Maybe I’m totally behind the times, but this one has just passed me by. I’m currently at a conference in Cornwall called Agile on the Beach, and have been getting a crash course on, amongst other things, design thinking.
I’ve always been interested in different ways of approaching a problem. Design thinking is one approach. Or should I say a range of related approaches that differ slightly depending on which business school you’re talking to.
requires a deep understanding of the stakeholders involved.
requires an innovative approach.
is experienced differently be every person.
has a different ideal solution to ever person, and potentially no ideal solution at all.
impossible to know when it’s done.
is likely to cause more unintended problems as you try and solve it.
Simple, huh?
Do you have a wicked problem that you’d like to solve? Or that you have solved? How did you go about defining the problem? And what process did you/could you go through to find a solution?
Being in this beautiful part of the world, with its fresh sea air, and laid back lifestyle, really gets the braincells fired up. I must say a huge thank-you to Amber and Roxane and the team at Flexible Falmouth (Falmouth University) for making this meet up at the conference happen.
Being on a distance learning course has many advantages, but it has been so nice to spend time with people that I have been studying with for over a year now. And they are even more brilliant in real life than they are on a computer screen.
Bear with me on this one, because it’s gonna get a little deep. This is an idea that I’ve just started exploring, and is way too big to get into in one blog post, so I may add more mini posts as I discover more.
We’ve all heard of psychological safety:
A shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. It can be defined as “being able to show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status or career” (Kahn 1990, p. 708). Inpsychologically safe teams, team members feel accepted and respected.
Thanks Wikipedia. But what I’m really interested in is how a person’s state of safety changes the way they view, react to and respond to advertising.
I’m reading a book by Claire Wilson, called Grounded. It’s truly brilliant, put it at the top of your reading list. It focuses mainly on helping children feel safe, but it equally applies to adults.
There’s a sliding scale of emotive states from thrive through to freeze (through the familiar fight or flight states). We want to thrive, of course. This is the only state in which we can make decisions.
So, as a brand, we want to talk to people when they’re able to take in our message, digest the information, and make a decision. When they’re in thrive state: they’re safe.
So how can we make sure we’re talking to our audiences when they’re in this safe mode? And not in one of the other survival modes, where decision making, and many other core functions, are switched off to the world?
Or can we help reassure people: help to bring people back down the scale, away from survive mode and into thrive mode?
This famous David Ogilvy quote comes to mind. But what if, we’re not talking to consumers in the right headspace? What if they’re not making purchasing decisions in the right headspace? What if, we actually are the totally rational beings that economists dream us to be, but only when we’re in safe mode?
This book has sparked some interesting questions in my mind, and I hope to share more of these questions with you. And one day, maybe even some answers.
After attending my first TEDx event last week, I had so many ideas buzzing around in my brain. I’m still letting some of them percolate away, but there’s one I’m going to share. And interestingly, it comes from the organisers, not the speakers.
At the start of one of the sessions, this video was played.
TED is known for ideas worth spreading. Now, as the event organisers, they have control over part of that (the ideas), but the rest is up to the audience (the spreading).
In Buenos Aires TED came up with an innovative marketing channel to help those ideas spread: taxi drivers.
It’s a really interesting case study on the flow of information around a city. It challenges the way I view marketing. It has elements of viral marketing, word of mouth marketing, and is 100% not digital.
I have a bit of a thing for Sherlock Holmes. I’ve read (or at the very least listened to) most of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s writings about the character. The keen observations. The flair for the dramatic. The flagrant disregard for the rules. What’s not to love.
It often strikes me that ad planning is not so different from solving a crime. You start with a client. And they have a problem. They do not have the necessary skills to solve said problem. So they need a professional.
Enter Holmes/strategist. Listen to the problem. Dig around for additional information they may have missed. Detect for untruths. Agree payment and timescale. Exit client.
Holmes/strategist inspects scene of mystery. Consults previous case studies of similar instances. Analyses necessary facts. If necessary creates additional data points by speaking to people.
Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four (1890)
This is, of course, an extremely simplified view of the world. But it does make me wonder if there is some framework for investigating a crime that may be able to help us as planners to systemise our thinking, and streamline the ad planning process?
As of yesterday there are new guidelines all advertisers have to adhere to regarding the portrayal of men and women, girls and boys. After a rigorous analysis of current advertising, the complaints they receive, focus groups, UK and EU law and the social and economic context, the ASA produced a report on how gender is being used in advertising.
Whilst the report found that the ASA was approaching sexualisation, objectification and body image in the right way (i.e. regulation and policing of the rules is not too lax and not too harsh), they weren’t quite getting it right when it came to gender stereotypes.
The problem they found was that in some instances, they way gender was being used in advertising was negatively impacting the way we see ourselves, and they way others see us. The narrow way gender was being used in advertising was limiting the role people see that gender playing in society.
Advertisements must not include gender stereotypes that are likely to cause harm, or serious or widespread offence.
ASA
One caveat that I will highlight here is that it appears that where the ASA refers to gender, they are using it in a binary sense. They don’t seem to have tackled any issues relating to trans or non-binary gender. Perhaps that’s a follow up report. Or perhaps there weren’t enough instances of non-binary in advertising to make it into the report.
The event was Chaired by Guy Parker, chief executive, ASA with keynote from Minister for Equalities and Older People, Christina McKelvie MSP, and a panel discussion with Rachel Adamson, director, Zero Tolerance, Brian Coane, partner, Leith Agency & Scottish Chair of the Advertising Association and Nita Patel, committee member and NED, ASA.
The line that I keep coming back to is from Rachel. She really bought the issue home:
There is a direct correlation between gender stereotypes and violence against women.
People who have a stronger belief in the stereotyped view of the roles genders play in society are more likely to commit or turn a blind eye to acts of violence against women.
Wow.
That is a responsibility that we as advertisers have to take seriously. The reason brands use advertising is to influence people. And we must remember that we may be influencing people in ways we’re not intending. We might that think that using a woman as a the sole bearer of the housework is a way to identify with women that run the house, but really we’re perpetrating the myth that women shouldbe the sole bearer of housework.
This bought the conversation around to responsibility. Who’s responsibility is it to change the status quo. Of course it’s all of ours. Everyone who touches that advert.
In a 2004 study my Drumwright & Murphy, How advertising practitioners view ethics, it was found that ethics wasn’t an issue that was on the radar for most practitioners. We’re not even trying to look out for the unintended negative consequences of our work. Ouch.
They exhibited “moral myopia,” a distortion of moral vision that prevents moral issues from coming into focus, and “moral muteness,” meaning that they rarely talk about ethical issues. We find that the reasons for moral muteness and moral myopia are categorizable. There were, however, “seeing/talking” advertising practitioners who demonstrated “moral imagination” when responding to ethical problems.
So what can we do? Look up from our own work and see the vast array of people that will view it. Speak up when we think something is amiss. Let’s not just bury our collective heads in the sand.
During the panel discussion, Brian encouraged us all to start talking more. Kick off the conversation. About the work. About our agency structures. About who we’re hiring. About the brands we’re willing to work with.
So often we’re working at such a pace, that things can slip through. You’ve got a screaming urgent photoshoot for a brand, and you can only get three pretty blonde girls for your advert? Not a good enough excuse any more. Let’s all step up. I dare you.
Check your previous work. Put it up side by side. Does it reflect the wider society?
Something I’m really interested in is whether advertising reflects or creates culture. And the more and more I look into it the answer is absolutely both. It has to reflect culture to resonate with the target audience. But to be truly effective it must build culture; to differentiate itself, to be aspirational, to be pervasive. And that’s a big responsibility. Use it wisely, friends.
I love this word. A declaration of intentions. A line in the sand. A legacy. To me, manifesto has Cold War overtones, with a hint of that one nightclub you could get into when you were 17. Or… to manifest the future in seven easy steps.
I was at an IPA Scotland event recently seeing out the old Chair and welcoming in the new; who just so happens to be my old Creative Director Guy Vickerstaff. Each IPA Chair has their own manifesto, and Guy’s, as you might imagine, concentrates on the creative department. Creativity 2.0 in fact.
Creativity 2.0
The agency world is shifting, and there is no that sees it more keenly than Guy, as the CD at The&Partnership Edinburgh, “a collaborative new agency model built by The&Partnership and Royal Bank of Scotland group” (I stole that description from Guy – thanks!).
And that means that the creative department needs to keep up. To keep up with changing customer demands. To keep up with the changing media landscape. To keep up with changing client demands (daily). And to keep up with the changing talent pipeline. That is #CreativityTwoPointZero.
Enjoy being scared and on strategy
Mother strategist Gail Anderson‘s talk on what kills creativity followed Guy’s manifesto announcement. She gave us a fascinating taste of how ideas are treated at Mother. With a reputation for original thinking, and edge of your seat creative, each idea gets put through its paces in a rigorous process that puts Army training to shame.
In order to not end up on the cutting room floor Gail gave us a series of examples of tests the creative must pass in order to make it to the client presentation – only the best of the best, such as:
Would it make your mother proud?
Would your taxi driver tell you about it?
If you sent it in a group chat, would your friends want to pass it on?
Equally, Gail gave us the run down of ways that creative gets mishandled. Behaviours that, possibly accidentally, kill creativity. From brief creep (oh, can we just add one more thing…) to the quantum leap (of assumptions). And she wrapped up with the six habits of the illogically sane:
Enjoy being scared and on strategy
Illogically sane or just non-sense
I’m currently reading Alchemy: The surprising power of ideas that don’t make sense by the inimitable Rory Sutherland, and what strikes me about many of his brilliant (non-sense) ideas is the trouble he has convincing people to take them on. He says more than once “I’m yet to find someone who will… (insert bonkers but brilliant idea here)”.
He puts this down to the business requirement for logic, reasoning and rational thinking, and distrust in intuition and gut feeling. That’s why entrepreneurship is flourishing. Without a boss to answer to, or an appraisal to fill out, entrepreneurs have broken free from having to rationalise every move, and take a leap of faith on a hunch.
Strategy + Creativity = rational + non-sense
Enter strategy, stage right.
I’m interested in how we can help clients to be brave and buy better (if more bonkers) creative. To not always stick to the safe option. I sign off every post in this blog with Be brave. Feel stupid. A quote from strategy rockstar Mark Pollard. There’s something in the idea that to do something worthwhile, to be effective, you need to be brave. You need to do something new, and new is scary.
Gail’s team created the, now infamous, KFC apology advert. And they had to be bloody brave to take that to a client in the middle of a business critical crisis. She said they bought it because Mother have a reputation for taking risks and pulling them off. And they, excuse the pun, delivered.
FCK
Brave creativity
I’ve enjoyed the recent spate of brave creativity. It’s something that fascinates me. Taking the client on the journey with you is so important. To spend their budgets on illogical or non-sense ideas. To be held accountable internally. To be able to argue the case to their boss or The Board (scary…).
No one had heard of “banking” before we came along.
Santander’s latest ad campaign, the bank of Antanddec, is a huge departure from their previous, serious and benefits driven, creative. For years they drove home the 123 message for the current account – it’s all about what you get, endorsed by athletes. Now, they’ve moved in promoting their mortgage, and its brilliant. There’s no brand promise, no rates, no incentives.
Billy Faithfull, chief creative officer, Engine, added: “In the search for a little magic, you have to give every idea a chance to shine. Even the silliest of ideas should be taken seriously.
“So, when it’s thrown into conversation that Ant & Dec sounds a bit like Santander you can’t ignore that, it’s an absolute gift. It was one of those ideas that you keep parking for good reason, but keeps coming back, more powerful than before. And the more we let it back in the room, the more funny, famous and memorable it became. Nothing else stood a chance.”
And what about Carlsberg? It takes a lot for me to be blown away by an advert, but I’m pretty sure the first time I saw their nw advert I was open mouthed. That. Took. Guts. It opens with “Probably the best beer in the world. Once true. But in the UK Carlsberg pursued being the biggest, not the best. And the beer suffered.”
Holy moly!
What a relaunch! And when I looked into it, this TV ad was a follow up to some more brave creativity:
Liam Newton, vice president of marketing at Carlsberg UK, at the time told The Drum through a “nerve-wracking” relaunch, claiming: “It’s been fascinating to watch the campaign unravel over the last week,” he says. “But in the end, it was all good.”
A round of applause for Carlsberg. Let’s see if it did the trick.
My manifesto
This month I’m starting work on my dissertation, and my first job is to work out just what on Earth I’m going to write about. I’m studying Advertising Strategy, and my dissertation can be on anything that fits under that heading.
I’ve thought about following in Rory’s footsteps and looking into behavioural economics. I’m interested in the future of adtech, and especially with regard to TV (and can we give VOD a better name now please?). I’ve touched on the relationship between advertising and culture in a few of my assignments; advertising needs to reflect culture to be authentic, but needs to create culture to be pervasive (more wise words from Gail).
But I started this course to learn about strategy specifically. And it was that subject that intrigued me enough to start this blog. So, it would make sense that this is the subject that I write my dissertation on.
A framework
I’m fascinated by the process that strategists go through to get from client problem to strategic proposition. Is there a framework we can follow that creates a solid foundation to help clients buy brave creativity.
How can we show the thinking that has been done to get to the illogical and non-sense crazy creative, that might just be mad enough to work?
I’ve heard many strategists (including Gail and Mark) talk about strategy that scares you. Strategy that makes your uncomfortable. That’s what we’re aiming for – but that’s what clients shy away from.
The business of creativity
In business its seen as bad practice, or at least higher risk, to make decisions based on emotion or gut feel – but surely that’s what we’re evolved to do? That’s the decision making process we’ve spent thousands of years fine tuning.
In this brave new world of Creativity 2.0, how can we as strategists and account managers support the incredibly, scary and seemingly irrational creative that’s coming out of our creative departments?
I’m a bit of an obsessive collector. If I grew up pre-screen-era then I would definitely be big into scrapbooking. Instead I’ve got rafts of links on Notes on my phone. I’ve got Pinterest boards. I’ve got WeCollect boards. I squirrel away information like there’s an internet ice-age coming. Here’s some of my favourite strategy moments from the last few months.
Strategy tips from @omerazeem 1. Challenge conventions 2. Think idea first, channel later 3. Find the shared beliefs b/w brand & consumer 4. Think big, not small 5. Zoom out to see the broader picture 6. Stay up to date 7. Read abt different topics- history, culture, language
Bow down and read the beautifully wonky typewritten text.
Ideal advertising planning methods according to @JWT_London's Planning Guide in 1974 – warning, I'm about to tweet the hell out of this document pic.twitter.com/KTueAhxZSC
What have you done recently to get better at what you do? Or to become who you want to be? Or to be who you want to be? I wrote this blog, that’s what I did.
A cloud walker. An individual who lives in the clouds of their own imagination or dreams. They do not abide by the rules of society, art or literature.
Brands always want to be the CD version, the version you listen to on Spotify: perfected, honed, polished, buffed, recorded and recorded.
Instead, aim to be the Live version. The sweaty, jumping around, yelling at the audience in a grimey old venue with sticky floors version. The version that people can’t access instantly through the device in their pocket for peanuts. Easily won, easily forgotten.
Be the version people travel for, pay for, drag friends along to, rave about, experience. Be the version that changes people.
I don’t know about you lot, but it feels like an awful lot has happened in 2018. The world has gone into overdrive! Phew! I wasn’t sure how I’d get along with this blog, but I’m really quite enjoying writing it. Writing helps me organise my thoughts, think deeper about the subjects that interest me, and create a repository of my thinking.
And hopefully one or two of you have found it useful too.
As I sit here in my pyjamas getting ready to ring in 2019 with loved ones, I’m drawn to thinking about what I’d like to discover in the next 12 months. I feel the need for a roaring fire, a wingback chair and brandy to really set the scene, but you can’t have everything in life!
Stuff your conscious mind
I kicked off this blog series with a David Ogilvy quote that underpins everything I’m trying to achieve with this blog.
Ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science and advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your ideas will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, and then unhook your rational thought process.
I love this quote for so many reasons. It’s not just encouraging you to read a lot. Or know a lot. Or think differently. Ogilvy wants you free yourself from the constraints of your own thinking. It’s like pedalling a bike up the hill, putting in a huge amount of time and effort to get to the top, but then freewheeling on your way down.
Irrelevant
This is a word that really sticks out to me. It’s something that has come up a lot in my Masters course. You can create an absolutely stellar campaign, but if you’re not keeping up with the times in terms of cultural norms, technology, socially acceptable behaviour and terminology, then at best you’ll be ignored, and at worst ridiculed and ostracised.
New year, new you – the new media diet
January is, of course, when everyone goes on a diet, so why should I be any different? Although this diet isn’t about the food that I consume, but rather the content that I consume.
If you’ve been keeping up with this blog, you’ll have seen the reading list and resources page have been updated a number of times. Both of these have been inspired by Faris Yakob, and his excellent APG post earlier in the year: What you think is a function of the ideas you consume. I highly recommend you take a quick look at his media pyramid, and see if you think you need to adjust what you’re consuming on a daily basis to improve your thinking.
And yes, you’re right. I need to get off social media.
Next read Ian Leslie’s guest post on APG about Cognitive fitness for planners. Again, Leslie also compares your creativity to health. He encourages his readers to read books, slowly and fully, digesting their information over time. I adore his writing:
Trying to get by only on TED talks (much as I love TED talks) is like kidding yourself that you can skip vegetables if you take vitamin pills. Opinion-led polemics can be great fun to read but they’re not real sustenance either – we can enjoy the sugar rush of a hot take without relying on them. In short: more protein, more fibre, easy on the cake, and take your time over meals.
True though, huh?
So, what am I doing to improve my diet in 2019? Well, I don’t think I can kick my social media habit just yet, but I can make the most of it. I did a big Facebook cull in early December, so I’m not seeing nearly as much dross on there.
I’m also going to read a good balance of fiction, business and non-business-non-fiction books. I’ve been trying to read all of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels in order. I’m currently on number 10 – Moving Pictures. I’d say it’s one of my favourites so far.
And I’m going to try and get out there more. You know, the real world. I live in a vibrant city, full of incredible culture. There’s so much to fill my mind with. Music, theatre, dance, comedy. Go forth and enjoy!
What books do you recommend? What were your top reads of 2018? Anything you’re waiting to come out in 2019? How do you make sure you get a balanced media diet?
calm.com/quote
i'm a wannabe strategist 