Out of nowhere I ran again across this small section of Rory Sutherland’s „Life lessons from an ad man“ talk at TEDGlobal 2009. I had forgotten how interesting and brilliant, filled to the brim with awesome it was. If you like this small section, you will enjoy all the highly recommended 17 minutes.
www.ted.com
Rory Sutherland’s blog at Brandrepublic
Take a look at this video:
Nick Vujicic is a total inspiration.
You see, I have been thinking lately about persuasion. Especially the really complicated kinds that go deeper than selling stuff, but touching people and changing their attitude (about themselves or important issues). I believe there are many people out there who tell these kids exactly the same things as Nick, they probably use exact the same words, but their words could never as resounding. Why is that, I wonder?
I have written down some thoughts about this, but it needs more thinking.
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 It is outdated but I still believe it is a great example of how to build up an argument for a strategic decision.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.
This week started with a pleasant surprise:
Rob Campbell posted Paul Colman’s reviews on the presentations for the assignment on Extra gum. After short disappointment because I wasn’t able to identify my presentation from the feedback (see whole story here) it turns out the winning presentation is my entry.
To sum this up in short: Extra is the everything else gum of Wrigley’s. The brand is spread out to appeal to everybody, and also the vehicle for new products. My recommendation was to define Extra by leaving innovation to a new brand, and putting focus on Extra as functional gum that aids concentration, focus etc.
Personally, I knew that this would taken two more slides, but ten was the limit. I REALLY would love to see Assignment „I“: „Mental Hygiene“ is perfect, sums up my positioning thoughts much better. In fact, I would love to see all the other presentations. It was always great to see where all the other minds went.
BIG Thanks to Paul and Rob for taking the time to a look at the work.
But, alas, back to work. The new assignment is up already online.
Hm, I can’t help it, but I still have a suspicion that there has been an error and Paul Colman will ask me to return my price.
Gareth Kay, planning director at Modernista!, posted his feedback on the last assignment of the Account Planning School of the Web. There were 6 entries discussing Mr. Clean and Gareth has taken the time give useful critique to all. Brett and Hayley were named winners.
Here is my entry:
And here is Gareth’s feedback:
Visually I think this is the best presentation and kept my interest levels up – good way of showing competitive clutter, etc. I like the implicit call for brand humility. But here I had a real problem in understanding your recommendation – I see the issues you raise but don’t get a sense of what the recommendation is. What are the things you would recommend the brand to do? Just saying make better product is not the answer. Some seeds here, but I would have loved to have seen the flower.
Yeah, when I put the finishing touches I pretty much knew this was not complete. I guess it is a limit of the format: 10 slides without any written coming with it. You just can not add everything that swings between the lines.
The recommendation really is that Mr. Clean should try become part of the process of cleaning. Right now, people spend more time with brooms, buckets, cleaning cloth than any cleaning detergent. The P&G Swiffers of the world come with those special brooms, while Mr. Clean just handed out a license to a broommaker in the US to produce Mr. Clean branded cleaning utensils. So you see what caught my attention.
I figured that a „New Formular!“ would not really help. But a brand that would start saying „We work to improve cleaning!“ and does everything to relieve us of the nuissance would have impact. Instead of that magical thing out of the bottle that never cleans like on TV, Mr. Clean should become a strong, physical support. Does that make sense?
Thanks very much to Gareth for taking the time.
