[Tim Wilson]

I’ll throw in a vote for negativity. LOL It works a LOT, especially for politics.

You get into this thing where people SAY they hate negativity, but in fact, in testing, negative ads are virtually the only ones that ever score high. People keep using them because they work.

It used to be one of the cornerstones of advertising, too. Comparing ours vs. Brand X. You still see it with domestic stuff — laundry whitener and such — and many food products. (Which I guess is still kinda domestic.)

Certainly true in beer. Remember the “skunk face” campaign? Entirely anti-

You know who’s great at negative advertising? Apple. “I’m a Mac” was one of the most effective campaigns of all time. Not only was it negative, it was occasionally false. The negativity was sugar-coated (Adorable young Justin “Hipster” Long, vs. Nebbishy John “Square” Hodgman; easy to use vs. hard to use), but it was easily the most aggressive non-political “negative” campaign in history.

Of course Microsoft is taking a page out of that book with Surface — hitting hard on all the things iPad can’t do. And it has been working. iPad’s sales continue to drop, and Surface sales are doubling.

They’re also closer than you might think: $5b for Apple vs $1b for MSFT. Smaller, yes, of course, but an “actual” product. Apple has certainly built plenty of business that might NEVER achieve 20% of the revenue of its sector competitors, and they’re quite real indeed.

Not that there aren’t many good reasons for iPad sales to be dropping that have nothing to do with Surface — I doubt ANY of it has to do with Surface — but Surface is indeed getting traction that ramped up with negative advertising. You just can’t say that iPad’s drop is because the sector/form factor is getting less popular on the whole. That’s absolutely NOT the case. Maybe it’s time for Apple to go negative again.

Unlikely of course. Jobs was a negative, spiteful guy. Talk about driven by outrage! Tim Cook is relatively well adjusted. LOL Competitive as hell, but a nice enough guy that I’m sure he always found the negative campaigns distasteful. Compete on your strengths, not the other guy’s deficiencies.

Which is of course the other dynamic. The power of negativity goes through cycles, and there are some companies who simply don’t want to be associated with it, no matter what. We’ll see, but I suspect Apple might be swinging that way.

You know who else feels that way? Front runners. Coke was getting its lunch eaten by Pepsi, but was in no position to go negative. NEW Coke went negative, hard.

People who call New Coke a failure miss two things. It pushed Pepsi products into smaller spaces on retail shelves, which was later replaced with OTHER Coke products once NEW Coke had run its course — and its entire course was to create a “battle brand” (an actual thing in the marketing/advertising world) that in fact stopped Pepsi’s progress in its tracks, and then started rolling it back, as people were reminded just how much they prefer Coke to Pepsi. REAL Coke, mind you, while simultaneously rejecting New Coke but that was of course the point. Reinforce loyalty to Coke, which would always stay “the real thing.”

It was building brand loyalty through negative advertising. It won customers BACK. Maybe the first time it happened, but definitely not the last.

I also wonder if there are products that are immune to negative advertising. This car stuff is obviously skirting the edge of it (although I agree with Walter that it’s nowhere near classically negative), but it makes me realize, I don’t remember hearing a single explicitly negative car ad.

I think it’s because an ad that says “those other cars are crap” also says that I’m an idiot for buying it in the first place. You can NEVER convert me by starting with the proposition that I’m easily duped or just not “smart” enough to have chosen you in the first place. Carmakers HAVE to sell WITHOUT reference to specific cars, but by using language from OTHER people that IMPLIES judgement.

I heard the phrase “most awarded pickup” last night. Perfect example. It says, “You chose a truck that has won awards, my friend. Of course it was a good choice. But ours has the MOST awards, so it’s a better choice.”

So, what do you think? Are cars maybe exempt from negative advertising working? Is there a campaign I’ve forgotten about?

I’ll forego the observation that there’s an entire sector of news entertainment (as opposed to just news) that has built itself around negativity — far beyond one stereotyped TV channel, but books, magazines, speaker circuits, etc., built on outrage rather than excitement.

Along with the examples above, and many more like them, it’s a reminder that No is ALWAYS more powerful than Yes. “Yes” fires up dopamine. “No” fires up adrenaline. Guess which drives sales and (other than cars) creates brand conversion. Adrenaline.

Playing to win? Make sure that going negative is part of your message cycle.

EDIT: I CAN”T BELIEVE I FORGOT APPLE’S FIRST NEGATIVE ADS…which were in fact the first ads for Mac at all! From the BEGINNING it was negative.

The first was Ridley Scott’s famous 1984 ad, in which users of other computers are mindless automatons.

The second, during SuperBowl 85 and called “Lemmings,” was so offensive that Apple employees revolted. Blindfolded businesspeople with briefcases marched themselves off a cliff, like Lemmings. The only “pro” Mac message was the words at the end: as a guy takes off his blindfold, fade to black with the words “The Macintosh Office.”

(BTW, the only “pro” Mac message in the first one was that a woman in a tank shirt with giant bazooms and no brassiere was an Olympian hammer thrower. Yay for Olympic women in tank tops with giant bazooms and no brassieres! Ima buy me a Macintosh!)

Back to Lemmings, I’ve mentioned before that my father was at Apple from 1979-1985, and reported directly to Steve. Among other things, he was the head of sales, and he said, “You can’t sell to people you just called lemmings.” See car observation above. People aren’t lining up to buy from someone who calls them an idiot.

Steve didn’t let his foot off the gas, though. In his most extensive interview, to Playboy in 1985 (check it out — easy to find with no naughty pictures, and some truly great insights), he even ran negative against customers. He said that the IBM PCjr looked like it was designed by customers. Everything about it was wrong because of customer input. Focus groups always come to the wrong conclusions because they’re just not very smart.

This actually echoed his disdain for Apple as a whole in the early 80s. The Macintosh team set itself up in an outbuilding, flying the Jolly Roger: we’re pirates from the rest of the company. The signatures of the Mac team were etched inside the case, because they were the only ones whose names SHOULD be there.

And of course, as a customer, you couldn’t open the Macintosh case. The Apple II was built on openness. The Macintosh was based on the belief that you need to keep people out of your computers because they’ll mess everything up, and you need to keep Macintosh away from the rest of the company, because THEY’LL mess everything up too, and since the customers you don’t have yet are DEFINITELY idiots or else they’d already be your customers — well, there wasn’t anybody left to be positive with.

Even the internal imagery at company meetings was militaristic. You can find one of them online, using actual WWII footage, and Jobs as MacArthur calling for the liberation of the imprisoned IBM customers shown in bamboo cages.

I’m not disagreeing with the “crowds are idiots” observation, mind you. I’m just pointing out that Macintosh was rooted in negativity, and stayed very nearly 100% negative until the day Steve left. And while it was by no means a universal part of Mac’s messaging for Jobs 2.0, it was by all means an important part of it.

[Tim Wilson]

[Chris Frantz] “This will be one of the features that people will defend Apple not implementing until they do, and then championing it soon afterwards. “
See also:

• A compressed proprietary codec that offers workflow advantages, especially over camera codecs. “Avid DNxHD? Makes no sense!” Then four years later, “PRORES IS AWESOME.” Haha! Avid sucks!”.
• Multicam. Who needs THAT? Certainly not anyone using an Apple NLE. Too specialized. EXCEPT (how many years later?) LOOK HOW AWESOME IT IS.”

See also:

• Phones with big screens. “Who would carry a phone THAT big? It’s ridiculous. I’d NEVER do that. EXCEPT LOOK AT THIS BIG NEW IPHONE. IT’S AWESOME.”
• Phones with high resolution screens. “Your eyes can’t even tell the difference! Except Look At MY AWESOME RETINA SCREEN ™! What? Yours still has higher resolution? YOUR EYES CAN’T EVEN TELL THE DIFFERENCE.”

Sorry, couldn’t resist. Well, I could have, but what fun would THAT be? LOL

[Tim Wilson]

[Richard Herd] “Editing is not the most important part of the movie: it IS the movie.”

My favorite observation of Kevin’s in the article is related to that: when he says that standup comedy IS editing! I’d never thought of that way, but of COURSE it is. It’s non-stop focus testing under live fire, with jokes being altered or thrown out if they don’t work, until they come up with a rock-solid routine…which might conceivably never happen.

What I didn’t know until I’d experienced it is that the HBO special or what have you is typically at the end of the tour. The comedian has been refining on the road. Comedians based in LA often run over to Vegas to work things out. One weekend I saw both Dennis Miller and Janeane Garofolo in Vegas WHEN THEY WERE BOTH STILL FUNNY (which feels like a long frupping time ago, man — in fact, now that I think about it, it was 13 or 14 years ago), and both were working off handheld notes in preparation for an upcoming special. George Carlin did it too.

In that sense, I can see why editing the film was such a powerful experience for Kevin. Sifting through material, arranging, refining, getting it to WORK. It’s what he’s been doing for most of his life in other areas, and can now apply it to a different kind of storytelling.

[Tim Wilson]

[Mitch Ives] “Maybe Apple could pretend for a moment that this is as important as some iPhone issue?”

Actually, I think they have.

I spent all day on hold, and when I finally got someone on the line to tell them about this, they said, “We’ve tested FCPX thoroughly, and found no problems with it here. You’re obviously holding it wrong.”

[Tim Wilson]

Agreed, great article!

I saw Kevin do stand-up in the 80s in Boston (can that be right? 84 or 85 if I’m not dreaming), alongside Louie Anderson. As you can imagine, Louie was charming and sweet, but Kevin was forceful and razor sharp. And hilarious of course, but it was like he could see inside you. LOL I don’t know how often they’ve done this, but I think I remember the two of them touring together in 2010 as well.

If stand-up was the only thing he’d done, I swear I think he would have been considered one of the all-time greats. As it is, comedy simply goes on a long list of things that he’s terrific at — ie, all of them he tries. I’ve been a huge fan for yeah, 30 years now. I can’t wait to see this.

And hey, what? No mention of his wild role as one of the Brownies in Willow? See here and below, on left, with comedian Rick Overton on the right.

Again, thanks for another great article, Kylee!

[Tim Wilson]

So David, you keep coming back to Fusion as one of your greatest topics of interest. Have you downloaded it? If so, what do you think of the nodal approach? Especially for the kind of motion graphics that you do?

If not, why not? 🙂

[Tim Wilson]

[Mads Nybo Jørgensen] “Although working in a good team will improve your editing style, so don’t dismiss the process without trying it first :-)”

More important, working alone is rarely an option in practice. It’s not uncommon to have a client or boss sitting next to you. Certainly in general, this is among the most collaborative creative fields. Many people are always gong to have something to say about your work, usually while you’re DOING the work.

So doing editing for a living like the video in your example? Absolutely. Working alone? Highly unlikely. It may be a happy surprise some day, but for the most part, set your expectations to be working with lots of people in some capacity or other.

[Tim Wilson]

[Dave Gage] “Hey Tim if you’re following this thread…”

Dude, I follow every thread. LOL I’m just not always able to reply…. however….

[Dave Gage] “Any chance of adding the option after “Reply” of “Reply with Quote”? I think most new posters and some veterans aren’t aware of the “Q” trick you can use after you hit the Reply link. This would help solve this particular problem when viewing by topic.”

Hmmmm, I think I see what you’re saying.Let me poke at this for a while. Can you take one more try at describing it for me?

I really like this new view too, btw. Thanks for your patience as we continue to refine.

In the meantime, folks who don’t know it should definitely check out the “Q” button. Hit Reply to bring up the text entry box, then select the text in the post that you’d like to reply to, and press the “q” in your keyboard (no quotes, just the letter). The selected text will show up in italics, with the name of the poster in bold.

In fact, this feature was developed both for efficiency (no need to quote the whole post if you’re only talking about one sentence), and in combination with the Threaded view, to provide a visual representation of branching conversations within a thread. Hence new posts going under the ones they reply to, rather than just parked at the bottom.

When a long thread went a dozen posts or so, that worked great. Now, threads routinely cross multiple dozens, sometimes over a hundred, and it’s not always realistic to expect to find a new post asking alllll those others if it’s in reply to one of the branches in the middle.

Anyway, if you can help me understand your suggestion a little better, we might be able to figure something out. …

[Tim Wilson]

[Scott Witthaus] “ummm…it’s an FCPX forum, right?”

Ah, and so much more!

The thread itself is a broader inquiry into what Laurie should consider add her next step. This is the most appropriate forum to ask that question.

Me, I think Steve’s point is well taken. Some vigorous opinions to the contrary, X might not be the right choice for every editor. The continuing evolution of all of each of these options also opens the possibility that the answer might be different now than it was before. Certainly true of X itself, no?

Play on!

[Tim Wilson]

I’ll accept your criticism, and extend my apology for over-responding to Robin.

Where I failed was in not crisply stopping my admonition to Robin in particular at the end of the first paragraph, and picking it up again at the end.

For the rest, separated from Robin as you completely rightly point out, I completely stand by it. Calling people’s motives into question, and whether or not they belong here is a step back in time to three years ago or more. Coming up on 4 actually. Not good.

And I do in general see more of people (again not meaning to single out Robin) being adamant that only FCPX is the best choice for every workflow, and waving a hand over “unless you need After Effects or movies,” but even that level of nuance is fading over time.

Which is fine. I’m nearing the time when I’ll have been out of the game longer than I was in it. Every single person here is more of an expert on applications and workflows than me. I imagine this to be the case until the end of my career, and quickly accelerating. Maybe FCPX actually IS the best choice for every task.

Yet, with apologies again to Robin and the group, my basic points stand.

— Accusations of rhetorical exaggeration are off limits. Your “edge case” may be somebody else’s life blood. Especially in cases where Legend DID fulfill those needs, this becomes part of the complexity that we have to protect, administratively and as a community.

— Orthodoxy tests (you must use FCPX and like it) are off limits.

— Look before you leap. Experts are everywhere in Creative COW, and I would certainly include Robin among them. But people are often here because they’ve spent a decade or two building the thing.

–When somebody asks for specifics, we all save a lot of time by jumping ahead to those specifics, rather than saying the equivalent of “you’re holding it wrong.”

I always appreciate being called on my own faulty stewardship as well.