11 June
7 – 11 pm
LBi, Brick Lane

TICKETS

Do you ever see an ad and find yourself asking ‘‘Where’s the ‘creative’ idea gone’ ? Yeah? Then come on over to our next CS Presents where we have assembled a kick-ass line up of Socials to talk about the value of great insight and developing ideas off the back of them:

Becky Power, Executive Creative Director, Lowe Open
Chris Baylis, ECD Tribal DDB, London
Sam Ball, Creative Partner, Lean Mean Fighting Machine
Tim Palmer, Digital Creative Director & Board Director, Inferno Ltd
George Prest, VP, Executive Creative Director, R/GA

Becky Power kicks off our session with ‘A planner in the works’ – a guide to how strategy can enhance your creativity, rather than bring it to a grinding halt.

“Some of my best friends are planners” – Chris Baylis points out how most advertising doesn’t talk to the audience, but instead talks back to the category. Car ads look like car ads, beer ads look like beer ads and lets not even go into fragrance advertising! If creative is to be more than a box ticking exercise, we need more imaginative planning.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Abraham Lincoln said that. And Sam Ball will be saying the rest….

Next up, Tim Palmer poses the question: ‘Creative strategy or strategic creative – Where is the line, and who cares?’ Yes, there is ALWAYS room for ideas, but we as an industry are more sensitive to the issue of ‘planning showing’ than the people that matter, the people who buy the product!

Not afraid to shout ‘I love planning’, George Prest closes our evening with his talk about the intrinsic relationship between planning and creative – imagining a new way forward and defending our strategic friends.

As always after the talks there will be a panel Q+A and a good hour to get your networking heads on. Happy days.
Don’t miss out, and grab you ticket NOW:  TICKETS

Big thanks to our partners,

Because Source is all about Connected People, Connecting People, Creative Social is the perfect platform for people to network whilst benefiting from leading industry knowledge. To help conversation flow, there will be a sponsored bar, courtesy of our friends at Source

We would also like to say a special thanks to our venue partners LBi for providing us with ‘The home of Creative Social Presents..’ a top notch venue for creative thinking.

Please note: This event is for agency folk and students only

How would you describe your job to an alien?

Assuming that the alien in question speaks fluent business babble, I’d explain that I have ‘portfolio career’, something that sounded very groovy in the 90s but now suggests you’ve got Attention Deficit Syndrome.   I direct, I write, I devise and run workshops, I teach and I facilitate groups for discussions, conferences, etc. You could also say that I am a professional outsider (hey, I’m an alien too, let’s hug).  I don’t really belong to any one industry any more which gives me a useful perspective from which to see both the big picture and the stuff below the surface. An outsider can often ask the tricky questions that an insider can’t.

How did it all start, and how have you got to where you are today?

I was at Sussex University studying social psychology when I got involved in making a radio version of ‘The Hunting of the Snark’. That started it. After university, I worked in fringe theatre, took some radio courses, did a spell at a production company, and then set up my own radio company in the mid 80s. I directed programmes and drama, but mainly, in the early years, I made ads – a hell of a lot of ads. I also worked with Dick Orkin from the Radio Ranch in LA.    After 17 years of all this, I found I was being asked to write more and more, and to devise teaching workshops. When I got bored with hearing myself talk, I brought in an improv group and took to touring the country with a couple of improvisors, preaching the gospel of radio to anyone who would listen.

When the writing and the workshops started to take up more time than the radio, I set up Punch It Up – the name’s important – it’s that old Hollywood phrase: you ‘punch up’ a script to make it better. That’s what we do: we help talented people make things even better – books, scripts, presentations, performances. It’s simply a version of directing, which is where I started out, applied to other areas of creative work.  We take the same approach in the workshops, giving people ideas to help them punch up their professional skills. At the centre of it all is The Creative Detox, a workshop that brings together everything I’ve learnt about creativity over the years.

What are the biggest challenges you’re faced with in your job at the moment?

Getting people to turn off their mobile phones.

What’s the most interesting thing you’ve seen recently?

99% invisible – ‘A tiny radio show about design’. A wonderful, perfectly produced, radio show that tells stories about architecture and design – what’s not to love?

A puppetry workshop at the Little Angel Marionette Theatre.  I am fascinated by puppets and recently took a workshop with a puppeteer from the Folded Feather company. Extraordinary stuff that taught me a lot about hooking an audience’s imagination.

What’s been your biggest learning throughout your career so far?

To quote John Cleese: ‘Creativity isn’t a talent, it’s a way of being.’   And it’s not confined to creative departments.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

I have been notoriously bad at listening to advice but very good at watching and learning. Most of what I’ve learnt can be summed up as:  Ask questions. Then ask some more questions.  In particular ask the question: ‘What lies beneath?’

Where do you do your best thinking?

When I’m running. Though it’s a bit like drunk thinking, endorphins can make an idea seem rather more brilliant than it is.

If you could travel in time, where would you go and what would you do?

I once made a programme with a presenter who fronted the TV coverage of the moon landing.  I’d go back there and be in the studio, doing the live commentary.

Or, I would go back to the moment when the first person was about to draw the first exclamation mark at the end of the first shrieking sentence. I would wrench the pen/quill/flint out of their hand thus saving the world from this airhead bit of punctuation. They’d probably put up a statue in my honour.

If you could work with anyone on a project, who would it be and what would do?

Ira Glass and the This American Life team. We’d find a way to turn the UK creative industry on to radio stories.

Tell us something about yourself that not many people know?

If people don’t know, that suggests I am hiding it. Best keep it that way.

Who would you have in your fantasy workshop session?

My workshops are often about challenging assumptions and rules. With that in mind I would like to have the person who said that there are so few women in advertising because it is ‘too tough’.

What’s next?

I am rubbish at planning. I prefer to wait and see.

http://www.punchitup.co.uk

LIFESAVER is a crisis simulator, which fuses interactivity and live-action film to teach CPR in a new way, on your computer, smartphone or tablet. On the versions for phone and tablet, you actually move your device up and down, two times a second, to do CPR on the victim in the film. If you’re too slow, he’ll die. When someone’s choking, you move your device down sharply to hit her on the back.

Lifesaver Case Study from unit9 on Vimeo.

Play Lifesaver on your computer:  www.life-saver.org.uk/

iPad app: www.tinyurl.com/lifesaver-ipad

iPhone app: www.tinyurl.com/lifesaver-iphone

App for Android tablets: www.tinyurl.com/lifesaver-and-tablet

App for Android phones: www.tinyurl.com/lifesaver-and-mobile

They currently have twenty signed prints up for auction. Nine of them were created by the David Bailey’s recruited through the campaign and one by the legendary photographer himself.

There’s currently one way out in front, but is it the right Bailey? if you think you’ve got the skills to spot it you could grab yourself a bargain. The auction is open until 8pm on 14 May and all proceeds are going to Marie Curie, check it out here.

Speakers:
Dr Kate Stone, Cambridge Tech Innovator + TED speaker
Grant McCracken, Founding director of the Institute of Contemporary Culture
Dr Bertolt Meyer, Visiting Professor for Work, Organisational & Social Psychology at Chemnitz University of Technology
Mark Cridge, Director Of Consulting, BERG
Gregg Mayles, Design Director, Rare Studios
Fredrik Forrest, Creative Director, Obscura Digital

Lawrence Weber (LW), Head of Digital Integration, Karmarama

Scott Cooper (SC), Head of Innovation Lab, The Sandpit

Nick Constantinou (NC), CEO, Collective

Rohan Tambyrajah (RT), Global Innovation Director – PHD/Unilever

Francesca Ronfini (FR), Partner on Jumptank

Amelia Torode (AT) – Head of Venture Strategy and Innovation, Chime

Nadya Powell (NP), Client Partner and Chief Innovation Officer, Dare

Damian Ferrar (DF) Innovation Director, Imagination

Matias Palm-Jensen (MP), Chief Innovation Officer McCann

Faris Yakob (FY), Chief Innovation Officer. MDC>kbs

While we have no idea how long the role is here to stay, the number of people with the title does appear to be growing. Of those above, most have had responsibility for innovation within their agency for between one and two years. However despite this the definition of innovation is still not universal and included:

• Changing behaviour, process and people to produce work that is either a) new enough to get noticed or b) truly goes beyond advertising into utility (LW)
• Smart experiments that make a difference (AT)
• Entrepreneurial response to change (SC)
• Doing things differently to get cut through (RT)
• Challenging clients on how they communicate and challenging marketing to take an active role in defining what they market – innovating the product (NP)
• A new idea or method (DF)
• Not doing what you did before. Picking at embedded assumptions. Finding solutions to unarticulated problems, creating new things and ideas that people didn’t know they needed or wanted, unlocking new markets and new business lines to sustain economic growth (FY)

While the definitions above may seem very different, I would say that they are all rooted in delivering new and better ways to solve problems.

It is worth noting that while many carry the title of innovation, very few of us are fully dedicated to innovation, which I suppose reflects the fact that the advertising world has not yet fully been able to justify the dedicated innovation role fully. Other responsibilities vary between Head of Digital, lead client status, new business, digital strategy, venture strategy and Chairman of the Nordics (you might be able to guess who that is). It is worth noting that the common consensus is that you have to have someone dedicated to innovation to be innovative. You do however need someone who has board level responsibility for innovation and the time to dedicate to making sure it happens, something a dedicated role helps hugely.

It does feel like change is happening although there are still some clear barriers at both an agency and client level and the people I asked listed the following:

• Fear in terms of both change as well as failure
• A business model, operational capabilities and client relationships that reward and specialise in channel-specific and messaging focused outputs
• Budget – its a new budget line and no-one is used to including it
• Politics
• Process. Not recognising the pace of change and it’s impact on the world we live in.
• Reconciling innovation with scalability.
• Time pressures – innovation needs time; and
• The cult of the creative

It does feel that the most prevalent barrier seems to be the business model, which is no surprise given that it is a new discipline and it is sometimes hard to attach immediate revenue to the role. Especially if you then consider that everyone who was interviewed felt that it was their responsibility to actually develop and monetise IP. I personally am a little conflicted on this one as having started a couple of new businesses at Profero, I still think that the industry’s core focus should be that of a communications industry and where we do develop our own product, I think it should be more about becoming part of the Ecosystem and learning from being part of it. (e.g. it is amazing what you learn when you develop you own app).

This brings us on to measurement and the key KPIs for those responsible for innovation. These again varied and included new business and new product revenue, revenue growth, increase in ROI for clients, types of projects delivered, culture change, digital advances, a wider scope for the agency, awards, reputation, thought leadership and inspiration to the wider team.

Finally to finish off with a little inspiration, here are the things people I asked thought had been the most innovative thing they had seen in the last 6 months:

The red tomato pizza company fridge magnet ‘direct to pizza order’ button. Love the simplicity in answering a human need and behaviour (NC)

Nike’s product recycling and supply chain innovation (SC)

Disney D-tech custom princesses (RT)

Netflix and House of Cards (AT)

Nike+ Developer Portal (FR)

Stratos from RedBull for communication. Google Glass for product (NP)

Hailo for black cabs (MP)

Personally I am going to stay close to home and say the wi-fi poster done by my colleagues at Cheil in Korea:

My final comment it that while it seems that much of the focus for many of us in the innovation role is to deliver innovation for our clients I do think that a large part of our role should be to drive innovation within the advertising industry itself. I still think that there is a lot of change that is going to happen in the industry and I hope that those with an Innovation role, can help make this happen quicker.

Anyway if you are interested do come to our CS Sessions event on Innovation Stories on 16^th May that is being organised in collaboration with Innovation Social (an offshoot of Creative Social that I founded with Nadya Powell of Dare). You can buy your tickets here.

Honestly, the main reason I decided to go to the Holi celebration held by Shoreditch Indian restaurant, Dishoom, was because I thought it’d make a nice photo on Instagram -and maybe the promise of some good food. Although my vibrant posts were indeed ‘liked’, The festival’s message resonated with me more than I had expected.

Holi is the Hindu festival of spring, where among other things, you pelt each other with coloured powder. So, amidst the freakishly cold March weather, I layered-up, over my old white t-shirt and bused it to Shoreditch, ready to welcome spring with open arms.

At Village Underground, I was met with faces of all ages, genders and nationalities, vibrant decorations, vegetarian samosas and cups of hot chai. Before the main draw began, we gathered to hear Vayu Naidu of Dishoom tell the message of Holi: Throw away the doubts and anxieties of winter and spread the colour of the rainbow.  ‘By painting each other, we are all united in the colours of spring’.

And paint with colours we did. Within seconds the place was awash with greens, reds, blues, oranges and yellows. No filter needed. Gulals –packets of vibrant powder, quickly appeared and then disappeared over anyone who came near. No one was exempt from turning rainbow. I felt twelve again. And when it was time to go, I didn’t want to leave the party and return to a grey London.

I’ve left my paint covered t-shirt still crumpled on my floor –(half due to laziness) but also as a reminder that London is a better place when we celebrate all traditions and that despite the sub-zero forecasts, spring will come.

Sarah Buggle (@sarahbuggle)

CS Sessions speaker Will Cookson and his partner Matthias Metternich are a couple of bright heads from the advertising world who came up with an innovative idea for a start-up. Believe.in is a social fundraising platform along the lines of virginmoneygiving and justgiving, with the significant difference that it doesn’t keep any of its donations for profit.

The sleekly designed site explains how their Virgin equivalent takes a 3.45% cut of all donations, and justgiving even more with 6.3%. With donations reaching staggering heights in the UK last year, charities lost over an estimated £750,000,000 to middlemen. Donation sites don’t run themselves and are still businesses, but people want to see their money going to the cause they’ve chosen, not a third party.

Will Cookson is a failed pharmacologist who fell in love with design, the internet and brands. Prior to co-founding Believe.in, Will had ‘proper’ jobs at digital agencies AKQA, Poke and Razorfish as a designer and creative director. He met his partner in crime Matthias at Poke, who was Managing Partner there.

Will and Matthias put on their thinking caps and found a way to create a financially viable donation portal without having to touch the money people donate. With a bunch of smart investors backing them up (like Index Ventures and Greylock Partners), a uniquely snazzy interface, and a (hopefully) sound business concept, these two chaps seem exactly on the right track.

Unstuffing charity – Why two guys started up Believe.in
At Innovation Stories, Will and Matthias will tell us about their incredible journey so far: how Believe.in was conceived, brought into motion and made reality.

Don’t miss out on this story, and grab you ticket NOW:

Date: 16th May 2013
Time: 9am – 12pm
Venue: Google Campus, 4-5 Bonhill Street London EC2A 4BX.

A whopping THANKS to our partners

and the newly launched Innovation Social.

Media Partner

With that much creative inspiration packed into a day, there was only one way the evening was heading, dinner and a nightclub! CS headed to Galali for some authentic yuushoku (dinner). Then it was off to see Taku do his thing on the 1’s and 2’s at Womb club. Shapes were thrown, big boxes / little boxes were made and at one point someone broke out the funky worm. For those still standing it was back to our appointed local for snake sake, a fitting way to end #CStokyo.

Sake with extra bite:

Inspiration comes from anywhere. Founders of Dressedundressed Takeshi Kitazawa and Emiko Sato talked us through their latest collection. Their work is genre neutral and up until the previous collection they had worked exclusively in a very dark palette. They explained that the red colours we could see within their latest designs were inspired from watching The Hunger and ‘being inspired by the colour of blood.’ The film also pushed them to explore the classic/modern gothic theme that can be seen in the latest collection.

Dressedundressed 2013 S/S collection:

Embrace the influences of other cultures. It’s fair to say that what Masuhiro Yamamoto doesn’t know about Japanese food probably isn’t worth knowing. His talk was a fascinating mixture of his personal journey as a food critic and remarkable facts about his homeland’s cuisine. There were far too many to list here, but a couple of our personal favourites were that Japanese food is based on water (not butter and cream like western food) which means “you have to go out and find it’s flavours”, and the length of two chopsticks from your body is considered your  ‘boundary of eating’, having your chef at this distance (as can be seen in many traditional restaurants) means “you will be eating the feelings of the person serving you as well as the food.” Yamamoto finished by speaking about the future of sushi; it first became popular outside of Japan in the 70s after American President Jimmy Carter formed a committee to fight the growing obesity problem by looking at how other cultures ate. Since then the trend has spread throughout Europe and beyond. Yamamoto believes that the future for sushi is ingrained within other foreign foods and that sushi must be allowed to be influenced by different cultures for it to continue to grow and develop.

Trailer for ‘Jiro Dreams of Sushi’ which Masuhiro Yamamoto featured in:

Focus your energy on what you really want to do. To many people Marty Friedman is a rock god. Our very own Anders Gustafsson (who originally suggested Marty as a speaker) is one of those people and it was clear to see the admiration he had as he fired questions at him on the sofa. After a decade of being the lead guitarist for Megadeth Marty explained that he felt his life was ready for a new challenge, and that came in the form of a move to Tokyo. He had visited years earlier and been overwhelmed by a “good type of culture shock.” His interest in Japanese music had been growing ever since and when it eventually became too much he left the band and made the move. Marty soon became a respected musician in the J-Pop scene, “I like it because it sounds futuristic” he told us, “the sound is all about happiness and fun, but it’s an extremely developed and complicated structure.” So what about all those die hard metal fans from the Megadeth days, what do they think about this radical change in direction? – “Some people in the metal community might think I sold out or whatever, I get that. For me what’s really important is that I’m much more happy now in what I’m doing.”

Anything that’s worthwhile takes time. As well as being a respected musician, Marty is also a well known face on Japanese TV. How did that happen? – “Cultivate your following one person at a time”, he told us. His introduction to TV started as a way for him to practice speaking Japanese (which he is now fluent in) in front of an audience. One show lead to another and his popularity on screen began to grow. Marty is a man who understands the entertainment business and filling up the year with TV appearances not only keeps him busy but also makes sure he stays firmly in the public eye.

Marty Friedman playing with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra:

Don’t always follow the herd. Misha Janette Fleming grew up in the US where she studied fashion. When it came to making the next step she found herself turned off by the stereotypical idea of an American studying fashion in NYC, and instead opted to move east, graduating from Tokyo’s prestigious Bunka Fashion College. The gamble of moving to a foreign city has definitely paid off. Misha Janette landed a job at the Japan Times, she contributes to a diverse range of publications, and her blog Tokyo Fashion Diary is becoming an increasingly popular resource for the ‘fashion 2.5’ style that she has coined. She’s also branched into the world of wigs, recently launching her own company Plump. Misha Janette told us, “It just seemed to me that since I didn’t have any connections with anyone in the fashion industry anyway, even if I failed to jumpstart my career, at least in Tokyo I could say it was an adventure trying. I was also drawn to the fact that it is such a rare thing for a westerner to go to Tokyo to start young from the bottom up.”

Misha styled the infamous ‘Pom Pom’ dress that Nicki Minaj wore when she was sat next to Anna Wintour:

Get the audience doing the talking. Taku Takahashi has to be the most charismatic DJ / producer we’ve ever met. He started his talk with a brief history of his rise to fame, moving on to run through some of the things he most loved and hated about his home city. Then he did something that none of the other speakers had done, he flipped the microphone on us. Taku asked us to turn to someone sitting nearby and discuss what we had found cool or weird in Tokyo (there was plenty to choose from). Having this interactive discussion gave his presentation a depth that was incredibly engaging and he repeated the exercise with a different question later on. A simple presentation technique with powerful results.

Galapagos theory. Why is that CD sales haven’t been on the same cataclysmic downward spiral in Japan as they have in Europe? Taku had a formula for that: CD = music + alpha. He went on to explain that the music industry in Japan was quick to see the storm lurking on the MP3 horizon and started to look at how they could add extra value to encourage CD sales. The first major strategy that has been added is hand shaking rights; each CD comes with a voucher that entitles the buyer to literally shake the hand of the artist at a special event. Voting rights have also become a bonus value, allowing purchasers to have influence over what the band release, where they play, and a host of other options. It’s hard to say whether these techniques would work in other parts of the world, but it certainly shows how important the idea of adding extra value can be.

Taku Takahashi doing his thing at Club Womb:

Review from #CStokyo day 1 here.

Check out the socials hanging out with Mart Friedman here.

More pictures from #CStokyo here.