Crocodiles and hole-punches 🐊

Author

Jared Shurin
July 18, 2018

I've heard this story from colleagues at both Unilever and P&G, so I think can safely assume it is apocryphal at this point:

Someone from the insight team at [Big Global Laundry Brand] travelled to rural India as part of their world tour. They interviewed a loyal customer, washing their family's clothes in the river:

"How are you enjoying [BRAND]?"

"Make it wash faster."

"How's the FLASHWHITE STAIN-REMOVAL MEGATECH working for your stains?" 

"Make it wash faster."

"Do you enjoy the scent of LAVENDRANTHIUM FLORAL?"

"Make it wash faster."

"Does your family like the feel of new FLUFFINATING FABRIC SOFTENATOR?!"

"Make it wash faster."

Eventually, infuriated that all of these multi-million-dollar, focus-group-tested, brand-boosting and laboratory-approved innovations were being ignored, the insight person asked the all-important question: "Why?! Why is it is so important that it washes faster?!"

"Because of the crocodiles."

Zing.

I think every planner has found crocodiles. I can personally vouch for campaigns that have been 'cracked' by:

  • comments made at the end of focus groups, when everyone is filing out the door

  • comments made at the very beginning of focus groups, dropped into the introductions

  • asking someone the best place to get dinner nearby

  • a window display on Berwick Street

  • taking a cooking class 

If I'm working on a brief, I'm basically living it - which means I'm open to inspiration. And that passive engagement is critical. All the situations above are defined by the absence of my active involvement. I'm not guiding the conversation; I'm not asking questions. I'm not expecting anything - which means I'm not, in any way, intentionally or not, imposing my own narrative or anticipating the right answer. 

Another story, not apocryphal this time.

There's a terrific exhibition on at the Whitechapel Gallery right now - 'Killed Negatives': unseen photos of 1930s America taken by (and then removed from circulation by) the Farm Security Administration.

The FSA photographers had a pretty Herculean task: traveling the country to record what was happening in the country's Depression-ravaged rural areas. Their work was astounding and there are over 100,000 negatives in the FSA collection. Roy Stryker, head of the FSA Photo Unit, had a very particular job description. 

I've copied these out here, because, well, I love them:

[The FSA photographer] must be a good deal of a social scientist, with some theoretical and much practical grounding; he is the social investigator with a camera as his note-book; he must be a first-rate reporter - not of spot news - but of the major currents of our time as they manifest themselves pictorially in any one location. He must be able to distinguish between biased information and fact; he must have a wealth of knowledge of a variety of subjects - from rural architecture to tractor construction; and he must be capable with pencil and note-book to almost the same degree as with lens and shutter. 

To do this kind of job the photographer has to be more than an artist - more than an adequate mechanic. He must be something of a sociologist, something of an economist; he must be a good deal of a wangler, equally at home with a hostess or a farmer’s wife; he must have a healthy nose for news coupled with a thorough scepticism of biased information; and more than anything else, he must have a basic understanding for the meaning of his story. 

This is a fantastic description for a planner, by the way.However inspiring this is, it was a little more restrictive in practice: Stryker's photographers were sent into the field with a script. They were armed with an idealised story, and they were instructed to develop it through their work. These pre-determined narratives were well-researched and sympathetic, but they were also strict.

The scripts defined the 'reality' the photographers could capture, and those photos that went off-message were literally 'hole-punched' to prevent their use. Whether or not the scripts were malevolent - or even inaccurate - is not the point. The problem is that they existed in the first place: even as the photographers were encouraged to investigate, they were always constrained by the 'story'.I suspect every planner has encountered hole-punches as well: pre-existing assumptions (often self-imposed) that keep us from doing our best work. Just as we need to leave space to find crocodiles, we also need to guard against hole-punches. It is more than simply keeping an open mind, it is about allowing ourselves to be surprised.

Get: Planners and those who brief them

To: Welcome surprises

By: Showing the danger of pre-conceived narratives

Further reading:

Reply

or to participate.