Roth The Humbling 2010

It is Roth’s book about an actor who loses the ability to act. “Instead of the certainty that he was being wonderful, he knew he was going to fail.” (Roth, 2010, p.1). “The worst of it was that he saw through his breakdown the same way he could see through his acting.” (Roth, 2010, p.5). “He was an artificial madman too. The only role available to him was the role of someone playing a role.” (Roth, 2010, p.6).

He is desparate and engages in a relationship with girlfriend that saves him form depression.

In their relationship he buys her more and more cloths and dresses her up – as if she was was to play a role, that he cannot do any more. “Wasn’t dressing her up in costume as though a costly skirt could dispose of nearly two decades of lived experience? Wasn’t he distorting her while telling himself a lie?” (Roth, 2010, p.66). Accordingly, for every person he meets, he asks himself, sooner or later, whether he or she is acting or not? He buys her more and more expesive cloths.

Later they pick up a girl in a bar for a threesome: “she’s a cat, he thought, before the cat pounces, the falcon before it soars from the falconer’s wrist. The animal you can control – until you let it loose. He thought, I am providing her Tracy the way I give her the clothes.” (Roth, 2010, p.110). “Three children got together,” he said, “and decided to put on a play,” whereupon his performance began.” (Roth, 2010, p.114).

When she leaves him, all possibility to act – on stage and in life – are gone and thus commits suicide: but he can only do it once he develops a plan to play it as a role in a play.

“And if it’s that hard to kill someone else, someone you have every reason to want to destroy, imagine how hard it is to succeed in killing yourself.” (Roth, 2010, p.42). “until finally it occurred to him to pretend that he was committing suicide in a play. In a play by Chekov. What could be more fitting? It would constitute his returen to acting.” (Roth, 2010, p.139).

Cultural Strategy - Holt and Cameron

This book develops a very interesting alternative for developing briefs/strategy to the traditioanl approache.

It jumps right into the usual gap between ‚brand statement’ and execution. Rather than letting the execution being developed randomly based on meaningsless brand statements and empty feeling worlds (usually called tone of voice in the briefing) Douglas and Holt propose build creative work on ideology, myths and cultural codes

“in the end, even if the concept consists entirely of abstract phrases, the actual marketing offering must make use of concrete cultural content. (…) However, because such messy content has been systematically excluded from the insights and strategy stages, when cultural content is finally added back in, it happens without any sort of strategic guidance” (Holt and Cameron, 2010, p. 302).

He argues that innovation is usually based either on technological innovation or on a psychological benefit areas – yet both ways ignore cultural innovations. For Douglas and Holt it is not about better product or services but inventing a better ideology: for example Nike had all their product innovation developed early. And also its positioning on enhancing performance was in place. But it only took off once they reinvented the American dream with their ideology of “Combative solo willpower”. Similarly Ben & Jerry only took off, once the Ideological flashpoints against the Reagan free market economy and showed how this contributed to a sustainable business.
2010, p. 88). Marlboro used the cowboy for years without success – only once it developed Marlboro country against the backdrop of the ideal of the “organisation man”. They used John Wayne’s Western as source material, but changed it significantly according to the reactionary work myth: Marlboro country is a place where physically challenging work takes place in nature, where cowboys must be self-reliant and determined, no savages no guns and no violence. There are no women to rescue; cowboy is hos own boss. This is not a Western, it presents a myth about an idealized version of pre-industrial men’s work on the Western frontier (Holt and Cameron, 2010, p. 167).



In the last section of the book, Douglas and Holt argue, why brand bureaucracies don’t work: It is not unusual for a brand bureaucracy to spend only 1-2 days of developing concepts and than test them for months (Holt and Cameron, 2010, p. 298). The end result are concepts full of vague generic phrases that could mean just about anything – “the qulity of the concept is far less important than the rigor of the process used to test it.” (Holt and Cameron, 2010, p. 299).

Digital Advertising - Fianduca and Burgoyne (eds.)

Great book of many essays – hence nmot trying to tell a coherent story but many. Here arethe points that surprised me most:

For an industry that focuses somuch on novelty advertising is very slow to adopt the internet (Fianduca and Burgoyne, 2010, p.xi).
But: the internet is a two-way medium – it is not a selling it is a buying medium (Fianduca and Burgoyne, 2010, p.xiii).

Formerly, advertising agencies made things – in the future they will devise frameworks of information exchange (Fianduca and Burgoyne, 2010, p.xvi).

“The mobile is the bridge between the virtual and the real world.” (Fianduca and Burgoyne, 2010, p.19). It knows where you are, it knows wehat ou think from twitter and it knows what’s around you.

The digital channel is so exciting because it is so many channels (Fianduca and Burgoyne, 2010, p.34).

“The most difficult thing is not creating technology that allows you to share content; it is making content that is worth sharing.” (Fianduca and Burgoyne, 2010, p.46).

“If there is one major difference between traditional and digital it is that, in digital, the consumer has to make the first move.” (Fianduca and Burgoyne, 2010, p.60).

We all can out something on the web, but: “content isn’t really content without an audience” (Fianduca and Burgoyne, 2010, p.72).

Sound is very important to advertising. But did you notice: interactivity + sound = musical instrument. (Fianduca and Burgoyne, 2010, p.79).

Behavioural Economics: “all of us are subject to a host of cognitive biases and tics that distort our view of te world and lead usnot just into temptation but into trouble time and time again, however rational our thinking and precise our calculations are.” (Fianduca and Burgoyne, 2010, p.130).

John Updike - Rabbit Angstrom. The four Novels

An incredible book about America and growing old. Similar topics to Roth, but less playful, more real and grittier.

There is a major catastropy in each book (his babykid is drowned by the mother, his young heroin-addicted girlfriend burns in his house) and each time Rabbit is caught in between urge to run-away into freedom and the security of staying. And each decade he reacts differently.

“His house slips from him. He is free.” (Updike, 1971, p.555).

The younger hippie generation: “You never see them out in the sun but the’re all tan, with flat stomach muscles. Their one flaw is, the’re still soft inside. The’re like those chocolates we used to hate, those chocolates creams. (…). That’s what I like about those kids: they’re trying to kill it.Even if they kill themselves in the process.” “Kill what?” “The softness. Sex, love; me, mine.” (Updike, 1971, p.579).

“Everybody else has a life they try to fence in with some rules. You just do what you feel like and then when it blows up or runs down you sit there and pout.” (Updike, 1971, p.587).

“When he was around the lot it was like they were all trying to fill some big skin that Springer spent all his time and energy imagining, the ideal Springer Motors. When he died that skin became Harry’s own, to stand around in loosely.” (Updike, 1981, p.625).

“It gives him pleasure, makes Rabbit feel rich, to contemplate the world’s wasting, to know that the earth is mortal too.” (Updike, 1981, p.631).

“You’re wrong about my wantng what I don’t have. I pretty much like what I have. The trouble with that is, then you get afraid somebody will take it from you.” (Updike, 1981, p.685).

“He misses Janice. With her around, paternity is diluted, something the two of them did together, convincing, half by accident, and can laugh together about. When he contemplates it by himself, bringing a person into the world seems as terrible as pushing somebody into a furnace.” (Updike, 1981, p.781).

“Janice asks him why he is his heart so hard toward Nelson. Because Nelson has swallowedup the boy that was and substituted one more pushy man in the world, hairy wrists, big prick. Not enough room in the world.” (Updike, 1981, p.825).

“He is amused by the idea of having a daughter-in-law at all, a new branch of hiswealth.” (Updike, 1981, p.882).

“Maybe I haven’t done everything right in my life. I know I haven’t. But I haven’t committed the greatest sin. I haven’t laid down and died.” “Who says that’s the greatest sin?” “Everybody says it. The church the government. It’s against Nature, to give up, you’ve got to keep moving.” (Updike, 1981, p.966).

“What you lose as you age is witnesses, the ones that watched from early on and cared, like your own little grandstand.” (Updike, 1981, p.1041).

“grace you could call it, the feeling of collaboration, of being bigger than he really is. When you stand up on the first tee it is there, it comes back from wherever it lives during the rest of your life, endless possibility of a flawless round, a round without a speck of bad in it.” (Updike, 1990, 1100).

“In a way gluttony is an athletic feat, a stretching exercise.” (Updike, 1990, 1125).

“as he signs it with their condo number he feels like a god, casually dispatching thunderbolts; the sum will appear on his monthly statement, next year, when the world has moved greatly on.” (Updike, 1990, 1125).

“perhaps that is the saddest loss time brings, the lessening of excitement about anything.” (Updike, 1990, 1153).

“she had had a face-lift, to tighten up what she called her “wattles”. Life is a hill that gets steeper the more you climb.” (Updike, 1990, 1306).

Nelson, his son: “I keep trying to love you, but you don’t really want it. You’re afraid of ot, it would tie you down. You’ve been scared all your life of being tied down.” (Updike, 1990, 1429).

His garage: “it has become a cave of deferred decisions and sentimentally cherished junk.” (Updike, 1990, 1432).

“There was a time, when he was younger, when the thought of any change, even a distaster, gladdened his heartwith the possibility of a shake-up, of his world made new.” (Updike, 1990, 1440).

“Life, it’s incredible, it’s wearing the world out.” (Updike, 1990, 1464).

““Well, Nelson,” he says, “all I can tel you is, it isn’t so bad.” Rabbit thinks he should maybe say more, the kid looks wildly expectant, but enough. Maybe. Enough” (Updike, 1990, 1052).

IPA 19 - David Golding

Finally I made it. A joy to see all the good work - as usual. I think WISPA and Sainsbury are the cases that stood out. Sainsbury's because AMV BBDO invents new products for Sainsbury's with every campaign. And WISPA becuase it is a role model how not to simply amass facebook fans, but how to make them work for you by making your brand work for them.

William Shakespeare – The Merchant of Venice

Not quite sure what to make out of this one….

“All things that are,
Are with more spirit chased than enjoy’d” (Shakespeare, 1984, p.51).

“The quality of mercy is not strain’d
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest,
It blessenth him that gives, and him that takes” (Shakespeare, 1984, p.88).

“Though Justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of Justice, none of us
Should see salvation” (Shakespeare, 1984, p.89).

William Shakespeare - Julius Caesar.

Every time I read it a great source of inspiration, because the main topic rings so true in most things I do: “Do evil that good may come, and see what does come.” It seems to be all about how consequences defeat intentions and how the protagonists realizes this – this teaches a good deal of humbleness. The second inspiring theme is that any form of tyranny is mostly caused by the suppressed and thus can be shaken of by the suppressed.
“Cassius: In awe of such a thing as I myself.
I was born free as Caesar, so were you;
We both have fed as well, and we can both
Endure the winter’s cold as well as he. “(Shakespeare, 1984, p.108).

“Cassius: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
‘Brutus’ and ‘Caesar’, what should be in that ‘Caesar’?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?” (Shakespeare, 1984, p.110).

“Casius: Cassius from bondage will deliver Casius (…)
If I know this, know all the world besides,
That part of tyranny that I do bear
I can shake off at pleasure. (…).” (Shakespeare, 1984, p.125).

“Brutus: We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar,
And in the spirit of men there is no blood.” (Shakespeare, 1984, p.138).

“Caesar: Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste death but once.” (Shakespeare, 1984, p.149).