There is an alarming trend to remove friction from everything we do. We’re constantly trying to make things easier,faster and so simple that we don’t even have to think anymore. Friction provides barriers towards doing things:

- Forcing me to register for a site before I can  push the purchase button. (That’s why people love Social Log-In.)

- Asking people to click on an ad to get the desired information. (That’s why people love to find all the content inside the banner.)

- Pushing me to to finalize the purchase in the store.

In the digital world, friction means your product is dead. Any barrier will lead me to delete your app, abandon the cart, move on. An armada of engineers, designers and UI/UX practitioners work day and night in Silicon Valley to eliminate friction.

Facebook wants us to share anything we do without us doing anything.

Retailers want us to pay with our phone, no credit cards required.

When there’s no friction in the world, there’s no free will.

You don’t have to make decisions, the app does it for you. You don’t decide what to share, Facebook does that for you. You don’t decide to look for a movie outside of your comfort zone, the Netflix algorithm recommends a movie for you. At one point, the world won’t need our decisions anymore. What happens  when we lose the capacity to make decisions and live in a recommendation world?

We’re building our own broadcast stations on the digital channels. We’re following people that are like us, think like us and agree with us. Where are the debates happening? No wonder there’s gridlock in Washington, we don’t even listen to the other side anymore.

Friction is at the heart of change.

We should not try to eliminate friction from our lives. If everything we do in life is easy, life becomes tedious. Arguments are a form of friction. Debate is a form of friction.

Show me a frictionless marriage and I see a dead marriage.

Show me a frictionless society and I see a dead society.

We should remove unnecessary barriers, absolutely.

But we need to continue to have friction in our lives to move ahead, tackle new problems and make this world an even better place.

We wait to win the lottery. The screenplay that will make you a Hollywood star. The blog post that will lead to a book deal and speaking engagement. The woman of your dreams. The dream job. The end of the world.

We tend to waste a lot of time waiting.

Companies wait for the new product to turn everything around. The new marketing campaign will change everything.

It doesn’t work that way anymore.

Brands succeed one person at a time. You make one person happy, they will tell others. Rinse and repeat. If you disappoint your customers, they will leave one at a time. Drip, drip, drip.

One at a time is not as cool as the big bang. But it’s the way the world works now.

Social platforms are “one at a time tools”.

You show up every day. You tweet. You blog. You give to the world. Over time, you build a body of work, leading to trust.

Many marketers want to use these tools for breakthrough efforts. Let’s get a million followers and then convert them into a sale. They don’t understand that you have to build trust, one at a time, to earn the right to make a sale. You need to build that trust over time, tweet by tweet, post by post, interaction by interaction, one person at a time. Trying to build trust right before you want to make the sale is a foolish undertaking.

Build a foundation of trust now before you really need it.

Canada has to show us how to create impactful advertising: human, touching, insightful and a perfect match for the brand.

I’ve played soccer for 12 years, mostly in front of 10 fathers and the village drunk. One day, we played in the semi-final for the German Championship in my age group, right before a German Bundesliga game. 50,000 people in the stadium watching us. It was invigorating, amazing and life-changing. A dream came true. Most people playing sports never have that opportunity. They toil in obscurity until they retire. Budweiser changed that with this project and commercial.

It shows again that advertising shouldn’t be about celebrities, CGI or creative egos. Advertising should be about human insights come to life. It touched me deeply to see the players react and respond to this idea.

Congrats, Budweiser Canada, you made my day.

Below, the making of the commercial.

Twitter friend @bud_caddell let me know that the commercial is a creative copy of commercial below. He’s right. I still think Budweiser Canada made the initial concept better. Maybe it’s the human reaction of players toiling for decades in obscurity, just to be recognized for one day. Judge yourself.

On Monday somebody will ask: “Does any of these commercials sell product?” or “Did anyone rush out to buy this product when they saw the commercial?”

They are asking the wrong question

Super Bowl ads are not really about selling. They are about creating some funky creative that spreads. That people will talk about on Monday, that people will share through their networks. It’s the one time of the year where people are waiting for ads, asking for them. People want to be entertained, not to be sold to. We’re watching because these commercials are social objects, ideas we want to share with our world.

Does it work?

Depends on who you ask. Ask agencies and advertising pundits, they will tell you it works really well. Ask the CFO, you might get a different answer. I’m somewhere in the middle. I love some of the creativity that’s often missing the remaining 364 days. But I wonder if we don’t make too much out of it, and if all this effort is really worth it. The one thing I know is that Super Bowl ads show that storytelling works. It doesn’t say anything about the value of advertising.

P.S.: The agency of the Kia commercial shot five minutes of super-slo-mo reference footage of Adriana ima waving the flag. They slowed it down to 1/60 speed, creating a 5 hour movie. Brilliant. At least, that’s what more than 200,000 visitors thought.

This is must be the place is a series of short films that explore the idea of home, or places that function as home – workplaces, hang out spots, etc. What makes them, how they represent us, why we need them.

This video features Prime Burger Restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. Opened in 1938, the place hasn’t been altered since the early 60’s, and that makes the place so charming. For many employees, Prime Burger Restaurant is a second home, being working in the same place for decades.

Personally, Musso & Frank is one of these places. Some of the waiters have been there for more than 40 years, the Martini’s are perfect, the inside feels as if Raymond Chandler could show up any moment. Places like this are precious and we need to do anything to protect them.

We have this view of the world that the super-mega market leaders in one niche or market have a superpower that will guarantee success in new markets. The current Facebook S1 release is just another sign of this irrational view. “Facebook dominates advertising.” “Facebook more important for advertisers than Google.” “Mark Zuckerberg for President.”

The majority of brands are only good at doing one thing. If you hit the jackpot, they are good at 2 things. Almost nobody is good at three things. Remember when Facebook Places was launched and every dopey pundit proclaimed the end of Foursquare? (Including this dope.) Or when Google Wave launched? Google Buzz? G Phone? When Yahoo tried social. (Let’s not hate on a corpse.) When Microsoft got into mobile hundreds of years ago and never achieved their goals? Or when Apple tried social?

Size does matter. But it’s not everything.

There are rare instances where companies can crush a competitor: IE vs. Netscape comes to mind. But it’s not common. That’s why you shouldn’t be brainwashed by the size of a company, focus on the excellence of a company. Facebook is really good at growing their user base, allowing us to share information with family and friends. They belong in the user baser growing Hall of Fame. Does Facebook do anything else that belongs in the Hall of Fame? Deals? Places? Commerce? Advertising Conversion? Monetization. Nope. They didn’t even make the roster, riding the Minor League bus.

Will Google ever succeed in social? Google+ is doing okay but it’s not in the same league as Facebook and Twitter. They even show cracks in their dominance of the search business. Microsoft’s browser domination is gone. Soon, Facebook will see increasing fatigue and the brainwashing of a new shiny tool. While we live longer, social platforms life expectancy tends to decrease.

Don’t get fooled by size. On Sunday, many advertisers will link their advertising to Facebook pages or Twitter accounts. That’s foolish. Facebook owns all the data. Who guarantees you that they don’t sell it to your closest competitor?

Look at the big picture and have a long-term strategy. If you put more and more eggs in Facebook, you need to move some out and put them in different platforms. It’s not about new platforms, it’s about experimenting with better ways to market, platforms that convert and technologies that are effective in achieving your business goals.

People on their deathbed tend to say: “I wish I would have done A/B/C.” Only a tiny majority says: “I wish I would have done less A/B/C.”

For some reason, we tend to beat ourselves up for things we have done: The stupid thing you said, the email that was sent, the presentation that bombed.

Wouldn’t it be much better to reflect upon the book you didn’t read, the call you didn’t make, the hug you didn’t share?

Shouldn’t we try to be more in this world and not less?

We keep track of the wrong things.

We keep track of things we did and didn’t work out. We should track diligently the things we didn’t do, the paths we didn’t take, the bets we didn’t make, the human touch we didn’t show.

It takes 3 years to become a hair dresser in Germany. The first year you spend most days sweeping the floor, cleaning tools and serving refreshments.

If the floor is filthy, it really doesn’t matter how good your haircuts are, nobody wants to come back and pay good money surrounded by hair on the floor.

When people write and speak about marketing and advertising, they assume you know how to sweep the floor. They assume you understand the impact of creative, the power of copywriting, have advanced knowledge of graphic design and UI as well as UX. They assume you understand the correlation between paid, earned and owned media, know how to measure the impact of any marketing effort and be able to distill that knowledge into a client presentation.

Too often, we fall in love with the new thing, jump ahead and embrace it.

Too often, we fail to be competent at the important thing.

Advertising Age posted this week an article “Aging in Adland: The gray-hair phobia that’s hindering older execs.” and it hit a nerve. My Twitter feed was bursting with comments about the article and the comments a the bottom of the post are worth your time.

Rupal Parekh writes:

“Most shops won’t admit it readily, but gray-hair phobia is a reality in the digital era. With agencies continually restructuring and changing models to keep pace with the public’s media consumption habits, adland is right to be digitally obsessed. But most in the industry wrongly assume that the only people who grasp digital are fresh out of college.

That presumption has spawned an undercurrent of resentment as agencies refit themselves for the digital world – a process that often entails stripping out layers of longtime employees in favor of a newer breed of creatives and strategists believed to better grasp the increasingly complex media environment.”

It’s a bigger problem than just the digital revolution

When I started as a copywriter in advertising, people suddenly looked at me differently. Behind that cheap haircut and the non-cool clothes and appearance, there must be something cool about me, right? I didn’t know bands that were playing in a garage, ready to become underground hits. I didn’t go to hidden bars, I didn’t eat in a North Korean restaurant and I didn’t care about that cool movie from Sri Lanka. That average guy, how could he work in advertising?

Once you start working in the advertising industry, it looses its perceived coolness very quickly and turns into a grind of long hours, lost weekends and  endless defeats. (Still, the best profession on earth.) Advertising professionals should know about the lack of coolness in our profession but, somehow, the outside view of our industry has rubbed off on the industry itself in some kind of self-perpetuating cycle.

Focusing on coolness is a sure loser

Being hip and cool seems to be equated by our industry with youth, the general feeling seeming to be that if you’re over 39 years you can’t possible contribute anything valuable. Translated: If you’re not in an executive position by 39 and 364 days, you better look for a new job. You’ll never make it.

This makes no sense. Or to say it in a more diplomatic way: It’s beyond stupid.

The long hours, the lost weekends and overall lifestyle demands youthful amounts of energy and, sure, some agency types are done by the time they start a family, opting for 9-5 lifestyle. This is not a golden rule but agencies love to worship the fountain of youth (the current economic climate doesn’t help) and forget that they are missing out on a deep talent pool.

The industry not only misses out on 39+ executives from other industries who would be suicidal to make the jump into advertising, we’re also losing a lot of talented people inside our industry. Especially bewildering when you have to listen to endless complaints about the “lack of talent” in our industry. I have friends in the industry who were loved by all their clients and co-workers, who can talk more intelligently about emerging technologies than any SXSW attendee and who have an amazing track record of brilliant work who can’t get an interview. Why? Because they were born before 1973.

The industry should take a long, hard look in the mirror: We seem to hire the same cool folks, the same hip people, the same way of thinking. And we end up with similar ideas. Innovative thinking won’t happen when we habitualize our hiring policies.

We need to start recruiting more on attitude and aptitude and less on date of birth.

You can’t imitate your way to innovation. Here’s a good example of a brand that imitates the strategies and tactics of one its biggest competitor. On my way to an Apple store, I walked by a Microsoft store. It was stunning how similar both stores looked. The one big difference: the Microsoft store was completely empty.

Microsoft copied the concept. Apple stole it.

Steve Jobs mentioned the famous Picasso quote (”Good artists copy. Great artists steal.”) many times because its at the core of Apple’s philosophy: Don’t just copy: steal and make it your own. Computer stores used to be messy and fairly uninviting. The inspiration for Apple stores didn’t come from those chaotic experiences, it came from the world of luxury boutiques: expensive materials, inviting street presence, bright lights and friendly employees. They stole and imitated; but not from their competitors.

There are scenarios where it makes sense to plainly imitate: Ask Zara, a low price imitator par excellence. When you have an expensive product and can deliver a comparable experience for a disruptively low price: That’s a winning strategy because you’re opening up new markets.

Generally, mindlessly mimicking the direct competition is a race to the bottom. Making ideas your own and transforming your industry can turn you into the most valuable company in the world.

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