Neil Gaiman Commencement Speech: ‘Make Good Art’
Inspirational words for creatives and would-be-creatives alike. …A call to make mistakes. To be wise (or at least pretend to be). To enjoy it. And to in all things, at all times, make good art.
College Taglines: Most Frequently Used Words
by Elizabeth Scarborough (@elizscar) on January 9th, 2012
The most commonly used words in college taglines are:
- world
- excellence
- success
- learning
- real
- life
Focusing the Creative: Targeting Someone, Not Everyone
Thoughts on a blog from Seth Godin and an ad campaign from the University of Phoenix.
I was reading a blog post earlier today by Seth Godin, “Everyone is Clueless” in which Godin makes a very strong point about knowing and targeting your audiences. Godin understands that when it comes to marketing and advertising, we too often keep things at the 100,000 ft level instead of really bringing it home for them - really connecting with and inspiring our specific audiences. Too often we try to please everyone - or reach out to everyone - and we end up reaching no one. The creative suffers and thus the campaign suffers.
“The problem with “everyone” is that in order to reach everyone or teach everyone or sell to everyone, you need to so water down what you’ve got you end up with almost nothing.”
But do we really want everyone to come to our campus? Do we really think everyone will buy our product?
“You don’t want everyone. You want the right someone.”
This is something we constantly find ourselves preaching to clients, but in the end, the audience pool goes from a targeted one, to a very general one. What was once, “sophomores in high school from the Grand Rapids metro area with a 3.0 GPA or higher” becomes “high school sophomores, juniors and seniors from the state of Michigan with any GPA.” That right someone became everyone. We blame budgets. It is easy to blame watered down creative on budgets. But the real factor here is the focus… We have lost focus.
That is why I was really excited to see the ad campaign below from the University of Phoenix. It is written in Morse Code - something only a very select group of people can read - because it was intended for a very select group of people. No, everyone cannot read it. Yes, University of Pheonix is going to have to create ANOTHER ad campaign for ANOTHER audience. It will be OK. This campaign is for a right someone and the result, is a very powerful ad.
Enjoy.
