Talent imitates, genius steals

Advertising for Agencies

Campaign magazine asked me to write a couple of columns to fill in for Ian, so he could go on holiday.

In today's exciting episode, I point out that media agencies were notable by their absence from Cannes this year, even in the media category, which you'd think they would be ideally suited to enter.

[Although what constitutes a media idea, and how you separate that from a creative idea, is a whole discussion in and of itself.]

My point was though, as I realised when I was doing the Clio judging thing, that entry is almost as important as the idea itself.

Since most of the campaigns are from other countries, as a judge you may have never encountered the work, you have no idea how it resonated locally, whether people loved it and talked about, or simply ignored it.

The entry is all you have to go on - a short form video advert for an agency.

And traditional advertising agencies have quite a lot of experience making short form video adverts, whereas media agencies don't.

[I wonder if you could set up a meta agency, that just made case studies for other agencies.]

You can download the whole thing here.

[It's a pdf but you may need to rename the file and give it a .pdf file extension, as Macs seem to remove them]

In the piece I mention that media agency of the year was awarded to Forsman & Bodenfors, a creative agency. [Second and third place also went to creative agencies.]

But I said they were German, and Beata emailed me to point out that they are from Gothenburg in Sweden.

Förlåt!

Ways of Seeing

Noah and I wrote this piece for the new issue of Contagious about visualisations.

It's called Ways of Seeing [this is a reference to an awesome book that my mate Paul lent me that I never gave back called Ways of Seeing. It came out in 1972, was based on a BBC television series of the same name and is amazing:  a discourse about the the inherent ideologies embedded in visual imagery.]

In the piece we look at a bunch of interesting data visualisations and quote a blog post by Ed Cotton:

in a data driven world, infographics are the new art

and go on to suggest that visualisations are only going to become more prevalent and interesting as more and more data and metadata is generated by every digital interaction:

In a world increasingly saturated with data, we will all need to develop new ways of seeing.

You can download the whole thing here.

And The Winners Are

[I'm back.]

[I've missed you.]

[Parenthetically, it would seem.]

[Anyway.]

I wrote this thing for Media Magazine about what trends emerged from the Content and Contact Clio Category [try saying that fast five times. Be careful of the Candyman though].

There were a few things that jumped out: marketing people pay for, user involved content, doing GOOD THINGs, and the Shibuya district of Tokyo.

The point I was trying to make was:

As communication evolves, things that don't fit in elsewhere hint at how the industry is developing - mutations are, after all, the key to evolution.

You can read the whole thing here.

The winners have been announced - have a look here.

Once I get some time, I'll try to focus on a few campaigns and explain why we thought they were generative mutants.

[PS - has anyone else noticed that the new typepad CMS seems to leave big line breaks?]

Metablogging

Campaign Magazine asked Richard, Scamp, Ben, Neil, and I to have a big blog up to blog about blogging.

They wanted to know why we do it, among other things.

Here's what I said:

O blogging how do I love thee - let me count the ways.

I blog because it makes me think. The blog needs constant feeding, so I need to keep thinking and reading and making things up.

I'm constantly looking to make connections between disparate things, to package them up into posts. Finding patterns. Or creating them.

It's a place where I can think unfettered and get feedback on what comes out, from people who I know are interested in the same sorts of things, otherwise they wouldn't bother.

It's writing but it's not solitary.

It's a place where I can do whatever I want with words.

You can see the rest of the rambling here.

[Or you can download the orginal article here. ]

You are Entertainment

The Next Issue is a new monthly magazine from The Future Department, looking at, well, the future and that:

Our aim is not to report on past events – or just talk about the future – but to play a proactive role in developing new solutions and approaches, through an ongoing conversation with the creative and business communities we serve, making intellectual and personal connections across all creative disciplines.

I wrote an article for the first issue on the future of entertainment:

Increasingly immersive entertainment will be demanded, played out in spaces both virtual and real, validating and rewarding experiencers for their involvement. Entertainment that is constrained to single iterations will make way for properties that develop their own imagined realities. Retinal projection allows for immersive realities to be overlaid on meatspace in real time. Not so much Second Life, as Reality 2.0.

Elements of one narrative world will blend with others as entertainment ideas are remixed, creating recombinant narrative hybrids, evolving new forms from the old. Why restrict your experience set to one set of myths, when all are accessible?

Other entertainments will simply be your friends' lives; content and communication blur; people spend time consuming the reality TV of their real friends, who broadcast a continuous stream of personal content to their networks. And ultimately, user experiences narratives will become entertainment themselves.

You can download a pdf of the first issue, featuring contributions from Russell, John, and a host of other interesting people, here.

Waxing Brazilian

I did this interview with Meio & Mensagem - a Brazilian advertising journal - thanks to my friend Mauricio, talking about how things are and were and should be, in my humble opinion.

Mauricio assures me I didn't say anything too foolish so if you want to have a look and can read Portuguese, you can grab the pdf here.

Download interview_mm.pdf

One of the bits they pulled out was my frustration about the the antagonistic, teacher / pupil dynamic we sometimes get into as an industry with our clients - they set us homework, we run off and then come back for them to mark it [or tell them the Mac ate it.]

Clients are usually people that want to do cool stuff and therefore probably like to be involved - and the more they own the ideas, the more passionately they'll defend your never-been-done-before idea to a board that wants to see how it worked in the past.

The New Quid Pro Quo

My mate Ben and I have an article in this week's Adweek in the USA, in which we quote Bill Hicks' famous exhortation to marketers.

It grew out of the win - win communication or branded utility idea, where marketing delivers some value to earn the attention of the brand's desired audience.

Today, in response to an aversion to advertising, some of the world’s leading brands have begun to craft an entirely new model for communications to help them earn the right to talk to consumers. They’re doing this by making their marketing valuable, developing brand communications that deliver a genuine service value to consumers, free and with no strings attached.

To build a successful value-added campaign, companies need to identify something that is both useful to consumers and relevant to their brand. Most important, there must be an equitable value transfer. Consumers must enjoy a genuine utility in return for consuming the communication. At their best, brands can create a win-win marketing model whereby consumers get a useful service and the brand builds engagement with its targets.

You can read the whole thing here or download the pdf here, if you want.

Advertools

My mate Ben and I have an article in this month's Media Magazine in the USA.

It's about 'Advertools':

An advertool is a communication channel, created by a brand, which offers in itself a functional utility to consumers.

The idea grew out of two of my ongoing obsessions: to get brands to deliver value as well as messaging and my desire to invent new words.

By providing a specific functionality that consumers find valuable, brands can communicate a set of values or messages to consumers that use it - there is a balanced value exchange.

We highlight a few examples in the piece that we like, such as the Verizon Beatbox Mixer and Yutaka Loves London, the interactive guide from Virgin Atlantic.

Can anyone think of any others?

PS. You can download a pdf of the article here:  Download Advertools.pdf. If you want.

PPS. I'm the one with the beard. I have a different beard now though.

UPDATE: Adage have an article in the current issue that echoes this need for brands to deliver value - they call the concept 'branded utility'. Via Big Picture and Chroma.

Are All Ads Spam?

I've got an article in this month's Media Magazine in the States - it grew out of a post here a while back that used this image so I thought I would use it again.

The article conveniently follows on from yesterday's post. It asks whether all advertising will be considered spam when all channels become digital. The definition of spam online is:

unsolicited, unwanted, irrelevant, or inappropriate messages, especially
commercial advertising in mass quantities.

So will it no longer be enough just to be targeted and relevant in broadcast media - will advertising also need to be solicited?

If so, brands need to be offering value as well as messaging to engage with consumers.

You can get a pdf of the article here. The title is supposed to be contentious so I would be very interested in people's thoughts on this one.

Recombinant Culture

 
I have an article in the current issue of Contagious Magazine about the remix, tracking its evolution from John Locke's combinatorial imagination through trailer trashing videos I've posted about before all the way to web mash-ups.

To steal from William Gibson:

the remix is the very nature of the digital

and as all media becomes digital, the remix will become its dominant construct.

An understanding of this is crucial for anyone interested in how people consume media: no longer passive but recombinant and collaborative.

I've posted a pdf of the whole article here.

Ps. Thanks to Nick Sommer - Design Ninja for the  illustration.