The Human Eye: actually filled with a kind of urine!

Ad school taught me some weird things, and one was that the human eye does a backwards Z across any page it reads, skimming along, hoping to be stimulated, becoming disappointing and trying again on the next page. According to the hard working folks at Eyetrack, it does something more like this:

In actuality, that's a graph of web usage, but it still illustrates the idea that your eye is a skeevy fool who can't be trusted to look at a piece of paper by itself. Who am I to compare the analysis of a closet alcoholic to the practically Skynet-like scrutiny of Eyetrack's creepy machines? Let's focus on it's troubling figures on headlines to start.

First, a giant, domineering headline immediately draws the eye. Wait, don't bail. The numbers show that the average person gives that headline less than one seconds worth of facetime. Not even an entire whole second will be spent on your headline. How are you going to drag them into the depth of your body copy if their brain shuts off after "Call me Ishmael"? Provoke. People are likely to continue reading after the first five words if those first five words provoke their interest. Look at your headline an ask yourself how can it work harder?

Now let's look at that body copy. This eye-eating abomination (not sure exactly how it functioned) suggests that smaller type size encourages focused viewing behaviour while giant large type encourages scanning. Also shorter paragraphs tracked better in research than longer ones. Ever been on a date with a chatty drunk? They're not that much fun. So why are you philabustering on your layout. Learn to trim the fat. Just the facts. Snag the eye. Drive them to the web for more information. Sites like Lowbrow and One Sentence have always been great for understanding the need for berevity in story telling. Twitter is another great disciplinary tool for staying on point and keeping it short.

A copywriter friend of mine once went on a drink with a chatty drunk who refered to copywriting as "all that stuff between the headline and the logo". Technically, she might have been right. Let me welcome you to the end of this entry. I appreciate it, regardless of what weird path your eye took to get here. Oh, and your eye is not filled with a kind of urine.

Advertising and Children: who needs times-tables when you have Happy Meals™

So my son woke me up telling me he needed Star Wars toilet paper. That Star Wars Toilet Paper was the only paper that could help his bum. He just turned four, and has never seen Star Wars, so I'm thinking there is actually a product called Star Wars Toilet Paper trademarking off Carrie Fisher squating in front of a droid begging for help?

Here's some stuff you need to know about children and advertising I want to pass on courtesy of the National Institute for Media and the Family. In 1997, $1.3 billion was spent on television advertisements directed at children. Counting all media, advertising and marketing budgets aimed at children approached $12 billion (McNeal, 1999).

By the age of two, my children are all able to call out McDonald's, Zoo and Home Depot logos. The average child watches as many as 40,000 commericals a year, and can't tell the difference between commercials and regular TV shows. What I can say is my guys know when the really good, really short little shows are lined up and perk up for commercials so they can bow to the alter and play "need it, want it".

Simply put, children influence parental spending, so all advertising now aims at children to increase "nag factor". I've pointed out in the past how marketers target the young to create brand loyalties and children don't just influence spending on kids toys and food - it's everything from carpets to cars. A lot of adult products are being paired with kid-friendliess (oh, and billions of dollars) to influence the young to pressure the old to part ways with their money.

We're all familiar with the use of cartoon characters and toys to draw attention to all kinds of products, but I was surprised to learn there was a Sports Illustrated magazine for Kids. And I was really surprised to know there were ads for Minivans in it. Come join me in my slack-jawed awe at these tidbits of information.

• databases of child customers are being built from information gathered on Internet sign-ups and chat rooms, from electronic toy registries at stores like Toys 'R' Us
  
  
• in-school news briefs force kids to watch commercials in school
  
  
• budget cuts draw advertisers like food brings racoons, offering cash for access to students
  
  
• in-school news briefs force kids to watch commercials in school
  
  
• Promotional licensing of products aimed at kids which include media pitches
  
  
• Do you have any idea how many Children's TV and radio networks there are?
  
  
• Children's toys are starting to carry product placements (Barbie™ dolls with Coca Cola™ accessories for example)
  
  
• almost every fast food chain now has give-away programs including promotional merchandise (McDonald's™ "Happy Meals, etc.)

Brainstorming 101: suspending your disbelief for the benefit of all mankind

Doga: yoga for dogs. Let me say that again: doggie yoga. Before you say anything, here's how CNN handled this topic with stern grace: "between layoffs, threats of terrorism, and tainted dog food, the world can be a stressful place for you and your four-legged friends." You think the writer had to do the rape shower after penning that masterful prose? You could be that writer. Here's your assignment: resist every natural impulse, and now convince me why I want to join doggie yoga.

One of the most important things for everyone working in advertising and marketing to remember that no one ever points out is if you are not the ideal target for a product, you have to pretend you are. I was recently in a brainstorm for pet food, and I was the only person in the room who didn't actively hate animals. Somehow the brainstorm turned out to be a complete success because this crowd was able to bury their feelings and emote like they were the end-consumer.

I can't tell you how many brainstorms I've been involved in where most of the participants can barely contain their distain for the product they're attempting to market. Brainstorms can begin with hundreds of different creative exercises to loosen the lobes and prep the mind, but I've never seen anyone ever prep a room to temporarily become the target audience themselves. How do you turn a dog lover into a cat lover? Or a vegetarian into a meat eater? Or a vampire into a warewolf?

Here's one I just made up. It's called Positive Visualization. Pretend to be a different person, a split personality; tell yourself you are that person and act like it. You're going to need a heavy suspension of disbelief, and a certain level of gut maturity that allows you to method act till the clock runs out. Your opinions and insights are going to match the target consumer because you are one, and you know how important your opinion is.

It won't be easy, but if you can't find a way to become an empath or an actor, you should maybe sit out any brainstorms for products or services that strike you as dumb or funny or absurd. Many off-strategy advertisements could be avoided if everyone could remember this simple principle. This will totally benefit all those industry noobs, and the following video is a walking tour of the kind of insanity you might face one day. Will you be able to keep a straight face?

Ad Innovation: inducing vomit to induce sales

[CLICK THE IMAGE TO COMPLETELY BLOW YOUR MIND]

I came across this MacLaren McCann ad for the Grass Roots Hemp Store and felt it begged to be passed around. Most all of my entries revolve around an inspirational or educational message, and today's is a disclaimer that Brad Choma does not endorse or recommend the opening of the doors of perception in your mind through the use of recreational drugs.

Lost in Translation: Who does what in my what now?

I've written before about this kind of thing before. When I first saw this, I was told it was a South African Gaviscon ad written by someone who's first language wasn't english. Unless the entire agency was populated by people who's first language wasn't english, and unless the tagline is South African slang for "did their duty to the best of their ability" or something, or unless the whole sentence is a series of unfortunate typos, then I just don't know what to say. I think this was done on purpose, and is either the best or worst copywriting ever, depending on your point of view.

A million years ago, at my first job, we did a sales ad for a bedding company, and the headline caught some flack. Once people explained their objection, we were appauled. By wad, we of course meant money, plain and simple.

Marketing as Dating: let's hook up and exchange money for services rendered

lot of people I talk to are in dark places right now. They see excess office furniture and the people who used it carted out on dollies and they panic. Belt tightening can be inevitable. Even the parades of former co-workers dead-man-walking out the front door seems understandable to a degree.

Hands down the most common concern I hear from people contemplating the jump to freelance work or even just sideline freelance work is how to make contacts. Networking is creepy and makes stalkers of us all. Yesterday I heard an analogy that changed the way I think about networking for business contacts. It was a dating analogy, which blew my mind. Dating is all about prettying yourself up and making as many impressions if you can till someone gives you the time of day. It's so obvious.

Be a good listener

The dating scene seems a little quiet out there, doesn't it? Before the economopocalypse, everyone was shouting from every direction and a dollar spent on advertising was worth a dollar. It's no breaking news that many companies have shrunk or collapsed their marketing budgets lately, or as I now look at it, every other guy at the party voluntarily contracted larengitus. It's an unusal opportunity to shove that better looking guy off his feet and steal market share while your competition sits mute and forgotten. I'd say a dollar is just plain worth more when it doesn't have to work as hard.

You can't be afraid to be a hustler

I'm not proud of this next part, but it's only because the looks bad when using the dating analogy. If your client base shrinks by the numbers due to their own internal budgeting, you don't kick them to the curb; you cheat on them. Same analogy about marketing dollars, now is a great time to mad hustle for more clients. And not just regular clients. Consider married clients too. Some clients might get turned on by the aggressive swagger of an upstart leveraging against their AOR's more conservative, respectful stance.

Grow the relationship organically

All that furniture and deadwood wasn't bringing in clients; self-promotion and sales efforts do. A plant won't grow if the leaves all shrink. It needs to grow new leaves. The leaves in this horticultral analogy are one-off projects to help keep client money flowing. Now is the time to propose brave new areas of branding and promoting businesses, now that social media has removed some of the financial hurdles of traditional media. Presenting creative strategies and aligning partners on a project basis, like bringing a squirrel out of a bush with a peanut is what will grow those leaves.

Try, try again

When you're trying to woo someone and they turn you down flat, you don't crawl back in your car and leave, you step up and try someone else. I always tell the story clubbing with an old friend; it was late and everyone wanted to go but before he'd leave he ran out and hit on about fourteen women, struck out fourteen times, and we were off. He believed in the numbers game, and so should you.

On the surface of it, everything I've said follows the rules of common sense, but I believe people need to hear it some times. Getting noticed is the first step to getting laid. I mean, paid.

Product Placement: just what the doctor ordered

I'm not going to pretend that I don't park myself in front of 90210 every week to nourish my soul. It is after all, the funniest sitcom on TV these days. It also deserves an award for pioneering acheivement in Product Placement. In the olde days, an actor might place a product by saying, "sorry hon, no time for dinner. The captain's going to have my ass so I'll stop by McDonalds on the way to the precinct" and boom, some money changes hands and the audience associates the character with their feelings about McDonalds, and vice versa. Today it feels like producers assume you won't notice the Big Mac unless the actor is basically posing with it and talking about it like it's another character. Let's explore some bad examples of product placement.

Innapropriate usage of a product


Really? Dr. Pepper for breakfast? Product placement without context will always catch the eye because something doesn't fit. Take this shot; would it have been crossing a line to have the cast enjoying delicious bubbly Dr. Pepper with a Western Omelette? Cheers to the producers for putting their foot down and puting a more tastefully positioned gigantic logo beside that slightly larger crying cabbage deal weeping off the table to make this scene more realistic.

Intense usage of product

I've been less excited about bandages after accidents than these two (Dixon and Annie) were while road tripping through the Arizona desert. I couldn't decide if the cooler in the back was small, or if it only looked small because of the stylized log jam of delicious, refreshing Dr. Pepper. Either way, the director gave us whole seconds of screen time to think about it as Annie decided between regular delicious and diet.

Ridiculous non-satirical over-statement of product usage

This is the use that most taxes suspension of disbelief. In comedy I think they call it a cap or a tag when you add to the punchline of a joke with a follow-up line to milk or continue the punchline. In this example, Dixon craftfully chides his step-sister at a rest stop when he explains that maybe they wouldn't need to stop so often if she didn't drink so much Dr. Pepper. Oh snap, right? Wrong. Annie replies: "We're on a road trip! Drinking Dr. Pepper is practically a requirement". This smacks of an SNL skit, but it's not. Satire free. See my earlier note about money changing hands.

All up-in-your-grill usage

I may have over-stated my adoration for 90210. The first time I saw the new series, Naomi was trying to fit in with the rest of the Heathers at West Beverly High and won them over by teaching them how easy it is to program the new T-Mobile Sidekick. This had squat to do with the plot and the intense close-ups were really distracting. Maybe they could have CGI'ed in a few sparkles or played awesome dance music in the background to enhance the effect. That would have been less obvious than running a crawl of product features along the bottom of the screen. In this scene, Annie advances the plot by changing the station (read: cuing the next track from the official soundtrack) while holding (read: hand modelling) her Dr. Pepper. I'll point out they wasted a strategic partnership with Sirius/XM here.

Not-so-generic brand placement

No wonder these people love their Dr. Pepper. Dr. Pepper evidentally owns every inch of ad space in Beverley Hills. There is no where you can go without a giant logo being shoe-horned into view. I wanted to say seemlesslly, but the term doesn't apply. In traditional sitcoms, actors take pauses to allow for audience reaction so scripted dialogue is not missed by laughter. Attention 90210 producers: your brand placements are so focal and distracting that by the time we finish laughing and/or complaining, we're all like "that's nice, now why is Justin so mad at Silver?".

I'm going to start watching just to make a product placement drinking game out of it (see a logo, take a drink of delicious Dr. Pepper). When they innevitably pull out the old teen-alcoholism chestnut, they could seemessly work Dr. Pepper into the plot by partnering with Barcardi to invent a drink called a "Bacardi & Pepper". Annie: "I'm all worried about Shasta. All she drinks anymore is Bacardi & Pepper". Shasta: "I do it because of the delicious taste, and my daddy issues".

The producers need to get off the fence and either change their product placement strategy to be less obvious, or commit whole-hog and go for that gold medal.

That's a great ad, now feel our wrath!

When I first saw Bob Burnquist and Ty Evans's "Feel the Bubbles" video, I wanted to blog about it immediately. Aero's last TV campaign featured the two potted office plants (read: employees) talking about letting bubbles melt on your tongue in a way guys wouldn't understand. JWT in the UK decided enough was enough and created something beautiful and fun to reposition the brand. Here's the commerical.

and the very interesting "making of" video

It's always easier to apologize later than to ask for permission first, which probably led to the backlash. The creators admit they "borrowed" the idea for riding through balloons from a previous skate video, but skaters haven't been very forgiving. Snickers ripped off a skater video ealier and a boycott ensued. This backlash reminds me of this recent animated type spot by Motrin.

You may have heard a woman innocently talking about the pain of wearing a snuggli, but to a lot of mothers, they heard a condescending "you're a stupid and insecure fashion victim for wanting to carry your baby" and it was all downhill from there.

Whether you're stealing your inspiration, or just being neglectful of people's feelings, people will always find a way to complain about your work. The rule of thumb used to be for everyone one person who boycotts your product, there are a hundred who wouldn't complain out loud, but would sabotage your brand to friends, and a thousand behind them who wouldn't complain at all. They'd just quietly stop using your brand.

I did work for a bedding company that enjoyed provactive headlines and the backlash they inspired. "The Boss is on Prozac Sale" headline was written thinking the only people who could complain were on Prozac so they wouldn't be interested in complaining. The complaints came from the parents of children on Prozac. My personal feeling is you can't please everyone all the time, so you have to do what feels right and handle any flack with dignity later.

The protest signage was created by Stephanie Syjuco.

Advertising Slap and Tickle: Another groovy idea unintentionally backfires

With great power comes great responsibility. Uncle Ben knew it. Spider man learned it. And now the fine people at Honda are geting a taste. Honda came up with a great viral advert that put a smile on people's faces, and it was paved over before I started typing.

Every highway driver knows what happens when you hit a rumble strip. A Japanese engineer accidentally figured out how to create musical tones through the frame of a car by controlling the width, depth and distance between lines scraped in asphault. Before you knew it, drivers in three Japanese cities were enjoying pop tunes while they commute.

Honda engineers used this technique to make a stretch of road in Lancaster, California to play the William Tell Overture. Drivers loved it, but local residents? It didn't take long for local officials to point out some issues.



The ultra dynamic trumpet-heavy, fully-orchestrated finale to Gioachino Rossini's William Tell Overture loses some lusture when reproduced on aspault. You have to drive at exactly 55mph to really get the effect. Any slower and you get a dull, sickening rumble. Any faster and it becomes a whacked-out, high pitched drone. If you're not driving a Honda Civic, the spacing of your axles will alter the effect. And the Japanese originators knew enough to make their roads far from people's homes. Evidentally in the wide open California desert land, the sound carries further than anticipated.

"When you hear it late at night, it will wake you up from a sound sleep," said Brian Robin, who lives a half mile away from Avenue K. "It's awakened my wife three or four times a night".

Far be it for me to point out someone else's misfortune without pointing out my own. This piece was an invite for the very first agency I worked at. We needed an occassion, so we invented the two-and-a-half year anniversary party. The invite was simple enough; directions, two aspirin, and the suggestion that you would benefit from these the day after. The invites had to be crafted by hand and over 1,000 were mailed. Fast forward a couple of days, and the calls started. It turns out, mail does not gingerly flow on gentle breezes to their destinations like a scene from a Christmas cartoon. Real mail is beaten and rammed through sorting machines. Now picture the attached image with the dime bag, but instead of aspirin, you get white powder. The calls were endless. One was from Customs; summoning us, our lawyer and our checkbook to pay for testing, re-routing and charges related to sending controlled substances through the mail.

Somehow we had more than 1,300 people RSVP. We even had postal workers trying to crash the event. So the question is, are these campaigns really failures, or is the endless apologetic backpeddling just part of the cost of a great idea?

Lost in Translation: Forgiveness is Divine; Salvation is Free, or at least cheap

You know when you watch Asian TV and literally nothing makes sense?

See this truck? Maybe there's a Korean pop-cultural reference I'm missing here. I'm not going to attack Koya Ajoe juice. It's delicious. In fact if someone wants to ship me a case, I'll bathe in it on YouTube. The ad is well-meaning with good photography but the message is a disaster.

So how will I vent? I could easily make this about the value of translators (plural) or the three-second rule of advertising, but follow up on the happy theme of failure with a look at screwing up royal. No one wants to hear they made a mistake, but how you handle it says a lot about you.

I was always in awe of how the Japanese handle blame. Working in North America, when something goes wrong there is a flurry of finger pointing like people are dodging a shit-sprinkler (pardon the language). Throw someone, anyone under the bus, deke fault and distance yourself, get the promotion. In Japan, step one is to identify the problem, fix the situation, and only then is someone asked to put a sword in their stomach. The North American model may lack honour, it may be cowardly and shameful, but it's an honest reaction pre-programmed since school.

If you're freelance, it's just you. You're at the bottom of the trough, and if something goes wrong, guess what - the best thing to do is climb under the bus voluntarily.

WHAT TO DO: 101

To begin, repeat after me: "I'm sorry". Show some contrition to your client and get right to work on it.

Step two, show them the cause of the error wasn't a brain injury by describing a solution and get approval to proceed. Did we mention the client is the one who found the mistake? Make them feel that they're a part of the solution process to put them at ease. Now fix that problem. Stay up all night. Eat that cost. Whatever it takes. And if pushed or taken to task, let your pride take a backseat and honestly explain what went wrong, no matter how dumb.

The odds are the cooperative process of your repair job will be worth more goodwill than the damage of admitting Twitter is destroying your life and you promise to quit shortly. As long as there's an open line of communication, you're working as a partnership, and you can save yourself a lot of pain.

So do I consider this Aloe ad a mistake? I've worked with translators and they can be a shady bunch. Not every one of them is going to be the first to point out how culturally irrelevant your headline is once it turns into french or spanish. So unless "crush" translates from Korean as "delicious beverage", then at best, it's wrong for me.

Consumer-Service Marketing: Harsh times force large corporations to take menial part time jobs to make ends meet

Little trivia: did you know Howard Stern once ran for governor of New York on a campaign that included filling the state's potholes with the rich ashes of death row inmates?

Did you kow Colonel Sanders himself is personally filling Kentucky potholes with what we hope is "asphault" and marking them with a "Re-freshed by KFC" stencil?

You could make the joke that filling a pothole with asphault while running TV spots where they top off a chicken bucket with corn, mashed potatoes, cheese and gravy makes the buttocks clench the wallet pretty tight, but they're hoping people make the more obscure connection between "refreshing the street" and its new "fresh" campaign which focuses on food quality. It's actually called "consumer-service marketing" or "cause marketing", and in a nut shell it's a very old idea.

Early American advertising is rammed with puppets and cartoons shilling everything from Michelins to Marlboros. Here's the thing: Fred Flintstone wasn't trying to get Johnny Lunchpail to smoke Camels. He was working to create a warm feeling about the brand in Johnny's brain so one day he would feel comfortable enough about Camels to throw a pack in his adult-sized lunchpail.

Consumer-service or cause marketing works on the same principal. It creates a quiet feeling of goodwill between companies and consumers. While you're suspending your disbelief about chicken-flavored road holes, keep in mind I'm applauding KFC for their ballsy initiative. I'll explain shortly.

For my money, a better example of a company helping people on a grassroots level that builds directly to it's brand in a more strategic way is Charmin toilet tissue. For the last three years, they've provided custom port-o-lets in Times Square, and even have an iPhone/BlackBerry application that finds the nearest toilet in an emergency. They've embraced experiential event marketing and social media applications.

And now, the thorn in my paw revealed: for years I worked on an unnamed disinfectant manufacturer (not necessarily featured in my portfolio) that repeatedly shot down every attempt at any guerilla style awareness marketing and brand building in high traffic public washrooms.

Toilets and germs seems more literal than the association between fresh asphault and fresh chicken, but they didn't want to risk turning off consumers "by associating their brand with germs". So you can see, whenever a company is brave enough to engage in long term brand building rather than short term product lifts, my hands slap together involuntarily.

Definition: The Three Second Rule

Brand messaging is (almost) always going to have more visual appeal than promotional messaging. At least, that's been the trend, but it's my experience that there there are enough good people working in promotional advertising today who feel promos deserve attention to design and well-crafted visual story-telling that promos have come a long way. There are those clients who feel as nice as it is, this only slows the in-take of the "what's in it for me" message, but I beg to differ.

Store environments are highly visual places loaded with thousands of square feet of competing brand messages and product images. Throw signage and promo materials into the mix, unfreeze a caveman and watch his head explode. The hunter/gatherer part of the modern human brain has the ability to treat grocery store aisles like wallpaper, only really focusing on the occasional tin of soup or bag of dog food.

By my math, and this is really conservative, if you throw promo materials or display in someone's path you have three seconds or less to engage them or they're gone.

You can easily test this yourself by people watching in a store. Watch how their eyes fall on it, do a quick backwards Z from top to bottom and either engage or keep walking. They need a reason to want to keep looking; to read beyond your clever headline or value proposition, to decide to take part in your promo and somehow commit your URL to memory. That's another story.

The reasons? First: craft a value-add or promotion so strategic and irresistible to your demographic that they think it would be stupid not to take part and you've already cleared shelf space for that next award. And second, strategic design; well-crafted visual story-telling that engages the consumer.

If your program has no lead time or money to put against it, I know it can be hard to deliver the bacon, but if you can't find a way to use strategic planning and design to do this, you're letting opportunity and money slip through your fingers.

Blog vs. Portolio: admire my work, and enjoy the enlarged genitals

Building a personal brand and using a machine to humanize you? A blog, as well as your portfolio? My portfolio is the greatest thing in the world. It showcases my experience, increases genital size and cures diabetes, but that doesn't automatically entitle me to a flood of return traffic and new business.

A portfolio is stagnant, lazy, and unadored. A blog, on the other hand, can be interesting, personalized, and compelling. It's the perfect tool to fill the interest gap, and the hoped-for side effect is peripheral interest in your work after admiring your carefully crafted thoughts, then comes love, then comes marriage.

It's a silent interview

Human psychology 101: it's harder to hate people you know than random strangers. You want the world at large to love you, and you want that love to translate into increased business. But unless you're the Caligula of cold calling, you're not going to be meeting people and you're not going to be making great contacts. Your blog is a museum of you, and it's open twenty-four hours. Show off your abilities by sharing your knowledge. Show your value by having the maturity to put it all out there for the world to enjoy.

you're waiting for people to reach you, and a blog is the perfect place for you to create a museum of you, to share your knowledge and show your abilities. In short, it's the pre-interview you.

Getting to know you

As an Art Director and Graphic Designer, I could drive a car through an Adobe seminar and I'd still have 99.99998% of the competition able-bodied and hacking at that same pie (they're out there, while I'm in prison). A potential client has a lot of choice when it comes to making a hire, and without the benefit of a living conversation to add substance to your name, you're a ghost. A simple portfolio can't tell them what you might have in common; there's no chance to be impressed by your opinions and mindsets, to enjoy your wacky experiences or to relate to you on a more personal level. All of this can translate into the trust and confidence that might see you with a new business card.

I know, it's a big ass crowd

The theory bouncing around is that as more people recognize your name through social networking (blog, twitter, facebook, flickr, linkedin, etc) the more leads and referrals to follow. Don't automatically hang your hat on this nail. It's a big web out there. There's a better idea...

Give away your cow's milk

Create your blog, and focus your writing on what you know best, then squeeze. Honesty reads, and the need to feel like every other blog out there is not the most satisfying past-time. Write what you know, as long as it's unique and credible. It may seem counter-intuitive to spill your guts to the world and share valuable revelations and experiential tips for free, but if you believe in karma or wiki-spiritualism, you'll end up benefiting long-term from relationship building, networking with your peers, and increased business.

A professional gibberish-sounding post about professional gibberish

As note in my last post, Pepsi paid over a million dollars to redesign it's logo. Whether the leak of this work-in-progress document was intentional is debatable, but take a flip through and with just a few pages in, you're ankle deep in "breathtaking" Marketing Speak. To wit:

"The Pepsi ethos has evolved over time. The vocabulary of truth and simplicity is a reoccurring phonomena in the brand's history. It communicates the brand in a timeless manner and with an expression of clarity ... Breathtaking is a strategy based on the evolution of 5000+ years of shared ideas in design philosophy creating an authentic Constitution of Design."

Who does what now? Sure, it sounds vague, it leaves you feeling empty, it begs for clarity, but it's called Marketing Speak and if you thought regular english was hard...

It all started with the Corporate Mission Statement? You'll find them etched into nickle plates outside many offices or in the About section of many websites. A mission statement is a brief statement of the purpose for a company. If you're familiar with them, then you've probably wondered why they sound so random and intentionally vague? Well according to Wikipedia: "In management, by stating organizational goals with opaque words of unclear meaning; their positive connotations prevent questioning of intent, especially when many buzzwords are used".

Sigh. Can't we get a computer to do this? Well, a Mission Statement Generator is a simple program that contains a short list of simple nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs which are randomly belched out into print-ready statements such as:

"Our mission is to continually leverage existing catalysts for change with a high level of employee empowerment."

or...

"Our mission is to establish a reputation as the first choice to network wealth-generating enterprises and delivery inexpensive solutions to our clients."

or...

"Our mission is to seamlessly integrate profit-drive teamwork and network principle-centered benefits."

Congratulations, you have an instant MBA in Pro Gibberish. Sure, at best it's a ramshackle syntax, so overwhelmed with topical buzzwords and empowering business jargon that the end product rings generic and hollow, agreed, and the fact that a computer spewed it mocks the entire industry, but people get paid and paid really, really well to sound fluent in this kind of stuff.

So much of modern Advertising & Design is not what you make, but how you sell it. Word to the wise, learn to do it well, and you're writing your own cheque, tap dancing into the future sipping martinis made with pickled panda eyes instead of olives or onions.

Sadly, the Dilbert model no longer exists but many clones can be googled in it's stead.