Tag: marketing

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.

Content comparison: @ThreeUK vs @O2, which is better?

I’m after your opinion folks, so get ready to hit that ‘Leave a Reply’ section at the bottom of this post.
_________________________________

This week I received a cake* in the post.

A cake with my face on it.

IMAG0550

— yes, that is my actual face, on a cake —

This is piece of co-marketing material from both Three and Nokia pushing the unique selling point (USP) of the Lumia 925: the awesome low-light camera. The angle?

YOU HAVE BEEN LIED TO. CARROTS DO NOT HELP YOU SEE IN THE DARK.
THE LUMIA 925 HOWEVER, DOES.

Why a cake? Well, it’s a carrot cake. Geddit…?

Anyway, the video that the leaflet directs you too is below, take a look –

OK, let’s park that right there.

Next up, we have this effort from O2. Their phone of choice is the Huawei Ascend P6. The USP? The super-slimness of the device. The angle?

MODERN DAY PHONES LOOK TERRIBLE IN YOUR POCKET.
THESE ‘VISIBLE MOBILE LINES’ OR ‘VML’ NEED TO BE NO GONE.

Check out the video below –

Strategically, the two briefs for these could be almost identical –

Drive conversation and engagement around the DEVICE NAME by creating a funny and shareable piece of social media content that will stay true to [the] OPERATOR’s existing online tone of voice, while also highlighting the USP of our hero device.

The execution is obviously very different (plus the former had the additional push of some ‘influencer engagement’ in the shape of aforementioned baked product) but, the question to you, dear reader, is – which one do you prefer and why?

Both are funny in thei rown right, both pushing the USP of a hero device, both deliver the same message but in a very different way. I’m intrigued on your take on it so please, leave a reply below and let me know.

 

 

*I also received a hand-carved carrot featuring the Nokia and 3 logo. No, really. I didn’t eat that, nor did I get a photo (EDIT: photo uploaded as requested by carrot-carving fans), however the cake was really quite nice, so thanks for that. Why was my face on it again? 

Bowie vs Marketing

This is perfect –

“We live in an age when distraction is everywhere, consumers are multi-screening – and multi-screening is actually an acceptable verb – and the industry assumes that to get what marketing departments call cut-through or mind-share for music you have to bombard people: artists are supposed to be in a constant dialogue with their fans, via Twitter or blogs or Facebook. It’s a timely reminder that mystique is a valuable commodity. You can perhaps give people more by giving them less.”

— Tim Ingham, Editor of Music Week

The above quote is taken from ‘The inside story of how David Bowie made The Next Day‘ which features in today’s Guardian.

Explaining (in quite fantastic detail) how exactly, in an age of cameraphones and gossip websites and social media, Bowie’s album remained under wraps for two whole years before appearing, seemingly out of nowhere, last Tuesday – it is a great read.

Screen Shot 2013-01-12 at 10.52.39

It seems we could all learn a thing or two from Mr Bowie.

How to improve your outdoor campaign with Virgin Media WiFi on the Underground

Example one (real)

The Look for Longer campaign is a neat little competition from CBS Outdoor to encourage interaction with outdoor advertising. The game itself is quite cute, there’s 75 different tube stations hidden on a poster and you have to guess them all. Simple, right? Perfect brain fodder for London’s challenge-hungry commuters.

You can see the full poster on the campaign website, the version that I’m showing above however highlights quite a nice piece of joined-up thinking from the chaps behind the activity. Conversations around this sort of thing would normally go like this:

‘OK, so we’ve got our posters’

‘Yup!’

‘Do they have a clear call to action? Something like, ‘Text us on this number now!’ or similar?’

‘Yup!’

‘OK, so where are these posters going again?’

‘On the Underground.’

‘OK. Then make sure we add a QR code too…’

‘Straight away!’

—- I’m not kidding.

But not this time ’round, oh no. This time the copywriters and creatives have actually applied context to their work and seeing this kind of relevant and in situ call to action actually put a smile on my face. Smart thinking tends to have that affect on me.

More of this please.

Example two (not real)

Walking onto the platform at Maida Vale back in July earlier this year, I was greeted with this fairly awesome poster for The Amazing Spider-Man. Now while the film wasn’t exactly awesome, the outdoor campaign really could’ve been.

Literally the first thing I thought when I saw this poster was ‘How cool would it be if this was an augmented reality (AR) execution?’. I walk onto the platform and the poster is exactly how you see it now except there’s no Spider-Man in it.

Instead, you download the AR app, hold up your cameraphone and voila, there’s Spidey, crawling around the other side of the platform on the underground.

Wouldn’t be ace if the call to action was something like ‘Seen The Amazing Spider-Man yet? Connect to Virgin Wifi and download app X to see him on this poster right now’ or, better yet, have the app on the Virgin Wi-Fi splash page.

I know a little bit about a little bit when it comes to AR markers (and marker-less markers too) and I’ve always thought you could do something cool with the actual tracks themselves (health and safety, what?) but now there’s internet down there, a whole new world of integrated marketing is wide open.

WiFi on the Underground is free until the end of this year.

Who’s going to innovate next?

 

Freefall Photography: The HTC One

First up, watch this –

The video description:

The Experiment: We chucked a photography student out of a plane to see if he could take the perfect fashion photo. We gave him a model, lighting guys, a makeup artist and smoke machines. The only thing we didn’t give him was a camera. We gave him a phone.

This is the commercial that’s currently running in the UK globally to mark the worldwide release of the HTC One. While it’s not the most original idea in the world, it does have great piece of backing music (Tick of the Clock, Chromatics – most recently heard on the DRIVE official soundtrack), some great imagery and… well, that’s about it.

It sounds harsh but, I’m not entirely sure what the advert is for.

Yes, it’s for the HTC One, I get that much, but why are they jumping out of the plane? Why is the HTC One being used in this instance? From what I’ve read, it’s to help show off  ‘the One’s low-light capabilities’ – if that’s the case, why can’t I see the image and/or video quality that ‘Nick’ shot with the phone in the advert?

The very last second of the ad ends with ‘Watch Nick’s story online’, let’s get online and find that content then shall we?

A Google image search for ‘HTC One free fall fashion shoot‘ only turns up images shot by other cameras that were present on the day; DSLRs etc… keep clicking and eventually, on page 3 of the search, this image shows up via All Things D –

I’m not sure, but I’m thinking that this might be the actual image that our man Nick shot with his HTC One. Not bad, right? Right. But I want the full image; the original, uncrunched image, with EXIF data.

But I can’t find it.

Even the official photo album from the shoot, the one from HTC UK’s very own Facebook page, doesn’t have the full file [instead uploading a frustratingly bad and super-compressed FB-friendly version]. Additionally – and still, according to the ad – Nick was recording video and trying to get the perfect photo at the same time. Guess what? No sign of that footage either.

I’m labouring the point, I know. But if you’re going to make a big deal about a fashion student being given the opportunity to take part in a one-of-a-kind free-fall fashion shoot, then surely you’d make a big deal around the actual content that said fashion student produced. No?

Just me then.

Read the press release, make your own mind up.

 

The Hunt for Hanna

Just over a week ago I was sent an email about the new Blu-Ray/DVD release of the child/assassin-based thriller, Hanna.

Note: this is not your average email, but we’ll come to that shortly.

If you’ve not seen the film before (I haven’t), it’s about a teenage girl (the amazing Saoirse Ronan) who has been trained by her ex-CIA father (Eric Bana) to basically be a complete bad-ass. Think Hit-Girl from Kick-Ass [but slightly older and with less pink wig-ness] and you’re probably halfway there.

Anyway, like I said, she’s been trained to be THE PERFECT ASSASSIN and then well, from what I can see from the trailer, Cate Blanchett turns up and the proverbial really hits the fan.

Speaking of which, the trailer is worth a look –

What do you think? I missed this at the cinema as I had only just got back from my mad trip across Siberia, but it does actually look quite good. IMDb gives it a solid 7/10 and, I think I probably will pick this up at some point also.

So, why am I blogging about it? Given that a) I haven’t actually seen it yet and b) although the film looks good, it doesn’t seem to be the kind of epic masterpiece that normally drives me to put e-pen to e-paper.

Well, it’s that email I mentioned at the top. It would seem that HMV and Universal have teamed up to create a rather awesome Foursquare-based treasure hunt across three major cities in the UK (London, Birmingham and Manchester) that kicks off this weekend.

Based around the central themes of the film, each hunt contains six codes that need cracking and from there you end up with six locations that need checking into.

The prize for completing said task? Er.. a weekend in Berlin! Sweet.

If you’re any of the above cities, your orders are available c/o The Galinka Project (but be quick, you only have until Monday). In the meantime, I have codes to crack.

Catch you later.

 

 

 

New Year, New Challenges

2011 is going to be a big year for 1000heads; we’re formally opening several offices across the globe (many of which are already hiring, by the way) and the entire team seems to have come back from the Christmas break with a renewed sense of ambition and direction. It’s electric.

For myself, having spent 2010 defining (and refining) the engagement strategy for the company both internally and externally, it’s time to move onto pastures new*.

When I hit my year anniversary back in October, a conversation began about where we (1000heads and I) could go next. What did we decide? Well…

I’m about three weeks into my new role** and, as the challenges ahead grow ever larger and more exciting, I’m this close to being in the perfect position to knock every single one of them out of the park.

Bring. It. On.

.

James Whatley
Marketing Director
1000heads

*staying on at the same farm, obviously
**leaked in the press at the weekend