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The Woodies have a blog. It’s a kind of collective. Not sure we’re about to start a revolution baby, but we might kindle a small debate or two and perhaps raise a smile. Anyway, rather than just blogging corporate Woodreed by fielding our top Woodie (as so many other companies seem to do in a thinly veiled attempt at impressing with their profundity), we wanted all our individual voices to be heard. An agency’s most valuable assets are its people after all. Everyone’s got something to say here and with us everyone’s ideas and opinions matter.

Each week someone different will be blogging. It's mostly about stuff that rocks our world as well as the flipside – the things that just don't cut it with us. We'll blog about inside and outside – inside this glorious industry where we work and outside in the real world.
It's a bit of an experiment, so go with us on this one.

Hope you enjoy.

Thursday, 17 February 2011

My big fat ever-so-slightly-confused society



Can someone explain? I am perplexed, puzzled, put out and all manner of other 'Ps'.

I have read the papers, listened diligently to Radio 4 and watched the news. Alas still I am none the wiser. What is David Cameron’s Big Society? What’s the elevator pitch? What does it stand for? What’s in it for me? What the hell do I need to do? Someone market it to me please.

In my view they’ve made the classic mistake of coming up with a big idea but without having done their homework first. The building blocks for the ‘Big Society’ brand simply are not there. It’s smoke and mirrors, it’s the PM’s new clothes.

Brilliant brands don’t just appear, they are carefully crafted based on truths and benefits and a real understanding of what people want. They are easy to identify with and articulate by the people whose job it is to deliver it, they have resonance and meaning in the lives of the people they want to target, they create engagement.

I really want to buy into it as I love fresh ideas, but only those with some substance to them. I am kind of on board the idea of us becoming more society minded, but am unclear about my part in it all or anyone else’s for that matter.

Listening to the Conservative MPs waffle as they struggle over articulating the proposition time and time again is becoming embarrassing and they are in danger of totally switching off the British public big time if they don’t put some series effort into marketing the Big Society.
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2 comments:

  1. Unknown21 February 2011 at 10:05

    I think you're probably right - the total inability of even it's biggest proponents to articulate what this is about does rather suggest it was a great idea which someone came up with in the bath one night but then never subjected it to the rigorous analysis of the cold light of day

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  2. Dave Wilson8 March 2011 at 09:12

    I think i is really sad that politics havesto be "marketed". at all. Politics should exist to let democracy work at it's best.
    Spin doctors (a role that didn't exist until the eighties), logotypes, campaign buses deflect away from what our people want.

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