This Week in Strategy: If anyone has any advice on how to deal with plastic surgery gone wrong, I'm all ears
Hi Strat Pack,
Happy New Year! It's a short week this week so we're going with an abbreviated newsletter. Worry not! We're returning to regularly scheduled programming beginning next week! Let's start off with a holiday note: I should have included The Perfect “Meh” Gifting Guide I know it's a little late for gifts but what can I tell you - my gift to myself was not writing this thing for two weeks (it's a lot of work, guys!). But I still wanted to share this because it made me chuckle and it also gave me some ideas. Hope you didn't get anything from this list. Maybe
I was giggling at 12 design fails that were so bad they were actually good which I am now realizing is actually sponsored content from iStock. Hats off for making branded content that I actually want to read. But you should click through for two reasons: 1) the lulz, and 2) because we work in advertising and don't make similar mistakes!
Alright stop messing around trying to photoshop your company logo into something NSFW. Let's jump right in.
The one thing to read this week
1) Avoiding Premature Execution [LinkedIn - Tim Williams]
In business culture, there exists a belief that being productive means generating outputs. But a knowledge worker’s real value lies in producing outcomes. Thorny business problems aren’t solved by briefs, reports, and presentations, but by ideas and insights borne from expertise. As a professional, your value emanates from your critical thinking, not your words-per-minute on the keyboard.
Sweat over the solution before you sweat over the details
Technology tempts us to jump straight to the execution of an idea without first applying discerning judgment to whether it’s a good idea in the first place. Advertising agencies are notoriously susceptible to this bad habit. Art directors now invest the majority of their time not on the uniqueness and power of the concept but how it looks on the screen of their Mac. They steal valuable time from the problem-solving process and use it searching for the best stock photograph. They fret about the line spacing of the copy instead of sweating over the caliber and distinctiveness of the copy itself.
Before desktop computing, creative professionals in agencies developed and presented their ideas to clients as “tissues” — rough approximations of the finished product, usually hand sketched using markers on large pads of paper. Today, some of the best agencies still do this — intentionally eschewing the finished look produced by Macs and Adobe software — so they and their clients can focus on the quality of the solution before they start agonizing about the quality of the execution.
Invest your ideation time in ideation, not execution
Professionals of all types fall victim to the trap of style before substance. Most new business teams invest the majority of their time and efforts making their proposals and PowerPoint slides look good at the expense of applying truly original and disruptive thinking to their clients’ problems. They’re investing their ideation time in execution, and it points their clients’ focus in the wrong direction.
When marketing communications firm present finished-looking work that’s supposedly still in the concept stage, their clients react to the size of the logo and their dislike of the color purple instead of evaluating the power and effectiveness of the underlying idea.
Worse, these firms are missing the opportunity to maximize their effectiveness by engaging their clients in the concepting phase of the project. The firms that involve their clients early using rough approximations of ideas benefit from increased client buy-in and even some fitting ideas (yes, clients can have good ideas). Smart clients and are much more willing to support a truly original idea if they have been involved in the early ideation stages.
The very best professional problem solvers spend the bulk of their time and energy in the ideation phase of their work. They wait until they have a great solution before deciding the best way to present and execute it. If the objective is to get across to the other side of the river, the instinctive reaction of most professionals is to start designing the bridge. They invest countless hours developing beautiful schematics of causeways arching over the water when in fact the best recommendation to the client might be simply to swim across.
When quantity can lead to quality
Expert copywriters embrace the discipline of “60 headlines,” meaning they prod themselves to write at least 60 headlines for a given piece of marketing communication. They know that their first 20 headlines will likely be unconsciously borrowed from other ideas they’ve seen in the past. The next 20 will be much more interesting and unique. But the final 20 yields the gold because by then they’re much more likely to be in virgin territory.
The amateur is not only likely to be prematurely satisfied but is also unnaturally anxious to see how the headline will look in 30-point Futura Extra Bold. The great Michelangelo sketched the captivating concepts on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, then left it to his assistants to apply most of the paint.
2) Quick Hits: A few articles that are concise, important, interesting, impactful, and I'm not going to write long descriptions for them.
Consult this handy chart to see if you are an asshole designer [FastCompany] A must read if you work in a creative field...Here's some wishful thinking: a lot of asshole behavior in the industry is entirely unintentional and comes down to the relentless nature of the creative personality wanting to make great work. The quest for perfection is filled with sweat, blood, and tears. But that nature is not an excuse to develop bad behavior in the workplace and let it run rampant through studios everywhere.
Did The Simpsons predict every Pantone color of the year from 2010 to 2020? [DesignBoom] Head designer at boom online, Pete Bingham discovered that the Dimpson’s living room plays host to every single one of the Pantone color of the year winners from 2010 to 2019. as a result of this discovery, Pete set about recreating this well-loved and iconic setting in photoshop using the winning colors. since this discovery, the Pantone color of the year for 2020 has also been released – ‘classic blue’. and who should have the most noteworthy blue hair on tv?.. you’ve guessed it, Marge Simpson
Pepsi adopts a new tagline, 'That's What I Like,' and promises to stick with it [AdAge] Pepsi is known for memorable taglines, from “Taste of a New Generation” to “Joy of Pepsi.” But lately, the soda’s catchphrases have been pretty forgetful—mostly because it hasn’t stuck to a single line in ads. But starting today, the brand is going for a more consistent approach with a new tagline, “That’s What I Like,” that will be used for all Pepsi varieties including regular Pepsi, Pepsi Zero Sugar and Diet Pepsi.
In memoriam: The brands we lost in the 2010s [Vox] Retail today is either super global or local in a stupid and rarified way. There’s a cost, of course, to such breakneck change, and that came in the form of what’s been called the “retail apocalypse.” Not just the result of these new upstarts and consolidated power (private equity certainly did its part); the death of many traditional retail chains left hundreds of thousands without jobs, and the shuttering of countless storefronts. Vox writers eulogize the brands that meant a lot to them, which breathed their last in the past decade.
The problem with benchmarking [Joe Detavernier] Benchmarking has its merits as a management tool when some conditions are met. Alas, the tool is often misused. Different competitors can pursue different objectives and it is very easy making a mistake trying to uncover the objective a competitor is trying to achieve with any given measure. And even if you would be able to gauge correctly what your competitors are trying to accomplish, you will often still be left in the dark about their rate of success
3) Department of Great Work
Aer Lingus donates used blankets to animal charities [The Independent] These blankets, used on transatlantic flights, usually only get washed and reused about three times before they are discarded. Inspired by his own adoption of a rescue dog, an Aer Lingus pilot decided to negotiate a deal with the airline whereby they give old blankets to animal rescue charities that can make better use of them
A Police Chase Fail Shows The Pitfalls Of Lending Your Car In This Humorous Skoda Ad [AdAge] Skoda's is promoting its "Skoda Key" tool, which remembers all your personal settings and adjustments when you get into your car, with a humorous new spot by French agency Rosaspark.
Volkswagen says goodbye to the iconic Beetle after 7 decades with new commercial [CNBC] The campaign launched Tuesday and includes an animated film scored with a cover of The Beatles’ “Let It Be” from the Pro Musica Youth Chorus children’s choir and out-of-home digital billboards in Times Square in New York. From Johannes Leonardo
YouTube ads leaderboard: 2019 year-end wrap-up [Think With Google] This special edition of the YouTube ads leaderboard showcases the top 10 ads that people chose to watch on YouTube this year in the US. Most of these are really great ads. Some are real stinkers.
4) Platform Updates
Social media adspend to hit $112bn even though it 'stumps' marketers [CampaignUS] Analysts at Forrester found that just under a third (31%) of chief marketing officers cannot show the impact of social media on their businesses. This is because, the report argues, "social media stumps marketers. First, they had unrealistic expectations of social media, hoping it would be the key to unlocking massive profits in the digital age. When that didn’t pan out, they shifted 180 degrees to believing that social media’s only use was for advertising. Although it’s true that Facebook’s primary business value is as an advertising platform, it’s a mistake to infer that advertising is social media’s sole opportunity." Instead of having a "social marketing strategy", the study says, marketers should instead use social tactics and technology strategically alongside other channels to achieve broader marketing goals.
TikTok Transparency Report [TikTok] The report details government requests, which could include requests to remove content or be given access to personal data of certain users. The US and India led in requests for take-downs and personal information, while China was notably absent from TikTok's report.
#ThisHappened in 2019 [Twitter] New global memes, #GameOfThrones fever, and a terrifying baby 🦆– #ThisHappened in 2019… This year we added a new list to the mix: 19 Tweets that became some of 2019’s most memorable moments. #ThisHappened
Kellogg, Maker's Mark test Hulu's new ad format that rewards binge watching [MarketingDive] I remember buying something very similar to this ad format from Hulu in 2013, but what do I know, you know? Machine learning will identify when a binge-watching session begins and will serve up contextually relevant ads during a viewer's third episode, where they'll see a message promoting the next episode through offering it ad-free
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