Silver lining?

So I snapped some phone shots at the chaos at Heathrow today and stuck them on Flickr - by the time I got to Boston, I had CNN and a public news network emailing me if it's ok to use the images on TV. Absolutely! The speed of the media and the sense of participation reminds me of this link, which is worth a look: http://idorosen.com/mirrors/robinsloan.com/epic/ols-master.html

Bike trip

Country scene
Originally uploaded by alt.planning.

We've been working on some advertising ideas for Transport for London about how to stop cyclists riding through red lights. Doing our research certainly has moderated my riding behaviour (I was always pretty cautious, but I'm doubly so now). But I'm getting really fed up with dimwit drivers failing to anitcipate the speed I'm travelling and turning in front of me, or in the side of me (I still don't know how I dodged that one).

Anyway, enough rant. - this was a phonecam pic in Cobham today. What camera would be good to take on a ride?

Central Park with Tilt Shift Effect

Central Park with Tilt Shift Effect
Originally uploaded by alt.planning.

Well I failed after one day to take a new picture to post to the Flickr group but I tried to make up for it by doing this last night - a fake tilt shift using photoshop. I saw Olivo Barbieri's pictures at the Tate Modern recently and, judging from the Flickr activity, this is a popular new photo technique. My guess is we'll start seeing these images in advertising very soon.

Are we in the advertising business or MEDIA ARTS? discuss.

The real art of Pixar?

13 07 2006

Art of Pixar @ MOMA NY (and the Science Museum, London)

Two things struck me at the Pixar exhibition.

Firstly, that the show seemed built around the use of ‘old’ technology rather than the new. This was surprising, and charming. A Victorian zoetrope was the centrepiece, with a spinning three-dimensional animation of the Toy Story characters. There was genuine delight on the faces of all those watching – that people could be so beguiled by a concept from the past albeit with a modern and inventive twist – was refreshing to see. Similarly, there was a ‘movie’ of art from different films – essentially a slideshow projected on a panoramic screen – when the ‘easy’ thing to do would be show clips from the films themselves. They let the pictures do the talking, there’s no narrative/ Perhaps our presentations could benefit from a more pictorial or artistic approach?

The other thing was how relentless Pixar are to get things right. There must have been 20 or so ‘pre-volutions’ of the Sully character from Monsters Inc, each one rendered by different artists, then a number of artists riffing on their chosen direction. Sure, their movies live or die by the appeal and inventiveness of these characters, but I loved the way they can harness wildly different talents in the focused pursuit of the end result.

Integration - a dirty word?

What are Integrated communications, and why are they a bad thing?

“More and more marketers are embracing Integrated Communications Planning to ensure that all their marketing communications work together in harmony”. (IPA)

(Mediacom): “In essence it means joined-up thinking. Joining up all agencies (advertising, media, PR, below-the-line, sponsorship etc) so that they work in harmony and with focus. Joining up all knowledge about the target audience so that they are fully understood. Joining up all the sources of data to fully understand how the advertising will work, and how well it is working”.

Lovely.

But, in reality, integrated communications are campaigns made to look and feel the same in multiple channels, for international, agency, or client convenience. There’s a misconception that the brand has to be delivered in a consistent way at all consumer touchpoints.

This belief is rapidly being dispelled by a few progressive agencies and marketers. Alan Rutherford at Unilever coined the phrase ‘holistic’ which is now taken to mean a brand idea or brand essence at the core of a campaign that is optimised for each channel. So the TV can look very different to the web to the RM programme.

A fundamental driver for this approach is the emergence of the experience economy. From Pine & Gillmor’s book (published by HBS), brands have moved to a new stage of added value, from products to services to experiences. “I think by now, many marketers have come to realise the importance of tangibility and experienced quality” (John Grant, The New Marketing Manifesto). In order to deliver the best possible brand experiences, they have to be optimised for each channel, not homogenised for every channel. Another proponent of this view is Jean-Maire Dru in Beyond Disruption: “The medium is no longer the message. The medium is now the experience and the benefit”

Cases in point include W+K’s Honda work. W+K, or Chemistry for that matter, work on the principle that creative has to be interesting, engaging and respectful of the time and place it is consumed. As Howard Gossage said 50 years ago: “People don’t read advertisements. They read what interests them, and sometimes that’s an advertisement”. Our creative for Baileys is based on the same brand core as BBH’s TV but has a different executional idea, look and feel, optimised for the direct and digital channels we operate in. This approach is 3 times more successful for the brand

We’re seeing this trend evidenced in all the major IPA award winners – even small agencies on comparatively small brands are punching above their weight with well-crafted holistic campaigns. http://www.ipaeffectivenessawards.co.uk/shop/index.html

And this approach is working with consumers because the time is right – that technology in particular has changed the way people interact with brands; and the entertainment industry has conditioned people to new experiences that the communications industry have copied – e.g. BMW’s films & their new audiobooks.

As Nike puts it: “I believe that the best, probably the only job, for TV advertising, is to wrap a bundle of feelings and associations around the brand. Good advertising is very good at doing this. (Not that there's a lot of good advertising around.) - the conversation today is more about brands engaging in two way conversation - not broadcasting. Nike didn’t discover the power of advertising – they discovered the power of their own voice. It was true for advertising, it's even more true in the world of blogs and allied trades” (Russell Davies, Nike)

Integration is dead – long live integration

Royal Academy

Royal Academy
Originally uploaded by alt.planning.

So this is my first shot for our group. It's going to be hard to find a shot everyday but I think it'll be nice to have something other than work to think about, and to exercise the eyes on something other than the computer screen.

It would have been better if I'd got it straight, but hey ho. It's also my first shot with my new phone (Orange m600) and the colours have turned out really strange - notably a strong blue cast.

For some reason Shozu didn't play and I had to email the image to Flickr. Why is it still so difficult to blog from your mobile to a proper service like Blogger or Flickr?

New Flickr Group

Pixel Thoughts is the name of a new group we've set up. Not a competition but there may be prizes. One shot a day. Most views wins (although I think this is a test of tags rather than photography)

Drawing the line?

For a few years now we’ve all been programmed to cross the line. Many an agency’s proposition is based on integrating through the line, or in erasing it from their thinking entirely.

I’d like to see if we should put the line back, but in a surprising new way.

We all know how the agency world has changed in the past few years – this argument is based on looking at a ‘perfect storm’ of these trends.

It’s a freelance world. More agencies are more reliant on freelance creative than ever. Teams get exposure to all sorts of different environments and briefs that keep them fresh. Agencies get an influx of new thinking, shared experience of others ways of doing things, and solution neutral creativity. The concept of ‘line’ is still referred to openly and often - but usually in spite of any given agency’s freelance-driven creative capability.

Media fragmentation. Although people are consuming more media than ever, they are doing so through more channels, with more screening mechanisms and with more simultaneous channel consumption than ever before. In response, we see the rise of ‘lean towards’ media (to borrow Will Awdry’s lovely term for it) – channels that encourage people to participate and interact, to co-create and navigate on their own terms.

The masses or the few. Digital is growing gangbusters at the moment and traditional DM shops are turning traditional DM budgets through digital channels. After all, why build and maintain relationships among a small group expensively when you can reach a large group inexpensively.

Ideas are different now. Sure there are plenty of your bog-standard campaigns kicking around, but there are also wildly experiential campaigns that tie together multiple channels in fresh ways and involve the consumer in the act of communication. And if they are good enough, our new breed of ideas are capable of engaging millions, not just niche high-value segments. Ad agencies talk about amplification – of broadcasting entertaining ideas to millions, but now, savvy agencies of all denominations can ‘activate’ ideas to broad consumer groups.

So what do we have in our ‘perfect storm’? Every agency can do everything. The media landscape has skewed from passive receptive to ‘lean towards’. Ideas are activated, not amplified. Smart multi-channel experiential campaigns can engage the many, not just the few.

So where do we draw the ‘line’?

Well, I’d argue that the skill sets of the agencies we used to call below-the-line are actually better suited to weather this perfect storm than their above-the-line counterparts.

What do you think?