Here are two spots that communicate much more elegantly not only my feelings this day but also demonstrate how product attributes are only as recruiting as the stories we tell and the emotions we elicit.

Verizon’s spot for LG’s Lucid2 does an excellent job of likening the touch-screen operation to a mother’s caress.

And Getty promotes its extensive stock video collection with this traditional, but altogether captivating love story.

The fundamental rules apply

If only the creative “minds” behind recent campaigns for Reebok, Mountain Dew and Ford (or, lamentably, the recent Oscars telecast) had paid as much attention to “fundamentals” as the hero in the Mira Nair movie. In their effort to be “hip” and “relevant” to their millennial target and to achieve “virality,” they overlooked a very basic truth. It’s not virality you should be chasing. It’s positive awareness, trial and brand loyalty.

Not to pile on, but did anyone with authority or credible professional experience (um, adults) consider that rape (Mountain Dew) is not funny?  That violence (Pepsi) and misogyny of the most savage kind (Reebok) are not recruiting? That suicide-obstruction (Hyundai UK) is not a product attribute?

According to the various post-mortems on these and similar campaigns, marketers and their agencies are struggling to reach out and engage the newest target du jour. “What do millennials want?” is apparently the question on everybody’s lips.  As the mother of a millennial I can tell you what they want—a job with a living wage and some relationship to their major after graduation, a way to pay off tuition debt before they reach social security age and the belief that there is a future to which they can make a positive contribution. Lil Wayne and edginess for its own sake do not factor into the equation.

Blaming social media (the tyranny of likes) or resorting to cheap borrowed interest (celebrities) is lazy, unprofessional and irresponsible. It’s not good for the brands you’ve been hired to promote and it’s not good for society. Our job as creatives is to face the challenge of these self-proclaimed discriminating consumers with messages and visuals that are strategic, emotionally resonating and meaningful. It’s what you’d do for any product or any consumer group at any time.

It’s not easy. But it is fundamental.

The horror and the pity

The first thing you notice when you enter “Photography and the American Civil War” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the silence. There is a hush, an intake of breath, a softly murmured “oh my”—the same, sad quiet that you hear at Antietam, Gettysburg and Civil War sites all around the country. And no wonder. Displayed in galleries designed like tents on a battlefield, the photographs of slaughter, of slavery, of too-young soldiers dead or maimed take your breath away and make any commentary superfluous.

It took a new art form, however cumbersome and time-consuming, to re-tell the ancient story of man’s inhumanity to man. Through their work, thousands of photographers including Matthew Brady, Alexander Gardner, William Marsh and John Reekie, captured the sorrow and pity of combat and the collateral damage of injury, death and destruction. “Bloodbath in sepia,” a reviewer for NY Magazine called it.

The Civil War was one of those turning points that, in the immortal words of British historian AJP Taylor, “did not turn.” We are still fighting those battles today, although in different arenas.

Photography may have changed the way we see and experience war, but it cannot—for all its terrible beauty—wipe away the stain.

If it’s May, it must be time for watch advertising, all the better to celebrate the trifecta of late Spring events: Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and graduation. Rather than focusing on the traditional (and often brand-indistinguishable) beauty shots (of product or wearer), Omega shows us precisely what makes its Co-Axial Chronometer tick with magical animation that takes us on a journey through time and space all within a tiny universe of 3D mechanical gear wheels. TRT is 70 seconds and time literally flies. Created by HMNS (Milan) and produced by “digital esthetics lab,” taxfreefilm (Parma). The haunting, otherworldly score is by Harry Gregson-Williams.

For some time now, Dove has been encouraging “a global conversation about the need for a wider definition of beauty” and has been celebrating women in all their multi-hued, multi-ethnic, full-figured, angular, youthful, older, freckle-faced diversity. While there were some negative comments about alleged photoshopping, the “Real Beauty” campaign has endured and evolved and now appears on the web in a new incarnation that is already provoking the same intense reactions as the original.

Instead of focusing on the physical, the new web ads highlight how women view—and judge—themselves. Far more harshly, it turns out, than the men and other women in their lives. It takes a forensic artist’s sketches to illustrate the “aha moment” when the subjects discover they are in fact “more beautiful than they think.”

Of course there are those who say that the ads emphasize traditional notions of beauty and, indeed, the importance of physical beauty itself. They miss the point. Dove’s message is more about self-esteem than appearance. How we beat up on ourselves for supposed flaws that few others see or might even appreciate.

Naysayers aside, the campaign has been enormously effective; it has been viewed 7.5 million times on the Dove YouTube channel and received 2,000 likes and 1000 shares on the brand’s Facebook page. (Full disclosure: I bought a Dove product at the drugstore this weekend, a direct result of the smart and creative storytelling.)

Men, of course, don’t suffer from this problem, a phenomenon New Feelings Time Comedy parodies to great effect.

A week of extremes on the creative front.

The good (really, the great): “The Waiting Room,” a new documentary many years in the making that chronicles a day in the life of the ER at Highland Hospital in Oakland, CA. The patients here are “the least of these”–the medically complex, the poor, the uninsured and the high-utilizers of medical care and services (often expensive and repeated) and the doctors, nurses and staff, their passionate (and occasionally frustrated) advocates and caretakers. Director Peter Nicks says his aim was not to create a film “that would come and go,” but to build a “framework for engagement and empathy” that would give even the most marginalized individuals a voice and dignity. (Two more films in this series are in the works, focusing on the relationship between Oakland’s residents and other public institution: the police department and education system.) Every detail tells a story. Note the second-hand animated graphics that reveal the credits or the waiting room chair that serves as web icon. The Waiting Room, which has been in limited release throughout the country, will air on PBS this fall.

The bad: Bank of America, those wonderful folks who almost brought the housing and financial markets to their knees, is out with a new campaign demonstrating how they help you (individuals, businesses, innovators of all stripes) connect “with what is at the center of your life.” They are beautiful, heartwarming spots that in other hands and for another advertiser would be a triumph. Unfortunately for BofA, it will take more than pretty pictures to dispel the memories of foreclosures, fines and firings now associated with the brand. Cognitive dissonance, anyone?

The ugly: The NRA’s ad for the Dulles Gun Show in yesterday’s Washington Post that asserts: “universal background check = registration = confiscation.” Second amendment rights and free speech aside, even the most minimal advertising standards would require that marketers (especially cause marketers) substantiate their claims and that the media hold them accountable when they do not.

What’s wrong with this picture?

While the NRA would prefer otherwise, the parents of Sandy Hook are refusing to change the subject or the conversation about guns. For them, the political has become exquisitely–and painfully–personal. Last night’s 60 Minutes devoted two segments to the “after” of their lives since December 14. It was television at its devastating best and if there was any good news to be gleaned from their story, it is that their grief-turned-activism has inspired some of the strictest gun control legislation in the nation.

In the same spirit, Toronto artist Viktor Mitic has created “Incident,” a bullet-riddled school bus originally created to drive home the effects of gang and gun violence in his hometown. It is now on exhibit at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA in a show called, appropriately, “Newtown Project: Art Targets Guns.” Despite the subject matter, the artist does not call himself an activist. According to a piece in the Washington Post, Mitic, who has often used ammunition in his art, he does not believe it is his role to influence viewers on “what to do about guns…” One could say the work speaks for itself.

The brain on creativity

In a wonderful bit of synchronicity, my official career (advertising) and encore career (launching a primary care advocacy organization) came together thanks to a post on the Well blog of the NYT. Written by Dr. Danielle Ofri, it poses the question: what are you doing creatively these days?

Ofri, of course, is talking to doctors who, she believes, are innately creative but stifled by an “algorithmic approach to diagnosis and treatment.” She challenges them to think outside the box of “standardized treatment success” and bring a more creative, nuanced approach to the “every day delivery of health care,” benefitting both patient and practitioner.

What she prescribes is both revolutionary (in traditional medical education) and commonsensical (but occasionally forgotten by those of us in the creative business), specifically:

- Incorporate the arts and humanities in the medical school curricula. Patients (and communicators) are storytellers. What better way to understand what they’re saying than with the tools art, literature and poetry teach us? Read a book, go to a movie, see a show, get out of your head.

- Think different. Consider ideas and relationships that don’t fit established patterns.

- Follow that metaphor. Go beyond the statement to find out what’s really behind the symptom (or the selling proposition).

Ofri recommends that “the next time you see your doctor, you might want to ask what he or she is doing creatively these days.”  As creatives, we should ask ourselves the same thing.

Building Stories

Creative news that struck our fancy this week:

Book design: If you know me, you know that I read. A lot. And very often I choose those books based on the appeal–and feel–of their covers. Compelling cover art (graphics and paper stock) will draw me in every time. (Proof that apps and retina displays are still no substitute for a real book.)  Just by chance, while looking for something else, I found this slideshow in the NYT featuring the favorite book covers of graphic designers around the world. Their comments are instructive and their choices are too.

Graphics myths: In his provocative new book, Popular Lies about Graphic Design, British designer and art director Craig Ward shows that everything we thought we knew about design (from comic sans to longer deadlines and cheapskate budgets) is most likely wrong. Or at least deserves a second, more informed thought.

Better work: For those who dread Mondays or feel trapped in agencies/firms that don’t inspire, this piece from Co.Design is a tonic and provides six ways to save your sanity and your creative soul, starting with: “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.” (A phrase that resonates on so many levels!)

Toasting the teams

The advertising column in today’s NYT covers the recent 4As conference and notes, among other things, that ad “agency executives rivaled their clients in the use of industry jargon.” If you can get past such terms as “zetabytes” (a measure of information storage capacity) or “customer decision journey,” what we (or they) are really talking about is “product attributes” or “buyer behavior.” After all, isn’t “ecosystem playing field” just another word for “competition?”

Lost in all this verbiage is the “consumer” and the “creative” and how the latter must reach the former in order to motivate some sort of action. Here are two great examples of visual storytelling that not only broke through all the clutter, noise and competing media but actually made me stop and think and learn something new.

- With the final game of the NCAA tournament scheduled to take place in Atlanta, an effervescent bottle of Coke is the perfect metaphor for capturing the up-and-down fortunes of the contenders and predicting who might “bubble up” to win the national title. Ordinarily, I’d never read a story like this, but once I saw the graphic, I was hooked. Kudos to the illustrator, Sam Manchester.

- LOLCats this is not. It is, instead, a beautiful portrait of a cat and the people who loved and lived with him, from his adoption when he was a few weeks old until his death at 16 of kidney disease. Hiroyuki Ito, one of his owners, has created a work of art in celebration of a dear friend.  I knew how this story would end before the first frame but was compelled to view the entire slide show and in so doing appreciated anew all the animals I had loved and lost.

The moral of the story: when you want someone to do something (the essence of advertising, after all), it’s wit and emotion—not reliance on zetabytes—that get the job done.