One of my all time favorite blog posts, is from one of my all time favorite bloggers, Richard Hunington and his digital think-pad Adliterate. In this post he points out that it makes more sense to divide the labour and craft of creating advertising not by the medium of delivery (TV, radio, newspaper, radio, outdoor, online, etc.) but by the medium we work in as spelled out by the slide.
This approach always made a lot of sense to me, especially as one makes sense of all things digital or interactive as they can and do live in all four quadrants. But most importantly it is a simple approach that respects the specific craft and talents of a creative person. It allows them to be a specialist at what they do and love, but allows them to transcend traditional mediums , channels, disciplines or whatever you call them in your office.
As such it was intriguing to come across an agency that has set themselves up in this manner - Moving Brands. Their verbiage is different Richard's but of the same spirit. Thought this was worth sharing to show another way of looking at the same idea. It is a straight lift form their site:
Static reel
Static assets do not move: logo, business cards, letterheads and so on. At Moving Brands we believe that all brand assets should evolve from one inclusive and complimentary creative process. Seeing the brand as a moving, dynamic, living entity means we can come up with solutions in print that are both unique and consistent with other media assets.
Moving reel
From Mnemonics (moving, onscreen
logos) to longer film work, moving assets are central to the creation
of a successful identity. Moving is not just motion, it is also
emotion, and that is why moving assets can truly bring a brand to life.
Sonic reel
Whilst sonic assets are subtle and
delicate, they are also powerful and adaptable. Informed by a sense of
emotion, sonic assets can encapsulate a company's brand values, whilst
their subliminal qualities can strengthen brand awareness and
associations across a wide variety of applications.
Responsive reel
Static, moving and sonic assets can
all also be responsive (e.g. a website whose appearance reacts to a
users unique profile/ customer history). Responsive assets interact
with their audience and environment, they are adaptive and reactive,
and they too can help bring a brand to life.
Lets wonder if the writer strike is potentially the best thing to happen to advertising in a long time. Why's that? Well, because it may bring an end to the single most influential and monumental force in advertising each calendar year. No, it’s not Cannes, the Superbowl or the Oprah gifts episode. It’s the Upfronts.
Consider this - what if the biggest barrier to agencies thinking differently, evolving beyond :30 reliance, moving to more integrated ideas, and more generous ideas isn’t a creative challenge, a client problem or an organizational issue. It’s really a budgeting issue.
Sure there has been a slow erosion of TV budgets in the overall
picture relative to growth in other disciplines as overall marketing budgets
grow, but the fact is gross expenditure in broadcast is still growing even as
audiences also slowly erode. At a macro level, budget increases in other disciplines remain slow incremental changes and broadcast media purchase remains the
largest line item in most brand’s budgets. Not without reason it must be acknowledged as it remains an effective way to reach large audiences and moving picture with sound is a great way to tell stories. But budgeting reamins primarily focused around purchasing :60, :30 or :15 units of airtime and has real evaluation been given to the overall marketing mix, or are budgets made out of habit?
In the financial markets if you have one investment with a steady average growth rate but another has a marginally increasing above average rate of growth, one tends, fairly quickly to shift moneys into the faster growing investment. But, financial markets are liquid. You can purchase any day, hour or second of the week.
Advertising markets are illiquid due to the annualized cycle of the Upfronts. Now I'm not part of the rhetoric that the :30 spot is dead, broad sweeping statements that one should spend less or more on TV or another medium are foolish - when money should be spent depends on the brand and it's objectives/problems/opportunities. Nonetheless, we could use a bit more liquidity in advertising markets. With creative development lead times it will never be, not should it be, the liquidity of capital markets, but the ability to review a marketing mix like a portfolio and shift based upon return and growth rather than necessity and heated auction mentality would be a good thing.
Jeff Zucker, president of NBC Universal yesterday told the
New York Times that this year they simply might not have anything to show at the Upfronts due to the writers strike. Therefore the Upfronts won’t happen. And in his mind, once they go away, they won’t come back.
This is where it gets exciting for agencies. Those who have the ability within their walls to shift brands and projects through different disciplines as opportunities arise throughout the calendar year, and move without bias of who gets the revenue, the brand guardian role steps up to a new level. Those agencies that have a special forces type of central hub of folks (mostly account and planner types) who can think and work across all disciplines will become the new rock stars for their lack of discipline bias thinking and instead brand/consumer biased thinking and an ability to corral the experts from the necessary disciplines to work on assignments. At a time when the folks at Proctor and Gamble and moving to a one brand, one agency, all disciplines approach it all comes together. As media fragmentation furthers, brand centralization when it comes to stewardship becomes essential. You can only have so many cooks in the kitchen.
But make no bones about it, TV will remain a force. Don't buy into all the death of the thirty second spot rhetoric. Just like I hope you didn't buy into the death of newspaper rhetoric in the 30's (and 70's and 90's) and death of radio rhetoric in the 50's. Printed word, audio stories and moving picture with sound will continue to be the dominant ways our society/brands tell their stories. But the purchasing, delivery and format mechanisms most certainly will change. But for the better if you ask me.
I try not to be a hater and trash other people's work. And while there is a lot of work in the ad world that's lukewarm or forgettable there are few things that really tick me off.
This, "fashion protest" by a fellow Canadian Agency is condescending, belittling and sophomoric.
It is irresponsible that in 2007 an marketer would say "burn your bra so you can buy a new one."
What's the insight here? Women fought for self determination so they could consume conspicuously. It is unfortunate that an icon retailers, the world's first corporation, the 336 year old The Hudson Bay Trading Company, now know as The Bay, would resort to something so unfortunate.
For an example of how to use major movements of humanity in an empowering way true to the core of a brand please refer the legendary Think Different campaign. An all time personal favorite advertisments.
There is so much chitter chatter about integration, which is natural as great pressures for conformity escalate in an environment of increasing disparity as media and entertainment time continues to fragment or at least shift to different things and ways.
The good news in a way is that no one has really yet even figured it out. In their biannual review it was surprising to see that even the folks at Wieden London, who many hold up as a gold standard, themselves haven't figured it out.
5. Fully embrace interactive media and turn W+K into the UK's
first agency to offer genuinely integrated, creatively brilliant
offline/online campaigns.
We're working on this one. We’ve
done a fair bit of digital work for Honda (Hondamentalism site up and
running, plus various other bits of interactive stuff and web content,
with more in development), Pizza Hut, Wales (new site to launch soon),
Emeco (new site to launch soon), and projects are in development for
Cravendale, Nokia and more. We’re also staffing up with interactive
talent. We hired AKQA San Francisco ACD David Lee, BBDO Montreal’s head
of digital production Jessica Manchester, digital producer Will
Misselbrook, and we have two more hires confirmed and starting work
shortly, with more to follow. I couldn’t honestly claim that we’ve
achieved this objective yet but we’re making real progress.
Been lots of chatter on the Simpson's movie Kwik-E-Mart transformation of 7-Eleven's in North America. While the 300-400% increase in sales at these locations has been impressive, what is really impressive is the level of detail. So much more than window clings and cardboard cut outs. Right down to actual products and loads of fun little things in ever corner, and in the case of the above, around back. The Kwik-E-Mart blogs does a lots ot detail.
A post by the venerable Richard Huntington today really intrigues me as I too am sometimes confused as to why our industry forgets its forefathers. Maybe it's our fear of failing to evolve, therefore we ignore the past to create a false sense of evolution. But, as the old adage goes, those who fail to learn the past are doomed to repeat it. Sadly there is more badness than goodness, and therefore we are doomed to repeat more badness.
Now, in all fairness, I don't have much to say about evolution and forward movement of our industry... okay well actually I do, but something more interesting grabbed my eye in Richard's post. His point about how our industry fails to learn from other industries, architecture in his example. This really struck a chord with me as I was think this very thing a few weeks ago when I got out of an meeting early in Chicago and popped into the tail end of a day of proceedings in the Conrad Black racketeering trial.
As a child of a lawyer the law has always been fascinating. Trial law in particular. But not the Hollywood version. While I think Tom Cruise was an excellent lawyer, real lawyers script themselves and only Have one take. The lawyers at the Conrad Black trial are some of the best, and absolute masters of presentation.
A great lawyer and a great statement of their case makes complex matters simple and memorable for a jury. They use props (aka. evidence) and diagrams with discipline and panache to prove a point. Extraneous or irrelevant information (say case pyramids or onions) are struck from the record. And most importantly a great trial lawyer plays the balance between conveying information and entertaining.
I don't know if this is the case of anyone else, but it's funny in our industry, maybe it's our insular existence but we've become so afraid of being that cliched bad powerpoint presentation (which is bad) that we've gone the other way and thrown away any tools or props to plead our cases. A good creative strategy should be simple, but have great depth of support and rational behind it. Too often it seems of late we've lost that support, and thus a simple and great strategy gets torn apart into the expected and the creative along with it. Sadly, this is often under the premise that "the creative will sell itself."
Now, I'm not saying we all become Tom Cruises, but maybe it's time we turn back the dial a tough on the "un-presentation" and remember that we too need to prove our case beyond a reasonable doubt.
It's back from the framer and ready for glory. Now to find a place to hang it. (Note: this was just a test run, not it's final resting place of honour.)
As some may have notice this blog is called Think Small. It is a homage to one of if not the greatest or at least most influential ads of all time. I remembered I had an original copy tucked away needed to be properly mounted and framed. So, out of the closet it came and off to the framer it goes. Hope they recognize what an imporatant piece of history they will be working with...
Of all the winners coming out so far for Cannes, this (Download nedbank-print070619.pdf) is the one that has really blown me away. It is amazing. It epitomizes the notion of a brand creating real value, not perceived value. It's generous. It's tangible. It exemplifies the core principles of the brand. It's flat out fantastic.
I've always felt a close kinship with action, or adrenaline, sports. Likely an affliction stemming from my background in ski racing (great to see my fellow Canadians stepping up and becoming a force on the World Cup) which hooked me on the need to scare the crap out of myself on a semi regular basis. Naturally the next generation of sport, the X-Games sports fall right out of ski racing, and skiing in general. Hence the kinship.
As such it's always been interesting that action sports, despite standing for something so true and profound, have always been marketed by "fashion" type marketing. Basically, hire a model (in this case an athlete) and put them in the clothes, equipment or consumable product you wish to pitch and capture them in some form of a "lifestyle" action shot. Either doing what they do when they compete or in a similarly at "rest" off the snow, beach, or water. Always done with beautiful photography and setting.
It's just too bad because there is so much to work with in this whole category. As such it's great to see Quicksilver has been pulling up their marketing socks. Not just with this oft circulated YouTube film:
But also now some neat out of home. Hope it's just the beginning of more to come:
Images courtesy of Angus Whines - Hope you don't mind Angus...
The world of viral videos keeps on trucking along. The good folks at Feed Co. have put together a primer (Download Social_Video_101.pdf ) on how to make "social videos." It is a very superficial case for social video, using some examples, and they are smart enough not to touch on creation of virals. But they have some best practices which more advertisers would be wise to note:
- Choose what should be viral very carefully
- Commit to being part of the social conversations (I'm assuming they mean both good and bad)
- Respect and cultivate your network
One point that seems a bit off to me is "Build social video into your planning early on." If you look at many of the examples it's simply a good creative idea that will live naturally online. Did CPG devise the VW gang sign purely with the intent of getting consumers to post their own pictures online, or was it just a good devise to sign off their film executions and as an added bonus you can expect a tribe of hard core VW fans to co-opt it themselves? Probably a bit of both.
The best part of advertising, is watching it all come to life on a cruddy monitor with scratchy headphones.
The creative development process is pretty cool, with all the ideas, the refinements, the cuddling and fostering of nuance. But the leap from storyboards to film is huge. It is like going from a sonnogram to a screaming and wet baby fresh out of the womb. It's the advertising miracle of birth.
I generally stay away from blogging about anything specific to my work in the agency world. Firstly I am not a spokesperson for our company but more importantly I don't think I can do justice to the great thinking and smart minds of the folks I work with. But I had to make an exception with this campaign that launched recently. It is for a campaign to help combat gang violence. Canada, which most think of as a very peaceful nation, has in the last decade begun to suffer a great deal from gang activity and the violence they bring to our streets. In Vancouver alone there are typically a number of shootings and slayings in frighteningly public places each week.
We were tasked with trying to help stem this violence. We determined that advertising could best affect change in the next generation of gangsters, specifically teenagers 13/14 years old, primarily male, who are at risk of being recruited into a gang. In our research with current and past gang members along with various other experts like police, reporters and cousellors, we identified a very profound disconnect. Tenns are attracted to gang life based upon their perception of a glamourous lifestyle of money, women, cars, power and comradery as depicted in popular culture. However the reality is that once you are in, it becomes a world of fear where freindships dissapear in an instance and the money may come, but a severe consequences. There is no escape and the only exits are at best getting severely beaten/hospitalized, imprisoned or dead.
The campaign sought to shatter this perception not through the traditional campaign model of cracking "a idea" giving it a strapline and shoehorning that into a number of mediums. We developed a very strong strategic platform that then developed creative ideas that worked within the context of the mediums we selected to reach our target. Don't think this is anything revolutionary, but it was a great example of an integrated cross divisional agency team between the traditional agency and the digital arm and tasking them to develop one execution within their core medium but then allowing them to problem solve in any other way they deemed best.
In the end both divisions supplemented their ideas with mobile phone based solutions. I really like this campaign because each medium takes a different approach to address the problem under the strategic umbrella.
Naturally we start with the glory that is film:
The website is groovey too, but the really neat parts are the street campaigns. First the recruitment campaign:
These are posted as skate parks, community centers and on telephone poles in neighbourhoods with gang activity.
Next and most chilling part of the campaign is the audio street crimes. We comissioned a screen play writer who grew up in the hardest neighbourhoods and he wrote a numbers of chillingly real audio depictions of typical crimes one in a gang may suffer the consequences of. Each of these was spray painted in environments that matched the context of the envirnoment where the crime took place. For example the numbers for the wash room scenarios were posted in washrooms to give a sense of real world realness. Also posted on the website or you can call a couple of them for a real listen. Female 911 is uber chilly:
Female washroom - 1-604-608-4487 Male Washroom - 1-604-640-4335 Female 911 - 1-604-640-4363 So far the response from the community is great. Hopefully we will have an impact is detering kids from getting into this lifestyle.
It is always interesting to see how another country sees your country. And, judging by this Vodaphone ad in London the Canadian cliches of canoes, wildlife and mountains is holding strong. Phew...
Brandchannel.com recently completed a readers poll of global brands. Summary here thanks to our friends at CBC. What was surprising was that mixed in with the expected, like Coke and Toyota, brands who spend huge sums of money or building there brand, were new kids on the blog like YouTube and Wikipedia who have never spent a dime on advertising. Granted they have enjoyed a wave of media hype but it goes to show that when create something unique, that meets an unmet need or that solves problems of the every day people success breeds naturally.
It has been said that brands only advertise when they have to. For instance, Google is entering the mass media realm (despite proclaiming the superiority of contextual driven bits of copy replacing advertising) to aid recruiting efforts. Nonetheless it is amazing how little advertising these new brands require.
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On Januray 16 I've been kindly invited to chat about the advertising industry to the UBC Sauder School of Business. I'll talk about where I work - DDB Canada, how to get into advertising and about current and emberging trends in the industry that are relevant to the future stars of our business.
To make this as beneficial as possible for the students I’m harnessing the power of Web 2.0 to hear from you, the student. I want to hear what you want to know about. Use the comment feature below or shoot me an email on what you want to know about advertising, DDB or the world in general. And I’ll try my best to answer your query on the day. Or if you'd prefer I can also answer you personally in privacy.
There will be prizes for the most interesting query. Both in content and delivery. Impress me with you technological powress - I want to see at least one question submitted as a YouTube video. Don't be shy, the worst that will happen is you will impress me.
Got to love a good insightful microsite. Here's a great one from Lowe Roche for Nokia's 6133 Push to STart phone. The phone flips by pushing it so you can do it with o ne hand - so that begs the question - which hand will you use? This site has some tests to determine which hand is worthy.
Kind of like one of those Nintendo DS brain training games, but for your hands.
