For the last four years I entered a creative writing contest (Brevis). I won the first place just one time. The other three times I won the second place. Of course I was annoyed about that: why am I not able to reach again the highest spot on the podium? – I asked myself. Then I remembered the famous, great Avis campaign made in 1962 by Bill Bernbach: “The Avis number two” campaign.
In 1962 in the United States Hertz was the car rental leader. Avis called Bill Bernbach at Doyle Dane Bernbach. Bernbach put art director Helmut Krone and writer Paula Green on the project, and they created …a masterpiece.
“Avis is only No.2 in rent a cars. So we try harder”. The truth inside this idea was absolutely powerful: Avis had to do everything better than Hertz to win customers. Because when you are not the greatest, you have to. You can’t take anything for granted. You can’t make mistakes. “The No.1 attitude is: Don’t do the wrong thing. Don’t make mistakes and you’ll be ok. The No.2 attitude is: Do the right thing. Look for new ways. Try harder.”
Now I’m happy to be a number two. Thanks, Bill. I’ll try harder.
Are you scared to meet a psychopath? Of course yes but pay attention: apparently it could be more dangerous (and easier) to meet a broker. Indeed, according to a study from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland (two researchers – forensics expert Pascal Scherrer and prison administrator Thomas Noll – compared the egotism and the propensity for cooperation of 28 professional stock traders with the behavior of psychopaths), stock traders are a really really dangerous species. Impulsive, dishonest and without empathy, brokers result more competitive, manipulators and pitiless than psychopaths.
A really disquieting portrait, don’t you think? Especially if we realize that our money could be in their hands. If you want to know more about this subject you can watch the enlightening documentary Inside Job by Charles Ferguson or read the really interesting articles below.
“Aren’t you glad to have psychopaths looking after your retirement pension? Let’s give them some more control over our lives, why don’t we?”
Appetite for destruction: stock brokers vs psychopaths.
“Scherrer and Noll are not the first to suggest a correlation between success on Wall Street and mental pathology.”
Stockbrokers More Competitive, Willing To Take Risks Than Psychopaths: Study.
“A Swiss university study found that brokers behaved more egotistically and were more willing to take risks than a group of psychopaths who took the same test.”
Study: Stockbrokers Are Worse Than Psychopaths
“I ricercatori elvetici hanno messo a confronto agenti di cambio con un gruppo di disturbati mentali e sottoposto le due categorie a diversi test. I risultati sono oltremodo preoccupanti ed hanno sorpreso gli stessi esperti.”
I trader? Più spietati degli psicopatici
Pa-Ra-Da is not just a movie. Instead it’s a simple movie that tells hard tales. In particular the real story of the street clown Miloud Oukili, young hero of our times.
Miloud is not an ordinary man. Born in Paris in 1972, the young Oukili learns how to be a clown really soon. Despite in Paris he was on easy street, Miloud chooses to go to work in Romania as entertainer in some hospitals and orphanages. In Bucharest he meets the city’s street children, known as “boskettari” who live in the streets and sleep in Bucharest’s sewers, eking a living out of petty crime, begging, and prostitution. Miloud succeeds in having a real dialogue with them, a dialog made of trust that helps those children to believe, for the first time in their life, in themselves.
Pa-Ra-Da tells Miloud’s story, the touching story of the “red nose angel” who was able to conquer Bucharest children: poor, doped, shabby, forced to live in the city’s subsoil. Children who live among cardboard and putrid, stinking mattresses; children who are distrustful, nasty, without any dream. Only Miloud, with his magic allure, is able to touch their hearts and give them some hope. Miloud teaches those street children how to have respect for themselves and for others; with the “boskettari” he creates a real circus company that will perform in Bucharest’s main square, proving the world that they are not rejects but human beings.
Pa-Ra-Da is a precious movie because tells a real story as a fairy tale, with respect and without looking for pity. “Life is a big circus comic and dramatic, and first of all a man must be a great clown”.
If Miloud says that, we have to believe it.
I’m sorry for McCann Erickson Belgrade (it’s not fair to criticize someone else’s work and I generally don’t do it), but sincerely I don’t like their sexy advertising campaign “for beautiful city.”
I don’t like it as a woman, but not a feminist, for obvious reasons (indeed the only subject with a man doesn’t work at all); I don’t like it as a person ’cause in those ads I feel something like an annoying discriminatory background. The city is more beautiful if men can see pretty butts but are we sure that they would be happy even if they would see, for example, fat or ugly ones? Or maybe the concept is that people with ugly or fat bottoms should leave their dog’s poop on the street to “preserve” beauty?
At last I don’t like “for beautiful city” campaign as a creative. Bill Bernbach (the Guru of advertising par excellence) taught: “don’t turn a man upside down in your ad unless you are selling me spill-proof pockets”. This means that sensational visuals work only if the sensational part is consistent with the core message. Otherwise – this is Bernbach again – we call it “Oddvertising”.
And here we are. McCann Erickson Belgrade campaign was the most viewed and clicked on the web: but are we sure that all the people who saw those ads will remember the message of the campaign? The man was turned upside down in reason? I think that the problem of this campaign is that in your mind remains the bottom. But not the poop.
Today I feel good because I read something that made me feel like this. In Sweden an italian tourist was arrested because, outside a restaurant, he beat his son who didn’t want to enter.
How many times I saw a scene like this, in this exact situation.
Children that cry at the restaurant on one side, parents who shout and beat their children on the other side. Every time I attended powerless but feeling a weight on my chest. I always thought that it was absurd. Absurd to beat children in general, absurd to beat his own sons, absurd do it for a stupid reason like this.
Every day we force our children to do things that are unnatural for them or, even worse, a real torture. Be sitting on a chair for hours just waiting that someone brings some food. How could they understand something like this? How could they find this funny or enjoyable? Nevertheless most of the time children accept our decisions and suffer in silence, but sometimes they just can’t make it. For this reason they deserve to be insulted or beat? I don’t think so.
And, fortunately, Sweden as well. What a great civility lesson from this country. Swedish law punishes with jail both corporal punishment and too much heavy reproach. Do we think this is odd?
To italians it’s strange for sure seeing that, according to a recent poll, 53% of parents admit to use violence with their children. Monstrous and totally crazy.
A well known spanish pediatrician – Carlos Gonzales (his book “Besame Mucho” should be like the Bible for every parent) helps us to make a simple and enlightening remark: if an office manager slaps an employee to obtain a better work everybody would say he is a criminal; if a man beats his wife because he is displeased about his supper everybody would say we are facing to a domestic violence. But if a parent beats his child then he is “educating” him. Crazy, isn’t it? The only category for which we admit violence is the children, the most defenseless of the human species!
Starting from today I’d like to give as a present a free ticket to Sweden to all those parents who use certain methods to raise up their children. At least, there, they will be the beaten ones.
