Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

Ok, warning first: what you are about to see is, well, let’s say: it ain’t smooth jazz, so be prepared for expletives.

Jon LaJoie’s is seemlingly stating the obvious: most of the rapper scene’s make-believe is going on our nerves:by copying style, clothes, language and gesticulation of the rapper set, and juxtaposing the actual live story of a normal customer service representative who makes paper planes, hurt his back and makes pretty good spaghetti sauce, debunks the aspirational hype that works so well for performing artists in this genre.

But there’s more for me in it: this made me think of our tendency as ad and marketing people to construct “target audiences” which, in reality don’t exist, and how we should, you know, stop that. Fact is, yeah, we would like to be able to choose which people buy our products, but it just doesn’t reflect real people and real behavior. As a result, it is a big mistake to construct personas based on mapping them to brand attributes. While brands can adopt an aspirational quality and tonality, the observation of people and their true behavior is paramount, not target strategies that inject brand attributes into the social milieu of our choosing, and hence turn upside down the very thing we are supposed to accomplish. It’s not about brands manipulating people to achieve marketing objectives. It’s about people influencing brands, so brand can enter a real value exchange with them.

I take this video as a reminder, to, like, get real.

Thank to Simone and Peter for the inspiration!

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