What are the rules of pitching?

Just started this over at Quora. This will be a longer blogpost sometime but here are some starters. I suspect these are not limited to pitching for advertising accounts either.

• Don't give the client a reason to say no (most pitches are lost, not won).
• If it can go wrong it will. It's best to get all the bad luck to hit on one pitch, rather than be spread out.
• Nod like dogs - and the room will follow.
• Always overdeliver.
• Make conversation not presentation.
• Don't assume your audience has a clue what you're talking about.
• Do something that makes you stand out - be memorable.

More to follow ...

Predictions for 2013

Easter Eggs are in the shops so it must be time for some annual predictions. I've been doing this for a few years now and think I'm slightly over 50% on the strike rate, which is nice. Or just lucky, which is more realistic. Anyway, I try not to ride the coat-tails of the usual predictions out there, by joining the dots between different trends or data points to come up with something original.

So here we go for this year. And for this year, this is an echo of the Inferno blog, just to be all professional and joined-up about it.

2013. A whole year with an unlucky number. The year with no major cultural event in the British calendar (can’t we have the Olympics every year?). What will we do? Well, perhaps brands – and their agencies – can step up to the plate. Perhaps we can all fill the cultural landscape with energy, with rewarding and interesting things. We hope our predictions for 2013 are a good place to start. They’re written in such a way that we can use them as a lens for brands, perhaps working through the possibilities to create cultural artefacts, not just more ads, together.

01. Shifting Cultural Tectonics

As the global economic power bases shift from the stagnant economies of the west to the growing markets elesewhere, so the cultural influences change too. Added to this is the constant search for more interesting, fresher sources of cultural inspiration. We predict 2013 will be the global breakthrough year for two such new national sources and their influence on global culture. Korea and Mexico.

To a certain extent Korea has already embedded itself as the new Japan. You only need to type ‘Korea is the new Japan’ into Google to see across how many categories this is true (pop, cars, phones, etc). Psy’s gangnam, Hyundai, Samsung are all everyday mainstream references. This proliferation of Korean cultural capital is only set to grow as it seeks to assert itself globally even more vigorously against a weak Japan, and seek to redress the many years of Japanese colonial and more recently political dominance.

Less obvious, but equally prolific is the increase in Mexican influence in the United States. Obama’s legalising of the 3 million or so ‘illegal’ Mexicans in the States is now unlikely to be prevented by staunch Republicans, which is a kind of acknowledgement that was unthinkable even a couple of years ago. This coupled with slow but certain increase of Mexican art and cuisine in Western Europe is sure to grow as the country’s tarnished image at home is ‘managed’ through successes overseas.

02. Digital Renaissance

2013 will be the year that past favorites reinvent themselves and comeback with renewed promise to claim a place in our hearts. The ubiquity of Facebook and Google are driving users to seek out alternative means for discovery and social engagement. The redesigned MySpace puts music  at its centre, connecting artists to their fans. Boasting an elegant discovery engine, it learns what its users like and keeps content fresh. It’s integration through Facebook & Twitter will boost numbers and fully establish it’s comeback.

Yahoo is also in the midst of a revival, putting the focus on technology rather than media.   2013 should see Yahoo properties become much more interactive, on PCs and mobile devices, using social media tools to personalize the user experience and make it less cluttered. Renaissance 2013 will also see us hankering for nostalgia, caused by the prolonged economic gloom. Expect to see some interesting comebacks from brands with a once strong heritage, like Nokia or HP. Department stores should also experience a boost as we seek good old fashioned service over the poor attention given from a plethora of vertical branded retail.

03. Collaborative Consumption

Renting is increasingly becoming the choice way for consumers to discover, experience and enjoy a wide variety of new things, from entertainment, fashion, utility,   to travel and transport, making them part of their daily lives. With no end in sight to the current economic gloom, this trend is likely to ramp up and break into new categories during 2013.

Technology (location aware smart devices) and social networks are the main facilitators, allowing consumers to find what they need, when they want it, giving the convenience of ownership but without the responsibilities or costs. Social networks add the necessary layer of trust where new consumers can read user reviews, number of likes, or even check a Klout score. Brands should look to this growing trend and consider new revenue models, as the trend moves from ownership to usership.

Peer to Peer models have started to impact financial services by matching borrowers to lenders, giving both more competitive interest rates and greater security at a time when the banks are proving harder to borrow from. See Zopa, RateSetter and Funding Circle. Zilok provides a facility for consumers to rent out their personal belongings to anyone in their local community. While ideal for utility (tools, garden equipment etc), another benefit is it allows people to try before they buy, and indeed question whether they really need that thing they so desire.

Airbnb matches travellers to private homes and apartments, making holidays more interesting, authentic and better value. Whipcar allows people to rent cars from real people in their local neighbourhood, allowing car owners to make a little extra cash at times when their car is not being used. Rent the Runway makes high-end fashion more accessible, a bit like a Netflix for dresses.

04. Instantaneous

Technological developments have bred a desire for instant gratification. We no longer save up to purchase treasured items, wait for photos to be developed or for a letter to arrive. There is an inverse relationship between expectation and patience – as expectations of service, speed and quality increase our tolerance diminishes.

Smartphones provide access to information wherever, whenever we want and with the introduction of 4G this will be even quicker too in 2013. We aren’t prepared to wait around – giving webpages only 0.3secs to load before clicking away (this was 4secs on 2006). This will have significant implications for both brands and retailers and the level of customer service they both deliver.

Twitter and Facebook have knocked down the walls between brand and consumers, and opened up opportunities for conversation. Done well, this builds relationships and loyalty. Done poorly and people feel ignored and sidelined, effectively turning a friend into an enemy and ultimately impacting customer loyalty.

Instant gratification and delivery has always been the thorn in the online retailers paw. Overnight deliveries and 90minute timeslots will become the norm, raising the bar to all other retailers. Speed of delivery will become increasingly important, especially for impulse  purchases when the customer wants it, and wants it now.

05. Big Data Is Only Half Of The Solution

The amount of data in our world has exploded, with significant value hiding in the detail. However the potential and power is only unleashed when you know what to do with it. Big data helps to streamline operational processes and identify industry inefficiencies. Big data lets you be small, nimble and personal, and used well it can also be used to execute more effectively. We predict huge growth in big data discussions, but see very few brands and retailers getting true value from it…yet.

There is a fine balance between inviting consumer interaction and invading their territory. Consumers want to feel special, treated as individuals not mass market or hounded by brands. Harnessing the power of big data allows for brands and retailers to provide personalised content or service to meet specific demands and expectations at exactly the right time. This was proved to be highly effective by the Obama 2012 campaign – precise and differentiated messages on a massive scale. Brands who embrace big data and use it correctly can reap the rewards and competitive advantage whilst everyone else plays catch up.

06. Capsuling 

As my friend Sooz triumphantly tweeted she’d got two weeks clothing into just hand luggage, we’re already well aware of the capsule wardrobe. But then you look around at full-fat cameras merging with phones, or the emergence of phablets. You only need one now, not two. We see the popularity of blogs like the Burning House Project with people posting pictures of the core few things that they’d save. And we wonder if the capsule wardrobe effect will be seen in other areas of life in 2013. It might mean weeding out all those apps we really honestly never use. It might mean adding new sentimentality to old technology so they’re elevated to your core set – and so it’s easier not to have to pay for the upgrade. We might see brands and services to help us see and curate what’s truly important. Fewer, better, more emotionally attached things. Capsuling.

07. Authorship

Having brewed for years inside the walls of the Googleplex, the concept of Author Rank was finally unleashed in summer 2012 and hit the SEO circles hard. Reputation and hype around a specific author (not just a page or a website) all of a sudden became a crucial ranking factor in the ever important Google SERPs. The cynics may point out this was a sly move to push usage of Google+, but we see this as the inevitable establishment of an important overall social trend for 2013 and beyond.

As social media and the mindset that comes with it has ingrained itself further into our everyday lives, it’s not surprising that the importance of individual author identity has grown along with it. So while transparency and the ‘human’ side of brands has always been a key tenet of social media strategy,  2013 will finally properly push this up to the top of the marketing agenda. Of course overall brand reputation will still count, but see smart brands leverage and emphasise the ‘human beings’ (aka authors) behind their logos a lot more.

The tangible impact of this in 2013 will be the prevalence of individual authors in search results for brand searches. A brand sustained by a team of quality authors will rank higher than one without. We will grow to trust and maybe even individually follow individual brand authors, as they curate and produce content on behalf of the brands they work for/represent. And ,it won’t be enough to have our content seeded far and wide, it will become far more important to have a few quality authors carry it for us.

08. Force For Good

With communication technology people realize that they have a real power: they used it against government (Arab spring), institutions (anonymous), and with projects like Kony 2012 we’ll see it increasing in the near future as people look to improve the world we live in. This has become a threat for traditional and non-flexible charities.In 2013 we will see a blurring of definitions between Brands and Charities, and will begin to question their roles  as brands look to create a truly Noble Purpose and build trust.

09. Don’t Listen To What I Say, Listen To What I Can’t Say

At it’s inception, and for a long period since, advertising has been reliant on the idea of the rational individual who is informed by communications and makes purchase choices on the basis of advertising information.  The explosion of neuroscientific research and the growth of knowledge in behavioural economics has revealed the serious limitations of this view.  We are not always able to accurately explain our own behavior.  Rather, we have limited self-awareness, flawed memories and make the large majority of decisions on the basis of mental shortcuts and rules of thumb, not rational reasoning.

Thinking such as this shows how new consumer understanding helps to widen advertising’s remit far beyond communications.  Experience architecture and choice design are the new tools for changing behavior and their strategies need to be informed by a greater balance of third person research methodologies (neuroscience, experimental psychology and behavioural economics), over first person research methodologies (self reporting, both quantitative and qualitative).  Marketers will need to be well-versed in a much wider range of research available to them and confident in applying a greater degree of insight interpretation to the research they use.  In future we will listen less to what consumers say, and pay more attention to what they can’t say.

10. Surprise Me

With ever more targeted advertising, on demand entertainment, and everything at our fingertips people are suffering information overload and serious choice fatigue.  This is driving the trend toward people wanting to relinquish control, escape decision-making and relish the unexpected.  If we look at the rise of Secret Cinema (and now Secret Hotel and Secret Restaurant), it is clear that people are quite happy to pay before they even know what they’re getting.  In an age of Google informed know-it-alls and mobile enhanced have-it-alls, mystery and surprise will be valued more and more.  When people don’t know what to expect, it makes the experience a whole lot richer.  Sometimes it’s just a whole lot more fun if someone else makes the decisions.

Advertising in 2020

I recently took part in the IPA/Wharton survey about the future of advertising. Their flyer for the survey included some quotes from my answers, so I though't I'd post it here.

What will the term advertising mean in 2020?

Much as it does today, but with more intelligent and extreme forms. By intelligent, I think we'll still see broadcast advertising as it looks now but it will have to recognise the way people will content and advertising. I honestly don't know anyone under the age of 25 who uses the TV set as the predominant form of viewing TV content. It's all laptop, tablet, and even phone. These technologies allow people to filter content - and filter out things they don't find interesting.

At the moment, advertisers (and the media conduits) force advertising on viewers as a price to consume content. I think people will get smarter, work-arounds more sophisticated, and content will be available elsewhere if they prefer. Advertising needs to maintain a high quality threshold (be at least as interesting as the content that surrounds it), or be more embedded and natural within that content itself (requiring better brand storytelling and deeper relationships with non-branded content creators).

And that's where extreme forms might come in to play. Being able to experience a virtual test drive in your 3D goggles isn't just a more convenient way to test drive your next car, it's a more rewarding, richer form of advertising. Advertising not just with a narrative but with a purpose. Consequently, we may see more advertising-as-a-service, or advertising-as-a-product. 

What will advertising agencies look like in 2020?

Extrapolating current trends, I think we'll see continued polarisation - more consolidation of the global networks which get bigger, more corporatised, and try to move further up the value chain with their clients. On the other hand, more global clients are looking for better local insight. As long as the brand is well handled and having multiple local agencies doesn't cost more, this might create a renaissance for boutique integrated agencies.

Structurally, departments will disappear as clients want to speak to fewer, more skilled, specialised people. Agencies will look more like cooperatives of associated skill-sets. White-labelled (or exclusively contracted) talent networks become business as usual, changing the nature of supplier relationships and client transparency. Agencies will be makers not just creators. They will be able to deliver a wider range of outputs through their talent networks. Agile will be the norm not the exception. Clients will become more embedded in the creative process - perhaps a fully integral part of the agency team - as a fight-back against the threat of in-house client agencies.

Visiting an agency, or working there, might look different as a consequence. More project space, for small cabals of people, that can constantly adapt. The space will be increasingly virtual as global minds replace bricks and mortar networks. The idea of a 'desk' seems laughably 2012. 

What should we be doing now to get ready for this future? 

We should be scrapping departments and forging projects teams. We should be creating agile processes, and building cooperative skill-centric teams in-house. To compensate for less time and greater diversity in our challenges, we should be able to throw more resource, more skills, from a wider range of cultural and technological backgrounds at problems, more quickly. We should be forging partnerships with external but increasingly vital talent, from Hollywood to the City, from Google to Maker Faire's. We should get rid of proprietary ways of working as each client or future advertising challenge will be so different that the process will need to be defined each time, and the team coalesced around that. Creative teams should involve strategists, makers, technologists and even clients, not just a writer and art director. The role of strategy becomes central to identifying opportunity, creating structure and process, and driving momentum. 

Finally done it

Changed the blog name to something a bit more contemporary, and a little less cynical I suppose. There's a thought that if brands (or in my case, a strategist) can stay just slightly ahead of the curve, then  that's probably going to give you genuine and realistic advantage. Being light years ahead is unrealistic. And requires too much thinking.

The Middle Renaissance of Advertising

This is a little answer from Quora that I need to think about a bit more. there's something in it, I think.

Pulling a few common threads together. The future of advertising? contextual, personalised, locational. I also think agency people (even the young dudes) will want to make 'art' or at least legacies for their generation (and Groupon promotions ain't that). So I there's a bit of a renaissance model going on. Early renaissance was defined by naive wonder (the internet). High renaissance is defined by scale, energy and high art. I think we're in the middle right now, which is about intellectual idealisation (ie personalisation, localisation, contextualisation). And I think there's an aspiration in the industry to start to do the really big, meaningful stuff. Hey - there's a presentation in that!

Predictions 2011

That time again. Blimey.

We've done some on the agency blog, so there might be a bit of overlap. And a bit of an embarrassing photo too.

Branded Generosity – pour colour and fun into the environment. I thought that campaigns might become more austere (unpimped) in response to the downturn, but what consumers want is brands to lighten their days. If we have to endure advertising, it might as well be jolly.

Branded Usefulness – consumers are fed up doing the hard work for brands. Brands have to start doing something to give back, to do things that help their customers. Not dumb stunts like Charmin loos but things with lasting value and utility in our daily lives

Social TV – this is the year of social TV going mainstream. Kudos to the beeb, but this year it will become a mainstream communication platform.

Three-screen campaigns – branded content in the cloud, that follows you from TV to PC to Mobile

Multi-layered tech – (digital) campaigns that start to realise the potential of new technologies by layering them together. And then have them overlaid on physical experience to make them useful. Think geo-locational + social + promotional + retail …

The death of the digital agency. The digital agencies are quickly becoming commodity suppliers. Digital agencies *still* think tech-first not ideas. They think they are creatively sharp but there’s been almost no innovation or outstanding creative for 18 months + (and client’s are voting with their budgets). Old fashioned ad agencies are cracking the digital code, allied to strong strategic thinking.

Making stuff / the planningness of things– from making apps to making new products. Agencies getting involved in the creation of new businesses, and new IP. Lower cost of distribution and easier access to the market. The Anomaly / Erasmus / Coudal differentiation becomes less pronounced as other agencies chime in (starting with apps). Corollary – planners engaging with objects and production rather than briefs and concepts

The end of the herd – we might still make herd-like decisions (animalistic & tribal behaviour / behavioural economics) but at a subconscious level. Perhaps the conscious decision-making self will start to reject the mass. Don’t buy an iphone 4 just because everyone else has one – buy a John’s Phone. Join Path (the anti-social network) not Facebook.  Micro-niche goes mainstream.

Must. Resist. The. Gameification. Of. Everything. - Points mean prizes. Promo marketing campaigns turn into games. The curse & legacy of foursquare is badges for everything. Consumer behaviour is trivialised to the point where we feel happy for ‘winning’ clubcard points rather than earning them. God help us. Just say no. Or do more meaningful games.

Intention becomes the leading innovation factor in app development in 2011. It's not just 'where' you are, but what you're 'intending' to do there. This prediction refers to the fact that smartphones are becoming increasingly aware of not just your location, but also why you are there, who you are with, where you are going and how you are feeling. There is a huge opportunity in planning for ‘intention’ as well - there is so much data out there to be made sense of for our benefit. 

Fingerprinting is about shoppers leave their mark. Retailers will invite audiences into their shops and give them opportunities to contribute to the atmosphere of their surroundings. Whether it be tangible or virtual, momentary o. r lasting. (Graffiti on walls, framed photos, music play lists, any other user-generated content creation)The shopper becomes a part of the store, part of the experience they share with others, part of the brand story.

There we go. What do you think?

Generative Advertising

Listening to an old-ish talk by Will Wright (Spore) and Brian Eno on generative systems - and their use for gaming and music - struck a chord (no pun intended there).

Eno describes the role of the artist to generate seeds - and rules for their growth - rather than perceiving and  composing great forests of work from the outset.

A lot of global advertising is formed from toolkits of assets. Assets are like seeds. Little building blocks of campaigns that local marketers can draw upon to put their campaigns together.

Similarly, a lot of social media campaigns are basically little bits of content being released into a system. We even talk about seeding.

The problem is that social media systems tend to be largely beyond the control of the marketer or agency. Pesky people in the real world tend to do their own thing with our little seeds.

Which is not what tends to happen with music or gaming - there are generative systems which are quite tightly controlled by the artist.

The second problem is that marketing toolkits and traditional rigid campaign design aren't generative systems. They are OK at distributing seeds but not very good at helping them grow and turn into something interesting.

So I think an emerging role for agencies (and I guess planners, from my own perspective) will be to design more controlled generative systems in the real world, to propagate their little creative seeds.

That's different from helping shape the growth of platforms organically (Russell Davies' old gardening analogy), because it requires more intent at the outset, and the creation of tight simple few rules that can govern the passage and evolution of our work in the real world.

Foreign Correspondents wanted

I'm looking at creating a network of planners or planning-like people around the world. I want to make this thing to be inherently interesting, like having a (media) story attached to it. If you think you might be interested in being part of it, please ping me. Cheers

Unimaginative Inc

At a Campaign lunch recently, the great and the good (or at least those who paid for the privilege of being there) planners from a selection of agencies met to discuss the subject and future of Integration.

Probably a timely discussion as maybe five years ago, integration was a synonym for a DM agency aspiring to make the odd TV ad. These days, it seems there is a plethora of media agnostic / channel neutral / integrated agencies around every corner of Noho or Clerkenwell. And most of them are pretty good.

The thing that struck me though was the utter and slightly terrifying lack of imagination of almost every person present. Which wouldn't be too bad if they weren't so smug about it.

The network dudes seemed to have this eureka moment that in order to respond to the new world (of social media etc) integration means removing P&L's so they could give the client one bottom line and use different companies within the group. Which is fine except this was happening 20 years ago, and I can't believe they haven't figured it out yet (or maybe it's just a new generation figuring out for themselves). And it's fine except the different companies will still compete internally for a lion's share of the pie. Call me cynical, but it's true.

Even digital agencies seem to think that integration means doing the odd press ad now and then. That's an echo of the DM agency plea from five years back. And a signifier that they're ultimately doomed unless they can get get up the food chains (and out of a low cost supplier role) very quickly.

I could count on two fingers the agencies that had something fresh to say, albeit quietly and with some puzzled looks from around the table.

Why do we need a chief gaming officer or a head of entertainment? Because that's the sort of stuff we do. And we also don't need these people on payroll, or even in the building. Integration means building "cabals" of great talent, the people we need to deliver something interesting. We don't have to worry about removing P&L's because we only have one. We don't have to worry about the size of our slice of pie because if we get each thing right, there will be more pies than we can eat.

That's the new world.

New Motion Creative

Hadn’t thought about this before, but one by-product of the iPad is a new creative genre – the motion magazine cover.

It seems to be a hybrid between static print and the motion picture.

I wonder if there’ll be an advertising knock-on or equivalent. If you’re reading the NYT on an iPad, then the advertising doesn’t have to be static, or a repurposed banner.

This format affords a somewhat bigger, broader and more filmic canvas than your typical MPU or whatever, and requires narrative / scriptwriting skills to deliver (and maybe a deeper consumer experience).

Predictions for 2010

Here they are again! Predictions, or at least some underlying trends, for planning, brands, and campaigns generally. This is also being posted on the Inferno blog SPARK, with email links if you want to know more (or see a presentation).

1. Inner prosperity. Brands promise self fulfilment and development, rather than the promise of ownership or consumption.

2. Open. In the value economy it makes sense for companies to cut overheads in R&D by opening up to more expert and customer input.

3. Silver-lining marketing. Brands need to find hidden benefits or indulgences. Thrifty customers can liberally maintain some of their indulgences without sacrificing the necessities.

4. Everything in Beta. We’ve been doing a lot of WoM marketing in 2009. With increased transparency and consumer scrutiny post-recession brands must accept and act upon consumer feedback and input. Those who build this into their business model will be repaid through customer loyalty and positive WoM.

5. Real-time campaigns. Major events in 2010 will see opportunities for brands to act as media providers through real-time, multi-platform, cross-channel campaigns. Mmmm.

6. The Mob (Rule). RATM and China’s ‘internet mob’ are the tip of the iceberg for brands. Time to take note, if you’re organising your own online communities of interest.

7. UGC(rap). UGC is now the majority of content online. And most of it is frankly rubbish. Brands need to step up and stand for quality content, not simply sponsor the cheap stuff.

8. Retail as Community. This one’s about communities moving from a purely online existence to a physical manifestation on the high street. And this will have a big impact on what brands define as retail.

9. Community Patriotism. Patriotism is becoming even more and more micro-focused. “Patriotic consumption” is the term coined for purchasing to support your community, and can be seen in the increased prevalence and support for Farmer's Markets, locally produced goods and the high street (the Brixton Pound).

10. Zombies! Popular culture is awash with zombies, monsters and vampires. From True Blood to Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Given that many agencies’ modus operandi seems to be to rip off YouTube memes or pop culture, where are all the ads then?

5 things I look for in a CV

We’ve been doing a bit of hiring recently, including the planning department. Which means I get to see a lot of CV’s. My CV-to-interview ratio is about 1 in 20. I don’t know if that’s high or low compared to other planning directors, but here are five thoughts why.

1. I’m seeing a lot of CV’s for planners with a couple of years’ experience following a career before (as a client or suit, for instance). If you’re up against planners with 5 years or more planning experience, there needs to be a point to seeing you. Are you a specialist? What’s the holistic benefit of that experience, and what would it do for us?

2. Most CV’s now have a bit of blah at the top – a description or summary of skills and motivation. There all lovely and useful but if was an OCR, they’d all look the same. I’m not being facetious for once. There’s so little sense of the person. Be differentiated, and be yourself.

3. Why us? Don’t rely on the headhunter to craft your submission to the agency or role. Write it into the CV. Perhaps in that description bit. Do you homework on the agency and the role first.

4. Keep it short. I tend to have to read CV’s when I’m not in meetings (which means on the train or early in the morning). That means brevity wins. tend to look for 2 standout things on the CV itself. Relevant experience, and things to talk about if you come in for an interview (stand out projects, not your travels).

5. Put the rest on the web - so the team can have a look at your work in the agency, when it suits them, or we can put it on screen when you’re in for an interview. That’ll take a bit of work, but it’s worth it.

Of course, every planning director will be different (heck, they pride themselves on being different), so this is probably just as unhelpful as it is otherwise.

Photo credit Karim (KJPM) - thanks - at the 'Planning Eye' Flickr group

Technorati Tags: planning,job,cv,resume,hints,advertising,skills

Looking for a Planning Director for our new sister agency

Will need telco or IT experience, and probably a good dose of b2b and 'enterprise' too.
It's based on Great Titchfield St.
Know anyone who might be interested?
PM me if you do.

Cannes, or Venice?

Watching the Monocle podcasts today about the Venice Architecture Biennale, I was struck by a definition of architecture as "not just about buildings but what we think about buildings or how we talk about buildings".

This seems to suggest a broader cultural definition of 'advertising'.

Then I saw the pointlessness of 'old fashioned' advertising imploring us not to dump our free copies of Metro newspapers. Surely the 'advertising' response should have been to exmine how these freesheets have created this behaviour in the first place, and see how the business process could be re-engineered?

So, to that end, would the advertising world be better served by a Biennale, exploring the meanings and definitions of the industry, rather than the good 'old fashioned' Cannes festival?

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The message and the medium

I was half-listening to a radio article yestaerday about the anniversary of the 45 single. people can usually remember what their first single was.

So it's not just the content that has value, the medium does - and the more precious the medium, the more memorable the experience (even at pocket money prices)

However, I don't think many people would be able to remember their first download. And with music being free for all intents and purposes now, both the message and the medium are devalued.

As advertising channels follow the same pattern - not just a huge swing to digital, but the fragmentation of media - then the message is inherently devalued too. What chance for memorability, no matter how good the content?

Perhaps creative agencies need to find a way to take more control of the medium, the messaging environment - maybe make it more physical, analogue, and memorable?

Media planners what do you think?


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Where have all the typographers gone?

We lost a repitch last year. Boo. Largely political, but isn't it always. The new ads have broken and, this might smack of hard cheese, but they look like they've been done in powerpoint.

My grandad used to set hot type for the newspapers back in the mists of time, and my dad was a draughtsman, so maybe I have a thing about type. In fact I love great typography.

The last (and first) agency I ever worked at with a typographer (with a business card that said the same) was Still Price Court Twivy D'Souza. And that was a while ago. Where are they now? Surely they're not just doing nice powerpoint.

Loose confederations

Just a quick post to agree with Leigh Stop's prediction for the year. If you don't get his annual email, you should. I have his address if you want. I'll quote verbatim and then respond after:

First the economy. I'm only going to mention it once. It will be a year of the football metaphor. There will be much talk of the need to take 'each day, one at a time'. It will be 'a year of two halves'. There will be a lot of emphasis on 'the importance of good defence' and 'the need to sell before you buy'.  There will only really be two places to be, either at the top of the premier league like Manchester United or somewhere in the middle of League 2 of the Championship like Brentford who offer good basic value for money. For my money Brentford might do better than Manchester United - honest toil. Affordable prices. The games last exactly the same length of time. You can go to 5 matches for the same price as one. No contest. BETTER TO BE BRENTFORD THAN MANCHESTER UNITED

I work for an independent agency. No network. Certainly not Man U (I used to but have got the T-Shirt, thanks). One way I think smaller or independent agencies can prosper will be to form loose confederations of mutual capabilities. Small, agile, innovative networks built on friendships or shared culture not on network matching luggage. Maybe we've always done that as agencies, but I think it will become more formal and open. And maybe we'll see enlightened clients seeking them out.

New year, new brief

Richard, and many other planners, prefer to use a blank creative brief. Each project is unique and the should be written up as such. Instinctively I like that thought, but in my experience most creatives tend to like a (consistent) structure (tell me if I'm wrong!). The last time I revamped a creative brief, I sat down with my then creative director and we did a sort of pick and mix of all the best briefs to put a highly structured brief format together. It ended up being quite close to this one.

However, I think there were too many boxes. It was forcing different issues and problems into the same way of thinking. So this year, we've gone and thrown out most of the boxes - yay. Even the trusty old insight and audience boxes have gone - thank goodness. No longer can planners or suits cut and paste from client briefs, but they have to really think through what's important and how they will express it (if the insight is important, make it the key thought).

Maybe I haven't seen the 'blank brief' light yet, but so far, the creative teams seem to like this one, and the work is strong, which are the ultimate acid tests, I guess.

Technorati Tags: planning,brief,"creative brief"

Predictions for 2009

The latest in an annual series of predictions about planning, advertising and the use of technology for the year ahead. I've been running at about an 80% hit rate over the last 2 or 3 years, but given today's economy, I have no idea really what to expect for 2009. I am also, somewhat lazily, reprising some thoughts from earlier presentations as I think there are still some valid trends I touched on before (maybe they were just a bit early or unformed).

I also wanted to see if there was any sort of thread through this years' predictions, and I think it's about Innovation. This will be a year when innovative ways of thinking will be required across the advertising and marketing community in order to survive and position ourselves to come out of the recession as better businesses.

Still, we'll see. And let me know what you think?

1. Ads go the way of consumer choice in a recession

I mean by this that in times of recession, consumption of mid-market / mid-price products often gives way to price-fighter brands or luxury goods (people are quite reticent to give up their luxuries). I can see Branded Content producers pushing into the advertising mainstream through their ability to create a cheap-chic ('unpimped' I called it last year) product by approaching the production more from a programme-maker's cost perspective. It's the end of the pricey yet mediocre TV ad. The corollary will be more 'luxury' or premium films (presumably for premium brands) as brand owners seek to stand out on screen.

Technorati Tags: "branded content",unpimped

2. Agencies finally 'get' brand storytelling

Sure we've been going on for ages about brand stories, but most agencies (creative departments) are I think still pretty uninterested in building and maintaining a story over a period of time (or maybe it's the often high churn rate among marketers that's to blame?). As a result of working more with branded content producers, I can see that agencies (planners?) will get good at narrative, story arcs, and brand & character development. I would like to know more about how the movie or TV industry researches narrative ideas too.

Technorati Tags: narrative,storytelling,planning,creative

3. Narratives will be told over mobile

An extension of prediction 2, combined with apps being a better medium for brands than ads on mobile devices (everyware), and the growth of mobile apps - and especially locational technology - to access physical experience (e.g. geo-caching or Loopt) is that we'll see a lot of these brand narratives playing out over mobile phones. Campaigns will aim to develop ongoing rich brand experiences integrating digital and physical aspects. Or maybe we'll see 'virtual' brands - that exist in these devices and mediate brand experiences on the go (Virtual Playstation anyone?)

Technorati Tags: narrative,storytelling,mobile,brand,virtual

4. Technology enables a 'new analogue'

I don't have one, but I think devices like the Polaroid PoGo, or Microsoft Research's Lifeclock concept, are terrific. They reapply technology to an analogue concept to make devices - or experiences - more human and accessible. Maybe agencies and marketers need to embrace these devices as a new medium for the 'mobile narrative', or just to deliver new forms of branded content.

Technorati Tags: analogue

5. Small, meaningless distractions

I believe that www.icanhascheezburger.com was largely founded on the idea of small, meaningless, playful interactions leading to more involved (and revenue-generating) brand experiences in time. The best-selling computer games are now designed to be playable in 10 - 20 hours (not 100 hours like they were just 2 or 3 years back). Twitter is taking over from blogging (less onerous). Add these together with the fact that there's a decline in Click-Through rates, and emerging new metrics (like in-banner interaction rates) for online advertising, and I can see brands deliberately trying to provide small, playful, distractions in the banner (or whatever) itself and not trying to lead people elsewhere or sell them anything. The key to success for these interactions will be their seeming pointlessness and amusement value. So, how many agencies have game-designers in house?

Technorati Tags: "small meaningless distractions",banner,play

6. Connected brand experiences across the web

Another projection from no 5 combined with no 2: make these little distractions highly connected across the web. Those connections could either be within the user's online environment, or linking multiple users together via informal, temporary social networks. I liked the Orange Balloon Race, and the potential of apps like PMOG - which allow the user a playful (branded) experience to accompany them across the web, to interact with their content, and their context.

Technorati Tags: "informal social networks",connected

7. Tagging the real world

We're used to tagging everything we put on the web, and I think marketers and agencies are going to look at how we can tag the real world better, and create little, useful brand encounters. Maybe it is going to be more use for shot (QR) codes - I planned a campaign for an airline earlier in the year which proposed travellers creating and posting shot codes at destinations - or it might be the use of RFID/scannable tags (like Tikitags) that form the basis of this. Of course, we'll all need scanners, so mobile phone-based technology will probably prevail.

Technorati Tags: tags,tagging,"real world"

8. NBDB

This is a thought about experimentation. In the days when innovation is a priority to stay interesting, and when we're trying to build stronger brand relationships, marketers are going to need to try things that have never been done before. Or, at very least, are difficult to quantify. Penguin have led the way in trying out all sorts of new digital marketing - I don't know what the ROI is, but it certainly deepens people's affection for the brand

Technorati Tags: Experimentation,ROI,relationship

9. A new metric for the engagement economy

One of the outcomes of all this narrative and mobile activity will be the requirement for a different kind of metric - and model - for success. Starting with the model, then, the traditional consideration-purchase funnel seems somewhat outmoded or simplistic (or at least it's fashionable to think so). I'll certainly be working on a proprietary model for the agency in 2009. And one of the big areas of focus will be to reduce the emphasis on ROI where possible. Unless the agency is selling off the creative (eg eCRM) it's tough to be directly accountable for the sales return (and I did econometrics) - but we should be accountable for some new measure of engagement-cum-consideration (brand love perhaps?). Joseph Jaffe says we'll need new metrics to guide, direct and validate new commitment-based marketing, and Andy Sernovitz says that "Companies that focus on earning love will thrive during hard times, and kick ass when good times return." (thanks Darmano).

Technorati Tags: metrics,engagement,"brand love",consideration,ROI

10. Hope

A bit of an odd one this. We're all going to need a bit of hope to get through the next year or two. Regardless of the expectations he's set up for himself, the Obama campaign was built on hope and their ability to deliver it. I think we'll see more higher-order claims by leadership brands (or successful challengers). And that they might be perceived as a bit cheesey or American won't matter because people will want to believe in it, and they'll want the brands they love to help them come through these times.

Technorati Tags: hope,leadership,obama

So, that's the ten top tips for 2009. I have a powerpoint version of this - with added picturely goodness - which I'll be touting round clients shortly. As usual, I'll do an update half-way through the year too, to see how things are going.

Fast = Non-Obvious

One of the main reasons for the general lack of posts in the recent (and, in fact, the not-so-recent) past is we've been pitching like crazy. Which is good. Our win rate is OK - above average so that's nice too. But if we won everything, we'd be all over the front - and back - of Campaign every week. You wouldn't hear the end of us.

One of the reasons I think is lack of time on some of these pitches. Gone are the days of 4 or 6 week pitches it seems, and hello 4 or 6 days. If we're lucky. The challenge then, is not just 'fast strategy'. I define fast strategy (probably wrongly) as non-obvious strategy. Finding the right or obvious answer is ultimately not that hard - but taking a leap beyond that, with some rationale for doing so, with no time at all, is the hard bit. Not least because everyone else's innate caution filters tend to kick when we're going a hundred miles an hour.

But from talking with John recently, it's the 'fast creative' bit agencies need to come to turn with - i.e. deriving non-obvious creative solutions, blooming quickly.

Dick Foster used to run McKinsey in the US and wrote a book about creative destruction. While this was mainly focused on creative solutions to business (process) problems, his views about collective genius might be the answer to fast creative. Rather than brief creative teams and let them run with pitch briefs, perhaps we should put the entire department in a room and brainstorm (run by the planners) all the obvious creative routes.

Let's get all the ones off-brief, or with their strategic knickers showing, or the boring ones, or the student ideas, or whatever, on the walls and on the table and out of the way. The give the creative teams the hours or days they have left to nail something interesting, original and non-obvious.

Technorati Tags: planning,creative,non-obvious,"fast strategy","fast creative",pitching

What can advertising learn from Obama's win?

So the result of the US election is known. Advertising and marketing has for many years played an influential role in elections, not just advertising the party or candidate, but advising. But in the spirit of keeping things simple (if not frankly superficial), what are the main learnings for me from the Obama campaign?

One word equity. OK it changed halfway through, but Change worked. Listen to the interviews on the news over the last few weeks and people play the word back, but framed in their interpretation of it. They ascribe their own meaning to it, which sort of makes it even more powerful.

Grassroots. Brands take note. Making something as big as winning the presidency rest on the shoulders of individuals, and giving them a role to play in the victory was crucial. If brands want to create a huge campaign, get everyone involved in creating it, in the community (Scorpion football, anyone?). This wasn't just the strategy for voting, it was also the strategy for campaign donations too.

Backstory. Both candidates had backstories but I think Obama's was more resonant to a modern generation. We talk about authenticity and provenance, or expertise (in the absence of authenticity). Maybe we should be looking more for their backstories and weaving them into the mainstream communications. How do we make brands (or campaigns) interesting and textural, in a way that creates empathy and depth.

Conceptual targeting. Joe the Plumber was the everyman around whom the campaign promises and policies centred. But the 'target audience' became the subject and focus of the campaign rather than just a background reference point. It served to remind everyone that the campaign was about, and for, them.

Semiotics and the power of art. I'm a big fan of using semiotics for branding and communication design. Obama seems to have been much more canny than McCain in terms of imagery (the 'hope' graphic portrait), use of colour and typography (although 'change we need' sounds like Yoda talking), and the psychological or cultural take-out from these things seems to be one of stature and scale, of seeing the big picture.

Messaging optimisation. Candidates are drilled to within an inch of their lives what to say and how to react. But seeing Mark Penn on Newsnight, and as part of Hillary's campaign earlier on, reminds me that PSB's methodology of optimising a message to an audience, from a given 'voice' is a useful tool more brands could take advantage of (plug over).

 

Technorati Tags: semiotics

Technorati Tags: obama,backstory,equity,change,grasroots,planning,advertising

Freelancer required

I'm after a mid-weight freelance planner for 3 months to work on new business and existing clients - booze and financial services. Get in touch if you're interested?

Mad inventor

We had dinner the other night with a well known software entrepreneur (not Bill). Cryptic link to a shot of his house here. We were riffing around with the notion that hybrids, like Priuses, are dangerous in town centres as they're silent. People cross the roads with their ears not their eyes. So, apparently, hybrid manufacturers are to build in sound generators. This made me think it would be fun to download your own - 'rolltones'? - say to emulate a tank, or a jet, or a gas-guzzler (so you can at least pretend). Said entrepreneur took extensive notes and no doubt has the wherewithal to make such fancy a reality. But you heard it here first.

(thanks skinnydiver for the pic)

American Postcard

I was going to use a screen shot from the Olympics on TV here but apparently I can't as there is a disclaimer on all the coverage that unauthorised reproduction and distribution is prohibited. Nice. Why wouldn't they want their images distributed as much as possible? So here's an old picture of the fair.

I'm writing from the home of the Staycation - holidays taken at home in the US rather than travelling to Europe. As a consequence the roads are crowded but the restaurants are half empty, as people make use of their holiday homes and friends' invitations.
One thing I've been most struck by is just how insanely eager the Americans (and I'm generalising massively here - I'm on an island the size of the Isle of Wight with the demographic profile of Belgravia)are for the Olympics. It's like they've been waiting for four years just to see how well (actually how badly) the US performed on the pommell horse. The bars are packed to the gills of young and old alike glued to the plasma at midnight. Maybe it's just patriotism, or something else in the psyche that compels us to watch.

Equally fascinating is just how bad the ads are right now. You can see the scene: pick any main channel (CNBC, CCNBC, CBNC, CNNBCC, CBNNCCBBCC, etc) and visualise a random picture of an athlete you've never heard of, scrubbed to within an inch of their lives, and insert-packshot-here of haemmorhoid cream/4x4/insurance/anti-depressants. Where have all the ideas gone? Coke came reasonably close with a computer animated spot featuring two NBA basketball players from different nationalities being united through their love of Coke. Ahh (ugh). But at least there was an idea. Brands that co-opt sporting events and simply stick a random athlete in or logo on mere product information quickly becomes wallpaper. It's offensive to watch actually. I mean these people have had four years to think about it, to find an idea and make it look majestic and brilliant.

London take note.

Right, I'm off to the pool.

Agent of the evil empire

I worked on the launch of Halo 2 so I thought this was fun, if not slightly nerdy and obsessive. BTW, 'agent' was my tag. Thanks to Craig for the excellent image.

Geo-tagging to hit the mainstream?

I've always loved the idea of geo-tagging photographs. I used to travel maybe 120 times a year and took photographs as a way of documenting my trips (on film too - I'm that old). Then, I played around with Google Earth, dropping holiday photos onto maps of the planet. And sharing them with friends around the world. All good fun but it always felt at the edge of nerd-dom.
Now I have a BlackBerry (they're a client, hence the correct spelling). As do many many other people. Now, Nokia have had gps in the n95 for a while, but BlackBerry have a huge installed base and repurchase rate. That makes me think it's *just* the device to get geo-tagging to take off, big-styley. I don't quite know - apart from ego (showing off) or keeping track of close friends and relatives, what the real application of geo-tagging is - but I can't wait to find out (thoughts please!!!)
I just wish these BlackBerrys had a decent damn camera.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I set up a little Flickr group to this end, and let's see who comes to play.

Renaissance and the slowdown

Adage have a little article about what 'renaissance marketers' need to do to develop integrated marketing campaigns (actually, IMC's - I love the way people can turn everything into a Three Letter Acronym, or TLA).  In a nutshell, it precis how agencies do it:

- strategic consistency (I'd call it coherence; slight difference)

- common measurement framework

- break down functional silos

- ensure you have the functional and technical skills to deliver.

But they seem to have missed out the bit where they have to buy some creative work. What is the renaissance work they should be looking for, what characteristics should it have?

I found an old book on the shelves at home which might provide the answer. Early renaissance art was categorised by naive wonder. Middle renaissance by intellectual idealisation. The high renaissance by scale, energy and high art.

Perhaps BMW films were a good example of exploring and surprising people about the possibilities of integration with digital at the core. Perhaps I Love Bees was a neat example of creating a very deliberate programme of experience orchestrating different channels through the web. Has anyone done the latter? Are there high renaissance integrated creative campaigns yet? Are there any agencies producing them (the scramble for digital agencies to become ad agencies, and vice versa, suggests not). Are there any clients - renaissance marketers, in fact - putting briefs out for this sort of work?

Technorati Tags: renaissance,marketing,integrated,adage,art

Positioning for an economic downturn? Or, of baby birds and octopi.

So it's pretty clear the industry is in for a bit of a rough spell. There usual summer lull in new business and softening budgets may not come back in the autumn. The IPA has been talking for a while now about the importance of brands advertising during a recession to strengthen your market position when it's hard for your competitors to respond.

But, how do agencies position themselves for this downturn?

Networks have greater flex than smaller agencies. They can move people around the network, compensate for downturns in one market through network revenues, and downsize more easily. I was in a network during and after the last recession, so I can remember how they consolidate and adapt.

Smaller, independent agencies have less elasticity of resources and cashflow. Less 'fat'. The danger is they strip out a lot of the cost which makes them less able to add value and slower to respond to an upturn (and therefore vulnerable to sale).

I suppose my answer is that smaller agencies have to try and sell an integrated offer based on a value (not low cost) basis. They can save the client money by not having to maintain a lot of separate contracts with different agencies (a network to a client must look like a nest with loads of constantly demanding baby birds competing for scraps of worms from the parent). Integration can mean keeping the brains trust together and coordinating an integrated structure (and therefore campaign design) around the clients' business. More like an octopus, then.

And I wonder how many agencies have been bold enough to start talking about the R word in their creds yet?

Technorati Tags: economics,positioning,downturn,integrated,advertising,recession