Hasta La Creative!

Editor’s note: Please welcome Nathan Archambault of AKQA in NYC to AdPulp. An earlier version of this article appeared on Maybe I’m Gravy.

The old advertising agency model, the one where Madison Avenue agencies took their sweet and expensive time, isn’t working anymore.

It’s time for a forced retirement.

Sorry, old model. The nature of the business has changed. Client relationships have splintered and the traditional methods by which agencies profited are shrinking or disappearing. Clients want more effective work and they want it faster and cheaper.

Agencies are left with a clear choice: become more nimble, flexible and cost-effective or fade away. As Jeff Goodby recently admitted, we’re past the time for quick fixes.

It’s time to build a more agile agency. Here are a few things agency leaders can do.

Reduce logistics.

Today’s agency doesn’t need the same departments that were once a centerpiece to the creative offering. Goodby folded project management into account management and scaled back in-house production, opting to work with more outside vendors. Other agencies have eliminated the studio department, instead leaving final design responsibilities to creative instead of to a separate department.

Ask your agency: What departments are redundant, outdated or inefficient?

Operate like a newsroom.

It’s time for agencies to get out of the meeting business and get into the making business. The old model has too much overhead, too much process and too many barriers getting in the way of the work. An agency should feel like a living organism with the sole goal of producing great work, and nothing else should matter or get in the way. Oreo operated like a newsroom during last year’s Super Bowl and we all know how that turned out.

Ask your agency: What can we do to get out of the way of the work?

Replace perfection with experimentation.

In the past, clients demanded perfection and the agencies that delivered it thrived. These days, experimentation returns more on investment. Google launches everything in beta and future updates are expected and (mostly) welcome. The important thing today is getting your product, service or campaign idea to market. Once people have access to it, you can gather feedback, revise and repeat. This is what successful startups like Instagram, Foursquare and Path do and it works pretty well for them.

Ask your agency: What can we make today and worry about making better tomorrow?

Hire doers, not thinkers.

Agencies used to be able to hire creative teams to sit around and think up big ideas. But teams that lack the craft to build the ideas they come up with aren’t pulling their weight today. They’re requiring the agency to hire someone else to execute and bring the vision to life. The jig is up, big thinkers: Being clever and having good taste is no longer a job. That’s why side projects are the new main course – they’re the work of a doer.

Ask your agency: Who actually makes things around here?

Cast for talent.

Interpersonal relationships and unique skills matter more than staffing plans. The need may be for an ACD-level copywriter, but it’s important to be open to creative solutions when filling this or any position. An agile agency wants to find people with the right mindset, regardless of whether or how they fit into a particular department or job title. With the right people in place, an agency can cast for projects, not staff for them.

Ask your agency: Are we hiring the best people first and determining their role later?

Deconstruct the process.

It doesn’t make sense to implement the same process for every project. These days, unlike when advertising was mostly made of TV and print, each project is different from the last. Michael Lebowitz, Founder and CEO of Big Spaceship, gives his teams a framework instead of a process. This allows each team, each operating as mini-agenices, to bubble up a unique process that leads to more unique work.

Ask your agency: Are we finding new paths to the end goal of creativity?

Integrate every department.

The different stages of any given project shouldn’t feel like a baton pass. The brief can’t spend weeks with strategy before being handed off to the creative department, and later to production. AKQA CCO Rei Inamoto believes that agencies need to combine strategy, storytelling and software in order to build emotional and useful connections with people. This means that creative, strategy and technology work together from the start, making each team more invested at every stage of the process.

Ask your agency: Is each team member a stakeholder from the beginning?

Maybe you’re not in a position to change the way your agency operates. But there is something you can do: you can join an agency that believes in the game-changing power of agility.

In this agile age, one thing is for certain: the inflexible will be left behind.

Previously on AdPulp: The Google To Adlandia: Be Lean And Agile Like Us, And You’ll Be Rich Like Us

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Media is powerful. In fact, just one potent article in a trusted magazine or newspaper has the power to inspire us, shape us and lead us to new places. Take “The Brand Called You” by Tom Peters. The article first appeared in Fast Company on August 31, 1997.

Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.

How many believers has Peters reached in the last 16 years? Millions. For the author pours a particularly seductive nectar into Fast Company’s crystal glass.

Naturally, there is truth in Peters words, but how much truth?

I read a great rebuttal this morning to the mountain of bullshit sometimes known as the literature of creativity. Let’s listen to wonderfully critical Thomas Frank on the topic:

Consider, then, the narrative daisy chain that makes up the literature of creativity. It is the story of brilliant people, often in the arts or humanities, who are studied by other brilliant people, often in the sciences, finance, or marketing. The readership is made up of us — members of the professional-managerial class — each of whom harbors a powerful suspicion that he or she is pretty brilliant as well… And what this complacent literature purrs into their ears is that creativity is their property, their competitive advantage, their class virtue. Creativity is what they bring to the national economic effort, these books reassure them — and it’s also the benevolent doctrine under which they rightly rule the world.

Are you familiar with the self-satisfied “creative people” Frank describes? If you work in advertising, you are. Our profession is full of people who mindlessly spew their recipes for brand success, but sadly most of what the poseurs say (and do) is total garbage.

I’m not just pointing fingers here. If I were to open a deck of my own making from a few years ago, I would likely be appalled at the tortured logic and language of my arguments.

The reality is marketing isn’t all that complex. Are you creating compelling brand experiences for prospects and customers? Yes or no? This is how simple MarCom is at its core. The hard part for most practitioners is coming to this conclusion and then choosing to live by it. We want so badly to believe our ideas separate us from the pack. That our ideas above all else are the real difference maker. Yet, I think the evidence points to execution. The ability to make mundane things like advertising into something artful (that also builds the brand and moves product) — that’s the difference maker.

The post Come On Down, Everyone Is Welcome At The Altar of Creativity appeared first on AdPulp.

Chew on this…the act of chewing negates the efficacy of adverts, particularly in movie theater settings.

According to a new study by a group of researchers from Cologne University, the reason why adverts manage to imprint brand names on our brains is that our lips and the tongue automatically simulate the pronunciation of a new name when we first hear it. Every time we re-encounter the name, our mouth subconsciously practices its pronunciation.

However, according to the study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, this “inner speech” can be disturbed by chewing, rendering the repetition effect redundant.

The researches conducted their experiments on movie theater goers, giving one group popcorn and another group a dissolvable sugar cube. The popcorn eaters had little to no brand recall following the filming, unlike the other group which absorbed and retained the ad messages shown prior to the feature.

Source: The Guardian

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As it turns out, men don’t like to get old. The idea of Clint Eastwood’s gritty face with a cigarette, riding off into the sunset to the great beyond is no longer as appealing as it once was. The old cowboy image has faded, replaced with a newfound quest for youthful vigor. Men are no exception to the rule; they feel the pains and pressures of aging the same as women.

The dating scene complicates things further, creating a need for men to dress well and groom themselves properly in order to remain attractive to women. That’s why the men’s grooming industry has been growing by about 8-percent per year.

Companies like Dove are increasingly marketing to men with creams and body washes designed to moisturize. Bolstering this growing trend are websites like the Art of Manliness and Esquire, both of which routinely offer fashion advice for the man’s man. A way to “shave like your father” did, etc.

The business is growing among high and low end retailers. There is definitely room for disrupting the razors locked up in a case model that currently dominates the retail atmosphere. How are the makers of toiletries selling to the men of the world?

Media

Facial hair has seemed to make a comeback in the media, with many men donning a five o’clock shadow or a scruffy face over the clean shaven look. The classic Don Draper style isn’t lost though, leaving plenty of room for high-end retailers to sell razors and creams designed to moisturize the face. The bearded characters are tough and rugged, like King Leonidas. Ron Swanson, the dry-humored manly man from Parks and Recreation, brings mustaches back into style with a thick head of full hair.

Web

The Internet has developed a kind of fascination with beards and mustaches. There are shaving subreddits and blogs devoted to teaching men how to shave and recommending products to groom. Bear and mustache contests challenge men to grow their facial hair and show it off competitively. Results are posted to forums and given accolades on YouTube.

Fan art of characters depicts what legendary game and movie characters would look like with beards. These trends become viral, making facial hair a part of popular culture.

Cross Promotion

The beard and mustache trend is not limited to facial hair alone. How often have you seen pictures of someone holding a fake plastic mustache beneath their nose, or driving around with a mustache sticker affixed to the hood of their car? The trend of facial hair has become a kind of status symbol that oozes retrograde cool.

The facial hair revolution might not fund an entire industry, but there is definitely room for an upscale experience in the everyday hum drum of shaving. Most men might say they wouldn’t buy products for themselves, but men also judge the merit of something based on the experience. Present a man with a well-designed razor that gives a comfortable shave and he’ll be a customer for life. The question is who the next provider to break the model will be.

The post Shaving: the $59 Billion Per Year Business of Cutting Hair appeared first on AdPulp.

Few bloggers keep me, or anyone else, interested for long. When one does it is worth noting.

Geoff Livingston writes beautifully about marketing, and content marketing in particular, which is not easy to do.

Given the level of noise in the sector at the moment, I appreciate his insights and skilled delivery all the more. Here’s a recent clip:

Marketing is not the final product. Yet for some reason we treat it like a stand alone offering in our marketing conversations online. It’s frustrating to hear conversations about companies modeling after Red Bull, and then watch hundreds try to become a media company. Much of the resulting customer-centric content is created haphazardly with a blind eye to customer-brand relationship.

If I hear Livingston correctly, he’s saying don’t get lost in online engagement, as it may or may not be a brand-building activity. Duly noted!

In related news, Matt Kumin, founder and CEO of PublishThis suggests, “Developing an editorial voice is akin to building a brand.” Kumin also says you are what you eat, that “the content and sources that a company consumes define it as well as any outbound marketing or message that is communicated.”

Two lessons from Kumin’s piece: 1) Careful what you curate and 2) Seek out and digest highly nourishing media. The main takeaway from Livingston’s piece is concentrate on relationships with customers and then use media judiciously to support and/or enhance the brand experience.

Photo credit: Flickr user, technotheory

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“Opinions are like assholes. Everybody’s got one.”

This little truism is especially true today. We’re all critics, even when we’re consumers at the same time. So can brands narrowly target an audience anymore, or will they hear about their marketing from everyone, regardless of whether they’re the target? Case in point: The recent Mountain Dew “Goat” ads that were deemed offensive by almost — but not quite — everybody.

Every creative brief I’ve ever been handed contains a section about who the target audience is. Some are very narrow, some are quite broad. It’s futile to try to target even a majority of the population.

Yet when large swaths of the public rise up and complain about an ad or a brand, they get attention. Woe to the brand manager or CMO who says, “Sorry, we’re just not talking to you.” All consumers are supposed to matter, and when anyone can write a blog or use the Twitter megaphone, they all need to be heard or placated. In cases where a controversial ad is in question, many people don’t think twice about pouring gasoline on a fire.

It’s the subject of my new column on Talent Zoo.

The post Targeting Is Futile When Our Audience Is Everyone, Everywhere appeared first on AdPulp.