This Week in Strategy: If a child refuses to sleep during nap time, are they guilty of resisting a rest?
Hi Strat Pack,
What a week! With everything going on in the US, we can often miss the most important things happening in international news. For example, I don't know if you've heard, but Oh No, the Feral Hogs Have Gotten Their Hands on Some Cocaine. The author's name is Hannah Gold and this article is Pure Gold. These particular animals are said to have dug up the dealers’ supply and strewn it about the woods, possibly in a manic state that briefly convinced them they are the Jackson Pollock of feral hogs. It is only the second biggest waste of cocaine to be reported this week; multiple outlets reported on Monday that several bricks of “very pure” cocaine washed up on the shores of southwestern France. Quel dommage.
Well after all that excitement, Honestly, a Video Game That Strands You On a Boring Six-Hour Flight Is Just What I Need Right Now. Let's be honest. I have no idea why this game exists. I don't know who the target audience is. I don't know how much funding this will raise. But I can think of a whole slew of people that just need to turn their brains off for six hours and this game is probably a great way to do that. Watch the trailer. Or just read a book or something. You know?!
In the design world, two things I've been very seriously enjoying (both courtesy of It's Nice That):
Berlin Wall graffiti is made into a typeface to warn how “division is freedom’s biggest threat”
“Are we all avatars now?” asks digital painter Zak Keene I am obsessed with these illustrations. I would say, yes, we are definitely all avatars now.
Alright, stop messing around trying to figure out why they haven't made a Greyhound Bus videogame yet. Probably because you'd have to ship it with a bunch of scratch-and-sniffs, garbage smell edition. Was that a feral hog cocaine reference? Hard to tell! Let's jump right in.
The one thing to read this week
1) Schrodinger's Strat: The Planning Paradoxes for 2020 [BBH Labs]
When you start to dig into alarmist headlines and the standard adland twitter bashing of said topic, neither end up beating the other. Because there’s an element of truth in both seemingly contradictory sides. Traditionalists won’t give credit to anything new. The Digerati won’t back down from the latest shiny new thing. Yet we should embrace these lovely paradoxes. Paradoxes that have elements of truth circulating within them.
You can either follow the Aristotle quote “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it” or you can pick a side and use it to back up your 2020 plans. The article contains 7 Paradoxes. Here are my (Jordan's) top 3:
1. Short and Long term
Hopefully, this is a simple one we’ve all heard before but for some reason, it feels like we need it repeated every week.
Both are true, don’t you dare reject either, the perfect paradox.
2. Efficiency & Effectiveness
Everything is data. Everything is measurable. Everything can be optimised. We know from the Tour de France and Formula 1 the benefits of marginal gains. Teams of experts pouring over data to achieve a 0.17% improvement in airflow can unlock a championship. The same is true of media spend, click through rates and purchases. But focusing on the micro can mean we miss the macro. Despite Google just reaching Quantum Supremacy, it still doesn’t mean data is the new oil. We can end up floating away in an Efficiency Bubble.
We need to ensure what can be measured is managed. We must take opportunities to optimise but we mustn’t miss the bigger picture. Brands don’t exist in real life, they’re in people’s heads. Change happens over time not overnight – effectiveness is an investment in long term ambition. If you want to build a legacy you do that by demonstrating change over time, not a one-off bump on a spreadsheet.
Don’t walk past being more efficient, but make sure you’re walking towards an effectiveness story.
3. Depth and Decisions
Ask a CEO what they wish they had more of and very few of them would disagree with the following 3;
“More focus”
“Knowing more about my customers”
“Speed”
The industry has accelerated to a pace that requires us all to work faster than before. Yet there is more to digest and understand than ever before. And we all know that the more time we can spend on a problem, an audience or a brief, the better the answer will inevitably be.
Colin Powell championed the 40/70 rule – gather 40-70% of the information and then go with your gut. Any less and you’re not informed. Any more and you’ve likely missed the opportunity. We need to find ways to speed up whilst understanding more about the challenges that lay ahead of us in more moments, touchpoints and opportunities. There is no slowing down. There is no pure gut instinct. We need insight and impetus.
Brands, marketers and agencies will adopt either side of these paradoxes and all of them will be right. There is no strategy to rule them all. There is no one right answer. The dramatic shift in the political landscape of the last few years has hopefully opened our eyes to the dangers of blindly following your own beliefs. Be Aristotle’s “educated mind” and be open to the alternative truth sitting behind your plan.
2. The Purpose of Humour [Little Black Book]
Purpose. Every brand on the planet is trying to find theirs to talk about.
It’s today’s - and maybe tomorrow’s - trending topic. Sustainability, accountability, equality and diversity: all words that now appear regularly on client briefs. Intimidating words that can guide us towards a certain approach to the creative: serious, informative, worthy. And in turn to forgettable, homogenised work.
Humour has been telling our stories and selling our products for years. It forces a way into our collective memories like no other device.
But ‘funny’ is getting scarcer on our multiple screens. Maybe it’s due a comeback, even when our subject matter is more serious? Because humour can tell difficult truths and even bring purpose into sharper relief. It’s not just a tool to be trotted out in the safe space of FMCG spots. Instead of going for the heart strings and tear ducts, why not take aim at the funny bone?
Look hard enough and you’ll find a precedent. Advertising like the Rainforest Alliance’s ‘Follow the Frog’ laid the way for ‘Innocent’s Chain of Good’. ‘Viva La Vulva’ is a brilliant, more recent example: humour as Libresse’s new gateway into a potentially hazardous subject, a potent spot that will live long in the memory.
In 1997, The Co-Operative Bank (a brand with values, ethics and purpose) ran a cinema advert called ‘Wanker’ in support of disability rights. The script: a disabled guy in a pub garden with his mates, recounting the tale of getting caught eyeing up another man’s girlfriend in the same pub the night before. The offended man calling the disabled guy a ‘wanker’ as his chosen insult, instead of the playground names our disabled guy is more used to. Which actually makes our disabled hero’s day.
The end line was perfect: ‘See the person, not the disability'. It was a brave approach, executed brilliantly, purpose punctured with - and made enduringly memorable by - humour. One of my favourite ads of all time. Maybe we all need a bit more ‘Wanker’ in our lives and on our screens
3. Short-termism is a choice: agencies and marketers are accountable [Mi3 - Carl Ratcliff CSO of DDB Australia]
Did you read Martin Weigel's brilliant Has Advertising Lost its Personality that was the one thing to read last week? This article builds on that. In case you forgot, the main takeaways were: Creativity shouldn’t be seen as some kind of distraction tactic, bait, or bribe. It offers a far richer output and outcome. If creativity is to succeed, we must rebuild a model that delivers short- and long-term ideas. Now you're caught up!
We – in the agency world – risk being seen as hand wringing over the death of our model and/or the long-form advertising format. But the greater risk is that we don’t defend the commercial truth of how we approach healthy brand building. Closer to home, Mark Ritson has screamed the virtuous cycle that emerges when you avoid the tyranny of ‘or’.
And that’s the pain of all this.
The corporation will indeed feed more richly if it pursues both strategies. But often is unable to see beyond the glare of short-term success.
A dual approach requires patience and time, true. While not imperative, a brand will likely deploy up to several communication platforms to make work. Considering how they flow and work together is time that needs to be afforded. It is the very definition of time well spent.
Post-Cannes, clickbait headlines declared the death of creativity because long-term effectiveness was apparently in decline.
I’d argue that the case for creativity has never been stronger. Instead it’s a prevailing commercial culture that is killing its paradoxical gift. A gift we can reprise if we dare to push back. And revert to the core agency skill of – as Bill Bernbach called it – ‘properly practiced creativity’. A business practice that results in greater sales more economically achieved. Properly practiced creativity can lift your claims out of the swamp of sameness and make them accepted, believed, persuasive, urgent.
Priming. And reminding. The long. And the short. As Martin concludes, so shall I, ‘Disproportionate and sustained advantage awaits.’
4) Quick Hits: A few articles that are concise, important, interesting, impactful, and I'm not going to write long descriptions for them.
How Targeted Ads and Dynamic Pricing Can Perpetuate Bias [Harvard Business Review] This article is really interesting and I think super important. Please read it: Even the largest of tech companies and algorithmic experts have found it challenging to deliver highly personalized services while avoiding discrimination.
Beware Claimed Data [Richard Shotton - Twitter] via Marketoonist
It’s time to get brand strategy back on track [AdNews] As an industry, we need to take an honest look at ourselves when it comes to the long-term strategies behind the brands we work on. Not campaign platforms and messaging, but the strategic foundation they’re built on. The thing that should never, ever, change.
The Digerati discussions: What will the role of the marketer evolve to become? [The Drum] Whatever the future of the chief marketing officer turns out to be, there is a clear need to be able to adapt and move with the times and work with emerging roles within businesses that can support and introduce new skills and insights into the engagement and brand building process.
Americans don’t know their neighbors anymore—and that’s bad for the future of democracy [Quartz] The article is from 2017 but it's a hot take worth your read. And without getting political, it's definitely got implications for advertising Here's a choice paragraph: Unlike Barack Obama’s “big data” operation, which targeted individuals with appealing messages based on surveys about local issues that would mobilize voters, Trump instead offered disconnected Americans who had grown distrustful of their neighbors the opportunity to join a broader community, however vaguely defined.
How brands get your phone number and call after they see you on their website [CNBC] “If this become pervasive, what will the consumer [and] shopper backlash be?” Brands can use technology to see who is browsing their websites, and can use data collected on consumers to email or call them to try to complete a sale. Consumers, confused how this is happening, have taken to Twitter to complain about it.
5) Department of Great Work
’Bok to the Future [Brand New] New Logo and Identity for Reebok done In-house with Darrin Crescenzi. What can I say, I absolutely love it. Maybe because I was coming of age when the 90's logo was most in vogue. Maybe because it's just great work.
HP and Michel Gondry Imagine 'The 12 Days of Christmas' With No Screen Time [Muse by Clio] HP's holiday push reinforces the themes of device disconnection and heightened human interaction recently introduced in the company's "Get Real" campaign. From Goodby Silverstein & Partners, production house Partizan and director Michel Gondry. There's been some backlash on Twitter about this (see, e.g. OK Boomers). But what can I say, I love Michel Gondry's visual approach and it's also a good message or whatever.
Gap’s Sweet Holiday Campaign Follows the Bond Between a Mother and Son [AdWeek] Gap’s “Gift the Thought” campaign is about reframing “how people not only see the brand, but the product and the shopping experience.” As part of the campaign, shoppers who purchase gifts from the Gap this year can choose “thought-based gift tags” to go along with their presents (in the spot, the gift tag on the hoodie reads: “Because you’ve been there all along”). From Johannes Leonardo and probably part of their whole thing about trying to take ownership of the hoodie. It's well done if not a little predictable
Angry Birds invents rage-powered scooter and 2019 could not be more ready [Muse by Clio] The louder you vent, the faster these "Rage Riders" go (up to 15 miles per hour). A "public event" slated for New York's Times Square on Nov. 21—the date Angry Birds sprang forth from the egg—will feature, according to press materials, "an innovative device specially designed to give locals and tourists a chance to convert their anger into something good." (That shebang will probably attract crowds and tie up traffic, making New Yorkers more incensed than ever. Which should, when you think about it, make the activation a rousing success. Angry Birds wins again! Grrrr.) From Droga5
IKEA's first-ever Christmas advert is the best thing you'll see all day [Creative Bloq] The company has unveiled its first-ever Christmas commercial titled Silence the Critics, which encourages shoppers to overcome “home shame” and open up their dwellings to visitors this festive season. Produced by creative company Mother London, it feels like it's purpose built for Millennials. And you know what? I'm not mad about it.
Bravo Fans Get First Taste of Pepsi Champagne as NBCU Lures Madison Ave. to New Events [Variety] At BravoCon 2019, PepsiCo is bringing refreshments – including a special limited-edition beverage, Pepsi Sparkling Rosé, a non-alcoholic concoction meant to taste a little like champagne or sparkling wine. I hear it mixes great with vodka, which has the added benefit of getting rid of that pesky non-alcoholic designation.
Burger King’s Directional Signs Lead To Locations That Don’t Exist—On Purpose [AdAge] Now, a new outdoor push running in France is informing customers that there isn’t a Burger King restaurant anywhere in their vicinity. The posters promote the fact that they can now get BK in those areas through delivery service Deliveroo. Not groundbreaking but really interesting way to disrupt the convention of "Burger King in 400 yards, 200 yards" etc. From Buzzman Paris
It’s Official: Prada Is Teaming Up With Adidas for a New Sneaker Collaboration [Robb Report] The partnership was announced via a somewhat cryptic post on Prada’s Instagram feed; it reads “Coming soon,” and amassed nearly 90,000 likes within a few hours of going live on Thursday morning. Shoes will have the moniker Adidas Prada Sailing and retail for around $350. And we're all probably going to buy a pair.
Twitter's Best Dad Joke [Scott Jehl - Twitter] Like there was a universe where I wouldn't share this with you. I don't know if it's intentional or not but it's corny as hell and tha tis 100% my brand of humor
...and Department of Work that isn't that great but is important to be aware of
Christmas 2019 Ad | John Lewis & Partners and Waitrose & Partners [YouTube] It's been literally all over the trades this week. It's two-and-a-half minutes long. Maybe it's because I don't love dragons (no I didn't watch Game of Thrones either, don't @ me, bro). Maybe it's because the dragon reminds me of Mr. Mucus, the Mucinex mascot. Maybe because the tension is contrived. But... meh! I don't love it.
Also Facebook rebrands as FACEBOOK: can capital letters save a toxic brand? [The Guardian] Somehow Facebook managed to make their rebrand even less interesting than when Google decided to become Alphabet. (And yes I know this happened last week, but whatever! It was a busy week last week)
6) Platform Updates
Snap Spectacles 3 Review: Reaching New Depths [The Verge] I can't tell if this headline is supposed to be ironic or not... Spectacles 3 will include new features, like 3D effects and augmented reality (AR) options for posts headed to Snapchat and a VR viewer. Unlike the first iteration, the product is being marketed as a tool for affluent creators and artists, not average consumers. Which makes sense, because at $380, these sunglasses are the same price as an Apple Watch series 5
TV ad spend to drop 3 percent to $70.3 billion in 2019: report [AdAge] Boring but important: TV will account for less than 30 percent of total U.S. ad spend for the first time, according to eMarketer
Facebook quietly built “Popular Photos”, an in-app Instagram [TechCrunch] TechCrunch has spotted Facebook testing a feature called Popular Photos, which affixes an endless scroll of algorithmically selected pics from friends beneath the full-screen view of a photo opened from the News Feed. The result is an experience that feels like the Instagram feed, but inside of Facebook. Why? I have no idea. But interesting. Speaking of which...
Instagram Is Hiding Likes Globally, Affecting A Subset Of Users In Each Country [DesignTaxi] It's happening! With the change, people would have to judge for themselves whether they want to like a post, rather than following the actions of others. This may also help users post things they are interested in sharing, without worrying about the number of likes.
4 Ways TikTok’s Ad Products Benefited From Competitors’ Mistakes [AdExchanger] Unlike Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snap, which focused on audience growth over advertising opportunities at first, TikTok understood early on how to successfully work with media buyers.
Help us shape our approach to synthetic and manipulated media [Twitter] Twitter is seeking public comments on how to address bots and fake news. "Deliberate attempts to mislead or confuse people through manipulated media undermine the integrity of the conversation."
As always, the full archive is available here. Was this email forwarded to you? Want to start getting this on a weekly basis? All I need is your email, everything else is optional.Thanks for sticking around as always. See you next week!