'Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.'
Jack London

Chris was a charming and hugely talented editor who was a master at producing emotive films to support our presentations. I popped in to brief him on his next assignment.

One of our Clients had commissioned us to supply a short edit that would feature at the climax of a forthcoming sales conference. It needed to be grandiose and magnificent - something that suggested achievement, progress, dynamism. It should perhaps include Apollo rockets blasting into the sky and joyous communal dancing; Rocky atop the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and that scene from Witness where they build a house together.

Chris nodded.

‘And you say this is for a mid-market shoe brand?’

I chose to ignore the sarcasm and pressed on.

‘Oh, and the Client has requested that the piece be sound-tracked to Tina Turner ‘Simply the Best.’’

Chris winced. This was not going to be his most creative challenge. But after a pause for reflection, he gave a weary sigh.

‘It’s OK. I’ve got it. Lots of fireworks, ticker tape and uplifting moments that’ll have them punching the air in the conference hall. I’ll make it totally vitriolic.’

I hesitated for a moment. Chris had clearly got the brief. But what did he mean by totally vitriolic?

I determined that it was best not to disrupt the positive momentum.

‘Great. Exactly. Make it totally vitriolic. Let’s crack on.’

Over the next week I occasionally popped by to see how Chris was getting on. All was going well. He’d integrated futuristic wizardry from The Matrix; dramatic leaps from Crouching Tiger; and he’d concluded the edit with Jack and Rose on the bow of the Titanic. Perfect. It was totally vitriolic.

'You're simply the best,
Better than all the rest.
Better than anyone,
Anyone I've ever met.’
Tina Turner, 'Simply the Best’ (H Knight / M Chapman)

Our shoe Client’s sales conference was a great success and Chris’ inspirational video added a triumphant closing note to proceedings. My benign bluff had served its purpose.

'It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.'
Mark Twain

I read recently in The Times (20 May, ‘Bluffing is a sign of being clever') about research into bluffing carried out at the University of Waterloo in Canada and published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology.

‘People like stories. Even if you’re at the top of your field, being a pretty good bullshitter gives you just that little bit extra edge.'
Martin Turpin, PhD researcher, University of Waterloo

200 students were given a list of concepts and asked to define them even if they were not confident they knew their precise meaning. Six of the concepts were real, including ‘general relativity’ and ‘sexual selection theory’. Four, such as ‘neural acceptance’ and ‘subjunctive scaling’, were not genuine. Another group of students were then shown the answers and asked to judge how convincing they were.

The research found that those who were best at bluffing also scored best in intelligence tests. And it concluded that bluffing should be rehabilitated as an art form: it is an evolved skill that helps people navigate social environments.

'People have this assumption around people who bullshit, that they are mostly people who are dull or talentless, and they use linguistic trickery to get an edge up where they don’t actually have any substance…[But] bullshitting is quite fundamentally human, and might actually demonstrate intelligence in a very human way...If you are good at bullshitting, then across the majority of human enterprise there will be room for somebody like you — someone who can tell a good story.’
Martin Turpin, PhD researcher, University of Waterloo

I would always urge people to tell the truth. It’s more important now than ever. But we should recognise that we’re in the business of persuasion; of advocacy and storytelling. And occasionally it is entirely appropriate to go with the flow; to pretend, affect and simulate; to bluff one’s way out of a tight spot.

'Since he was much weaker than his enemy, he could afford to display no weakness at all.'
Michael Dobbs

A month or so after the sales conference, I received a call from Chris.

‘You bastard. I’ve been saying vitriolic left, right and centre. And someone’s just corrected me. That’s not what vitriolic means at all!’

'If you search for tenderness,
It isn't hard to find.
You can have the love you need to live.
But if you look for truthfulness,
You might just as well be blind.
It always seems to be so hard to give.
Honesty is such a lonely word.
Everyone is so untrue.
Honesty is hardly ever heard
And mostly what I need from you.’
Billy Joel, ‘Honesty'

No. 334

My grandfather was a retired policeman with a warm heart and authoritative manner. At weekends he would drive Martin and me along the A13 to his old haunts in Barking, Poplar and Limehouse. Hard to believe now, but ‘going for a drive’ was a popular leisure activity in the ‘70s. At traffic lights and junctions, Grandpa would playfully greet other drivers with a ‘Hello, Mary’ or ‘Yes, of course, Dave, you go first.’ He didn’t actually know Mary or Dave, but he was aware it amused us. And every time we went past a triangular sign indicating road works (by means of the silhouette of a labourer planting his shovel in a pile of earth), Grandpa would exclaim: 'There's a man having trouble with an umbrella!'

We loved that joke. To a young boy it was deeply silly, slightly surreal, somehow subversive. And it improved with repetition. As we rolled around in fits of laughter at the back of the Rover, the gag didn't seem trivial at all to us. It seemed important. And I'm pretty sure it was.

Repetition reassures. It creates a sense of familiarity, intimacy, common currency. Consider catchphrases and slogans; jingles, chants and incantations; aphorisms and end lines. These may be regarded as lower forms of expression, but they have an insidious potency. We assume that familiarity breeds contempt. But often the reverse is true: familiarity breeds contentment.

I recently came across a review of The Song Machine, a new book that considers the methods of the modern music industry and today’s high-tech record producers. It’s a calculating world of ‘writer camps’, ‘melodic math’ and the quest for elusive ‘bliss points.’ The author reaches an interesting conclusion about the science of hits:

‘For all the painstaking craft involved… the crucial factor in our emotional engagement with music is familiarity; in other words, if you were repeatedly to hear a song you didn’t like, that proximity would eventually breed affection.’

Mark Ellen/ The Sunday Times, reviewing The Song Machine by John Seabrook

That explains a lot...

Familiarity also resides at the heart of brand value. The first brands were founded on the reassurance of consistency: this product is the same as the last product you bought; it’s made from the same ingredients and it’ll perform in the same way.

I wonder, do we in modern marketing properly appreciate the power of repetition? Of course, we endeavour to be disciplined about visual identity; and, in a media context, we take account of frequency, dwell-time and wear-out. But this is a quantified, rational view of repetition. Do we really understand the qualitative, emotional value of repeated experience?

Earlier this year I attended a production of Aeschylus’ Ancient Greek tragedy, Oresteia. I was particularly struck by this exchange:

‘What’s the difference between a habit and a tradition?’
‘A tradition means something.’

At their best brands are not just mindless habits. Through repeatedly exploring territories and ideas that are relevant to people, the best brands establish their own meaning, their own traditions. In this age of nudge theory and behavioural economics, we spend quite a lot of time seeking to change habits. What would happen if we sought occasionally to establish traditions?

Certainly our creative instincts are all the time working against iteration. They urge us to embrace change, innovation and reinvention at every turn. Every campaign is a fresh challenge; every new brief is a blank sheet of paper. And these instincts are intensified in the modern age. There are infinite platforms to be filled with unique content; there are ever-increasing consumer appetites to be sated. We live in dynamic times of difference and diversity.

In our obsession with reinvention the commercial communication sector is at odds with other creative professions. In the film, gaming and TV industries the occurrence of a hit is a cue to explore sequels, series, formats and box-sets. Why are we so nervous of repeating success?

Of course, none of us needs a return to the dark days when advertising drilled the same messages into the crania of hapless, captive audiences; over and over again. In the interactive age we need communication coherence more than rigid consistency. We need theme and variation, call and response. We need campaigns that evolve and amplify.

It’s sometimes helpful to think of modern brands as ‘meaningful patterns.’ Brands reassure through rhythm and repetition. With infinite variety they examine, echo and expand ideas.

Some years ago I attended a talk by the esteemed fashion designer, Paul Smith. He explained that, when it came to window displays, he believed in ‘the power of the repeated image.’ Accompanying a pale blue cotton shirt with a royal blue version of the same shirt; and then navy and deep indigo; next to a twill or a denim execution of the same design; adding a polka dot pattern, a striped print or floral detail. It was theme and variation played by an orchestra of blue shirts. And it created a very compelling, harmonious effect. At once both thrilling and reassuring.

Perhaps the power of repetition in the digital age is best expressed through the concept of memes. For many marketers memes are merely a form of iterative campaign, something involving white type and cat videos. However, insofar as a meme is ‘an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means’ (OED), then surely brands are memes. Brands exist not in factories or spreadsheets or shop shelves. They exist in people’s minds and in their behaviours. For what is a brand, if not a shared set of behaviours and beliefs? We always sought to create content for brands that was 'talkable'; nowadays we aim to create the imitable, adaptable, copyable and repeatable.

Of course, brand management is fundamentally a balancing act between consistency and change. Some brands are too conservative; others are too capricious. Working out whether to 'stick or twist' is a critical marketing skill. All I'm saying here is that, occasionally, in times of transformation, the argument for holding a steady course gets shouted down.

Perhaps when we’re being seduced by the siren call for radical reinvention, we should also have the tender words of Billy Joel singing in our ears. Repeatedly.

‘Don’t go changing, to try and please me.
You never let me down before.
Don’t imagine you’re too familiar,
And I don’t see you anymore.
I would not leave you in times of trouble
We never could have gone this far
I took the good times, I’ll take the bad times
I’ll take you just the way you are.’

Billy Joel/ Just The Way You Are

No. 57

The Benign Bluff: ‘Make It Totally Vitriolic!’

A Man Having Trouble With An Umbrella: Recognising the Power of Repetition