There is always another way to look at things. I’m not just talking about two sides to every story. Sometimes there are three or four or eleventyseven sides to a story. This applies to all walks of life: family, vacation, daily routines, work, play, whatever. There is always always always another side to the story or another way to look at a situation.
Like when you are stuck behind a super slow driver on a residential street and even though you aren’t in a hurry at all, the driver is going way below the already super low speed limit and for some reason you (like most people) want to zoom around them at a whopping twenty miles per hour, shake your fist at them and say some unkind words about their mother as your blood boils and you get to wherever you were going under no specific time pressure about 33 seconds faster than you would have if you had stayed behind the slow driver! That run-on sentence was necessary to help illustrate how dangerous it can be to not consider alternative situations. This very scenario happened to me once and my wife at the time said, “Maybe they are carrying a trunkful of eggs.”
So now anytime I’m behind a slow driver, I assume they are carrying a ton of eggs and I pass the time speculating about what all the eggs could be for and life continues to be good, even at 15 miles per hour.
A great philosopher with an even greater name of Heraclitus said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for its not the same river and he is not the same man.” I love that quote.
A modern-day philosopher posing as a photographer for National Geographic gives an incredible talk called “Extraordinary Visions” that literally illustrates the concept of there is always another story through his brilliant pictures and inspiring adventures. Please check out DeWitt Jones and share that video with all your friends.
I was just telling a client about DeWitt Jones because she recounted an experience recently listening to a guy talking about millennials. I can’t remember his name at all, but the point was when old people like me think of millennials and have to yell out words to describe them, we might say ‘entitled’ or ‘selfish’ which admittedly is a poor judgement off the bat, but hey, that’s a common response. The speaker then asked how those millennials got that way. Umm, cuz us Gen Xers and Boomers raised them that way. We are enablers!!!!! That’s quite another side to the story, isn’t it?
Keeping in mind a trunk full of eggs, Heraclitus, DeWitt Jones and millennials is so important when it comes to media planning and buying. Whaaaaat? I just brought it back to something relevant to this blog, right? There is always another way! At Explore Communications, our mantra is that media should be as creative as the creative itself. We believe anything is possible and that we can find non-traditional ways to do traditional things.
Consumers get numb to advertising very quickly. Or even angry. Its why while we are running research, crunching numbers, considering reach and frequency and CPMs, we are also looking at timing, impact and relevance – things quite a bit more difficult to measure up front. But we can measure results and our style of media planning and buying works. There is more to it than the numbers and we aren’t afraid to take the time and energy to find those others ways; those other sides to the story.
That river flows differently every day, just like life. Eggs in the trunk or just a bad driver? Either way, let’s not jump to conclusions and fall into old habits. Consider the alternatives and don’t be afraid to find another story.