This Week in Strategy: I love when they drop the ball in Times Square. It's a nice reminder of what I did all year.
Hi Strat Pack,
A quick publishing update: next Friday is Christmas. The Friday after that is New Years Day. I really can't think of anyone remotely wanting to read anything about work on either of those days, so I think it's fair to say that this will be the last issue of the year.
On a serious note, I just wanted to say thank you for a great year. Well not a great year in general, but a great year of This Week in Strategy. I learned a lot, I grew a lot, and I hope you did too. Although I don't get feedback often, I really appreciate everyone who dropped me a line, whether it was to say, to ask a question, to offer advice, or to the three of you who donated to keeping Space Camp from going bankrupt. Please keep it up, I love hearing from you! Hope you are staying safe, staying happy, and purusing your professional dreams. From everyone here in the Strategy Editorial Department [ED Note: it's just me], Happy Holidays, Happy New Year! And from the bottom of my heart, thank you for subscribing and reading. It really means a lot to me.
So because this appears to be the last newsletter of 2020, let's start off with 20 haikus written on post-its about 2020. My personal favorite is the first one (but click through because they're all gold)
In maybe the most important thing I'm going to share with you today, Scotland named its snow plows and their titles are amazing. It's now clear to me that Boaty McBoatface must have come from the English part of the isle, because these names are so much more cleverly pun-tacular. For Your Ice Only! Snowbegone Kenobi! I love it. Here's the full list
And in other important news, did you know that (if you live in New York) Your Old Radiator Is a Pandemic-Fighting Weapon? It turns out that the prodigious output of steam-heated buildings is the direct result of theories of infection control that were enlisted in the battle against the great global pandemic of 1918 and 1919. The Board of Health in New York City ordered that windows should remain open to provide ventilation, even in cold weather. In response, engineers began devising heating systems with this extreme use case in mind. Steam heating and radiators were designed to heat buildings on the coldest day of the year with all the windows open.The architecture firm KPF found that nearly 75% of Manhattan’s existing square footage was built between 1900 and 1930. What a weird and interesting history. I love learning stuff weird history like this, and I appreciate you tolerating me publishing it!
Let's end with a correction: The link to the insane RC Cola ad from last week was not the version with English subtitles, which was probably difficult to understand if you do not speak Tagalog. You can find the English-subtitled version here. The Strategy Editorial Department regrets the error, but does not regret exposing you to this.
And! They released a second spot! Which you can find here (it's in english and Tagalog but as an English-only speaker, I got it. It's mental. It should belong in great work. I also learned that "basta" roughly translates to "whatever". Which is empirically just a great tagline. Hats off RC Cola. Basta.
Alright, stop messing around trying to figure out more snow-puns for those Scottish plows. (Actually don't stop doing that. If you come up with any great ones, please let me know!) Let's jump right in.
The one thing to read this week
1) A Strategy Christmas Present For You - 10 Strategy Downloads [Planning Dirty - Julian Cole]
Firstly if you haven't done the free creative briefing course yet, do it. It's great no matter what level you are.
10 greatest strategy hits
1. Short Sharp Strategy (Write better strategy)
2. Strategy Mate (Key tools needed for a strategist)
3. 10 Best Strategy Papers (Learn from the best)
4. Giving Creative Feedback (Learn to give great feedback)
5. Creative Brief Template (Created the Frankenstein brief template)
6. Politics 101 (Hot to deal with office politics)
7. The Cogs Of Marketing Effectiveness (How marketing works)
8. 100 Creative Ideas on Tiny Budgets (Budget shouldn't be a limitation)
9. Comms Planning Stats (Key statistics for the value of comms planning)
10. How to work with creatives (Essential to being a successful strategist)
I personally use the politics 101 deck ALL the time. Julian has also introduced me to the concept of Nemiwashi which roughly translates to "laying the foundation" but can also be interpreted as the art of the backroom deal. Basically to build consensus with key stakeholders individually as a pre-read before going in and presenting the idea. It works, like, really well.
And if you're able to, sign up for Planning Dirty Academy. It looks like Julian is running a pretty good offer on lifetime access. See if your agency's tuition credit will pay for it. I highly recommend it (and for the record, this is non-spon-con! I'm saying this because it's great, not because I'm getting paid to do so. Side note, if anyone DOES want to pay me to do so, feel free to slide into my DMs)
2) D&AD New Blood Academy Handbook [Ready Mag]
This one I can't really summarize. The Handbook is ostensibly geared towards entry level people, but there is such a wealth of talent here, and smart thinking. I've taken a lot away from this so far. Some inspiration, some relearning things I've forgotten or haven't been the best at putting into practice, some things that are brand new to me.
This is one to bookmark and keep coming back to. Read it over break. Read it when you get jammed up on a brief. It's not all gold but there's a lot of great stuff in here.
As creatives, we don’t just sell stuff. We tell stories. You’ll hear that phrase a lot during your career in the creative industry. It’s a cliche because it’s true.
Throughout history, stories have shaped and reshaped the world, changed behaviour, adjusted mindsets. They’re powerful: 22 times more so than facts alone. People quite simply love stories, and the storytelling in our industry is no different, but it’s a craft that needs to be honed — a process we’ll look at in this section of the academy.
In recent years the industry has undergone (or is undergoing, depending on who you ask) a shift towards primarily digital platforms, demanding innovation in creative practices. That’s not to say you’ll be expected to write code, build websites or work alongside an AI (does not compute), but you will need to keep up with the latest trends, platforms and ecosystems to find the tables where consumers are feasting on content in all its forms, and apply your creative thinking to their frameworks.
Remember, in times like these, your creativity is your asset - creative people are natural born problem solvers, and therefore your skills will always be in demand.
3) Quick Hits
I'm going to drop a lot of links here, because this has to last you two weeks
A brand doesn't display EQ [Paul Bailey - LinkedIn] This is a very short read and a very smart opinion. A brand is shaped in the interaction of ideas and things – of the elements by which we identify it and what these elements encourage us to think, feel and do. In this definition, a brand is continually created – it is not the creator. And this is where the problem lies. We define 'brand' so loosely now that it is both the creator and the created. It is used to mean essentially the business and the experience. This is confusing, to everyone. The group of people within a business can display high EQ, not a brand. It seems like we forget that more and more easily these days
Biden campaign manager: Public polling failed because people inflated their education [Fast Company] I would ask you to look at this through the lens of market research, not advertising. Public pollsters may have underestimated support for Donald Trump in part because respondents said they were more educated than they really were. That may have reduced the sample of nondegreed Trump supporters and increased the need for public pollsters to use statistical weighting to estimate the impact of those voters on election results.
We've known for a long time that people lie on their Nielsen ratings saying they watch more PBS than they actually do because they want to appear smarter. Rather than fix the problem, we fixed the symptom - switching from diaries to electronic reporting. But think of MRI, Simmons, Mendelsohn (which is now the Ipsos Affluence Survey). We use these sources as 'chapter+verse' to plan and sell-in advertising. All of these are self reported. Not to mention all the brand trackers, the Pulse surveys. I think this absolutely has impact on how we should be thinking about market researchNominations for Words of the Year 2020 [American Dialect] Worth a read for sure. My vote is for everything is cake: expression of extreme distrust, based on memes in which objects turn out to be hyper-realistic cakes. I still can't believe that was this year
What Can Advertisers Learn From A Holiday Season Like No Other? [Little Black Book] Read this article in full, it's worth it. To top off this most unique of years, it’s perhaps fitting that the marketing industry is preparing for a holiday season like no other before it. With the traditional high-street shopping experience impossible (or at least heavily discouraged) for millions across the world, we’re seeing a significant shift to online retail. However, despite the unprecedented circumstances, it may well be that the trends which define 2020’s holiday period stand the test of time and remain into the future. Marketers treating this year as a one-off, therefore, could be caught cold in 2021. To discuss how marketers will be approaching this year’s festive period, we spoke to Adstream’s global head of marketing Trevor Williams, Tug Agency’s head of social & content, Emily Knox, and Leo Burnett’s strategy director Joe Beveridge.
To Get People to Wear Masks, Try Comparing Them to Seatbelts and Helmets [Bloomberg] Again, read this through the lens of market research and advertising effectiveness, not politics. A recent survey of more than than 2,000 state residents offered respondents five different messages and gauged whether they made people more or less likely to wear a mask in public, as compared to a control group that saw no message. Comparing masks to helmets and seatbelts was the only message that had a positive impact on people’s decisions.
The finding adds evidence to the argument that linking masks to safety measures already widely adopted — and legally enforced — could increase compliance with mask mandates. It may also reflect hard-won progress in persuading more Americans to buckle their seatbelts in the first place. “There’s a lot to be said for the simplicity of the message. This one is the most politically neutral, and it’s just very straightforward, to the point.”
4) Department of Great work
Lot of social impact work this week. It's good.
Behind the Work: The Craft and Comedy of Hilarious Thai Covidman PSA [Little Black Book] Holy fucking shit. ‘Big Bad’ is a phrase coined in the self-aware ‘90s show Buffy the Vampire Slayer to describe a major recurring villain driving the main story arc of the season. And if 2020 has a Big Bad, it’s got to be coronavirus, right? Enter Covidman. He’s red, he’s menacing and he rocks a rather slick streetwear look. From BBDO Bangkok
This ad gives 2020 the send-off (and middle finger) it deserves [Fast Company] Toronto-based social impact agency Public decided to give this crappy year the send off it deserves, and for a good cause: to raise awareness and donations for the Mental Health Coalition in the United States and the Black Health Alliance in Canada. The ad is just cathartic. We talk a lot about whether you want your ads to be a mirror or a magnet of your audience, this one is definitely a mirror. I'll be honest, this ad worked on me. I donated.
Attention, '80s music fans: Alaska Airlines parodies 'Safety Dance' in new video [USA Today] Friends who don't mask are the new friends who don't dance. If you caught that "Safety Dance" reference, you owe it yourself to watch Alaska Airlines' new safety video. The Seattle-based airline has co-opted Men Without Hats' 1982 new-wave classic for a video touting its COVID-19 precautions. This really enjoyable safety video will start rolling out in January. And everyone in the commercial is actually an Alaska Airlines employee. It's nice to see that Alaska kept a little of the fun of Virgin after they merged. From Mekanism.
This LinkedIn post from Southwest [LinkedIn] The post tells the story of Southwest Captain Ted Orris's final take-off before retirement, and the story behind how he got some incredibly memorable photos. Besides the story being perfect for LinkedIn, this post does a great job of showing the humanity and warmth in the people that work at Southwest. It's a great slice of life to counterbalance, say, a person getting bloodied and dragged off a United plane.
People in silent movies watching movies: a celebration of cinemas [Twitter] Not advertising. Not marketing. But what can I say, I love it when an industry depicts how it believes people interact with them.
5) Platform Updates
Vice becomes first media publisher to launch on OnlyFans [Axios] Vice's food vertical, Munchies, is launching a verified channel on the breakout creator platform OnlyFans, a subscription site in which fans can pay creators directly for exclusive content. Why it matters: It's the first verified media publisher to launch on OnlyFans, which is known for hosting racy content. It's also Vice's second foray into any sort of direct-to-consumer subscription revenue.
Walmart to pilot test livestreamed video shopping on TikTok [TechCrunch] The retailer, though seemingly an odd fit for a social network, had seen the potential to attract a younger online consumer through video and, in particular, livestreamed video. This is what the new test on TikTok will involve, as well. During a Walmart livestream, TikTok users will be able to shop from Walmart’s fashion items without having to leave the TikTok app, in a pilot of TikTok’s new “shoppable product.”
YouTube Provides Answers on Common Reach and Algorithm Distribution Queries [SociaMediaToday] The article summarizes the video pretty well, but it's long so you're going to have to click through to read more! These are some good insights, and they add to the other algorithm insights YouTube has provided throughout the year. If you're looking to make YouTube a bigger priority in 2021, it's definitely worth checking them out, and getting a better understanding of how you can maximize your video performance.
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