Category: Advertising

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:

Screen Shot 2016-02-15 at 21.26.31

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.

__________________________

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.

Useful links and data re: #Millennials

Someone asked me recently how they might discuss the topic of ‘How to best engage millennials’. I was quite happy with the braindump that I responded with, so I thought I’d [re-]share it here.

Y’know, just some resources / interesting reading and stuff.

kanye

EDIT: I’ve decided that I’m going to try and keep this blog post updated with the latest findings on all things to do with millennials. The standard is high, so don’t expect to find Daily Mail headlines here. But yes, save this page and refer back to it later.

Last updated: Feb 25th, 2015.

Someone asked me recently how they might discuss the topic of ‘How to best engage millennials’. I was quite happy with the braindump that I responded with, so I thought I’d [re-]share it here.

Hope it’s useful.

__________

In answer to your question, this is what I throw at people in the office if/when they ask me about Millennials.

  1. This Marketing Magazine article touches upon a METRIC TON of stuff that my esteemed peer and colleague, Marshall Manson, and I have been covering recently across various media in regards to our 2015 Social Trends, have a read of that – it’s totally lifted some stuff from us wholesale but screw it, who actually cares?
  2. Speaking of that trend deck, Trend 3 (slide 36 onwards) of said presentation might also help (no guarantees made, obvs).
  3. I wrote this piece a little while back about how BRAND WITH PURPOSE will be the ones that talk to (and succeed with) the disillusioned millennial audience of today / tomorrow – #medianode
  4. White House report, “15 Economic Facts about Millennials“
  5. BRANDS WITH PURPOSE is a trend on its own for 2015 (I’ve seen a book that’s coming in March that addresses the same thing and I’m certain We Are Social dropped a report recently that just reiterates everything in the article above.
  6. Also: ‘What’s current when nothing is certain?‘
  7. Pew Research on Millennials, including its reports on “Millennials in Adulthood” and “Who Are Europe’s Millennials?”
  8. The Drum have released a new ‘Millennial Hub‘ with Bauer – don’t know how good it is but it might be worth a look?
  9. There’s this Deloitte Millennial Survey 2014 (here’s the PDF exec summary)
  10. This is a great resource for illustrating the disillusionment of millennials (the last image nails it).
  11. Something something AUTHENTICITY.
  12. IBM report on millennials in the workplace
  13. ‘What Millennials Want From Work‘ by HBR covers over 16k respondents in 43 countries and is actually a really good read.
  14. That HBR piece is itself lifted from a larger piece of work from a collaborative six-part effort to ‘understand a misunderstood generation‘ (it looks like it’s free to sign up too). This stuff is gold.
  15. Telefonica conducted its own Global Millennial Survey (also worth a look)
  16. Like infographics? Goldman Sachs have got you covered.
  17. Fusion Massive US Millennial Poll
  18. Knowledge @ Wharton article on “How Millennials Think Differently About Brands“
  19. Mindshare did its own research (article coverage)
  20. How Millennials Get News (US-focused, again, but a fairly thorough process so some genuine insight here)
  21. More from Goldman Sachs.

That’s all I’ve got at the minute. Sorry.

Cheers,

JW.

PS. I’ve realised all I’ve done is give you loads of additional stuff to sift through. In answer to your broader question: you engage with Millennials by a) being authentic and b) having a purpose. There’s a Kanye West quote nails it. In fact just stick the image attached (posted above) on a slide and have done with it.

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.

_____________________________

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

dressnormal

“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.

 

Apple’s influence on advertising

When is an iPhone not an iPhone?

This is an iPhone.

iphone

The next three things are not iPhones.

Kitkats are not iPhones.

Somersby Cider? Not an iPhone.

IKEA: Book Book (not an iPhone).

You can’t deny Apple’s influence on modern advertising (even it’s other brands mocking or simply imitating its efforts). The IKEA one above is the latest and arguably best effort [to date] and everything from the casting, writing, and set up is completely spot on.

You also can’t deny that Apple makes great products. Better yet, everything about the company is geared towards making you feel great when you own one of then. From the service, to the stores, all the way through to its advertising.

I just love that its so open to mockery.

That is all.

—- UPDATE —-

Since publishing this post quite a few people have pointed out another remarkably similar piece of work, from five years ago, for The Sun Newspaper.

Watch this, then watch the IKEA one again.

A rip-off of a rip-off?

Damn.

 

Originality + Advertising

People in glass houses… yadda yadda yadda. Whatever.

People in glass houses… yadda yadda yadda. Whatever.

Two sides, one portrait

Remember when the above image did the rounds on the Internet a few months ago?

I’ve Googled the hell out of it and I can’t find the name of the artist anywhere (sorry – happy to be corrected by a more knowledgeable commenter). But hey, irrespective of the origins, let it not be said that good art can’t be stolen re-purposed for advertising purposes.

Check out this new set of print ads from Mercedes Benz, highlighting its new ‘blind spot assist’ feature.

MB3

MB2

MB1

Yawn of yawns.

 

Branded Content: LG vs Sony

I like LG. I like Sony. But which one is better? FIGHT!

LG vs Sony

UPDATE 1: the LG video has been removed. You can still see images from it however, here, here, and here. Hat tip: Dan.

UPDATE 2: the video is still viewable over on Creativity Online.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to present to you two brand videos. One from LG Mobile, for the new LG G Flex (actually quite a good phone) and the other from Sony Mobile, for the QX100 lens/camera mobile accessory (a fantastic, if little bulky, hardware add-on).

One of them is the worst piece of branded content I’ve ever seen and the other is quite possibly the best piece of branded content I’ve ever seen.

Can you guess which one is which?

First LG –

And now, Sony –

Your comments, as ever, are welcome.

 

 

How to opt-out of auto-play videos in Facebook

If you hadn’t heard, Auto-play ads videos in the Facebook mobile app (and desktop) are on their way.

Facebook Videos - DEATH

Good? Bad? Annoying? All three? Yeah, maybe. But look, here’s the bad news: on mobile, you can’t actually switch them off. What you can do however is prevent them from playing over your mobile network. In other words, make the videos only download over Wi-Fi only, and ostensibly opt-out of letting them auto-play on your handset.

Here’s how that works.

  • On iOS
    Go to Settings -> Facebook -> Facebook Settings -> ‘Auto-Play videos on WiFi only’
  • On Android
    Go to Facebook -> swipe right to the options pane -> App Settings -> ‘Auto-play videos on WiFi only’

Switch off auto-play videos in Facebook mobile

The benefits of this are two fold:

  1. If you’re hardly ever connected to wi-fi, you can pretty much ‘opt out’ of this auto-play media completely.
  2. If you’re not on any kind of unlimited data plan with your network provider, this will prevent Facebook eating into that precious data.

 

Hat tip to he who spotted this, Charles Arthur.
Go give him a follow.