This Week in Strategy: Never date a tennis player. Love means nothing them!
Hi Strat Pack,
Even if you don't know me personally, you know that I work in advertising, and therefore know that I enjoy a good drink. I'm also super into the history of cocktail culture, and how absolutely insane the United States' relationship to drinking is. I was so utterly enthralled with this Atlas Obscura article: To Evade Pre-Prohibition Drinking Laws, New Yorkers Created the World’s Worst Sandwich that I had to share it: "Near the end of the 19th century, New Yorkers out for a drink partook in one of the more unusual rituals in the annals of hospitality. When they ordered an ale or whisky, the waiter or bartender would bring it out with a sandwich. Generally speaking, the sandwich was not edible. It was “an old desiccated ruin of dust-laden bread and mummified ham or cheese,” wrote the playwright Eugene O’Neill. Other times it was made of rubber."
If that doesn't hook you, I don't know what will.
I'm also really digging this Richard Vijgen project, WiFi Impressionist “paints” data-driven landscapes that are both poetic and precise. “Data interpretations” – as opposed to data visualizations – Richard’s pieces enable their audience to relate to the invisible realities which surround them. Atmospheric and poetic, rather than directly translating waves, measurements and data-points, his work uses these quantitative values to generate multi-layered qualitative experiences. Cool.
Alright, stop messing around trying to figure out how much sawdust was in your last bar meal. Let's jump right in.
**Cool Webinar Alert! Rory Sutherland on the Effectiveness of the Irrational Friends of the show know I'm a big Rory Sutherland fan. He's doing a webinar with Warc (spoiler alert: this is a big Warc week) where he'll share his rules of 'Alchemy' or the surprising power of ideas that don't make sense. He'll cover:
The rules of Alchemy when cracking the human code
Why humans have evolved to behave in illogical ways with the 4 'S-es': Signalling, Subconscious hacking, Satisficing and (P)sychophysics
Applying these rules and thinking illogically
Check it out! Register here
The one thing to read this week
1) How to capitalize on low attention [Warc]
(This is based on a paper in the current issue of Admap. Do you have access to this paper? I do not but would really love to get my hands on it. If you're a Warc subscriber, drop me a line, let's talk!)
Marketers might spend their time seeking consumers’ undivided and concentrated attention, but new research exposes how to get a brand message across in low attention environments. Professor Karen Nelson-Field and PhD candidate Kellen Ewens isolate a handful of areas in expert consensus. One of them is the idea of the guidance trigger.
“As humans we operate in a default state of sub-consciousness (or pre-attentiveness) where we have a broad and un-specific focus to everything around us. Our state of consciousness, and our subsequent level of attention, can then change when guidance triggers surface.”
Guidance triggers can be either top-down (endogenous) or bottom up (exogenous).
Endogenous:Top-down triggers are typically personal and goal-oriented, when you are web-searching, when we use “high and controlled attention”. Another example is when watching video and a personally relevant ad appears. In this case, the ad becomes the viewer’s main focus.
Exogenous: Bottom-up triggers are more stimulus-driven. “For example, we pay low and automatic attention when an ad delivers unexpectedness such as being of high emotion or just plain loud – and therefore the ad becomes of incidental focus to the viewer.”
Overall: “Controlled processes require us to think on a fully conscious level, while automatic processes occur at semi consciousness.” Most processes are the latter.
The majority of viewing is low attention. On average 54% (+/-7) of all attention paid was low, while only 32% (+/-8) was high. The remaining 14% (+/-5) of attention paid to advertising was pre/no-attention. As many as 96% of the sample switched between attention levels while watching the screen.
It’s not the shift from low to high attention that deliver lift, but the transition from pre-attention to low attention that matters. “Low attention processing delivers more value than most people give it credit. We found the greatest uplift in sales impact occurs when a viewer moves from a pre-attentive state to low attention”, the authors write. “High attention is not the only valuable commodity.”
2) Marketing, it’s not the size, it’s how you use it. [Samuel Brealey - Medium]
There is a sad belief that marketing properly is only possible for larger businesses, with huge budgets and departments but nothing could be further from the truth.
The value of marketing has always been about clarity, it’s about creating a clear guiding policy for a business. It helps businesses understand the world outside its own doors; the market itself. It helps them understand their customers and also and most importantly the limits of their ambitions.
It’s about helping businesses with a roadmap. There are many routes to go but some are more fruitful than others and some are just downright impossible to go down. Good marketing helps businesses choose the best routes.
The arguments against strategy and planning are typically around their long term outcomes and how they don’t deliver immediately. But there is nothing to say that marketing for a small business cannot deliver immediately. A little can go a long way and that doing a little is the beginning of strategy and planning. The two should go hand in hand. Slash wasn’t great at guitar when he first picked one up, he had to listen and learn first.
Understanding immediate concerns are important but so is the long term. It’s a rather clear case of doing both, that’s what strategy and planning is. Marketing strategy in it’s simplest form is about helping businesses to make informed choices about what not to do.
The reality of life is that all we can do is make informed choices based on what we know rather than uninformed choices made on very limited information. Neither are perfect but it’s better to be alright than it is to be dangerously ignorant. After all, you simply can’t know what you don’t know.
3) The end of Monoculture and what that means for agencies [Truth About Branding]
Fly over any major city and you will see nearly arranged rows and columns of buildings and streets. The human sense of geometry imposed on nature, seen from the human invented vantage of flight. It’s wondrous and beautiful and awe inspiring. It's monoculture in its fully glory.
Monocultures make us vulnerable. A similar monoculture had been taking root in the 20th century. The memetic monoculture of TV and mass media.
We had shared cultural references. It was easier for brands to be built with ‘campaigns’; one iconic campaign and you are sorted for the decade. Agency leaders were celebrities and being in an agency felt great. After all, advertisers were the architects of the monoculture. One culture to rule them all, and advertisers were molding that ring. We wielded great power and we rue loosing hold of it.
21st century is different though. Internet is the fungus that has killed the monoculture of mass media. What does it mean for agencies? Isn’t it obvious? Advertising was the powerful ring to rule them all. Now that ring is destroyed. The point is not that advertising is dead. But rather that it’s relevance is dwarfed now. It will always exist, but no longer in the spotlight, but it will grow in the shadows.
It will remain an important tool in attempting to create shared cultural references. But its ability to do so is being challenged with end of monoculture.
That is an opportunity to advertising agencies, not a threat. A brand now needs to do more – engage in culture more, meet more needs, be more proactive, delight more often…
Why fight and complain about it?
It’s great that the ‘big idea’ is dying and marketers have to do more, improve faster to retain customers. this is natural in the paradigm of growth through fast feedback. By fighting it, all we are doing is showing our ignorance, our inability to adapt. we need to Pivot.
4) Chart of the Day: Over nine in ten strategists need more access to client data [Warc]
92% of strategists agree they could do a better job if clients gave them more access to data.
Gut reaction: no duh
However, data access is not the be-all and end-all. As Emily Rule, Strategy Director, BBH London noted, “there is a widespread assumption that data equals insight and strategic direction. But in the context of creativity, data is useless without imagination.” Therefore, strategists need to build the vital combination of empathy, critical thinking and data skills to a degree where it is possible not only to gather insights but to make them actionable. As a director from India succinctly put it: “more data is good but not a replacement for great thinking.”
5) Quick Hits: A few articles that are concise, important, interesting, impactful, and I'm not going to write long descriptions for them.
A Mountain Of Debt Makes Publicis And WPP Vulnerable To A Recession, Not To Mention A Consolidation [Forbes] My favorite take from Tom Doctoroff: They just don't get it. The ability to nurture a brand -- from product differentiation to experience that springs from purpose -- is the ultimate raison d'être of modern marketing. And yet the two most financially-vulnerable communications holding companies (WPP and Publicis) are, full throttle, eviscerating their most fragile and sacred assets -- the advertising agencies -- as they mindlessly lurch towards a "data as salvation" Hail Mary. J. Walter Thompson, gone. Y&R, gone. Leo Burnett, gone. Ultimately, these failures are a result of a transactional modus operandi, the polar opposite of what consumers are craving for in a digital world that demands transparency and authenticity.
Pabst Blue Ribbon Is Paying BBH 12,000 Cans of Beer for a New Campaign [Muse by Clio] BBH New York found a novel way to circumvent such issues by taking no money whatsoever to introduce Pabst Blue Ribbon's Stronger Seltzer (with 8 percent alcohol!). Instead, the agency agreed to work for a year's supply of beer.
What are 'VSCO girls'? Scrunchies and the newest teen lifestyle trend [NBC News] Great. Another thing to keep track of. "VSCO girls," named for the aesthetic derived from the photo editing app VSCO, is the latest teen iteration of "preppy" style with a casual beach-inspired flair. It's an aesthetic that has taken over Gen Z-dominated corners of the internet such as short-form video app TikTok and photo-sharing app Instagram. There are several specific hallmarks of a "VSCO girl," which includes scrunchies, oversized T-shirts, clothing from the store Brandy Melville, Vans, Pura Vida bracelets, Fjällräven Kånken backpacks and Puka shell necklaces.
Stay Calm: Pantone Shares 2020 Color Forecast [Special Events] You can expect various shades of greens, including teal and olive green, to dominate 2020, as well as oceanic and mineral blues. Pastels are also anticipated to take over the interior design scene, but in “surprising ways.” People will, for example, experiment with pink in “masculine environments.” Pressman adds that pastels are “easy to live with” while embodying a sense of serenity.
6) Department of Great Work
Hokusai’s ‘Great Wave’ Paintings From When He Was 33, 44, 46 & 72 Years Old [DesignTaxi] This isn't advertising but IS a very important cultural artifact. Last September, a tweet by Japanese literature researcher and PhD student @tkasasagi depicting the evolution of Hokusai when he painted the rogue wave at ages 33, 44, 46 and 72. And if you're not familiar with Great Waves (or even if you are), check out this excellent video from PBS Digital Studios/The Art Assignment
Stella print ads from Lowe, London. [Twitter] Turn a negative product side effect into an iconic brand asset. Stellar.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Logos? [Brand New] New Logo and Identity for Android by Huge. It's a *ahem* huge improvement over their previous work. I really like it.
Ads We Like: Sean Astin becomes Colonel Sanders for KFC by channeling his Rudy character [The Drum] Colonel Rudy made his national game-time debut today (5 September), just in time to kick off Thursday Night Football. The spots were done by Wieden+Kennedy Portland.
ESPN Powerfully Celebrates Emotional Milestones With ‘There’s No Place Like Sports [Ad Week] From indie agency Arts & Letters. The anthemic :60 isn’t necessarily earth-shattering from a structural standpoint. Footage of compelling sports moments is a tried-and-true technique, but the real power is in the choices made.
Busch and Big Buck Hunter put wildlife conservation in crosshairs [Marketing Dive] Busch Beer and arcade game Big Buck Hunter are partnering for the first time to raise funds for conservation through purchase of a new $5 Busch Big Buck Hunter Permit. All proceeds will go to the National Forest Foundation
Iconic Queens Pepsi-Cola Sign Totally Sells Out To JetBlue [Gothamist] The JetBlue logo will be up until at least October 1st as part of a promotion announcing a partnership between PepsiCo and JetBlue. Great publicity for JetBlue, New York's Hometown Airline. And this article is also delightful surly.
Bud Light Opened an Appliance Store in Cleveland to Sell Its Browns Victory Fridges [Muse by Clio] Get one at B.L. & Brown's Appliance Superstore today! Bud Light made an infomercial for the story that's been airing locally since Friday. It stars WWE superstar The Miz, a huge Browns fan who filmed his own Victory Fridge magically opening after last September's Browns win.
Department of Bad Work
Could Everyone Associated With This Please Punch Yourself In The Face … [Rob Campbell - Musings of an opinionated sod]
I’ve got to be honest, I think it’s one of the most amazing ads I’ve ever seen.
Not – of course – because it’s good, but because there’s so many things in it to hate, I don’t know which one I loathe more.
From the cliched photograph that is obviously trying to associate with street culture through to the absolutely fucking awful oxymoron/pun of ‘Future Retro’ and ‘Deja New’ … there is an endless amount of hate inducing triggers in this ad.
But even those things don’t come close to releasing my inner rage as ‘Time Tracker’.
TIME TRACKER!!!
It’s a watch. A bloody watch. Yes, they ‘track time’ but they’re attempt to make it sound like the future of watches makes me literally want to kill.
7) Platform Updates
The NFL is really trying, guys! And other things happened, too.
The NFL, facing declining interest among young viewers, just struck a deal with TikTok [CNBC] NFL’s content will include highlights, sideline moments and behind-the-scenes footage. The organizations will also launch NFL-themed hashtag “challenges,” which encourage TikTok users to share videos on a certain theme or following a certain meme format.
NFL to engage fans through Reddit in content and advertising partnership [The Drum] In an effort to open up to fans, the league will field current and former players, executives, personnel and fans to be grilled by Reddit users in a free form chat at least once per month, supported by a digital video series which will be distributed via Reddit as well as the NFL’s social channels, website and TV network.
Facebook Dating launches in the US, adds Instagram integration [TechCrunch] In the wake of the FTC's historic $5 billion dollar fine against Facebook for violating privacy practices, Facebook’s brand-new dating product is today launching to all in the U.S., promising to leverage the company’s deep insight into people’s personal data to deliver better matches than rival dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, Match and others.
The top trends for September 2019 [Pinterest] Item as described.
You can share Pandora music and podcasts on Instagram, if you want [Engadget] The social media platform already has support for Soundcloud, Shazam and Spotify.
Linear TV Loses Half Its Viewers As Streaming Services Soar [MediaPost] Within just three years, linear television has lost nearly half its viewers.
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!