McNuggets

The holidays are a special kind of brain rot, and while I have a ton of ideas, I'm not super focused. So I give you this week some McNuggets – three short thoughts that each probably warrant a longer piece, but not right now.

We Still Need Brands

I gave a talk about brand recently, so it's been on my mind. We need brands because as consumers we need to make choices. And we need to make A LOT of choices. One estimate I found was 35,000 in one day. You will not be surprised that making choices is taxing. And you have probably heard the term "decision fatigue" if not experienced it. If you need any further proof, just remember the last time you walked into a Walmart or Lowe's or absolutely any retail store. Even your last Amazon search results were probably both overwhelming and disappointing.

Brands (well-crafted ones) help us figure out what a company/product/service is about and how they are different from their competitors. I need to know whether or not I fit into your community. Brand = Community. Regardless what you might think about the Jaguar rebrand, they have made a choice in what they stand for, and that's a good thing. You are with them or not. And it's an easy decision. We need more easy decisions.

Presenting Your Work Tip #56.5

I've written about this here and here, but I keep remembering some items I forgot. This one is never present work at the end of the day. Only exception is if you're on deadline, and it's absolutely due. Here's why:

1. By the end of the day everyone is in a tired mood and wants to go home. They do not want one more thing to deal with.
2. Decision fatigue (see above)
3. If you sleep on it one more night, you might see something about it more clearly in the morning. Fix it and then send it through.

If you want the best possible meeting, show work when others are rested (in the morning) and not hangry (not right before lunch). One person in a bad mood can wreck any meeting. I feel like people in advertising know about some of these psychological tips but we forget we can use them ourselves.

Law of Averages

There has been a lot of talk lately about boring rebrands and the desire to NOT stand out. About being average. I'm personally tired of it. But I realized one of the things about AI that I've been complaining about, which is that it only outputs averages is something I may have been doing to myself.

Every time I endlessly scroll IG (insert your platform of choice here), in a way I'm training my brain on the average of what I see. Kind of like the coffee shop aesthetic. I've personally felt less creative. And when I have a new idea I get a suspicious nagging feeling that I might have seen it before. Or it might be some kind of version of something I just saw. Even if I see something that sparks an idea, I've probably scrolled on before I let it take shape. I love being inspired by things I see, but it's good to remember that you can choose what you take in and what you don't.

I'm going to try to get back in the habit of having a sketchbook at all times. Not only to jot ideas down, but to give them some time and space to become something new.