Say hello to this week’s guest on the Brain Tap series: Amelia Torode is a Partner and Head of Digital Strategy at VCCP. She can also lay claim to being one of the very first WPP Marketing Fellows, was a Partner at Ogilvy Interactive in New York and Strategy Director of Naked London earlier in her career. She is an avid blogger herself, when she gets time in between pitches and the general madness of agency life, that is! She’s one of the first few people in London I met who work in the field and gave me some solid advice, which I religiously followed. What I like best about her is her openness and willingness to help – I’m glad I met her.
The interview:
1. What is the most interesting job you’ve ever held and what lessons did you learn from it that help you in your current role?
The most interesting job I have ever had is probably the one that I have at the moment. I am one of 6 people running the London office of VCCP, but I am also head of digital strategy. I also do a lot of communications planning across the VCCP group, bringing together experiential, direct, PR and brand identity. I am very lucky as I have a huge amount of autonomy and responsibility and some incredible clients like 02 and the Olympics.
2. Do you think that creativity=innovation?
What is creativity?
That’s a good question. Of course its about innovation, but true creativity to me is about tapping into needs, finding new ways of approaching problems and not being afraid to take risks and make mistakes. Maybe creativity is learning the art of failing forward.
3. What is the one ad campaign or event that made you take two steps back and go ‘Wow!’, and why is it better than others?
What are the ad campaigns or events that just make me go *wow*? Well, there are a lot of the all time ad classics like the VW Bernbach ads, classic Levi 501 work, Apple Revolution and the latest iPod ad, but more recently I thought that the 118 runners were one of the most effective and creative uses of comms, I loved Cadbury’s Gorilla though don’t think its a campaign, Dove Real Beauty was brilliant although I know people knock it now. Nike Run London is a great example of how digital can enhance reality. I also think that the rebranding of the dome to The 02 is one of the most creative pieces of marketing that I have seen for a long time and I am not just saying that because we did it at VCCP, honest!
I’m having such a lot of fun getting these brilliant thoughts from brilliant people through this interview series. Dave Birss is the Creative Director of Poke London, a company I’ve heard interesting stuff about right from the beginning, and I mean that in a good way. Read the ‘About’ section of his blog to find out more about his personality, as it were. I like the way you can figure out the essence of the man from it!!
The interview:
1. What is the most interesting job you’ve ever held and what lessons did you learn from it that you’ve been able to apply to what you do now?
I’ve had so many jobs in my life, it’s hard to choose. I don’t know if it’s my most interesting job but I learned a lot about creativity when I worked as a musician many years ago. Some of these lessons would be:
- Subtractionism Keep removing stuff until you can’t remove any more. Then you have the pure essence of your idea.
- Humility Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to be arrogant to be successful. Passion and talent are far more important. And welcoming criticism will help you grow and learn.
- Polish What differentiates the good from the great is the amount of effort that’s put in after the idea. Coming up with the idea is the fun bit – but it’s the work that goes into honing it that makes it stand out.
- Realism All that passion you put in, those strokes of genius, the late nights, the pain – nobody gives a shit. Deal with it.
2. Does creativity=innovation, according to you? What companies/brands can claim to be really innovative and creative today?
In one of my former careers, I lectured in trend forecasting (another of my many jobs) so I’ll take this opportunity to share one of my hokey theories.
‘True’ innovation would be creating something hitherto unseen by the human race. Something so totally fresh that nobody has thought of it before. That’s a big ask. It happens – but it’s unlikely to be embraced and change the world. For an idea to be adopted it needs to have some level of familiarity for the audience. So, as an example, here’s how the telephone evolved:
- Ships used to have speaking-tubes that they could talk down to connect the captain with the engine room. The idea of remote conversation was born out of a simple necessity.
- The speaking-tube was then adopted by many homes and offices. There was still no technology involved here at all.
- The telephone took this idea further by using electricity to transfer the sound. This was a box fitted to a wall with a bit to talk into and a bit to put up to your ear. And the distances involved could be far greater.
- This developed into a smaller device that you could move around thanks to wires. The mouthpiece and earpiece were now put together in the familiar handset arrangement.
- Then someone invented the cordless telephone.
- Then the mobile phone arrived so that you could take your conversation with you wherever you went.
As you can see, this was an evolution. You couldn’t jump straight to the mobile without the preceding steps. Not because of technological reasons – but because people needed the familiar overlap of each stage of the process to get them there.
Lecture over.
So – with that in mind – the company I’d like to pick is one that has taken a great evolutionary step. They’re called Zopa (www.zopa.com). And the wonderful step they’ve taken is to offer banking services without being a bank. They are a social bank where everyday people lend money and other people borrow it. And the rates are better for everyone. The modern entrepreneur will see an opportunity in an existing market and create something new to fill it.
This is something I’m very interested in. As well as being Creative Director at Poke, I’m also one of the founders of unchainedguide.com. And the big thought behind that is to give independent shops more power by bringing them together and offering them the benefits that are usually only available to massive chainstores – marketing, buying power, training, community and more. It’s not necessarily about reinventing – more about rethinking.
3. What is the one ad campaign or event that made you take two steps back and go ‘Wow!’ and why?
I suppose the big freeze in Grand Central Station was one of the things that really impressed me this year:
It’s such a simple and beautiful idea. I hadn’t really been that impressed with flash mobby stuff in the past but this one left me moist eyed and slack jawed. And like all good and original events it’s inspired numerous copies. I know of two versions of it in London and a couple of days ago I saw a very similar stunt for the new M. Night Shyamalan film, The Happening:
It seems that the future of creativity isn’t about coming up with great headlines and visuals – it’s about creating a meme. And that requires much bigger thinking and much braver clients.
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Dave, I really appreciate your time. This has been great. To my wonderful readers, thanks for dropping by. Let me know what you think!
I’ve created a new set of questions for this week’s interviewee of the Brain Tap Series, just to change it around a bit.
Chris Hambly is a Web Strategist and Educational Technologist and is Founder and Director of audiocourses.com, which provides online music production courses. His Facebook page (he has a public profile) has a list of other sites where you can find him online, so if you’re a member of Facebook, go and say hi to him. I met Chris at Media Camp Bucks a couple of weeks ago, though I’ve been in touch with him for a while through everyone’s favourite 140-character messaging site, Twitter. He’s a good bloke
The interview:
1. What is the most interesting job you’ve ever held and what lessons did you learn from it that you’ve been able to apply to what you do now?
The Royal Navy – yup, not a lot of people may associate me with being in the military, however I was. During my teenage years I was a helicopter technician working on the electronics and communications systems, keeping the things flying at very unsociable hours, and operating on the back of a ship in crazy weather conditions. I can honestly say that no job has ever carried quite so much responsibility or accountability as that did – every little detail of work would have to be signed for and able to stand up in a court of law. I obtained good social skills in how to work and live with widely differing people from disparate backgrounds under stressing conditions, how not to complain but instead get on with it, and how to view the bigger picture. I’d recommend a spell for anyone, though I was glad to leave. Not sure if it was the most interesting, but certainly taught me some fantastic life skills – I had to grow up quickly.
2. Does creativity=innovation, according to you? What companies/brands can claim to be really innovative and creative today? (you can’t mention Google!)
Tough question! No, I typically associate innovation with some form of change in processes or production, more like innovative uses of creative ideas. Creativity on the other hand is the “seed” or the first creation, the idea of something, the stuff that comes out of an artist’s brush, the innovation would be creating a series of paintings around that art theme.
Coca-Cola with Crayon showed great innovation in their Virtual Thirst campaign, see below. 3. What is the one ad campaign or event that made you take two steps back and go ‘Wow!’ and why?
Hmm, this might sound a little self-promo-like but I actually really admired the ad campaign I was part of with Coca-Cola in SecondLife. The basic premise was to “engage” the community by including them in a realisation of what a “virtual thirst” is. Three prototypes were built as “thought producers”, one of which was mine, and the SecondLife community were then able to enter into a competition to build the official Coca-Cola presence in SecondLife. This campaign really captured the minds of the early adopters of Web2.0, a video of my creation is here:
(Anjali’s note: More about what Chris did for the campaign here.) ——————————–
I am very happy to present this week’s interviewee for the Brain Tap series. Anyone remotely related to the ad world will be familiar with his name – his was one of the first blogs I started to read when I was developing my interest in the media field, and I still read it faithfully. Richard Huntington is Director of Strategy at Saatchi & Saatchi in the UK and former Planning Director at HHCL and United London. Adliterate, his blog, is ‘dedicated to providing radical thinking for the brand advice business’, but more importantly for me, aims to be deliberately provocative. (I like things that do that). I enjoyed interacting with him on this because obviously he has a huge range of experience to draw on, and that reflects in his answers.
The interview:
1. Which is your all-time favorite ad and what do you think makes it work?
There are loads of pieces of work I could talk about, and alot of it is recent stuff – Experience from Old Spice, Gorilla from Cadbury’s, Cake from Skoda, Low Ego Emissions from VW Passat. But I am going to go retro and plump for the Fiat Strada ad from 1979. I love the idea – that the new Fiat Strada has been hand built by robots. I love the length of the ad. I love the way they shot the final sequence on the roof top test track. I love the craft. I love the use of music. And I love they way that an absolutely average car looks so great when you show a group of them. Sure its a visual feast but with a point.
2. What do you think the Next Big Thing in media is going to be?
I have no idea what the next big thing in media is going to be. And I have very little interest. Because the next big thing will have little permanence. Remember when brands were falling over themselves to build a presence in second life? I’m more interested in brilliant brand and creative ideas that can work anyplace the brand and people meet.
3. If your life could be described by a colour, what colour would that be and why?
Hmmmm. Black probably. My nickname at HHCL was Camp Dracula. Black is uncompromising, intimidating and hides a multitude of sins.
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A big Thank You to Richard for this. See you all later!
This week in the Brain Tap interview series, we have Gaurav Mishra, a self-confessed ‘marketer by profession and poet at heart’. At Gauravonomics Blog, he writes about marketing, technology and social media and is frequently quoted in the Indian press as an authority on the social media scene in India . Currently, he is writing ‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’, India’s first marketing book-as-a-blog. Gaurav’s been very forthcoming about his thoughts and I hope to contact him at some stage later to hear more of what’s happening in India.
The questions I’ve been asking the first few people on this series have been the same, and I will tweak it around a bit, but for now, I’m having a lot of fun reading the variety of responses that I’ve been getting. I hope you are too.
The interview:
1. Which is your all-time favorite ad and what do you think makes it work?
I’m not particularly turned on by ads per se. I think the value is not in thinking of an interesting idea that works for 30 seconds. I think that the real value is in thinking of a truly compelling idea that works over the brand’s lifecycle, that becomes an ongoing conversation between the brand and its audience, and becomes the lens through which the brand’s audience interprets culture and life itself. Amul in India and Absolut internationally are two brands that have done it well.
2. What do you think the Next Big Thing in media is going to be?
The next big thing in media is going to be social media measurement. ‘Listening to the customer’ has always been the holy grail of marketing, but it has always remained elusive. Now, customers are talking about brands in social media and the increasingly sophisticated social media measurement tools (ranging from the free Buzz Monitor to the very comprehensive and very costly Nielsen Buzzmetrics) not only allow brands to make sense of such conversations but also to use them to understand consumer needs, develop new products, develop communication messages, and track the buzz around launches, events and campaigns. Brands are only beginning to become aware of this opportunity, and none of the present players offer the full suite of solutions, but in the next three years, I see social media measurement maturing into the next big thing. Also see two posts I wrote about how social media outsourcing will be the next big business opportunity for India (1 and 2).
3. If your life could be described by a colour, what colour would that be and why?
Ah! I can’t believe you are making me do this! OK, if I were to describe myself by a colour, I would say black because black is classy, timeless, versatile, mysterious, understated and minimalistic at the same time. These are some of the values I aim for in whatever I do, even though my success rate is a little suspect.
Continuing with the Brain Tap interview series, this week we have Jamie Coomber answering my mini-interview.
Jamie is a Digital Strategist at Profero, a ‘unique, global marketing agency that delivers extraordinary consumer experiences.’ She has over 8 years of experience in new media. I first met Jamie a few weeks ago at a She Says event. She struck me immediately as a very social person with tremendous energy! Jamie is also joint host of Likemind London, and a trend hunter for Trend Hunter magazine. In 2007, she won a Gold Cyber Lion at Cannes.
The interview:
1. Which is your all-time favourite ad and what do you think makes it work?
I can’t think of a favourite ad, to be honest, as it is becoming increasingly harder to offer rewards through a single ad. However, a campaign that I loved was Diesel’s Fallen Angels as they were one of the first to truly get the user involved within their campaign. The campaign ran two years ago but they still used all the mediums well (blogs, videos, ads and a website). You can find more information here and here.
(Anjali’s note: I did some further online scouting and found this from the IAB Creative Showcase site where the campaign won first place in September 2006. It looks like Diesel has removed a lot of the direct links though, strangely – still, a lot can be gleaned from the sites linked here.)
2. What do you think the Next Big Thing in media is going to be?
The freedom of conversation – brands only tap in if they are very polite and offer something of value to the user in exchange.
3. If your life could be described by a colour, what colour would that be and why?
In all honesty, black. I know some say it’s not a colour, but I wear a lot of it and it doesn’t flinch when you throw something shocking into the mix.
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Thanks, Jamie! Stay tuned for next week’s interview, folks!
As part of a new series on this blog, I am going to interview interesting people from the media industry: advertising, marketing communications, digital, social media, or even a combination of two or more of these in some way or the other. I’ve been thinking about it for a while and came up with the conclusion that in today’s 140-character online world, shorter is better because often that’s all the time that people have!
So, without any further delay, I’d like to introduce the person who has the honour (!) of being the first person to share his thoughts through this 3-question interview series. Paul Isakson is a Senior Strategic Planner at space150 in Minneapolis, USA, a ‘modern creative agency that uses art and science, storytelling and strategy to grow brands and help them evolve in the modern world’. I first decided I wanted to ask Paul to answer my questions because of a brilliant presentation he did on the future of marketing and advertising. Many of you would have already caught it, if you haven’t, it’s here.
The interview:
1. Which is your all-time favorite ad and what do you think makes it work?
Hmmm… I’m not sure if some people would qualify it/them as an ad, but I have to say the BMW Films / Hire series. Of those, my personal favorite was the STAR film w/Madonna. I think what made this work was a number of things. You had short films directed by known names. They were truly short films, with interesting stories – they didn’t come off as long commercials. The product was a character in the story, not the story. They broke new ground in advertising in many, many ways.
2. What do you think the Next Big Thing in media is going to be?
The Next Big Thing in media is going to be 1/4-page black & white print ads. They’re going to be HUGE! Haha. Just kidding. I don’t know exactly what it is, but my bet is that it’s going to be something that gets developed for the iPhone. Maybe multiple things. There will be at least one person or company that is going to use the SDK in a way that makes everyone talk about it like they did viral marketing and are now doing with social media and widgets/applications.
3. If your life could be described by a color, what color would that be and why?
I’m going to go with my initial reaction, which was blue. I thought a minute about green, but I think blue is better. Why? First because of it’s association with the sky and oceans/water. They’re both open, expansive, adaptable, evolving, living, and hard to keep contained. I would like to believe that’s a lot like the way I think. Blue is also associated with things I think are true about me: depth, stability, trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, truth, faith, calmness, sincerity, consciousness, integrity and understanding. Lastly, it makes me think about growing up on a farm and working for my dad in the summer out in the corn fields under the clear, blue skies.
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I hope you enjoyed reading that as much as I did. A huge Thank You to Paul for his time. See you all for the next installment of Brain Tap!
