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Opinion: There’s a Limit to AI’s Ad Potential

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From the 4A’s SmartBrief, article by Ed Chambliss

Advertisers shouldn’t get carried away with artificial intelligence’s potential in advertising, as great creative relies on a human and emotional connection with consumers, writes Phelps’ Ed Chambliss. “AI has no soul. And it’s soul that sells,” he writes. AI offers us the ability to interact with customers on their terms 24/7, but can it really create rich, relevant advertising on a customized basis?

While marketing scientists seem to think AI will solve the escalating demand for relevant content without breaking the bank, I’m concerned we’re overstepping the limits of what a computer can really do by having it create ads – and in the process risking the credibility and reputation of brands with the very people they aim to engage.

This is part of a larger problem in marketing. We keep looking for answers in technology that we should be looking for in human connection.

I’m guessing most advertising people, like me, get fascinated with AI and want to test everything it can possibly do. After all, creating new means and methods of communication is fundamental to our business. We’re paid to take platforms as far as they can go. But our charge is also to create ideas beyond the available data and logic that computers are limited to, and write them into great advertising that plays on human senses and emotions.

That’s where AI reaches its limit. AI is not an ideal creative engine, because computers can’t be people. They can think, but they can’t feel and sense, or make emotional connections between impulses. They don’t know the feeling of sinking your toes into wet sand as waves roll over your feet; or the sensation of the wind pushing your hand up and down when you hold it out the window of a speeding car. Without this kind of shared emotional reference, a message about human experience will feel hollow.

In other words, AI has no soul. And it’s soul that sells. The emotional response we seek as marketers isn’t a chain of logic; it’s the triggering of a feeling rooted in a sensation. That’s why ‘Got milk?’ swayed a generation where ‘Milk, it does a body good’ fell flat. And it’s why ‘You’re not yourself when you’re hungry” resonates three levels higher than ‘Snickers satisfies’ ever could.

Great advertising has exponential impact and efficiency because it’s created from this kind of instinctive connection, not the instantaneous organization of data points. We create from impulses and senses a computer can’t feel. We can automate message delivery on a media platform; but we can’t automate creation. When AI creates, we’ll be horribly wrong sometimes. That’s a chance brands can’t afford to take in an era where consumers don’t give out second chances.

More than ever, advertising is an ideas business and marketers need breakthrough ideas. As we deepen our reliance on technology to develop platforms and disseminate advertising, we have to protect the primary of true source – people sensing human truths that will resonate in the human experience. That’s where creative breakthroughs live. Let’s keep the computer’s role to finding connections and aggregating information that can fuel insights by people who can feel whether ideas will resonate with others.

Ed Chambliss is president of Phelps

The Short Form Video Ad Experience: Engagement, Expectations and Impact

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Through our membership in the 4A’s (American Association of Advertising Agencies), an article from their weekly “SmartBrief” newsletter inspires this blog post. We find the research, results and conclusions helpful as we counsel clients in this medium.

How was the research conducted? The FreeWheel Council for Premium Video with 11 offices around the globe, in partnership with leading emotion measurement platform, RealEyes, exposed almost 3000 adults 18 – 49 to a set of 9 different scenarios of content and ads to measure emotional reactions through facial recognition technology. By gaining a better understanding of a viewer’s expectations of the ad experience, publishers and advertisers can effectively work together on driving better and more engaging advertising.

Additionally, when FreeWheel surveyed 243 brand and ad agency executives in late 2016, the advertising experience was rated as the most significant challenge facing the video industry today. As anyone who is part of the advertising value chain will tell you, there are many variables and responsible parties involved in ensuring the right ad shows up in the right place at the right time, and in the right way.

Fragmentation of viewing options for consumers has compounded the challenge, but it’s not just the screen that impacts the type of ad experience. The content type, whether long-form full episodes or short-form clips, create different viewer expectations of appropriate lengths and frequency of ads supporting that premium content.

Surveying consumers after viewing the clips and advertising, the Council sought to understand expectations of the ad experience so that both publishers and advertisers can work together on driving better and more engaging advertising.

Here Are The Key Research Takeaways:

  • Not surprisingly, engagement levels on advertising increase as ad loads decrease.
  • There is a halo effect on engagement levels for both content and ads when combined.
  • Expectations of the number of ads while viewing clips are relatively high (3 ads for 4 clips).
  • Expectations of ad loads across screens are relatively consistent: a majority of viewers would expect the same on over-the-top (OTT) as desktop but 3 in 10 expect less ads on a mobile device. By the way, OTT is a term used in broadcasting to refer to video transmitted via the Internet as a standalone product without cable or broadcast operators.
  • The impact of choice is important: half of users would choose a longer ad at the start of their viewing to watch ad-free afterwards.

The unique study also took a closer look at the engagement, expectations and impact of different short-form video ad experiences, and shed light on how, as an industry, we can continue to create better experiences and business outcomes.

Short-form content is an important part of the premium video ecosystem and fuels significant advertising opportunities for marketers. Finding the right balance, and ultimately the right choreography of clips and ads to maximize engagement and business outcomes, is key to help foster those opportunities. Premium video providers are proactively testing to find this balance, as they look to improve the ad experience no matter the content, audience or screen.

To View Video Ad Experience (Click Here)

Bigger Isn’t Always Better

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As we started our agency in 1990, we clearly remember some agency business prognosticators proclaiming, “The small agency is dead.” Merger mania among agencies was in full swing and today’s big agency conglomerates were in their formative stages.

Fast-forward 27 years; fueled by people of passion, the small agency is alive and well. Case in point: read the excellent summation by Joe Parrish that appears below. Like many agency people, he had a taste of the big ones but prefers the size wherein he can develop relationships. Clients increasingly talk about establishing relationships with their customers for the same reasons agencies function optimally when they have relationships with their clients. Concurrently, clients want a relationship with their agency partners, i.e. the people that drive the agency and care deeply about its service to clients. Small agency does not mean small ideas. Small agencies thrive on project work…it’s how they prove their value every day. It’s their growth engine. The small agency is a permanent fixture.

Why big brands are increasingly putting small agencies on their radar Article By Joe Parrish

Straight out of portfolio school, I went to a 30-person shop in Atlanta, GA and fell in love with advertising. The agency where I worked has since been sold, but at the time, it was amazing. We won tons of awards, did lots of great work and had a great time doing it. But because I was young and naive, I felt like I needed to move on. And so I did…too soon; moving all around the country to work at bigger shops on bigger brands. And I fell out of love with advertising.

Six years ago, I took a long hard look at what made me happy, and I decided that I wanted to try to re-create the experience of that first job. So my family and I moved back to our hometown and I started my own agency. I wanted to get back to making a real difference for clients. I wanted to be nimble and take chances and have fun. And while I am incredibly biased, I think we have achieved all that and more.

Small is the new big.

I think there is a global sea change in the way clients want to deal with advertisers. And I think small agencies are poised to reap the rewards. Clients are looking for real relationships with their agency partners. They want to personally know the name on the door and know that their successes are mutually aligned. Small shops are generally more motivated to see their clients succeed because they are more invested in their business (and because failure is crippling.)

Big ideas from small places.

We’ve all heard about how technology has democratized the creative process. About how one person in a bedroom can make the movie that a huge studio used to create. I think that’s all a little overblown, but the reality (that has always been true) is that brilliant ideas come from small teams. Look at your own career. I guarantee you that your best work came from fewer people, not more. Big ideas come from small teams for a few reasons. The first is that ideas are fragile. They can easily be trampled on by too many feet. Great ideas need intimacy to get off the ground, before they are strong enough to survive the potshots of the public.

The second reason is really an economic principle — accountability. If you assign a project to everyone, no one will do it. The more people involved, the less likely anyone is to own it. To get great thinking, people need to sign their work. They need to know that they will be the ones standing up and presenting it. So they’re motivated to make it amazing.

From Droga5 to 72andSunny to Anomaly, the adscape is full of businesses that, when they were small, completely transformed our business with brilliant thinking. (note: While those particular agencies have gotten big, they still operate “small” and continue to make us all jealous.)

Spend smaller, think bigger.

We’ve all worked at places where we threw money at problems. It sometimes worked. But it often didn’t. Clients are catching on. They are looking for optimization and cost-cutting. They are demanding that we measure twice and cut once. In advertising terms, that really means that we need to get our brand house in order before we spend a dime. We need to think hard, then spend smart. Smaller agencies can undeniably do this better than larger agencies. Many times, this is simply due to the Sunk Cost Fallacy: Because large shops have invested heavily in certain disciplines, they are predisposed to want to use them. Have a huge broadcast production department? Recommend broadcast. A huge search team? Recommend SEM. You get the point.

Small agencies can generally be more execution agnostic in the beginning. Because their business models are built on coming up with the idea and the plan and partnering with best-in-class vendors for execution.

Smaller assignments, bigger ROI.

Clients are moving from AOR to ROI. That’s a reality we all must face. Projects, while damaging to larger agencies, are a boon to small agencies. There is a low barrier to entry for larger clients to try projects with smaller agencies. And generally speaking, the results are a win-win for all involved. Big clients see great ROI when they go outside of their AOR relationships to try projects with smaller shops. They get fresh, divergent thinking that institutional AOR’s would have never imagined. And the opportunity is for small agencies to grow those small test cases into larger, more meaningful engagements.

The reason is that small shops are highly motivated to take on smaller projects. And they treat them with the importance clients think they should be assigned. If a big name client gave a retail POS assignment to their large agency, it would go directly to the C-team, and be pushed out as unceremoniously as possible. If that same POS assignment went to a 10 person shop, it would be celebrated and anguished over and delivered with passion, conviction and great thinking.

Our industry is constantly changing. That is the one thing we can always know for certain. And there will likely always be room in the food chain for success at the holding company level, at the large independent level and at the small agency level. But I was recently at a gathering with a bunch of small agency owners, and realized we are a pretty like-minded bunch. So much is written about the big agencies making big noise. I just wanted to write a little bit about the role of the small agencies in the larger agency eco-system. Remember: all of those big shops started small and grew by doing great work for appreciative clients. Cheers to those agencies out there who are small in size but big in ambition.

4A’s Celebrates 100 Years of Advertising.

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100YearsAd2

100 years ago, the 4A’s (American Association of Advertising Agencies) was founded as a national trade association to represent U.S. ad agencies. These days, they give counsel to members on everything from new business to best practices to media transparency. As the leading authority representing the marketing communications agency business, the 4A’s provides leadership advocacy, research, database information and training that empowers agencies to innovate, evolve and grow. That’s exactly what the 4A’s has afforded us during our 27 years as members. And, we are one of only two 4A’s shops in Tampa.

From famous ad campaigns to cultural movements, the association has put together a robust and wonderful trip through nostalgia in the form of a timeline capturing moments that stand out over the last 100 years. The overview is nicely divided into sections starting with “Behind The Scenes.” For this segment, the 4A’s interviewed industry thought leaders to showcase more than twenty stories behind some of the biggest moments on their timeline. The “Cameos” page pays tribute to popular figures that have been popping up in advertising since it started. Some of the best cameos from famous people over the last 100 years are captured.

The “Characters” portion includes some of the most memorable characters in advertising history, from the hilarious swagger of the Old Spice Man’s Man to the awkward charm of PC vs. Mac. We were pleased to see an entire area devoted to “Design” to help mark the moments that made design a lasting influence in advertising as far back as Uncle Sam. When pivotal historical and cultural moments collide with brilliant creative minds, we get advertising that better reflects our society. The “Diversity” section captures some of those moments. Groundbreaking milestones are documented in “Firsts” that helped make advertising what it is today. From laugh-out-loud lines to totally “out there” characters, “Laughs” includes some of the funniest moments in advertising that still resonate today.

Great copywriting is showcased in “Lines.” From “Just Do It” to “Where’s the beef?,” some lines just stick. This section tells the stories behind a few of the greatest lines in advertising. Love them or hate them, jingles have been a staple of the ad industry, cementing favorite brands in our collective memories. The “Music” part lists some of advertising’s greatest hits. From the launch of the World Wide Web to the very first use of “bullet-time” (it wasn’t in that famous sci-fi movie you’re thinking of), these are the moments in “Tech” that changed us forever. Finally, we’ve come a long way in 100 years. The “Women” segment celebrates the evolution of how women have been portrayed in advertising, as well as key female figures who’ve shaped the ad industry.

To explore the 4A’s 100th Anniversary Timeline, click here: http://www.aaaa.org/timeline/

Brands Can Get Type Cast Too

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Occasionally, clients come to us feeling that their brands have been type cast. Perceptions are powerful and stick. Hence, our brand promise, “The Power of Perception.” So, we found this article on brand perception, written by Paul Friederichsen on “Branding Strategy Insider,” and wanted to share it. Although we’re not exactly big followers of WWE, the example is a good one. Clients large and small may relate to the challenges described here. 

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Brands Can Get Type Cast Too Article by Paul Friederichsen

Often we will read about a Hollywood star that will avoid a role in a sequel for fear of being type cast. Or a star that will struggle to find a “breakout” role simply because the perception of the star’s work doesn’t match with the star’s desired change.

Brands will have the same challenges. Many years ago, Rolling Stone magazine launched its iconic “Perception–Reality” campaign that intended to destroy the bad-boy rock and roll type cast image advertisers mistakenly had regarding its appeal and readership. As Rolling Stone understood at the time, its typecasting was hurting its ability to attract new advertisers; and so the campaign took on the dilemma head on in side by side comparisons of “perception” and “reality.”

It could be said that typecasting is really the result of a brand exercising sound brand discipline; so strong and so successful, in fact, that to alter, embellish or enhance the understanding of brand may be difficult. This can happen even in industries populated with “knowledgeable”insiders such as writers, editors, bloggers, or, as in the case of the Rolling Stone example, expert media strategists and buyers.

WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) is contending with type casting … not with their wrestling stars, but with the brand itself. Ironically, in a business that relies on type casting good guys and villains for staged wrestling bouts to enthrall fans, the brand is attempting to shed the notion that it stands for more than “wrestling” but that it’s a powerful entertainment media vehicle for advertisers.

Of course, typecasting can be desirable, as in the case of “Mac vs. PC.” Mac relishes being type cast as the fresh, creative and friendly alternative to the “PC.” Or Subway’s type casting as the healthy fast food alternative to heavy, greasy fast food options. Or Gold’s Gym as the no nonsense strength training alternative to the glitzy, sophisticated LA Fitness locations.

There are two fundamentals that brand marketers must recognize with regard to this issue. Firstly, as consumers of brands in a world saturated with them, we consciously (and subconsciously) categorize them for easy mental reference. This “filing system” is formed by our earliest memory with the brand and is not easily altered. We are resistant to changing a perception that gets hardened like cement over time. Secondly, many reporters, editors, and bloggers are either over-worked or just lazy, and may not dig deeper about your brand when including it in their story.

For example, a very large and successful flooring company began making quality, but affordable products when it started out, but later began adding a wider range of designs, warranty levels and price points. In spite of a considerable amount of marketing efforts to introduce its new lines, it is still often type cast as that company that produces inexpensive flooring by the writers and editors in the industry. Typecasting is difficult to change, indeed.

In her book “Impossible to Ignore. Creating memorable content to influence decisions” Carmen Simon writes,“It is critical for us to help audiences keep in mind valuable information” to prevent “accidental forgetting.” As she observes, “We may forget what we experienced, but we won’t forget what we understood.” Properly understanding brands requires effort, of course, and that’s where marketing must step in.

If the typecasting is unwarranted or undesirable, there are three areas to consider in addressing this:

  1. Bold action. Just as a comedic actor would take on a dramatic role to alter audience and critical perceptions, so should brands take on their new role with strategic timing. Appreciating the resistance to change, the marketing may need to be suitably jarring to challenge the type casting and reposition the brand.
  2. Often brands become lax in telling their own story and then wonder why others are not following them. As in the case of WWE, the brand’s executives are taking their story directly to ad agencies and advertisers emphasizing that they are more and capable of more by means of tie-ins and promotions than the limited view media execs may have.
  3. Brands, just as the markets they do business in, must adapt to a constantly fluid and evolving space. Depending on the category, change can be either at a snail’s pace or almost daily. Brand marketers must carefully consider the pros and cons of such a move in order to eliminate the drag of typecasting can have on sales performance and growth.

Essentially, for brands to have the chance to break free from typecasting their actions must create new memories, based on an altered understanding of the brand. Communicated and received successfully old meanings can be pushed aside to make a new role for the brand.

 

Farewell to an Advertising Legend.

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by Rayna Lancaster

If you’ve been in the marketing business anytime in the past 50 years, you’ve probably known a few damn-good art directors. But unless you knew Bob Schiffer, you missed one of the best.

Bob passed away June 17, 2018, due to heart disease, ironic in the case of a man whose heart was seemingly big enough to hold the whole entire world.

Bob was just a regular kid who grew up in the Bronx he loved, in New York City. He attended the Pratt Institute and the New York School of Visual Arts and got a sort of low-rent job doing catalog paste-up, I think. He hated it but it paid the bills for his young, new family of three. One day in 1969, Bob took a big chance (one of many many risks he’d take in his professional life). He walked into the offices of the renowned Doyle Dane Bernbach ad agency in Manhattan with his modest portfolio. He got hired immediately as an art director with no degree, not much experience and few, if any, connections. Does that even happen anymore? Well, okay. Augusten Burroughs.

Big thinking led to Think Small.

At DDB, those were the real-life Mad Men days. Bob worked on national and international accounts like American Airlines, Mobil Oil, and Clairol to name a few. He was involved in creating the then revolutionary and groundbreaking “Think Small” campaign for the Volkswagen bug. He was ahead of his time, at just the right time.

Bob and family left the New York advertising mecca for John Malmo Advertising, now Archer Malmo, in Memphis, Tennessee. He loved John Malmo and the favor was returned. “He was the best idea man I ever met,” John said. He told Bob’s son Rob about the day they were doing a photo shoot for an outboard motor company. The concept was “three men in a tub.” Bob had the tub but no men. So he so ran out on the street and grabbed three big fat guys, strangers, and pulled them in for the shoot. John still howls telling that story.

After Malmo, Bob moved the family to Largo, Florida, to work at a Young & Rubicam agency then called Zemp Advertising where he worked on Publix, Florida National Bank and Florida Power. From there he went to Bozell Advertising in Tampa to work with Howard Ellis and company on the Florida Lottery, Nehi Soft Drinks, Tampa Electric and Val-Pak.

Over the course of his nearly 60-year career, Bob would garner an almost uncountable number of advertising awards of excellence: Numerous awards from the Advertising Club of New York, the C.A. Show, Art Directors Club of New Jersey and of Memphis, Clio, C.A. and Telly awards, a National Addy and dozens and dozens of regional Addys.

He certainly left his mark.

Who’d think just driving in a car with someone could be as interesting as riding with Bob? Gregory N. King knows. He described driving to lunch with Bob at the wheel when Bob noticed some guy on a motorcycle harassing a woman jogger. “Bob throws the car into a hard brake slam, jumps out as it’s still moving, I’m in shock thinking about his several heart attacks…” Cops were called, woman was safe, jerk was chastised. “That was Bob,” Gregory said. “He was such a great guy.” When young Gregory asked Bob how to succeed in advertising, Bob poked him in the chest and said, “Follow your heart.”

One day long ago at Malmo, a 14-year-old kid called the agency and asked to speak to anyone in the art department. Bob answered and the kid asked what kind of degree does he need to become a commercial artist? “None,” Bob replied, “Come see me.” Thus began a lifelong mentorship by Bob for that young man, John G. Schmitz. Today John is a successful games designer and illustrator in Reno who said, “Bob Schiffer is the single most important person of my artistic life and the best creative director I have ever seen.” Bob racks up another groupie.

Tampa Bay area art director Ron Roman calls Bob, “The consummate ad man…old school, hands on, and a true artist.” Amazing in the ad world, Bob could actually draw. Ron and Bob were long time friends and Ron calls him the “art director’s art director.” He remembers interviewing with Bob at Zemp in the early 80s, seeing his cluttered desk full of hand-drawn TV storyboards, and thinking, “That’s what I want to do.” And he has, to great acclaim.

Howard Ellis, principal of the former Bozell agency, describes Bob with equal affection. He said it took some doing to pry Bob away from Y & R but he succeeded after a year of trying and was glad he did. The agency benefited greatly, Howard said.

Bob was famous for his temper. Or infamous I guess is the right word. I had the good fortune to be Bob’s writer at Y & R. What a team, if I do say so myself. After I left to free-lance, that sweet Y & R receptionist and all-around problem-solver Shirley Fletcher would call me to talk Bob down off one of his notorious tirades. He calmed down for me, thank God. Now, about 40 years and 500 lunches later, I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do without Bob Schiffer in the world.

A heavenly calling.

Bob Schiffer was a man of deep Faith, with a capital F. But he didn’t preach at you. Or bust your arm to convert you. He also wasn’t content to just sit around and read the Bible. His Faith showed up in action. He lived it. And not just on Sundays but on every day of every week of every one of the 40-plus years I knew that man, and long before that I am sure.

Bob officially retired from Bozell but he never really retired. He told me that God came and spoke to him and what God said was, “I gave you a talent to create and many of your friends I gave the same talents. I want you to ask them if they would be willing to share those talents for His work here on Earth.”

That’s when Ads4aCause was born. Bob felt his mission was to assemble us old pros and create an ad agency that provided creative services at no cost for worthwhile charities. He enlisted veteran art directors Ron Roman and Rob Chapin, Tim Schaedler as photographer, Glen Peak as marketing guru, ex-Y&Rers Gwen Peterson and me as copywriters, and Jennifer Frazier, too. Curtis Graham even succumbed to Bob’s charms and produced magic, as usual. Through Ads4aCause.org, this group of volunteers under Bob’s able creative direction provided free creative for the American Red Cross, Homeless Emergency Project, Police Athletic League, WMNF community radio, Week End Hunger, Christian Outreach Center, and other groups that really truly help people.

Talk about a parting shot.

Besides his faith, there was one other constant in Bob’s life. His rock. His inspiration. His muse. His Jean. Childhood sweethearts, they were married for 52 years, raised three great kids who gave him five grandkids and two great grandsons.

After Jean passed away six years ago Bob was adrift.  He leaned on his faith, his kids, and his friends and rallied to live the best possible life he could without Jean.

Bob was a salty dog, really. His tantrums are legendary. What bugged Bob the most was BS. He hated it. Bad input. Rotten clients. Stupid rejections of good concepts. Jerk AEs. Dumb rules. He was pretty tired of that by the time he left this world. Ever the advertising pro, Bob Schiffer wrote his own obituary and entrusted son Rick to see it was implemented. All he wanted it to say was:

No_BS

Artwork by John G. Schmitz.

When Rick told me, I literally howled out loud. So Bob. So funny. Pushing the limits right up to the end. I’m told that Bob’s double-entendre concept is being used, as requested, as the memorial pamphlet at his service, and the line was in his very brief Times obit.

So, farewell old buddy Bobarino. You were too kind to me and I learned a lot from you, as did just about every person lucky enough to work with you, know you, or even simply meet you.

Ciao, BS.

 

Opinion: It’s time to get flexible and break away from groupthink

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kelly-sikkema-291518Good reading this week comes from our 4A’s (American Association of Advertising Agency) membership via their 4A’s SmartBrief, news for the advertising, media and marcom industries. Agencies need to break away from the homogenized confines of an office in order to allow creativity to flourish, writes Creative Equals’ Ali Hanan. Flexible working arrangements — or a day shaped by core hours — would give creatives space to think and encourage more women to stay in the industry, she writes. The article appeared on June 20 in the online British publication, The Drum, run by industry experts that “believe marketing can change the world.” We tend to agree. We contacted Ali to ask about the statistic, “88% of all creative is shaped by a homogenized group of creatives (male, white, educated).” She replied, “That is the case in the UK from my research. Only 12% of CDs are women so that means 88% of them are men and that group is very white!” Wondering about how the US stacks up, we found a 2013 Fast Company article stating, “Women control a whopping 80% of consumer spending, yet only 3% of creative directors are female.” A 2014 3 Percent Conference report states, “The percentage of female Creative Directors in the Communication Arts 2013 Advertising Annual reached 11.5%.” Looking beyond all the stats, we were pleased to see in this June 2017 article by Hanan, attention drawn to the “flexibility” issue. Well aware that a willingness to change or compromise regarding work style and working hours to accommodate valuable workers with lives outside of work is an issue for all industries. We are also well aware that inflexible working hours affects men, too.

Could flexible working save creativity? Article by Ali Hanan

At McCann Japan, the company’s new artificially intelligent creative director, AI-CDβ is busy responding to live briefs from clients with logic-based creative direction based on past trends and success of TV ads. Last year, a human advert showing the hand-drawn beauty of giant calligraphy artistry narrowly beat AI-CDβ’s ‘superhuman flying dog’, in a consumer vote, by just 9%. Only with divergent human thinking will creativity defeat the robots.

Currently, creativity is in a workplace straitjacket.

Could our inflexible, outdated working systems be holding us back? Currently we’re in a ‘groupthink’ situation where 88% of all creative is shaped by a homogenised group of creatives (male, white, educated) within a traditional 9-6pm time structure. To creatively outrun artificial intelligence, it’s time to add in fresh, divergent perspectives into the mix, fast. To do that, we have to rewrite the workplace.

Trailblazing ideas rarely come during office hours.

Laura Jordan Bambach, chief creative officer at Mr President and co-founder of SheSays dreams her ideas (she scrawls in a ‘dream diary’ beside her bed, some time in the small hours), while chief executive of J. Walter Thompson, James Whitehead, cites his Saturday run as his most productive thinking time. Ana Balarin, executive creative director at Mother London, uses her breast-feeding time to solve creative problems, while Dentsu Aegis UK and Ireland chief executive Tracy De Groose says conversations with her sons have sparked some of her most creative ideas.

Our notions of time are outdated.

Imagine if our workplaces focused on a six-hour day, instead of our 24/7 model. Or, we worked around ‘core hours’ of 10am-4pm, like a recent workplace initiative from Wieden + Kennedy in London.

It makes sense; a recent study from Sweden showed that a six-hour working day significantly increased productivity. Nurses who worked a six-hour day were happier, healthier and had more energy compared to working eight hours. Additionally, they took less sick days and were less stressed, more active and experienced less back and neck pain.

If creatives could come in and focus on six-hours of ‘core working’ just consider the fresh, divergent approaches that could spark. A recent initiative from AMVBBDO has introduced permanent half-time working roles for parents, which may shape a path back to work for those we currently force to leave in droves: mothers.

Inflexible working hours mean we lose a huge majority of mothers.

While not considered a ‘diversity’ group (like race, LGBTQ, age, ability), the fact is so few mothers shape work within our business. Yet research from Digital Mums shows six out of 10 working mothers don’t have access to flexible work, despite laws introduced in 2014. Almost seven out of 10 stay-at-home mums would go back to work in some capacity if flexible work was an option. Creative Equals research shows an incredible 60% of our young female creatives believe they won’t be able to stay in the industry with a young family.

With open flexible workplaces, there is no doubt we’ll retain our mothers, attract Generation Z and, with multiple points of view at the table, unleash creativity. Just maybe we’ll daydream those unexpected, impossible ideas no algorithm can possibly predict, let alone create.

AdSpeak #36 – By carefully balancing science with creativity, marketers benefit.

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AdSpeak_36_BrainThe human brain is enormously complex. It takes both left and right sides to successfully function in life. The same is true in marketing. With all the tools available to marketers today, what was once considered more of an art, has now morphed into more science.

Historically, striking the right balance between art and science has always been a challenge for brands. In 1990, we built PeakBiety on a simple core philosophy, one of “balancing marketing knowhow with creative vision.” Admittedly, this was nothing new at the time. It’s the same philosophy that had propelled the Leo Burnett agency to greatness decades before.

Although, the tools and means for achieving marketing success have changed greatly over the years, this core philosophy remains as true as ever. Successful communication requires both right and left sides of the brain. The left brain enables us to understand customer perceptions and user needs. This can be as simple as research gained from sorting through readily available information, or as complex as conducting qualitative and/or quantitative research.

With such knowledge in hand, the creative team gets solid strategic direction to anchor the communications they create. No matter how visionary the creative execution, everyone understands the main idea to be conveyed, thus eliminating the usual guesswork as to whether an idea is right, or whether it will resonate with the intended audience.

More important, this information is received before, rather than after the idea is shared with the audience. Mistakes like the controversial Kendall Jenner Pepsi commercial could have easily been prevented with a little well-planned science and testing beforehand.

For this reason, PeakBiety’s simple combination of marketing insight and creative execution remains essential to a marketer’s success. It is only through the careful balancing of both sides of the brain that marketing initiatives get their fair shot at achieving, and even exceeding stated goals.

Tribute To A Positioning Genius

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The-Origins-Of-Brand-Positioning-1

As the agency that positions itself with the brand promise, The Power of Perception®, we would be remiss not to acknowledge the passing of marketing great, Jack Trout. Not only did Mr. Trout coin the term “positioning,” the verb “to position” is part of marketing vernacular today. Branding Strategy Insider posted this intelligent homage to the legend in his field.

The Origins of Brand Positioning: Article by Derrick Daye

It is with great sadness that we mark the passing of Jack Trout who died Sunday at the age of 82. To many in the business of building brands, Jack was a pioneer, a mentor, and a game changer. In 1969, he and his partner, Al Ries, introduced the now highly valued concept of positioning in the paper “Positioning Is A Game People Play In Today’s Me-Too Market Place.” This became the genesis of their ground-breaking first book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. Positioning would quickly grow into one of the world’s most powerful business concepts, a countermeasure to the noise and confusion that plagues the minds of consumers searching for value in an over-communicated society.

As a mentor, he groomed the thinking of generations of marketers and executives using the sharp edges of candor to make his points and push others to be better. His wisdom was spread out over 13 books that include classics such as Marketing Warfare, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Differentiate or Die, Repositioning: Marketing in an Era of Competition, Change, and Crisis, Big Brands. Big Trouble, A Genie’s Wisdom and Trout on Strategy.

Jack was also a friend to Branding Strategy Insider contributing 109 thought pieces since 2007. Most of them were set to the beat of differentiation and its role in competitive advantage. Some reminded CEO’s that they are the ultimate CMO, while others challenged an agency world that he felt was drifting away from its purpose.

Today we remember Jack and revisit the concept of positioning through a compilation of his thoughts:

Positioning is something (perception) that happens in the minds of the target market. It is the aggregate perception the market has of a particular company, product or service in relation to their perceptions of the competitors in the same category. It will happen whether or not a company’s management is proactive, reactive or passive about the on-going process of evolving a position. But a company can positively influence the perceptions through enlightened strategic actions.

In marketing, positioning has come to mean the process by which marketers try to create an image or identity in the minds of their target market for its product, brand, or organization. It is the ‘relative competitive comparison’ their product occupies in a given market as perceived by the target market.

Re-positioning involves changing the identity of a product, relative to the identity of competing products, in the collective minds of the target market.

De-positioning involves attempting to change the identity of competing products, relative to the identity of your own product, in the collective minds of the target market.

What Seven Concepts Are Critical To Brand Positioning?

1. Perception (their’s, not your’s)
2. Differentiation
3. Competition
4. Specialization
5. Simplicity
6. Leadership
7. Reality

To sell concepts, products and services, marketers have to understand how the mind works:

1. The mind is a limited container.
2. The mind creates “product ladders” for each category (cars, toothpaste, accounting services, hamburgers, etc.) There is always a top rung and a bottom rung in each category.
3. The mind can only remember seven items in a high interest category. Most people remember only two or three items in a category.
4. On the product ladder, Positions One and Position Two typically account for more than 60 per cent of the sales in that category. In other words, Positions Three, Four and Subsequent are not profitable.
5. The mind hates complexity. To the mind, complexity equals confusion. People don’t have time to figure out confusion.
6. The best way to enter the mind is to OVER-SIMPLIFY the message.
7. The most powerful positioning is to reduce your message to one simple and easily understood word.
8. Minds are insecure. Most people buy what others buy: this is the “herd mentality.”
9. Minds don’t change—easily.

 

Throwback Thursday Ping Pong

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Looking for a good throwback post, we searched through our video archives and found this 1995 spot created and produced by the agency when it was known as Peak Barr Petralia Biety. The spot is one of our favorites for its strong concept and humor, not to mention excellent execution and production all the way from casting to timing to music and sound effects. No wonder it cleaned up at the award shows.

Obviously, a lot’s happened with mobile phones since they were first developed in the ‘70s and then mass produced and marketed in the ‘80s and ‘90s. When it comes to technology, 30 or 40 years is like going back to the time of the Neanderthals.

In the very early days of mobile phones, they weren’t created with consumers in mind. Back then, they were intended for businessmen-types like Donald Trump who drove big Jags and flew Concorde, not your average Joe. Even at the start of the 1990s this was still the case. Nokia’s first ‘handheld’ mobile phone, the Mobira Cityman 900, launched in 1989 and weighed just 1.8 lbs was a huge improvement over their 1982 carphone, the Mobira Senator, weighing in at a whopping 21.6 lbs. To date, more than 250 million Nokia 1100 devices have been sold, making it the bestselling electrical gadget in history. By the way, while on the subject of useless trivia…did you know that today, more people in the world have mobile phones than toilets?

So how did Peak Barr Petralia Biety land the Nokia account? Back around 1990, our start-up agency got introduced to some nice people at what was then the U.S. headquarters for Nokia Mobile Phones (Finland-based parent company). The U.S. headquarters office then…believe it or not…was in a strip mall in Largo, FL.

Those were the days when mobile phones were more likely to be found hard wired in cars…and, as mentioned earlier, considered a businessman’s toy. Nokia’s vision and focus was on making the mobile, hand-held phone something that all people would want to own. What hand-held market existed at that point was “owned” by Motorola. A few short years later…Nokia became the leading international cell phone manufacturer and moved their offices to Dallas. PeakBiety had the privilege of helping Nokia grow their business and, within a few short years, we were communicating with consumers via national television. Later, we also had the privilege of helping Nokia become dominant in Latin America markets.

Our Nokia experience provided many important lessons for the agency. One in particular was the lesson of never adopting a policy of a “minimum spending level” in assessing the value of a prospective client. Had we a “minimum spend” policy…Nokia at that time would not have qualified. Moral: good people with good ideas should command agency attention and consideration…regardless of current marketing budget size.