They said what?

Awesome buzzwordage from the Kellogg's marketing team last week after their global realignment from JWT to Leo Burnett:


"As Kellogg continues to optimize its marketing model, the company has identified the need to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of its agency partnerships to enable more scalable thinking, ideation and ad execution, and to enhance brand consistency and strategic alignment across the portfolio."


Besides making me snort coffee out through my nose all over the keyboard, it also made me ponder just have much the creative and marketing industries have changed their relative positions since I first started work.


Back in the eighties, they'd brief us on an item of seasonal POS. We'd produce a piece of high art with a nod towards the proposition buried deep within one of its complex sub texts.

They'd say it was 'a bit clever' and you 'really had to think about it.' We'd roll our eyes and ask what was wrong with work that made the audience think, exactly?

They'd go off to a print shop and get 'Summer Sale Now On', white out of red on an A2 hanging board.

They sought simplify. We sought to complicate.

Today, it's the marketing people who obscure, obfuscate and hide their meaning behind dense walls of waffle and double speak. While it's we who implore them to tell us, in words of one syllable, what it is they're trying to say.

They seek to complicate. We seek to simplify.

Better minds than mine have exposed the void at the heart of today's industry psychobabble, most notably at The Ad Contrarian.

I just wonder how long it will be before the wheel turns full circle and we can take ownership of ideation as viable strategic paradigm once more...

Your bare faced lie is in the post

Any agency staffers familiar with this kind of ‘360 Degree Thinking’ planning hokum...

...might be interested in hearing it has an equivalent in the freelance jungle. It’s called the ‘Invoice Settlement Delay Cycle’. Initiated by a polite phone call some 6 weeks after payment is due, it goes something like this: 

1. Could you e-mail a copy of the invoice? I can’t seem find it on the system.

2. I’ve flagged it for payment. There’s a cheque run next Tuesday

3. He’s on holiday this week, but it’s on his desk for signing

4. E-mail me your bank details and I’ll organise a payment.

5. I'm afraid (insert Head of Account’s name) no longer works for the company. Call us again on Monday.

6. Could you e-mail a copy of the invoice? I can’t seem find it on the system....

In the hands of a skilled operator (say, a Design and Events Marketing company in Macclesfield) and allowing for two weeks between stages, this system can postpone payment to a degree that makes Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce look like a quickie divorce while grinding your very will to live into the dust.