"As the tagline on a poster raising awareness about domestic violence, that's not bad. But it was the poster itself that was truly attention grabbing, for it brought the issue of being watched (or not) to life.
If you didn't catch Jung von Matt's award winning ambient poster earlier in the year, here's another opportunity to do so.
The poster, placed in a bus shelter in Berlin, was a one-time installation sponsored by Amnesty International. When a person in the shelter was looking at the poster, he saw, along with the words, a photograph of an amiable couple: a stocky, professional looking man in a blue oxford cloth shirt, his arm around the shoulders of his girlfriend or wife. If no one in the shelter was paying attention to the poster, the image switched: now the man was raising his fist against the woman as she leaned away and protected her face. There was a slight lag in the switch, so viewers could notice that the poster was changing its image.
Designed by the Hamburg-based firm Jung von Matt, which bills itself as being in the business of "attention warfare", the ad worked via a camera attached to a computer outfitted with face-tracking software with a working range of about 16 feet. A Potsdam company called Vis-à-pix created the technology. Jung von Matt described the ad as the first of its kind, and it won a silver prize at the 2009 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival and a gold prize at the New York Festivals International Advertising Awards.
The technology has since improved, according to Vis-à-pix. As new posters can even identify the sex of onlookers. So look out for the likes of Lynx wanting to join the party.
An article by by Stuart Parkinson, VCCP Digital Planner.
One that I wanted to share and hope he doesn't mind me doing so. As you'll also find it on VCCP's twitter page.
This isn't just another wooden soapbox parked in speakers corner. But in my opinion, a well observed and insightful piece on what digital and social media hold for us all.
1. The year that people get to grips with marketing on social networks.
2009 has been the year that a few brands and agencies have produced stand out work that properly leverages the scale and features of social networks and utilities such as facebook and twitter. 'Tag a sofa' campaign for Ikea by Forsman and Bodenfors, Whopper Sacrifice by Crispin Porter + Bogusky and the awesomely popular 4320:LA for V Austrailia by Droga5 are beginning to show people that you can have product relevant, powerful and spreadable ideas that exist in these previously hard to tame media spaces. These campaigns have opened people's mind to a new way of thinking about this sphere that is much more focused on the individual functionality of the platform. Finally, people are recognising that for an idea to work, it must be landed in an existing behaviour.
2. The year that brands begin to realise it's about lighting lots of fires in different places.
Agencies have known that the days of a monolithic creative idea are dead, spending 99% of the pot on one idea, was ironically, how the clients were used to working....all your eggs in one basket, anyone? It's taken a while, and a lot of work from digital agencies and industry folk such as Mark Earls, for clients to catch up. The fact is, digital work is far harder to pre-test than more traditional work because it often involves a new set of behaviours and a deeper, more active experience that the effect of which is much harder to gauge if it's on a smaller scale. How do you test if a viral is viral on a small sample? How would Whopper Sacrifice work if you disabled its 'pass-on' mechanic? Brands who are doing digital best such as Burger King, Penguin Books and Diesel are au fait with creating many cheap, scalable ideas and launching them all, conscious that not all of them will stick. At £50,000 a pop, you could launch 4 ideas for the cost of a TV ad production budget or 4 full page inserts in the nationals. You light 4 fires, you pour petrol on the ones that take, and then you remember what works for next year.
3. The year it becomes less about technology showcases and more about ideas.
I don't think I'd be exaggerating if I said that here is one of the most often clicked, longest played with online ads that has ever been launched. This one probably isn't far behind. You'll notice something about these executions, they are brutally simple and utterly devoid of anything other than basic flash programming. No one is asking permission to access your webcam, asking you to blow into your microphone or making you get tangled up in interactive film. Digital agencies from the early part of the decade were constantly trying to one up each other with new ways of using technology to make even more novel executions, often, at the cost of the idea. Awards were won with novelty, but in the days when consumers have mind-blowing technology coming out of their ears, there's been a clear reversion to the quality and originality of the basic idea. Good news.
4. Someone will figure out how to do something interesting with Google Wave.
I have no idea what it is yet, but it'll happen. I've got my thinking cap on.
5. The Android is nigh.
2010 will be the year that Android grows and grows. It was released early to fanfare amongst geeks and not much noise elsewhere, Android 2.0 is being released as we speak and it will mean that the various devices that run it will get a worthy, mass market, operating system. For all the talk of the size and popularity of the iPhone app store, iPhones are still and will remain a minority. Android will become the mass platform of choice and the integration it offers between cameras, microphones, maps, social networks and GPS will mean that there's potential for brands to release some killer applications.
6. Transparency gets even more radical.
fmylife.com, facebookfails.com, myparentsjoinedfacebook, untagmondays, textsfromlastnight.com etc, the list is of bare-all, social network based sites grows ceaselessly. The teen to 20-something demographic has opened itself up more than anyone could've ever predicted. These sites are pretty relentless and have effectively dissolved privacy boundaries. There's an opportunity for the right brands to be bold enough to get down and dirty in this sphere, or perhaps even figure out applications or spaces that give their audience more opportunities to brag, shame and untag.
7. Crowdsourcing.
Momentum is building, I'd need several more hands than I posses to count the amount of times that Dell's Ideastorm or 'My Starbucks idea' are wheeled out in presentations, yet clients, especially in the UK have been slow to respond. These ideas need continuing investment and can often have an impact on the structure of a business. Walkers managed to get involved to great success with 'Do us a flavour' but opportunities to ask a client to hinge it's whole budget on a crowdsourcing idea that requires above-the-line support don't come up that often. Expect to see smaller initiatives coming out, in CSR, product development and marketing development. This is one of the small fires that Marketing Directors should be very keen to begin starting.
8. The internet will bleed into reality.
People will sort of cut up the internet and use bits of it to augment the real world. It's a hard thing to explain, but you can see a nice example of what I'm talking about below, where Poke London built, using Arduino technology a device that lets the baker tweet out his freshest produce to the surrounding shoreditch ad-men and fancily sneakered designers so they can take a break from Powerpoint and flash coding to gobble a pain au chocolat and a double espresso.
Devices like the Nabaztag (Armenian for rabbit) were way ahead of their time, this was an internet/real world crossover device that launched in 2006...expect to see more of these in 2010.
9. Everything will change, but nothing will change at all.
Just as with online ads, the sooner people obsess less over media and technology and more over insight, originality and creativity, the better the work will be and the less presentations you'll have to listen to about 'Why X is the next big thing'. There is only one big thing, be that in digital or DM. That, my friends is an engaging idea.
10. People will switch-off.
My flatmate arrived home the other day to show me that on his ‘jailbroken’ iPhone, he's programmed buttons on his homescreen which enable him to choose not to receive calls, just be able to make calls and just be able to use the 3G data connection. He's reached the point where he needs to switch off, and so do a lot of people. 83.9% of people sleep with their phone switched on beside their bed, we're so addicted to attention we even want to be woken up by a text at 2.37am, but we're tiring of it. Twitter will have opening hours. Phones will have buttons that let them only be used as data devices or cameras, you'll be able to choose for facebook to only allow you to login 10 times a day. Gmail is already testing a take a break feature that allows you to get on with some real work, and the wonderful Herraiz Soto of Barcelona have produced a writing program that blanks out everything else and plays you soothing music so that you can actually use your laptop to write something of quality, instead of badly formed 140 character sentences about what you had for breakfast that morning.
Without doubt, the brands that can get a handle on the fact that people don’t always want to be in touch or pestered will be the brands winning people’s hearts in 2010.
With a running time pushing the best part of an hour, you'll need the luxury of time just to take it all in. And while the speaker appears to be taking the scenic route to some of the points he's looking to raise, you begin to realise there's much more here than you first thought.
What I mean by that is. Initially you may find yourself thinking that there's nothing being shown, in the case notes used that you aren't already aware of. That much is true. But where the gems are found, is in listening to the well observed principles and practices that the foundations of successful Transmedia/Cross Platform Storytelling are built on. So much so you may find yourself thinking, 'should I playing it again?' My advice is a big fat yes.
Because in doing so you'll probably learn more in that extra hour, than you will from anything else on the box this week.
Some of us never realize how huge the internet really is. Let's take a look at a few statistics for an average day on the Internet and see how big these numbers really are...
During my career I've been fortunate enough to work for several prominent Creative Directors in the UK advertising Industry. Probably none more so than Steve Harrison, as I've had the pleasure of working for Steve at both HPT and HTW. He's not just a genuinely great creative, he's a genuinely great man too. Everyday spent under Steve's wing inevitably leads to a greater understanding of what it takes to produce great creative that delivers results, and what it also means to produce it. Reading Steve's book served to remind, reinforce and ensure that I didn't detour from any of those abiding principles and disciplines I'd so meticulously learned, and a great please it was too. So much so, with hand on heart I can honestly say, I read it twice.
So where on earth do I begin? Well, I'll begin with a couple of quotes from a few luminaries of the advertising industry, include a little known fact. And leave you with a few more quotes, some from his clients. Plus one little quote Steve has for me.
'The greatest direct marketing creative of this generation and an icon of the business.' - Campaign Magazine.
'He is the Bill Bernbach of British Direct Marketing. There are quite a few of us, myself included, who owe our careers to his influence.' - Rory Sutherland, President of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.
In 2000 Steve co-founded Harrison Troughton Wunderman. Five years later the agency had picked up a staggering 90 DMA, 56 Campaign and 29 Cannes awards.
Effective creative work is not a nice-to-have, it's a necessity - it's the only way you'll stand out in a fiercely competitive marketplace. Whether you're in digital, direct or advertising, the CEO of an agency or just starting out, How to do better creative work has been written for you. In fact, you'll see that everyone plays a crucial role in producing creative work that works: What it means to be creative, How to build a creative culture, How virtually all great work is underpinned by a simple problem/solution dynamic, How to use that dynamic to create your big marketing ideas, How to brief a creative team, How to use 'relevant abruption' to produce big creative ideas, How to simultaneously build a brand and get response, How to sell your work, How to run a creative department.
All this is illustrated by some of the best advertising, direct and digital work ever produced, plus 12 case studies featuring ideas that have not only sold millions of pounds worth of products, but also won dozens of the world's most coveted awards.
'Steve writes like he talks, with great intelligence, wisdom and common sense. He's one of the few people capable of looking at a notoriously self-obsessed industry and saying, The Emperor has no clothes. And he's one of an even smaller number who can look at its problems and say, here's how you fix it. Creative Work is as challenging as it is engaging. When I reached the end I felt like I wanted to continue the conversation, which is probably the highest compliment you can offer a book.' - Jon Steel, author of Truth, Lies & Advertising and Perfect Pitch.
'This is genuinely essential reading for anyone who wants to demystify the advertising creative process and vastly more entertaining than your average business book. Harrison's simple, commonsense approach makes you wonder why so many ad campaigns fail so spectacularly. Buy it, read it and learn from it!' - Larissa Vince, Campaign magazine.
'This is a smart, straightforward and very special book. It affirmed so much I knew already, but my eyes were opened afresh to what is genuinely important about the work that we do. I came away with ten or twelve things I wanted to share with the rest of the team at glue and it also fortunately gave me some confidence that we're getting a lot of this right already.' - Mark Cridge, CEO, glue London.
'Steve is one of the dying breed of creative directors that clients crave. He tells it like it is and delivers. How to do better creative work is a refreshingly honest must-read for any client, suit or creative who want to cut through the bullshit and produce great creative work that does the job. Harrison has the right to say what he likes about the ad industry - and he does!' - Charlie Smith, Head of Brand Marketing, Vodafone UK.
'This book isn't just about how clients can help get the best work from their agency. I loved the insight into the thinking that goes on before the creative idea is had and realise it applies to every business that takes a creative approach to problem solving." - Paul Ferraiolo, President, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, North America.
'If, one day, my son tells me that he wants to be part of this business, I will make sure that he reads Steve-s book and, if possible, find a way for him to spend a couple of hours with Steve himself.' - Pablo Alzugary, President, Shackleton Madrid.
And for that quote he has for myself.'I had the pleasure of working with James for several months. I found him a very hard working and talented art director. Indeed, he produced one of our most memorable ads in the launch work he did for United Airlines, London to Delhi service. He was equally as at home with direct mail pieces. This ability to work through-the-line is indeed rare.' - Steve Harrison. European CD Ogilvy, Global CD Wunderman, Co-founder HTW
If you haven't seen the social media Socialnomics doing the rounds on YouTube as of late. I thought I'd give you the opportunity to take a look at one or two.
While you'ld be foolish to believe that social media and some of the traditional media knocking that takes place in these videos. Is a green light to throw away all that advertising has taught us about the consumer over the past 150 years. There's no ignoring the seismic shift taking place in consumer shopping and personal habits, the online world is very much another media to be added to all the others. And for the very first time, the first half of this year saw online media spend exceed that of any other media.
Some interesting facts to be found in the first social media Socialnomics video below, Social Media ROI.
Over 300,000 business have a presence on Facebook.
The BK Whopper sacrifice Facebook application where you sacrifice 10 Facebook friends to receive a free Whopper had an estimated investment of less than $50,000 with an estimated return of over $400,000 from press and media coverage alone. 233,906 friends were removed by 82,771 people in less than a week with 32 million free media Burger King impressions. The equivalent of reaching the combined populations of 19 US States.
Dell sold $3,000,000 worth of computers on twitter.
Naked Pizza set a one day sales record using social media. With a 68% growth in sales from purely twitter members, resulting in 85% of new customers coming from twitter.
Barack Obama has 5 million fans on social media. 5.4 million clicked on a 'I voted for Obama' Facebook button and 3 million online donors generated £500 million. With 92% of the donations being in increments of less than $100.
Ebay found that participants of online communities spend 54% more than those that aren't.
Companies sales of those with the highest levels of social media usage are on average up by 18%. Compared to those with the least amount of social media usage being on average down by 6%.
It finishes with the statement...'The social media tidal wave is here. Are you swimming with the current?' Food for thought in deed.
Don't you just love those sunny days that visit the Autumn months. Working in a classic loft conversion decked out in stripped floorboards, skylights and foliage everywhere you look I could well be in Manhattan let alone on Clerkenwell Road. Ok, so only being on the third instead of the thirty third floor and listening to a heavy brummie accent from across the wooden floor as opposed to one from Brooklyn doesn't quite have the same ring to it, I'll grant you that. But there's no denying an uncanny similarity when I hear the word coffee. Try it for yourself in your best brummie accent and you'll see where I'm coming from.
On a separate note it's amazing where inspiration comes from when looking for something to hang a piece of copy off. You copywriters have it easy, I should do this copywriting lark more often. Ok, may be not. Right where was I, oh yes Clerkenwell.
Working for Agency K on a food brand aimed at the female market I found myself being told to think like a women with plenty of female food insights at my disposal, plus the added benefit of having a man on the inside, so to speak. Working with a dear friend and copywriter extraordinaire who goes by the name of Jayne.
I've never been convinced that it necessarily takes a woman to write an ad for women anymore than I have, only a man can write for men. It's not like we don't happen to find ourselves spending a great deal of our time living with the opposite sex now is it. As I learned nothing new about the desire for guilt free indulgence or the things that occupy women's minds. I've watched desperate housewives too you know.
Ok, joking aside there really are very few insights a good creative shouldn't already have about the people around them. People we live, work and play with regardless of age, sex or subject. You, me, us. It's probably the one thing we've learned more about in our lives than anything else. I have an elderly mother and father before he passed away. A younger brother with a wife and young children of his own. A teenage son and daughter that's still just a child. An older half sister and brother both with children of their own, either teenagers or young adults now over the age of 18. And a newly married ex with a husband that has teenagers of his own. Let alone the friendships and relationships I've had with the opposite sex. When you add it all up you're pretty hard pressed not to of learned anything along the way.
Yes there are some poorly written ads written by men aimed at women out there. But that's more a case of poor creative than anything else.
So if you're looking for an insightful, beautifully observed, powerful ad that strikes a cord with its target audience, find a talented creative to write it. That's all the criteria you need.
The end of October brought a spell at Agency 'C'. And if you've read the earlier post on the first agency to grace these pages you would of spotted a trend developing. Agency 'X'.
It was working for a giant in the electrical goods arena and one with the not so common practice of producing some of it's advertising in house. Although far from all of it. The more informed of you may by now know of whom I'm referring to.
There are the obvious pros and cons for any company producing it's advertising in house. The upside being you can see the client/decision makers a lot quicker and easier than when you're an external agency based somewhere else. Those last minute hurdles and unforeseen problems that need quick answers to get addressed much more quickly. And as deadlines drive everything it's all the better for it I say.
The down side has to be the classic departmental head deciding to pop down to the creative floor because the client/marketing department wants a quick change made immediately. Where as the ad agency/creative not being in the same building would bring an air of 'we'll look at diaries and arrange a meeting as soon as possible' when we aren't very busy with everything else right now.
Plus the big one. The cultural differences. This has got to be much more of a fabulous opportunity than it ever is a recipe for Clash of the Titans. Imagine the strengths that would come from a well synergize meeting of departments. A client that gets to see and therefore understand how an agency reaches it's very best work and by default also what leads to the creation of very poor work. Or am I being the eternal optimist? I like to think not.
What have I learned from it? I know there are many more companies that use this philosophy for a variety of reasons. And for me this was a great opportunity for a great insight into it.
It's been a long time coming and something that I've seen become an ever increasing requirement for the conceptual Art Director. Mac skills. I've chosen this topic because in my pursuit in creating this years logo and car stickers for the 'Lotus Alpine Tour 2009' I've had to learn Photoshop and Illustrator with pleasing results. But there's a down side too.
Not so long ago as an Art Director working with a Copywriter you were charged with the sole responsibility of answering the creative brief for the development and creation of a well crafted, successful advertisement in whatever guise was deemed most appropriate. And this is still the case today. But where 'best of breed' was a philosophy the majority of ad agencies could afford to follow with budgets that allowed for this. With dedicated specialists filling dedicated positions. Art Director. Copywriter. Designer. Artworker. And never the two shall meet. How many of these roles today now blur into one?
Has 'Master of One' become 'Jack of All' and are we now delivering a weaker product for it? But more importantly and without knowing it, is the client ultimately the cause of this? Is their paying of peanuts, delivering monkeys?
Times and budgets have changed and therefore so has agencies resources. But I've also noticed a perception in some quarters that best of breed appears to have never existed! Surely 95 to 05 wasn't that long ago. Have we lost a lot of the more experienced hands or because of the recession playing towards the smaller players. Am I increasingly dealing with more smaller agencies than I may not have done so 5 years ago? In all honesty I suspect it's a bit of both.
Anyway I've detoured. My point is that the continued reduction in budgets and possible reduction of experienced agencies hands too, has led us to a place where as a senior Art Director. I'm increasingly being asked to Conceptualize, Art Direct, Write, Mac up (full design not just mac scamp as to be honest there isn't really such a thing as a mac scamp) and even Art Work the advertisements I'm charged with rationalizing and creating. If that's the nature of today's budgets then so be it. But there's a price to pay and it's a self fueling circle.
The 'Jack of All' approach only leads to a compromised product. Not necessarily in time spent on the job as I know we work even longer hours than we used to. But in the quality of service the product receives at each of it's departmental stages. And with the competition fighting ever harder for every piece of the pie, crumbs and all. Can you and should you be reducing the resources needed to deliver the best product possible?
There is an up side for us Art Directors. Learning the programs that the Designers use to build the creative we produce and art direct does give you some understanding of specific strengths and weaknesses members of the studio have towards specific design programs. This in turn alloys you the fine turn your best of breed structure within the studio itself.
Best of breed isn't about wasting time and resources with having people kicking their heals because they've done their part of the job and it's now over to someone else. It's about the benefits that the highest possible quality of product and increased effectiveness in results brings to every single job you produce. No matter how big or small. That helps to keep a client, increases the projects they give you and puts you on the radar of other clients too.
Last week I spent a couple of days freelancing for Agency 'M' on a global Hotelier brand.
And was inevitably reminded there's no getting away from the fact that it's the smaller Independents in the Advertising Industry that are showing the rest of us the way forward. While you can't exactly say they're bucking the recession. With their lean approach allowing a business plan of flexing to their business needs, they're definitely in a better place to deal with it and remain busier too. Enjoying the vibe you get from a busy shop over the skellingtons to be found rattling around the corridors of larger agencies continuing to cut staff. Many of the smaller agencies are quite simply feeling more positive about the outside world. And there are blue skies to be found from the views from some of the smaller windows that overlook ad land. A view I'm regularly seeing at first hand myself.
I also believe it's where the industry is heading and one that's here to stay. One arrived at by bigger agencies being forced to substantially downsizing or the great and the good seeing the current appeal and benefits of the Independents over the big boys. But lets face it, in reality it's been heading that way for sometime now and all the recession has done is to of made it all that more apparent, speeding up the process along the way. Even when the economy does inevitably pick it's self up off the floor after going 12 rounds with Iron Man Mike Tyson. It's a direction I don't expect to it waver from. They'll be too many clients and staff for that matter, enjoying the benefits that a larger number of smaller Independent's bring. A greater choice of those smaller fee agencies where more senior staff are now enjoying having a greater say.
And from a creativity point of view, in a paradox to what you might expect. The leaner and meaner Independents ability to weather the storm better may well lead to a growth in their numbers, one that was supported by the clients. Inevitably bringing greater competition and more niche agencies. And from there, dare I say it...the possibility of enjoy that long overdue creative Indian Summer. Basking in a creative return to form the UK Industry can be proud of.
It may well be the only summer we get. But if we do it's one I'd take over a tan any day. Told you every cloud has a silver lining. Now let's just hope I'm right. :-)
Well since I've got to start somewhere, here at ten past two on a Friday afternoon is as good as any.
This blog is in answer to my wish to become a fully paid up member of the digital rat race. Don't get me wrong, deep down inside I secretly crave the extra work commitment it brings. I deny anyone not to crave the adrenaline and sense of achievement that flows from such a busy life.
But god knows. With the speed of life today showing no signs of ever easing up, on the contrary it just keeps piling on the speed hurtling towards the 22nd century reinventing it's self along the way every 24 hours. Will we ever reach a happy ending in what we've achieved and where we find ourselves. Will the grass ever been green enough or our drive ever fulfilled. Will Facebook, Twitter and YouTube become obsolete before they even reached puberty. Will this time next week find me on a completely different blogger site altogether. And will my spelling of improved?
One thing I do know. It like this blog is only the beginning.
"As the tagline on a poster raising awareness about domestic violence, that's not bad. But it was the poster itself that was truly attention grabbing, for it brought the issue of being watched (or not) to life.
