Ferris Bueller was right. We all need to take time to stop and look around us.
This is a blog about brands, technology, ads and ideas that I find interesting and would like to share.
How a country manages to be a Vogue top tip and also an Axis Of Evil is something that I will be able to report back on in a week or so. We are off to Syria and I am very very excited.
Crusader castles, roman ruined cities, souks, mosques and Middle Eastern food - all sounds good to me. OK so George Bush isn't a fan, but well you can't have everything!
The world seems to be utterly divided between those folks who tell me how Syria is on their travel wish list and are just as excited as I am by the prospect and those who give me like odd "what on earth are you thinking" kind of look.
Anyway, might be Twittering if the phone/internet works.
Popped into Magma last week and by chance discovered my new favourite book, LeCool: A Weird and Wonderful Guide to London. Maybe I have been living with my head buried in a cultural sandbox but somehow news of LeCool had passed me by.
How is that possible?
This is an utterly brilliant, beautiful book and I have already brought 3 copies for my present box to give as gifts to some lucky friends in the future.
Does everyone else know about LeCool expect for me?!?
If not they should!
This is a little taster of the beginning:
"WE CHOSE THIS CITY
We came here in a Transit, the rest of the band asleep on the flight cases in the back. We came here in a borrowed suit and our funeral tie to be interviewed for that big-money job in the city. We came to graffiti the trains at Willesden Junction one night, met some people, got a job in an art supplies shop and ripped up our return ticket. We came here because of Jeffrey Bernard, or Jazzy B, or Johnny Rotten. The myths are all true. Dragons stalk the city, the streets are paved with gold. There are angels in Peckham Rye and paradise is by way of Kensal Green. We're here because we choose to be. This is our London."
It had me from the very first page. It's poetry as well as a guidebook. It brings a lump to my throat.
Apart from the excellence of the copywriting, the design is incredible with each page having a fresh visual look and feel.
But it's the fact that they have cool unknown stuff to do and see in places like New Cross, Stoke Newington and Archway that is so great. It's real London. Messy, inspiring and unique.
I am a born and bred Londoner and pride myself on knowing the place inside out (although I don't really do West London for some inverted snobbery reason), anyway I got so many new top tips - The restaurant at the Indian YMCA, the CrossBones Graveyard in SE1, the Romanian restaurant in the Old Bailey, the private room at Princess Louise in High Holborn ("London's best pub? Could be.") and Unit C103 in Deptford's Creekside.
What a result for the team that Guy Murphy called the "digital misfits".
It was a good description of a rag-tag team and I mean that in a good way. I deliberately choose people who don't fit neatly, people who don't really have clear titles and have many different work "hats".
Sometimes I am Head of Digital Strategy, sometimes Head of Comms Planning, sometimes Planning Director, sometimes Planner. To be honest I am not really that bothered what I called so long as I can work on interesting briefs and do smart creative stuff.
I felt the same thing from the other team members I picked - Yusuf , Adil, Martin and Martin. All of them are flexible, creative thinkers who just enjoy solving problems.
We were pitching against a Dave Trott team which included George Michaelides (smart "names over the door" thinking!) and other Media/Comms Planning types and Kate Stanners and a team made up entirely of Creatives.
The brief was a live one from Ian Armstrong, the main Honda client.
HONDA ARE LAUNCHING A NEW HYBRID IN 2009 - IT WILL SELL FOR AROUND £13K, TOYOTA PRIUS RETAILS FOR AROUND £17K. WHAT'S THE LAUNCH STRATEGY?
In the interests of Radical Transparency, this was our chain of though.
(some of the answers were immersed in the briefing pack, some we used intuition...)
1. How many cars do they need to sell? 10k 2. Is this a little or a lot? This is a lot - all Hybrid cars sold YTD are aprox 10K, across all car categories 3. Why could this be? There are issues, skepticism and confusion around the word "Hybrid" - is it really green, is it any good, isn't it a smug middle class type of purchase 4. What's so good about this car? Hybrids have very low running costs and are better for the environment due to lower immisions. 5. What's the current social and cultural context Its bloody awful economically and people are thinking less about "eco" and more about "eco-nomics" - their worlds are getting smaller so to speak. Its less about "we" and more about "me"
So, lets dial down the eco bit of this car - and focus more on the economics of the car.
Let's allow Toyota and the Prius to grow the hybrid market because we will get a good share of it due to our highly competitive price point and the good reliability of Hondas generally.
1. Where do we get share from? Let's attack the diesel market - its massive (119k c-class sold YTD) and we believe that this audience is a cost-conscious one, so it should be an easy sale.
2. What is the core thought at the heart of this strategy?
Let's start with the car itself and the technology within - - Product truth - a hybrid engine has two components, a fuel part and a battery part - one essentially "feeds" the other, so that it works on battery sometimes and fuel at other times. The energy isn't wasted, its transferred. - Audience truth - People are anxious about money and family fiances, people are concerned with wastage and conspicuous consumption - Brand truth - Honda is a company that wants society to "want them"
Our Solution - a Social Movement WASTE NOTHING
The car technology wastes nothing, society is moving to a waste nothing phase and Honda has social benefits at the heart of the company.
That's it really.
It was a huge amount of fun. The feedback about the day in general was really positive.
(and hello to Will, Belinda and others...) ps. There's an interesting Russell Davies POV on the downside of Fast Strategy over at his blog - for the record, I think that our team thought that the exercise of developing a strategy in a few hours was ( at least for us - enjoyable, eye-opening and entertaining), however we did all agree that while we did come to a strategic solution in the allocated time, we had no time to stress-test it, question it, pull it apart and ask any difficult questions, we just had to take a deep breath and go for it. And that probably doesn't give the client always the best solution....
I met Jonathan kind of randomly at a beta-testing for Trusted Places. We got to talking and we worked out that we worked in the same industry. Then we exchanged blog-cards and I realized that he was the genius behind Around Britain With A Paunch. This is really a GREAT foodie blog, the writing is witty and insightful and the tips are always spot-on. If you haven't read it and like food, what are you waiting for?
Anyway Jonathan has a new job outside of advertising which is being the Sandwich Correspondent for the Londonist. This is his first Sandwichist post....
So when Jonathan said let's meet up for lunch, I really had to think hard about a sandwich place to take him. Victoria is not known for its culinary delights, but what was funny was when I knew that I needed to find somewhere un-chain-y, somewhere really good and interesting it made me look at my local streets with a totally fresh eye.
And you know what, we found some brilliant places that I had never even noticed before - Portuguese cafes, Spanish tortilla bars and Gastronomeria Italia on Upper Tatchbrook Street. Its been there for 30+ years, a great little neighbourhood local with exquisite sandwiches .
Anyway, I will be keeping an eye on Netvibes for Jonathan's review.
But it was an interesting exercise, if you had a Sandwich Correspondent come to have lunch close to your work, where would you take them?
Social Media and Social Media etiquette is something that you probably know I feel very strongly about. This presentation has been in "beta" so to speak with various folks around the agency and clients for a while as I wanted to sharpen and refine our approach and get a proper measurement plan in place.
Couple of thoughts that came out in discussion after the Masterclass:
1. I don't think that Social Media takes the place of other channels in fact I am sure that with an ATL push Social Media initiatives would work even better (an hypothesis as the both O2 projects, Cocoon and XDA had no ATL support) Given the fact that branded search terms for clients always increase when we run advertising its not a hugely controversial belief.
2. Measurement in terms of ROI is a bitch, dare I say impossible at the moment. What was the sales uplift on an account of doing our Social Media launches? I don't know, but we have a fairly robust measurement approach in the deck.
3. When PR agencies tell me with great pride that they "treat bloggers just like journalists" that worries me. Most bloggers aren't journalists and I am not sure that the same rules apply here. Yes treat people as human beings, understand what interests them but to me one of the really important things is that if you want to engage social media creators then you have to be a part of that world. One of the points that I made at AdTech was about Radical Transparency and the fact that of our Social Media team are an active part of this world and that our social media footprints are clearly visible and accessible across the web. You can't sit on the sidelines looking in and expect to understand it properly, you have to be in it to get it.
Things like this scare me enormously. I am very happy talking at conferences and at public events generally, but the whole "performance planning" really makes my stomach turn with fear.
So I'm doing it. I talk to people a lot about the importance of getting of their comfort zone so this seemed a good occasion to get out of mine.
I pick my own team. It's supposed to be Digital Natives, so I failed the recruitment criteria having been born in 1975 and never having used a computer until I started working back in 1997. Anyhow that aside (and there is an online debate that being a Digital Native is a state of mind not a year of birth, Russell Davies for example - not that I am saying that he's old or anything...) Anyway I have picked people who I think capture what I think are is the essential spirit of digital nativity (is that the right use of that word, not sure?) - Adil who is a Planner/Producer and generally brilliant, I worked with him on Push The Brief so know that I enjoy his style of thinking; Yusuf who started up Staufenberger and I know from Naked days; David Brain who I met through blogging and brings a PR POV to the team and Martin Bailie who is the Planning Director of Glue.
So if you are coming please come and say hello, I'll be the one sweating and shaking somewhere in a corner...
Came back from holidays this morning, a little depressed and grey, to find a package from Rubber Republic on my desk.
Inside was a copy of the seminal (but probably not read widely enough) tome, The Cluetrain Manifesto. I think that the Cluetrain is a great, provactive, insightful piece of writing. It came out when I was working in Ogilvy Interactive New York and I remember how it just seemed to encapsulate how I was thinking and feeling about digital.
Their 95 Theses were great - here are a couple:
1. Markets are conversations 2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors 3. Conversations among humans sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
9. These networked conversations are enabling powerful forms of social organization and knowledge exhange to emerge. 10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.
The point of this Book Crossing scheme is that I pass the book along, so much as I want to keep it (actually I just need to hunt for my original version) I will post on the book to anyone who wants it. The condition is that they need to send it on to someone else after they have finished with it.
As the Beijing Games ended this afternoon and the London handover began there was a free party for 30,000 in the Mall in London.
We saw British Olympians past and present and future hopefuls, bands like Scouting for Girls, Will Young, The Feeling and McFly and the Red Arrows.
And you know what, it was great.
A lively,confident, happy afternoon.
With no aggression, no arrogance, just thousands of people dancing and singing - celebrating and looking forward to 2012.
A multi-generational, multi-cultural gathering that somehow seemed to sum up a lot of what's good about this country.
I just don't think that we're very good at being patriotic in this country (there's a great Orwell essay on just this BTW), sometimes we seem to either confuse it for racism, or we can get rather snobby and class-conscious about flag-waving, in fact even the term "flag-waving" has negative connotations. So it was lovely to see that finally we as a nation seem to be more at ease with being proud of our country. That doesn't mean being blind to our faults, but it does mean celebrating our achievements.
Bistrothequeis one of my very very favourite spots in London.
Hidden away, unmarked in a dodgy-looking alley on the out-skirts of Bethnal Green, Bistrotheque always provides a great night out. Whether you want dinner, freshly made cocktails or a laugh at their cabaret. This winter they will be hosting a pop-up restaurant in the oh-so-refined Royal Academy in Mayfair. You just know that it will be fantastic.
It opens in November and closes in January 2009.
They are accepting online reservations.
They say that most tables will be either for 2 or 4 people with a couple for 6.
This will be the coolest restaurant experience of the year, so try and get a table now while you can!
I remember Johnny Vulkan chatting with me about the way that I used my blog and the way that he used his Flickr account. His was more of a sharing stories through pictures and mine was more through words, but the essential motivation wa the same for both of us: Upload, Share, Create.
So in the spirit of that thought, have a look at his Flickr stream - it's brilliant, I can lose myself for hours in the pictures.
This is probably my fav - I love trying to workout the backstory...
BTW, Johnny assures me that this is NOT his salary from Anomaly!
In May of 1969, fourteen-year-old Jerry Levitan heard a rumor that his
hero John Lennon was hiding out in his hometown of Toronto, Canada. The
young teenager didn't want to miss this one and only chance to speak
personally with the legendary musician, so he set out on a quest to
find his favorite Beatle. After knocking on numerous hotel room doors
throughout the city, Levitan finally happened upon his idol. They hit
it off, and John Lennon allowed the kid to come in for a chat.
What
resulted from this chance meeting was a thirty-minute interview
recorded on an old reel-to-reel tape machine. A recording that Jerry
Levitan has been sitting on for close to forty years. After many offers
and ideas, Jerry decided to take the audio and do something creative
and personal with it.
Last year I was part of a panel, chaired by the lovely Jess from Contagious, at the PSFK London conference. We discussed "Are Planners The New Creatives?" To be honest I found it a tricky motion to debate. Its one of those sound-byte questions that sound easy, but actually call into question much deeper issues about advertising, creativity and where exactly is this industry going. My own opinion then, as it still is today, that if anyone is "the new creative" than its actually Technologists rather than Planners.
Anyway...
The IPA Strategy group held a similar debate earlier this week: "Who makes better Planners? Planners or Creatives." Defending Planners was David Golding from Adam+Eve, and proposing Creatives Dave Trott.
When you get a brief from clients I often ask "what's the real exam question?" When you get a brief you have to really dig in and work out what it is that you are actually being asked about, what is the real problem that you are being asked to help solve.
And I guess that was the issue that I had with the IPA debate - what exactly was being debated? Why were we spending an evening talking about it and what could we learn from it? A lot of the younger folk from the agency who came thought that the evening was great, engaging, entertaining and educational. Maybe I'm a bit old and jaded now, but it left me a bit empty.
What is Dave Trott so angry about? I totally get that this is his "brand", but even so his rage just seem to be directed all over the place - angry about pontificating Planners who complicate the simple, angry with Creatives for forgetting the skill of strategy and business-problem solving and angry with the industry for rewarding creative work on account of creative awards won rather than effectivness or genuine imagination and flair. All good things to be angry about actually and in fact I would agree with all of them but how it relates to Planners Vs Creatives was beyond me.
I don't however agree with his assertion that all Planners want to do is big TV brand advertising. In my experience it is more often Creatives than Planners who are desperate for big brand glory.
Trott's main point seemed to be that the bottom 90% of Planners are pretty shit and the bottom 90% of Creatives are pretty shit. That's probably right.
But where does that leave us?
Are Creatives the new Planners?
No.
Are Planners the new Creatives?
No. But given that our creative end-product increasingly could be a blog, a widget, an event or an ARG instead of or as well as a TV ad, then we all need to think about what exactly we mean by the phrase "the Creative Team". Pairings work well for problem solving and ideation (apologies for that Americanism), but an Art Director - CopyWriter? I'm not so sure?
The definition of Planners and Creatives are in-flux so debating which one is better sort of seems to be missing the point.
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