Movin On Up

I cannot stand M People, but it makes a nice header...

Northern Planning Summit Number Something or Other went very well, a nice turn out despite acouple of last minute cancellations. (That's people not trains...)

We welcomed three newcomers, Andrea, Jenny and Rebecca; the most new people we have had at one event for quite a while.

The events now break up into groups as its difficult for seven people to talk in one group in a noisy venue; so we all discussed various topics.

One choice topic was about designers and whether universities are preparing them enough for work; providing enough briefs and helping them to understand the business side of design.

Overall a good night, I look forward to seeing everyone again for the next one!

Image from Northern Rail

Its Grin up North...

The umpeenth My Brain Hurts/Northern Planning Summit happened yesterday; and despite several major absenses it was good fun as usual!

Myself, Simon and Jonathon from Love, and Lauren turned up for a couple of drinks in a proper pub, then on for a slightly disappointing chinese meal.

As well as advertising the topics covered included:

Why Yorkshire Tea is the best tea in the entire world

The move back from digital worlds to real tangible items

Giving up smoking

Having kids

Road signs and traffic systems of the world

Etc. (etc)

1. I think I have Laryngitis... my girlfriend had it and im pretty sure ive caught it off her! Luckily I only felt ill the day after my interview.

2. Had an interview this week in London for an Account management role. Hoping to hear back soon. I also got (sort of) offered a 6 month job doing 'digital' project management at a small (but growing) agency. Lots to think about, especially as I still have people from several agencies (and one brand) to have "chats" with next time im in London.

3. The next My Brain Hurts - Northern Planning Summit is in the process of being organised. I shall keep you all updated. After the appearance of many of Love last time, its going to be a tough one to beat!

Badadmadness

Thinking back to Russell Davies comments at the FMS about how "The business model for shit is going away." I was wondering, why is it that bad ads still get made?

Do they work? Or is there just a total ignorance of a: how bad they are b: whether they work c: whether something better could work more?

I mean, if the Coke Zero ads worked, why on earth wouldnt other rubbish ads... but why?! Are people fond of being patronised and talked down to? Do they enjoy being treated as if they have the intellectual capacity of a mouldy peanut, or are people far stupider (arf) than we give them credit for?

Why do Loreal and Gillette still do the same terrible ads they have been doing for 30 years? Surely if they didnt work they would have been stopped?

We need better, but will better work?

Mortimer and Co's Famous Miracle Brand Formula

Whilst discussing Kevin Roberts' idea from the Future Marketing Summit that brands 'are now owned by the consumer'; several of us (myself, Rob Campbell etc) have concurred that was frankly rubbish, brands have always been owned by the consumer.

I do feel however that what has changed is that the customer now controls the brand, as well as owning it. Where as before the customer protested and the brand took notice (or ignored it); now the consumer has the power to change other people's opinions about it before you can even do anything about it.

I did come up with an analogy I like though:

The situation for brands is rather like that of an early 20th century travelling salesman. Whereas before he could pack up and move town; and change his sales technique before he arrived at the next place... now the people already know what he is selling and whether they are interested before he has even got on his horse.

Future Marketing Summit Day Two - Part 6

A big update will follow with the best videos of ads shown at the summit, and also the best pictures of the event. Including some good slides!

Now my thoughts (part one…possibly)

Kevin was right to say that the power of brands is shifting to the consumer; and he is also on the right track with the idea that one media will not replace another, they will become another in a list. For example, while TV as a medium is shrinking, people might soon watch it on their mobiles or their portable media players or Freeview handhelds; and this may prevent much of the predicted reductions.

However, is what he said that revolutionary? Probably not. He seems to give us a lot of the questions with few of the answers. Idealistic thinking is all well and good, but clients don’t buy ideals. And as much as I’d like to see the end of Return on Investment as a model, I can’t see clients ever giving up on it. Because regardless of whether that return is measured in sales, opinions, brand equity or even involvement (as Kevin Roberts stated); clients are still measuring against their budgets and their spend. Investment is always investment regardless of how it is named.


One point I think will become important on the issue of entertainment and risk taking, is that now the viewing of ads is becoming more about choice and less about forced ad breaks; I believe that will are going to have to start changing as well.

Bad ads could work when people have to watch them, but when people choose what to watch, they stand less chance for success. As Russell put it, the business model for crap is disappearing.


I certainly agree with Rob Campbells comments that some of the speakers were very good at telling us what needed to be done, but not so good at telling us how it should be done.

My favourite panel was the Technology panel; and myself, Ben and Beeker agreed that the one person we would really like to see do a full talk next year is Richard Huntingdon; his introduction was great, and he is someone with a good vision of the future.


Overall I think the event was extremely informative for me. Both in terms of the state of marketing, and the future we are heading towards. It also gave me much encouragement that despite not being directly in advertising yet; my thoughts are actually on the right track. The big question is whether this is all just talk, and the real moment of change will be when the giant monolithic agencies start to genuinely move rather than just having a small office somewhere with a “Head of Digital”.

Its seems like marketers and advertisers are starting to head in the right direction, though it appears like many are still relying on their sat-nav; and we all know that can be dangerous…

Future Marketing Summit Day Two - Part 5

Next were Google and BBH to discuss the joint British Airways and Google Earth advertising.

The ads featured shots using Google earth, with cloud pricing. While the site was designed to let you view the destination, but with a cloud image with the BA price on!

One highly interesting point was on the net ads, Google intentionally asked BA to lower the Google branding and increase the BA branding on overlay ads because Google didn’t want to be associated with ads that get in the way of sites.


--------------------------------------------------------


Lastly, was Jon Hamm, the founder of Greenroom digital.

He discussed how this is an exciting time for agencies and clients, a time to take risks, to become even more creative.

He also mentioned how media consumption is becoming more and more chaotic, and how the power of social media is still increasing.

An interesting point he gave was about the nature of ‘viral’ distribution is moving to ‘resonate’ and ‘right place’ distribution. Its not just about putting a funny video up, its about putting it in the right place and making it resonate with the public.

One good point was how measuring views is not the only important metric anymore, it’s about how many people in the core audience viewed it, what did they say, and what sort of response it got.


-----------------------------------------------------


After all these interesting people, it was left to Douglas Broadley of Imagination to sum up. Here are his major points.

“Amazing!” – What an insight!

The gloss of Kevin Roberts words was appealing, but things are not always that glossy in real life.

The idea of owning a conversation is ridiculous…

Agencies forgot to make a plan B! Hence all the recent panic!

The continuing difficulty in finding people who can move between disciplines.

Those who are quick on their feet will succeed.

Integration should just happen, but people get in the way. Integration is not a ‘nice to have’, it has to be meaningful.

Meaning will engender greater belief, which will help engage.

We need to define what unites brands and corporate cultures.

Integration is about Integrity.

People talk when you are found not to be true to their meaning, you can no longer be dishonest, people will find out.

I think this guy knows his stuff. A good choice to sum up.

Future Marketing Summit Day Two - Part 4

Day Two continued:

Next was the Entertainment panel. Here are some of the key points:

This discussed the need for a reason for people to watch content, and the empowerment of new models of viewing.

40 thousand videos are uploaded to You Tube every single day, and 90% of it is crap. However, we have to remember that most of that 90% is not designed for everybody, its things for a small circle of friends.

Clients are starting to see the need for quality, and the need for entertainment. Though someone in the audience made a great point that sometimes content can be informative rather than entertaining.

Is engagement more important than entertainment?

There is apparently a huge difficulty in finding people who don’t think in terms of print or tv ads. Shall I wave?

Clients have to accept that control of their brands has slipped through their hands.

Another good point is how the system of peer to peer sending that drove much online/viral content is moving to a model of discussion. For example: One of the key things about You Tube is that each video has a discussion area below it, allowing debate to spark.

-----------------------------

Next up was Matt Smith of The Viral Factory. Here are some of his key points:

The internet is now a consumer channel just as much as it is a brand channel.

The ratio of good user generated content to shit is huge.

He spoke about the issue of brands wanting “to do viral” but having no understanding of how it works. The odds are for many brands that if people do care, they care in a negative way.

One problem of asking people to do UGC is that you can end up disappointing people who (despite putting effort in) produce crap content by not using it.

Don’t stake your campaign on viral, as he rightly points out; many people expect to put a video on You Tube and have it automatically get seen by 2 million people, but it simply doesn’t work like that.

Respect creators and consumers, they gave a good example of a great Samsung viral they did, and when someone created their own version they worked with them.


Viral Factory Samsung Viral



Consumer Generated Version

Future Marketing Summit Day Two - Part 3

Next up is TBWA, discussing the Nissan Qashqai work.

Enthusiasm > Pain !

Nissan wanted to rival VW Golf in terms of sales and perception, which involved needing 80% of sales coming from people who don’t normally have any association with Nissan.

Objectives: Make Qashqai a household name, create interest, build intrigue and engage for long launch period.

As TBWA rightly point out, the name is odd, yet it worked for the Nintendo Wii… it’s also harder to make puns about the word Qashqai!

They came up with a fictitious urban sport of Qashqai, with rules, ads, history, galleries etc. Not an easy task they say, but it actually became fun. The aim was to make the content the media, not about buying media.

Difficulty in tying it all together, what with being a “traditional” agency (eurgh…).

Made how to guide – rule book, including one for each country.

When people started to point out it was fake (of course..) they started to join in, such as whether things were mathematically possible.

The campaign does appear to be a good example of how big agencies can work together; with 12 involved in this case.

Results: Gave Nissan employees pride in the car, improved the profile of Nissan Europe within the company. Awareness / views / sales a lot above expectation.

Future Marketing Summit Day Two - Part 2

Mike Mathieson and the other guy whose name is not in my booklet – the founders of Cake talking about entertainment insights.

Firstly, I absolutely love the fact that Cake was names after the Cake episode of Brass Eye. They also showed some interesting examples of their work.

They talked about the Internet as a social transformer, about entertainment as an ice breaker; and about how focus is moving towards shared experiences.

They showed some good examples, including work for Motorola and Nintendo Wii (hurrah!). They seem to be very good at creating attention and press coverage gaining events… but the question for me is, how good are they outside their safety zone, which appears to be mostly music?

Future Marketing Summit Day One - Part 2

The first presentation of the day was from Kevin Roberts – CEO Saatchi and Saatchi worldwide; discussing the topic of Sisomo (Sight Sound and Motion).

Here are the main points of his talk:

Retailer and consumers are now the boss, power has shifted away from the brands.

Consumers are ahead of the industry, they know what they want; the only people confused are clients, who are terrified of this new world, as they cant quantify it. But everything that has gone before is irrelevant.

TV is not going to vanish, and mediums will not replace each other, but we will live in an “and” environment, where all mediums exist side by side.

People are driven by emotion, and we need to use stories and storytelling to create ‘Love and Respect’ and ‘Loyalty Beyond Reason”.

Return on Investment no longer matters, things are now about Return on Involvement.

The world and media is changing so fast that the latest trends have come and gone before research figures them out.


---------------------------------------------


The second event of the day was a discussion panel on the topic of Reality Check, featuring among others; John Shaw (Planning Director at Ogilvy UK) and Russell Davies.

The main topics here were:

Have consumers always owned the brand, with a great example about how Camra (The Campaign for Real Ale) stopped Watneys brewery from limiting the choice of beers in their pubs.

A quote from Russell on the topic of the 80/20 rule (80 percent of everything is crap): “The Business Model for Crap is Going Away”

There was a lot of talk on User Generated Content, while much of the things on there may be ‘rubbish’, they are usually all good to the circle of three or four friends who they are made for.

Are customers recognising that brands are evolving in terms of their ethics and responsibilities? The seeming disappearance of the anti-brand movement of a few years ago seems to show that. But also, many brands have started to place much more importance on ethics.


-------------------------------------


The next discussion was on Design, including Ben of the Design Conspiracy.

They spoke about how design should be important through everything, that designers often have difficulty talking and explaining things to clients, and those who can move between disciplines will be the winners of the future.

A good topic was how most agencies fail to understand how to take the feeling of ads into a 3d space, with the example of the Hersheys store in Manhattan.

Finally, a good comment; if Jonathan Ives was announced as the new design head of GM (General Motors) their shares would rocket.

Very true.

-----------------------------------------

The two afternoon panels were on Technology and Delivery. The first being chaired by Richard Huntingdon, and the latter by George Bryant, head of planning at AMV BBDO.

After managing to bring old pictures of Donald Rumsfeld into the talk, and not being able to resist talking about Dirt is Good again; the panel spoke:

Future proofing brands was a major topic, especially about brands in places like myspace. How these communities have rules and etiquette, and to be accepted brands need to remember that.

Interaction by its very nature is 2 way, and brands need to remember that the viral model is not about selling. Its not the same as making a tv ad.

The time has come to abandon demographics, most people agrees that they are outdated and do not represent people in a relevant way anymore.

Also, there was the battle between the “BIG idea” vs “An ideal with lots of little ideas under it”. This topic was touched on again later…

The Delivery panel spoke again about how useless demographics now are, how they don’t show any understanding of people.

We listen, but do we understand?

Honesty is now a pre-requisite. If you are not honest you will be found out, with communication so quick and simple, you can no longer hide behind falsehoods.

People don’t trust big brands anymore. With Innocent Drinks growing as such a big rate, are they risking being seen as a big brand, and then end up facing a backlash?


----------------------------------


There was also an interesting talk by Justin Bovington of Rivers Run Red about how brands are getting involved in virtual worlds, particularly Second Life.

Its not something I know a great deal about, but with some big clients like Vodafone and Adidas/Reebok, the online virtual world appears to be the next big thing (which sadly usually means its about to be replaced with something else).

The use of Second Life areas to encourage brand communication between brand and consumer is also a very interesting area, with some good examples, such as being able to choose the shoe colour of your avatar, then buy the shoes in real life through the virtual world.


[I will update with videos and pictures once I return home after day 2]

Im highly enjoying this event so far, please let me know what you think of the topics discussed. Is this the way marketing should be heading, and are these the right topics?

Future Marketing Summit Day One

Hi! After bashing my dads laptop (metaphorically dad, dont worry), I can finally post about todays event. I will update on the mornings events later, but here is the details of the first talk of the afternoon:


The first part of the afternoon session was with Tim Ashton – Founder of Antidote.

After taking part in the earlier design conference Tim talked about “A Fresh Perspective”. Here are some of the key points of his talk:

Choosing ideas that people want to spend time with rather than interrupting things that people are interested in. Simple big ideas are more important than ever before. This is something that has been discussed a lot on blog’s recently.

He talks about forgetting the idea of 360, bringing ideas in across channels.

Content is everything, no ideas hierarchy.

Changing the team, creative teams should mean more than just copywriting and art directing. They should embrace collaboration. Multi skilled teams, they should include a planner and a comms planner.

Bored of “headline pun” and “coincidence visual ads, everything starting to feel the same. This might cause small tremors along most teams who work on car ads. Small car with big features anyone?

Design is a crucial opportunity to differentiate. Not enough design skills in ad agencies, and probably visa-versa.

So much bad design about. (Really? I hadn’t noticed, though that may be the point…)

Getting Excited!

I am very much looking forward to the Future Marketing Summit, as it would normally be impossible for me to attend something with so many intelligent people talking about ads/marketing/design/etc.

I asked a little while ago for ideas as to what people think the Future Marketing Summit should be talking about, and here are (most of) the answers I got:

• "what people think about Big Ideas v a collection of little ones.
  
  
• Whatisface was on about this in Campaign, defending the Big Idea - but most of the examples he used were brands that have a long history, back into the old days of messaging."
  
  
• With such product parity, do people think Brand Advertising is MORE or LESS relevant in marketing today?
  
  
• Is the future of brand growth, product led?
  
  
• Will cause marketing become a core driver for brand differentiation/growth?
  
  
• Is brand activation a fad or is it here to stay?
  
  
• Why is creativity not so highly valued as media efficiency?
  
  
• Who are the future powerbrokers of business success? [ie: The retail trade now have the power over the Coca-Cola's of the World which is radically different from past times]
  
  
• Is communication about selling or leaving a positive impression on consumers?
  
  
• How much has innovation got to play in brand success?
  
  
• What is the real power of communicating on the net?
  
  
• Will the impact of copywriting on the public change the importance of creativity in an age where we need to keep doing more to interest people...?
  
  
• Why are their not enough bald men in advertising when there are so many shiny headed planners?

Thoughts..? (bear in mind these will probably be passed onto the organisers of the event)

The Future of Marketing

With the Future Marketing Summit coming up, I thought it would be interesting to see what sorts of topics you think would be worth discussing and talking about for advertising, design and marketing.

I know some very clever people read this blog, so i'd love to hear your suggestions for talking points!