ZZ blog in English.

Sponsorship like it should be. Sponsorship normalized

Around 10th second you know that it is Big Idea. After second thirty you know - there will be success for client and there will be awards. And then, after second fourtyfive, you just keep asking - how it can be that nobody has tought about it before. Great! 

Sneakerpedia

Shoes retail brand Footlocker offers great idea on how to identify those for whom sneakers are really important and how together build relationships with broader audience based on that platform. 

via @psfk

Designing Identities

"Design is not a product. It's a craft and a process" 

Great presentation, worth of a book. One that most probably will make me to return to more than few times. Enjoy. And return to. 

From Work as a Play to Brand Systems - web video interview with Alex Bogusky

Quite an extensive web-video interview with new (!!!) Chief Creative Insurgent of MDC Group (holding company that owns also CP+B) and one of all time best Creative Directors Alex Bogusky in almost one hours:

1. On moving (up) to MDC
2. On work as a play and play as a play
3. On the future of capitalism
4. On translating "traditional ideas" to new platforms
5. On mechanics behind of one his best campaigns
6. On how do they pick ideas and imperative of quantity of ideas;
7. On what he would do with $1bn (for the campaign, of course); - how he would approach it?
8. On why and how he looks for Cultural Conventions
9. On his new role and the role of brands
10. On the brand systems
11. On legendary Ford Fiesta campaign
12. On start-ups 
13. On phenomena of Twitter
14. On focusing on successes, not failures

If Carlsberg did Team Talks

World Cup is almost there. Like few hours of SuperBowl in US these undoubtely will also be four weeks of celebrating great ads. 

Carlsberg comes out one of first (next to Nike Rooney teaser last week) with an epic Team Talk for Team England full of iconic references. 

Linked to it there is also short "Making of" video: 

One more interesting aspect of building campaign ecosystem - besides of official Twitter account and Official Fan Page on FaceBook, the official webpage of "EnglandTeamTalk.com" is build on (is redirecting to) the platform of YouTube. Seems to be more good example of smart use of existing social platforms. 

 

Starbucks. "The Big Picture"

Starbucks and BBDO NY. Again. Literally few days ago (15/04/2010). The next step in great series of simple, emotional acitivies that encourages (incites) people (ones that care!) to do something, to show their attitude rather than just shouting out some kind of "constructed" brand message in mass media. 

Going for impact rather than reach. Because actions speaks louder than words. And creating stories. Because stories are spreading. Rather than just words. 

 

On management books

"Management books on branding usually trade on the apt anecdote: They either rely on a whirlwind of short, seconhand snippets or else use quick I-was-there insider briefings to demand that the reader accepts their arguments. From an academic viewpoint, what is troubling about these books (some of which have been written by academics) is that the empirical data that author summon is so thin that they cannot possibly develop an explanatory model. The reccomendations that flow out of these models are so vague that it is impossible to distinguish between the activities of the best brands and the most medicore. Further, much of the "data" that drive the findings in these books are actually assembled from predistilled stories reported in business press. So rather than careful primary research, most authors are simply repeating stories that the patagonists (the client and agency) want to tell about their brands. The average analysis of a brand in most of these book extends all of two or three pages, satisvactory for coctail conversation and not much else"  

Douglas B. Holt "How Brands Become Icons. The Principles of Cultural Branding", Note #2 to Appendix, p. 243

The Campaign of the Week: UNIQLO UTweet

 

The campaign that surprised me most last week is UNIQLO UTweet - positive, simple and colorful. In the same time as smart in using digital technologies in very human way as it has been with most of UNIQLO campaings last few years. 

Don't look for something hyper stategic or serious there. Digitally most awarded brand in 2008 and 2009 offers you entertaining show that last few minutes and is cusomized up to your choices of keywords. It also plays around with elements of randomness acualized by growing popularlity of latest digital fad -Chatroulette.com in their target group. 

The only thing I haven't found answer yet - is the campaign in any way linked to opportunities to T-shirts of advertised UT series. That would be great link to real life.  

Anyway, UNIQLO UTweet is the first "Discovery of the Week" or "Campaign of the Week" from my blog. To be continued. 

 

Digital is not about digital at all

Last weekend I have run into one more interpretation of good, old idea that I strongly believe. This time it comes through the lenses of British public services and was prepared for 5th National Digital Inclusion Conference by one of participants, paraphrasing great election campaign by Bill Clinton in 1992 based on "It's economy! / It's economy, stupid"):

 

(via Neil Perkin)

The same applies for the world of marketing communications and could easily be rewritten for advertising industry. 

The phrase "Digital is not about Digital at all" (exactly in these words) is one I has been using quite a lot in my presentations and discussions. But - as a small provocation to stress the importance of (a) not getting blinded by technology and (b) keeping the focus on people, their lives, challenges and aspirations.  

Putting emerging technological opportunities (now called digital, fifty to ten years ago - TV, a century ago - radio) as the entry point of campaign creates temptation to look to the communication challenges from technology perspective or to fall in passion of playing around with new features and new formats ("what can we do now technologically?" or "what cool feature of platform X or platform Y could we use in our campaign?"). In so many cases it ends up with the solutions that are focusing "Technology for the sake of technology" and has little relevance to what does it mean to customer.

From the perspective of creative process it creates the temptation to focus on one format of communication as a central one (e.g. TV commercial or multi-media webpage or Facebook community, for example) and when the idea for that is ready - to adapt it for other formats. That kind of adaptation was "a-kind-of-possible" in the world of one-way communication and limited number of choices (so called "Mass-Media Age" - TV, radio, outdoor, print). Not anymore in the world of abundance of information and most importantly - "two-way" communication platforms and increasing involvement and participation.

Still one thing is clear -  also in fundamentally changing world of communications great and successful campaigns will be be about big, format-neutral ideas; ideas that has emerged from great insights about (a) customer, his needs, wants and challenges; and (b) broader social and cultural trends and impact of these on our customer needs, wants and expectations. And it increasingly will be about ideas that executed create value for customers - rational, irrational or rather mix of both. 

And if idea is big enough, not only it "should be so big that it fits in SMS" (Andrew Robertson, CEO, BBDO Worldwide) but it also has to be adaptable to three fundamentally different pillars of modern communications:

• the very challenging world on new, "two-way" communication platforms enabled by digital technologies (social networks, blogs, video services) that demand consistent adaptation to different situations and formats, participation, listening, constantly providing new content and value and going to them, not inviting them to us. A challenging, unknown and in many ways unpredictable but rich with opportunities; 
• related communication activities in old, evergreen "mass media" (TV, radio, outdoor) - "one-way communication" vehicles that still are effective if used properly and taking into account their rapidly changing role in the landscape of opportunities on maintaining conversations and delivering messages; 
• in the "real life" - from variety of touch-points in the retail and service environment to the events and other real-life experiences whose importance in the age of information abundance and media fragmentation also will be increasing.

Therefore in most of the cases putting any kind of format in the center - would it be old-fashioned ones or trendy and emerging - is a limitation to what we can do to our customers. Moreover, there should be focus on what will be changing or going on in real life rather than around any kind of media or in virtual environment. 

To summarize there is a quote (by Paul Isakson) that I am using quite often in my presentations. A quote that can be generalized and used as a metaphor not only for social media but for everything we do in communication nowadays. 

KitKat Jesus. For Easter season

Great project with very good "viral" potential, particularly around Easter from exactly one year ago (Easter, 2009). Agency and clients get few "thumbs-up" from my side:

• for the courage the touch this sensitive issue that so offten is full with hypocrisy;
• for the ability to react to the context (or, whats more probable, to create some of "early publications");
• for the courage of client to take this polarizating decision instead of some "corporate risks"
• for the courage to play it big; 

And after all - the biggest risk in marketing communication is to get stacked into the grey area of illusionaly safety and medocrity. At the end of the day it is always waste of money. Nobody cares about grey, medicore and overly safe ideas. 

Besides of that one main tasks of any marketer in this era of social platforms and extreme abundance of information is to move the customer out of the zone of indifference and comfort in order to incite the conversations, either big or small, and to move forward to some action. 

Challenging conventions, particularly controversial ones, is not the worst beginning point. 

"Advertising on the Edge" by The Economist

Great presentation on the role of branding, marketing and advertising in the times of recession from The Economist. Thoughtful and insightful, as always. Must see. And must-share with clients and colleagues all around advertising and marketing. 

Ads on Edge

Source: Fallon Planning blog

Brands, entertainment and communication in 2010. Just one vision.

"The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed".

William Gibson.

Beginning of the year is a good opportunity to look forward. Attached is four minutes film - vision about future of brands, communication, digital technologies and entertainment from one of most interesting thinkers about communication in digital age and one of my favorite strategic planning blog authors Faris Yakob. 

It has cached my attention few months ago but I watched it one more time with high interest in the last holidays. Although it is based on many assumptions there is a lot good insights and food-for-thought on what are the change and how they influence our lives. Will it all happen until 2010 - it for you to judge and decide. 

But while watching keep in mind good old truth that "We tend to overestimate the speed of changes, but we tend to underestimate the impact" - in the digital age is more truth than ever. 

The First Internet Balloon Race

Great promotional campaign by Orange in air from last weekend.

http://www.playballoonacy.com/

Actually it starts in a week but preparation stage is on, participants have to choose their balloons and/or submit their web pages as a base stations. But it is worth to check it now, because it seems it has it all

1) original, simple, great idea with potential to be scaled up to really big
2) super-great execution - funny, friendly
3) smart use of social media to build the buzz (particularily blog widget thing)
4) smart generation of interest from webpages

Lets see how will it be working. My gut feeling is that it has to be big!

Cadbury - next move after "Gorilla" ad

Last night Cadbury launched Today @ 9:10pm Cadbury is launching new serie next to Gorilla ad. Nothing to do with gorillas and Phil. Trucks this time. And Freddie. I start getting some clue where it all could lead and moving from skeptics to curious ones.

It seems that conceptual legs of campaign are growing from good, old David Lubars "BMW Films" back at Fallon around 2001/2002, before moving to BBDO.

Will try to put some thoughts together later tonight or tomorrow. Until you can enjoy "Glas and Half Full Production" web page. By Cadbury, of course. It leads to some kind of answer.   Both "Gorilla" and "Trucks" are here in much better quality than on YouTube. And more stuff. Plus simple and great experience (production value)

p.s. Cadbury also said last night that sales are 10% up after "Gorilla" ad was launched. A lot ....

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My favourite quote: "Alex Bogutsky doesn't want to see scripts anymore: "Don't show me a script. Show me the press release""