via youtube.com
I love the idea of creating a fantastic muchies machine that has one purpose only - prove to consumers beyond the shadow of a doubt Lays is nothing but fresh potatoes, a little oil and salt. Nice!
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011
HARRY POTTER TECHNOLOGY HITS MUSEUMS
via youtube.com
Truth is I love the campaigns created for museums in the last decade. from Tate Tracks to the museum of London's Street Museum, I think they add to the visitors experience and help bring the pieces of art closer to the visitor - enabling a more intimate viewing experience. The campaign developed for Warsaw Sukiennice "Secrets Behind Paintings" is no exception. Borrowing from the Harry Potter popular culture icons of animated talking paintings - the museum brings the story behind each painting to life. Wish they would make this a travelling exhibit. I'd definitely go.
Holiday Serendipty
via vimeo.com
the concept introduced by Virgin airlines is simple.
log in your port of departure and date of departure and return.
Choose the weather you would like and discover 24 hours in advance where you are flying to. Now that makes for new discoveries!
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Sunday, October 2, 2011
IF YOU ONLY READ ONE THING THIS WEEK THIS SHOULD BE IT: Google #Firestarters 3: Building A New Agency OS « BBH Labs
Google #Firestarters 3: Building A New Agency OS
30th September 11
Posted in transformational change
For the third event in the Google #Firestarters series its curator extraordinaire, Neil Perkin, chose to tackle the issues of “legacy structures, processes and thinking” head-on with the question: “what might the operating system for the agency of the future look like?“.
It’s a hairy, humbling monster of a question, not least because talk of new agency structures and ways of working so often teeters precariously on the edge of empty buzzword bingo (check out Tim Malbon’s post last year on Agile as a cargo cult).
On Tuesday night, Martin Bailie, James Caig and I were given 20 minutes to share a response. I attempted to avoid painting a picture of an agency built of silicon, and instead set out to describe something rather more prosaic. These days, perhaps more than ever, agencies are almost ALL about culture; their operating system a set of programs designed to encourage creativity and responsive behaviour, not codify inflexible structures and processes. Get the culture right and the rest follows. So the question becomes: what sort of agency culture do you want to create or be a part of? And what about all the contextual stuff we perhaps need to consider first?
A simple take on the impact of technology
We’ve known for years that the opportunities to buy mass attention are shrinking by the day, just as the opportunities to earn and measure attention become ever more enticingly available. If today Google’s Panda algorithm places ever more pressure on businesses to boost the signal not increase the noise and Facebook’s EdgeRank reduces the visibility of brands that send users to sleep, imagine what this will be like in future. At its simplest, it adds up to the same thing: ALL marketing – not just the rare handful of brands that regularly win awards – needs to be *genuinely* useful or entertaining. If not, marketing will become that thing that marketers and agencies fear the most: unseen and unheard.
If we can just wake up to this fact, this is a show-stoppingly great moment in time for our industry. There simply isn’t room for me-too, clutter-up-your-life, half-baked ideas, or one way messages dumped on the web dressed up to look “interactive”. However, there is lots of room for marketing done with skill and purpose, that people want to share, remix and make their own.
I’m calling this Marketing Singularity – an absurd title, which I’ll explain it in a second. For now, I just want to restate how it feels that we’re at a tipping point in our industry’s life cycle. If we can just set ourselves straight, it’s going to be epic. Let me explain why and how…
Is the pace of change exponential or logarithmic?
Let’s start with a question that’s at the root of why we’re having this conversation in the first place: the oft-discussed pace of change. Jeremy pointed me to a speech made earlier this month by Ben Hammersley, who spoke with provocative eloquence about an incumbent generation of leaders losing ground on a ‘Internet era’ revolution racing away from them. Around the same time, Matt Edgar wrote a spirited rebuttal to the common assumption that the pace of change is accelerating.. It feels important to decide where you sit on this debate, because if the pace of change is exponential, then it follows we need to have systems in place that encourage us to plan a lot further ahead – or react more nimbly – than we have currently. Or perhaps that isn’t the point. The pace of change may or may not be accelerating, but the pace of life is de facto faster than it was, say, five years ago. And whilst Matt questions whether technology’s exponential rate of change actually impacts on our lives to the same degree, I find that a peculiar assumption. Technology doesn’t sit on the sidelines of our lives these days: it’s embedded, root and branch. What’s more, the technology companies themselves regard speed as a competitive advantage (“Better products, faster” – Larry Page, Google shareholders’ meeting, 2011). Last week’s avalanche of tech news (again) is a case in point.
Marketing Singularity?
In fact you could argue we’re approaching Marketing Singularity: the point at which marketing is forced to become exponentially better, until it is so useful or entertaining it ceases to be a separate, stand-alone, one-way message and instead becomes indistinguishable from the product or service it promotes.
It might be content, it might be a framework or a game that invites participation; or even participation that gets displayed as a game. Platforms are brand operating systems, campaigns are applications. As Ben pointed out earlier this year, these are not binary.
Marketing as a profit centre, not a cost
Taking this to its logical conclusion, shouldn’t we aim to create marketing products and services that are so good, people are prepared to pay for them? Even if this approach isn’t what’s required (perhaps a Freemium model is the way to begin), I like the responsibility it places upon our shoulders: make marketing valuable to people. Looking further out, we may look back on the days we spent millions of dollars just paying for the privilege to reach people as a little odd. Brands like Audi and Red Bull are early experimenters in the guise of brands as committed media owners / publishers.
The kind of agency OS this demands
A few programs for starters:
Reductive thinking everywhere
At Labs, we admire the ruthless economy, flex and energy of a great start up as much as the next person. Kickstarter and Instagram are two of the better known examples of Minimum Viable Product thinking. For any agency worth their salt, the fundamental principles of MVP should not feel new. Great brand strategy and creative have *always* been about the art of sacrifice. The task now is to apply that mindset throughout agency departments: reduce to MVP, then listen (data) and pivot as required. This becomes all the more important when we look at shifts in business stability: from long periods of stability and short periods of disruption, to the reverse. This is a model for marketing too – let’s get comfortable with an environment that needs to flex and morph.
Silicon vs carbon
As Rishad Tobaccowala said a few days ago, ‘the world may be digital, but people are analog.” Any agency OS needs to be built around people, not technology.
‘Big is a collection of smalls’
People habitually join agencies like BBH from colleges and smaller agencies because they want to do something at SCALE. Accordingly, the very last thing we need to do is shy away from growth. Instead, the best agencies are increasingly breaking into nimbler, cross-functional teams, often with hybrid skills and collaborative in mindset. As Nigel Bogle puts it, ‘big is a collection of smalls’. Teams with autonomy, but access to shared services.
Whilst we should cast for the client or task in question (don’t take the team structure I sketched too literally), it’s worth drawing attention to the ‘broker’ role. If you’re interested in non-traditional media partnerships and thinking, you need a deal maker in your team.
Networked, versus in a network
We cannot do everything ourselves. With every layer of complexity, comes a deeper requirement to nurture and build strong external partnerships. Labs is a product of its network, plain and simple.
Foster Renaissance (wo)men
We’ve said this before, but we’re living through a Renaissance period. To be successful, we need fearless people who want to collaborate and learn from other industries. Deal makers, entrepreneurs, makers.. The people who never hold back from making the thing they dream of, just because the tools don’t exist today. Because they know they’ll exist tomorrow.
Make real things
You don’t need a 3D printer to make stuff or experience the benefits of making a proto-type of your idea. Making an early version of something – even if it’s rubbish (many years ago, I remember taking a mockup of a Boddingtons Tetra pak to a client meeting, to sell the idea of ‘Fresh Cream’. They hated it) – teaches you stuff you don’t find out if you stay in theory mode. So go buy a soldering iron and make something… There’s also a non-too-subtle shift going on between experiences that live entirely online (potentially interesting) and those that straddle the real world too (potentially fascinating). Check out Russell Davies’ piece for Campaign and the brilliant Marc Owens’ Avatar Machine if you want to read more.
Stay curious
Adopting and encouraging a culture of constant learning sounds exhausting, but it may well be the only way to stay sane. Learn to code, get comfortable in the wild, stay open, stay curious – I’m enjoying playing with my Weavr thanks to @zeroinfluencer – create your own here. A phrase used often at BBH and which turned up on our login screens this summer is perhaps an apt way to close: “Do interesting things and interesting things will happen to you.”
via bbh-labs.com
Saturday, October 1, 2011
KISS - KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID
What I love about this campaign is that it is so intrinsic to our behavior online. So what's it about - well basically your everyday charity brief - "we need money - please help us get some".
But what these guys did about it was smart. People in the online world like in the offline world use a lot of swear words. It's built into our 21st century DNA - swearing I mean.
It used to be our parents would set up a swear jar; and every four letter word cost us dearly. That is unless we didn't mind getting rid of our weekly allowance in under 12 minutes...
Well these guys figured why not set up a public money jar - and make good use of the swear$.
The website they set up http://charityswearbox.com is really quite straightforward programming....the idea on the other hand is just smart. Take a look.
<p>Charity SWEAR BOX from Fueled on Vimeo.</p>
Virgin is incubating a "Culture of Play"
This kinda goes back to my previous post about "incubating a culture of play".
Today in the digital and social media age, many of the best advertising ideas are not ads. Take Apple, Google and even Pepsi. Their breakthrough approach to marketing is not only changing the future of advertising, it’s changing our culture.
On September 10th, Kyocera, via Mother New York, created the Echo Temple, an interactive music experience for the Virgin Mobile Freefest, a one-day music festival in Columbia, Maryland, attended by over 50,000 people and featuring Cee Lo, Patti Smith, TV on the Radio, Deadmau5 and the Black Keys.
The interactive sound installation allowed users to play virtual musical instruments by moving their bodies in front of motion-tracking cameras. The Echo Temple included six monolithic speaker towers with motion tracking cameras encircling a central tower including subwoofers. Participants standing in front of the monoliths were able to manipulate a different melodic instrument’s volume, pitch or unique audio effect by moving their body and waving fans branded with special symbols. The central tower produced the core of the mix: drums, bass, drones and the main harmonic progressions, and had architectural bamboo that could be tapped to trigger percussive sounds within the mix.
As you would expect, this became a social media phenomenon on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Talk about engaging consumers.
As I constantly preach to my agency colleagues and clients, we’re in the ideas business, not the advertising business. Well done, Mother.
Reblogged from fueltheculture
Incubating a Culture of Play
So many nuggets here. Minimum viable product, experimenting, beta thinking, culture tapping, behavior over medium. No, digital does not equal repeat media. It's a must watch...
Monday, September 26, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Innocent Drinks #TweetAndEat campaign - The Social Business Feed
Seems like this was just waiting to happen...Groupon meets Twitter. there is really very little to say except: smart! Via http://michaelbatistich.com
Monday, July 25, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Energizing Posters
Vitamin Water bus-stop ad lets devices juice-up before the commute
Battery running low during the rush-hour commute? Glacéau's Vitamin Water Energy Bus Shelter by Crispin Porter & Bogusky wants to help you get charged while you're waiting to board. The new billboards feature a bottle of the vitamin / caffeine-packing drink, sporting a triple-USB port, which you can plug your devices into for some extra juice. Apparently, you'll be seeing these if your daily public-transit hustle takes you through the fine cities of Boston, New York, Chicago or Los Angeles -- we'd imagine owners of HTC's Thunderbolt will find them very useful.
via engadget.com
Sunday, July 3, 2011
On Creativity...
Titanium work was being done long before new technology and social media. Take The Macy’s Day Parade created in 1924. A brilliant brand-building creative idea. Not an ad but a piece of creative that is still building a brand today. Let’s commandeer the start of the biggest shopping month of the year with the ultimate shopper, Santa Claus, showing up on our doorstep in Herald Square. Now, that's an act.
I worry that if we created The Macy’s Day Parade today, we would do it for one year and then ask, “What will we do next year?” Because repeating an idea certainly doesn’t seem very creative. Not to mention, it has very little chance of being awarded twice. However, if you are trying to build a brand with this idea, you might be inclined to keep investing in it.
It is ironic to me that we are in a business that frequently creates campaigns to encourage recycling and conservation. Yet, we are the first to throw away ideas because they’ve been done before or because we’ve grown tired of them. Interestingly, Malcolm Gladwell’s "better-to-be-number-three-than-number-one" seminar nodded to this very thing. Watch what number one does and then do it better. Perhaps that is why we shouldn’t be in the business of creativity. Because that demands that we start over. I would suggest we are in the business of building brands through creativity. We will make slightly different choices if Cannes awards brand building through creativity versus creativity in a vacuum. Brilliant brand building creates equity, and equity has huge value.
via fastcompany.com
This is an excerpt of an article published in Fast Company by Susan Credle CCO at Leo Burnett USA...I loved Malcom Gladwell's lecture at Cannes and believe Susan's commentary is insightful.
To put it in a nutshell, Yes - it is about innovation. No- it is not about wiping the slate clean and restarting from zero but building on an idea and getting better at remixing - ideas, trends, insights. Building off existing concept and remixing them into an innovative point of view that creates that moment when you say "I never thought about it that way". Just a thought.
For a the full article follow this link http://www.fastcompany.com/1763405/does-the-ad-industry-really-need-a-festiva...
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Coca Cola "Liquid & Linked"
Wendy Clark discusses "Liquid and Linked" approach to cross-media marketing at the Ad Age Digital Conference in New York.Watch live streaming video from adage at livestream.com
The strategic vision and thinking behind the Coca Cola Brand marketing.
A must read.
To Hell with ads, Spark a movement
via slideshare.net
Here is the great presentation deliverd by @hklefevre on behalf of Strawberry Frog at their Cannes Lions Workshop 2011. About tapping into pop culture and communities and sparking a movement rather than a campaign.
100+ Beautiful Slides from Cannes Lions 2011
via slideshare.net
Carrying on his great series of presos this is probably the most comprehensive round you will get on the most brilliant lectures presented at the Cannes Lions 2011 festival.
Always great reading @Jessedee.
12 Trends from Cannes 2011
via slideshare.net
I just got back from Cannes and here is a good digital round up of trends hitting our industry. Take a look.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Music Industry Spins New Business Models
'THE FUTURE IS MEDIEVAL' WITH THE KAISER CHIEFS
We’re finally able to talk about this. It’s been shrouded in secrecy within the agency for over a year now.
Wieden + Kennedy London have teamed up with The Kaiser Chiefs, B-Unique and and Fiction Records (a division of Universal Music UK) to create a whole new way of releasing an album.
Everybody gets their own bespoke album that they are then allowed to sell on.
Fans can pick 10 songs out of 20, design their artwork and download their album.
We give them their own web page, banner ads for their blog, posters and social media tools to advertise their album. For every album they sell they get a pound.
If you don’t want to make your own album then you can browse and listen to other people’s and just pick one of them.
The plan was hatched by our creative Oli Beale and lead singer Ricky Wilson in a fish & chip shop, while on holiday in Cornwall together. The conversation snowballed into a bigger and bigger idea and we’ve had a full-scale team working on this here for months now.
Nothing like this has ever been done before. The financial model has required fundamental changes to the way royalty payments work that couldn’t have been done without the might of Universal Music UK behind it.It’s been an incredibly exciting meeting of minds. We’ve learnt a lot of things:
1. Never show a band a Powerpoint deck. “I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT I’M LOOKING AT HERE!”
2. Look after the hardcore fans of bands.
3. Use the band as creative directors. They are brilliant.
4. Being a band manager is an insane job that doesn’t allow for sleep. Respect.
5. Record labels and Ad Agencies are very different places but full of very similar people. I think we all learnt loads from each other.Who knows what stories this will throw up in the next few weeks?
Will somebody make a fortune selling an album?
Will other bands make their own versions of the album?
Which tracks will emerge as the favourites?Pop back soon to find out.
Make one yourself here: Take a look here: http://www.kaiserchiefs.com/
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
The Butterfly Effect
I read an article today saying that my old bosses are retiring, well to be exact, it said they were taking a step back, to make way for a new and younger generation of creative managers. I am happy and sad as well.
Happy that my friends are being given a chance to move up, prove themselves, face new challenges and grow from them. Happy the agency feels the need to grow, change and morph into something new and hopefully more powerful.
Sad I guess, because although I left the agency some 7 months ago, in more ways than one, I still consider it home. I had the privilege of working closely with at least two of the agency's partners, but I am happy to say I learnt something different from all three. If I can call myself a professional today, it's because they gave me the opportunity to grow, nurtured my curiosity and fed me with ever more difficult challenges.
I recently read somewhere that when caterpillars morph into a butterfly, at the cocoon stage - if you were to open the cocoon - there is nothing but goo. I guess it takes a lot of energy to create real, pervasive change and create something truly beautiful. Something that can generate a butterfly effect. For those of you not familiar with the concept, the theory goes that something as delicate as the flapping of a butterfly's wings can cause a tremendous ripple effect on the other side of the world.
I know this may sound like rambling to some of you, but I had to get this of my chest. So to my friends and former bosses, I wis 'Bon vent' (french for may the wind always be in your back).
Sent from Eva Hasson's iPad
The Creative Brief by Tom Fishburne
via tomfishburne.com
Following text from Tom Fishburne about the creative brief which will make a lot of sense to anyone in advertising.
"Creative briefs may be brief, but often they aren’t very creative.
Rupal Parekh wrote an AdAge article on poor creative briefs last week: “Marketers, Quit Blaming Your Agency — It’s Your Brief at Fault”. It includes this illustrative quote from Casey Jones:
“If you rated the industry on a scale from one to 10, with one being a horrifying piece of direction and 10 being optimal, I would say that companies are currently somewhere between a two or three. The norm is partial, incomplete and sometimes no brief at all. A phone call or a text message comes across to the agency, and the agency is trying to read the client’s mind and they go off and start executing. Agencies go off and do stuff and then the marketer comes back and says ‘That’s not what I wanted’”
I’ve worked on both sides of the client/agency table, but learned the real power of a well-written creative brief from Eric Ryan at method. As an ex-agency planner, Eric understood that a quality creative brief unlocks quality talent at an agency. He put as much energy into a creative brief to an agency as he would to a creative pitch to method’s biggest customers. With so little marketing spend, the quality of the creative had to carry the weight.
Instead of a brief, write a manifesto. Instead of a brand promise, convey your brand purpose. Instead of bullet points, tell a story.
A creative brief should not just inform. It should inspire."
I believe the brief has indeed, over the last few years, been neglected and is in many cases , written in a very stereotypical way – one that leaves little to the imagination. It's become about ticking cases and filling in blank spaces, rather than inspiring creatives and the agency at large to do great work. Funnily enough, a friend of mine sent me the Skittles brand book. I think some of it was very inspiring:
Reblogged from: litmanlive.me
The Museum of Me
via youtube.com
Although we've seen the Facebook stream experience before, this is a beautifully realized experience by Intel. Give it a shot: http://www.intel.com/museumofme/r/index.htm
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Think small
via slideshare.net
A must read by Gareth Kay. It's about agile, iteration, baby steps, doing, making, bridging gaps, being useful and entertaining, and thinking SMALL...sooooooooooo worth reading. Enjoy.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Coca-Cola Highway Cinema
via youtube.com
These guys really know how to spread a little happiness.
To liven up people's hour long stay in traffic, Coke set up a giant cinema screen over the Bogota's busiest streets, and in true cinematic experience fashion while ushers distributed new Mini coke bottles and other snacks, drivers were prompted to tune in to a special radio station and enjoy the movie.
Great entertainment if you ask me. Take a look
Kinect Fitting Room on Vimeo
via vimeo.com
I just love what a little hacking can accomplish. This technology is actually Kinect based and for anyone who really hates shopping, this is probably a really great and effortless shopping solution. Would love to know when this tech goes mainsteram.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Prius Records is Coming
Real time advertising is coming. On March 30 & 31 Prius will be holding a two day live event to break 200 world records. Definitely a space worth watching. www.Toyotapriusprojects.com
Eva Hasson
Eva Hasson
Friday, March 18, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Lynx has angels falling from the sky
I love the interaction with the brand: cheeky, surreal and fun.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Honda Jazz: Interactive TV Ad / iPhone App
Honda Jazz: Interactive TV Ad / iPhone App
Wed, Feb 2, 2011 (5 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
4 Comments Here is something seriously cool. Honda has just unveiled an interactive TV campaign called “This Unpredictable Life” to launch the new Honda Jazz, and with that, an iPhone app that allows you to literally grab content from the ad as it plays.
The campaign was created by W+K London and uses whats called “screen hopping” that works by having sound from the TV ad recgonised by the iPhone App, so when pre defined sound waves are read, the app knows to display the same character that was on screen at that moment, essentially giving you the ability to interact with the TV ad in real time.
Screen hopping takes this a little further though, once you’ve got the character, you can interact separately with each one away from the TV ad, by doing things like singing into the iPhone to make characters dance. Give it a crack. Download this app and then watch the TV ad here.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Trends 2011 - Internet of things
via vimeo.com
Call it the internet of things, online and offline colliding...I don't care. There have been some pretty cool campaigns this year using collision between the real world and online world beginning with the Nike Livestrong Chalkbot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNg-rQR6z84 and on with local initiatives like the Coca Cola Real Life Like machine based on RFID technology http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkz15wAc6Ew.
My bet is this trend is just gonna get stronger. Look out for new applications.
Trends 2011 - Random acts of goodness pay off big for brands
orange have come up with a plan to help you cheer up your mates and gbeat winter gloom. Send a winter warmer to a friend - tweet #WinterWarmer with your friend’s name or Twitter name. They’ll ask you for their address and race over to your mate with a van full of hot chocolates and scarves.
So if you're in the UK - give it a shot.
2011 Agency Predictions | Forrester Blogs
Over the past couple of years we’ve seen some dramatic shifts in the agency landscape. In what Forrester has dubbed as “The Great Race For Relevancy”, virtually every type of agency is now competing with each other like never before. Social media has become the great land grab and all just about all agencies are claiming to be “digital” in some ways. We don’t expect the agency landscape to shake out and make sense in 2011. In fact, we expect more dramatic shifts. Here are some agency predictions for this year:
- Agencies continue to hire and develop talent outside of their heritage. In 2010 some interactive agencies like Razorfish and EVB began hiring“earned media specialists” while some PR agencies like Waggener Edstrom and The Horn Group built out interactive creative services. Meanwhile, some agencies with traditional creative heritages like Weiden + Kennedy, were pioneers in developing content that is truly agnostic to digital and traditional channels while also interactive (see Nike and P&G’s Old Spice). Expect to see these trends become mainstream in 2011.
- Media planning and buying agencies begin to broaden their horizons. While other agencies have been making fundamental changes to adapt to the ever changing digital environment, media planning & buying agencies are still very much focused on paid media (and are still compensated on volume of spend). While some have been successful integrating online and offline media teams, 2011 will open the window for dramatic change. These agencies will begin to take advantage of new digital media tools (e.g. DSPs, RTBs, exchanges, etc.), the growth of connected TV’s, and analytics platforms to move beyond just planning and buying advertising to expanding communication planning services that make them key strategic advisors to their clients. Look for agencies like Starcom Mediavest (with help from the Publicis Vivaki group) to pioneer this space, while those agencies that fail to evolve will become less relevant.
- Agencies mature with social media. Certainly the great majority of marketers have a long way to go in figuring out how to integrate social media into the organization. But overall we’re seeing marketers mature in this space and their agencies are maturing as well. While many different types of agencies are still battling for the overall strategy, many are now falling into place in their core skill sets: PR agencies tend to manage word-of-mouth and crises, interactive agencies tend to build strategy and applications, traditional creative and media agencies leverage social to compliment campaigns, etc. Expect this trend to continue as marketers continue to mature.
- Mobile (along with tablets) becomes the next big land grab. With the massive growth of smart phones and tablets and the continued focus on emerging markets like India that have high penetration of mobile ownership, agencies are already fighting for mobile work. With their technology know-how, interactive agencies are in the best position to help marketers navigate The Splinternet but considering the opportunity in this space you can expect all agencies to have some form of mobile expertise in 2011 and beyond.
- A whole new crop of specialists appear…again. Technology is moving so fast that new shiny objects are being created almost every day. 2010 was the year of social media boutiques like Big Fuel, Ant’s Eye View, and Powered (recently acquired by the Dachis Group). New types of agencies (or non-agencies) are constantly popping up. 2011 will spawn new types of agencies in the emerging space. Consider Breakfast, an agency consisting of what you might consider inventors that focuses on futuristic experiences or Zugara, a firm that specializes in augmented reality. And many of these agencies will be scooped up by the big holding companies looking to fill out their skill sets. (Speaking of acquisitions, let’s not forget that some big digital agencies like AKQA, Rosetta, and IMC2 are still independent and will become increasingly attractive to the holding companies looking to expand their digital portfolios in a highly competitive environment).
- Everyone continues to (pretty much) fail at analytics. Analytics positions are hot at agencies right now. Every type of agency is trying to improve their capabilities. But the truth is marketers themselves are still very much fragmented in their approach and, until that is sorted out, the great majority of agencies will be stuck managing the data in their corner of the world. Expect improvement, especially with real time metrics, but agencies will continue to struggle to tell the full story through analytics in 2011.
- Technology innovation becomes the new creative. Agencies are often hired based on their ability to generate “ideas” (though I would argue it is only one of many reasons they’re hired). This won’t change moving forward, but the way those ideas are manifested is changing dramatically. And while you don’t need to be an engineer to come up with ideas in the digital age, it helps dramatically when the agency has the ability to understand what can and cannot be built. That’s why agencies like SapientNitro are succeeding in expanding their business model – because they can balance the head in the clouds ideas with the feet on the ground know how.
So what does this mean to you as an interactive marketer? Well first you can expect more agency confusion as it will continue to be difficult to determine which agencies excel at the many different digital services. However, it also opens doors to working with new types of agencies. For instance, interactive marketers have always been more comfortable with building and buying media (i.e. owned and paid), and if your interactive agency isn’t up to speed with earned media, then you have the opportunity to work more closely with the PR agency to learn new skills. To succeed in this environment you should commit to your agency relationships (i.e. don’t hire them to be strategic and then treat them like vendors or vice versa), set clear roles with the agencies, and constantly evaluate your agency performance and knowledge.
Save and Share:
Just went throught the Ad Age A list and thought that the agencies listed on it were telling to this article and how spot on it is.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Your Life is a Transmedia Experience
This is probably one of the best transmedia presentations I have come accross in a long time. Well worth the read - via Propagation Planning
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
10 business models that rocked 2010 | Board of Innovation
Coming up with new Business Models is a challenge, one that requires reframing the question and looking at things from a new angle. This year some remarkable new models that have emerged - Groupon that you no doubt have all heard of (with an army of copycats sprouting up all over the world) and my personal favorite 'Pay with a tweet' - a kind of forced viral where if you want to access the proposed digital concept, all you need do is tell you friends about it. Enough said. Take a look at the preso here by @nickdemey
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
256 Ways to love a music clip
This is a new music video clip from an Israeli Artist called Yoni Bloch.
The clip filmed in 24 hours, is an interactive experience that allows you at certain crossroads of the song to choose the pathway you will follow. You can choose the protagonist to follow throughout the clip, the music style you prefer to hear the song in (acoustic vs. rock), the solo you prefer to listen to (guitar vs drums vs voice vs keyboards). All in all, there are 256 different ways of listening to this song and viewing this clip. An experience that will keep the viewer coming back for a fresh experience over and over again.
Well enough said - have a look and take a shot at at it:
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