make stuff cool VS make cool stuff

I've been super busy over the last couple of days, meeting work-related people, hanging out and saving money by having lots of home-cooked food.

The other morning I went to a lovely event called Brunch Bites 1.0, organised by Mike Butcher. It's a coffee morning in the Breakfast Club in soho, aimed at web/mobile entrepreneurs and industry people. Note my new "suitable for gainful employment" haircut.


Image from Thayer

I met a nice guy called David, who wrote a book on how music propagates through social networks, and a couple of smart guys who are launching web2.0 and widget startups.

I felt a bit dirty being the only ad-guy there - I was surrounded by really positive, do-er mentality people, who believed in providing people with great services they'd want to adopt, rather than relying on marketing. Those of the let's just make cool stuff school of thought.

Advertising, on the other hand, has always been about making stuff cool, or desirable, without really changing the content (e.g. the ingredients of the Shreddies).

While there's loads of talk now centered around marketing that provides value to customers, and doing genuinely interesting things, it's important that we don't lose the ancient skill of creating communications that incite desire, rather than just inform.