_{Well, the cops, they broke the door of my hummer
Asked me about my long brat summer
But I couldn't remember a thing I'd said
In my cosy era, I'll wind up dead}

_{Brat Summer, Vegas Water Taxi}

According to the internet, the best cafe in Drury Lane is on 188 Drury Lane, near where I work. It's always busy. Tables filled with people looking pleased with themselves that they’ve got a table. Disappointingly, it does not reference the Muffin Man in any way.

I have been there a few times. Though it looks wonderful from the outside, you are packed in. The food is ok. The coffee’s not great. In short, there are a lot better options nearby. But what it is is very findable, both physically and digitally; it’s the top end of the street, it’s at the top end of the internet with its reviews. They’re very clever, relentlessly targeting tourists who don’t know any better, for whom who ‘good enough’ is good enough. (There are whole brands of cafe in London who do this - Cafe Concerto in Green Park/Knightsbridge, Garfunkels - never go there).

For most people, ‘good enough’ is good enough. Sure, it’s not a place you want to go to for a breakfast meeting, but it’s fine. Absolutely fine. It is the epitome of a ‘satisficer’.

I invite you to put yourself in the position of some of the tourists visiting London. You are exhausted. London is a busy, global city, and there’s a lot to consider, whether that’s how you get around, or where you should go to. You’ve heard about Drury Lane and Covent Garden from Lonely Planet, and, let’s be honest, you’ve run out of cognitive decision making ability. You look up the best cafe, you go there. It is fine. You are fine with your choice.

Consider it from my point of view. I’ve worked around there for about 4 years. I know about Monmouth. I know about the vast amounts of good coffee around (but likely not on) Drury Lane. I can make an educated, critically thoughtful point of view because I don’t have to think half as hard as most of the tourists.

Caffeinated digression aside, I think a lot of the problems in the business world (particularly marketing and communications) come from assuming everyone isn’t a satisficer, and instead want to maximise their decisions. To get the very best out of their decisions. It’s perhaps most painfully illustrated by this clip (NB, the full thing is here). In the clip, essentially, the position is taken that the craft will be the thing that saves advertising from AI. That people will ‘just know’.

I say this as kindly as I can, as I appreciate it’s in each of that panel’s interest to promote the power of creative advertising, but I’ve got to call bullshit. I am no fan of AI facsimiles of the real thing, but accept that most people, frankly, just don’t care where there advertising comes from. It feels like collective delusion to assume people will just care about the craft. I cock a particular side-eye on the notion that Guinness Surfers could never be made today; I’ve been lucky enough to work with the man who made it, and I can tell you that Walt loved all the opportunities and canvases that tech enabled (psst, he’d have used AI in the early 00s).

Most people want reassurance that what they’ve bought is trusted / good (let’s be honest, the original point of brands and branding). That can involve AI. It may be a point of difference for some brands in time, but for your toilet cleaner brand? No-one will care if it’s made with AI or not. If it will clean my toilet after my six year old has made a mess, then it gets a big tick. Not if the ads are artisanally hand-crafted in E1.

Where I am on firmer footing is that ideas are important. Brand ideas help set the direction for how a business behaves and communicates. It’s not lofty purpose, it’s what they exist to do in the world. To return to that coffee shop in dear old Drury Lane, it exists to meet a very specific need. It has an idea guiding why it exists. No, it’s not for everyone, but it’s clearly gone after a very specific market and targeted a very specific problem. Never mind that poncy comms types like me prefer the infinitely superior Monmouth (for a treat) or the Black Penny (for a chat). I’m not the audience.

Where communications gets into a pickle is with messianic beliefs about creativity. Yes, it’s vital to help unlock business value, to communicate a point of difference. But whether it’s a hand-crafted, stop motion ad or a prompt filmed only matters as long as it reflects the brand idea at its heart, which says who something is for, and who it is not.

My worry with encouraging ‘craft / taste above all’ is that it reinforces the belief that creatively minded communications people are not serious people, and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the boardroom. Their coffee shop will soon go out of business, no matter how many fixies there are adhered to the window or how rare the coffee beans they use are.

Thanks for reading. I’ve been flashing back to 2014 with music, hoping Beck delivers another country one.