Remember that time an art director cost a brand billions?
Turns out that not putting message first will screw you over. Massively.
Do you know what I love more than this job, Leeds United, my dog, and (until fairly recently) life itself?
Smoking. Love it. Absolutely love it. I had my first cigarette in August of 2000. I was 14. It was a Regal. Cadged it off my mate Andy Smith and smoked it in a bus shelter. I had my last cigarette on honeymoon. November 2014. I was 29. It was a Benson and Hedges silver. I smoked it on a beach.
Fucking loved smoking. The only thing I did half as much as smoke was quit. I’d quit four, five times a year. It never stuck.
Until November 2014. Because then I discovered vaping. All the fun of smoking, but it tasted better and didn’t reek. And until I quit nicotine altogether in mid-2023, I vaped pretty much constantly.
They reckon if every smoker in the world switched to vaping tomorrow, it’d save one billion lives. One billion!
In karmic terms, that’s saving more lives than Hitler, Stalin and Mao managed to end. Combined.
And that, according to the Netflix documentary Big Vape, was the mission of a company called Juul.
The company started off with a message that was built around that mission. To save lives with a healthier alternative to smoking. It did OK. They grew slowly and steadily.
Then in episode 2, they hired an art director. He had a great idea. Frame Juul as a lifestyle product, make a load of Apple-style ads, and get influencers to pick up a Juul as a fashion accessory.
Fuck the message, let’s go with what looks good. And it worked. The company’s value skyrocketed. His campaign added billions to Juul’s value.
Then someone at the FDA looked. And noticed it was all familiar. His visuals were pretty much shot-for-shot remakes of cigarette advertising. But with shit copy.
Cue investigations, fines, lawsuits, product bans and all those additional billions of dollars evaporating like creme brulee flavoured vapour.
Abandoning your message might work in the short term, but in the long term it’s going to leave you worse off than you ever were before.
So next time an art director starts blowing smoke your way, stop and think.
What about my message?
Something mint - this one line summary
I don’t go on Kickstarter much, because I end up spending loads of money on ridiculous things like Thunderbirds themed board games I’ve played once in 8 years.
But flicking through late one night, I saw this one-line summary of a tabletop RPG and I think it’s the best thing ever written.
The year is 1943. You are a team of crack vampire commandos with one mission: drink all of Hitler’s blood.
Not a word wasted.
The year is 1943. Straight away we’re all thinking Casablanca. Or Allo Allo.
You are a team of crack vampire commandos... Not just commandos. Not just vampires. And not just crack vampire commandos. Now you’re thinking “my mates and I are the best fucking vampire commandos in all the world.”
… with one mission. Oooh. Exciting. One mission. This is tight, focused, a game, not an alternative lifestyle (looking at you every D&D group I’ve ever met).
Drink all of Hitler’s blood. Not some. Not a bit. Not enough to get by. All. You, and your other crack vampire commando mates are going to exsanguinate the Fuhrer. And he deserves it too. The bastard.
20 words, and I’ve never been more immersed in a setting or ready to bleed a dictator to death.