A video about digital in advertising
A lovely video here from Edward Boches, Chief Innovation Officer at Mullen. He crowd-sourced a load of questions and whittled it down to five. They were…
How do we get clients to embrace more innovative work?
What can we learn from software startups?
Do agencies have a role in social media?
How do we stop the talent drain?
What kind of people should we hire?
Good questions… better answers…
My top five take outs…
1. Like
Give examples. Show the client how other people are operating in a related space in an interesting way.
2. Do.
Convince by doing. Demonstrate some kind of success and understanding by trying the new shiny thing out for yourself. It’ll make you and the people you’re talking to feel more comfortable with the new shiny thing.
3. Try.
Prototype. Build things that can be used rather than honing messages that need to be pushed.
4. Play.
Incubate a culture of play and learning.
5. Give.
Be generous with your ideas and your inspiration. Share them early. Let others have a go to build on them.
(This last one wasn’t really talked about specifically but inherent given the topic, the personnel and the medium really).
I don’t have all the answers (surprise surprise)
Often, I get asked ‘what’s next?’ or ‘how do we do this?’ on projects which haven’t been done before.
It’s a pain in the arse of a question. But now I have an answer I think. Paul Bennett, Chief Creative Officer at Ideo, when asked ‘what’s next?‘ by the Google Think Quarterly (Google’s very good agency charm offensive) replied in this quarter’s ‘innovation’ themed essays;
…it’s about asking questions. I’m very inspired by what President Obama is doing right now, which is just about putting questions out there,being very transparent. In a world where trust has broken down, which clearly it has in a lot of businesses and in a lot of governments, you have to be transparent. And it’s not about being the one with the answer anymore. It’s about being the one with the smart questions and having everybody answer it with you.
Here’s the video in full;
The other week, I was faced with a very similar parallel. We had arrived at an idea for a client which we hadn’t done before (which always excites me). The account team were unsure whether to involve the client and other stakeholders in the production meeting as we felt we needed, as an agency, to get our ‘ducks in a row’ before we involved a wider group.
But in a world, as Paul describes, where transparency and honesty reign, coupled with the variety of creative execution possibilities today, perhaps it’s a smarter and quicker way to work with as many clever people as possible to ask the right questions together. It not only encourages all stakeholders (not just the agency) to emotionally invest in the project and make sure it happens, but also cultivates a much more open and transparent working relationship with a variety of stakeholders. This changes the role of the ‘creative agency’ maybe (or perhaps more emphasis on the word ‘agency’ than ‘creative’) where innovative projects are concerned; where the agency increasing acts as an ‘agent’, a catalyst and facilitator of smart people asking the right questions rather than simply setting the “creative vision” as the ‘creative lead’ on a project. In this model, it also becomes a lot easier to iterate and improve the idea collectively as you go.
So when you’re doing something new, perhaps it’s OK to admit, that you don’t have all the answers. The value now, perhaps, is knowing who you want to ask the questions with.
From 360 ‘big’ ideas to just ‘good’ ideas
I’ve been working in advertising for nearly five years.
It’s been fun.
But there has been a lot of 360 chat. A lot.
I’ve been across some brilliant ideas (don’t think I’ve ever come up with any mind, just across them).
But some didn’t see the light of day.
Why?
Because they’ve tended not to fit into the ‘big idea’ that has been agreed upon by all the various stakeholders working on the project (the big idea, by the way, is obviously only a big idea when you’ve got AT LEAST seven ideas across various different mediums, which CATEGORICALLY PROVES that the idea is BIG).
Since when was the validity of how good an idea was, how much you could bastardise it into twelve different incarnations?
Plus, when have you ever seen a full ’360′ campaign bought in it’s entirety?
So it seems a little silly to judge how big an idea is by how many different types of media you could fill with it.
I’d argue you can still end up with the desired outcome across lots of different media, platforms, devices etc without having to rely on one big ’360′ idea to prompt the outcome across them all.
Given the growing influence of digital shizzle across our lives and low barriers to entry to applying a more agile process of idea development and roll-out, it seems silly to me to have to wait for a ‘big 360′ idea. It seems that an increasing part of my role as a planner is to encourage this spontaneity – getting behind proactive ideas that had no brief but are simply brilliant right the way through to discouraging another TV spot which drives to Facebook game app of the same design etc etc
As a client, I’d be ecstatic to know I had an agency thinking about me when I wasn’t thinking about them - proactively bringing me ideas off the fly – that were small, stimulating, new, measurable, creative, interesting, timely, relatively cheap, idiosyncratic and most importantly, answered my business problem.
The future of collaborating? Let’s talk it through
A few weeks ago, Much awarded British TV writer Jimmy McGovern was asked
“How does the relationship work between writers?”
(in reference to a couple of shows – ‘The Street’ and ‘The Accused’ which he has a team of writers collaborating together whilst he leads).
He made a quip which I thought was quite good…
“We confuse writing with typing. This is writing, walking around, getting into your character, into the concept. That’s writing, sweating blood. Sometimes, I’ll have walked round and hours will have passed. “
I thought this was good because it’s a fundamental challenge confronting the world of agencies right now. Collaborate we’re told. Play nice. But it’s quite superficial. We type. We create ’360′ documents/ toolkits/ dossiers that get farmed around with each agency inputting in their two penneth based on their discipline and taking the opportunity to land grab.
Nobody wants this. It’s a pain in the arse for everyone, not least the client.
And quite simply, this isn’t collaborating. Collaborating means doing what Jimmy and the team do. They put down their pens. They acknowledge who are better at some things than others. They go and explore. Together. They also explore each other – as each other explores. Thinking out loud is actively encouraged. They listen to each other and riff off a half baked idea.
And I thought this was quite a smart idea. What if, as an ‘all-agency’ team, nobody wrote anything until everyone had explored the problem and then explored each other as each of the other teams explored the problem? i.e. So there is an all-agency briefing. Each agency then buggers off to think about their bit of the puzzle. But, then halfway through that thinking time, where no one’s cracked the brief yet, you’re forced to put down your pens, stop typing and go and visit the media agency, the ad agency, the PR agency, the experiential agency etc and you go and chat about some of the things they’ve been thinking about – some of the challenges and opportunities the brief throw has thrown up for them. Chances are you may even have some of the same issues or maybe it’s thrown up new ones for you.
The key to collaboration in my mind is the initial talking-it-through phase. Having a walk and a cigarette down Charlotte Street with the PR director on the account (you pair of cliches you). A pint with the media planner. A breakfast with the ECRM dudes. Having an appreciation and a humility that you can’t do it on your own and making sure the other disciplines understand your limitations, processes and nuances. Integration is as much about acknowledging weaknesses as it is recognising strengths in each other.
I think this is how we should be collaborating more. Not writing ’360′ presentations. Less typing. More talking.
Show and tell
Last night I popped along to a little event organised by Show and Tell films. They run events for the TV and film industry and yesterday evening’s do was a panel discussion about content, lovingly called, ‘Contentment‘.
On the panel was Matt Smith, MD of the Viral Factory, Ben Freeman, Senior Drama Editor for ITV.com, Michael Gubbins, Music Week’s Director of Content and finally Nik Howell, legendary music and film producer and entrepreneur who co-founded Virgin Records with Richard Branson in the 1960s. Justin Pearse, NMA editor moderated.
Each speaker was given five minutes to argue, what makes great ‘content’ (this is my interpretation of what they were asked to do anyhow… not everyone stuck to the brief). Matt Smith kicked off with this charming video…
He argued it worked (it has over 7 million views) because it was short, it tapped into a universal human truth – so it was recognisable the world over, it had the repeat factor – it gets better the more times you watch it, and it was executed with aplomb. But his over-riding point for anyone looking to create content that could potentially spread online was that this is what you are up against – random stuff with no baggage- no film to peddle, no toothbrush to sell, no agenda to push. So, think about how you handle your agenda.
Next up was Ben Freeman from ITV. He discussed how ITV had been experimenting by extending narratives of ITV shows into new places, Coro Facebook games, Twitter characters, online exclusive episodes, fake news- flashes. It was interesting to note, what his team are doing is really nothing revolutionary – extending stories into new spaces to ultimately drive enjoyment of the whole show.
Michael Gubbins next up. His emphasis was that we are in the foothills of a digital revolution but there is massive opportunities for the TV and film business because we’re living in an increasingly visual world. He also suggested that right now, it’s actually not a bad time to be big and be a gatekeeper. Because gatekeepers are the guardians of authenticity – in an age where we have limitless choice, being authentic and providing authentic experiences will be increasingly sought. For example, we can watch films online but the authentic experience is to go to the cinema, sit in an uncomfortable chair, get disturbed by the person next to chomping on pop-corn and watch the film on a big screen. Similarly with music, we can listen on Spotify, but what people increasingly seek is the live performance.
Paul Banham then talked us through a recently launched campaign for Sunsilk called Z to A. Based on Facebook, JWT have developed a campaign which is content dressed as a game, a show, a reward programme, a viral etc and with the potential to monetise itself by charging for ads within the app.
Last up was Nik Powell. Nik was great. He used the first three minutes of his five minute slot to show a video plugging the National Film and Television School (of which, he is a director) and then the next two minutes to regale anecdotes from back in the day and offend Michael Gubbins with height double entendres (I hope they’re mates really). He had the air of an old sage, sitting back having been there, done it and confused what all the fuss was about. There was a definite tension amongst the panel as Nik contested or belittled some of the points raised by the previous speakers – as if the formula for making cracking content was straight forward or that the others were teaching the room how to suck eggs. After all, ”human beings simply want to see human emotion” he contended.
I was perhaps hoping for a little bit more discussion but for last night anyway, the secret to creating great content? Just add Nik Powell.
Instant presentations
Isn’t this clever.
A presentation on anything, instantly. Just type in the topic you want a presentation on. Hate the idea of someone presenting this to me but like the idea of pulling together information sources into a more coherent story. Here is Derby County’s presentation. It’ll be interesting to see how this puppy grows – enabling people to add in conjecture and opinion on a subject will either be the making of the site or will kill it as people revert back to curating their own research. I see particular value in presenting largely agreed-upon historical information rather than analytically grounded and opinion-led story-telling.
For a recent relaunch of German crime drama ’13th Street’, NBC created a great AR game called ‘The Witness’ which put the viewer at the heart of the story. A good summary from Fast Company…
The Witness” works like a smartphone-centered fusion of a traditional thriller and an interactive ARG: German viewers applied to participate online, and the “winners” got to enter a real-life version of the movie in which they play a role, using their phones to watch snippets of the film that play out like a virtual layer over the physical scene they’re standing in.
Here is a summary video…
The world in 2000 as predicted in 1910
A great find from Sad and Useless.
The illustrations are by French artist Villemard in 1910 of how he imagined the future to be in the year 2000.
My faves:
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More here.
Have we always been curators? (Do we actually create anything anyway?!)
My pal Jonathan wrote an interesting post in his MSC Sustainability and Responsibility course scrapbook/ blog over the weekend about our relationship with brands. In it he concluded;
…the majority of our identity is a result of curating the brands we buy, rather than creating and projecting our own identity from within
I’d pretty much agree with this. In terms of our relationship with brands, that’s exactly what we do; we select, organise and in some case nurture and look after our relationship with brands. He then went on to challenge who was in charge of this process – i.e. how much control do you have in creating and shaping your own identity because we largely “sub-contract part of our identity” out to brands.
Again, from Jonathan, this is because;
…in our (western) society our ‘subsistence’ needs (i.e. food, warmth, shelter) are easily met. Therefore, we’ve got a lot of spare time to think about and exercise our higher-order needs – e.g. how do I fit in socially, how to gain peer acceptance etc.
I buy this too but I’m not sure if this is as bad thing as the subtext of his post suggests.
Working as a planner in advertising, I’m pretty interested in the creative process. There are people in advertising who are seen as ‘creatives’. They have the ability to create something new that hasn’t gone before. But if you speak to any creative, or chef, or artist, or designer, or mixologist or urban planner, in fact, anyone in the business of what we define as creating stuff; from ads, to recipes, to cocktails, to town layouts, to pieces of art, to clothes, to products, very very rarely do they start from scratch. What they produce is a something which is informed from a series of life experiences/references which they themselves have curated. From where they shop, what they watch on TV, what they read, what they eat, where they live, who they befriend; these are all acts of curation which define us and the consequent product they create. The creation ends up being something that has been informed by something that has gone before – there has been some influence along the way that has informed the music in the ad, the ingredient in the recipe, the layout of the town, the cut of the designer suit, the painting in the gallery.
Similarly, I’d argue that we have never ‘created’ our own identity from scratch in the first place. Our identity is in fact defined by what/how we curate, which in turn creates something new and unique – i.e. my identity and yours.
Brands are also rarely ‘creators’. They are curators too (even if they do have their own TV channel ;)); from who they choose to employ, where the offices are located, the suppliers they work with, what they choose to say about themselves, the HR policy etc. All these random acts of decision-making and curation over a period of time, which when combined, stitches together the thing we call a brand. A personal brand or a corporate brand.
Hell, even this blogpost that I’m writing has been made up of a smogasbord of stuff I’ve been reading in the past few weeks. There are a lot of references and discussions about content, conversation, and curation; which is king? etc etc. However, given the suggestion that everything we do is an act of curation, to me, a virtuous circle of curation suggests perhaps asking who is in ‘control’ is the wrong question to ask. Rather, those that do well (people and brands), in an increasingly noisy world, is those that do it best.
After all, it’s this act of curating the world around us, which makes us all, pretty unique.
From Electricpig:
Honda’s new TV advert for “This Unpredictable Life’ will take augmented reality from the TV screen to your iPhone. Using “screen hopping” technology, this will be the world’s first app that allows characters from a commercial to transfer across another device with complete interaction
Augmented reality on a smartphone is nothing new. However, unlike previous attempts in the field which use augmented reality markers and QR codes, “This Unpredictable Life” app is constantly listening to the commercial. The “screen hopping” experience uses advanced audio recognition technology to sync the app with the advert’s soundtrack, “allowing the user to interact with what’s happening in the ad in real time”.
The ad breaks today.
