Lock down mind cramming
Like many other Planners filling their enforced extra time at home. Currently overloading with watching, reading, and listening. Thing is when we all get out if you thought we were annoying in the use of obscure or random references before Covid-19, man oh man, just wait. I must have racked up at least a year’s worth of random inputs in the last few months inside. I’ve become a coiled spring of the most lateral, mind bogglingly bizarre facts, quotes and statistics. Weaponised with renewed editing skills. The next thought piece you ask of me will smoke
“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary”
Nothing moves forward without disappointing some from where it came from
““...Making music specifically to please fans can be patronising and exploitative. Challenging music, by its very nature, alienates some fans whilst inspiring others, but without that dissonance, there is no conversation, there is no risk, there are no tears and there are no smiles, and nobody is moved and nobody is affected!””
Don't fall for the conspiracy chic
I’m a planner, I read, lots. It’s the job. Recently I’ve become fascinated by the best seller lists in non-fiction. There’s appears to be a rather prescient theme running through all the titles; the world is shit here’s how I/you can deal with it. It’s like an end of the world self help group reading list.
The titles sort of divide into two camps. One, the voices of the hidden. Stories from the unseen struggling in a world of chaos; The Secret Barrister, Tales from a Junior Docter Then there are the evangelists of self-help offering you salvation from a world in chaos. ‘The subtle art of not giving a f*uck’’ ‘Surrounded by idiots’
So why all the doom and despair?
I’m sure its not escaped your attention, globally and parochially here in the UK; the current outlook is less than chipper. Politics appears just made up as it goes along without a care for truth or expertise. Legacy businesses are struggling with technology and ‘value engineering’ i.e. ‘can you do it cheaper?’ Plus we appear to have truly screwed the environment in which we live. Interesting too that the drug of choice right now is Ketamine or as The Cut magazine recently wrote it’s the party drug for the end of the world. The perfect match for today’s dislocated youth.
But is there more to the perpetuation of doom? Many current populist political leaders are leaning on the hidden enemy troupe. Spelling out to their supporters that the reasons behind current woes are ‘those over there’ a nebulous hidden force at work in the shadows. A collective of many whether its generically ‘the media’ or a cabal of billionaires. It’s a convenient narrative to have in popular culture as it detracts from what really matters. Genuine changes that help mankind.
This kind of conspiracy chic is interesting as it’s currently the 30th anniversary of the Berlin wall coming down. Which brought to an end the epitome of what a real conspiracy culture can create. Erich Honecker’s East German regime was built on and maintained by paranoia of hidden enemy’s. Even to the extend of children informing on their own parents. But unlike today’s leaders flirtations with conspiracy themes. In East Germany it became frighteningly real. People died, mainly trying to escape from the terror.
So yes it does matter, fuelling a conspiracy chic has consequences. Clearly it also sells a lot of books. But can we rise above this or maybe it’s as fruitless as Elton John attempted to get his record company to do something about the wind outside his bedroom. A long held urban myth that he delightfully confirms as true in his scurrilously brilliant memoir, Me. Currently sat at the top of this list of books I’ve been talking about.
Look your world may seem a tad grim right now, but in most cases its not, made up as it is, of a stack of artifice that has been generated to serve others. Head up to the light and consider what you can change. Oh yeah and don’t forget to register to vote. Now that really matters.
Stunts with a heart of gold
Huddersfield Town managed to provoke a wide-ranging debate on social media last week with the unveiling of new kit with a ludicrously oversized sponsors logo. Clearly all was not as it seemed, it was indeed a prank courtesy of shirt sponsor Paddy Power
Paddy Power did something shocking and after the initial outburst reveal it’s an outrageous stunt (with a heart of gold ‘Save Our Shirts’). Well it’s not a new headline is it? Paddy Power have been at this game since 1988 but in terms of stunt advertising you probably have to go back to 1870 and PT Barnum, notorious for countless pranks to get people talking about his brand. It was his idea to walk elephants unannounced through mid-western towns to drum up business for his circus.
Many years later in the late 1980’s Crispin Porter + Bogusky adapted an elephant as their logo and the mantra of ‘Walking an elephant through town’ in other words what’s the cultural shift, the talkability this idea can generate? No surprise it was their London office that was responsible for so much of Paddy Powers break out work; Rainbow laces, Tiger Woods sky writing and Chav Tranquilizer at Cheltenham races to name but a few.
On the face of it staging a prank has appeal, it can be a fast, cost effective way to get your brand talked about. But just because you can, does not mean you should. A mantra true of so much in life, but when it comes to stunts in advertising often ignored. There have been great pranks, that gained attention and drove brand value, but and it’s a massive but, for every great one there are countless tone deaf, unfunny acts of desperation. NatWest and its Mansplaining Mr Banker from May of this year certainly comes to mind.
So, what makes a good marketing stunt if its not budget? The key thing is trust. From the from the brand owner to agency to general public. No one wants to be taken for a mug. Illusion and deception have been part of human society since time immemorial. But brands are built on ever more fragile consumer trust. Knowing the true extend of your audiences’ relationship with your brand is key. But so is the relationship between agency and client. While Paddy Powers Huddersfield Town stunt may well have been planned months in advance. It’s rare, normally the opportunity for a stunt is very in the moment which means standard sign off processes have to be accelerated. Which is normally impossible unless brand and agency already trust each other and know each other’s boundary’s.
Finally, it should go without saying but unless you invest in the time and effort to nurture creativity all will be lost. Having seen first-hand the creation of some of Paddy Powers campaigns, what appears to be a spur of the moment stunt, is the product of extremely talented, senor people working extremely long hours sweating the detail to get it right.
Finally, is the ‘Save Our Shirt’ campaign with Huddersfield Town and now Motherwell FC any good? While for the football teams it’s a win, loads more preseason publicity than their budgets could have hoped for. For Paddy Power being an outspoken brand in a category facing growing criticism of its prominent shirt sponsorships the idea of championing ‘unsponsoring’ is a smart move and potentially has a life much bigger than a one-off stunt. Like the afore mentioned Rainbow laces campaign to tackle homophobia in football, what was a one-off stunt in 2013 is now an annual event. Maybe over and above all the manufactured fuss with Huddersfield’s fake sash the notion of ‘unsponsoring’ by a gambling brand may just be the real deal.
‘Crossing the Streams and the impending death of affordable choice’
It’s all happening in streaming right now, Loads of new services, from the likes of NBC and HBO, rumours of a Facebook service, Amazon launching a free ad supported product as YouTube offers a ad free premium service. While in the wings Apple gets ready for a world wide launch of its streaming service, while not up to Netflix standards Apples rumoured budget for original programming is in the low $ billions. I can see the drive by the studios. Why share profits with the likes of Netflix when we can ring fence our content into our own world, with our own ad revenues, it’s just that the small matter of poor customer satisfaction does creep in a tad.
The recent activity in streaming services reminds me of the early days of MP3s around the time of the iPod3 launch, 2003, remember? ‘In Da Club’? ‘The Cheeky Girls’? No? anyway what was happening at that time was a proliferation of download services, some ad funded, some clean. The reason so many didn’t make it was under funded, rushed services leading to a combination of clunky UX and limited content selection. We are now witnessing a similar headlong dash into streaming rich media content. I do shudder slightly when NBC claim they can harvest $5 a month ad revenue from its users, potentially because they are still struggling with the menu system and click on an ad by mistake.
Sure in time like the multitude of music download sites of the past, there will be mergers and consolidation into a market leader who can afford to develop the UX and buy original content, but that will take a few years yet. In the meantime the consumer is left with a multitude of fee based options and an ever more desperate advertising model behind it.
2019 seems to have been the year we lost the wonder of pretty much all the content we want in one place. Toggling between Amazon and Netflix is just about ok for most but once HBO, Disney and the others all pull their content off into closed worlds, what of affordable choice? Sadly that looks to be sooo 2018
Broken banking a perfect fit for a broken society
What is the value of a bank brand in 2020?
With few exceptions the banking industry appears to be finding it increasingly hard to come to terms with the prescience of start-up FS brands like Starling and Monzo. Kantar recently released a report that said traditional high street lenders had lost a collective £1.6bn in brand value over the last 12 months. This is a big figure. Especially when you consider it means the eight biggest banks in the UK declined by an average of 7% in 2018. This was once a category built on a reputation of an established name backed by grand buildings and the endorsement of grand parents or similar figures of note with grey hair and wise words
But it can’t be so simple that the upstarts have turned people’s heads with brightly coloured cards. When Kantar results were published the tone of much coverage, especially that by the traditional FS media was that the new players like Revolut, Monzo and Starling were in some way to blame, that it was their fault. That is really odd, true some of the upstarts have been guilty of questionable marketing; Revoluts rip-off Spotify campaign, which in their own words featured stats ‘we just made up’ was pretty poor. But there is more going on to explain the big banks troubles.
What most of the new brands offered was a human faced service. But this is often the case for any well-funded disrupter in an established category. Attack bloated established competitors with fast customer service and a humanised tone of voice. This is a tough one for the banking industry as with the clear exception of First Direct most UK banking customers think the service they get from their bank stinks. That fact remains even after multi-million pound rebrands and relaunches. Most UK consumers don’t value bank brands.
The very thing that made the big banks so valuable, is the one thing that now makes them so vulnerable. Their traditions and part within the old order. The current climate of mistrust in institutions only goes to further weaken the banks new advertising, it’s not the message. It’s the product truth. Monzo and the other new banks, are not more valuable brands because of feature superiority, they win because they are not perceived to be part of the enemy.
But does this matter? is it just a natural resettling of value in an always on digital world? Underpinned by the fact, the traditional lending banks are not losing stacks of customers. Switching bank brands is after all something very few of us actually do. Many may open second or third accounts. In the UK we average 2.4 accounts each. But actually, leaving one bank brand for another is only done by 1.4% of us last year.
We will see more banking advertising with customer service claims at the heart. There will be more start-ups. But trust and brand value are unlikely to go up. It’s not about brightly coloured cards or epic TV spots. The core tenant of the category is just not liked. I mentioned before First Direct. For 30 years this HSBC owned outlier brand has been consistent in the way it talks and behaves, standing as it always has, as a customer centric entity first, bank second. Banking just different. Its customers have also been consistent in voting it best for service year after year. Recently awarded yet again Best Buy status by consumer champions, Which magazine.
So maybe the perfect bank for 2020 is an established bank after all. Just one that does not behave like one.
Agency of the present (ish)
I’m annoyed. I’m reading another article speculating about the shape of the Agency of the Future
It was back in 2011 at Cannes that Will.i.am stated “Ad agencies are yesterday”. With it, along with troubles within WPP, it appeared to kick off a tsunami of articles and endless debates on the ‘Agency of the Future’. With the seismic shifts in the agency landscape recently I would have thought we’ve sort of done this now, but the debate continues in some quarters as this week in Cannes, Microsoft are sponsoring yet another ‘Agency of the Future” debate.
You can’t help feeling this has become a bit of a race to the middle, a blanding out of advice from group think. The same quotes and insight; How much the consultancies are spending on buying agencies, success stories of in-housing. Crippling costs of staff and office accommodation in London. I think people get it. The advertising industry has changed.
But what remains is our core purpose, to sell to distracted audiences. We do this, when at our best, with emotive ideas that stir the soul. Tolerating uncertainty through internal navel gazing, devalues the potential for creativity. This is not a time to leave anything to chance.
That’s why I really think it’s time to talk about the Agency of the Present. Right here, right now, are waaaaaay too many clients in fear of their jobs, desperate for some kind of result. Famous brands are in creditors meetings almost daily. These people are not seeking another debate, they just need fresh creativity, engaging ideas backed by skills that can predict and measure results, they need all this now.
I offer nothing new other than what was, and should always be, our mission; nurture great talent, tolerate the random, champion amazing work. Go home on time.
EMBRACING CHAOS Or the search for humanity in the spaces we inhabit
At the forefront of place branding we’re seeing an interesting trend emerging. The celebration of the human desire for the unexpected. The need for an emotive layer in our automated worlds.
The impact of this on large scale branded developments in highly populated urban areas is fascinating. There’s a perception that many city developments are pristine but sadly, soulless spaces.
The new Kings Cross development in London, is centred on Europe’s biggest new public space, Granary Square. The developers went right back to ideas first promoted in ancient Rome. They believed a city should provide inspiration and wonder, with the unexpected around any corner. This strategy means the plans of the development are literally reversed, with the public areas being planned first. Local people were invited in, encouraged to linger and be entertained. It allowed people to establish a sense of space and identity, anchoring them and their needs to the place before fitting commercial properties around it. Costly, but the under-pinning theory still works the best. Placing people first.
Geographer Bradley L Garrett wrote in The Guardian, “The problem with these developments is they lack that kind of energy. They feel too monitored, too controlled.”
The geographer David Harvey said, “The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is…one of the most precious, yet most neglected of our human rights.”
Constant change, exploration and progression is demonstrated to those few experiencing a fully self-driving car. People commented how it was terrifying initially, but within 15 minutes it became numbingly boring. The same can be said of our surroundings.
We are adapting to our changing cityscapes with remarkable ease. We really don’t want the expected. Our emotions demand spontaneity for a reassurance of reality. Research by UCL and Otto von Guericke University prove our brains respond to the novelty of situations by exploring, in search of a reward. It’s well documented how shoppers speed up when walking past blank facades. So it’s not just architecture, it’s the pulse of people on the street. The environmental psychologist and neuroscientist Colin Ellard recently wrote about humans feeling happier, more comfortable and more productive within cityscapes offering novelty and impulse options.
This is not an invitation to simply reflect a happy, smiley world.
A smiling image in an ad is now considered fake. The upshot of this? The stock photo libraries like Shutterstock are reporting a doubling in demand for images showing ‘sadness’. Even ‘fear’ is being selected almost twice as often as ‘surprise’. A not-so-perfect world is the new perfect world. Highlighted as supermarkets are now championing ‘wonky’ fruit and veg.
An identity that evolves and involves the user.
But what does this mean for the spaces we inhabit, both digitally and in the real world? Whether we know it or not, we need the odd bump in the road. Constantly looking for the unexpected, to experience the new. Be it a random Instagram, beguiling outdoor banner or a public space with the most bizarre pop-up that disappears 48 hours later or an identity that evolves and involves the user. The psychologist Danial Goleman said, “Emotion plays a powerful role in our lives and has gained significant attention as a priority area of study in interaction design.”
Consumers will enthusiastically spend money in a place or at an event that promises ‘managed’ versions of the unexpected.
It has been shown that increased loyalty and productivity come from environments that facilitate the needs of social and physical group dynamics. It’s no wonder that immersive experiences whether dinning, theatre or film are so big right now. The engaging promise is of a layer of humanity and a little managed chaos added to the experience.
This element of spontaneity is what we’re searching for. Online or in the real world. It’s what is driving us to rethink how we brand the locations and spaces we visit and live in.
By embracing the joy of human chaos we will make our public spaces more interactive, fun experiences and their online presence more inspiring and enjoyable.
Don't fall for the Conspiracy Chic
I’m a planner, I read, lots. It’s the job. Recently I’ve become fascinated by the best seller lists in non-fiction. There’s appears to be a rather prescient theme running through all the titles; the world is shit here’s how I/you can deal with it. It’s like an end of the world self help group reading list.
The titles sort of divide into two camps. One, the voices of the hidden. Tales from the unseen struggling in a world of chaos; The Secret Barrister, Junior Doctors, Chernobyl workers. Then there are the evangelists of self-help offering you salvation from a world in chaos; ‘Surrounded by idiots’ ‘Subtle Art of not Giving a F*ck’ etc, oh and a stack of ‘rules of life’ stocking fillers
So why all the doom and despair?
I’m sure its not escaped your attention, globally and parochially here in the UK; the current outlook is less than chipper. Politics appears just made up as it goes along without a care for truth or expertise. Legacy businesses are struggling with technology and ‘value engineering’ i.e. ‘can you do it cheaper?’ Plus we appear to have truly screwed the environment in which we live. Interesting too that the drug of choice right now is Ketamine or as The Cut magazine recently wrote it’s the party drug for the end of the world. The perfect match for today’s dislocated youth.
But is there more to the perpetuation of doom? Many current populist political leaders are leaning on the hidden enemy troupe. Spelling out to their supporters that the reasons behind current woes are ‘those over there’ a nebulous hidden force at work in the shadows. A collective of many whether its generically ‘the media’ or a cabal of billionaires. It’s a convenient narrative to have in popular culture as it detracts from what really matters. Genuine changes that help mankind.
This kind of conspiracy chic is interesting as it’s currently the 30th anniversary of the Berlin wall coming down. Which brought to an end the epitome of what a real conspiracy culture can create. Erich Honecker’s East German regime was built on and maintained by paranoia of hidden enemy’s. Even to the extend of children informing on their own parents. But unlike today’s leaders flirtations with conspiracy themes. In East Germany it became frighteningly real. People died, mainly trying to escape from the terror.
So yes it does matter, fuelling a conspiracy chic has consequences. Clearly it also sells a lot of books. But can we rise above this or maybe it’s as fruitless as Elton John attempted to get his record company to do something about the wind outside his bedroom. A long held urban myth that he delightfully confirms as true in his scurrilously brilliant memoir, Me. Currently sat at the top of this list of books I’ve been talking about.
Look your world may seem a tad grim right now, but in most cases its not, made up as it is, of a stack of artifice that has been generated to serve others. Head up to the light and consider what you can change. Oh yeah and don’t forget to register to vote. Now that really matters
Is branding really a drug?
It is interesting to see Wetherspoons Tim Martin talking about the demise of Jamie’s Italian as the seduction of branding. As chairman of the UK’s number one pub brand, as awarded by the World Branding Awards last year, one would of thought he was a keen advocate, albeit Wetherspoons do seem to take great delight in stating they are not a brand and each individual outlet is an entity in its own right, I feel the YouGov data relating to ‘Spoons kind of undercuts all that, as the great British public do indeed see ‘Spoons as collective brand. One nurtured over time and preserved via strict policing of values and delivery details.
Tim Martin would have people believe branding is some kind of spell that you cast over customers which wears off after a while – but in the real world, it’s far more complicated. The hospitality industry is super difficult and any venue, regardless of how good or how expensive its food is, will likely fail inside two years without major investment in branding and marketing. This is true whether it’s backed by a newly crowned TV chef or a hipster pop-up going permanent. Jamie Oliver’s casual dining brands were as much an experience for customers as they were for staff, mostly to the good and but were born from and reflective of an earlier, predelivery time.
But trends move on and brands have to keep up with their audiences’ changing expectations. It’s a very competitive place, and consumers buy into experience. Nando’s and Wagamama have invested in their brand and the customer experience once in branch, providing digital experiences that can speed up the ordering, remove the risk of customer service slip ups, and allow customers to pay without all that awkward signing for the bill.
This last point is really important and where detractors like Tim Martin miss the very thing they are actually doing, Wetherspoons focuses on the customer experience that is branding. Its way too simplistic to think branding stops at a logo and a colourful menu. Hospitality brands are built from the customer experience outwards.
Meanwhile, it’s also important to remember that ownership models have also changed, and this will have had an impact on the fate of Jamie’s Italian. His investors brought in venture capitalists to expand, and the model became detached from its origins. Running for new profit targets ended up undermining the very essence of a brand identity that both customers and staff had bought into.
So, it’s bonkers to suggest it’s not about brand. In fact, no matter what Tim Martin now claims, Wetherspoon’s itself is a brand built extremely carefully in a singular vision. And while it may be easy to poke fun at Jamie Oliver, it’s important to remember that he is someone who guided his organisation and invested heavily in training and motivating lots of youngsters who would have been unlikely to enter the industry through normal channels. Along the way, he got vast swaths of the general population to cook their own food. None of these things are bad.
It isn’t only about product or only about brand – it always has to be both. The brands that continue to thrive in this challenging market are the ones delivering both, great food and great experiences. The issue for so many stars of the zeitgeist, not just Jamie’s, is that tastes and fashion clear move at a pace. Your business, the brand, needs to be engineered to adapt and move on. Without the investment to do this the outlets were destined to fail in time, which they duly did.
Time for a ‘Plain Lion’?
Have we lost the art of plain speaking? Samsung’s Chief Marketing Officer, YoungHee Lee told the audience at Cannes that to connect with GenZ it was important to harness the power of ‘Storyliving’ over storytelling. Twitter pretty universally responded WTF? I know this was at an advertising festival that has history in the championing of made up words. But as many have pointed out since, in the real world it's laughable. It’s the type of lexicon bingo that has so devalued our industry.
Our job fundamentally is to inform people of the advantage of our client’s brand. We do this in as clearly and emotively engaging manner as possible. The simplicity and clarity of a few words to describe the complex.
It’s not just the stereotyping of generations that so offends in this Tweet, it’s the meaningless re-labelling of observed behaviour. There are good points made in YoungHee Lee’s talk. Brands do need to live the version of life they portrayed in their advertising. People are seeking proof of a brands stated intentions. But for so many, all these good points will be lost by the scrambling of verbs.
Cannes is an international event aiming to foster better work across the world. Its stated mission of fostering understanding and better communications. So, I have an idea. A new award. The Plain Lion. Awarded to the speaker with courage and commitment to deliver their thoughts in the most succinct, clear and easily understood manner. In this age of misunderstandings and alternative facts. Surely now more than ever, we need a Plain-Speaking Lion to celebrate those who can communicate with a universal language of clarity.
Amazon does an Ad
Amazon is a brand advertiser as well as an advertising platform. Both fuelled by a data factory that is mainly funded by its client brands and end customers. A pretty neat trick you have to admit.
Amazon is data. Amazon advertising is a reflection of data science meets human creativity. The emotive Christmas ad, created by agency ‘Lucky generals’ is cute, maybe not be quite as fun as last year’s version of the same idea. But it works on pulling the heart strings. The rational product ads and offers, created in-house, also work. but not as art, but as Frighteningly efficient, laser targeted messengering.
It has been well documented that advertising is going through fundamental changes and brand owners need to clearly take stock of how they spend marketing budgets. Amazon have just done things on a much bigger scale and much faster than most brands are able.
Amazon are by a number of markers the epitome of the new age of advertising. A heady mix of magic and logic. The magic comes in the form of their brand advertising agency Lucky Generals who have made this year’s Christmas TV spot, featuring singing boxes to the tune of the Jacksons ‘Can you feel it’ The logic? Oh, there is a whole ton of that. First, they have invested heavily in an in-house creative facility called D1 that produces all of their product and tactical advertising. Secondly and way more intriguing is what Amazon are doing with their customer behaviour insights. Amazon is after all a unique beast, a retailer who is also the country’s third largest advertising platform who is also a major advertiser in its own right. Data science is completely at the heart of this. Proven in the first week of December when the brand briefly over took Microsoft and Apple to becomes the world’s most valuable.
Amazon do still need to persuade us about its expanding service. For that they need ads. Their voice assistant Alexa is a very good example. For the last year it’s been the gift of choice, selling upwards of 50+ million devices worldwide. But and it’s a massive but so far, their advertising, especially that of its retail partners from grocery to fashion have failed to convince us to shop using the thing. Earlier this year a leaked report put the numbers of consumers buying via voice assistants at a little over 5%. To improve on this figure Amazon, need to change ingrained behaviours. Especially in the UK where our inherent reserved nature means that rambling down a shopping list, without saying ‘sorry’ about a gazillion is going to be really hard. It’s no wonder that the most any UK based Alexa gets to do is tell the time and pick from Spotify. To change such behaviours takes very bold creative ideas aligned to an equally bold media budget. So far Amazon have held back from such a move hoping its clients will use their own budgets to do that, as Ocado is currently doing
It is very insightful that while Amazon has potentially the most valuable data set of customer intentions of any retailer. They have invested heavily in the magic of longer-term brand building to complement shorter term rational messaging. Not so long-ago Amazon’s advertising was looked after by an American advertising legend Droga5, a well-established, hugely creative agency, who undoubtedly would have continued to produce eye catching ads. But Amazon took a bold step and appointed a relatively new UK agency Lucky Generals known for creative that really gets the emotive nature of culture. The recent IPA effectiveness study into advertising highlighted the importance for brand health of longer term emotive brand building messaging. This to play alongside shorter term tactical messenges of price and features. The temptation for so many brands is to only do the latter, hoping for an upswing before thinking about commissioning the former. Empirical evidence in the IPA report from 900+ case studies in over 70 categories across almost 20 years proves this to be a real folly.
But Amazon are not finished yet. Lessons from Alibaba’s real world experiments in Asia with retailer brands like Huma show that we are only just touching the edge of what seamless customer experiences could be. Amazon has many experiments currently running in real world retail and financial products to test these waters. You get the sense of a brand very much developing its next stage after successfully reformulating for mobile
There has been recent coverage of the potential of Amazon launching a free to air video streaming service. This could be massive for brands. While Amazon Prime remains ad free. An open access channel could be a gold mine of consumer intentions. Not only would you know who they are, past purchases etc. But once they have been exposed to an add you would be able to correlate future behaviours of brands brought, categories browsed etc. There isn’t another advertising platform that could offer that. But would many people be watching? Well it goes without saying Amazon has access to epic content, it just remains to be seen how far they will go in getting one.
Is AI draining the emotion out of advertising?
AI is fundamentally changing business and those it employs, no more so than in marketing communications. Jaywing is deeply involved. We are not only a developer of AI driven marketing technology but a large employer of the very jobs that this technology is replacing.
We therefore feel expertly qualified to host a debate about AI.
Has the potential of AI driven guaranteed results opened up the possibility of doing away with the mystic behind creativity? Undoubtedly automation can help brands gain a much quicker, more accurate short term attention. But what are the long-term effects? Does automation in marketing offer a backdoor to more sinister uses of AI? Less scary, but no less important is that research indicates that a more emotional, tangentially random human approach has more profitable outcomes.
Jaywing’s Head of AI Martin Benson and Director of Strategy Philip Slade go head to head to debate the question of how to achieve better creative marketing for brands. The dependable logic of AI or the capricious nature of creative humans.
"More human than human" – Tyrell / Blade Runner
"People asked a computer, 'Is there a God?' And the computer said, 'There is now,' and fused the plug." Stephen Hawking
One night 6 years ago we did something really rather special
Algorithms of joy
'...Credibility (is credible on the subject); Reliability (is dependable, someone who delivers, does what they say they will do); Intimacy (referring to the safety or security that we feel when entrusting someone with something); and self-orientation (referring to the person’s focus and whether, in particular, their primary focus is on themselves and what they can get out of it, or on the other person)...' (Only Dead Fish. May 2017)
Comes from this book, highlighted by Mark Raheja really interesting approach worth following all the connected links between this and a connected thought about purpose and brands.
““There are two kinds of people and organizations in the world: eaters and bakers. Eaters want a bigger slice of an existing pie; bakers want to make a bigger pie. Eaters think that if they win, you lose, and if you win, they lose. Bakers think that everyone can win with a bigger pie.””
Review of the latest MAA 'Green jam' event
The April GreenJam panel, led by Philip Slade, the strategy director at Keko London, also featured Kit Altin, the planning director at Leo Burnett London, and Simon Callender, the creative planning director at Initials.
Our aim was to help GreenJammers understand how to spot good planning, with a focus on explaining the differences between observations and insights. Here’s a flavour of the panel’s thoughts and the interaction with the audience.
1. Don’t get distracted by the data. Philip Slade said: “It’s one of the best times to be in strategy and planning because of all the data and also one of the easiest times to mess things up. Because of all the data.” Kit Altin added: “The whole story can’t be told by big data. Look at the film The Big Short. The answers came from people driving around and looking at ‘For Sale’ signs outside homes. The answer can’t always be found by sitting at your computer.”
2. Observation can do the job. Philip Slade said: “Observations don’t explain ‘why” and good planning is about keep asking why.” But Kit Altin added: “Insights can be brilliant, they lift you and everybody else in the room but don’t become too obsessed with them. You don’t always need an insight to produce great work. Take what’s often cited as the ‘greatest ad ever made’ – Guinness ‘Surfer’. There’s no insight in it, it’s an observation about a product feature.”
3. Cultural relevance isn’t always possible for brands. Philip Slade: “Most products have zero chance of achieving cultural relevance in their lives. Your Bic Biro just doesn’t need cultural relevance. Though it’s worth remembering that we’re in a vanity and ego-based industry where clients and your boss are on an ego trip and somewhere inbetween your career lives.
4. “Always ask: ‘what’s the ambition?” Simon Callender spoke about the limits to some brands’ scope and that they need to ask some tough questions: “What is the ambition and where’s the permission for a brand? Sometimes the ambition can just be too big for the brand.”
5. All research is flawed. Kit Altin said: “There is no best research methodology yet. They’re all flawed because we’re all flawed as people. But unfortunately, though we’ve got to work with the research, we should all be concerned about how it’s used to judge and plan ideas.”
6. “Immersive ethnography” isn’t a bad approach, said Simon Callender: “Throw yourself into a situation, if you’re a beer brand get yourself into the micro-breweries and pubs. Walk in people’s shoes to understand them.”
7. Pick the right brand, and client, for the big insight. Simon Callender said: “Ask where credibly can we go with the idea? I’m a huge fan of idea over budget and knowing which fight to pick. Ask yourself if a brand is after a long-term strategy or a short-term fix.”
8. Good planning stimulates energy. Philip Slade said: “If you’re sat in a presentation in your agency and you’re bored then it’s shit planning. Good planning is about storytelling and drilling down into a great idea.” Simon Callender added: “You can sense the presence of a bullshit planner if it’s over-intellectualised. Insight should be relevant and simple but create a huge amount of energy in the room.”
9. New techniques don’t always work. Kit Altin said: “Social listening? It can’t tell you what people think, it can’t understand sarcasm for instance. Good planners provide the nuance in terms of human understanding.” Philip Slade said: “You need to be the people who don’t fall in love with machines, you need to understand the numbers and the data but also the foibles of the human mind.”
10. Build good relationships with the creatives. Kit Altin said: “Good planning is in the relationship with the creatives. The mark of a good planner is that they are close to the creative teams.”
And, if you’ve read this far, go further:
11. Read and discover. Here’s Philip Slade’s suggested reading and exploring list for those who want to experience and understand good planning:
1. ‘I’ll Have What She’s Having - Mapping Social Behavior. By Mark Earls + other authors.
2. ‘Decoded – The Science Behind Why We Buy’. By Phil Barden.
3. Sign up to ‘Only Dead Fish’ weekly email newsletter of invaluable insight stuff
4. Sign up to ‘Group-think.co.uk’ London young planners’ social and sharing group
5. Sign up to ‘Openstrate.gy’ . US-based but getting more international planners network of sharing insights
In a galaxy far, far, away
What seems like ages ago was in fact only 2013, but these three chancers thought they could start a new agency, didn't work out as they planned, but start up culture is like that. You live and learn. Never hold back, always forward. Take every chance, however bonkers it appears. Die happy in the knowledge you had a crack at just about everything on offer.
MAA / The Guardian #DoDifferent Day & Awards
Riding the Gold Plated Lift
The election of Donald Trump has given us a timely reminder of the changing attitudes to conspicuous consumption[1].
Constant online access, mobile devices and the pervasiveness of social media had already established a new normal in the reporting and display of wealth. Something that for decades had abided by convention. But such traditions are disappearing as fast as a live stream of Emoji's
The new age of Trump has also appeared to establish a normalisation of unconventionally acquired wealth as proven by the Panama Papers to The Rich Kids of Instagram.
This paper aims to take a quick whizz around the world (in an App booked private jet of course) to look at today’s contrasting views of conspicuous consumption. For instance, in societies with extreme levels of inequalities such as Albania we see displays of visually loud, individualist sign posted symbols of wealth, whereas in similar economies of new growth such as Vietnam, where new wealth is much more evenly distributed the symbols of conspicuous consumption are more socially realised in the form of eating out or taking vacations.
China Daily posted a number of articles this year about the growing popularity of the imported concept of Valentine’s Day in China. In one titled ‘Valentine’s Day means celebration, not conspicuous consumption’ The paper highlighted the influence of American brands encouraging young affluent Chinese to spend more than 2,000 yuan (£232) on each other in 2016. The paper concluded that a festival established solely on business logic was not a problem of the holiday itself but of the people who celebrated it…
As the Guardian recently said it’s all about ‘..the drama of being conspicuous to one another, just without the consumption.’
