Paid Attention

Faris Yakob

📚 GENRE: Business & Finance

📃 PAGES: 240

✅ COMPLETED: April 14, 2023

🧐 RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Short Summary

The competition for attention has never been tougher. With so much content floating around, how can you cut through the clutter and make an impact on consumers? Faris Yakob investigates.

Key Takeaways

1️⃣ A Whole New World — Advertising and marketing have changed forever with the rapid development of the Internet, social media, and digital technology. The simple ways of traditional outbound marketing and advertising are in decline. Everybody now has the ability to publish content anytime they want, and there are ways anybody can get around consuming ads via ad-blockers, DVRs, etc. Brands have to adapt. 

2️⃣ Competition for Attention — The competition for attention is stiffer than ever. Unlike the past, you are no longer only competing with other brands for attention; you’re competing with every media platform, gif, Netflix show, YouTube video, viral social media post, and cute animal photo readily available to consumers. You now have to think big to get a consumer’s attention. 

3️⃣ Deliver Value, Create Experiences — Because there is so much content competing for attention, you now have to come to the table with something of value when communicating with consumers. The days of sending ads and expecting consumers to passively absorb them are over. You have to deliver something of value to the consumer in exchange for their attention, whether it’s through entertainment, education, humor, or an interactive experience. Focus on getting the consumer involved, creating an experience, and delivering value. 

Favorite Quote

“Therefore, communication in the connected age needs to deliver value as well as messaging. This balances out the value exchange, making the communicative interaction equitable… Let’s call this value-added communication. Since it delivers value, consumers will not avoid it and it will engender empathy for the brand, not resentment — it is not spam.”

Book Notes 📑

Introduction

  • The ‘Attention Economy’ — Everybody is competing for attention. The Digital Age and the rapid development of technology and social media have led to an unprecedented amount of content being released and consumed on a daily basis. With so much competing content available, it’s more difficult than ever to get, and hold, a person’s attention because everybody has only a finite amount of attention to give. These developments have led to what many people call the ‘Attention Economy.’
  • Communication Is Persuasion — When we communicate a message or idea to somebody or a group of people, we are trying to affect change. We are trying to persuade somebody to take an action we want them to take (i.e. a purchase) or believe something that we want them to believe. That’s ultimately the goal with any form of communication.
  • Attention = Mandatory — Before a message or idea can persuade somebody, it has to get their attention. In this way, attention is a prerequisite to persuasion and action. There’s an art to capturing attention with your message in today’s content-driven world, and this book will go over a few strategies so you can cut through all the clutter and get people’s attention.
    • Quote (P. 9): “This slippery property, attention, is of incredible and increasing value. Since it follows logically that ideas that are allocated no attention can have no impact, attention is therefore considered a prerequisite for affecting any change through communication.”
  • Chapter Takeaway — There is a tsunami of content released on the Internet every single day. With so much competition, it’s more difficult than ever to cut through the clutter and get people’s attention. But attention is a prerequisite to change and action — without it, it’s impossible to get people to do what your message or idea wants them to do. Unbelievably, the total amount of money spent trying to buy attention via ads, content, etc. is over $500 billion annually worldwide. 

Ch. 1: Logocentrism

  • Brands — Brands used to be simple, but they now encompass a company’s entire story. Just about anything associated with the company can be considered its “brand.” Brands are almost like their own language in many ways.
    • Quote (P. 13): “I would argue that brands are a language of their own, expressed via word or image or sound, via television or print or mouth. Brands are a bundle of inextricable, irreducible parts we can call brandemes. Coca-Cola is not just about happiness or refreshment. Its brandemes might be redness; youth; Father Christmas; sharing; the liquid; the shape of the bottle; ‘The Real Thing’; new/classic versus Pepsi; teaching the world to sing; and many other connected ideas.”
      • Takeaway — When you hear the word ‘brand’ you’re really talking about everything the company is and stands for. Its style. How it does things. Its look. Its logo. Everything. Every company has its own style and positioning. That’s what a brand is. 
  • Brands & Story — Every company (or brand) has its own story and way that it wants to position itself in the market. Physical products from almost every competitor in a certain industry are the same or very similar. It’s the brand identity, brand story, and brand positioning that makes people feel a certain way about the company and align with the company by making a purchase. Because brands encompass basically everything about a company, the best way to communicate in the here and now, and over time, is by telling stories.
    • Quote (P. 14): “There are a number of parallels between advertising and literature. This is because literature is the expression of stories, as advertising is the expression of a brand. Stories have characters, events, settings, beginnings, middles and ends, styles, subtexts, twists and turns — and each episode should leave the audience wanting more. This is how we should also think about constructing communication; conceptionally and overtime.”
      • Takeaway — Stories are what resonate the most with people. Make sure your brand tells a story about you. 
    • Ex. Google — As it was coming up the ranks early on, Google’s brand story was all about the startup underdog taking on Microsoft, the big, bad wolf. Google also emphasized its developer origin (the company was started by a few ambitious developers). Everything the company did was about telling that story and cementing that image in people’s mind. 
  • What’s a Brand? — In short, the definition of a brand is this: A brand is a collective perception in the minds of consumers. In other words, what does the typical individual think or see in his head when this brand comes to mind? A brand can’t exist without the public having a consensus understanding of what the brand is about and what it stands for. Everything the company does should be in alignment with its brand story and image. The monetary value of a brand is basically the amount of public attention focused on the brand (i.e. Coke’s brand is worth a lot of money).
  • Brand Dominance = Business Dominance — Strong brands have been shown over time to create price elasticity of demand. Basically, the company can charge a premium for its product without dramatically affecting market share. People will pay more money for the same product. Also, stronger brands with large market share tend to have more buyers within a certain time and more loyalty as measured through repeat purchases. In 2020, Millward Brown’s BrandZ report found that Amazon ($415B), Apple ($352B), and Microsoft ($326B) had the most valuable brands in the world. 
  • Interesting Fact — Tide is one of the most successful brands in the world and even has some street cred. In 2012, investigators were trying to understand why supermarkets in the U.S. were being robbed every month of Tide detergent, and only Tide detergent. They followed the money and found that bottles of Tide had become street currency, with 150-ounce bottles being exchanged for $5 or $10 worth of drugs. This earned Tide the nickname ‘Liquid Gold.’ Because of this type of brand loyalty and awareness with consumers, Procter & Gamble (producers of Tide) are able to charge 50% more than the average detergent and still outsell its competitors by more than 2-1. That’s the power of a great brand; it allows companies to charge a premium. 
  • Chapter Takeaway — A brand is essentially everything the majority of people think about a company. It’s the story that pops in their head and the image they see in their mind when the company is mentioned. Brands are powerful — companies with valuable brands earn a lot of attention in the attention marketplace and therefore have more success charging a premium for their products and gaining repeat purchases. 

Ch. 2: Uncovering Hidden Persuaders

  • Market Research = Not Useful — Market research and focus groups are unreliable and should always be looked at skeptically. Most of our decisions are made subconsciously, so forcing people to consider something rationally that operates on an unconscious, emotional level, is always going to give the wrong answer. To summarize, there are two main reasons you can’t trust market research:
    • We’re Confused — We don’t know why we do what we do. We make most of our decisions at a subconscious level without really understanding that we do that. But we’ll happily answer a question when asked by a researcher. We’ll give an answer that explains or justifies our behavior and seems to make sense to us. In reality, we make most of our decisions subconsciously. 
    • Inconsistent Behavior — The gulf between what we say we intend to do and our actual behavior is huge. Asking people if they intend to buy something is like asking them if they intend to go to the gym — the results may not correspond well to future behavior. 
    • Quote (P. 31): “Market research is a $23 billion industry in the United States but all the data it generates should be understood as wrong.”
    • Ex. Red Bull — Despite rigorous testing of new consumer products and research, 80% of them fail. Market researchers doing work on Red Bull concluded that “no other product had ever performed so poorly in consumer testing; the look, taste, and mouth-feel were regarded as ‘disgusting’ and the idea that it ‘stimulates mind and body’ didn’t persuade anyone the taste was worth tolerating.” And yet by 2020 the company had more than 75 billion cans.
  • Subconscious Mind — We still really don’t have a clue why we do what we do. But many experiments have shown that we typically make conscious decisions after the decision has already been made in the subconscious mind. We then justify the decision by giving an explanation that seems to make sense. This is why advertising models like AIDA and ‘the marketing funnel’ are not really that useful. Those models attempt to explain a consumer’s thought process, but we ultimately really don’t know why we do what we do.
    • Quote (P. 29): “This is really hard to get your head around, but various experiments suggest that our experience of consciously making decisions can happen after the decision has been made elsewhere in the brain, which turns logical models like AIDA upside down and inside out.”
    • Quote (P. 29): “The brain is the most complex thing we currently know of. We know almost nothing about how it creates the emergent property known as consciousness. Combine that with the fact that it is interacting with stimuli, some of which are the equally complex minds of others, in the ever-changing soup of culture and commerce, and you have the most complex multivariate system in the known universe. And it is this system that market research seeks to decode in order to increase the efficacy of marketing. It’s little wonder that it’s a bit tough.”
  • Behavioral Economics — The fact that we can’t explain consumer behavior led psychologist Daniel to establish behavioral economics, which seeks to understand why we make certain purchases. Traditional economics operates under the assumption that consumers behave rationally, which isn’t true. The differences between what a consumer should do and what they actually do is what behavioral economics seeks to study and explain. The truth is, we’re swayed by things we aren’t even aware of.
    • Ex. Nike Shoes Experiment — There was a famous 1990 study done using Nike shoes by The Smell and Taste Foundation. The foundation placed two identical pairs of shoes in two identical rooms, with one difference: one was scented with pleasant floral tones, the other unscented. According to the study, a staggering 84% of people exposed to the shoes in the scented room expressed higher levels of preference for the shoes, and we’re willing to pay $10 more for them on average.
  • Emotion > Rationality — Decades of research have demonstrated that rational messaging seems to have little impact on changing behavior; an emotional response is what does the trick. This is why modern ad testing includes automated facial coding to gauge the emotional response of a viewer. In advertising, and in life, it’s really not what you say, it’s how you say it. A message that generates an emotional response is much more effective than one that tries to reason with people using rational content. 
  • ‘System 1 & System 2’ — One of the reasons emotional appeals resonate with people more than rational content is due to what Daniel Kahneman called ‘System 1 and System 2 thinking’ in his famous book Thinking, Fast and Slow. System 2 is the more complex and effortful thinking that is almost never engaged unless is has to be. When you’re advertising, you’re talking to System 1, which is far more automatic, rapid, and emotional. With rational content (i.e. “buy because of this, this, and this”), you’re unknowingly trying to engage System 2, and that usually won’t happen.
    • Quote (P. 34): “His (Kahneman) work presents a direct challenge to the messaging model of advertising, since, as he pointed out during a talk in London: ‘You must recognize that most of the time you are not talking to System 2. You’re talking to System 1. System 1 runs the show. That’s the one you want to move.”
    • Quote (P. 34): “Advertising is mostly conceived, due to the persistent meta-cognitive error of rationality, as trying to persuade System 2 — but that system rarely makes purchase decisions. You can’t persuade System 1, that’s not the way it learns or decides. It’s automatic and associative.”
      • Takeaway — Emotion is what moves people. Keep this in mind when creating advertising and marketing materials. People don’t respond to messages that attempt to persuade using rational arguments. That kind of thinking requires System 2, which is usually only called on when absolutely necessary. Emotion appeals to System 1, which is where most people are operating from. 
  • Customers = Ads — Today everyone has a social media account and can voice frustration or praise at any moment. That’s why customer service has become more important than ever. A company should always go above and beyond to solve customer issues because those customers might leave a review or post something on social media commending the company, and that can lead to referrals and positive word of mouth. In this way, customers are ads. As Mark Zuckerberg once said: “An advertiser can produce the best creative ad in the world, but knowing your friends really love drinking Coke is the best endorsement for Coke you can possibly have.”
  • Chapter Takeaway — Market research isn’t very useful because consumers don’t really understand why they do what they do. None of us understand why we do things. Decades of research have shown that many of our decisions are actually made subconsciously rather than consciously. We use the conscious mind to justify our decisions rather than make them. When writing content or creating ads, remember to appeal to emotion rather than rationality. All of us are primarily using our System 1 thinking, which is more responsive to emotion. Rational arguments don’t work with System 1. 

Ch. 3: Advertising Works in Mysterious Ways

  • Communication Approaches — There’s no single ‘universal’ way to market and advertise to consumers; it really depends on the situation and the target audience. Some brands will benefit from developing engaging inbound communications where they provide value and develop a relationship with the customer. Other brands will benefit from more of an outbound communication approach where they are pushing a general message to a large audience. It can even be a mix of the two approaches. It really just depends. 
  • Moment of Truth — Because most products in a certain industry are very similar, if not the same, among competitors, brands, and our perception/relationship with them, ultimately allow us to make decisions easier. It is in that 3-7 second window when a customer sees your brand and is about to make a decision that all of your previous brand advertising and marketing either pays off or doesn’t.
    • Quote (P. 45): “There are always a combination of rational and emotional needs that brands satisfy. Engaging communication that helps to build stronger brand affiliations (a more developed sense of the brand) can help to provide the consumer reassurance, both pre-and post purchase.”
      • Takeaway — We’re faced with a lot of decisions when considering a purchase. There are like 20 brands of toothpaste, for example. Our relationships with and perceptions of brands ultimately allow us to make purchase decisions. Most products in an industry are very similar, so it’s the brand recognition, and the feeling about the brand, that puts one company’s product over the top in a consumer’s mind. 
  • The Paradox of Choice — People don’t like to make decisions, especially when there are a lot of options available. In Barry Schwartz’s book The Paradox of Choice, he describes one grocery store experiment where a table with six jams to choose from outsold a table with 24 jams to choose from. When a consumer has too many choices available to them, a certain paralysis kicks can prevent them from making any decision at all.
    • Quote (P. 47): “Dramatically increasing the number of options decreases the propensity to purchase. Decisions with lots of options cause anxiety, paralysis, proleptic regret, and a bunch of other negative responses. They increase the effort invested in the decision and ultimately can diminish the enjoyment you get from anything you do choose.”
  • Role of Brands | Company — Brands are good for companies because they increase frequency of purchase, allow you to charge a price premium, drive loyalty, are a defensible competitive advantage, and contribute significantly to the intangible assets value of a company (goodwill). Brands can lead to repeat purchases, with customers ‘sleepwalking’ through the supermarket, buying the same things again and again.
  • Role of Brands | Consumers — Brands are good for consumers because they act like ‘shortcuts’ — they take away the need to make decisions when we have so many options available to us. They take away the pressure of pretending to ourselves that we are rational economic agents. They prevent us from breaking down every time we want some jam.
  • Attention Grabbers — The human attention system is hardwired and can be hacked; you just need to know a few ways to do it. The following strategies are ways to get people’s attention.
    • Violate Expectation — As also discussed in Hey Whipple, Squeeze This and Made to Stick, one of the best ways to get attention is to violate expectation. When you do something that people are not expecting, it has a way of hooking attention and improving memory. The element of surprise is very effective at cutting through the clutter and grabbing attention. 
    • Disrupt Familiarity — Similarly, when you change something up from the norm and do something unfamiliar, you grab attention. People ask themselves, “What’s going on with this? What sparked this change?”
      • Ex. Soda — This is why many soda companies introduce new flavors, create ‘new and improved taste’ labels on their cans, and redesign their cans entirely. It’s all to create something that’s unfamiliar to grab consumer attention. 
      • Ex. Text — This is also why people bold or highlight text in emails when they want the recipient to pay attention to a certain sentence. The bolded text breaks away from the norm and therefore has a way of drawing our attention. 
    • Curiosity — As also discussed in The Adweek Copywriting Handbook, building curiosity (in that book it’s called ‘The Slippery Slide’) has a way of holding a person’s attention. We want to know more. You can use ‘knowledge gaps’ to accomplish this. These are when you introduce a question or a topic that the audience does not already know about — you’re opening the gap. From there, we have an itch to discover the answer and close that gap in our mind. We’ll hang on until we get the answer.
      • Quote (P. 52): “Curiosity is stimulated by making people aware of manageable gaps in their knowledge. How does this work? First, you have to show people enough of something to get them involved, but leave enough gaps that people feel the need to fill in themselves. If you give people all the answers, there’s nothing for them to do.”
      • Ex. YouTube Ad — I once sat through an entire 3-minute fitness YouTube ad because the guy opened a knowledge gap at the beginning by stating that one food in particular destroys testosterone levels in men. I watched the whole video ad to get the answer and he didn’t even answer the question! That’s a good example of what we’re talking about here, though. 
  • New Age of Advertising — The old traditional ways of advertising are declining. Although they are still effective, TV commercials, radio spots, print ads, and magazine ads are simply not the best way to reach people anymore. People now have so many modes of entertainment and content available to them that they can easily avoid seeing ads entirely. The rise of ad-blockers has also contributed. Today, the best way to reach people is using digital channels and by building awesome content that creates an experience for the consumer and is easily shareable. 
  • Chapter Takeaway — The human attention system is hardwired and hackable. Two of the best ways to get attention with your content involve using surprise/unexpected tactics and building curiosity with knowledge gaps. These strategies have a way of drawing us in. Additionally, brands help consumers choose from a tsunami of similar products without having to work very hard. The relationship and perceptions we have with certain brands help us make purchase decisions among similar products. 

Ch. 4: Is All Advertising Spam?

  • Advertising Is Changing — Traditional broadcast/interrupt advertising is declining quickly with the rise of new media platforms, social media, streaming services, and devices. Unlike TV, radio, and print, the Internet and social media allow consumers to engage with content. This has fundamentally changed advertising because traditional forms of advertising relied on broadcasting a message in a one-way, outbound exchange (brand to consumer). Today, the best approach to advertising involves encouraging engagement with customers and prospects. 
  • Ad-Blocking Software & DVRs — What has contributed to the changes in advertising is the creation of ad-blocking software. People can now block and ignore ads easily. On TV, DVRs allow people to pause and fast-forward so they don’t have to see commercials. Traditional interrupt advertising is just no longer as effective as it once was. 
  • The ‘Impression Illusion’ — Impressions, the number of times an ad was presented to somebody, isn’t a very good measure of success. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, 36% of all web traffic is considered “fake.” Comscore reports that 31% of ads are unseen because they are placed on areas of a website that can’t be seen. Additionally, just because a person “sees” an ad, doesn’t meant they are putting their full focus and attention on it. For the ad or message to be truly effective, it has to have the person’s full attention. Impressions only measure the number of times it has been placed in front of somebody. 
  • Media Meshing — Today’s consumer is constantly absorbing multiple forms of media simultaneously. For example, phones and tablets have made it easy to browse the Internet and social media while watching TV. Ad agencies have historically divided departments by channel (i.e. TV, Radio, Web, etc.), but these channels are now more blended than ever.
    • Quote (P. 64): “With the advent of digital channels, content can flow freely from one to the other: audio-visual content, for example, can be consumed innumerable ways: on televisions, computer screens, or most importantly, mobile phones. Audio can be broadcast, streamed or downloaded as a podcast. Tablets allow for the fluid transfer of print. The boundaries between many of the standard channels are dissolving as we shift to a media consumption model based on content and screens.”
      • Takeaway — The way people consume content is completely different than it used to be. The Internet, social media, and new devices have allowed us to pay ‘partial attention’ to many different forms of content. As a result, traditional outbound marketing where consumers are interrupted with ads is no longer effective, nor is it accepted or tolerated by people. 
  • Delivering Value — If traditional interrupt advertising is spammy and no longer very effective, what is now the best way for brands to connect with consumers? The answer is delivering value. Whether it’s in the form of education, entertainment, humor, or amusement, you have to focus on delivering value to the consumer in exchange for their attention. The traditional outbound communication model involves blasting a message out to consumers and asking them to provide value in the form of their attention. It’s spam. The new model of communication involves the brand providing value in the form of education or entertaining content in exchange for the consumer’s attention. The new model is a two-way value exchange.
    • Quote (P. 66): “Therefore, communication in the connected age needs to deliver value as well as messaging. This balances out the value exchange, making the communicative interaction equitable… Let’s call this value-added communication. Since it delivers value, consumers will not avoid it and it will engender empathy for the brand, not resentment — it is not spam.”
  • Encourage Collaboration — One of the best ways to deliver value and build relationships with customers is to encourage collaboration. Red Bull, for example, has done this by encouraging customers to submit artwork for their cans. The company then uses the best artwork, as determined by a judging panel. This is a kind of open-sourced approach to marketing, where customers become collaborators: their creativity is facilitated and then turned into advertising or content.
    • Quote (P. 68): “Memes created by consumers in a matter of minutes are often more viewed than high-budget commercials. Brands that are able to leverage consumers to create or co-create content on their behalf will hit the sweet spot.”
    • Quote (P. 69): “The goal for brands is to break down the division between their consumers and themselves, making consumers feel like the owners and producers of the brand, which, in reality they have always been.”
      • Takeaway — Find creative ways to get customers and prospects involved in an experience. This content strategy delivers value, makes the customer feel important, and helps you create strong relationships with your audience. 
    • Ex. Nikon Film Festival — To promote its new Nikon D5000 in 2009, Nikon set up a separate website/platform called the ‘Nikon Film Festival’ and encouraged people on social media to submit short videos that they created using their Nikon 5000 camera. The videos were put on the website, and a judging panel evaluated the videos and eventually picked a winner who won $100,000. The campaign was a huge hit. Nikon received over 48 hours of film in total. By encouraging collaboration, Nikon drove traffic to its social media channels and websites, inspired consumers to use their new camera and show off its features, and created buzz/brand awareness. 
  • Chapter Takeaway — Advertising has changed for good. The traditional outbound broadcast model where you interrupt consumers is no longer as effective as it used to be. The key now is to deliver value. Deliver an experience. Get people involved. Communication with consumers should now be viewed as an exchange; the brand is giving something (i.e. education, entertainment, etc.) in exchange for one of the scarcest resources available today: attention. 

Ch. 5: The Spaces Between

  • Social Influence — What other people like has a big influence on purchase decisions. We find customer reviews and testimonials very valuable when we’re considering a purchase. That’s why Amazon customer reviews, the New York Times Bestseller List, and YouTube product reviews can be so influential. 
  • Social Media — Social media is where content is widely consumed, distributed, and shared. It has become a battleground for content. Try to win here. 
  • Focus on Production — Now more than ever, the focus has to be on producing high-quality content that people want to watch, read, or otherwise consume rather than simply talking about the company with ads. Focus on doing. Focus on creating great ideas. More money and focus should be on doing rather than saying when it comes to executing an idea. 

Ch. 6: Do Things, Tell People

  • Competing Against Infinite Content — Digital technology has given every consumer the power to create content. It didn’t used to be this way. Publishing content used to be something ordinary people weren’t able to do easily. Now, anybody can create a blog, start a social media account, and publish a video. As a result, advertising and content as the sole tools in the marketing tool box are simply no longer sufficient to earn attention since they compete with infinite volumes of content created by people. 
  • Do Things — Because advertising and content alone are no longer sufficient, companies/brands need to do things and then tell the world about what they did. With this thinking, actions can become content engines. You take an action and then develop content to tell people about the action you took. To further drill this home, the idea is to do something memorable and have your brand be associated with that experience. This is how marketing should be thought of now.
    • Quote (P. 88): “Douglas Rushkoff suggests this requires the abandoning of communications ‘as some separate task, and instead just doing all the right things that you want talked about.’ Brands will be built by behavior… and content that communicates that behavior.”
    • Ex. Mastercard Priceless Surprises — In the early 2010s, Mastercard had an idea. The company began ‘surprising’ loyal cardholders with small and large gifts here and there. One of them involved Justin Timberlake showing up at a fan’s house to hang out for the day. The experience gave cardholders a story they could tell friends and family and share on social media. News outlets covered the campaign because it was a cool story, and Mastercard became associated with the surprise experience in a consumer’s mind. By doing something like this, the company was also able to create its own content by capturing videos of the surprises. This is what the new age of marketing is all about. 
    • Ex. Red Bull — In what has been called one of the most successful marketing campaigns of all time, Red Bull in 2012 coordinated an event where skydiver Felix Baumgartner broke the world freefall record by jumping out of a capsule suspended 24 miles above the surface of the earth. The jump was broadcast on more than 40 television stations across 50 countries. A record 8 million people watched it live on YouTube. It organically created more than 2.5 million social media mentions. The campaign became linked to the Red Bull brand and it’s long-running slogan: ‘Red Bull Gives You Wings.’ On the one-year anniversary of the jump, Red Bull released a secondary burst of content, including a powerful point-of-view video of Felix’s experience.
  • Leveraging Technology — Do things by finding creative ways to leverage technology. There are ways to use technology in unique ways that can help you cut through the tsunami of content in the world. Pepsi actually started a venture capital fund inside the company that it uses to support and partner with early stage technology start-ups. Pepsi’s goal with the fund is to discover and leverage new, up-and-coming technology for its marketing efforts. Technology helps you do.
    • Quote (P. 89): “Technology provides a medium to amaze and cut through the clutter of content. Technology speaks by doing, it can be utilized to create utilities, tools, services, and ideas that earn attention.”
      • Takeaway — Find ways to use technology to do things in the world. Use technology to create experiences for consumers. This is what advertising and marketing is all about now. It requires a lot of creativity. Try to think of a great idea, and then come up with ways you can leverage technology to execute it. 
  • Chapter Takeaway — Unlike the past, digital technology has allowed every consumer to create and publish their own content. Companies and brands now have to compete for attention with average consumers every day. As a result, advertising and content aren’t enough anymore — the company has to focus on doing things and creating an experience that the brand becomes associated with in a consumer’s mind. The idea should be to do something big, then tell the world about it. Red Bull and Mastercard have had successful campaigns using this line of thinking. 

Ch. 7: Recombinant Culture

  • The Creativity Myth — While some people are born a bit more creative than others, creativity can be learned. It’s a skill. In essence, creativity is a way of thinking, a process of combining previous ideas. When someone says “that’s really creative,” what they mean is that they haven’t seen that combination of ideas put together in that way before. Because creativity is really a process of combining previous ideas, to become more creative you have to expose yourself to a wide variety of topics, ideas, subject matter, etc. When you have knowledge of so many things, you can draw on ideas you know about and combine them in a way that meets your needs.
    • Quote (P. 99): “Being creative is not a magical skill, it is simply a way of thinking, a process, one that combines things in non-obvious ways in order to achieve something useful or beautiful or both.”
    • Quote (P. 99): “Innovative ideas are associative: What the innovators have in common is that they can put together ideas and information in unique combinations that nobody else has quite put together before. Researchers describe this ability to connect ideas as ‘associating,’ and believe ‘it is key to innovators’ ability to create non-obvious combinations.’ Crucially, finding non-obvious connections tends to mean that the mind doing the mixing has knowledge of concepts in areas that are not directly adjacent.”
    • Quote (P. 99): “This is why Aristotle thought that ‘the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor,’ because you have to be able to find similarity in difference. Metaphors are at the heart of thoughts, of new ideas.”
  • Genius Steals — Pablo Picasso has a quote about how good artists imitate and great artists steal. Stealing things from other people/places and combining them in a way that makes sense for your purposes is how you develop creative ideas. Don’t be afraid to steal ideas from other people who have had success. Creativity is ultimately that process of mixing and matching previous ideas. Think of it like Legos — you’re looking for pieces you can use to build your set.
    • Quote (P. 100): “If minds are blank, where do ideas come from? You steal them.”
    • Quote (P. 100): “Ronald Burt’s theory of ‘where to get a good idea’ helps to explain that it is probably stolen: ‘The usual image of creativity is that it’s some sort of genetic gift, some heroic act, but creativity is an import-export game. It’s not a creation game.’”
    • Quote (P. 105): “This is why the consultancy I founded with my wife is called Genius Steals. It is built on what we believe about innovation. We look at the broadest range of sources when we help to craft solutions for our clients — and build from them, rather than starting from scratch.”
  • Steve Jobs & Creativity — Steve Jobs was also vocal about the value of stealing ideas. Steve is quoted as saying: “Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you’re doing… We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” Steve went on to give his three keys to creative thinking:
    • Reiteration — Building on what came before. Looking at what works and starting there, rather than from scratch.
    • Recombination — Blending different elements together to create a new whole.
    • Inspiration — Looking to fields “diverse in interest” for sources to recombine.
  • Chapter Takeaway — Creativity is not some magical thing! It’s a process and way of thinking that involves mixing and matching (or combining) previous ideas together in a way that meets your needs. This is where being well-read can be very beneficial; the more you know about all areas of life, the more knowledge and ideas you can draw on. 

Ch. 8: Combination Tools

  • Creative Process — Brainstorming sessions should have structure and follow some sort of process. Volume is important when brainstorming, and there’s no such thing as a bad idea. It’s about getting ideas out there. The most compelling ideas can then be refined and developed. For example, if you’ve come up with 100 ideas, only 5-10 ideas should move on. Steps to follow when going through the creative process include: 
    • Step 1: Define the Problem — Creative ideas in advertising exist to solve problems, usually business problems. Being able to find a creative solution to a business problem requires a strong understanding of the problem. You have to define and frame the problem in a way that leads “tees you up” to think of good solutions. For example, if the business goal is to ‘sell 15% more mayonnaise,’ you have to restate that in a way that is more inspirational for creating solutions. A better way to phrase that to set yourself up for brainstorming solutions would be: ‘We want to get more people to try mayonnaise on their fries.’ Setting it up like that will help you brainstorm better. 
    • Step 2: Frame the Metaphor — Our minds think in metaphors. Try to come up with some kind of metaphor link that can help you think of solutions to the problem.
    • Step 3: Inspiration — The components of new ideas are always other ideas. As discussed in the previous chapter, look for inspiration from previous ideas put out in the world. Think of them like Lego pieces — look around for pieces you that might help you. You can look for cool ideas by checking out what has been winning at various advertising awards shows. You can look at other fields and industries. You can look for inspiration from things that interest you in your personal life — the point is to look around. 
    • Step 4: Recombination — Once you have a solid list of inspiration, or Lego pieces, begin combining them to see if you can find a link between the ideas and the problem you’re trying to solve with your advertising or content. 
    • Step 5: Incubation — Take a break and stop thinking about the campaign entirely. Allow your subconscious mind to work. 
    • Step 6: Judgement — Decide if the idea is worth moving forward with or not. If not, what’s missing? Make sure to give the final idea a name and a description. 
  • Other Ideas — The toolkit below outlines another process for coming up with cool ideas. Again, the goal with today’s advertising and marketing efforts should be to bring value to consumers and find fun ways to get them involved. 
  • Chapter Takeaway — Brainstorming isn’t effective if there’s isn’t a process being followed. There should be structure when you’re thinking of ideas. Your goal should be volume when you’re brainstorming — get as much on paper as you can. From there, you can refine, mix and match, and move forward with the best ideas. 

Ch. 9: Advertising for Advertising

  • Award Shows — There are several annual awards shows for advertising, including One Show and the Effie Awards. Go to the websites. Study the pieces that won. You can find a lot of great inspiration by seeing the ideas, art, and copy that won awards. 
  • Don’t Forget the Point — Never forget the point of marketing and advertising, which is to solve business problems for the company and to drive business results. In the end, the goal of all marketing efforts is to help the company make money.

Ch. 10: Integrative Strategy and Social Brands

  • Stay Consumer Focused — Try to always remember what your real mission is, which is to serve the customer. It’s easy to lose sight of the what you’re really in business for. For example, the railroad tycoons thought they were in the business of railroads when they were really in the business of transport. That’s partly why they got run over when automobiles and planes became a factor. The railroad tycoons failed to look ahead and adjust. Blockbuster’s downfall and Netflix’s rise is another example.
    • Quote (P. 128): “People don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.”
      • Takeaway — Steve Jobs and Apple are a good example of keeping the right perspective. Not long after releasing the iPod, Jobs realized that mobile phones were coming and they could easily have a built-in music player that would basically end Apple. That realization is what inspired the iPhone. Jobs understood and was content with cannibalizing the iPod to keep Apple ahead of the game. 
  • Advertising Solves Business Problems — As discussed in the previous bullet, adverting agencies shouldn’t look at their job as “making advertising.” They should look at is as “helping corporations solve business problems with creativity.” As a copywriter, your job is to ultimately help the business make more money by solving business problems (i.e. generating more leads and making more sales). Keep that in mind when thinking of ideas — there’s no limit to what you can do when you’re trying to solve business problems.
    • Quote (P. 129): “Advertising agencies, then, either ‘make’ advertising, which is a service that can be displaced, or they help corporations to solve business problems with creativity, which will remain an ongoing need as long as there are corporations.”
    • Quote (P. 129): “The business of advertising remains robust for now, but the business of ideas that drive business growth is evergreen.”
  • Interesting Fact — A ‘marathon’ is called a marathon as a tribute to the Greek legend Pheidippides, who ran about 26 miles from the town of Marathon back to Athens in 490 BC to tell the people of a victory over the Persian army. He collapsed and died soon after arriving back in Athens to deliver his message. 

Ch. 11: Prospection

  • Listen to Customers — Always try to listen to what customers are saying online and make changes or run campaigns based on their feedback. This goes back to the new age of marketing and finding ways to allow customers to be part of the experience.
    • Quote (P. 149): “The key is for brands to listen to what people are saying and then incorporate what they say, and solutions and surprises to delight them, into content and behavior.”
    • Ex. Domino’s Pizza — For years Dominos heard from customers how bad their pizza was. They finally decided to change their recipe in response and ran a campaign where they put ‘pizza proverbs’ on their boxes and put pizza pictures submitted by customers on their menu. 
  • Creating Relationships With Customers — The way you build relationships with customers in today’s marketing world is by delivering value and solving problems for them. You then create advertising campaigns that tell everyone how you solved a problem. It used to be the opposite — ads would tell customers how a product will help them if they buy it. Now you want to focus on actually solving a problem with your idea (“doing”) and then telling people about it.
    • Quote (P. 157): “Buying attention is no longer sufficient, no one has enough money to outshout the rest of culture. Advertising used to work simply because it could reliably garner enough attention. Now the need to leverage creativity and make difficult strategic choices about how to allocate time and money has never been greater.”
    • Quote (P. 157): “Agencies are not dead. What is dead is an agency process that can only end in traditional advertising. The world is too complex for that to work for every problem. Ultimately, agencies will embrace a broader palette and work with clients to create value using creativity, in whatever is the most appropriate form.”
  • ‘Ideas That Can Be Advertised’ — As we keep drilling home, the best marketing ideas are now the ones that do things for people. Solve a brand problem by solving consumer problems. Create content that people find valuable. Give them tools they can use. Leverage advertising creation and distribution to create “ideas that can be advertised,” not just ‘advertising ideas.’
    • Takeaway — Think big! Marketing is now more about creating cool gadgets, tools, ideas, and content that get people involved. You then follow with advertising that tells people about how you helped others and delivered value with your idea.

Ch. 12: Everything Is PR

  • Everything Is PR — Today, everything a company does should be considered PR. Ideas that inform advertising and earn news coverage win at awards shows and generate business results.