Living in a digital world

Shackleton Madrid agency of the year. One of the jurors told me that Shackleton made over a 100 entries to Cannes. That’s a serious amount of time, money and effort, but it seems to have paid off for them.

From the UK, JWT and The Communications both get golds.Ogilvy, CHI and JWT get bronzes. As does our freelance art director, Michael Jones.

In the Promo category McCann Erickson from the UK get a gold.

Here is some of the shortlisted direct work. This is from Castrol. It’s my favourite piece in the category. Wearing motorcycle helmets is seen as very uncool by Indian youth. This mailed t-shirt on receipt gives 10 reasons why you shouldn’t wear a helmet. But, when it’s washed the t-shirt has an awful accident in the washing machine. The red ink runs blood red and the message mostly disappears leaving only the stark warning ‘reason why you should wear a helmet’. Excellent.

During the Hollywood writer’s strike, TCM sent out this simple mailer. It features a very short letter claiming the channel is in full support of the strike, as after all the best movies have already been made. Such a clear dramatisation of the movie channel’s USP.

Mailpack for Toyota, selling the benefits of the built-in GPS system. Again a simple idea - the envelope has been redirected, but with GPS you’ll arrive without detours.

Lots of ideas playing with the mechanics of mail this year. Here a scale replica of the Land Rover Discovery is sent to prospects in packaging which appears to have been absolutely battered in the process of reaching you. However the ‘indestructible’ Land Rover Discovery is in pristine condition inside the ruined packaging.

Not very PC, but perfect for the target audience. This is the ‘last longer’ pillow.

Wow. What an amazing year for the UK. After a few years of putting in a distinctly average digital performance at Cannes, this year UK agencies have been shortlisted everywhere (probably second most shortlisted country after the US) - and it’s interesting the mix of agencies represented; above-the-line, below-the-line, pure-play - everyone seems to be in on the digital act.

It’s good year for the network too with Rapp Collins Malaysia, DDB Stockholm (3), DDB Oslo, Rapp Digital Brazil, DDB Germany Hamburg and DDB Germany Berlin (2) all appearing on the shortlist.

The big news on the direct shortlist is that Australia has done bloody well, the Germans gain many appearances also. Rapp Collins NY is there - on the B2B shortlist for the agency’s future garden website. The french office has also been shortlisted for some lovely viral work for stella photographic studios using a model, speed cameras and motorways!

Michael Jones who is in our london office has also been shortlisted in the direct and press categories for some work he did at M&C in Australia.

Interestingly the category that the UK is most represented in is integrated, with CHI, Elvis, JWT and The Communications agency making up more than 30% of the shortlisted agencies.

In the outdoor category Asia storms the shortlist, with plenty of work from Thailand and Malaysia. Even Vietnam making an appearance. It seems that the most interesting work in this category is coming from the East. As an aside the Cannes organisers are keen to have the Asian market embrace the event. There’s a lot of China events here and a delegation from China is visiting to decide whether to whole heartedly send a huge delegation to next year’s event.

In the promo category Momentum make an appearance for their ‘other lunch break’ campaign for Mini. I’m really chuffed this campaign has been recognised. I think it’s a marvellous example of how agencies should be thinking. Read more about the campaign here and here.

Today Proximity did an interesting seminar on the lost generation (born 1966-1972). This generation is currently entering leadership positions. Proximity rather than labelling this generation as gen x have attempted to understand them in more depth by dividing them into three categories: cruiser, nesters and super breeders. It’s complicated if you want to know more leave a comment or email me.

tomorrow I’ll post some jpegs of some of the shortlisted direct work that really excited me.

My global creative director, Ian Haworth, is presenting a seminar (you can see the slides above) around how we build value based relationships now, rather than one dimensional communications. A parallel theme is how great a time it is to be a creative and how technological change is taking many of the traditional restrictions away.

Hopefully I’ll be able to give you more details, but as Ian talks my battery is quickly running down.

As a starting point Ian takes us through a whirlwind tour of excellent but simple comms, before starting to make the point that great creative comms work is no longer enough, we now need to make more emotional connections that are deeper than simply working towards brand affinity.

The journey Ian describes is from creative that focuses on a USP to work that focuses on ESP (emotional selling points) to BBSP (belief based selling points) to VBSP (Values based selling points). Communications that develop from belief and values based selling points tend to a have a real, human truth embedded deep within them. They also seem to ignite peer to peer based activity simply because the messages really resonate with the target audience. Ian illustrates this with some work from Merck, around a cervical cancer vacine, Gardasil. Here’s a video of the case study:

The other side to this is how BBSP and VBSP comms lead to debate, eg The Dove work though well received has had it’s online detractors arguing that the brand is hypocritical. A recent NSPCC online advertising campaign (disclaimer: I was involved in this work) led to a huge debate on a Weight Watchers forum. The NSPCC ads were banners shouting abuse at the user and asking ‘click to stop the abuse’. When served on the weight watchers site these ads alienated some of the users (self-esteem issues meant many weren’t happy to have the banner shout abuse at them). However on the forums the work had many defenders. Ian’s point? Because the work was belief based it caused deep seated reactions in its audience and led the work to take on a life of i’s own.

Whoops battery about to go - so I’ll blog this later (after stealing Ian’s presentation and recharging the laptop).

…It’s now later and here’s some of the video case studies from Ian’s presentation (I’ll upload them over the next day or so). You can also see Ian’s presentation here.

Here we go. Blog report from the Debussy Theatre at Cannes 2008. Over the next few days I’ll blog each of the seminars and workshops I go to. I’ll also report on the award winners and ceremony. Do bear with any typo’s - I’m blogging live so there will be mistakes (I’ll edit later, promise).

The first seminar is from FEDMA (Federation of European Direct and Interactive Marketing). Patrick Collister is presenting some thinking about how DM is sexy, and how increasingly above the line agencies are utilising dm techniques.

For instance, in talking about the sony foam ad, patrick points out that the ad was based on an event, an event where camera users shot the ad as it was filmed, those images are on a website where users can explore the camera and buy it. Patrick asks what awards the ad might win. Probably TV. Maybe media. But in fact it could be more usefully be considered as a winner in the direct awards because it’s ultimate aim is to drive people to a transactional environment.

In fact Patrick points out that the ad is both brand and direct. And five minutes into the presentation, this seems likely to be the core theme - ie the old categories are irrelevant. DM is doing brand (as evidenced by a lovely wooden mailer for a karate magazine) and brand is doing DM.

Patrick argues that one of this first instances of brands advertising moving beyond the ad was the bmw films work from 2002. BMW commissioned a series of films and placed online. In the US the work got 20 million hits, 2 million signed up online, and in a single year BMW’s brand took 12% more share in North America. Unbelievably when a new marketing director joined a year later he fired Fallon - the agency that had given BMW a massive commercial boost. Go figure.

More no-line thinking is evidenced by a campaign for Jim Beam, Press ads placed in women’s magazines spoke to male readers suggesting that if the where reading the female magazine they were a wuss and needed help. Driven to a website, the men could sign-up for a sample of Jim Beam, It was brand, it was dm, it was sales promotion. The line had disappeared.

Interestingly Patrick claims there is still a line, but it isn’t horizontal. There is no longer an above or below. The line is vertical. It runs through everything, and the very best work does just that. And it is this permission for dm to sell but also to do brand, that is making dm work increasingly sexy. A chocolate mailing from the royal mail is used to demonstrate this - an emotional communication that also as a response purpose.

On response Patrick points out that in the past the average response rate is 2%. Not good enough claims Patrick. If DM can now work brand magic, then it’s not good enough to be potentially alienating 98% of your audience. You’v got to aim higher. Leo Burnett in Oz last year ran some work for WWF encouraging people to turn off their lights for an hour. 2% wouldn’t have been good enough. Leo Burnett aimed at 100%, During the targetted hour 2.2 million households turned their lights off for an hour. The equivalent of taking 48,000 cars off the road - reducing Sydney’s daily energy consumption by 10%.

In aiming for higher response, you can’t just measure traditional scores. You have to measure other things. Expanding on his vertical line theme, Patrick claims that it slides along an axis from pre-decision (emotional) effects to transactional (rational) effects. New, sexy DM should aim to create responses along the entire axis.

Interestingly a lot of the really interesting sexy DM work is comng from brand advertising agency. Patrick ends his seminar by making a call for DM agencies to step up to the challenge and start creating more of this work themselves.

Here’s a similar presentation Patrick’s done previously. Some of the work featured was shown in his Cannes seminar.

Apologies for my recent posting laziness. One of the hazards of running a work related blog, is work getting in the way. Damn.

To make up for my shoddiness here are a few sites (some new, some not so new) that I think point to the way the web is developing at the moment.

CLOUD COMPUTING

First off - the cloud, the mesh, the whatever. The cloud refers to accessing computing services over the web rather than from your desktop - see definition here. In other words applications live ‘out there in the cloud’ rather than inside your machine. For a while now I’ve been using google docs (for word processing, presentations and spreadsheets). The following google docs video gives a good explanation for why you might find cloud computing useful: 

But there are many more interesting examples of cloud applications starting to appear. A month or so ago Adobe made Photoshop Express freely available as a cloud app. The app allows users to tweak, store and place images on flickr, facebook, etc. It’s not anywhere near as advanced as the full version (obviously), but it does point to the way users can expect to access more services away from their desktop. And it’s free.

As is box.net a free online storage and collaboration application. I use it to (along with flickr for photo’s) to keep my hard drive free of unnecessary data and as a security back-up in case my home computer gets stolen.

Another tool that I find useful is LogMeIn - this cloud app allows you to access your home computer from anywhere in the world. So far it feels secure. It also allows you to create a vpn (virtual private network) which is able to connect multiple computers. And like box.net it can act as storage backup - except LogMeIn can do this automatically.

FREE STUFF

Although not a cloud app, AVG is well worth downloading (if you’re running Windows or Linux). It’s free anti-virus software. Like lots of free software it does encourage you to upgrade (and pay) for a more advanced solution. 

NICHE SOCIAL NETWORKING

For the past year or so lots of brands have tried to exploit the opportunities offered by social network, but only a few have been brave enough to launch their own niche networks. Courvoisier have their future 500 network for today’s most thrusting and select business stars. And earlier this year the Financial Times announced the thrillingly named FT Media and Technology Executive Membership Forum  - a £2,000 a year subscription based network designed to enable senior executives to ‘maintain contact with peers and luminaries operating within the digital, new media, mobile and telecoms sectors.’ Phew - and pricey too.

More exciting is quark’s social network hooking up designers and allowing them to share their portfolios online. Ilovedesign is the site.

VIDEO

Video services seem to be all the rage at the moment. Youtube are due to launch a live video streaming product soon, for a while now kyte have been allowing users to create their own tv channel streaming content live (and rather badly) from their mobiles. But for me, the most exciting video project (and no doubt youtube will nix this when they launch their service) is Y!Live an experimental release from Yahoo. The site takes live video from your webcam and simply streams it to the world - bingo, your own personal tv channel.

I can see huge opportunities for brands here. Especially in the fundraising space. Imagine a regular stream from your favourite charity in the developing world, where field workers report in each day to chat about their projects and introduce the local people they’re working with. Supporters of the charity would have a instant view of how their money is having an impact, and the charity has a new, low budget media channel - they also incidentally have an instant video conferencing ability allowing dozens of people in many different locations to see what they’re up to.

My group CEO, Marco Scognamiglio, recently wrote a letter to Campaign (’Letter of the Week’, Jan 12, 200 about how agencies are reacting to a changing environment.

Here is his letter:

Claire Beale
Editor
Campaign
174 Hammersmith Road
London
W6 7JP

Dear Claire,

So we have new start up Adam & Eve structuring itself to think “in an unbiased way”. And Grey choosing a multi-experienced new creative director to “revolutionise” the way it operates. And both say it’s all about “giving the clients what they want.”

As your Perspective piece points out, there’s clearly a theme emerging here. Both are reacting to a changing environment, an environment in which what the client wants has changed markedly. The key question is, why?

The simple answer is that the change is being driven by the consumer and changing consumer behaviour. Media fragmentation and the growth of digital and social media means consumers are now interacting with brands in a multitude of different ways. Consumers don’t think in silos and increasingly it won’t be good enough for brands to choose the channels they want and hope the consumer responds.

The future is all about understanding and tracking consumer behaviour, gaining obsessive insight that then dictates both creative solutions and channel selection.
And that’s where companies which are, and always have been, devoted to understanding consumers are now - more than ever - uniquely placed to help brands manage customer relationships.

Those who can truly understand and track the customer journey – particularly understand how on and offline assets interact – are going to be at a massive advantage. It’s no longer going to be about advertising, or DM, or digital. It’s going to be about the consumer. Ultimately, what clients really want is someone who can acknowledge and deliver against this most challenging of scenarios and can deliver them measurable, creative business solutions – solutions based on an obsessive understanding of their customers.

Yours sincerely,

Marco Scognamiglio
Group CEO

Feel free to comment. Personally I’m convinced he’s spot on about the impetus lying with agencies who understand the consumer. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I…

Past experience has shown me the foolishness of offering up predictions. And after years of saing the same thing, I’ve got fed up of telling everyone that ‘mobile is going to be huge’.

So, I’ll let others braver than me tell you what they think 2008 has in store:

Mark at Mashable offers up some interesting views on social networking, intellectual property, web applications, video and cool gadgets. I think he could well be right about OpenSocial and Android facilitating the convergance of mobile and web 2.0

Steve Rubel at MicroPersuasion gives his view on digital trends for 2008 and bets on advertisers owning their own media and migrating away from traditional formats like the banner. It’s already happening (see Walmat’s checkout blog).

The Guardian Newspaper (bottles it a bit, like me) and opts to let it’s readers give their own predictions. Most sensible suggestions seems to be, “It’ll be the year of the touchscreens”.

ReadWriteWeb has some interesting thoughts on privacy (nod, nod, think I agree), most likely start-ups to be acquired, and China.

More consultancy type predictions from McKinsey - I like their ideas on extracting more value from interactions.

Tongue firmly in cheek O’Reilly Radar talks about the future of Web 2.0.

And if anyone should know, you’d expect it to be the Futurist magazine, so here are their thoughts. Less digital, more geopolitical, although I do like their no.10 prediction - ‘more decisions will be made by non-human entities’ - ie