Simon Pont's 'The Better Mousetrap' - promo quotes, June 2013.

Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (Kogan Page, 2012)

rands have not suddenly become fish with feet.

As ever, they look to seduce and captivate and intoxicate

us,

to draw us in, draw us close, never let us go.

But like Alice’s adventures in Wonderland, the world of

brands is one of riddles and contradictions.

Welcome to the rabbit hole.

B“


I take ‘the better mousetrap’ to be a compact metaphor for consumerism and the ‘creation of want’, that bad-wrap discipline called ‘advertising’.

“

Ro-Cat: The 1934 Twin Rocket Flying Suit, Jeff deBoer (1997).

It’s such a lovely, thorny, gnarly, ever-so-twisty, I-double-dare-you-to-try-and-answer kind of question.

“Just what the hell is a ‘brand’?


”

A brand is a bundle of meanings and values,

but as seen and perceived in the eye and the

mind of a consumer.

“


My strong point is not rhetoric, it isn’t showmanship,it isn’t big promises – those things that create the glamour and the excitement that people call charisma and warmth.

Richard Milhous Nixon37th President of the United States

Watergate aside, there’s a very good reason why Richard Nixon remains theleast-loved president in the history of American politics.

“

“

Simon Pont The Better Mousetrap (2012)

‘Straight advertising’ is the equivalent of ignoring your girlfriend over dinner. Branded content, and CRM, and co-creation is the opposite. It’s telling her she’s hot. Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (Kogan

Page, 2012)

In the finest semiotic tradition, a brand’s logo is a

signifier, a Stargate through

which we may pass into the

emotional, rational, Philosophical

Universe of that brand.

“

Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap

(Kogan Page, 2012)


The running man.I’ve always found the running man to be an incrediblyevocative image - a motif with all manner of potential meanings:Running.Running towards something.Running away from something. Being chased. Driven by fear, the threat of capture maybe.

Or more hopefully, being driven by

one’s self, to progress, succeed, to

improve; the thing that drives not beinga threat from behind but a goal in front, the horizon.

A burning want to improve, this being mankind’s perpetual forward motion. Bannister breaking the four-minute mile (6 May 1954); Bolt devouring 100 metres

in 9.58 seconds (16 August 2009). Mankind. By brilliant example. Achieving. Always

running.And always getting faster.

“

We need to get better at digital.Digital is too often talked about like it’s someone’s tennis game, or golf game; like a handicap that needs shaving.

‘Digital’ is not something to get better at. Digital is not something to improve at, like your golf swing.

‘Digital’ is merely zeros and ones. ‘Getting better’ starts with understanding what to get better at.


“

‘The Past’ conjures all the magic and mystique of a travel brochure destination, without a

handy Time Machine to disprove the allure and expose the truth.

For brands, ‘nostalgia’ can be one helluva compatible

and curvy bedfellow.

“


In the case of advertising, the headline holds firm. Sex sells... so long as you do it well. Life and advertising has many a parallel.

“

Simon Pont, The Better Mousetrap (2012)

Men and women don’t - of course - respond to the same universal set of turn-ons.

As Billy Crystal put it:

‘Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place.’ Simon Pont

The Better Mousetrap (2012)Kogan Page

“

Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you’re lucky.

Alan Moore, comic-book legend

“

As referenced in: The Better Mousetrap: Brand Invention in a Media Democracy (Kogan Page, 2012)


We divide life into genres –

just pigeon holes so that we can make some sense of it all,

but that’s not how we

live life. An alternative sense comes through living

it and looking upon it

differently, through which we

maymash

and bust it up.

“


the consigliore positioning.


Anti-Capitalists may view advertising as packaged lies in a damnable world, but the world we live in is a capitalist one, where buying is a key driver, and advertising is the necessary flux.

I don’t see ‘advertising’ as the bogeyman telling tall tales.Effective advertising acknowledges a prevailing truth about ‘how things are’.

“


There’s nothing veryvoodoo about consumerunderstanding.

I think insightfulconsumer understandingtypically comes frombeing un-clinical,from being emotive.

Great agency plannershave to draw on rawfirst-hand experiences, on ‘feel’ and intuition, of head, heart and gut.

“

An agency’s planning process, or ‘system’, or ‘tool’, may well be an acronym.

Big organizations (agency and corporate alike) tend to be utterly adoring of acronyms.

TCP (Total Comms Planning); IBM (Integrated Brand Marketing); IBC (Integrated Brand Communications); ICP (Integrated Communications Planning).

All are absolutely harmless, so long as no one goes confusing them with WMD’s.

And while there’s nothing wrong with a good tool, there’s also a clear bottom line.Use a tool, never be one.

“


Simon PontThe Better Mousetrap (2013)Kogan Page


You get conventional brands. You get conventional advertising sectors. Typically they sit within that world of risk-aversion, of uncertainty and easy doubt, populated by journeymen and dullards. Conventions are the play-it-safe default that steps in the way of invention.

“


It’s only once you have everything that a Hollywood movie star has that you then find yourself wanting an audience with the Dalai Lama.

Existential angst only tends to follow once your tummy doesn’t grumble and you potentially have a star on Hollywood Boulevard.

“

Language is a beautiful

thing, and fortunately

robust enough to

take the slings, arrows

and occasional

atom bombs of abuse

aimed at it.

“


To be a Category Hero, a brand needs to contrivea worthy villain, a suitable counterpoint,

irrespective of how same or different

they truly are.

Every brand needs

its Moriarty, its Joker,

its Blofeld.


“

Most grown men on the planet wish they knew the stuff Jason Bourne knows.

Journeys of self-discovery are just great when you end up in a place where you’re some kind of kick-ass capable James Bond, or wake up one day to be told you’re Superman.

“


More than ever, we worship at our own altars, plumping our own egos, fuelling our own delusions.

Our ‘icons’ are now our means, a desktop quick-click by which we chronicle and curate and self-narrate.

Anyone can be a self-idol, anyone can craft, expand and share their own mythology.

We’re becoming our own gods and monsters.

“


Adland is no different to any other industry badlands. There are rednecks with shotguns, for sure, just like anywhere, and maybe some hungry tigers too, but also like a Narnia, there are friendly lions and new frontiers forming all the time, where you get to play explorer, pioneer, and cartographer. That can be thrilling.

“


Happiness is our oneultimate end. Boil it right the way down, reduce all those motivationaldrivers, and sitting right there at the centre of our very human hearts, is our yearning to be happy.

“


The fundamentals will cause


us all to stand and stare; our want

“for material possessions, our

possession and passing on of heirlooms, our want to leave a legacy; our base sexual drives, our wish to be the superior versions of ourselves; our desire to be happy, as an emotion and an idea, that ultimate phantasm.

Material taken from ‘The Better Mousetrap’ (Kogan page, 2012).

“A fabulous new book. We recommend.”

Blackwell's Featured titles

“Sneaky in a good way.”Judd Labarthe, Argonauten G2

“A scalpel-sharp examination of our relationship with brands.”

Chris Maples, MD, Spotify

“Gloriously smart.”Faris Yakob, CIO, MDC

“Shows cunning more akin to a wild cat than a mousetrap.”

Greg Grimmer, Founder, HDMG

“Simon has achieved the near impossible. A must read!”

Steve Hyde, CEO, 360 Search

ABOUT SIMON PONT

His agency career includes being part

of Saatchi & Saatchi and Naked

Communications, the pioneers of

Communications Planning. Hollywood

movie studios, Icelandic investment

banks, British chocolate bars and

Middle Eastern airlines figure amongst

his time on the inside of Adland. He is

Chief Strategy Officer at agency

network Vizeum, and an EACA Effies

judge. Simon Pont is the author of non-fiction titles ‘The Better Mousetrap: Brand

Invention in a Media Democracy’ and ‘Digital State’, and ‘Remember to

Breathe’, a novel.

Say hello at: www.simonpont.com

SIMON PONT is a writer, commentator and brand-builder.

Simon Pont's 'The Better Mousetrap' - promo quotes, June 2013.

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Transcript of Simon Pont's 'The Better Mousetrap' - promo quotes, June 2013.