Author: James WHATLEY

It’s funny how one thing leads to another.

One reply to a Tweet about standing up for women in adland and the next thing I know I’m being asked to be a mentor for this fantastic programme.

This is how I found myself last week, listening intently to other mentors who were a lot smarter than me, in a room full of amazing women, offering mentorship and guidance with some of the issues that face this increasingly empowered workforce in our industry today.

Humbling, and utterly brilliant.

But like I said, it’s funny how one thing leads to another. When I made my intro to the room I, out of public-speaking-force-habit, began with ‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen’ – which I caught as I finished, then self-corrected to ‘Er… sorry – good morning, ladies’ – cue: much laughter and general hilarity. It was all taken in good spirit too.

I tweeted the faux pas later that day and ended up in a brilliant rabbit hole of ‘how to use more inclusive language at events‘ as well as a robust discussion whether arguing gender pronouns matter at all (see full discussion thread).

The post linked above about more inclusive language is definitely worth a read. Especially if you speak at or host/organise events.

I picked up this brilliant profile of the above-named singer/songwriter from Jed Hallam’s equally brilliant newsletter ‘Love Will Save The Day‘.

Read both (and subscribe to the latter).

First thing is to read this piece over at The Drum that talks about how the UK advertising industry has allegedly lost touch with the public (the full whitepaper that supports this article can be found here).

The article makes a strong case that advertising has no idea what it’s doing, is obsessed with unproven channels, and basically has a major unconscious bias problem that prevents it from maximising effectiveness with any of the work it produces.

All of these points have a grain of truth to them (with a healthy dose of ‘it depends’ appended to each).

There are two main problems I have with the findings.

1. Nowhere in the conclusions talk about the role of planners when it comes to insight-led creative work.
2. The research only interviewed media agencies but goes onto making conclusions on the entirety of adland (no creative agencies were spoken to).

There is a meaner point you could make about how a research paper about bias is biased towards the channels the media owner behind it specialises in – but as I said, that’d be mean.

Current status: discussion time with the authors.

Whatever happens today, this is great.

Watch it all.

Three this week: 

• Speaking of adland (again) - I agree with this. 
• The President of the United States of America.
• Music.   

• Today is Pride here in London. I know this week is a bit Ogilvy heavy but I am so here for this AMAZING work: ‘This Coke is a Fanta‘
• Also timely, Rory Sutherland on penalty shootouts.
• ‘It’s nothing like a broken leg’ is a visceral look into what it actually means to suffer from a mental health problem (vivid language means this might be a hard read for some).
• Eat popcorn with chopsticks.
• Painting dragons.
• Lessons in brand architecture.

If you don’t know what Blockchain is – AND IT’S OK IF YOU DON’T – Reuters recently put together this rather smashing overview of exactly what it is, how it works, and just how well it can be applied across multiple uses (outside of crypto-currencies).

Simple to read. Simple to understand. Good job.

Feeling good? Good.
Feeling OK? OK.
Feeling low? That’s OK too.

If sometimes you struggle – and hey, we ALL do, then maybe take a look at this thoughtful self-help step-by-step guide that I counsel all of you to take some time to look through.

I have it saved now.

You should do the same.

I have strong reservations about this Buzzfeed article, that reads like a PR puff piece (sorry not sorry), for Twitter. The author manages to write 2000 words on why Twitter is profitable when literally one word will do.

That word is only used twice in the whole piece but it is hella called out in the comments.

I’ll give you a clue: it rhymes with DUMP.

eg:

In a rare sub-280 character moment, Wallman wrote this piece for Marketing Week this week, extolling the virtues of giving agencies space for their individual creative process. Understanding that ‘the work’ isn’t always FOR YOU and that testing isn’t always (if ever) right.

It’s a good read.

Did you know that last month, Pokemon Go generated over $104m in revenue? That’s up 174% YOY. Source.

Did you know that 147m people played Pokemon Go last month ALONE? Not bad MAUs at all. Source.

And, to top it off, Niantic – the makers of the eponymous title – not only have other, similar games in the pipeline (Harry Potter has been announced) but is also working on improving the AR tech and making it all a lot less floaty. They call it ‘occlusions’ and it looks a little like this.

The reason I’m telling you this? Basically, anytime ANYONE talks about AR, eventually, Pokemon Go will come up in conversation and, as sure as day follows night, someone will say ‘Yeah, but that’s dead now, right?’. Now you can put them right.

Right?

Right.

Three this week: 

• Terry Crews says why he didn’t push back. Christ. TERRY CREWS. 
• I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the men being called out. This NYT piece is about what happened next to the women who said ‘Me Too’ – and it is this edition’s essential read. 
• 414 (and counting).

• Some Instagram TV stuff: I contributed to two pieces, one for the Ogilvy website (pre-formal announcement of IGTV) and again, after, for WIRED, after the fact – this time with a broader look at the online video landscape.
• The Feynman Technique.
• A bit late to the news cycle now but this two-year-old Quartz pieceprovides some good background on the whole LUSH COSMETICS thing that kicked off a while back.
• Oh! This is important – AD TRANSPARENCY has arrived, both on Twitter and Facebook. For the former, you can go to its new Ads Transparency Center and for the latter, well, it only just announced it - so go read. This is a good step in the right direction towards combatting the spread of fake news but it’ll be a lot more effective once it applies to ads that have ran, vs those that just happen to be live now.
• Another latecomer - Wadds did a good write up of the Meeker trends that matter (worth a read – as ever).
• This Neville Southall interview is FANTASTIC.

Anna. The trickster. You may have heard about this article already. If you haven’t read it yet – do. It’s great.

Sharing this list for two reasons.

1. It’s a great list of GREAT talent.
2. I have a friend on it and I AM SO PROUD.

The end.

Going to Cannes this year (for the advertising/creativity festival)? Don’t seem to have a Y chromosome about your person? Then hey, wear black yeah?

I know people that can separate art from artist. I have tried. And I don’t think I can. This piece puts it very well indeed.

The Atlantic, being interesting AF.

Three this week: 

• Harvey.
• Morgan.
• Tokyo. 

• This is me.
• More on Scott Hutchison (please read).
• BBH’s website output is on WICKED form right now and if you’re not reading every post, you’re missing out. The latest is another home run: ‘Making advertising is really simple – and really hard‘
• Another reason why I will probably end up getting a 4K Blu-Ray player(even though I know I shouldn’t).
• Meant to share this a couple of weeks ago - Wile E. Coyote in Augmented Reality is another glimpse into the AR future that is COMING.
• If, like me, you spent your youth playing Street Fighter II (CE/Turbo/Super etc) then you’ll love this 27k word article covering every single game in its history. I did.   

TRAILER 1: TREMORS, THE TV SHOW 
With actual Kevin Bacon doing real acting (and not pimping EE for once).

TRAILER 2: BLACKkKLANSMEN
Spike Lee and Jordan Peele? Sign. Me. Up.

TRAILER 3: ARIANA GRANDE DOES LABO
Not a film but still super cool.

TRAILER 4: BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY
Rami Malek is life.

TRAILER 5: SORRY TO BOTHER YOU
YES.

This is old, apparently, but I really like it.

After sending a WeTransfer the other day (to myself – standard), the holding page after the upload was this – a simple story about regrets. Originally made for International Women’s Day but a) still available and b) still worth reading.

Enjoy.

This is fantastic.

Pictured above is the brand-new, just-announced-yesterday Xbox Adaptive Controller.

You can read about it on the Microsoft website (and you should – the amount of care that has gone into creating this thing is plain to see).

Gaming is a HUGELY social activity. I never shy away from the fact that I game with my friends, online, on the mic, at least once a week – and I’m OK with it. As I overheard one of my mates say to his wife off-mic as he was laughing at a joke ‘Yeah, what? It’s like being down the pub but I’m here, yeah?’ – brilliant.

Gaming can be a solo venture too. Escapism. But that can only go so far. Enabling gaming for people that previously would’ve struggled or, worse yet, had enjoyed it but now couldn’t, is a phenomenally progressive move from Microsoft.

It is exciting and inclusive.

The charity our gamer group supports, Games Aid, has been helping create joypads for disabled children for years - from scratch. To have one of the major hardware manufacturers get onboard with this so publicly and with meaning is – as I said – fantastic.

MORE PLEASE.

This is a short film that features the man pictured – and is quite lovely.

Newly minted Chief Strategy Officer at Ogilvy UK, Mr Kevin (Kev) Chesters, has been to TED every single year since 2009. When he gets back, he distills his favourite talks from the event into one easy to consume hour of downloadable intelligence that he presents to those he works with.

2018 was no exception and today I went to this year’s edition of that download.

And… er… here are my notes:

What you have there, is a list of 29 (probably 28) brand new TED talks to keep an eye out for over the coming months.

These are (in Kev’s opinion – and one that I buy into; the presentation was super compelling) the best ones of the bunch and I’ll be keeping an eye out for them so you should too.

Additionally, feel free to hassle Mr Chesters on the Twitters as and when you have feedback/notes. .

Three this week: 

• Elle Graham-Dixon on ‘Time to get constructive‘
• Egypt - you’re next.
• ‘#Metoo didn’t happen overnight

• I must admit, I missed most of the Facebook F8 event. Good job TechCrunch did a really good catch-all write up.
• Interesting implications for who is responsible for what when selling a very new car.
• As promised last week, I wrote Klout klosing (sorry not sorry). Sidenote: some people REALLY DISAGREED with this article! They all missed the point! That is all. 
• The wonderful and brilliant and super smart Karin Robinson shared this video of Al Green’s isolated vocals with me and I’ve finally watched it and it is brilliant (also: follow Karin).
• I missed this experiment in voice-activated coupons (from Google and Target). The UX is clunky AF and I can see MANY bad versions of this rolling out… Good lessons here.
• ‘I’m Batman’.
• The most confusing press release ever?

Another week, another book recommendation (if you missed the last edition, then Molly Flatt’s Charmed Life of Alex Moore is OUT NOW – it’s dead good).

This week I’m recommending a different book altogether. Something that, had I not heard it from the horse’s mouth direct, I probably would’ve shrugged and moved on from – I’m hella glad I didn’t.

Some background: last week, the second week of the Squared Guru training I mentioned, we were fortunate to have an amazing speaker in the shape of Sam Conniff. Founder, ex managing director of youth marketing agency, Livity, and now author, give a talk about why pirates were THE ORIGINAL innovators (he wrote this article about the book launch – worth a look).

Aside from setting a new bar for representation on a single slide, the talk – and Sam – was excellent – and I am a complete convert. I bought the book off the back of that presentation and you should do the same.

I’ll read mine, you read yours, and then we’ll compare notes in about a month. Deal?

Deal.

Go get.

First, The Drum wrote about the purposeful decision to cultivate and encourage different cultures between companies and their in-house innovation teams/departments – something that I hugely disagree with!

You can read more about that, here.

Second, WIRED wrote about YouTube’s recently announced foray into recruiting ‘A-listers’ for its next batch of original content. The angle of the piece makes it seem like it’s an ‘instead of’ or an ‘either/or’ when it’s actually an ‘and’ and furthermore, a really interesting strategic point of growth when you think about it…

Me? I tend to fall down on the more audience-centric POV.

Third and finally, I’m speaking at the Buy Yorkshire conference on Tuesday next week (May 15th). Running through a slimmed down (but updated) version of the #OgilvyTrends2018 presentation. I’m really looking forward to it and, if you’re in the area, you should come (it’s free).

It was a Sunday night. An ad came on in the background – it sounded a bit… different. I looked up. And I saw this.

And it was awesome (and so I tweeted about it, above).

There’s a lot to love here.

1. I LOVE how the ad uses a catch-all term for all home assistant. Over, for example, the easier route of just going after one.

2. I LOVE the test itself (you should try it).

3. And I LOVE the fact that Channel 4 used a TV ad to drive interaction with this, what is ostensibly a teaser trailer for its next seasons of its sci-fi drama, HUMANS.

Ask your Home Assistant ‘Start Human Test’ and have a play.

Those that hold up the Burger King ‘Whopper Hijack’ as a ‘best in class’ use of voice (it isn’t) could learn a lot from this.

Good job HULK agrees then.

Not that new but if you missed it it’s definitely worth taking a look at.

As is this thread of data points therein.

Three this week: 

• What do we do with these men?
• The Nike Exodus.
• Monica Lewinsky: disinvited.
• R Kelly. About time.
• Roman Polanski. Unsurprising.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand…. GO! 

• Did you know that you can view (and edit) the advertising info that Google has on you? I didn’t either. Go see.
• What is life?
• Klout closed. Just in time for GDPR. I’m probably going to write about this at some point (the first two comments on that post are SOLID GOLD too).
• Mark Hamill is great. 
• There’s a pixel watch coming, apparently.
• Facebook said sorry - in an ad.

I wrote about this several editions ago – when the proof copy of my dear friend Molly Flatt’s debut novel, The Charmed Life of Alex Moore, first arrived.

Back then I said something along the lines of:

“My friend Molly Flatt has a book out. It is pretty damn good (so far). I am awfully proud of her.”

Last week I finished it.

And here’s what I said, to Molls, shortly after:

Quite.

Having had a few days to reflect, I’m less emosh and more thoughtful. The Charmed Life of Alex Moore starts out as a rich and knowing insight into the crazy world of startup land. If you’ve ever been anywhere near that industry, or have wanted to know how crazybatshi it can be, then you’ll love the way this book starts.

But then things get weird.

Unexplained coincidences. A call from a research agency in the Orkney Isles sets in motion a chain of events that completely flips everything Alex knows about herself, and the world, completely on its head.

Alex Moore is a brilliantly realised character living her best life in a perfectly described London of 2018. Until she’s not. And that’s when things get weird and wonderful. Go with it – the reward is worth the journey.

I cried. Thrice.

The Charmed Life of Alex Moore is out next Friday and you can pre-order on Amazon, Kindle, or Audible TODAY. Don’t just do it because Molly is a mate, do it because it really is a bloody good book. x

Tracey Thorn, best known as being one half of the duo ‘Everything but the Girl‘, writing for The New Statesman on 35 years of being described by male journalists.

It is an essential read.

Cutting off Thor’s hair in RAGNAROK should be a huge deal. But it wasn’t – not really – and it was handled with such deft care, along with a whole bunch of other huge character changes that you barely even noticed because you were having so much fun.

As Film School Rejects notes:

“Thor: Ragnarok is a little miracle of a movie. It’s easily the funniest film in the franchise. As much as I praise the vision of the directors witnessed in Iron Man 3and Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor: Ragnarok plays like a Taika Waititi film first and a Marvel movie second. He picks up two of their most mishandled action figures, frees them of their usual accessories, and redefines their appeal. Thor is not the God of Hammers; he’s the mother frickin’ God of Thunder. Cue “Immigrant Song.””

And the Marvel Cinematic Universe is better for it.

Read the analysis – it’s good.

Ben Shaw writes:

“Consultancies are eating our lunch, brands are spending less with agencies, with procurement running the show and paying us by the hour, pitches now seem to be not only chemistry, tissue, strategy and creative but hey look we even made the ad too. Instead of a multi-year marriage between client and agency, long term brand building responsibility has seemingly been handed over to the logo, creatives are increasingly being told to tell a thumb stopping, emotionally engaging story in 3-6” vertical mobile film, the programmatic revolution increasingly looks like Brexit with lots of overpromise and plenty of under delivery, ad fraud seems ripe within the digital ecosystem with fewer and fewer pounds going towards actual comms, media agencies have been found out for not being transparent so brands are building teams in-house, influencers are the new media and replacing creative ideas with poorly acted product placement, Social Media ad spend is set to beat the storytelling heartland of TV, unsurprisingly, more and more of our best young talent isn’t even thinking of joining the industry, whilst our best talent is leaving to go client side or join a platform/consultancy, the #MeToo wave is slowly making its way through the industry with the biggest of big dogs being taken down, the gender gap pay difference confirms that we aren’t supporting talent in our industry if they want to nurture life as well, and our entire industry feels like it’s built on a cultural cohort of white middle class Oxbridge thinking that is more out of touch with the rest of the country than ever before. Phew. Oh. And A.I. is going to replace all of us.”

When you put it like that way, the industry’s problems writ large, it all becomes rather depressing.

The good news is (and also delivered by the brilliant and newly minted Head of Strategy at BBH London), it’s not all as bad as it looks.

Putting Ben in this role is bloody smart. I admire the man and his work – and I’m looking forward to seeing what else he brings to the table. Soon.

This is a GREAT read.

Andrew White for the New York Times sits down with Denzel Washington and Michael B. Jordan. He opens with a question on what it was like for MBJ when, after his performance in Fruitvale Station (no, Robbie, I haven’t seen it yet -I’ll watch it tonight) film critics described him as a young DW.

And then it just flows from there.

One of those interviews where you just wish you were in the room.

Three this week: 

• Bill Crosby. Guilty. All charges. At last.
• Related.
• Disney has reportedly made John Lasseter’s leave of absence permanent.
• Last week I wrote about Japan being next. The BBC has got more on how that all played out.
• Fashion: next? 

LET’S HAVE IT. 

• Women pay for sex. Here’s why.
• VOX has written up the Alfie Evans story with insight and care.
• GOD OF WAR (PS4) came out last week and it is ACE. Here’s a really good article on why this is yet another example of the difference between Sony and Microsoft.
• Rolling Stone’s profile on Janelle Monáe is 🔥.
• ‘Too young to have an opinion, too old to innovate’ - ageism in advertising is RIFE. Good words (needs an incognito browser). 
• Here’s why you do your best thinking in the shower.
• Every mass murderer is a man. We should be talking about that. Gary Younge on EXCELLENT form. 
• The best obit research thread ever?

Have you seen DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE (easily the best sequel in the entire franchise)?

Know that whole ‘let’s rob the federal reserve and steal it all with dump trucks’ bit? Yeah, the writer’s work on the subject was so good that the FBI was called in to investigate just how the writer, Jonathan Hensleigh, knew so much about it.

Brilliant.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while (or if you know a bit about me and my work) you’ll know that about two years ago now, I started dicking about with building chatbots. I built one for the building I work in (if you ever visit Ogilvy London, search Messenger for ‘Roombot’) and subsequently wrote the strategic POV for the agency and launched a bot building practice/framework to help figure out how this new technology could be applied to solve consumer and client problems.

I wrote about it two trends decks ago and, in the most recent one, reviewed my prediction of ‘The chatbot gold rush’ as a ‘B+’ for effort while remarking that ‘it was less of a rush, more a leisurely jog’.

In short: bots arrived but they didn’t exactly set the world alight and, like multitudes of new technologies as and when they’ve appeared, it takes a bit of time to figure exactly how to apply them.

This article (and the title for this section) is a really good dip on where we are with bots today.

It goes some way in addressing the whole mis-naming problem that’s gone on with chatbots/bots etc… ‘Message app’ or ‘Message service’ is probably an easier and more accurate sell.

We’re still building bots for clients (we’ve run Stoptober on Messenger for Public Health England the past two years and, most recently, built the messenger solution for Reuters) – with more to follow v soon.

I guess our golden rule is a combination of framing vs pointy-problem-solving. In reverse order: what is the pointy problem we’re trying to solve and, when we’ve worked that out, how do we frame the messenger-based solution correctly to the consumer to encourage participation.

One to noodle on…

Three this week: 

• Asia Argentino – for The Guardian.
• Asking ‘Sugar Daddies’ about Me Too.
• Hey Japan, you’re next! 
• Google made this data vis: ‘Me Too Rising‘. 

BEEE-OH-EN-OH-ESSS.

• Spotted some great AR stuff in the wild this week. First up, new PlayStation game GOD OF WAR (more on this shortly) launched an AR map that you can just pop down on any flat surface and look around. I put it on a table at work - and it looked great. The second thing I saw was this INCREDIBLE IKEA ‘door’ execution. I love what kind of promise this shows. Can you imagine te-telling The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in this way? Immense. 
• Speaking of GOD OF WAR (my reward for getting this newsletter out on time tonight is to open the copy of the game I’ve got sat here next to me), this brand new and incredibly high-rated game is out today. This is a reaction video from the director of the game after he saw the first scores come in after the embargo lifted. It’s beautiful.
• I love this postcard.
• The world isn’t as horrific as you think.
• Sun’s out, tunes out - here’s a bunch of summer playlists for your ears.
• Creativity’s female future (this is great).
• F*** YOUR LIBRARY (not sure about this but OK).