Cup of Java

Do You Know If Your Creative Sucks? Here's Why You Should Care

2018-08-26T18:46:00.000-04:00

More often than not, the quality of creativity is seen as subjective. Personal preferences of colors and font are one thing. You then have all kinds of personal perspectives that get layered on as well based on the reviewer's frame of reference. It also can reveal a surprising amount about the reviewer (but that’s another post).

I've recently been introduced to some constructs (thanks Sweathead group)that help to set up an objective way to just the quality of creative; I find it fascinating and surprising that the industry as a whole has not yet adopted this (or something similar) as a universal measure. Because, quite frankly, if you're doing things that are ranked at 1-3, why even bother?

A piece from Fast Company highlighted why Heineken was named Cannes Marketer of Year:

"In an attempt to scale best behavior across the company and ensure everyone adopts the same language and uses similar criteria to define what great creativity is, the company operates a Global Commerce University (GCU). It is a global hub, which provides mandatory training primarily for marketing and sales staffers. Morelli-Verhoog says: “It produces, deploys and embeds capabilities to build stronger brands. One of the fundamental capability streams is creativity.” The “backbone” of this stream is an internal tool known as the “creative ladder.” This is a 10-step ladder going from “destructive” creativity at its base to “legendary” at the top.

Here is Heineken's "creative ladder":

To keep the creative bar set high, Heineken uses "Creative Monday" to keep the marketing team of 1.500 people thinking about how to judge advertising:

Morelli-Verhoog says: ”Every Monday morning at 9 a.m. we send out a not-easy-to-judge piece of creative to the entire marketing community. We’ve done Adidas, Red Bull, Beats, and so on. Then people judge the work in terms of the creative ladder. Sometimes we ask people to explain their thinking because it is not about the voting, it’s about articulating the rationale. It gets super-passionate and then at 10 a.m. we stop. On Tuesday we [the GCU] reveal what we think and explain why a 7 is a 7 or a 6 is a 6. People love it because it is low effort for them, but it formally keeps creativity on the agenda every single week. We don’t let go.”

I love this idea and think it's a shame more brands don't do it. Of course, it would require them to value creativity to invest the time and resources to it.

As more brands bring creative in-house (as is the current trend), it becomes even more critical for them to provide continual support of the creative output from their internal teams——across marketing and advertising disciplines. Great creative requires buy-in throughout the approval chain. It needs everyone involved to support creativity and ideas that challenge the norm.

Similarly, Leo Burnett Worldwide has a Global Product Committee (@TheLBGCP) which meets 4 times a year to internally judge the agency's work on a 1-10 scale. The group upholds the benchmark for the agency’s global network’s creative reputation and is comprised of creative directors, managing directors, planners, and account directors from offices around the world.

Their scale is very similar, which they call “The Humankind Scale”:

The Human Kind Scale from triso01

CREATIVITY HAS THE POWER TO TRANSFORM HUMAN BEHAVIOR.
This is the core belief of what we call HumanKind. It’s not about advertising or brand propositions or marketing. lt's about people and purpose. lt’s an approach to marketing that serves true human needs, not the other way around.

That's why everything we do for brands is designed with a human purpose in mind. A brand without purpose is one that will never be understood or embraced by people. A brand with purpose can be a true agent of change and transform the way people think, feel or act. A brand with a true Humankind purpose can change the world. Our dream is to be the best creator of those ideas that truly move people - bar none.

The thinking here is that a client isn’t going to partner with the agency if it doesn’t hold these beliefs as well. At least that would be my guess. If that’s the case, this would be something that is presented and outlined in pitch decks, clearly setting the expectation with the client so they’re onboard with the same view to judge creativity.

A great creative idea that never gets made isn’t worth much. It’s one of the reasons why relationship building with clients is so important for creative leads. Often the thought is that that is only the account lead’s job, and it’s true, the majority of it is with them. But, you need to be trusted to sell in highly creative ideas, ideas that are seen as risky, as bold, as new. If your client faith in your team, they are more likely to have faith in your ideas. It’s a matter of showing them you’re not doing something creative for the sake of being creative, but there is a purpose driving each piece of it.

So, with all of these connections, it seems to me that both brands and agencies would benefit from improving their cultures around creativity. And, yes, it also could help to bring back the value of creativity which the industry as a whole has commoditized. Now, I'm not saying that this creative scale is the be-all-end-all, but it would be a great way to start building alignment to the conversation on a topic that is driven by subjectivity. Perhaps it would stop clients from wasting money on campaigns and marketing that gets lost in the crowd or just plain ignored.

(hat tips to @MarkPollard and @Dr_Draper for their inspiration and slide sharing)

When a new tagline kills the feeling

2018-04-18T08:34:00.001-04:00

A headline from AutoNews states: Mazda Turns to Emotions with New Ad Campaign. I'm not sure that they weren't already there, though.

About two and a half years ago, my 2004 VW Jetta's transmission went; it was time for a new car. After the whole VW fiasco—and the fact that their designs have become quite boring—I started to look at other makers. I ended up narrowing down my choices to Subaru and Mazda. And I landed on Mazda.

Zoom. Zoom.

In 2000, Mazda launched "Zoom Zoom". It had a catchy song. It had a cute kid whispering “Zoom Zoom”. It connected to a feeling people had about wanting to go fast and live a "zoom zoom" life.

In 2015, Mazda tried to define what "Zoom Zoom" meant with "Driving Matters." (Honestly, I didn't even realize this until researching for this post.) They kept the “Zoom Zoom” tagline, although I would say, what did they want people to remember, because two lines is a lot.
Funnily enough, the AdAge article about this new campaign has a similar headline to the AutoNews headline from last month: Mazda Launches Major Campaign, Puts Emotion Back into ‘Zoom Zoom’. Here’s an excerpt from that article on the why behind “Driving Matters”.

"When we go into a focus group, we do a first opening statement. 'When I say Mazda, what do you think of?'" said Russell Wager, VP-U.S. marketing at Mazda. "Nine times out of 10 they say 'Zoom Zoom,'" he added, banging a table for emphasis. "Then I'll ask them to explain to me what 'Zoom Zoom' means, and I'll get six or seven different answers. That's what Driving Matters is supposed to address. It's supposed to solidify what 'Zoom Zoom' means to people.”

Mazda hopes its advertisements will appeal to a specific type of person, which it calls the "Global Mazda Target." But rather than targeting a demographic, Mazda aims for a "psychographic," of people who love to drive, are well informed and are more interested in collecting experiences than things.

So now, three years later, they unveiled a new campaign with the tagline, “Feel Alive.”

In their press release, they talk about how they want to make them feel something profound.

"Mazda has always engineered to a feeling. We want to build an emotional connection with our fans by making them feel something profound," said Bernacchi. "'Feel Alive' will be a celebration of human challenge, inspiration, exhilaration and potential and there’s no better moment to reveal it than NCAA Championship Monday."
The new brand platform will also pave the way for unexpected partnerships and integrations with innovative companies like Amazon. The relationship is based on a fresh approach to fan communities and leveraging Amazon as a social channel versus an e-commerce tool. Mazda owners on Amazon have given select models five-star reviews.
"Amazon is consumer-focused, data-driven and very well-aligned with our new brand platform," said Bernacchi. "We have a vocal and growing community of Mazda fans and owners on Amazon and we want to support that community with the same energy and attention we give to our other social communities like Facebook and Youtube."

I’m sorry, but "Feel Alive" doesn’t make me feel anything profound. Nothing that tells me to feel a certain way is going to be profound. But, I think the biggest issue with this is that it falls flat. They’ve gone from celebrating the feeling with words that embody that feeling to simply telling someone how to feel.

When I sit in my Mazda, and think about "Feel Alive", I go to places like "Don't Feel Dead", "Not for Zombies", and other things I'd rather not think about while driving with maniacs who cut people off and fundamentally don't believe in using their signals.

From the little bit of research I’ve done, it's obvious that Mazda as a brand wants to be an emotional one. And, it’s a shame that they've walked away from their emotional line that didn't have to tell anyone what to do or how to feel. It just was.

It was a great use of onomatopoeia, perhaps second to "Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz, Oh what a relief it is." It helps make the idea more interesting and lively. It's emotional in and of itself. It doesn't need to tell people how to feel. It just is the feeling. And, I'm not sure it's a bad thing for people to take away what that means for themselves.

Brands have a fear of letting people put their own interpretation on them. It might be scary, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. Let me take away what "Zoom Zoom" means to me without being forced to have a specific meaning tied to it. As long as they are all positive, it shouldn't matter.

Zoom. Zoom.

Do your creative briefs have solid insights?

2018-04-13T16:12:00.003-04:00

Insight is defined as (by Merriam-Webster)
1 : the power or act of seeing into a situation : penetration
2 : the act or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively

Solid creative briefs contain insights. But, sometimes, those insights are less than insightful. But as the sage Bill Bernbach said:

“At the heart of an effective creative philosophy is the belief that nothing is so powerful as an insight into human nature, what compulsions drive a man, what instincts dominate his action, even though his language so often can camouflage what really motivates him.”

In many cases, planners and strategists are responsible for pulling together the creative brief and digging up the insights. But, that's not always the case. Often, little or no research is done and the brief becomes just a list of demographic data and generic information that does not help the brief.

Avi Dan's piece "The Heart Of Effective Advertising Is A Powerful Insight" might be 5 years old but, it hits on a truth that is still true today (and probably for the rest of time).

"A great creative brief inspires, intrigues and provides the fertile soil from which powerful ideas can sprout. It does so with clarity, conciseness, and with a definite point-of-view. The brief should tell the creative team what it wants them to do, what is expected of them. As the creative brief has the power to spark amazing ideas, and ideas are what advertising is all about, it is essential that the CMO and its team immerse themselves in its creation."

And, a key part of the brief is the insight. It can take a creative team into fertile, inspirational ground that would not otherwise be explored.

As a creative, the insight is one of the first things I look for in a brief. As a creative director, I've worked with strategists and account managers to help make sure that the team has a true insight to work from that can help drive the creativity of the work in interesting directions.

So, What is a good insight?

Let's skip good, and go to straight to great. Great insights provide richness to a strategy and provide a unique perspective into the mindset of the target audience. They help put the creatives in the shoes of the audience they are trying to reach.

Examples of ads developed from insights showcases how a successful marketing campaigns move and inspire by resonating deeply with a brand’s target audience using inspiring consumer insight rooted in complex data. They looked at brand campaigns like Activia: It Starts Inside, Always: Keep Going #LikeAGirl, and Spotify: 2018 Goals.

Giving marketers the tools to create ideas that stick, in-depth data is often where the best campaigns begin. Just one fundamental truth about your consumer can inspire a powerful message that lasts.

"Insights illuminate, but they don't have to be deep", says Andy Davidson, who is Head of UK Practice at the global insight and brand consultancy Flamingo.

"In developing a useful insight, consider human needs", explains Nick Hirst, Head of Planning at creative agency Dare.

In "How to write a Creative Brief that will inspire great creative on your brand" by Beloved Brand, they state: "The smart brief frames the consumer insights with the word “I” that forces you to get into their shoes and put the insight in quotes that forces you to use their voice. These insights add more depth to the story of the consumer so the creative team can build stories that connect with your consumer. The best ads are those where you can almost see the insight shining through the work."

This is what makes a great insight. It's the combination of the:
1) Things we read (Facts & Data)
2) What we see (Observations)
3) What we hear (Consumer Voice)
4) What we sense (Emotional Zones)
5) Life moments (Day in the Life)
These five things come together to create an insight statement that is also counterpoint to the consumer paint point.

According to this piece there are four characteristics of a good insight:
1) the "A-ha!"
An insight differs from an observation in the fact that it is not immediately visible or ‘evident’, but that it only becomes clear when you are actually confronted with it. A strong insight is equal to a sort of ‘Aha’ experience: a combination of surprise and something familiar. It entails a view on something which was implicit all that time. To get to these ‘Aha’ moments, you need a creative and multidiscipline approach.

2) It's Me
The second basic aspect of a strong consumer insight is relevance. A strong insight automatically calls for familiarity, sometimes even to the extent that you may even learn things about yourself that you were not aware of before.

3) Tension
Behind every strong insight lies a need to improve an existing situation. In other words: it’s not just about being relevant; consumers should also feel a need to change something to an existing situation.

4) Insight ≠ idea
An insight is the start of possibly hundreds of ideas. It is a source of inspiration for branding, communication, innovation and customer experience. The easier you manage to come up with different ideas that start off from your insight, the stronger your insight is.

The end result of a great insight, is possibly great creative. It certainly doesn't guarantee it, but it significantly increases the chances that the creative team will craft something that has a strong resonance with the target because of it.

Making Banking More Social

2017-09-12T12:49:00.000-04:00

At the end of last week I attended the Argyle 2017 Financial Services Forum: Marketing & Technology Innovation conference to talk about making banking more social.

Speaking off the cuff in an interview format, I know there are things I could have discussed but didn’t do to the lack of having notes available.

So I decided I would hit on some of what I talked about, but also touch on things I didn’t talk about.

Banking and finance are typically not leaders when it comes to technology and digital. Often, they leverage that which has worked in other industries first. It makes sense; the risk is lower. And we’re talking about very risk-adverse folks.

Where many other brands are today in terms of social, the banking and finance world (on average) is about 5 years behind but, working to catch up. The thing is, in the digital world, 5 years is a lot. And playing catch up means you'll always be behind. Brands need to start looking at ways they can leapfrog to get ahead.

Social touches all stages of the funnel.

I will start by clarifying, the marketing funnel is not the same as a customer journey. But, if we’re thinking about how we want to create awareness, drive education, and get people to act, we have the ability to do it all in this channel. Social can also be a key component to retention, an oft overlooked, yet powerful component of the overall process.

It requires building bridges across the silos that exist within your organization. Thinking about how each touchpoint creates a full story for your brand as they see different content within their social streams.

Think how can you narrate the story in the way that best suits your business needs, as well as providing value to your customers.

Social leads your online customer service.

Understanding the role social can play in customer service is critical. Customer expect to get their issue resolved through a message on Facebook or a direct message on Twitter.

Enabling your social teams to do so, and actually take action for certain items (like a password reset), can have an incredibly positive impact on your call centers. It can also help to improve the perception of your business by being able to solve things with less back-and-forth and in a more immediate manner.

Social provides key insights through data about your customers.

Leveraging the information about your fans and followers across your social networks can provide key insights to help drive future campaigns, and product development. You can discover what other brands they like (including your competitors) and gain tremendous psychographic learnings to apply to your marketing on and off social media.

Social is emotional.

From showing empathy through customer service to showcasing emotion tied to your brand, social is driven by the heart more than the mind.

It's a place to show you understand your customers; it should be relatable and relevant. And, it's a place for customers to show how they feel about your brand.

Social requires the right mindset.

There's more to social than just putting out a post on your platforms. It is a way of thinking about your business to create and deepen connections through relationships. It's also a way to leverage data that exists and use it in ways that surprise and delight.

Just because you're in the financial industry and there are a lot of barriers with compliance and regulations, there are always opportunities to think creatively about how to use social, whether it is in a program you launch or in the way you use the API data to do something that reduces friction for customers.

Overall, there is a lot more to think about with social and banking but, this is a start. Thankfully, banks have started to look outside their own industry for inspiration as well. Other highly regulated industries like insurance, have made great strides in how they create engaging and meaningful social campaigns that deliver for the business.

Banking can get there, too.

Reading Roundup: Week 8/28/17

2017-08-30T22:08:00.000-04:00

Here are a few things of interest I've come across and have read in the past week...

Meet the 3 types of people who will launch your culture of growth:
Read the article to learn about The Pioneer, The Champion, and The X-Team.

Google Rolls Out Video Previews for Quick Searches:
Read about changes in the Google app for Android and Chrome on Android. When video results show up in the video carousel, just like text snippets for text results, you’ll see video previews.

5 Tips from Twitter to Boost Campaign Performance with In-Stream Ads:
Read to find out how creative teams can make the most of Twitter’s new ad offering, using research-backed best practices.

Generation Z Speaks Their Minds:
Read why, according research, there are four big cross-cultural themes that drive this generation: Diversity, Digital detox, Justice, and Nationality.

Design Principles: a guide to less shitty feedback:
Read and learn how design principles can help the creative process. "Design Principles are a set of statements that communicate what we want from a project or product. It’s a way for everyone to agree on a couple of core principles that the work should be measured by. By determining these ideas early on, you create a framework that will help you take design decisions and give constructive feedback."

3 Tips for Retaining Great Creative Talent

2017-08-26T17:43:00.000-04:00

Can in-house agencies be as creative as out-of-house agencies?

Earlier this week, The Drum published this interview with AirBnB CMO, Johnathan Mildenhall who is in the middle of a creative review for the brand but "says the management consultancies are not in contention, believing they’re incapable of retaining great creative talent".

Which is interesting, as he seems to think that in-house agencies, and out-of-house agencies in general, are capable of retaining great creative talent.

Overall, I'd say that's a good thing, but in-house (and out-of-house) agencies often have a lot of trouble retaining talent, too. There are a few areas that companies can focus on, in addition to making the right hires in regards to skill sets and with the right "fit" in terms of personalities that will work well together.

Value of Creative:

Many times in-house agencies are creatively strapped compared to their out-of-house counterparts. Innovative projects and "blue sky thinking" tend to go to the outside agency and the in-house folks are left to execute. Creativity is either squashed or just not nourished in the same way as at out-of-house agencies. There needs to be a space where collaboration can happen, where ideas can be pinned up and shared among the team. The technology to create needs to be valued as well, so that teams have the tools to do their jobs. You wouldn't ask an accountant to do their job without something to be able to calculate with--and for creative teams there is an overhead cost for getting people set up with the tech they need.

Creativity also flourishes better when there is a system of trust in place. For employees to know that they are trusted and free to explore their creativity is critical. And nearly as critical is to understand that you've hired an expert who has likely studied their field and should be looked to for advice and know-how, not just as "short order" cooks. Value what they bring to the table is important to keeping them happy (just like any other employee in any department).

Corporate Culture:

Cultivating a creative environment is not a core competency at many corporations. Many times that also stems from the general culture of a company or priorities where Operations, bottom lines, and many other factors tend to get higher priorities. As companies look to bring more work in-house, they need to consider how they will allow creative to flourish in its own pocket within the larger company to achieve greater results. Consider what your agency's environment was like, and then think about what the environment is like for your in-house team. Is it comparable or does it need to be improved with features to help drive better creative thinking?

In some cases, companies have set up in-house agencies as their own entities within the company, which provides some more flexibility and new structures to be more easily set up rather than trying to retrofit existing processes which can be more difficult or not make sense. This can help keep creative from becoming too embedded into the company as well, leaving the ideation free from all the nitty-gritty that folks in marketing will bring to the table (legal/etc) that should not be barriers to the ideation process. Staying at an arms distance allows for the ability to be agile and nimble but without getting too lost in the weeds. The balance can be met in-house, if set up correctly.

Growth Opportunities:

As many bring creative capabilities in-house, it's often done with the idea that in-sourcing is cheaper than out-sourcing. When cost is at the forefront of a decision, one has to also understand that often it results in teams that are understaffed and overloaded with work. I've seen many, many, many job descriptions asking for someone to basically do 2-4 different jobs that one person really shouldn't be doing--at least not anyone who will do any of the jobs well.

People leave jobs because they are constantly overloaded with work or they don't see opportunity for growth, and that their role will never evolve or grow because there is no scale built in to the team they are on. This is also why people leave out-of-house agencies, too. In order to keep people for the long term, you have to show that you're willing to give raises and provide growth opportunities--it's the number one reason most people leave ANY job.

Micro-Moments and Your Brand

2017-08-21T19:17:00.002-04:00

Is your brand ready to handle micro-moments?

"Micro-moments have been accelerating consumer expectations for “right here, right now” experiences. People take for granted that information is at their fingertips and tailored to their specific needs. But the thing about human beings is they never stop wanting that little bit extra. It’s becoming evident that they’ll keep raising the bar, wanting more useful information, more personalization, more immediacy. My team wanted to dig into these evolving expectations and understand how consumer behavior has changed since we first introduced micro-moments."
- From Think With Google

Google groups micro-moments into three ways the data takes shape: well-advised, right-here, and right-now. It's possible your brand has something in motion today will suffice for passable mico-moment experiences. But, it's important to review the current customer experience and understand what hurdles you may have to overcome to meet these expectations.

Well-advised

Customer Behavior: People are using their mobile phones to research their purchases, for things as mundane as toothbrushes (yes, even a parity product!). Google's research even shows that searchers are using qualifiers, such as "best toothbrush". This means they're not just seeking out feedback about the item, but they're looking for crowd-sourced solutions in their results.

What to Consider: Check your content marketing and look over what you have currently and consider with the impact this could have for SEO results and rankings. If people care about the best product or service, you want your brand associated with this list, be it from John Doe's blog or Consumer Reports. Another piece to consider is the way you are overseeing customer reviews - take a look at how you are managing it and evaluate if you need to improve your current process. Be sure your teams are bringing forward thinking that helps your customers find more useful information to stay competitive.

Right-here

Customer Behavior: People expect brands to gather enough contextual information to deliver location-specific responses. They know you have information because other brands (not even your competitors) do. If Yelp can know where I am, why can't my mobile banking app? You know that it's snowing where I am, so make the information you show me relevant to my situation. It's not about a competitive set - customers expect all brands to be able to deliver at the same level as an

What to Consider: Review the data you have accessible and explore interaction points where you can better apply the information to cut out unnecessary or redundant data inputs by customers. With new feature sets and product improvements, you should always put contextual personalization at the top of the list. Brands who use data to help customers find what they're looking for will be the ones to achieve success.

Right-now

Customer Behavior: Customers are using their mobile devices for immediate needs like last minute purchases (think: forgotten birthday!). Instant gratification is not just wanted in the purchase phase but delivery as well--just look at companies like Instacart and Amazon Prime Now.

What to Consider: Explore your current ecosystem and seek out opportunities to deliver on more instantaneous delivery. Ask your customers for inputs, too. They're a great resource to get suggestions to for improvement and can help highlight the best placement in the user experience for it. Continue to push for immediacy and find new ways to get the sense of instant gratification to your customers.

Do you have other tips or suggestions? Leave them in the comments.

Thoughts on Digital from WFA's Global Marketer Week 2017

2017-08-19T12:41:00.000-04:00

"What we do is the same as it ever was but the way we do it can be so much faster, smarter, better, and cheeper. And that's the promise of digital. But that doesn't mean that we have to be better at digital. what it means is that we have to be brilliant and stay brilliant at our core competencies as marketers, which is you have to be brilliant at marketing but accept that we're doing it in a totally digitized world. And that all the tools and the opportunities we have at our disposal should be leveraged with the same intent we used to use with the traditional things."
- Ivan Pollard, SVP Strategic Marketing, The Cola-Cola Company

Here are some other key comments from Pollard, giving his frank appraisal of the challenges relating to digital media investment at WFA's Global Marketer Week 2017: Back to Life, Back to Reality (but watch it, he is entertaining):
"We're doing our advertising in an ADD world...So we're We're spending way more time consuming way more things in way more places and we're paying less attention to everything we see."

"So maybe time spent is not the appropriate metric to work out how attention effects comprehension."

"We need to generate scale but "been hoodwinked into believing in wastage and in the validity of targeting."

"People who were outside of our desired audience, we were told they were worthless, but they weren't. They were just worth less."

"Weight of advertising works, and Byron Sharp is right about reach. It's also telling us that that quality of content is key and Ogilvy is still right about advertising."

"Not all moments are created equal, especially for those of us selling high volume, low cost goods. What we're looking for are decisive moments."

"We have to maintain the balance between, what is happening in the real world and what is happening in the digital world and pay appropriately for them."

"Reconsidering how we maintain ubiquitous in the real and digital world. Doing this with a fanatical focus on the I in ROI. Starting to challenge the means and models by how we spend our money."
"We're living in a complicated world but the job of marketing is essentially the same."

"We make the remarkable, to make the marketing remarketably smarter."

This is also worth watching:
Our connected audiences have the power to make or break a brand, literally, at their fingertips. While the world has changed, Raja Rajamannar continues to be guided by the insight that experiences matter more than things. Learn more on how Mastercard is striving to exceed the expectations of the connected consumer by shifting from storytelling to storydoing.

"Low price, surprise and delighted, and want to be rewarded. And then there's a feeling of entitlement."

"Because as a consumer when you get rewarded you want to brag about it."

"Some brands used to be so exclusive...but now that kind of mystery has been taken away."

"Consumers want experiences that are truly uninterrupted."

"Consumers don't care about your products. They care about themselves. They care about listening to stories. They want to be entertained. In the process you inform them about your product, ok, that's incidental, but what they're looking for - that's absolutely right. But, today, consumers are telling, 'I don't care about your stories, keep your stories to yourself. I want uninterrupted experience.'"

People are valuing having experiences vs. things at all levels of the economic spectrum.

Connecting with consumers and connecting with the things that they care about - passion points. And this is experiences. If you want to give experiences to your customers, how do you do this. Create and curate experiences that will truly have scale, will have profitability from country to country, and gives us impact we are seeking from our campaigns. Use the "priceless" theme to unite the ideas. This lead to developing things like Priceless Cities where customers can have experiences that money can't buy.

What does it mean to be a customer-first company?

2017-08-18T18:57:00.000-04:00

What does it mean to be a customer-first company?

Today, it seems like every company claims to be a customer-first company. But really, is that true?

During the past 5-10 years, the brands I've worked with talk about it in meetings, but many rarely followed up with real action. And, as they say, actions speak louder than words.

So, what are some key ways for a brand to bring the concept of customer-first to life?

IT STARTS WTIH YOUR WHY

Being a customer-first company means your products start at the point of solving (or creating) a customer need or desire. That means the brand's products or services are built around the customer, not creating something and then figuring out the customer base for it or backing into a strategy to answer the "why".

Many new companies that leverage technology have done just that. Look at AirBnB, Uber, and Amazon as examples for this. They exist because they figured out a way to solve a problem, not attempting to retrofit a need into their offering. When brands start with their "why", it provides a stronger platform for all other communication strategies to stand on.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Most people say they understand that every touch point someone has with your brand is part of the customer experience. But, for some reason, many companies seem to let certain areas within their business slack off when it comes to putting the customer first.

It's understandable that brands get caught up in their own language and often start speaking to themselves, and that's why outside partners (ad agencies, consultancies, etc) are usually brought in to help provide that outside point of view and convert the internal language into something that makes sense for the audience, in the audience's language.

Another is instances of sales. Yes, of course the company needs to make money and be profitable. But it should not be at the expense of deceiving customers or providing terrible experiences. (Although recent actions by certain companies in the airline industry may prove this wrong.)

UNDERSTANDING YOUR CUSTOMER

Knowing your customer is absolutely critical to being customer-centric. If you can't understand their wants and needs, you'll have a lot of difficulty proving that your brand is there for the customer. You need to understand their mindset, their passions and what makes them tick. You need to survey as many as you can to remove generalizations that come about from small data sample sizes. It's a brilliant company leader that then even takes the next step to spend time with their customers to get a direct line of contact to their voice, which leads me to...

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

Brands that listen to their customers can make a big impact to their bottom line. Providing channels for customers to give feedback on their experiences gives you an opportunity to improve. It also allows for kudos to be shared with those who are doing things right. Transparency of the feedback loops can also provide a lift in customers' perception of the brand. And if you bring forward a feature or service that was requested by customers, it naturally allows for a proof point to highlight that aspect of the brand in marketing and advertising.

Emotional and Apathetic Brands

2016-12-14T17:47:00.001-05:00

Emotion.

It's a key component to many successful brands.

Visceral. Intuitive.

And yet, difficult to quantify.

There are brands which have such passionate fans that they tattoo the logo or other prominent graphic or tagline on their person.

There are brands that have a plethora of digital and IRL fan clubs.

These are brands that trigger chemical reactions in the brain.

They are brands that others want to be like.

But they never will.

Why?

Because they are the emotionless brands. The ones that are boring or present but don't stand for much.

They are not bad. They are not good. They just are.

These Apathy Brands deliver on a lack of feeling, emotion, interest, and concern. A state of indifference that holds no one's attention. Even one great ad, is just that for an Apathy Brand. A great piece of creative content and nothing more. A drop in a expansive ocean.

Emotional brands come from a raison d'etre. At their core, they have a meaning greater than profit. Great design. Ultimate user experience. The best customer service. Supporting local growers. A commitment to quality.

No matter what it is, it's something that drives the rest of the business. It's not something tacked on as an afterthought.

It is a central component that drives emotional responses. Emotional creative. And, passionate fans.

It's time to take a stand

2016-09-18T08:35:00.000-04:00

This morning I came across this article from The Drum, Is Advertising Finally Ready to Shake Off Its Last Taboos? It's got a great example using the recent Maltesers campaign from the UK as a way to break through the stereotypes that advertising often showcases and instead bringing reality and an authentic approach focusing on inclusion and equality.

It’s about time brands and mainstream marketing followed in Maltesers’ steps and started embracing subjects that have historically been taboo for fear of causing offence. Through embracing taboos we initiate a move towards a society where inclusivity and equality are truly mainstream rather than just for debate. The world at large might be oscillating from outright discrimination (take Trump’s comments on women and people of colour, right through to immigration being a key reason for our own Brexit vote) to healthy debate on diversity (gender equality and such). But advertisers have by and large been guilty of sitting on the sidelines in a bid to avoid offence and alienation.

The result? A safer, vanilla, kind of advertising that risks connecting with no one.

And that last bit about advertising that doesn't connect with anyone by trying to appeal to everyone is key. I hesitate to call it vanilla because, that's saying vanilla is bland and it doesn't have to be. BUT, the point being, you really cannot please everyone. And, that's OK.

I'm currently focused on creative for social media and I have been working to educate how in this space (but elsewhere as well), you need to connect with people based on what drives them. And, this is nothing new. As advertisers or marketers, our role is to help people find connection with the brand. And how that brand ties to their daily life, passions, and aspirations helps to drive that.

And it's great for a brand to take a stand. But it also has to be authentic.

It’s this sort of creative bravery that offers rich opportunity for brands: taking part in everyday conversations, however challenging, and doing so with relevance (and maybe a little well-placed irreverence) is clearly aligned to business success (as Mars is no doubt hoping to prove with Maltesers).

However, while brands should challenge themselves to take risks they must also be authentic. No token campaigns here please – consumers will see right through you. Authenticity is all when it comes to such personal engagement, and it’s no surprise that Maltesers had the help of disability charity Scope for guidance and a hands-on role in the creative process.

On Project Management

2016-09-04T11:30:00.000-04:00

No matter how great a creative team you've got, or how receptive your clients are to brilliant ideas, there's one very important piece to running a good creative department. That, dear readers, is organization.

Without it, you cannot meet client expectations. Delivering work late, unfinished or half baked due to rushing, being overloaded or understaffed doesn't result in good results or good feelings.

There are a few elements key to achieve great organization.

Strategy

A solid creative brief can help set the stage for understanding the overall scope of work. What kind of project does the budget allow for it to be? How long does the project of this kind take to execute? These questions begin to frame staffing needs and help with overall project needs.

But the brief should also be abel to answer questions such as, Who are you talking to? What are their challenges? What is the key message? What are the key benefits? Getting answers to these questions that will frame the creative process help the creative come faster and be more on pointe from the start. You end up with less need for iteration because you'll be closer to an answer that's on pointe.

Project Managers

I've often said that a good project manager (or traffic manager) is worth their weight in gold and then some. Someone who can wrap their head around deadlines and the intricacies of different disciplines helps keep the team on track.

Project Management Systems

No matter how amazing the project manager, having a great project management system is also critical. Tracking projects, organizing information, deadlines, and much more in one place so that everyone is held accountable for their deliverables.

To-do lists & Status Meetings

Getting the team together for a status meeting weekly (or more frequently, depending on the project) helps everyone align on needs, dependencies, and work loads. It also helps to keep ownership and roles and responsibilities clear for everyone involved. Each team member should be well aware of their own to-do lists--whether that comes from the project management system, their project manager, or out of their own head.

Having certain elements organized, allows for unorganized thinking. It frees up time to put toward finding the most creative solutions to a problem posed by a brief. It Reduces the amount of stress and helps create an environment of trust and professionalism.

Great creative never starts with a blank page

2016-01-05T10:56:00.001-05:00

Most people probably think that as ad creatives, we start with a blank page.

I would argue that in advertising that is rarely the case. And usually when it is, it means something is dreadfully wrong.

Starting point

Strategy is already shaping the page before we even touch it. And, that's as it should be. The all too crucial brief starts to put the structure together that defines a starting point, and the end point.

What is the problem we're solving? What obstacles might we face? What key insight(s) do we have about the problem or people we are trying to reach? What message are we trying to communicate? What is the reason to believe the message? How will we measure success/What is the end goal? What is the opportunity?

And the best will also include the audiences' fears, dreams, etc with pyschographics, as well as data on the competition for even more context.

This strategic foundation is the basis of great creative work, most importantly the key insight(s) which is the meaty goodness creatives love to sink their teeth into as they brainstorm.

Get inside the box

The all too overused phrase "think outside the box" when applied to advertising or marketing should really be "think inside the box". If there are budget constrains, specific requirements, or other elements that will ultimately constrain the "blue sky thinking" that most often happens in brainstorm sessions, it doesn't matter how great the idea is if the client can't pay for it. Sure, I've had plenty of projects where I've been able to sell in more expensive ideas--but it's not the norm. The solutions you can create that don't cost millions have to work harder and be smarter. Sure you can throw dollars at something and that alone might be enough. But, it's thinking within the parameters and constraints that is the challenge of developing great ideas that break through. It's also how we bring value to what we create; what makes our job skilled and not something just anyone can do.

Bring on the ideas

Great ideas play off archetypes that resonate with people. That help them see how a product or service solves a problem or helps achieve a goal. These ideas sometimes bring unrelated thoughts together in new ways that capture attention and drive engagement. Other times the ideas bring together new technologies and evolving social behavior in new ways.

Ideation or concepting might begin with doodles, random notes, and even research. Brainstorming brings some of these ideas together in ways not thought of before because different thinkers are combining their thought processes. It's one reason why team work is often better than the work of a single creative. Working in a vacuum, there is no outside voice to bounce things off or to build upon the idea with a different perspective. These additional idea builds can come from anywhere and from anyone.

The tricky part is to know what are good builds and what are bad builds--to keep the original idea from becoming too muddied--to keep it on strategy. All too often you see an ad where you wonder how it came to be. There's a gleam of something amazing there, but it's been stripped down or covered up with other things that it's a shadow of what it once was. Often that means it's a victim of "design by committee" or "too many chefs in the kitchen" issues.

Ideas that win

Put yourself in the audience's shoes. Sure, you might not be the target, but what are the kinds of things that resonate with you? What do you like to see? What ads have you loved? We are all human--we all have similar desires and fears. We want people to like us. We are afraid of being alone. We want to have it all. We want to be happy. There are many ways to skin these basic human emotions. The best ideas play into these in ways that are relevant to the audience you're trying to reach. It's why good creatives are curious. They want to understand what makes the people they are talking to tick. Because that's key to making ideas that win.

Content is a four letter word

2015-11-06T17:02:00.002-05:00

The renowned Dave Trott wrote a piece for CampaignLive that hits on the emptiness of the word "content".

The content is now just something to fill up the space; the delivery systems are what’s important, not the content.
And that’s the massive shift that has happened in our business.
"Content" may only be a word, but it signifies a total shift in emphasis.
Previously, the most important thing was to solve a business problem.
Then to work out what contribution marketing could make to that.
Then have advertising deliver that solution in the most impactful way.
That was the big idea that would change behaviour.
The delivery system facilitated getting the idea in front of the right people.
But the important thing was the idea.
To put it simply: it was idea first, delivery system second.
But by relegating the idea to content, it becomes far less important.
The delivery system must now come before the idea, before the "content".
So changing the word signifies the complete change in the business.
In case I was wrong, I looked up "content" in the dictionary.
"Content (noun): everything that is inside a container; the contents of a box."
So there it is: we’re in the shipping business.

This article from Harvard Business Review calls content "crap".

We never call anything that’s good “content.” Nobody walks out of a movie they loved and says, “Wow! What great content!” Nobody listens to “content” on their way to work in the morning. Do you think anybody ever called Ernest Hemingway a “content creator”? If they did, I bet he would punch ‘em in the nose.

Yet while content — a commodity to be acquired, distributed, and leveraged — remains a fiction in the minds of business planners, digital technology has given marketers enormous opportunities to publish and produce. To take advantage of those opportunities, marketers need to shift their mental models and think more like publishers.

I had interviewed for a Content Strategy position in the last year and it started with the question asking how I defined content. I would say that content is EVERYTHING you put out there as a brand. EVERYTHING. That means paid AND unpaid (or paid, earned, and owned if you'd rather). You can turn things your customers are sharing online into content too.

We are sloppy with our language describing marketing and advertising terms. We are verbose when its not needed to make things obfuscated. And so we end up with words that have little meaning and devalue the things we create. Shame on us.

Why Some Branded Mobile Apps Limit Engagement

2015-09-23T15:23:00.001-04:00

This afternoon as I was making my way through my inbox, I came across a story in Media Post's Out to Launch email that struck me as something worth thinking about.

Here's a screenshot from the email:

For a long time I have worked on campaigns where "doing something mobile" is requested. Why does "doing something mobile" equate to creating a branded mobile app that has to be downloaded from an app store? Yes, app usage has soared. But if you look at the data, it's very specific app use. Comscore's US Mobile App Report from 2014 showed that total mobile app usage has surged 52 percent since 2013. Other interesting stats from the report include the facts that "the total number of app downloads is highly concentrated within a small segment of the smartphone population. The top 7 percent of owners account for nearly half of all app download activity in a given month. A staggering 42 percent of all app time spent on smartphones occurs on the individual’s single most used app. Nearly three out of every four minutes of app usage occurs on one of the individual’s top four apps." And as this Forrester article "Your Customers Will Not Download Your App states, "Most apps simply aren't compelling or convenient enough to outweigh the inhibitors of discovering, downloading, installing, and customizing them."

The idea of the campaign is fun. But making it an app to be downloaded from an app store automatically limits the number of people who will engage with it. Would the people who created it or signed off on it download it if they were the target. Doubtful. So why should Oscar Mayer's customers do it?

Unless your mobile app provides utility tied to your brand (like if you're a bank and you have a mobile banking app or your app is tied to payment and loyalty, like Starbucks), you won't see swarms of customers rushing to download your app. Just because mobile activity is up, doesn't mean that it requires an app to connect with the customer.

Mobile experiences can happen via web pages which will increase your viewability (and shareability) and if you build the experience to be responsive, well then you've just increased it even further. Building apps in silos like this is one of the many ways money is wasted on an idea that could have lived in a more dynamic environment that lead to greater sharing (or viral) potential. It's unfortunate.

8 ways I keep up with ad news

2015-07-31T16:25:00.001-04:00

Some times people wonder where I get my links and news from. And for a long time, I liked to keep it under wraps, but today I decided to share some of my sources with you.

1) Flipboard:
I follow a lot of different magazines here and aggregate my favorite or noteworthy stores into my own. Currently I have 5, which seems to work well enough. That might change in time.
See my profile here to follow any of my magazines.

2) OpenStrategy:
A great resource about strategy and thinking which also sends emails (Yup I get these too). You can sign up here for the emails.

3) Adland.tv:
Largest Super Bowl archive and the latest ad news from around the world in one place.

4) Feedly
With the death of Google Reader, I moved to Feedly. I keep track of many sites there, although there is overlap with this and flipboard, which I just find more user friendly.

EMAILS:
5) Sidebar.io
Daily emails feature 5 curated links from a list that get voted up or down on their site (see here). Some great articles and featured work. Mostly focused on digital design & UX, although sometimes there are bigger branding themes as well.
Sign up here.

6) Fraggl
Fraggl is a "daily email of the 10 must read links on selected topics, brought to you by a surprising combination of smart computers and interesting people". Currently advertising, design, and health are available.
Sign up here.

7) Strands of Genius
Strands of Genius is a weekly newsletter curated by Rosie & Faris Yakob. Each week they "find the awesomeness on the internet so that you don’t have to."
Sign up here.

8) Mediapost emails
There are loads of topics you can sign up to receive alerts or aggregated emails. Around the Net in Brand Marketing, Research Brief, SocialMediaMktg Daily, and Accounts on the Move are just a couple I receive. More here.

Who drives your brand personality matters.

2015-07-07T12:27:00.001-04:00

Can brands ever really separate their personality from those at the driver's seat?

Virgin (and all it's brand splinters) all fall to a personality that embodies its founder. Richard Branson has a joie de vivre and that carries through the brands. The goal is to attract like customers and reach out to those people who do as well. It's all integrated. But, it also works for the brand and what it stands for.

Other brands, like Coca-Cola, have a personality that has been developed over time and I'm sure somewhat existed prior to the current CEO and other stakeholders. They understand that the brand isn't them, it is its own thing.

When working on branding projects, it's often hard for stakeholders, or the ultimate stakeholder, to not put their own spin on how they feel the brand should be positioned, for right or wrong. You see it when people are reviewing creative work all the time when they don't like something because personally they don't like it, not because it's not right for the brand or piece of communication.

Great brand leadership in a company is able to separate themselves from the work and will understand that the brand needs to connect with the target audience. It's not about what they want, it's about what works best for the brand and who they are trying to reach.

Until more executives and board members understand this, we will continue to see a proliferation of brands that struggle to identify who they are, how to connect with their customers and in the end, be successful. It's those who stay true to their inception and are brands developed with a purpose and belief that will be able to win out.

Keep it simple (and interesting) stupid

2015-06-30T14:12:00.000-04:00

About two weeks ago, Dave Trott was giving a talk to some media folks about creativity.

An article, "Simple may be out of fashion but its the way forward", shared some of his points that he blogs and writes about.

His point of the talk was that the message remains more important than the medium.

Creatives, he said, weren’t producing the goods as they should, partly because they were completely confused about what they were supposed to be doing: content, ideation, transcreation, narrowcasting and all the rest of it. All these were driven by technology and the belief, mistaken in Trott’s eyes, that new means of distribution – media – require a different kind of message.

Trott is right on the money. The problem is that many folks are making money by obfuscating the process and inclusion of new technologies. Yes, new tech can be a part of the process and end result, but it is not the idea. It's not the connection. It's not the story (unless your brand's story is about tech). Human truths have not changed. We still all want to belong, to be unique, to be loved, to be successful, to have our dreams come true. Technology hasn't changed our wants and dreams as much as it's changed how we can achieve these things (or complain about them).

On the same theme of ‘simple is best’ Trott also pointed to survey information that purported to show that four per cent of UK ads were ‘remembered positively,’ seven per cent recalled less than positively and 89 per cent completely ignored. In an £18.3bn ad market this was a lot of waste, he opined, before moving to a classic Trott exposition on how to get noticed – be different, essentially.

This really gets me. Billions are poured into advertising that isn't effective mostly because it's so samey and dull it is forgotten or ignored. Brands that aren't afraid to have a personality, stand for something, and/or know who they are will succeed.

Both of these are basics. We're hurting ourselves as an industry by getting away from them and obscuring them with lingo and fluff.

Brands are about the WHY not the what

2015-06-09T15:02:00.001-04:00

Are you what you do or are you what you believe?

This is a basic question when it comes to branding and it confuses many companies.

In most cases, brand stories aren't about what you do, they're about what you believe and the WHY behind what you do.

Less successful brands often get caught up talking to themselves and are so ingrained in their day-to-day that they cannot see the forest for the trees. They focus on the details of products or services they are delivering instead of standing back and looking at how they are impacting the lives of their customers.

Brands that are beloved and successful get this. They were either born with a clear mission or belief behind them, or understood what it would take to genuinely change their business to embrace one. Few companies can do the latter. It's much easier to start with the former.

And yet, so many companies struggle because they want to beat the competition that is LIVING their beliefs from its products to how it treats employees and all the way through to customer service. The best brands infuse their beliefs completely through their business in such a seamless way that it appears effortless.

But like a good concept, it starts at the core with a strong premise, and building off of it. Scale doesn't happen without challenges, and along the way, tough choices (financial, philosophical, etc.) need to be made to maintain that WHY.

Often "the brand" gets lost when a company goes public or the founder(s) leave. That vision and WHY disappear and often mean a drop in sales or struggle for maintaining the passionate customer base. When ONLY the bottom line is worshiped, brands will have problems with being successful.

Don't be boring

2015-05-04T15:38:00.002-04:00

A while back I started a blog post about clients burning their money. It's on a different computer but I've been thinking about it today and really wonder why brand think that they are doing something to be remembered with some of the "content" that's out there.

If we only remember a small percentage of the ads we encounter on a daily basis, what is it that makes us remember those select ones?

Interest - am I looking for something in that category?
Entertainment - did I find it entertaining?
Value - did it educate me in some way?

If your ads aren't doing any of these things, you're burning your money. Plain and simple.

Safe doesn't make you remembered. And that doesn't mean you have to be outrageous either. But being boring is the worst thing you can do.

I can't count how many times I've heard someone tell me about a great ad they saw or heard but couldn't for the life of them remember who it was for. This is also a fail.

Great advertising doesn't just try to entertain you without connecting to a message it's trying to get across (we're cheaper, we're smarter, we're who you want to be).

These are not new precepts in the digital age but ones often forgotten from the Mad Men era. As much as things change, certain pieces remain the same. There is a constant in our evolving world.

As Howard Gossage said, "People read what interests them. Sometimes it's an ad."

Super Bowl Ad Predictions for 2016

2015-02-02T15:33:00.000-05:00

Now that the Super Bowl is past us and we have 364 more days (give or take) until the next one, I thought I'd share some predictions for next year's ads:

A brand will create a 20-year throwback ad featuring Steve Winwood & Higher Love:
Politically charged ads about red and blue states
Advertisers will flip on dadvertising and try to focus on momvertising, because MOM!
More pharma brands will advertise with their illustrated grossness
Ads will feature less children dying
An internet star will show some skin
There will be slapstick humor - someone will fall down/get punched/get hurt
Lettuce growers decide to do a :90 ad
Ads will try to find the funny again and leave the heartstrings alone (except maybe Budweiser, if they bring that un-aging puppy back again)
The Olsen twins will show up in a car ad
Technology will show us how disabled people can achieve anything

Winners, Losers of Super Bowl Ads 2015

2015-02-01T22:12:00.000-05:00

My review of winners, losers and runner's up.
WINNERS:

Budweiser Lost Dog
Snickers The Brady Bunch
Loctite Glue

FAILS:
Absentee dads from Nissanand dads that are there from Toyota.

Dead children from Nationwide.

Disabled achievers from Microsoft and Toyota with Purdy.

Screaming goats from Discover Card and Sprint.

Nothing topped the Nationwide dead kid ad though..

RUNNER'S UP:
T-Mobile - Sarah Silverman & Chelsea Handler

Supercell/Clash of Clans with Leslie Neeson and a Taken spoof.

Always #likeagirl

Kia Sorento with Pierce Brosnan.

See all the Super Bowl ads from 2015 here: http://adland.tv/superbowlads/2015-super-bowl-xlix-commercials

Better ideas come from sketching it out

2015-01-02T14:08:00.003-05:00

Image via http://thiagolevysketch.blogspot.com/

+ There once was a time in high school when I had a teacher tell me that I shouldn't draw or doodle in my notebook because it wastes ink. I found it very funny, both ha-ha and odd. Sure, he was a science teacher but that just seemed too Spock-like in its logic.

A google search of "Why do we doodle" turns up this interesting BBC story about humans being hardwired to doodle. An article in Smashing Magazine talks about doodling as a way to help us retain information. Time published an article about a study done in England that also showed it helps you pay attention.

Move forward to the corporate world where we are surrounded by folks who have meetings to discuss meetings (seriously this is crazy to me). It's no wonder that you'll find me doodling in my notebook. But often what I'm doodling is tied to what we're talking about. If it's a new campaign, I might start sketching out some rough ideas. If it's a sales meeting, it might be thoughts around ways we can make improvements.

Creatives these days don't pick up paper and pencil or pen like they used to. We lose something in the immediacy of computers and Adobe. Sketching and doodling while brainstorming has always been one of my favorite things in the concepting process. And no, I'm not a skilled illustrator by any sense of the word. But, I can draw things out to get a sense of what the idea might be or how it might be communicated. Stick figures and simple lines. Tracing even works sometimes if necessary (windows are great for this). But, just talking about ideas and then going straight to computer roughs skips a key step in the process.

Sketching and doodling while talking through an idea can lead to better solutions for solving problems. Seeing how something might work or playing around with various elements in a quick, less permanent way can keep your brain flowing more uninhibitedly. Shapes and simple drawings that are less of a commitment keep you agile in your thinking. It's all part of the iterative process that goes into coming up with great creative ideas.

Why I went to the client-side

2014-12-24T10:44:00.004-05:00

+ Earlier this year I went from the agency world to client side. And within the past year I've seen plenty of other ad friends do the same. Why the migration to "the dark side"?

For me, having spent the prior 6 years at a digital agency (I know, that's forever in ad years), I wanted to get my hands on more pieces than just social and interactive again.

From a storytelling standpoint, I found that I wanted to be working on helping craft those stories for clients. It meant I was interested in looking at opportunities that provided more integrated thinking, strategy and creative challenges. There are a few agencies that do this well, but many are still specializing based on a medium.

In my experience I've found that many clients only saw a digital agency as able to handle certain aspects and when there was great thinking for other pieces of the business it was ignored until the "appropriate" agency presented it. I think that's sad and a miss for clients. And when agencies try to work together for their client, egos almost always get in the way. Everyone knows one agency is the "lead" but often it becomes a pissing match as they are all vying for a larger piece of the pie, which means a piece of another agency's revenue or work.

As much as I am into the nitty gritty of HOW brand stories come to life, I also want to explore the brand strategy components from a creative narrative perspective to craft what those threads are that run through all the touch points of a brand. To do so required getting embedded at a brand and helping bring all the pieces together.

I think many clients/brands underestimate the value of establishing these story lines for their brand. Because whether it's a spot or a tweet, they all should fit some how into the larger story for who you are and what you stand for.

And, sure there are probably a few other things that are contributing factors for going in-house. But that's another post for another day.

Why you should focus less on Millennials

2014-12-23T09:05:00.000-05:00

+Millennials (aka Gen Y) are the only generation to be talked about so much by ad folk. There weren't long articles about reaching the Gen X generation or Baby Boomers. What is the industry obsession with this audience? Why focus so much on this one group?

Let's look a bit at what defines a Millennial. Pew Research defines someone born in 1981. Wikipedia states that there are "no precise dates when the generation starts and ends. Researchers and commentators use birth years ranging from the early 1980s to the early 2000s." In May 2013, a Time magazine cover story identified Millennials as those born from 1980 or 1981 to 2000". And, a global generational study conducted by PwC (a network of member accounting firms) with the University of Southern California and the London Business School defined Millennials as those born between 1980 and 1995.

So, they range in age approximately from 18-33 years old. That's a big difference in life stages. Entering college vs. starting a family. Dating vs. settling down. Figuring out your life vs. growing your career. And when you look at how they're talked about, it seems many still focus in on that lower end, those in their early 20s...perhaps forgetting that the middle range is now mid 20s heading toward 30.

And this, to me, is why focusing on the psychographics is much more successful in terms of nailing down who you are talking to. I don't care if you're in college or retired. We are more defined by our passions and our activism, than our age. Sure, age adds color to what you know or don't based on experiences, but those who weren't tech savvy are catching up with those who are natives to the technological world. And at some point soon, that will be a moot point because every one will be digital natives.

I found this How Millennial Are You? quiz and I scored 83 out of 100, which means I'm Millennial. Actually I'm not (although only by a couple years), but it's because the questions were based on behavior...yes, psychographics.