CP+B & Hoopla: It’s about Standing Out from the Crowd

I just finished reading Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Warren Berger’s Hoopla. It’s an intriguing looking into an ad agency from Miami that came from obscurity and became known as a household name for all things that this industry doesn’t stand for. I’m starting to see why this agency went left while everyone else was going right. An interesting passage form the book:

“…If they’re making compelling forms of communication that are actually useful to people, the money will come-in the form of increased sales for the clients and maybe even directly from the consumer. CP+B believes that in the days ahead, consumers may pay money for the stuff that the agency creates. If it seems odd to think of people paying for advertising, the point to remember is that it won’t be advertising; it’ll be an advanced, highly useful mutation thereof.”

Mutation is part of CP+B’s theory that to create Hoopla and a movement of people around an idea or message you need: Mutation, Invention, Candor, Mischief, Connection, and Pragmatism. These words and ideas are nothing by themselves, but together they form the key ingredients to generate momentum. I can see how CP+B have gotten to where they are. For brands like Mini, Burger King, Molson Canada, AND 1 and truth, I can see how they have used Hoopla to generate a movement. I don’t think everything in the book is applicable to PR, however, the idea of creating compelling communication that people actually want is only going to become more important as consumers become part of the process to create a movement.