I’ll be happy listening to Strawberry Fields for the 1,000th time and marvel at his wit and use it to spur my own imagination. And if I accomplish 1% of what he did, I think I’ll still be a very lucky man.

~Graham

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