This is a presentation I did at school back in 2003 at the University of Oklahoma. It is outdated but I still believe it is a great example of how to build up an argument for a strategic decision.
I have to stress that we made this before the Playstation „Mountain“ commercial that won the Cannes Grand Prix 2004. „Mountain“ actually could have been based on this presentation, except here the technical potential would have been stressed.
I ran into this the other day: Kevin Proudfoot talks Intimacy It is just a short list/summary which I found to be a pretty a good reminder of the golden rules of establishing meaningful communication with consumers. I believe there is no way around them:
And then this washed up here and reminded me of the one rule to rule them all:
What will be the implications for the Dove campaign should it really be the case that their images were heavily retouched? Other than disastrous? I mean, doing EXACTLY the opposite of what you claim to do. What were they thinking?
This does not mean I am fully convinced by the story, but the damage is already done because the Ogilvy PR person was not quick enough to say „WTF?! Who is this guy?“. „We have to check..“ sounds more like “ I am not sure what to answer. Please stand by till I have made up the proper lie.“ This is a symptom of an inconsistent story and in an interrogation room Dove would now be screwed.
I remember this story of an retiring politician (as incredible as it sounds, I think that was the case): he was praised by colleagues and the press that he never forgot a name, a commitment, a discussion or a face. When asked how he archieved that, he answered: „Oh. That was easy. I never told a lie.“
It is true. If you find an honest tone and message, communication will be easy. You will know what to do, what to say and you (or your press spokesperson) won’t have to remember all the lies you told.
Claim says: „Now with more space for humans“. Well, let’s just say that this is one way to illustrate that the Ford Ka has lots of space inside. I like it.
Via Nerdcore
Did something interesting in my lunch break today. I teamed up with the Planning4Good AllStars who were competing at IPA’s FAST Strategy event today.
Ok, explanations first: Planning for Good is essentially a club of Account Planners all over the world that tackle strategic problems for good causes and non-profits. Members include Gareth Kay, Planning Director of Modernista!, Aki Spicer of Fallon, Mark Earls (author of Herd) and many more notable names from the Plannersphere.
Anyways, Mark Earls was team leader of the Planning4Good AllStars (him, Jon Leach, Chris Forrest (The Nursery) and Ian Tait (Poke & crackunit)) to work on the brief as the P4G Allstars, one of three teams competing in the three hour battle for the title Fastest Strategist.
Mark additionally called – through the power of the Internet! – the combined brain power of Planning for Good people who could spare the time. So my lunch break was 30 minutes of furious typing, reading and searching at once, trying bring in as much thinking, ideas as possible. The Brief was about creating a strategy for a dog owner’s registry in the UK.
What I learned today (apart from „30 minutes is not much time“) for doing strategy in a team online and fast:
Mark Earls posted that they just made second place. Bugger. Still was fun.I hope I can see the presentation they gave.
Apropos, presentations. In my Vodpod there is a splendid presentation Mark Earls gave at the ARF conference in New York (via Gareth Kay). He talks about Word of Mouth, decision making in our connected lives and how to best influence those processes. Intriguing stuff. I think I will get his book.
The tickets for Russell Davies‘ interesting2008 conference went on sale today 9am GMT. This should be an interesting thing again. But not for me. Tickets were sold out in less than 3 hours, when I got around to log in from work. Sigh.
The Watchman-Movie is already in postproduction and now director Zack Snyder has announced an advertising contest on the Watchmen Youtube channel. Fans are invited to create and submit commercials to be shown on TV screens in the background of the movie.
The idea to give fans out there the opportunity to create a real part of the movie is genius. It genuinely challenges fans. Much more than, say, „Send us your craziest picture of you using product XYZ!“. And, nice side effect, it also creates buzz without showing too much of the movie. I wonder what the commercials will look like.
Btw, here is a screenshot of another movie I expect with rising enthusiam: Spike Jonze’s „Where the wild things are“ („Wo die Wilden Kerle hausen“).
And now excuse me, I am off to do some market research and insight hunting for Veidt products in my copy of Watchmen.
Edit: Crap. Martin has pointed out the entry rules to me, who limit the contest to U.S. residents only. I’d understand that if it was a domestic U.S. brand, but this is a movie for global release. Well done, legal department. You have just locked out two thirds of the Internet, because the risk to pay flight tickets for a guy from Abkhazia was too high.
Last week I stumbled across these weird images:
Do you recognize them?
After some scratching my head, I summoned the power of the internet and a simple „where do these images come from?“ brought the answer within minutes: They were made by Glaswegian art group Henry VIII’s Wives. And yes, they are aged citizens in their neighbourhood reenacting „Iconic Moments of the Twentieth Century“ See how many you can recognize.
They also reminded me of Jon Haddock’s reinterpretation of iconic moments in the real world and movies that I saw a couple of years ago, where Haddock drew them in the isometric view of computer games like Civilization or The Sims. Same moments as above:
He did a lot more. They are all worth a closer look, click here. (most of Jon Haddock’s work is worth the look)
I am generally fascinated by those reinterpretations. They demonstrate how original images truly deserve the term iconic. I mean, they were shot long before I was born. Nonetheless, we immediately recognize them again, no matter how sketchy the reenactment.
This was good. I have not seen a planning process in a team like this in action. I had exchanged mails with George prior to the workshop and he had mentioned that this was rather about „strategy being about ideas that are stimulated and confirmed by research rather than strategy being something that emerges from research“. I get what he meant with stimulation.
It really was about laying out as many potential routes as possible before deciding where to go. Getting ideas for brand values, ideas for consumer values, ideas for consumer insights, ideas for propositions and spot the route through that multitude that hums best. The hardest part about the process is probably turning off your filter that keeps trying to cut away things.
I believe this can be exciting with smaller clients and companies to produce a useful platform for communication in a day or two. It takes an experienced planner to facilitate the process, keep it running and spot the nuggets. And trigger lateral thinking.
Another nice aspect of the seminar was meeting some of the few Account Planners in Austria. I can now safely assume that there are no more than 20 people that have Account Planner or Strategic Planner as their job title. And all sit in the network agencies lik TBWA, DraftFCB, Ogilvy, BBDO et.al. or work as independent consultants.
The bad news of this: the job situation is pretty dim. The good news: there is potential for Account Planning here and especially for the agencies who embrace it.
First day of the Account Planning Tools Workshop with George Shepherd in Vienna. The few times an opportunity for training comes up in Austria, I have to be there. Even if I pay the whole thing myself.
George, who worked with Y&R, the Leigh Agency and Red Spider, is introducing us to his Account Planning Toolkit, a blueprint and set of templates for a planning process. A lot of hands on work in groups, with a lot of brainstorming and thinking. With his templates I found you can move the results to promising routes without limiting the broadness of ideas. So far, I find this especially useful for teams that have to bring up results in a very short time.
I assume that whole thing works a whole lot better in the real world compared to five advertising people in a hotel lounge, when the client is involved and the agency has done the homework.
The LeMeridien is pretty chic, the room with the name „Eternal Black“ not as dark as it’s name. Just the typical hotel conference room. No photos, yet. Hopefully, I will get around to post some tomorrow.
