As much as I like social media, I find its true limitation lies in brand building. This Louis Vuitton ad does a fantastic job in storytelling, brand repositioning as well as selling the product. As planners AND creatives, we should not fall blindly into new ways of engaging and reaching in place of efficiency in communication. The role of communications is often more important than the actual message. 

There are currently a couple ad campaigns from two Stockholm agencies that have created exceptional buzz. Execution-wise these two projects are really high-class. There's a problem though: The ideas are clones of other ideas. 

There's a saying: talents imitate, geniuses steal. But how true is this when it comes to creativity? 

In the short run, stealing pays off – it's a genius move. Your agency will win awards and your unknowing client will be happy. But in the long run, the advertising business has to deliver creativity – ideas that have never been seen before. Ideas that have been made no not change anything inside people's heads and are therefore not creative. 

If the advertising business isn't creative and creates it's own ideas I see few reasons for why it should even exist beyond being printing and production factories, since the ability to find funny stuff on YouTube is not enough to get a Cannes Lion, and it's definitely not worth 300 dollars an hour.

As I said. Stealing pays off in the short run so probably it's a matter of how you view creativity and how your agency conduct business in the long term.

"Rolighetsteorin" by DDB Stockholm. Inspired by this?

"Youtube Hits" by King. Inspired by this? 

Zeus Jones and the Planning-ness conference presents an interesting list on obsolete marketing tools. The merits of each is an interesting discussion in itself, but what's really striking is that many tools listed above are primarily ways to improve efficiency in internal communications rather than improving creativity. But operational efficiency, I would say, is not the biggest challenge for the creative industry today. Creativity is. My money is therefore on relevant tools that boosts creativity and stimulates conversation. To be continued.

Here's an article I wrote for Superbrands that was published last week on their blog. 

As somebody working in marketing it is very likely that you are drowning in everyday problems. And if you’re like most other companies, it’s also very likely that the solutions you’re working on deal with yesterday’s problems rather than capturing the opportunities of tomorrow. 

Things hardly get easier as solutions are plentiful. You don’t have to look further than down this page to be bombarded with the latest fixes that will make your brand better. But how do you know what’s the right remedy for your brand’s competitiveness? 

For simplicity’s sake there’s one thing your brand can focus on: 

Creating momentum.

Momentum is what psychologists call the smallest unit of time perceivable by humans. It lasts about 0.06 seconds. In physics, momentum is the product of two physical entities – mass and speed – and means ”directed thrust”.

Momentum can also occur in marketing communications, at the point of contact between people and a brand. For example, the time it takes for a person to look at an ad is 1.7 seconds. 

Contrary to what  most people think, the point is not to turn the 1.7 seconds into 2.7 seconds with your brand. It’s about turning the 1.7 seconds to  something much stronger: a lasting experience. From this respect, the 1.7 seconds is not that different from love at first sight. 

Creating a lasting experience from what used to be low brand involvement has become harder, however. Brands of today are increasingly being judged by what they do, not what they say. Brands therefore have to appeal not only to senses but create new the ways for people to both think and act.

When thinking about innovative solutions for your brand, think about what made the Trojan horse successful. As you might remember from history class, the Greeks tried to enter Troy for over a decade with massive brute force but without accomplishing anything. The effective solution became a wooden horse that the Trojans instantly let inside. The rest is history. 

In a world where conventional brand building fails, momentum is the force a superbrand needs, and the best tool for creating it is unconventional creativity – powered by powerful insights about how to turn something inside people’s heads, rather than just turning heads. Make this happen, create your own Trojan horse.

So, eight weeks of being a part-time project manager, copywriter, web designer and a nagging bitch for everyone that's been involved in this project has come to an end. Our new agency website is finally up and running. It's anything but flashy –  the focus has been on functionality and presenting our thoughts and ideas as efficient as possible. And yes, it's got SEO, analytics, XML, Twitter and other lovely tech stuff built into it. 

www.jungvonmatt.se

For decades, the advertising has been under attack. Research companies, production companies, digital specialists, media agencies and brand consultancies, they have all taken a bite from the classic agency cookie. And for every bite, the ad agency has been officially declared dead. 

But for some reason, the ad agency has survived every threat by reinventing itself, albeit passively. Maybe because it always has been a really attractive place to work and thus continues to attract top talent? 

This is the latest PR work that Jung von Matt (where I work) did to promote our agency among students at Berghs, Sweden’s leading advertising school.

The "campaign" began on Twitter when Jung von Matt quickly responded to one student’s desperate tweet for a new refrigerator – one wasn’t enough for all the student’s lunch boxes. The promise of a new fridge got real momentum on Twitter and Facebook, and the ad industry paper picked up the story.

Through understanding, action and true commitment a unique and relevant social media campaign (including the brand new fridge) was planned and delivered in less than 48 hours. 

The dialogue visualised

The new SAAB seems to better than anything that has come out of the previously GM-owned car manufacturer for a long time. Maybe it's PR work that has effectively positioned the new 9-5 as a great car. Or maybe it's a live example of Jospeh Schumpeter's idea of Creative Destruction – that past production resources must be destroyed in order to give way for innovation. For a corporation like GM that's evidently unable to renew itself, the best solution forward might a total dismantlement. 

The internet has gone from an information society to a knowledge society. From being a huge database of information, today’s internet is full of prepackaged insightful knowledge in terms of blogs, tweets, slideshare, and so forth. Theoretically, the easy access to knowledge can change the whole world. Or can it? 

There are masses of people who believe so. Usually, the same people are communication consultants or self-proclaimed evangelists who claim to have the solution right in their pockets. Be innovative like Apple! Use social media! Reinvent your company! Imagine this! 

If the world was easy to change it would look different from what does today. But even though inspiring ideas are abundant, these are hardly solutions to the problems companies face today. 

Instead of dumbfounding companies, we as providers of creative services should think about how we can achieve change rather than what we want to achieve. There’s a huge difference. Achieving real change is as difficult as ever, because it’s about changing people’s behaviours. And until you’ve managed to do change people, talk is cheap. 

Here's a case movie I've just made: it sums up the results of three years of hard work Jung von Matt has done for the Royal Swedish Opera. It's by all means low budget, but I think it turned out pretty ok considering it's done in iMovie. What do you think? Maybe iMovie is the new Keynote? 

It's surprising that despite all the advanced talk about advertising and creative strategies these days some brands just forget the main objective: to sell products. Above is part of a running campaign from a Swedish clothing brand that I think does a really poor job in communicating a.k.a. selling the product. 

To clarify my point, check out this ultra-crisp visual from Kate Spade. It makes you wanna buy the product. And no, it's not a matter of expensive versus cheap brand or art direction, it's business.

Yesterday I had the honor of lecturing at Miami Ad School Europe. Topic: Creative planning. Here are the lecture slides including notes. 

Thanks to the organisers and students at Miami for this opportunity and for letting me stay at the fabulous hotel. 

As advertising agencies we are naturally good at capitalising on client success At the same time we're naturally bad at taking full responsibility when things have been unsuccessful. The Economist has written a piece on new types of agency compensation based on metrics and overall performance. I believe this is a topic that's both client and agency should think about for better "alignment" and more importantly for a better relationship.

If you're a planner in Sweden and haven't joined Account Planning Group yet, it's time to do so. This Autumn features a theme on Digital Planning, with lectures from John Owen at Dare Digital and Robin Grant at We are social plus two workshops to discuss and digest what we've learned on the way. 

Check out: Account Planning Group Autumn programme

The olive oil shelf at my local supermarket is probably the most confusing place I know. It's the place where I spend the most time at the supermarket – and I'm not alone, because I notice that fellow shoppers tend to stare at the bottles for several minutes. Olive oil is like wine – there's an over-abundance of choice. The result: you probably base your choice on past buys, the price tag or the nicest looking bottle. Somebody should solve this. I want to know what I'm buying or what I'm missing.

And when we're into real problem-solving (not the kind we tend to invent as planners), can somebody please make it easier to manage all those passwords and PIN-codes? 

... in the driver seat again. Haven't done anything remotely related to planning in four weeks, so warming up the old engines will take some time.