#Byron being such a fucking bot-

[alvaroz-starrs]

The old man quartet!

[gayestyugiohcharacter]

i am so sick of johan and byron’s poll aaaaaaaaaaaaaa

like yeah it’s weird that the percents are the same almost the whole time. it’s weird that it has 1100 votes

but bots can’t do stuff to polls. to make it so it’s constantly at that win rate someone would make so so many accounts and this is a goddamn gayest yugioh blog

the weird part isn’t that byron is winning.. the weird part is that he’s been constantly winning against johan fucking andersen this whole time

so i made up my mind with him.

byron arclight will move to round two (assuming he wins) and if his poll has him constantly winning by a constant percent and/or being overall sus i’m kicking him out and edo/rovian get an automatic win.

if it is someone botting it. don’t fucking ruin it for the byron and johan fans. both deserve to play fair, like everyone else. if i find out if any of you are making alt accounts so your blorbo wins you’re blocked.

[larsbusekist]

Why the fuck should anyone care about what we as advertiser make?

Two things shaped my summer (2017) - an article from Fastcompany about David Droga and a book by Byron Sharp, How Big Brands Grow.

Droga say in an article “It’s crude, but the essence, whether we’re talking to a billion-dollar client or a startup, is: Why would anyone give a shit about what we’re making?” he says. “Not, Do we think it’s cool or clever or funny or worthy? It’s, Why is this relevant?”  "Advertising Superstar David Droga Knows How To Get In Your Head, Fast company 06.15.17"

Most tv and print advertising has to me always felt like a clown entering my living room all the time. It’s fucking annoying and the more it happens the worse it gets. Today marketeers are stocking us online with banners and adds where-ever we go. It might be smart, and the smarts will of course gain from this. But as bots become better and cheeper, than humans doing this 24/7 365 it is every marketeers wet dream and everyone is able do it. Problem is when everyone is doing it, it too looses is meaning and becomes nuisance just like the man in the clown suit. Droga points out that we have invented technology to protect us from this, I use; adblock, adblocker by f secure etc. Therefore I think Dave is spot on when asking - why should people give a shit about what we’re making?

As advertisers we foremost have responsibility to our clients, but I also think to society, and of course the planet as a whole. if we pollute, spam and annoy people, to gain short sighted benefits, we're soil our own nest. I don’t wanna be part of that, never respected those in our profession who do.

My former boss Jari Ullakko used to say; the world of communication has changed, from shooting off pretty fireworks - read tv and print ads. Where people went, "ohh ahh". To building small bonfires where people gather and talk - read shared conversations online. Most of us recognise this is true. This is how the world turns. This means that you need to have something meaningful to say, for people to hang around, listen and participate in the conversation.

So why aren’t more clients and agencies doing this? I guess Tv still works, to some extend if you’re a big client with loads of money. This is where; How Brands Grow, by Byron Sharp comes in. Basically it boils down to two things, mental availability and physical availability. You have to be mentally aware when a consumer shops, and you have to be there where they are - kinda self-explanatory, and as other research confirms we use our emotional brain to make those decisions. So in his words it comes down to what you remember. If you’re big brand you can dominate the market, all the time, over time, years on end, and keep your competitors at bay. But here’s the catch, most brands are not even close to have that sort of marketing money in Nordics. We’re talking, Coke, Pepsi and the big cars brands here folks. The telco and oil companies, and a few others can do this.

i believe most brands are opperation under false assumption, that they should act like the multi billion dollar brands, and it's what being taught in business schools, but what they forget to tell you is that you need big ass company sized budgets, to think like this.

So that’s why I believe it much more effective to think as Dave suggest. It’s much better to create things people really care about. There's a saying that goes. It’s easier to make things people like, than make people like things. When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

So why aren’t more clients doing this type of work? According to Nobel price winner, in Behavioural economy, Daniel Kahneman, "Thinking, Fast and Slow, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2011" it can be related to something called Risk Aversion. That means “losses loom larger than gains” The pain of losing is psychologically about twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining, and since people are more willing to take risks to avoid a loss."

That means you know what you got, you know what others do and have been doing, so it feels right - even though you probably agree with the above way, of doing meaningful work is far better and makes more sense. That means our brains are still operation with the default, if you 10 000 years ago took a change and looked for food in a new place, changes were, that if you failed you’d be lucky to be alive. That same mechanism is making our marketing choices when, clearly there’s a more sensible way to create real value.

By creating value, I mean true value. Opposed to claiming, which is what most advertising do, when you think about it. Like Pepsi. The biggest evidence is the Pepsi commercial, which was so wrong and bad and obviously had absolutely nothing to do with soda pop. That’s the misguided part of trying to create value. Brands pretend, often using humor or - a word I hate with a sparke in the eye. Kinda the equivalent of bad jokes uncles at parties dish out, while everyone polite laughs, except that already super drunk person who are the only ones who finds it truly funny. Advertisers have protected themsleves from real life, by claiming and pretending. They create semi real worlds, where week men are dominated by strong women, revolutions are put on hold because of a soda, walls are broken down by a mob of male and female models, where nincompoop products solve peoples crises, and promises you fulfilled life you wouldn’t other wise have, if you don’t have or use this and that product. None of this is real.

The future I think lies not in distancing ourselves from real life, but embracing it for all it is. We have to align ourselves with what our Instagram profiles, FB, art, movies, books do. Embracing real life - or to be truly funny and ironic, can if done well work too - but the best humor is being brutally honest too. Embracing real meaningful values might seem more scary and frightening, because you can't lie and pretend and distance ourselves from it. As the saying goes, no guts no glory.

Companies are becoming transparent, and all their actions are known to the public, thus becoming their marketing, so embrace that shit and dive head in. One company that successfully have done this is Patagonia and Yvon Chouinard. As a company the have told their customers, not to buy their clothes, but to fix what’s already there. It was the 2011 advertising campaign that read “Don’t Buy This Jacket.” It went on, “The environmental cost of everything we make is astonishing.” Manufacturing and shipping just one of the jackets in question required a hundred and thirty-five litres of water and generated nearly twenty pounds of carbon dioxide. “Don’t buy what you don’t need.” This logic might seem counterproductive as a company to most, but in a transparet world it has only gotten them more liked not ignoring the fact and distanced themselves with claiming communication as outdoor posers, but laying it out there for everyone to be seen. People understand that you can’t be perfect, but at least your trying to make things better.

This approach, has created a lot more sympathy among its growing fan base. Patagonia is bigger, a billion dollar company, and more active in environmental and labor advocacy, than it has ever been.

I have for the past 3 years done mostly that kind of value creating work, trying to find meaningful ways to engage the many conversation around bonfires, and it has only been rewarding so far.