Taking pride in Art

This is Lady GaGa. She actually reminds me of Nicolas Cage/ Castor Troy in Face/Off in those strange glasses.

However one thing I like about her, is the fact that everything she does from her bespoke clothes, to her dancing, to her lyrics is all created by her, and is as she puts it - art. She even sites Bowie and Donatella Versace as her muses. Donatella for instance also wears little on her bottom half as her signature look.

Now as I grew up there was many a pop-sensation but none of them talked about their art, or themselves as an artist (at least not comprehensively). And to tell you the truth I always thought Art [in museums, especially modern art] was a bit naff and elitist. And deep down it was probably because I didnt understand it, despite loving drawing itself.

But what I love is that the people that this generation are exposed to, like GaGa or Dizze Rascal or even Peaches Geldof, are showing kids that art doesn't have to be a light installation, or a painting. It can be lyrics, clothing, furniture, dance. All the things they use to express themselves every day. They show the importance of expressing yourself through creativity.

The scariest thing is that I get given a lot of advice from people on my career in advertising, and I can't remember the last time someone told me to just BE MORE CREATIVE. To take pride in the mini works of art I try to make happen every day. It's the hardest thing to do, to stop the admin and the meetings and just be creative more in the day - but I should be.

Spectacle advertising

The new T-Mobile ad has caused quite a stir in the haul back to the office this [post bank holiday] morning. Certainly is putting Saatchi's back on the map. But straight away the first thing I think of is Sony Balls, Play-doh, foam, T-Mobile rick-roll... big production ads. (There are probably more but I only have my lunch break to write this). I'm by no means against this, and I think Faris puts it best here when he says its about brands bringing people together and giving them something to do.

I guess its the same ethos as don't write me a script write me a press release, and all that. I hope I don't sound too cyncial, and I of all people know the importance of PR and talkability of your idea - but I'm wondering if we're heading towards PR idea land and forgetting how good regular ads can be (including digital, experiential etc).

As long as it answers the brief these ads aren't comiting any crime. For T-Mobile if the brief was bringing people together and giving them something to do then gold stars all round. If its about being associated with moments of sharing then I think they've done a pretty good job of that too.

Just a thought, I'm still stewing.

Clever copywriters

I love this, insightful and succinctly put.

Emotion and behaviour change comms - seems obvious now

Was it really before Christmas I last posted?! Scary how fast this year has gone, mainly because we've been so busy at our place (only a good thing).

But amongst all the running around to enter Meerkats into every Awards body going, I've been tearing my hair out thinking about the solution to solving briefs that I work on. You see these are predominantly behavior change briefs - anti-binge drinking and school food trust. I'm not saying brands have got it easier than the Government, but in terms of getting your heads around a business problem and coming up with a strategic plan of attack they do.

Crassly speaking, with a brand you can identify gaps in the market, break category conventions, do fun things with social media. Not so easy if you're telling 18 year olds who live for £2 Apple Sourz in their SU club to reconsider their options, or 11 year olds who despise their canteens to go it alone and let their mates go to Chick City.

Rachel Barry at Fallon spoke the other day about the 'spirit' of a brief as opposed to treating it like a skeleton that needs flesh adding to it (I think that's how it went anyway). And I have to say that really got me excited - especially when it's obvious that the briefs for Cadbury's or Sony Bravia had real spirit to them.

So what is the brief spirit for government comms?? The answer came to me when someone mentioned Richard Huntingdon's theory on emotion in advertising. Joy for Cadbury's, anger for Dove, shame for anti-smoking (clog campaign). Most current e.g. would be the emotion of fear in the Violence against women ad Kiera Knightly appeared in (for free). Truly amazing stuff.

Thinking about booze alone, I know I reconsider what my limits are most when I regret something I did the night before as opposed to the fickle 'I'll never drink again' ailing of a brutal hangover, or booze bruise. Shame. Regret. Remorse. Guilt. That's what makes me think LONGER TERM.

SFT is a bit harder, so suggestions are welcome! Like a brand whatever idea we come up with should have longevity - and that's the hardest part I suppose. What emotion have we previously run with? Well we told kids to 'Get Real' about what's in their junk food to encourage them to shift to their canteen - I guess that would be Shock. But now we need to move on to something closer to the canteen itself. Would emotions would that entail? I'm going cross eyed at this point so think it might not be the right way to approach it, but all the same think its a very interesting concept.

Digital Marmite – FMCGs should decide how much they need to love it, or hate it.

It’s not easy being a brand nowadays. As well as keeping your stakeholders happy by delivering on the bottom line, you need to appeal culturally to consumers, and MUST be seen to be doing something ‘digital’, to avoid being accused of being stuck in the 80s when TV was King and nothing else mattered. Brand marketing managers read trade press articles with fear, as they see the next Facebook widget, iPhone application, or MySpace page being launched by their competitors. And what is their machine-gun reaction? WE MUST PRODUCE SOMETHING ONLINE TOO! SOMETHING. ANYTHING!

FMCG’s and digital aren’t a match made in heaven, mainly because things that thrive online tend to be issues that people are passionate about, want to discuss with others and will seek out relentlessly to dig out more information. So common sense tells you that this is less likely to happen for a bar of soap than for a candidate running for US President. So what tends to happen (as was also the case with fashion brands up to recently) is that an FMCG will have an online brochure, adapted straight from a print and therefore not bringing anything new to the consumer, then generally there will be no links to buy online, and the interest for people to seek out the brand online will soon die off.

But the truth is, and I probably shouldn’t say this, that digital isn’t for every brand. It’s rare that there’s legitimately no need for digital ideas for a brand, but it does happen. Or more accurately, the EXTENT to which digital is needed in the brand’s marketing cocktail can sometimes be more like 1 part than 3 parts. One great way of honing in on the instinct to recognise how diluted or potent your digital cocktail is, is to look at other brands and laugh at their mistakes, rather than make your own, and more importantly - praise them for getting it right.

Only when brands can judge others digital comms with rigour can they take digital into their stride for their own products, and make a decision as to digital will play a leading, or supporting role in their comms going forward.

So how should they go about it? The 3 point programme:

1) Digital landscape

Well, and I’ll say it again, it’s not easy for brands. The first thing to do is become aligned to the rough timeline of digital channels that exist – but the truth is new channels are born everyday. It’s a problem, but the easiest way of getting around it is just to accept: Whatever country you’re in, every media will become digital eventually. Become comfortable with that, and the first step is done.

2) Find common ground with traditional creative judging

Despite what some digital hot shops would love you to believe, there are plenty of similarities between ATL and Digital channels. Mainly: Insights, Involvement and Integration. The planning should be thorough and insightful; you still have to adopt the school of thought that if you’re in someone’s living room you should perform some form of entertainment or value exchange (and let them become involved in some way); and finally ensure that if you have various platforms, each one is in sync with the others visually and tonally (like cutting a stick of rock at an point and seeing the same thing).

3) Put this into a framework

Putting the above into a checklist, is easy. You need to ensure all Digital activity your brand does: Meet’s brand strategy; has talkability; and uses the right environment for that audience.

An example of a brand that got it right would be Walkers’ ‘Do us a flavour’ campaign. (If you’ve not seen it, they’re getting people to submit new flavours of crsips. If you submit the winning flavour you get £50k and a 1% share of the profits from the new flavour). To put it in the framework:

Meets brand strategy

The campaign works seamlessly with their traditional advertising. It doesn’t stray too far from home, for example creating a soap opera for Bebo around Gary finding new flavours wouldn’t have worked at all, it feels forced. This is simple, fun, light-hearted, and British – things the brand is.

Talkability

They’ve built the campaign around a great question. A superb conversation starter. I’ve ended up two or three times now in conversations where people have got really excited about coming up with interesting new and bizarre flavours of crisps. And debating what would actually sell.

Once the submissions round is over. They’re going to manufacture the judges favourite top 6 flavours and let the public choose which of them wins. Generating trial / sales and driving even more conversations. As a genuinely integrated campaign

Reaching the audience with the right environments

On something like this, awareness is crucial to get good numbers, so a heavy burst of TV went out to promote it with the brand hero Gary Lineker. The site’s got a lot of shortcomings. It doesn’t handle duplicates at all well, and the searching isn’t up to scratch. But it obviously doesn’t matter that much to people: 130,000 pages of entries - 6 to a page - gives almost 800,000 flavours submitted. That’s incredible. It’s a brilliant user generated content idea because anyone can do it. You don’t have to have any technical skills whatsoever. It’s just about imagining something. And something that almost all of us will have an opinion on whether we’ve thought about it before or not.

Other good ones I could mention are Lynx's 'Blow', Snickers Mr T app; Whispa's 'Bring back' campaign; and Innocent's blog. Non FMCG, same principle: Doc Martin's customisable boots site; Bugaboo pram-friendly maps; BBC Beijing Olympics widget; Diesel's XXX viral...

Thank you to Iain Tate's 'Crisps and Conversations' post for inspiring me to write this one.

Britney Badge

"There are two kind of people in this world. The ones who entertain, and the ones that observe. Well I'm a put-on-a show-kind of girl." - Britney Spears, Circus

Have been checking out Britney's site since seeing her on last week's X-Factor. Admitedly she doesn't write her own blog (her street team from different cities do that), but there's an opp to listen to all tracks off her new album (full length); a video of her introducing the site; exclusive videos from her Bday celebrations at G.A.Y; YTube vids of her Good Morning America medley, polls asking which song fans think she'll release next off Circus [the album]; back stage photos of her at dance rehearsals; and they promised to put the best YT video responses from fans up there too [and did]. They even gave you access to her iTunes librabry for a week.

As someone who's still as much of a fan now as when she came out when I was a wee 13 year old, I know how much fans appreciate stuff like this. (And see how insightful it was that they recognise people ALWAYS try and predict the next release - will they even put the power in the fans hands to decide that outcome?) Whilst at Uni people were asking what the music industry's answer was to P2P file sharing of music; and seeing this site - and what Radiohead did earlier this year - is kind of the answer.

Her management have woken up to what's required digitally to market her latest release, I wonder what she makes of it all? After all there's a certain vulnerability about releasing so much extra content when you're an artist. Gone are the days the public only saw picture perfect Vogue shoots and album covers of our idols. Still if you're going to have the occasional 'bad' photo, may as well keep it real on your own blog. My favourite thing, is the below badge.

As a final thought it occured to me that like campaigns, albums (or any entertainment property) are better when one creative idea ties everything together: Britney's Circus, Madonna's Confessions from the Dancefloor, Ricky Gervais' Animals. Next time I'm working something new, I'll try and ask 'if it [the brand/ government campaign] were a pop star on tour - what would it's tour theme be?'.

And yes - I did actually get tickets if you're wondering - will perfect learning the shimmying dance moves of Womanizer for June!

Diary of a housewife

This week I had a staycation. That's right - a week off work with no budget for a holiday and a more than happy attitude to staying at home nice and cosy!

I can't remember the last time I did this, maybe I was still at Uni? Anyway I have to say, just living 'real life' away from the advertising bubble was great. And if I were running for Prime Minister I'd introduce 'an extra week off work for all who work in marketing, (clients too of course), to remind themselves of the people they spend their lives trying to change the behavior of'. Or something less wordy.

The one thing that stood out the most: TIME (i.e. lack of).

Here's a shocker...time goes as quickly when you're at home pottering about, as when you're at work!! And therefore what we bang on about but sometimes don't always adhere to - is the lesson about making things as easy, quick, useful and enjoyable to these people AS WE CAN if we are to succeed.


Tidying takes time, cleaning takes time, cooking takes time, banking REALLY takes time, catching up on correspondence takes time, making sure things like insurance and birthdays are all up to date TAKES TIME. The amount of messages I was bombarded with whilst in the home for a week was frightening (post especially). The worst thing is 'relaxing' isn't as fun as you'd think, with such awful daytime entertainment - you end up feeling guilty for having your 13th nap, or doing something to keep occupied.

So just bear this in mind upper-east [adver]siders when you're on your lunch break on Brick Lane. Men and women who are stay at home partners or work from home haven't got it as easy as we think - do something that will really catch their eye and make them stop, or be at the mercy of being rejected rather swiftly.