Thoughts on ‘Digital’ job titles

Aka: ‘Creating noise where there was no signal in the first place’

Back in January, associate professor of marketing, brand expert, and Marketing Week columnist, Mark Ritson, published a piece on the ‘death of digital’ job titles.

It went a little something like this:

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If you’re familiar with Ritson’s column, you can pretty much imagine the rest. I’m not one to bite when bait is so blatantly waggled in one’s direction but this is something that I’ve been niggling on for a while and, the other day, said niggle floated to the surface…

Via what some of you might refer to as ‘a mini Tweetstorm’:

Oh wait, a bit of background first. In case you missed it, Ritson’s piece came in response to another huge piece of industry news (January’s a slow news month) and that was [ad agency] Adam & Eve DDB’s move to ‘axe’ said D word from all job titles.

Ritson said:

The news that adam&eveDDB has dropped the digital designation from all its job titles came as no surprise last week. Despite the prevalence of the D word and the omnipresence of digital planners, digital strategists and digital marketers under every lamp post, nobody in the know ever doubted that the prefix would eventually become an anachronism.

And, unsurprisingly, the article (and the ‘news’ it referenced) became the talk of the town (which, when you think about it, is a&eDDB’s raison d’être).

And now everybody’s talking about it.

What I actually meant was #PredictionsBreakfast (hey, I was grumpy – I got it wrong). You know the event I’m talking about, right? It’s the one where I said this:

Someone in the audience (I think – it might’ve been Andy Oakes challenging us) asked the question ‘Are digital job titles dead?’ – I think my response was something along the lines of a big sigh, laughter, and then ‘no’.

Which is kinda how I got to the next bit –  

And I’d say that’s a fair enough comment. The term ‘digital’ means so many different things to so many different brands, agencies, publishers, partners, vendors – the list goes on – to simply ‘do away with it’ because it seems on trend is quite possibly the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.

That said, I mean what I say: it could become redundant one day, maybe a generation from now – when the entire marketing job suite fully understands and gets what it means (and to whom). But that’s not going to happen this year and I very much doubt it’ll happen in the next.

And…

Which means that for the brands, campaigns, and projects that we work on, digital is a core component to nearly all of them. Do our partners need a experts? Undoubtedly. Do they feel more comfortable knowing they have a specialist on the case? Definitely. Would they give two hoots if we dropped it completely? Probably not.

But in the same way that products are designed to meet a consumer need, so are jobs created to meet client demand.

A small correction on this point. If you only read the headlines, you’d be forgiven* for thinking that a&eDDB had killed ‘digital’ only to replace it with the word ‘interactive’. The truth, as always, is slightly different. What a&eDDB have actually done is recategorised media into three areas: film, display, and interactive (more on that later).

So yes, replacing digital with interactive is a mistake – but let’s be clear: that is not what has happened here.

What has happened is that someone’s kick-started an intelligent debate about how we move the industry forward – and that a great thing (and should be commended).

Mark Ritson loves a rant (and I love him – sincerely, if you ever get a chance to see him lecture, GO), but on this there is a simple response: the industry just isn’t there yet.

…which means we’ll continue to have digital strategists, creatives, directors, etc… whatever’s required to get the job done.

Because ultimately, isn’t that the most important thing?

Thanks for reading.

JW.

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APPENDIX

– aka, related Tweets that I could find commentary for but are still worth your time.

Also

And my personal favourite…

 

*By ‘forgiven’, I mean ‘not forgiven at all’ – you should work harder at knowing more.

3D Printing THORN from Destiny

What’s that? 3D printing a gun from a video game? HOW NERDY DO YOU GET, WHATLEY?!

This is a super-nerdy post that encompasses online gaming, 3D-printing, and one awesome kick-ass summer project for one awesome kick-ass gamer.

You have been warned.

Still here? OK!

There’s a game I play on my PlayStation 4.

It’s called DESTINY.

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It’s a team game and it is awesome to play online with friends. There was a gun in the previous version (aka ‘year one’/vanilla Destiny, we’re now into year two, The Taken King (which is awesome btw, you should get it)) that everybody hated.

It was called THORN.

It looks like this:

Thorn-0

The weapon still exists in-game (but was nerfed for year two) and was, for most of the first year of Destiny, the bane of many a player. If you completed the epic quest to get said gun (and used it when playing other people online) you were not liked at all.

Why? It was a two hit kill, with a sniper-rifle-like range and poison-laced bullets.

It was a horrid, horrid gun.

My friends hated it.

I hated it.

So, when you really want to say a proper cheeky but really massive thank you to someone you play with online for being an awesome Destiny gamer over the past year or so, what better gift to get them than the 3D-printed model of the gun they hate most?

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This is how it happened.

I work at Ogilvy & Mather Advertising and, fortunately for me, as part of Ogilvy Group UK, we get access to the awesome people that work at Ogilvy Labs.

Ogilvy Labs just so happen to have a 3D printer.

An Ultimaker 2, to be precise.

This one, in fact.

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After chasing it down in the building (things can wander) it transpired that my mate Jon just so happened to be looking after it.

‘Could you do me a favour, Jon?’

‘Sure man, send me the files and let me have a look and we’ll see.’

Fortunately, 3D print files can be found relatively easily online (why charge for something that you need a £2,000 machine to print in the first place, right?) and so after a short spot of Googling, I found the files on My Mini Factory (free sign up to download but if you’re REALLY lazy, I’ve saved them for you right here).

Jon reckoned he could do it but asked that I bought my own plastic. The exact type required for our machine was 3mm PLA 100m coil. Faberdashery is a pretty good website for this kinda stuff and for £24, it had exactly what I needed.

A few days later, we were in business.

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And Jon (and his man, Lorenzo) got to work.

A few weeks later… this appeared.

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This is the barrel of the gun known as THORN.

It took a few hours and the other parts, according to the experts, were definitely going to take longer. That is, if they worked out at all. The printer was used to much smaller jobs you see and they’d never put it through its paces like this before.

But the thing about Ogilvy folk, they’re a tad determined…

Two weeks later, I had a call from Jon.

‘Can you pop down, mate. I wanna show you something.’

And he did.

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Amazing, right?

And HUGE.

The whole thing looked fantastic and, to top it off (and something I didn’t spot when I downloaded the files) you could put an elastic band inside so that the trigger would actually work with the hammer as a faux firing mechanism.

IMMENSE.

Eleven separate parts, two of which can move together, printed over several days and we were almost there.

OK, so maybe only halfway there.

The other thing that you need to create something like this is access to some artistic talent. Someone who could turn their hand to a project like this and be almost guaranteed outstanding results.

I happen to know that someone.

And this is what she did…

Step one: disassemble and spray paint the base layer.

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Step two: reassemble and admire handy work.

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Step three: apply black paint.

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Step four: scratch black paint away (to get the rugged, worn away / grubby look the gun sports in-game).

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Step five: Add a dash of green to the ‘eyes’ for the poison and…

YOUR GUN IS COMPLETE!

You may now sit back and admire your handy work.

TA DA!

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Isn’t it gorgeous?

It made me very, very happy.

Thank you to Jon, Lorenzo, and Annabelle. You have made a gamer named Phil very, very happy indeed.

That My Mini Factory link above has this gun, fully printed and painted for $299. It cost me £24 and two fairly large favours [pending].

Yeah, I’d say that worked out alright.

 

 

If you have a PS4 and play Destiny, feel free to add me on PSN. ‘Whatleydude’ is the handle (of course) and you should definitely, definitely seek out the gaming clan ‘MidlifeGamer’ – a nicer bunch of gaming men and women I never did meet.

Trend Churn

When is a trend not a trend?

Recently I shared with you the official Ogilvy social media trend report that I co-wrote with a lovely chap named Marshall Manson.

Throughout the process, Marshall and I played around with what we each thought our trends were for the year, stress-testing the notions, cross-examining the evidence (and each other) and as a result, some awesome stuff made it in.

Sidenote: co-writing is fun. If you write, try and write with someone some time. It can be both challenging and rewarding and if you’re lucky, like me, you’ll strike gold with someone super smart to do it with.

There were other trends and ideas too mind: ones that we didn’t have the time to investigate properly, ones that we just couldn’t find enough (read: any) evidence to support, ones that we had put some thought into but hadn’t completely finished noodling on them yet, and ones for which we had a catchy title but no real substance (basically 90% of the trend dross out there today).

Normally we’d cut those but this time however we decided to keep some of those unfinished trends in the final document and, under the heading ‘Random stuff we haven’t figured out yet’,  they can be found from slide 40 onwards in said presentation.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, the one that came closest to making it was a little thing that I’d been ruminating on called Trend Churn.

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Trend Churn?

The idea of Trend Churn was predominantly borne out of the micro trend known as ‘NORMCORE‘ making the leap from weird-ass white papers to actual ATL advertising and then arguably failing.

Miserably.

Gap – ‘Dress Normal’ / Wieden + Kennedy

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“Sales at the Gap continued to drop in November, as its roundly-criticized “Dress Normal” fall campaign failed to drum up interest from consumers.

Gap’s comparable sales for November were down 4% versus a 2% increase last year. Sales were down 7% year-on-year in October and declined 3% in September. Gap’s other brands, Old Navy and Banana Republic, saw sales increase this last month — so this is a Gap-specific problem.” – Business Insider, December 2014

The word itself, ‘Normcore’, first came to my attention in a K-Hole trend report entitled ‘Youth Mode

The Youth Mode report introduces the problem of Mass Indie culture—“where everyone is so special that no one is special”—and proposes a new aspirational model in #Normcore, “a way of being that prioritizes self-identification over self-differentiation.” Normcore is like the smiley face emoticon, which K-HOLE uses so affectively: inclusive, basic, and human; an invitation to engage.

Makes perfect sense right? Right.

Turns out the whole thing was a non-starter. A non-trender, if you will.

And that is a trend itself.

The whole schtick I was pitching at Marshall was the idea that when the bright young trendy creatives are sucking up all the sexiest trend reports all at the same time, constantly under pressure to deliver The Next Big Thing, then surely at some point or another the Emperor’s latest threads will wind up in an ad somewhere.

shadwell

Samsung – ‘Be Your Own Label’ / Cheil Worldwide

“Samsung set to discontinue Galaxy Alpha in favor of cheaper phones. Production of the metal Alpha will reportedly end when the current inventory of materials runs out.” – The Verge, December 2014

The thing is with writing [a decent] trend report is that you really do need a number of proof points that at least go some way to validate your thinking.

Without those, it’s just a hunch report.

With Trend Churn, I didn’t have the data . I knew that Normcore had leaked into adland but I couldn’t find anywhere that actually measured its impact. Not without any meaningful evidence anyway. Everything in this piece so far is pretty circumstantial.

But you can see what I was noodling at.

I’ll leave you with this piece of solid gold, nabbed from an amazing blog post (from an amazing writer – Jenka Gurfinkel) called ‘The Possibly Real Trend of Real Trends

“In the days of slow-moving, 20th century media, emergent cultural expressions had time to incubate below the radar before they tipped into mass awareness. Pre-Tumblr, the only way to find out about a new cultural emergence was through the unassailably real channel of one of its actual practitioners. There was no need to wonder about veracity. Now, a nascent trend doesn’t really have the time to mature into something legitimate before the trendhunting hyenas descend upon it, exposing it to a sudden burst of scrutiny. What remains becomes neither niche enough to be authentic nor mass enough to be indisputable. Maybe no new trend seems quite real because it hasn’t had the chance to become real before we’re looking it up on urban dictionary and just as swiftly are click-baited on to the next dubious dopamine hit of meme culture.”

 

And in that one paragraph, Jenka nailed exactly the point I was getting at.

Watch for this in adland throughout 2015.

There’ll be more.

Much more.

 

..

As if you’ll notice.

 

Social Media Trends for 2015

2015 trends, innit.

Republished [with edits] from Social@Ogilvy.

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Back in December 2013, Managing Director of Social@Ogilvy EAME, Marshall Manson asked me to co-write some kind of trend prediction document for 2014. I think his words at the time were something like ‘Look, everyone does them, and everyone slags them off but Ogilvy should have one and I think we could put something decent together’.

We laughed. We agreed. And then we got to work.Screen Shot 2015-01-11 at 22.05.11

A few emails back and forth and a couple of working meetings inbetween and Marshall and I came up with a fairly decent document covering off our shared trend predictions for the year ahead.

Such was the feedback of said presentation, we decided to it again for 2015.

WOOP WOOP.

So, at the bottom of this post you’ll find our latest work. It contains a brief overview of our predictions from last year as well as a more in-depth look at the thoughts, trends and predictions for the year ahead. However, if you’re a big cheat and don’t want to read the presentation (seriously, what kind of monster are you?) here are the cliff notes:

TREND PREDICTIONS FOR 2014: REVIEW

Marshall and I scored four for four with, ‘Disposable Content’,Brand Banter’, ‘Facebook as a Paid Media Channel’, and a little thing called ‘Sub-dividing Communities’. Each and every one of them came true and, well, we’re pretty chuffed about that (and the evidence is in the deck below – you didn’t think I was going to give it away that easily, did you?)

Without further ado, let’s move on to our:

TREND PREDICTIONS FOR 2015

Trend 1. Twitter Zero
Algorithmic content serving is coming very soon and, when it hits, and very much like Facebook before it, brands will need to understand not only what paid products are available but also how to use them.

Trend 2. The Video Battle Royale
‘Video’ was one of my ‘things that are not trends for 2015‘ however the BIG BATTLE FOR VIDEO AD DOMINANCE is 100% going to be a thing next year. With Facebook and Twitter both going all in on video-based ad products, we’re also predicting that Instagram’s existing ad products will also soon include video. Did you know Facebook outdid YouTube, on the video front, in 2014? We don’t think Google will let that lie… do you?

Trend 3. Teens & Anonymous Platforms
Less of a trend prediction more a piece of social / anthropological commentary, this section is about there now being a generation of teens who have grown up not knowing a world without an Internet. So what does ‘youth Internet’ look like? And why?

Check it out, you’ll see.

And hey, tell us what you think on Twitter (@whatleydude or @marshallmanson) – we’d love to get your feedback!

 

New stuff from me.

Short post covering off five things that happened this past seven days.

Whatley x 3

Regular readers will know I run a feature called ‘Five things on Friday‘ and I very nearly included these things in that, but then I realised it went against my own brief for that (e.g.: things about me might not actually be that interesting), so I broke them out into a separate post.

1. My new job got announced. So that was exciting.

2. I’ve started keeping a log of the brand-related Snapchat activity I find interesting. You may or may not find it useful [one day].

3. The Mobile World Congress edition of The Voicemail went live. If you only ever listen to one episode of this weekly mobile technology podcast, make it this one. It’ll prime you with all the mobile knowledge you’ll need for the rest of the year. Probably.

4. The Guardian wrote about ‘the secret to viral marketing‘ and they asked me to comment. I commented. They published it. Before you click through, can you guess what the secret is?

5. I wrote a piece for work about why Facebook bought WhatsApp and it went on to become one of our best performing posts to date. Proper sense of achievement that. As was presenting a webinar on my 2014 social media trends to the social teams globally (including this bunch of pizza-munching Ogilvy folk in DC). Amazing. Thanks for having me guys!

There were a few late nights and several early mornings, but this past week was pretty awesome.

That is all.

How to write a trend document

Sharing is caring.

How to write a trend doc

A couple months ago, at work, the new group-level European head of social media challenged me to come up with a couple of ideas that could form part of a trend document for the New Year – ‘We need a trend on one slide, and then maybe a slide on what to do about that trend after – can you do that?’.

Yes, was the answer. Of course. And the end result can be seen on the Social@Ogilvy blog with supporting slides on Slideshare.

But the thing is, whenever I try to come up with new ideas, I always start with words. Yes that’s right, WORDS.  Yes they might end up in a presentation at some point, but I never start with Powerpoint. Ever.

I start with a blank page, a clean browser (eg: no tabs open except search), some questions, and normally one idea that I’ve been noodling to get me going.

The clean page and browser were easy. The questions? They’re as follows:

  • What’s the trend?
    Does it have a name? What’s the angle?
  • What are the key drivers?
    Aim for three. If you have less, think of more. If you have more, reduce.
  • Examples?
    Again, three is the magic number. If there are no examples, then your trend is a prediction [and not wanted here; save it for another document].
  • Implications?
    The inevitable question: what it does this mean for brands?!

Using those four guiding principles, it’s relatively simple. I ended up writing a few for Ogilvy, two made the final cut, and I’ve developed a couple more for publishing elsewhere. But for the benefit of this post, I’ll just show you the first draft document that went onto underpin the aforementioned final presentation.

Copied and pasted direct from Word –

___________________________

TREND: DISPOSABLE CONTENT

DRIVERS

The Content Churn
With content marketing the buzz term of 13/14, every brand (and their corresponding agencies) is on the hook to constantly create content. Continuously churning through idea after idea, meme after meme… The desire to continually satiate the online hunger for more, more, more means that the content created in turn becomes smaller, and quicker to consume.

Unsurprisingly, this inevitably leads to mistakes. Which in turn leads onto our next driver…

Tweet & Delete
With the inevitable errors that happen in 24hr news rooms content hubs, the chances of a piece of work slipping out of the door without the correct sign off increase. It happens in all parts of the marketing industry, this isn’t new to social media.

However, unlike an offensive print ad, or a sexist TV commercial, social channels allow media owners to reach into the past and delete the offending content – as if it had never existed in the first place. This, of course, comes with as many risks and it does rewards. The latter in that it can be missed by many; and for the former? Post-deletion infamy on the Buzzfeeds and Reddits of this world.

Speaking of infamy…

Teens’ ever reducing content legacy
With the advent and subsequent global penetration of social media, the professional adults of today are finding that the penchant for over-sharing that was so new and exciting is slowly coming back to haunt them. Well, we’ve got news for you on this: the kids are wise to this one. The generation growing up RIGHT NOW is unlike no other before. This is the generation that has never known a world without the Internet (can you even imagine that now?) and they don’t want the selfies of today messing up the job interviews of tomorrow.

EXAMPLES

Snapchat [Platform Example]
It’s an obvious choice but it simply cannot be ignored. Given the voracity at which teenagers have embraced the platform and its mission-impossible-esque way of dealing with messaging, it’s no wonder brands are also getting in on the act.

Brand Example 1: 16 Handles was first with its voucher offer.
I like this.

Brand Example 2: Taco Bell + Snapchat collaboration = Burritos.
First(?) example of ‘mass broadcast’ from B2C.

Brand Example 3: Doritos for Halloween
UK example, unsure of purpose/ROI – but interesting as it mentions additional support from other social channels.

Brand Example 4: Charmin / Thor 2
One more than needed, but want to keep it as it fits with/proves ‘Tweet & Delete’.
Plus: it’s brilliant.

IMPLICATIONS

The marketing strategy goes by many names. From agile to reactive, from responsive to real-time – but the preparation and commitment required to make throwaway content such a success remains the same.

Preparation, preparation, preparation
Chance favours the prepared mind, and to get that viral smash, you need to have the approval processes sorted, the brand guidelines locked, and the right people in place to execute. Speaking of which…

Want an A game? Recruit the A team
Too many times do we see headlines that ostensibly blame young talent for social media errors – ‘The intern did it!’ or the like. The mistake here isn’t with the monkey, but in fact with the organ grinder. You need damn good talent to make great content that’s worth missing; so put your best men and women on the job. When it comes to the ephemeral, it’s time to get incredible

Be quick, be nimble, be agile
There’s no point in having the right processes and the right people if you simply don’t have the prowess to get it done promptly. Speed is of the essence.

REMEMBER: Your content is one thumb swipe away from being wallpaper. The trick is making that wallpaper stick.

APPENDIX

Unfinished ideas and other sources/thought starters

Guardian piece on messenger apps vs Facebook
TechCrunch on THE WHY of ephemeral media

Defining ephemeral media-
Amazing ideas from friends – which led to this
Good stuff from Amelia too (she should write more)

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And that’s about it.

Some structure, some research, and some words.

Do that a few times over, employ a couple of trusted friends to do the proof reading, and et voila: one trend document (here’s another example from 2012). If you’re really lucky, someone might even turn it into a presentation for you.

——–
Oh, and this is by no means the definitive way to write these things, it’s just how I do it.
I hope its useful. 

Team Ogilvy London vs Tough Mudder UK

“We came. We saw. We kicked its ass.”

Tough-Mudder

Saturday, October 5th – my Ogilvy colleagues and I completed the Tough Mudder North West challenge. 12 miles. 25 obstacles. One amazing feat.

Back in May, I started working with Ogilvy & Mather London Advertising on the Expedia UK account. The team were awesome and welcomed me with open arms. However, as an official member, I was told that I would have to join them in their Tough Mudder.

30mins later (after much heckling and also the clincher comment ‘James, it isn’t a race – it’s about TEAM BUILDING’ – I’m such a sucker for that stuff), this happened –

Turns out the best date we could all do it wasn’t in September after all. It was today. And guess what? We nailed it.

WINNERS

— Briony, me, Amelia, Harriet, Stephen and Joey —

There was blood. There was mud. There was euphoria. We climbed 12ft walls, we ran through electric cables, and we plunged ourselves into ice – and that is very much not even the half of it.

So far, we’ve raised just over £800 £1000(!) for Action on Bladder Cancer, the charity of choice of the Expedia UK marketing team, and there’s also (perhaps somewhat delirious) talk of making TM an annual Ogilvy event too – amazing.

If you’d like to sponsor me, or anyone else on my team, then you can do that on our dedicated sponsorship page (please do, even if it’s only a couple of quid it’d be appreciated).

I think I have a longer, more meandering post about how much of a personal achievement I feel this is (given that I only started running back in January), but that can wait for another day.

In the meantime, I’m headed home for a very long bath and while I do that, you’re going to sponsor me, right?

 

UPDATE: Photos now up on Flickr.