A big picture needs a big hook. Or. The end of the line for the endline?

It’s been a while since I last had a brief to surmise an entire organisation, its principles, its ethos, its vision. I’ve missed this kind of brief to be honest. I didn’t realise quite how much until a new client, with a new business, phoned up and asked me to encapsulate their soon to be launched new company in as few words as possible.
 
It’s exciting. So as always it began with a little inspiration by researching some of the legends of yesteryear.

1. Think different. - Apple

Has any other slogan so encapsulated what a company stands for than Apple’s Think Different? Two words that say so much about the company’s identity as the mavericks of the computer age.

2. Every Little Helps – Tesco

There have been many great straplines written for supermarkets, but the enduring brilliance of this one edges it for me. As one the of most successful company slogans ever created, it was surprising to hear that Tesco were close to dropping it not so long ago.

3. Coca Cola – It’s the real thing

Coke tend to change their slogans regularly, but this line is closest to what most of us would think of as the soul of the brand.

4. Beanz Meanz Heinz – Heinz Baked Beans

Another slogan conveying the authentic and original. Its durability is living proof that a well-written slogan can continue to deliver a relevant and powerful statement of the brand image.

5. Just Do It – Nike

Strangely, it has been stated it was inspired by US murderer Gary Gilmore‘s final words before being handed the death penalty. Inspiration can come from anywhere.

6. Good Things Come to Those Who Wait – Guinness

Drawing on the unique qualities of the drink’s identity to make the mouth water with anticipation.

7. Commercial Union – We won’t make a drama out of a crisis

One of the great customer service lines. We'll remain cool, calm and collected when your world falls apart.

8. HSBC – The world’s local bank

Connecting a titan of the financial world with customers everywhere through a brand idea that embraces the variety and richness of culture in the world. Powerful thinking. Wish I'd written it.

9. Peperami – It’s a bit of an animal

Food with attitude. This line captures not only the essence of the product but also the essence of a fantastic long running campaign idea.

10. Carlsberg – Probably The Best Lager In The World

Some endlines never go flat. An unsupportable big, brave statement with a twist to position Carlsberg as the best without actually saying so. Since first used in the 1970s there's been an abundance of great, award winning work that you can evaluate against the line. Is it good enough to be a Carlsberg ad? Probably.

And the list goes on.
 
Now feeling inspired to explore my new client’s world, it occurred to me that over the last several years the endline seems to have become less of a brand necessity and more of a hindrance. Perhaps it’s a new digitally obsessed generation of marketers in a rapidly changing marketing landscape that don’t have the time or the budget to consider the big picture. A big picture needs a big hook. The Mona Lisa wouldn’t be as impressive just leaning against a wall in a dark and dingy corner of the Louvre.

Personally speaking I believe a great endline is an incredibly valuable asset that can imprint itself in the minds of, I won’t call them consumers, target audience, viewers, visitors…just people. The very people we advertising, media, digital gurus and dodos (sorry if I left anyone out) are all paid to engage and persuade through our vast array of creative talents and plethora of media channels in which we specialise.

At the heart of all of our collective efforts should be a unifying idea that summarises a brand. Positions it. Embeds an overarching brand truth or communications idea in our hearts and minds and gives us a warm tingly feeling of being acknowledged and understood.
Each and every one of those legendary lines mentioned above has stood the test of time and often generations. They serve a purpose to all of us advertising and media folk who have the good fortune and talent to work in our industry. An endline should unify our thinking and drive a brand towards a common vision, engaging consumers, sorry, people, especially those who have the privilege to work on a client’s brand. We are, after all, people too.

As for me, after two days of burning the midnight ink, I had my ‘eureka’ moment. I felt it first. Wrote it second. I paced, pondered, spoke it and rationalised it. I still had that tingly feeling. It stacked up. All three words. Not much for two days work you might think. My client thinks otherwise. Happy days. And hopefully years ahead.

It’'s only better if it’'s better.

They can turn the buildings of Fleet Street over to squatters.
They can raze Wapping to the ground and, if they like, put up a parking lot.
They can tear down the paper columns, screw the rags into balls and hurl them.
They can pulp all the newsprint and smash down the presses.
They can scrape the news from the paper and empty the magazines.
They can put an immediate end to the four-colour process and allow the ink to drain away.
They can make CMYK lose its meaning.
They can crush the puppets underfoot, banish the dancers, and drive out the street players.
They can silence the singers of the hand-me-down songs and the makers of the lore-relating music.
They can put torches to the theatres and have no more of their social commenting and politicking.
They can wish to alter the way of the daily cryptic clue commute and discontinue the Sunday morning supplement.
They can consign the DPS to history, and the full page, and the 25 by 4.
They can give the old commercial broadcasts thirty seconds either to get out of here or switch to Channel Click.
They can cut off the heads of the moguls and stick them on top of the BT Tower.
They can make media social.
They can itty-bitty digital it.
But creatively, from what I can see, they can’'t make it any good.

A losing battle.

And the word of the week is decontextualisation.
It crops up in a recently published book by Dr Iain McGilchrist called The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and The Making of the Western World.
It’'s a book of two halves.
And it’'s not an easy read.
In the first line of his introduction, Dr McGilchrist writes, “This book tells a story about ourselves and the world, and about how we got to be where we are now”.
Phew!
A pretty broad subject.
However, it’'s not a long-winded trawl through time, taking in evolution, history, discovery, politics, war, science and culture.
Not directly.
There is however a kind of war involved.
But it’s one that rages between our ears.
The one being fought between the two hemispheres of the human brain.
The one in which the right hemisphere – the Master of the book'’s title (so called because human interaction and the perceptiveness it engenders were once uniquely central to our existence) and the left hemisphere – the Emissary (bringing some sense of order to the proceedings) are on opposite sides.
Literally.
Now the differences between the left and right sides of our brains have been discussed aplenty for years.
That the left is home to rationality, organisation and detail, and the right handles more subtle issues like empathy, sensitivity and context.
Simplistic distinctions.
In fact, much too simplistic by half.
However, what Dr McGilchrist sets out to prove is that the two hemispheres, whilst existing apparently cosily side by side, do have “fundamentally different sets of values, and therefore priorities, which means that over the long term they are likely to come into conflict. Although each is crucially important, and delivers valuable aspects of the human condition, and though each needs the other for different purposes, they seem destined to pull apart.”
We can see the results of this disintegration everywhere we look today.
No more so than in the world the geeks are generating for us as their charging decontextualisation advances apace in our business.
Increasingly, most of us are now living our lives without human context.
We sit, staring at screens, tapping at keys.
We fill in boxes in answer to questions and in invitations to comment.
We speak to each other via machines.
And often talk only to machines.
Greetings are sent electronically.
Business is carried out remotely.
And formulaically.
Messages are becoming confined to 140 characters.
More and more games are played indoors, habitually alone.
Bald efficiency is everything in enterprise and entertainment.
Human contact and the understanding that is created by it are being surrendered.
The left hemisphere is winning the battle.
And winning it decisively.
I can hear the cries of disdain.
But the ability to convince the right hemisphere that only functional, mechanistic progress will make the world a better place is another weapon in the left hemisphere’s armoury.
The ever-dominant grey matter subdues its more acquiescent other half as it destroys any subtlety, meaning and context that dares to confront it.
It fights against autonomy and humanity.
It supports literalism and explicitness.
It’'s out to crush an important part of what is essentially itself.
And completely eliminate all human context.
Which anyone with half a brain can see would be catastrophic in what has always been a people business.

iainmcgilchrist.com

Pillsbury makes dough.

Out of suckers.
Suckers who are prepared to make a 15-second TV-ready film at their own expense and hand it over to Pillsbury via a “people-powered brand energy” site called Zooppa.
There’'s the carrot of a $15,000 pot for any potential winners.
Presumably that also means winning the chance to see the fruits of their talents (suckers have talent too, you know) running on TV and helping to add to the Pillsbury billions.
Pillsbury aren'’t the only ones taking advantage of talented people by creaming ideas off them in this way instead of doing the decent thing and appointing professionals to do a proper job in the proper way.
But they are one in particular that has requested to retain the rights to all the films submitted.
Basically, “Give us your work! You might get something for it, you might not. But whatever, wave it bye-bye matey-boy, it’'s ours now.”
And how many free ideas in the bank could that mean?
Not even cheap.
Free.
Leaves a nasty taste, doesn’'t it?

The long and the short of it.

I don’'t like Geoffrey Boycott.

Not because he’'s a Yorkshireman.
More because he'’s a one-eyed, opinionated, chauvinistic, arrogant, intolerant, embarrassing know-it-all.
Oh, all right then, because he'’s a Yorkshireman.
However, he said something, during his commentary on the England v Bangladesh Test match today that I had to agree with.
He was speaking about T20 cricket and criticizing all those – and apparently there are quite a number – who reckon the increasing popularity of “slam bang” cricket will sound the death knell for the longer form of the game.
Boycott thinks not and, whilst praising T20 as a fun and exciting entertainment that the public rightly loves, he passionately defended Test cricket, saying that it fulfils a different role and appeals to those fans who think of it as the classical form of the game, distinct from the modern abridged variants such as ODIs and T20.
He firmly believes all types of cricket to be valid and all should be cherished.
And that made me think of the debate about online and traditional advertising.
We love the hit and giggle of the former but the latter is still relevant and vital, and to many, in terms of creative appeal, retains its position at the pinnacle of the game.
It should never be, ‘either or’ but ‘both together’.
And, as Geoffrey says about what he sees as the potential overkill of the cheap and quick, “I like steak and kidney pie, but if my wife gives me the same thing every day, I’d be ready to throw it at her after a few days.”
Thee tell ‘em, Geoffrey.

Fortune favours the scared.

In one of his recent agency blogs, Dave Trott describes how he would show Mike Greenlees, his Chief Exec at GGT, ideas for new campaigns.
On one occasion, they were pitching for a beer account.
Dave wrote a campaign and showed it to Mike.
Mike said, “it’'s a very good beer campaign, I’'ll have no trouble selling it. But it doesn’'t scare me. Can’'t you do something that scares me?”
At roughly the same time as this would have been happening, I was working on the Kimberly-Clark account at FSD.
It was the commercial and industrial washroom products part of Kimberly-Clark.
How exciting does that sound?
The truth is, it was the best account in the agency to work on.
It won shedloads of awards.
And it helped shift shedloads of paper tissues and towels.
The reason for this was not just very good creative work.
But a great client.
K-C knew how dull their products were.
And that they somehow needed to make them sound interesting.
So their Marketing Director at the time told the agency not to present any work to him that didn'’t immediately make him feel nervous.
In fact, his exact words were, “Don’t show me anything that doesn'’t scare the shit out of me.”
Pretty much what Mike said to Dave.
They all knew that, as Trotty says,  “Consumers aren’'t interested in the subtle differences between ad campaigns. If it isn’'t different, it won’'t stand out.
And if it doesn'’t stand out, it has no chance of working.”
Especially if the product, in itself, isn'’t that remarkable.
The only opportunity we had of making industrial toilet paper ads stand out was by coming up with ideas that made the client feel initially uncomfortable.
More than that – he actually wanted to feel scared of what he saw.
Because he knew that, if he felt apprehensive about running the work, the chances are, it would get noticed.
And he was right. It did.
The campaign was a massive success.
There are still a lot of dull products about. Probably more than ever.
If not dull, then samey.
If not samey, then at the very best, only subtly different from the competition.
And that goes for a lot of the advertising that’s used to promote them too.
Campaign after campaign that wouldn’t say boo to a goose.
Safe, comfortable, seen-it-before stuff that huddles together timidly, for protection.
You can smell the fear.
But it’'s a different kind of fear.
This is a fear of taking a chance.
Not the terror of being dull.

It’'s good but it’'s not right.

Technology is all about providing answers.

It’'s often so far advanced that it comes up with a solution before anyone has even asked a question.
The iPad is one such solution.
No one really knows what the best use of it will be.
There are lots of options.
Eventually, when it’'s been around for a while and all the hype has died down then exactly what gap in the market it will best be suited to fill will become apparent.
Perhaps.
Until then, it’'s just another clever gimmick that’s ahead of its time.
There are many such examples of people thinking up boundary-pushing gizmos that some greedily lap up in order to pronounce themselves the ahead-of-the-game uber-geek and others fight shy of in order to see how best they can be applied to their lives.
In terms of much online marketing, a situation exists whereby the answer to the problem is ready-made.
No matter what that problem is.
The real problem though, is that advertising – that art/science that requires an almost psychoanalytical understanding of the subtle nuances of the marketplace and the precise idiosyncrasies of the particular product or service – is, if a correctly targeted, financially viable, nailed down marketing message is to be generated, dependent on questions, questions, questions being asked prior to any answer at all being mooted.
Unfortunately, in the scrummage to show off their ingenuity and techno-savvy credentials the instinct of most online marketers is to fast-forward to the end.
To suggest an immediate off-the-peg solution that the current technology dictates.
“Quickly, before anyone else uses it.”
By definition, most people who understand people don'’t understand technology.
And most of those technologically focused, don’'t have the required empathy with the man in the street to know how to engage him.
They have the answer.
But they don’'t ask any of the questions they should be doing to make sure it’'s the correct one.

Could Belgium be any more dire?

Yes I know Belgium has produced some celebrated individuals.
Eddy Merckx the bicycle rider.
Adolphe Sax, without whom there might have been no Charlie Parker or Stan Getz.
Georges Remi, who cleverly transposed his initials and became RG (see what he did there?) before creating chipper-quiffed cartoon detective Tintin.
Audrey Hepburn.
(Always a surprise, that one.)
Plastic Bertrand, two painters in Rubens and Magritte, and the bloke who invented Bakelite: Ted Bakelite.
There are some more, but apart from digitally-challenged strummer Django Reinhardt and The Singing Nun, most of them aren’'t in the same league as the aforementioned.
Of course, there’s also Herman Van Rompuy, the new President of Europe. Who could forget him?
(Well, most of us actually, now we'’ve stopped sniggering.)
Belgium is also home to the headquarters of both the European Union and NATO, those twin pleasure domes of risk and vision.
The two main ethnic groups are the unfortunately named Phlegms (yes, I know) and Walloons.
And its most notable culinary gift to the world is the Waffle.
Because of its political significance and the access required by all those high-powered European movers and shakers, the country boasts a transport system that makes it one of the easiest in the world to get into.
And out of.
For Belgium, read online marketing.
Trying really hard to appear vital and of the moment but fundamentally dull and with precious little to offer in the way of creativity or imagination.
Copify, it seems, wants to make matters worse.
Not in Belgium of course, but in online communications.
On their website, Copify describe themselves as “a platform for publishers to meet writers”.
And it suggests that writers “can get paid for writing on the subjects [they] love. Depending on the standard of [their] work and experience [they] will be paid between £0.02 and £0.08 per word for [their] work!”
It tells clients, should they need words by the foot for their marcomms, that, “by using our site, you can ensure that your job will be delivered on time and on budget. With (sic) Copify, we have hundreds of writers who are waiting to receive your order. Your job can be completed within hours of being placed!”
Brilliant.
Don’'t worry about trying to gain even a cursory understanding of the subject.
Who needs to spend time interrogating the market?
Carefully examining the product or service?
Who needs to bother writing thoughtfully or empathetically?
Producing several drafts to achieve the most appropriate tone?
Never mind relevance or accuracy.
For any old bit of magnolia text, go to Copify.
£0.02 gets you an inexperienced hack.
£0.08 gets you an experienced one.
Space to fill? We know some words.
They’'re real words as well.
They’'re in the dictionary and that.
So tell us what hole you want us to shovel your content into and Bob’'s your uncle.
Content, you see.
Not real copy like what real copywriters write.
Content.
Like what forensic pathologists examine in the stomach of a corpse to help determine the cause of death.
Like what shifts in your bowel during defecation.
And that’'s half the problem.
The real art of copywriting has most certainly been devalued since the revolution, in the rush to get SEO’'d or whatever.
Anyone with a GCSE in English can buy a computer and set himself up as a professional writer.
Whack CS6 on it and bingo!
You’'re an art director or a designer too.
“Need a website? It’'s this button here, I think.”
So online marketing may not be the most exciting area for the quality-conscious copywriter (or art director) striving to produce a job that is gratefully received, stimulates interest and creates a positive response.
Creatively.
After all, there are zillions of pages needing zillions of tons of flim-flam churned out to fill ‘'em up.
And someone’'s got to do it.
But a bunch of never-mind-the-quality, dime-a-dozen (pretty much the exact average cost, actually) text grinders is surely going to dull down an already terminally dreary, stimulation-free environment beyond the acceptable limit.
Think of Belgium.
When it’s half-day closing.

“C” is for.

“C” is for.

Creativity.
A concept close to my heart.
A word I associate with ideas and new life.
I’'ve worked in advertising creative departments all my career.
Trying to be different.
Trying to think of ideas that make people sit up and take notice.
Trying to make people interested in things.
And to respond warmly and positively.
I find other creative people interesting and stimulating.
I find them challenging and fun.
Creative people know that different gets noticed.
Whereas the same old same old gets ignored.
That’'s what creativity is.
Making something that hasn'’t existed before.
Making something that has existed before is copying.
And a copy is invariably a fake.
It has no value.
Creativity comes from within.
From the soul.
The heart.
The mind.
It’'s a spark.
The spark of creativity.
Which is ignited sometimes by sensation, sometimes reflection.
Two abstractions generated within ourselves by our personal, unique experiences.
Creativity is originality.
It’'s precious.
To be creative is to be inventive.
From scratch.
Creative work, if it is to be of any worth and truly define the term, can never be what has been done before.

The other day, I was looking through a glossary of online marketing terms for the definition of yet another geeky word in their unfathomable “I-know-something-you-don’t-know” lexicon.
I came to the letter ‘c’.
There was “creative”.
“The technology used to create or develop an ad unit. The most common creative technology for banners is GIF or JPEG images. Other creative technologies include Java, –HTML or streaming audio or video. These are commonly referred to as rich media banners.”

Bollocks.

Arse about face.

Before I was, let’'s say 18 years old, I didn'’t know there was such a thing as advertising.
I knew about adverts of course.
I’'d seen them on TV, and in newspapers and magazines.
Occasionally they were even on radio.
These were the days of Horace Batchelor on Radio Luxembourg.
That’'s Horace Batchelor of the famous Infra-Draw Method for winning the football pools.
You know, “Horace Batchelor, Department One, Keynsham, spelled K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M, Keynsham, Bristol.”
No?
Not to worry, I remember.
Mind you, if his system was that good, why didn'’t he just use it himself and swap K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M for B-A-R-B-A-D-O-S for God’'s sake?
That’'s what I used to think.
Suffice to say there weren’'t many commercial radio stations broadcasting then, so not many radio commercials around.
On TV, there were the PG Tips chimps and the Esso Sign.
Which of course meant “Happy Motoring.”
There was a little cartoon bloke tapping a round wooden fort made of an insurance policy and pronouncing it, “Strong Stuff.”
Oh, and we also learned that “Beer at home means Davenports.”
Apart from these, there were the usual food, fags and fragrances spots.
All washing over and into the viewing public while they were waiting for Michael Miles and his Yes-No interlude to come on, or for DCS Lockhart, wearing his investigative expression, to come trundling out of old Scotland Yard again in his Humber Super Snipe.
Print, like television, was mostly black and white until the Sunday Times Colour Supplement was launched and everyone started dropping acid.
Advertising, as an industry, was unknown to most of us then.
It was only a few years later – when I was about 18 and I met some folk who were in the business – that I realised that there were people who actually did it and that it was something I’'d like to do too.
That I know now I was born to do.
And that epiphany just about coincided with the advent of the new wave of British creative advertising in the form of BMP, CDP and Saatchi’s.
And a little while later, AMV.
(I wasn’t responsible for it, I hasten to add, it was merely happenstance.)
Suddenly, advertisements weren'’t adverts any more, they were ads.
They were sparkling gems of scintillating, thought-provoking imagination and involvement.
The people who did them became well known to the man in the street.
The ad business was thrown into the limelight.
The challenges became greater.
As did the rewards.
But the work, and the need to create ever more memorable campaigns, was everything.
We were only ever as good as our last ad.
And when someone in adland (for by now the industry existed in its own intellectual ecoregion) produced something amazing, we all spat in the fire, rolled up our sleeves and tried to beat it.
Whilst others, who couldn'’t do it after any fashion, stood to one side and muttered that what we were doing was the devil’'s work.
Self-consciously watching light-footed youngsters bopping on a dance floor with abandon, but unable to join in, thanks to two left feet and complete lack of the expression required to liberate the limbs.
Then the music changed.
And instead of the free-form, heart-lifting wildness, there came the rigid, pounding beat of a military march.
You can’'t dance to that.
It has no soul, no source, no essence.
It has no etymology in terms of a deep-seated origin that can be traced back to the primitive roots that inform its existence.
No DNA.
No jungle rhythm.
No Arkwright.
No Wolf In Sheep’'s Clothing.
No Pregnant Man.
It began when it began and advances inexorably.
The machine sets the pace.
And it has no time for looking back.
The only thing that’'s important is the next widget, not the last ad.

Dead Boring.

Once again a bunch of skinny, pale-faced gamers are pulling wishbones, desperately looking out for falling stars and continuing to repeat their pointless mantra, obviously in the misguided belief that if they say it often enough, it will come true.

“Traditional advertising is dead.”
I won'’t say who it is this time or what they’'ve done for that will give them the oxygen of publicity that they use as evidence to suggest that they are absolutely right about everything and that anyone who disagrees with them is just not up with the times. Man.
These morons who have spent all their formative years in darkened, strangely damp, litter-filled bedrooms playing with themselves and growing spots keep insisting that digital advertising is The Word and that anyone who suggests otherwise must be over thirty-five years old.
Despite a plethora of proof to the contrary they keep on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on flogging the same horse that’s not just dead but was boiled, chopped, tinned and happily enjoyed years ago by the nation’'s dogs.
I once worked in an agency with a wonderful creative guy called Rick Cook.
There are a million stories about Rick.
All of them hilarious.
But what I remember most fondly about him was the way he would tell the lamest of jokes and when no one laughed he would wait a while and tell it again.
Then again, then again, then again until after the twentieth or thirtieth time someone would eventually chuckle.
Then we’'d all laugh.
Not so much at the joke – that was still crap – but at Rick’s persistent enthusiasm.
And his silly grin.
Perhaps that’s what these jokers are hoping for.
That if they say the same thing often enough, people will stop thinking they'’re twats and start to believe what they’'re saying.
Well it won'’t happen.
Rick was a nice guy.
He was a charming, talented, genuine people person.
These dweebs who wouldn'’t know how to communicate with any real people who didn’t have a USB port for an arsehole won’'t make anyone accept their embarrassingly tiresome bleatings no matter how long they drone on.
Don’'t they realise how stupid they’re making themselves look?
Traditional advertising agencies aren'’t dead.
Just as digital advertising or whatever it’s called today isn’'t the Holy Grail.
Things are changing.
Everything changes.
But one thing doesn’'t need to be dead for another to survive.
Advertising is and will always be a bit of this, a bit of that.
Sometimes a TV commercial, sometimes a viral.
Sometimes a poster campaign, sometimes a social network programme.
Sometimes produced by someone who enjoys Smackdown.
Sometimes produced by someone who reads books.
It seems like they'’ve become so used to staring at screens blowing cartoons into little pieces with a picture of a gun that they want everything to die.
So give it up geeks.
But not just because you’'re wrong.
Because you’'re boring the tits off everyone.

And another thing.

The iPad announcement was made eight days ago.

I’'m sick of it already.
I’'m sick of trendy geeks posting pornographic pictures of it all over the Internet.
I’'m sick of slavering, shave-heads panting with expectation, unable to contain themselves until the March launch day.
I’'m sick of vacuous pleasure-seekers vying to be first to show off on the 8.35 to Charing Cross the morning after.
“Hey, look at this thing everybody, I can hold it like this, or I can hold it like this, cool eh?”
And I’'m sick of all of the above trying to convince us all that it’s a necessary technology that filled a gaping hole in the computer market.
You know, the one between a smartphone, I think they’re called, and a laptop.
The one that the Netbook or something, or perhaps it was the Tablet PC once tried to fill.
The one next to Newton, or Pippin or whatever.
That gap there, look.
There.
Yes that one.
God forbid we don'’t give people enough choice.
For choice is freedom, isn'’t it?
And society cannot function let alone develop without freedom can it?
So for every option we are given today, there are a dozen, a hundred, a thousand alternatives out there to help us tumble towards a cultural and commercial future in which independence and autonomy are held up as absolute rights.
But what if choice doesn'’t provide us with the freedom we think it does and hamstrings us instead?
What if it leads to a kind of paralysis that rather than facilitating progress merely lowers a drag anchor?
In The Paradox of Choice, psychologist Barry Schwartz argues that this is indeed the case.
His theory is that with more things to choose from, we find it more difficult to decide.
So we put that decision off until some other time.
A time that often doesn'’t ever turn up.
How many times have you heard someone say –and I don'’t count the aforementioned minority of uber-geeks in this, they'’ll choose anything and everything the minute it makes an appearance, they’'re hardwired that way –“I’'m not going to get it right now, I’'ll wait for the upgrade”?
Or the up-something.
And a year or two later they'’re still waiting.
Actually, part of the problem is, they'’re afraid of making the wrong choice in case they'’re not happy with it.
They'’ve done it before and regretted it.
So they hang back and wait.
And wait and wait.
It’'s much better than deciding and having the expectations that it’'s the best decision dashed.
Which, now that expectations in our super-slick, have-it-all, gadget-for-this-gadget-for-that, compulsively competitive society are so sky-high, is something we have all now come to expect.
So thanks all those freedom flag-bearers and corporate option-providers.
Thanks for filling all those little gaps for us.
The ones we hadn'’t noticed were there.
Thanks for giving us the opportunity to be unable to make a decision.
And to regret the ones we do make.
Thanks for telling us that choice is all.
Professor Schwartz agrees that “some choice is better than none” but believes that too much choice is bad for us.
It paralyses us.
Us, consumers.
And who, in a western economy, wants paralysed consumers?
So if marketers want people to choose more, maybe one way is to give them less to choose from.
One less pointless techie toy would be a start.