This Week in Strategy: Why do people in Athens hate getting up early? Because Dawn is tough on Greece!
Hi Strat Pack,
What a week! Let's start with the most adorable and heart thing on the internet: My 96 year old grandad coming home to his dog after 16 days in hospital! The love between them makes you weep! [ED Note: Notmy grandad]
Not a lot of time for a write up of weird internet this week (and we're already late as hell getting this out the door) so I will leave you with this: Road House, the movie, has been TV a LOT recently. And I've found myself watching it a LOT. And then I came across THE GRUESOME ORAL HISTORY OF THE ‘ROAD HOUSE’ THROAT RIP SCENE (emphasis theirs) And its...insane. Just read it. And if you haven't watched Road House, for the love of god watch Road House. And then click here.
Alright stop messing around trying to find a more adorable dog (or panda!) to get you over the hump of that Road House article. Let's jump right in.
The one thing to read this week
1) Politics 101 - Julian Cole & Rob Estreitinho [Google Slides]
If you're a person that works in a company with other people, this deck is for you. Present this to your department. Agency politics is about understanding motivations and behaviors. Which is kind of sort of the job of planning. Whether you're a grizzled vet or fresh out of ad school, this deck will help cut to the core of agency dynamics and help you get to better work faster.
Politics is more than deceiving others for personal gain. Like many things it’s a tool – it can be used for good and bad. At its worst, politics is how you can win at the expense of others. At its best, it’s how you can get groups of people to do things together.
Strategists are in charge of the thinking, but it’s not a lone wolf job. It’s more important to know how you can get everyone thinking more strategically.
This is where politics come in. Knowing when to share – and with whom, in what order – might feel bureaucratic, but it’s often the most effective way to know how you build momentum into the project.
To do this, you need to make sure you start at the end. Make sure everyone knows the endgame of this project, or the problem you’re trying to solve, before trying to cater to everyone’s agendas (creative, strategy, client).
Remember: politics is only a tool, and it exists to do a job! It’s not the end in itself.
Similarly, your job as a strategist who gets politics is to recognize that strategy exists in relationship to every other department. Sometimes this means you need to get client services buy in, sometimes it means you need to talk to the producers first to understand what they could do with the budget. Agency politics are only as useful as they allow you to get people doing interesting work.
2) Your Brand Is Not an Asset. Think of it as an Action Instead [Inc]
I wish this article went deeper into what brands mean to be an action and a little less pushing against what it means to be an asset. But the thinking is provocative and good fodder for how we think about brands/clients.
The "brand as asset" mental model is so pervasive that we don't stop to question whether it's helpful. In other words, it may work well for takeover protection, but is it the right mindset to use when you are managing a brand? My argument is that seeing your brand this way is actively unhelpful, especially into today's technological and cultural context, because it presents three big problems.
The reality is that brands are verbs: they live in the moments of action and interaction between your business and the world around it, and great ones generously invite people in to contribute.
Seeing your brand as a financial asset puts you in a defensive posture. Assets need to be protected. They need security. They require risk-averse management. As a result many brand teams get caught in a criminal justice mentality, policing guideline violations internally and trademark infringements externally. This is not only a huge time-sink, but can lead to embarrassing overreaches, such as Facebook's suing a teachers' community website called 'Teachbook' and Starbucks taking a bar owner to court over a beer he named Star Bock.
Ask yourself less who might be misusing your brand, and more who should be co-creating its future with you.
The asset-based mental model pictures the brand as a noun-- and a monolithic one at that. If you see a brand as a pile of money, you are likely to think that more money is needed for it to succeed.
Think of branding as a form of an open toolkit of elements that different teams can co-opt in whatever ways they need, rather than a logo and a fixed set of usage guidelines. Ask yourself how your brand could create moments that compel people to contribute rather than persuading them to purchase.
This new mental model, of brand as action rather than asset, verb rather than noun, promotes innovation and agility. It engages today's customers on their terms, it creates communities of participation around you, and along the way it just might generate that big pile of money you had to make yourself stop thinking about.
3) Innovation Lessons I Learned by Drawing and Painting [Doug Garnett]
Great art is the result of process – but not linear process. In business we obsess about processes and we love them to be linear. But the truth is, this is the result of assuming the world is “complicated” when it’s really complex.
Art may be one of the best ways to understand the complex. Artists work through search and exploration. They have a sense of where they’re going and a sense of the general “arc” that will get them there. But they also know that forcing that process into narrow boundaries dramatically hurts the final results.
It’s my experience that the best innovators and product designers rely on processes quite similar to those of the artist. Unfortunately, even among innovators there’s too often a straight-line mentality. And the innovation literature has become obsessed with attempting to perfect a linear process to discovery – leading to books that sell while the processes fail.
A few other lessons Doug learned from art:
Be wary of pre-conceptions. Innovation must be approached with an open mind. In 35 years around innovation I’ve learned it’s difficult not to start a project with pre-conceptions. But when we don’t recognize those pre-conceptions or ignore them, we end up making merely caricatures of great products – products their creators think are great only because they fit pre-conceived ideas about the category. Innovators have to ask: Am I seeing the true problem? Am I open to the unusual answer? Without expectation or pre-conception? Am I open to an answer that won’t fit the arbitrary definition of “innovation” that other people hold? Only when you can answer “yes” will you find the greatest innovations.
It’s not possible to get it right the first time. Depending on the individual artist, those drawings may have little connection to the finished work once the artist has fully worked the canvas. And all artists will talk about how intimidating the blank canvas can be – they are as intimidated as writers are of blank pages. Innovation is too often driven by the idea that you should invent and get it right the first time. That’s not possible. Some of the best innovations that reach the market have been around for decades – only no one ever put it all together in the right way.
When one element becomes strong, leave it and work on the weaker elements. Then re-examine the one you thought was strong – it may have only appeared strong by comparison. Bureaucracies innovating love to check things off their list as if to say “that’s all done”. Except, as with a drawing, the innovation part you might love today could be far too weak for the market – and you’ll only see that later when the other parts of the innovation become clear.
Studying art makes it clear that innovating is not simple. It also makes it clear that innovation work is far less likely to succeed when you demand that the process become controllable and linear. When innovators trust their instincts and follow lessons like those I note above, their work becomes a whole lot more interesting as well as a whole lot more effective.
4) Mark Ritson: We need a new ‘third way’ to set marketing budgets [MarketingWeek]
A lot of Ritson this summer eh? Zero-based budgeting hurts long-term brand-building, while advertising-to-sales ratios are entirely arbitrary. There’s a much better, ‘two-speed’ way to set marketing budgets.
Marketing departments are trapped between the short-term rapacity of ZBB and the abstract passivity of the percentage-of-sales approach. There has to be a better way.
I appreciate that more than 90% of companies set their marketing budgets using advertising-to-sales ratios, but the approach is so ridiculously amateur and non-strategic we are almost better off using ouija boards and numerology to derive our marketing budgets for the year ahead. Never forget the madness behind almost every marketing budget. First, a finance executive looks at the last few years of revenue performance and calculates a compound annual growth rate. Next, that growth rate is applied to this year’s revenues to arrive at an expected sales figure for the year ahead. Finally, an entirely arbitrary percentage of sales is allocated back to marketing
A word on brand planning. It has become a dirty word in marketing. A stupid 800-slide monster built by someone with a global remit but no experience and no idea how to manage a brand
By my own estimation of working with multinational clients, across multiple brands, for multiple years I have now lived 1,000 years of brand planning. And most blow. They are over-complex, over-long, illogical embarrassments filled with pointless models like PEST and SWOT and FKWE (Fuck Knows What Else)
But a well-constructed brand plan could cross the chasm between short- and long-term horizons, between mass-marketing and target segments, between ZBB and brand building. And in doing so it might just help brands to grow, sustainably.
Interestingly, as I work on these plans with clients and teach them to executives, it becomes clear how crucial the two-speed ethos is and how difficult it is to pull off. You really have to commit to 50% or 60% of your budget for the longer, slower tactics to deliver on your brand building objectives. And to do that you have to ensure the shorter, faster half of your brand plan really delivers the cash in the upcoming year.
To master a two-speed brand plan requires a form of strategic schizophrenia, in which you build brand equity with mass marketing and long-term horizons and then harvest it with entrepreneurial and immediate commercial zeal.
And what I like most about these nascent plans that are emerging around me is that they reject the tyranny of ‘or’ and replace it with the generosity of ‘and’. Too often marketers are being forced to choose between short- or long-term. Between the top or the bottom of the funnel. Between performance marketing and brand-building. Or digital versus traditional.
What if these, and most of the other choices forced upon marketers, are false ones? What if we could accommodate both within the same strategic approach? What if two speeds gave you more scope and long-term growth than either one or the other?
A two-speed brand plan. One that builds the brand while delivering maximal short-term returns. It’s possible. Hell, with a decent brand plan it’s not even that hard.
5) Quick Hits: A few articles that are concise, important, interesting, impactful, and I'm not going to write long descriptions for them.
What the Ad World Can Learn From Live-Editing on SNL [Muse by Clio] More than anything, though, the SNL pressure cooker emphasizes the importance of open collaboration and communication, while being able to balance ego and expectations.
Nike’s new membership model for kids’ sneakers amplifies shift to direct sales [Modern Retail] Really really really interesting shift for the brand. The Nike Adventure Club, which launches today out of a two-year beta period, lets parents pay a monthly fee in exchange for regular kids’ shoes replenishments.
Police shut down Amazon’s ‘Maisel Day’ gas promo after it snarled traffic [LA Times] The LA version of the Supreme x Arizona Iced tea collab. lol. The Santa Monica Police Department put the kibosh on an Amazon “Maisel Day” promotion that attracted throngs of drivers who wanted gas at 30 cents a gallon, but ended up snarling traffic on Cloverfield Boulevard and the 10 Freeway for several hours Thursday.
Consumers less willing to share data [Warc] Consumers have become less willing to share various points of personal information over the last year, according to a study by the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), the trade body.
Offering a customised experience in exchange for data, the ARF analysis revealed, did not yield a significant shift in the information that survey participants were willing to share. Boring but important.How researchers use virtual reality to capture a ‘vibe’ [WeWork] This is really cool. I just can't summarize it succinctly. SO you need to click through and read it. WeWork has so many anthropologists working for them. I think it's a fascinating way to solve marketing problems.
6) Department of Great Work
Lots going on in packaged goods this week. Let's take a look
Jif Just Made the Most Apocalyptic Peanut Butter Ad Yet [Muse by Clio] Or is it gif? But seriously folks, this is a really fun campaign by Publicis and comedy director Wayne McClammy
Droga5 London’s First Mini Work, Starring Matt Dillon, Isn’t an Ad and Features No Minis [AdWeek] Will this be effective? I have no idea. But the films are cool and fun and honestly remind me of the BMW Films series from the early 2000s. Even the CCO of D5 London describes it as something outside the realm of what one would traditionally think of as “branded content.”
Rice Krispies designs Love Notes packaging to comfort kids with autism [MarketingDive] The snack brand is partnering with Autism Speaks to provide sensory "Love Notes" to place in lunchboxes for kids with autism. The heart-shaped stickers come in various textures, including fleece, faux fur, satin and velour, designed for kids that respond to tactile experiences
Pampers to install 5,000 diaper changing stations in men's restrooms in the next 2 years [USA Today] A friendly reminder that not all great work needs to be advertising, or even marketing focused.
Wendy's dishes out 2M spicy nuggets after May Twitter challenge [Mobile Marketer] Wendy's is giving away spicy chicken nuggets to DoorDash users after a Twitter campaign from May went viral. The burger chain pledged to bring back the menu item if Twitter users responded to its challenge with 2 million "likes." The post racked up 2.2 million as of press time
Holographic Statues of 500 Locals Help Boost Both Tourism and Morale in Brussels [AdWeek] It's a little old but what can I say, I haven't seen it before! Super cool idea from agency Rosapark and a train company. Hard to imagine Amtrak commissioning something like this...
Baby Shark Is Invading Sam's Club and Walmart in the Form of This Adorable New Cereal [Popsugar] I don't even like cereal! What even is Baby Shark? Who cares this is so adorable.
7) Platform Updates
Facebook wants to slide ads into your DMs, according to newly published patent [Mashable] A patent published Thursday details how Facebook could place targeted advertising inside of private conversations in Messenger. The company has allowed businesses to run ads in its messaging app for some time, but has stopped short of placing ads inside of users' private conversations. And the application strongly suggests the company may be thinking about significantly escalating the amount of advertising in chat
Facebook ‘pauses’ Messenger monitoring which saw contractors transcribe audio chats [The Drum] How thoughtful. Facebook has pressed pause on its practice of permitting contractors to listen to private Messenger conversations without the owner’s knowledge after admitting for the first time that it employed people to review archived audio to check the effectiveness of its transcription tools
TikTok Users Are Inventing Wild Theories to Explain Its Mysterious Algorithm [Vice] No one knows how TikTok’s For You page algorithm works, so users have taken it upon themselves to construct their own theories. Worth checking out. Theres some real wild 'explanations' in here
Snapchat’s ‘Instant Create’ fast-tracks ad creation [MarketingLand] The new “Instant Create” tool that allows advertisers to quickly build an ad by selecting the ad’s objective (web visits, app installs or app visits), entering the business URL and choosing targeting filters. The tool will automatically pull images from the URL entered and size them appropriately, or advertisers can upload images manually.
Instagram now lets anyone make their own AR effects [Mashable] The photo-sharing app is now prominently featuring user-generated AR selfie filters in a move that seems like a direct challenge to Snapchat's Lenses. Cool.
Twitter Discusses Coming Features, Including Topic-Based Streams and Searchable DMs [Social Media Today] Well the headline says it all doesn't it? Details within.
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