This Week in Strategy: There are no cases of Covid-19 in Antarctica...must be due to the ICE-olation!
Hi Strat Pack,
I cannot tell you the last time I've had even a normal week. It just seems like one onslaught after another. I hope you are managing to survive during these tumultuous times we live in. Because (and I mean this genuinely). And on top of that, Covid cases are at a record high in the US and nobody seems to give a shit. Wild.
Let's start with some good news/bad news: Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest is still happening this year, but with no fans, and will be indoors rather than on the Coney Island Boardwalk. I hate how much I love watching this every July 4th (always on TV, never in person). The 1920's carnival barking, the weirdo competitive eating pageantry, those comical old white hats. Part of me is for sure looking forward to tuning in to ESPN to watch, but without the crowds and general Coney Island weirdness will it still be as good? I guess we will all find out together in just a few short weeks.
On to a more serious topic, Uber, Lyft algorithms charged users more for trips to non-white neighborhoods (Salon). I think it's important to continue talking about how People of Color are systematically discriminated against in nearly all walks of life. Research found that ride-hailing companies charged higher price per mile for a trip if either the destination or pick-up point has a higher percentage of non-white residents, low-income residents or high education residents. This is not the first time that Uber and Lyft have been accused of algorithmic bias — or in-person human bias, for that matter. A 2016 study found that racial and gender discrimination were pronounced among drivers for Uber, Lyft and Flywheel. Male customers with names that sounded African American were more than twice as likely to have drivers cancel their rides as white passengers (11.2 percent to 4.5 percent), and women with African American-sounding names experienced similar results (8.4 percent to 5.4 percent).
I know that social justice might not be as prominent in your social feeds any more, but that doesn't mean that suddenly all is right in the world. Continue protesting, volunteering, donating, and educating (yourself and others) on how the United States has consistently kneecapped minorities literally every chance they could. Oh and we're still in the middle of a goddamn pandemic so please for the love of everything that is holy wear a mask.
Alright stop messing around trying to figure out how many hot dogs I can eat on July 4th. Let’s jump right in.
The one thing to read this week
1) Ad industry badly misunderstands aspirations of normal people, study finds [Campaign Live]
The ad industry is woefully out of step with some of the values and priorities of ordinary consumers, a new study from Reach Solutions, The Aspiration Window, has found.
The publisher of the Mirror and Express surveyed 2,000 UK adults and interviewed 200 advertising and marketing professionals in February, then repeated the study in April to see whether the coronavirus pandemic had affected people’s views. From the first set, it identified the "modern mainstream", defined as the middle 50% by household income.
There was a particular gulf between the mainstream and the industry professionals surveyed when it came to people’s desire for money and status.
Most strikingly, industry professionals on average thought that two-thirds (68%) of the mainstream wanted to own expensive possessions – more than six times higher than the actual proportion of people who said this about themselves (11%).
Just 18% of industry professionals, meanwhile, said this about themselves – placing them much closer to the reality of the public than they are to their perception of the public.
Similar patterns can be seen in the desire for a high-status job – an aspiration of 28% of the public and less than half (47%) of industry people, but believed by the latter to be something that 82% of people want – and fame, which 14% of the public and 25% of industry professionals want, but was thought to be an aspiration of 63% of people by the industry.
The research also asked members of the public to rate their own quality of life and industry professionals to estimate people’s quality of life at different income levels. It found that the industry predicted a much stronger correlation between income and quality of life than in the public’s own assessment.
"The aspirations window' is open far too wide and it causes us to persistently miss the mark in capturing what really matters to the mainstream," Andrew Tenzer, director of group insight at Reach Solutions, said. "This is a problem of market orientation – an aspiration gap that ruthlessly exposes our industry’s basic lack of understanding of mainstream people."
The report identified a crucial factor that could explain some of the differences between the industry and the public: 70% of advertising and marketing professionals come from an AB background – the top two socioeconomic groups – compared with only 29% of the population as a whole. [ED Note: Emphasis mine]
"Our notion of mainstream aspiration is seriously flawed due to the elitist composition of the marketing and advertising industry," Tenzer added. "We need to start addressing the elephant in the room – social diversity."
The study paints a gloomy picture for marketers who believe a strong brand purpose is the key to success. Across three factors – brand values, position on social issues and political affiliations – there was a lack of enthusiasm from both the industry and the public.
In all three cases, few industry professionals described them as important factors when making their own purchase decisions, while they also predicted they were relatively unimportant for the mainstream. But in each case, the mainstream rated them as even less important.
A fourth factor, concern for the environment, stood out in that industry professions underestimated its importance to the mainstream.
Instead, members of the mainstream considered value for money, reliability, quality and customer service to be the important factors – priorities similarly shared by industry professionals when talking about their own consumer behaviour, but underrated by between 10% and 24% when they were asked to estimate how important these were to the mainstream.
"We have identified a clear disconnect between one of the dominant narratives in our industry and practitioners’ beliefs about what actually works," Tenzer said. "The simple fact is that even people in the industry don’t believe social virtue matters to mainstream audiences. We believe the industry probably champions it to make it feel better about itself."
2) A Strategist’s Guide to Art (in the age of social distancing) [Harriet Kindleysides - Medium]
Art can be used as a tool to help us deal with problems; to find clarity in the chaos. Now, I’m a great believer that the things you learn outside the office can be as useful as the things you learn inside the office. I grew up surrounded by art, I studied it, and spend my weekends decompressing by going to galleries, amongst other things. But I never really thought about how it affected the way I approach my day-to-day job until recently.
So what are the links between strategy and art exactly? And how is it helpful anyway?
Here are [three out of the] 5 things I’ve learnt [ED Note: Article was getting long, click through for all 5, with examples!):
Pay attention to the negative space
Throughout the course of history art has been used as the key to unlock culture. It can tell us as much about the zeitgeist as any written record, and can rival many films in it’s ability to stir emotions. In part this is because artists pay attention to the negative space. They look between the gaps to find new ways of looking at the world; reaching into the depths of societal consciousness to create a new kind of commentary. In other words, they say the stuff which is otherwise left unsaid.
Their core job is to deconstruct accepted ideas and merge them back together in unexpected ways. When successful these new ideas have the potential to completely change the way you see something.
When it comes down to it, that’s what we’re striving for in our work every day — to challenge the status quo, to cut-through, to stand out, to be remembered. But often there’s so much focus on getting to the answer we project what we think to be true without stopping to question what we’re looking at. I for one have been guilty of that.
So, when looking for that insight or that solution to a creative problem try to take a step back. What is it you’re not seeing? What is the fundamentally human thing which is otherwise left unsaid? Uncovering the ‘unseen’ is how artists connect with their audience. It’s an important part of their toolbox and ultimately, when used well, ours.
Question the question
So as I said earlier, looking beyond the obvious and taking a step back to uncover the things which are otherwise left unsaid is important. It sounds pretty straightforward right? The problem is that every day we make thousands of assumptions based on what we think we know — it’s part of our biological instinct, an unconscious process.
In ‘Ways of Seeing’, John Berger says this ‘relation between what we see and what we know is never settled’. As he points out, the Surrealist painter René Magritte commented on this gap between language and meaning in his work.
This painting, known as ‘The Treachery of Images’ or ‘Pipe Painting’, has become so known, precisely because draws attention to preconceptions. “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” is not a pipe, it’s an image of a pipe. There’s a subtle, but distinctive difference when it comes to how people see it.
Magritte, like a lot of contemporary artists, would often put ordinary objects in unusual contexts. Taking complex and contradictory ideas and simplifying them in a way that makes people stop and think. Now we could get into a long debate about the philosophical connotations of all of this, but that’s for another time. On the surface what this painting does is draw our attention to something that once pointed out seems so obvious, so why didn’t we see it that way before?
When it comes to strategy, stopping to question preconceptions is key. What’s the question behind the question in the client’s brief? Is the insight obvious? If you flip the assumption what happens? Is the idea more useful, more meaningful, will it be remembered?
Master the art of the edit
The power of ‘good’ work lies in the simple expression of an idea that is hard to put into words. As Alain de Botton and John Armstrong point out in ‘Art as Therapy’: “We want to remember what really matters, and the people we call good artists are, in part, the ones who appear to have made the right choices about what to commemorate and what to leave out”.
So often the effect of art isn’t felt because it’s over-layered with complexity, lengthy ‘intellectualised’ explanations and so on. We don’t ‘get’ it and often leave art galleries feeling confused or dismissive. The same, can be said about strategy — albeit the deck is our canvas and the boardroom is our gallery. Art, like strategy, is a form of seduction. It’s divisive, for sure, but whether you care for art or not certain images will draw you in precisely because they focus in on a single, compelling idea. As de Botton and Armstrong say; “Art edits down complexity and let’s us focus, albeit briefly, on the most meaningful aspects”
There’s a lesson for all of us in that.
3) When Creativity Was Used To Tell A Story Not Just Demonstrate A Product Feature… [Rob Campbell - Musings of an Opinionated Sod]
Look at that ad. Look at it. Isn’t it marvelous?
Simple. Clear. Charming. Engaging.
Sells the product feature through a human benefit. A simple story that works for kids and parents alike.
The photo and the headline do all the heavy lifting, namely because the photo isn’t a stock image and the headline isn’t a piece of generic twaddle. And yet it’s not like it has high production values, it is just a good piece of advertising.
It’s also from a bygone age. Not just because this ad ran years ago, but because advertising has become about selling features rather than benefits.
Explaining rather than communicating. Describing rather than imagining. Telling rather than inspiring.
It’s not advertising … it’s a product brochure designed to please the board of directors rather than actual human beings.
Despite my music and clothes taste, I hate looking backwards … but maybe the industry needs to do that. Not because we should aim to replicate what has gone before, but because we seem to need to remember it was stories, ideas, creativity and craft that once made us so valuable, not being able to churn out cultural landfill at the lowest price per execution.
4) Quick Hits: A few articles that are concise, important, interesting, impactful, and I'm not going to write long descriptions for them
Brands and Black Lives Matter: a Labs reading list [BBH Labs - Twitter] A very important list of 5 BBH labs articles that you should absolutely read. Especially #2 from Rach Datey on the industry's blindspot for women who don't fit the straight, white, young mould: "We invest all our time into making work as distinctive as possible. And then we go and cast the exact same archetypes that appear in every other ad."
Brands keep apologizing for racism. Why do all their posts look the same? [Fast Company] These apologies are popping up every day, and the visual language is so similar, it’s starting to look formulaic. Many choose to voice their remorse and contrition through words on Instagram, without any images. Instead, there are lengthy written statements that often take up many slides, describing all the ways the brand or founder has failed, and all the ways they’re planning to do penance, including making donations and diversifying their teams. Posts on founders’ personal accounts are no less bland and impersonal than those on the corporate accounts. These posts appear to be trying to make a visual impact through minimalism and simplicity, contrasting the color of the words against the background. But given that they’re all starting to blend together, it’s unclear how effective this approach is. “It all falls really flat,” says Bobby Martin, founding partner of Champions Design, a branding and design agency. “From a design perspective, a quote can feel very removed from humanity. I want to see a person’s face: I want to look into their eyes and see that they actually mean it.
5) Department of Great Work
Twitter amplifies Black Lives Matter statements in US protest cities [The Drum] Once again Twitter has demonstrated that its most effective ads come from its rich library of tweets for everyday users. To mark the anniversary of the emancipation of slavery (19 June), on billboards across 8 US cities, Twitter has broadcast a handpicked selection of the millions of tweets that have appeared on the platform since the Black Lives Matter protests broke out in May. By selecting cities that staged the most impactful protests in May (Atlanta, Chicago, Louisville, Minneapolis, New York, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Philadelphia) the campaign aims to talk directly to the communities actively seeking change.
'The right question changes everything': The New Yorker launches a new brand campaign [AdAge] In a new campaign quietly launching in test mode today that celebrate the magazine’s remarkably broad range of provocative writing and reporting. The campaign theme, “The Right Question Changes Everything,” connects to specific questions such as “How are emojis born?” and “What does ‘racist’ mean?” and then directs readers to more than a dozen high-profile New Yorker articles from recent years. In essence, the content—and the relentlessly inquisitive journalistic process that drives that content—is the campaign. You can check out the brand page here. I like it. It's somewhere "The Truth Matters" from the times and those brilliant AMV BBDO ads for the Economist. From CMX, Conde Nast's in house agency.
Hennessy Has 'Unfinished Business' with Inequality During Global Crisis [Little Black Book] 'Unfinished Business' is a new program committed to help small businesses power through the immediate financial challenges of Covid-19 and ensure they have the resources needed to get back on their feet. Several communities are bearing a disproportionate share of the health and/or economic consequences of this global crisis and these are the communities this program is aimed at supporting. Beginning in June, the platform will donate to support small business entrepreneurs, with a vision to continuously replenish funds so that this first donation is not the last. In addition to capital, the program will also provide access to information, educational content and other assets to help safeguard continuity during and after the Covid-19 crisis. Since March, Droga5 has been working hand-in-hand with Hennessy to design and build the end-to-end experience from initial strategy and conception to visual language to guide the mechanics of the program and UX of the application site. In response to Covid-19, it conceived the program to step up with support for Black, Latinx and Asian American entrepreneurs who were only beginning to bear a disproportionate amount of the health, emotional, and economic consequences of the pandemic - and at the time, cut out of receiving help from government relief and traditional banking institutions – knowing that rebuilding these businesses is vital to the vibrancy of the communities they serve and crucial to a more equitable recovery. The 1:45 brand film is really well done as well in typical Droga fashion.
These are the Winners of NASA’s Own ‘Photographer of the Year’ Contest [PetaPixel] Friends of the show know that I am a big space-head. Love space. Think it's amazing. And because I'm generally stuck on earth, I get to enjoy space through photographs. NASA photographers don’t get a lot of love. Since they work for a government agency, their images are released into the public domain and are often only credited as “Photo by NASA.” The agency’s internal Photographer of the Year contest aims to provide some well-deserved recognition. Click through to check out these gorgeous shots.
6) Platform Updates
We've discussed the June boycotts already. The Anti-Defamation league sent a letter calling for additional boycotts which seems to have picked up steam. But I'm sure you're already aware of all this.
Facebook to let users turn off political adverts [BBC News] The feature, which will start rolling out on Wednesday, allows users to turn off political, electoral and social issue adverts from candidates and other organisations that have the "Paid for" political disclaimer. The company said it plans to make the feature available to all US users over the next few weeks and will offer it in other countries this autumn.
Instagram denies algorithm boosts photos of semi-nude men and women [The Independent] According to a report from Algorithm Watch in partnership with the European Data Journalism Network, Instagram’s algorithm is designed to prioritise photos of semi-nude men and women. “There's been a recent study that suggests we boost content specifically because it contains semi-nudity. This is not true. We surface posts based on interests, timeliness of posts, and other factors to help people discover content most relevant to them” the company said. Instagram said recently that it was changing its algorithm in order to prevent the “shadowbanning” of black users and avoid systemic bias in its system.
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