Is this 2020’s stupidest marketing idea?
It’s not often that corporatespeak provokes a gag reflex, but a multinational confectionery juggernaut served up something nauseating this week. In a promotional video that dances uncomfortably close to parody, Cadbury owner Mondelez proclaims: “We need to stop marketing and start humaning”. No, this was not a typo.
“Humaning” is now the raison d’etre that underpins the company’s strategic effort to communicate with people.
Beyond the linguistic horror show of turning the noun “human” into an awkward verb, the thing that makes this offending so egregious is how utterly unnecessary it is.
Is it that marketers are so removed from the concept of humanity that they need to be reminded their job is to connect with humans? Or maybe they just felt the marketing lexicon needed another ludicrous phrase.
What’s most baffling is that this comes from the organisation that owns the Cadbury brand, renowned for some great advertising — not least the Cadbury gorilla that drummed its way into hearts around the world with the help of Phil Collins’ hit track In The Air Tonight.
That gorilla had more humanity than any corporate moniker striving to “feed the hunger for human connection”.
This nonsense likely won’t damage the Mondelez brand — simply because enough people won’t see it. But the real damage being done here is to an industry that has long been derided as the colouring-in department of business.
It’s yet another example that will be paraded as evidence of the ridiculousness of marketing. This is a gross oversimplification, but the industry only has itself to blame for giving critics such easily accessible ammunition.
To put this into perspective, “humaning” only comes in at number 10 on marketing critic Mark Ritson’s “All-time marketing BS Index”.
Other notable examples include marketers becoming “storytellers” ; the old axiom that every brand needs a USP (unique selling point); and the idea that products can be separated into 12 brand archetypes (such as the jester, the outlaw and the sage).
As Ritson explains in an article for Marketing Week: “I’ve met scores of companies who have asked me to explain what they are meant to do with this stuff and I’ve always given the same advice. Bin it.”
The motivation behind these cringe-worthy ideas is most often to explain away the messy complexity of creativity. But that’s like trying to explain a joke to people who just don’t get it.
This is not to say that every piece of corporate waffle that comes out the marketing industry is automatically derided and rejected.
In 1992, the term “disruption” was coined by France’s Jean-Marie Dru, the chairman of ad agency TBWA, to refer to a radical change in the marketplace.
Rather than being ridiculed, this twist on the word spawned books, Harvard Business Review articles, has become part of business journalism parlance, and is often seen in headlines on stories describing technology, ideas or events that have shaken the market.
The longevity of the word is also evidenced by the fact that even in this market, TBWA, the ad agency behind ANZ and 2degrees, continues to refer to itself as “The Disruption Company”.
“Disruption” works because it introduced a word that was legitimately useful in explaining the chaos of the corporate world.
“Humaning”, on the other hand, does no such thing. It just adds unnecessary fluff to a narrative we’re all well versed in.
To put this in editing terms, “disruption” is the word you’d use to replace many superfluous lines of explanation, whereas “humaning” is the verbosity you’d quickly delete.
The one negative with “disruption” is that it became so unwieldy and widely used that TBWA lost ownership of it.
But this might not be as bad as it seems — especially not when you consider how Vaseline has become shorthand for petroleum jelly, hoovering for vacuuming and Jacuzzi for spa pools. Sometimes you just need to know when to let go.
And in the case of Mondelez and “humaning”, that time is now.
We need to stop marketing and start humaning. Mondelez