Creative Excellence: On the Uses of Weirdness and Unpredictability

Creative Excellence is…. Bold. 

Sometimes it's nice to be surprised. To be hit with something you didn’t expect but appreciate all the same. In my case that was three Japanese guys in their '50s playing awesome metal. 

Back in May 2019, a little over half a year before covid would seal us in our homes for the relative foreseeable, a veteran Japanese band called Ningen Isu released their new single 'Heartless Scat'「無情のスキャット」 and the accompanying video on YouTube.  

Blessed by the mystic algorithm gods, it swiftly began to grace people’s feeds. Like lightning in a bottle, it had the perfect mix of elements; powerful performances, excellent production values, trappings of a distant culture and underpinning it all, a song which, for want of a better phrase, absolutely slaps. 

As a result, it exploded. Racking up 15 million views to date and giving rise to an enviable comments section, it continues to stand out – despite the fact that it’s sung exclusively in archaic Japanese. It just goes to show that when something is that good – there’s just no holding it back.

Fortune has always favoured the bold, but being bold means making waves. You have to be ready to either ride that wave or be wiped out by it. Boldness can graduate to bad-assery, but it has to balance bravery with humility in order to not get expelled from surf school.

In advertising, borderless creative possesses that same power; to surprise, engage, and challenge. To stand out in a sea of sameness you need to push hard and sometimes that means provoking a reaction. 

Flora did just that with their 'Skip the Cow' campaign. Isn’t it a little bit weird that we continue to pump plants through a cow’s digestive tract to end up as butter? Why can’t we just skip the cow and go straight from plants to plate? 

The idea of picking at the thread of underlying weirdness in something commonly accepted as the norm, was the hook at the core of this campaign, developed by Pablo London. To challenge conventional thinking in the dairy space and promote an alternative view. Playful and pokey needed to be equally balanced with good taste (no pun intended) to promote without ever feeling patronising.

For us at Tag, this meant transcreating all brand collateral – and ensuring that the result was a line that felt ‘a bit weird’, no matter which country it ended up in. Provoking a reaction measures differently across countries and cultures, our lines had to strike a delicate balance between positive change, re-considering traditional values and a touch of rebellion, all without upsetting the apple cart to the point that ridicule and ostracization would follow.

It all started with ‘Susan’ – the name of our animatronic cow heroine that features heavily across the campaign. When she travelled abroad, she needed to have the right name in each language. She became Marguerite, Paula, Rossi, Jitka – all of which were carefully balanced to sound both natural and a bit ‘overly-human’ and tap into the cultural zeitgeist of each country. 

But it didn’t stop there, how do you render something as playful as “Creamy, not cow-y” in another language? Carefully was the answer and onomatopoeia and wordplay was the order of the day to bring these to life. With “Tellement mmmmh, et sans meuh” (Really mmmmm, and without the moo) in French, “Cremooosa, no cremuuusa”  (Creamy, not cow-y) in Spanish with the emphasis on the “moo” within the line, and “Hú de finom, nem pedig mú de finom” (Mmmm, it’s so tasty, not Mooo it’s so tasty) in Hungarian, we had to find compellingly succinct ways to make the point.

Then we had to produce it. Over the best part of a year Tag transcreated, adapted, recorded and produced over 1000 assets, ensuring that the omnichannel experience evoked that sense of weirdness across every format. The proof – as always – was in the plant-based pudding and this one scored big. Flora’s creative set tongues wagging and started to change opinions, challenging conventions and bagging the brand a Cannes Lion along the way. None of which would have been possible without the bravery to be bold and carry that sentiment through the line.

So what does all this tell us? What does it mean? What’s the connection between Japanese heavy metal and plant-based butter? The answer is shockingly easy; no-one is entertained by predictability.

If you want to stand out, then be ready to lead from the front and take the rough with the smooth. If you can’t birth a trend, you can only really be a follower and in creative terms that almost always means second-place. Both of these experiences started with a big vision, a stubborn insistence in sticking to what they believed in and stand for, and it shows.

“Be yourself, everyone else is already taken” – as Oscar Wilde rightfully observed. In the end, maybe it’s just as simple as that. Not letting yourself be swayed or dismayed by data and projected outcomes but deciding upon your north star and pursuing it for all it’s worth. 

If you aren’t being heard, it’s not about shouting louder, it’s about improving your argument. When data’s drumbeat strikes a regular pace, you may have to purposefully walk without rhythm to break new ground. That’s not to say data can’t be your backing track, but you better be capable of playing a blistering melody over the top of it if you want to be remembered. That might just be the difference between what people think they are looking for vs. what they didn’t know they needed in their lives. 

Like Japanese heavy metal. Like ‘Susan’. Like something that blindsides you on an idle Tuesday afternoon and remains in your head the rest of the week. 

So, to all of you nodding in agreement, who keenly feel that same rebellious itch, grab a pen and a blank sheet of paper. Aim high, don’t settle for second-best, do what feels right, not what seems easy, embrace the unknown and channel a little of yourself into what you do. You might be surprised by what you’re capable of conjuring….