Christmas Special Something For Everybody

Here are some little stocking fillers for everyone; The Power of Yellow & Lurpack (which is also a bit yellow) for art directors, 26 Fruits blog for story tellers & copywriters (ok I'm cheating with shared presents) and finally da da daaaaah! work by an amazing creative strategist; Richard Buchanan who is interestingly critical of social media.

Happy Christmasmicroandrealdissertationwriting, have a great hollyday
and best wishes, for the brand new year,
Janine

Permission-based mobile advertising, up close and personal

David Jones' views on social and collaborative advertising was the subject of the last post: Advertising Games where Olympic sponsors that used a traditional enforce and command approach were criticised.  Similarly Truong et al (2010) in exploring strategies for digital media find that a 'need to engage in permission-based advertising' is more acceptable as 'people don't use their mobile phone the same way they use the internet or watch TV' (Truong et al, 2010, p714).

This topic rings a bell with me (pardon the pun) as over the summer I have received a bunch of of permission-based mobile ads.  Have you experienced this phenomena too? If so, how does such personalised advertising make you feel? And in terms of creative advertising practice, should/do you use the same strategies to create them?

Here is a sample of the mobile ads I received, each of which have an 'opt-out' option:

Get a free eye test with Optical Express. Click here to book your appointment 13-Jul-12 13:19

Get flexible learning and drive your career forward with a Master's degree from the Open University. Click here for your free guide  Received 14-Jul-12 10:54

 Sort your summer reading list with 10% off when you spend £20 at Waterstones.

Reminder: to stop Bright Stuff messaging, text STOP to 200000 (free to opt out). Received 09-Aug-12 09:58.

  The topic of these ads are as Truong et al (2010) suggest,

 more personalised and contextualised. Advanced adserving technologies ...allow advertisers to target consumers with more relevant and localised messages. (Truong et al, 2010, p715).

Apparently this technology for geolocalisation of individuals has 'set off alarm bells for legislators seeking to prevent the abuse of consumer data and constrain the future of personalisation' (p716). It is unnerving to receive ads that are so relevant and I am not sure I like that sensation. Needless to say I have TxT STOP and opted out of all the ads received. I am however planning on booking an eye test soon!  This is because I was thinking of doing so anyway - but therein lies the beauty of mobile ads, what Fogg (2003) defines of the Kairos factor - presenting the message at the opportune moment.

 According to Jones and Truong et al three screen (TV, internet and mobile) advertising campaigns should not communicate the same advertising message, instead only complimentary content should be created instead. This view resonates with Andy Fowler (Executive Creative Director Brothers and Sisters) who explains that each medium has a different function. Have these views got any implications for your creative practices? For example, how will creating copy for a permission-based mobile advert differ from the method used for a traditional TV or print campaign?
 

Advertising games, David Jones gives social ads gold

David Jones cites the medal winners and losers in the advertising industry today as agencies who've grasped social advertising and those who haven't. Havas recently bought Victors & Spoils the worlds first and largest crowd sourcing agency, who don't have a traditional creative department - instead they use the power of the crowd to get their ideas - check out the V&S Community.

In a recent interview with the BBC Jones CEO of Havas, one of the biggest global advertising agencies gave gold to BBH's don't fly campaign for British Airways as it understood the audience. The commonality that the advertising medal winners have is an awareness to be open, to share and be collaborative.

Losers are brands and agencies that use an enforce and command model, like Visa, whose sponsors rights and privileges have gone too far in only allowing visa payments to be made in the Olympic stadium. The line 'We're proud to only accept Visa' is out-of-touch as it serves to annoy people.

The sponsor MacDonald’s had the privilege of being the only Olympic retailer (out of 800) to sell chips. Jones asserts that in the world of new media, you can still censor venues however it is very hard to 'lock down' social media, which he describes as 'much more powerful than the Olympic movement'.

The exclusivity rights the games give to sponsors have created a problem for the movement, as brands could be damaged by such sponsorship deals.  Social responsibility is important to the world and business today, people want brands to stand for more than just profit - they want to know the purpose behind the profit.

'Is the whole relevance of global advertising dead? Are you a burning platform?' Jones replied that the advertising industry is more relevant than ever as the industry has shifted from a TV advertising industry to a digital and social media industry.

'When you can kill a brand in an afternoon by leaving a comment on a blog how do you have a cat in hells chance of keeping up with that?'   Jones explained that as long as advertisers evolve we can. If we don't we will go the way of the dinosaurs. Clients know the rules of the TV advertising world; they don't know the rules of the game for the social media world. How you operate in that space and how brands can be socially responsible is what matters. New media is intrinsically linked to social responsibility and being able to deliver in this space is to be successful [achieve gold].

Can you bill a million pounds for running a twitter account or running a very well done blog? It's different to TV advertising isn't it? Yes it's a completely different model and every six months something new appears. Jones then describes the recent purchase of Victor and Spoils and contends that although this new approach to creativity could damage our legacy business - this is much smaller than our competitors. 

For Jones only socially aware agencies with entrepreneurial agility will be Olympian medallists.

  

Two month placement at Brass

The day begins at 9am, for me this usually involves grabbing a strong coffee from the filter machines and checking my emails; in a bid to jump start my brain into action (I am not a morning person, and often annoyingly come up with ideas in bed). The turn over of briefs is fast here, but it means you automatically work faster and don't stew on something for too long (loosing sight of what you're doing in the process). The briefs have included food brands, a recruitment ad (to help me work on my art direction), a fruit (!), health stuff and a keep Britain tidy campaign to encourage people to pick up their dog's crap...glamorous eh. The creative department are very keen to share the words of wisdom, which is nice - perhaps they remember the graduate wilderness too? A recurring theme is, everyone has their own opinion on what is right and what is wrong; about my book (digital or hard copy, case study or no case study), about the work I'm doing there for them...everything really. I know this happens at uni in terms of the creative work - it seems it doesn't go away in industry. So for me, this means having the balls to decide for myself what I think is right or wrong after asking other's opinions. As well as working in the creative department, I've also been gaining (valuable) experience in the digital department. They've taken me to meetings about social media strategy and online communication strategy (which did involve quite a bit of me not knowing a lot of the jargon words - but it was learning). There was opportunity for me to have my voice listened too (which if you know me, you know I quite like talking - so this was good). Having said that, I only spoke when I was absolutely sure I should. But people liked what i had to say. It gave me a bit of confidence - maybe I can actually do this in the real world. The days are long, but the weeks go fast. The office is relaxed, which means I can get into my own creative flow, and don't notice 5.30 come around. Alas, the road to creative employment is long it seems, and the creative world is bigger and expecting more of me than I realised sat in the studio at LCA; but the nice people at Brass are encouraging me to better my book...this is what I am concentrating on in the 2 months I'm placed here. Lauren. I'll upload a picture soon. Janine, i don't like how all of the text is bunched up together - makes it very hard to read stuff on here :/

at Brass

Our placement at Brass is quite intense, we’re already working on a second brief.

‘Office work’ can be exhausting, but at the same time, rewarding.

There’s a hairy rhino, a huge melon and some golden cats distracting us from work. 

We are receiving good feedback.

At the end of the day our eyes are red, our hands coloured in markers and what we say doesn’t make any sense anymore.

We are living on coffee and sandwiches.

Our 4 hours of Facebook a day have been reduced to half an hour in the evening.

No lazy mornings and no ‘Let’s go for a pint’.

But we’ve been coming up with more ideas than ever!

Bianca and Danielle

BA campaign by BBH is not about flying

 Justin Moore (BBH Creative Director) proudly revealed  (Metro, 26th June, 2012) how his team 'broke all the rules by demonstrating 'support for Team GB in the most profound way ...by asking people not to use the product'. interestingly this 'not about flying' approach runs through its social activities too. 

After viewing the commercial on British Airways Facebook page I scrolled down the time line, which shows the full sequence of the campaign revealing what a social brand BA has become.

Like in the Qatar's tweet a meet audiences are invited to write up sight-seeing tips for destinations (ok to win flights), vote on their favourite Olympic flick, consider how much tea BA makes for customers and offers little quizzes on the company's heritage - all little quirky strategic ways of reinforcing brand identity.

hello bloggers

Hello Bloggers...

We're all in this together.

Creating ads from conversation

A really good creative exercise: listen to conversations and spot a headline.
I overheard a group of kids chatting, and one said "Everybody likes me when I've got money. When I've got none, no-one talks to me."

Put it into a context (a brand!), and it becomes an ad.

It's a ten! Blogging - ideal for Creative Advertising

While David is in London at D&AD, here I am in Edinburgh on a staff development activity called Better Blogging. Here are ten reasons why Blogging is ideal for our Creative Advertising programme:

Blogging is the ideal medium for copywriters!
Like writing good endlines, you need to decide the purpose of your post, think about your target audience and language, use strategy and reduce all the unnecessary noise. [David will like this bit] It is good to use the inverted triangle model - punchy headline first, then background detail later.

Blogging is ideal for making our research quad visibly active!
As the course team has four areas of research interests; narrative, new media, copywriting and art direction - what better way to share such a (dynamic) ever-changing activity than in an ever-changing environment like a blog?

Blogging is an ideal method of (as Richard says) collecting creative fuel!
You can capture imagery, sound, narrative (anything) pretty cheaply and immediately for inspiration for your art and copy.

Blogging is an ideal way of sharing work experiences!
Thanks to Coming Soon's shout out on the IPA Gradvantage blog - I had an idea that A Day In The Life Of series would be great for sharing work placement experiences, in real time.

There are lots more reasons, which I will write up later, bye for now and good luck Tom!

Four Thought

I was listening to an item from the radio four series Four Thought about the significant role of computer games in the world today.  Games PhD researcher Mitu Khandaker  believes that the computer game extends our thinking and culture. This made me think about what Andy Fowler (Executive Creative Director of Brothers and Sisters) said recently (at an IPA creatives event) about how agencies today use New Media to create objects, games and experiences that enhance peoples lives in some way. Have a listen and share your thoughts on how you think games can extend advertising and maybe creative thinking?

Revealing Coming Soon

This years (level 6) final show is revealing in the sense it goes beyond a mere showcasing of undergraduate work. The show offers an experience that captures both the (collaborative) creative spirit and individual personalities of 19 creatives. A screening of a short documentary (see below) is the focal point and visitors are made welcome by being offered a comfortable seat (am I showing my age here?) Anyway, as this short review is tagged with the label 'social media' (a research interest of mine) the following exhibits are selected because of the social strategy employed. The Coming Soon campaign itself was seeded well, through blogging e.g. Gradvantage blog and tweeting with reach as  far as Beattie and beyond. Lily Tidy's blogtweetrepeat project illustrates her individual work ethic and the creative thinking philosophy of the course. Lily uses the headline of the day to kick start a creative thinking process. Chloe Robinson's Advertising and Travel book has some excellent case studies such as Lemon & Paeroa by Ogilvy New Zealand as Chloe describes 'a social media success and tourism figures rose to 425%'. Another book caught my eye, but perhaps not for the right reasons was So there I was by Molly Henage, I just wanted to emphasize to all less senior creative undergraduates that 'though paying attention is something you should do, everything is on the VLE' is not of course accurate or good advice - Molly merely jests! The Art Vinyls series by Chris Poots for the Cara Cowan are both on and off the wall, as the campaign is simultaneously an art installation, ambient and sound cloud. The last mention goes to Tom Birds' Birdeux Tapestry which is a material scroll-like-tapestry depicting the narrative of his creative escapades over three years, which also appears in his website where he invites creative directors to complete the tapestry with their contact details. There is so much more I wanted to say but alas it is home time and David has told me to stop blogging my time away.

Day in the life of...Creative Interns (Jac & Chris)

We are a creative team interning at Mortierbrigade, Brussels.

I guess the place to start with our particular internship is before we even get into the agency.

While we are here we are living in the Mortierbrigade Hotel. It's a big house inside the agency's compound (it used to be a brewery). It has three different rooms on different floors and they get nicer the higher you go. They have different themes and it's a pretty cool place to stay, check it out here http://www.mortierbrigadehotel.com/

So to the actual day. We start off with possibly the shortest commute ever. Five seconds of arduous walking gets us from the hotel's front door into the agency.

The Belgians are fairly laid back with arrival times, 9.15-9.45 seems to be the ok time to turn up. However we like to represent the British 'kill yourself before you're 40' work ethic and usually get in before 9.

The first point of contact is the bar. Time to get the coffee going and find out what the word is on the advertising streets.

We then walk up the stair case of lights to where the creative teams and planners have their desks. We have our own over sized desk complete with faulty but comfortable chairs.

The obligatory check of the e-mails/blogs/social networks then happens. If we have a brief going we will work separately on it until about 11.30. The office is pretty open plan and everyone keeps the chatter to a quiet hum. So when we need to spar loudly over some ideas it's time to go to a client meeting room or outside.

As far as the briefs go, we have been put on a wide range of brands and medias. We have worked on script writing for a 'come dine with me' style TV spot. Guerilla and ambient ideas for a beer brand and indie radio station. Art direction for a snack print ad and copy for T-Shirts for a bank's summer party.

Our afternoon to evening consists of getting ideas presentable in some form for a review at the end of the day. This is either with a creative team who we are working with or the pant-wetting experience of presenting to the top dog, Jens Mortier. Don't get me wrong, he is one of the friendliest guys you'll meet. But your genius idea starts to lose its glow when you realise you are presenting it to a man who has more Lions than the Serengeti.

This routine is punctuated with requests to 'image source' for print ads and layout tasks.

We leave the agency at around 18.30 and sometimes head off to a bar to sample yet another of Belgium's thousands of beers.

Day in the Life

Well done to level six students on their Coming Soon mention on the IPA Gradvantage blog. While I was having a look for the posting (which is coming soon ha ha) I noticed that the Gradvantage blog has a 'day in the life' tag. So, all the postings under the tag are written by students who've been on placements in agencies playing a role e.g. Art Director. Such posts will give insights into the experience of creative advertising, which, I think you may agree could be very valuable to you. Also, I thought this is a great way of using our course blog.  I mentioned this to Jennifer (L5) who has just come back from BBH and Jack and Chris (L6) who are currently undertaking an intern at Mortierbrigade, so they can launch our Day in the life series. So here's how we can do it, while on placements keep a blog of your experiences, then simply copy and paste one of these posts onto the course blog.  Over to you Jennifer, Chris and Jack...

Critical Mash-up 2012

This is a very brief plenary of the critical mash-up event hosted in the level five studio. The main topics were social media, traditional media, identity, psychology and creativity. Perhaps social media being the most dominant but with a variety of different focus points, such as 'the viral', mobile advertising and location-based advertising. Identity ranged from branding to gender and even to advertising itself. There were some excellent examples of  triangulation where different sources representing a range of viewpoints were used to interrogate an interesting debate. There were many successes where a range of critical theories were used to critically analyse and evaluate an issue from Althusser to more contemporary critical theory. There were some new phrases used to describe the nature of contemporary audiences such as on-demand society, producers (as opposed to consumers). Conversation and collaboration cropped up a lot as well as new challenges to creativity. One of the many insights that came out of this sharing of  critical activities was that social or media has a new, sometimes very physical relationship to 'producers'. Anyway, many thanks to all the delegates for contributing to this event, which was quite difficult to summarise (due to my depreciating memory skills). So, please lend a hand by leaving a mention of the many interesting exchanges omitted.

Notes from Liverpool

Innocence and Experience is the title of an art exhibition curated by Marianne Faithful, currently showing at Liverpool Tate. It's an interesting collection of art, which in part follows a biographical narrative with references to music Ska's not dead by Jim Lambie, 2001 and the tastes and influences (Magritte, Dadd & Blake)of the sixties pop culture scene. Through exploring the exhibition I found that there is more to Faithful's career than being part of the 60s pop aristocracy, as I was unaware of her long-involvement with galleries. She was also one of the first to experiment with music video with Jarman, 'an art form that would have a profound influence on popular culture following the launch of the MTV channel in 1981' (Tate, 2012). Linked to the exhibition (part of the same series) was a collection curated by Philip Treacy called

Conversation Pieces, within which was untitled (double portrait) 1991 by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. This piece was a pile of posters 'available for viewers to take away ad infinitum. The image featured, the doubled touching/overlapping circle, represents one of the most important themes in Gonzalez-Torres’s work: the pairing of two like people in togetherness.' Maybe it could represent Art and Copy?, anyway true to the artists intentions I took a poster and placed it near our studios. The piece for me represents how creatives can re-think how people can interact with art. Perhaps, it may encourage you creatives to re-think how audiences  interact with ads?  Please leave some notes of your day in Liverpool.

 

A Little History of The Word - One for the Copywriters.

 I am currently reading A Little History of The World by E. H. Gombrich. You may recognise this author if you've studied a history of art, as he wrote the classic text book The Story of Art. Anyway, like the title suggests, Gombrich's earlier text History of The World, which he wrote in six weeks! Anyway, within this is a small chapter called I C-A-N R-E-A-D, which explains the connection between the construction of contemporary and ancient words. The origins of the English alphabet stem from the Phoenicians a wealthy and creative civilization based in modern day Lebanon. They were maritime merchants who took their culture across the Mediterranean. 'For Phoenician craftsmanship was known throughout the world...most popular of all their goods was their dyed cloth, especially the purple' (Gombrich, 1985, p30). Gombrich suggests that through inventing a series of signs where each represented a sound 'and that just twenty-six of those signs were all you needed to write every conceivable word' (Gombrich, 1985, p29 the Phoenicians invented 3000 years ago the most convenient way to communicate. A tool that you copywriters still use today. Did you know that our alphabet originated from Lebanon before you read this post? If not where did you think it originated?

Notes on Social Media Mastery

Today I joined a webinar to listen to a live talk by Ian McKendrick a Social Media and Technology Strategist called Social Media Mastery run by Brand Republic. Social Media and its impact on Creative Advertising is a hot topic within academic and industry circles (see this blog at Brass agency). McKendrick said some interesting things, which I've organised into themes: actions, language, social campaigns, variety, future and thoughts.

 Actions
 He began by illustrating a scenario where he used http://www.twellow.com/ (yellow pages for twitter) which allows you to search by key words/subject. He searched keynote speakers as part of his consultancy role. Within hours he had a query and tweeted his blog address, which resolved the issue and contained a 'call to action'. His blog asks people to contact him with any queries and contains his email, twitter and facebook addresses. In a week he had recieved over £5000s worth of work. McKendrick emphaises that calls to action are vital to social-media-communications and gave some examples: join our mailing list, sign up to an event and tell your friends.
Language
 He discussed the importance of using the right language, giving the example of google's ad words.  He explained that any social communications need to contain the same words as those used by social networks e.g.facebook groups, bloggers and any type of online communities of practice. This is so that the communiciation ranks better on google otherwise known as SEO (search engine optimisation). McKendrick explained that this new process of using online conversational language entails a) building communties of interest b) giving something of value to people and c) utterly omitting 'sales talk'. So creatives need to find out where 'fans' of products and brands hang out and, as Paul Burns (copywriter TBWA) once told me 'talk with, not at people'.
Social Campaigns
The notion of giving people something of value also links to a talk by Andy Fowler ECD (Brothers and Sisters) available on the IPA Creatives channel - worth a watch (25mins). Fowler and McKendric illustrate the types of valuable content that social media campaigns can host. Fowler points to Nike Grid  whereas McKendric described a personal health campaign that began with creating a group twitter account with hash tag. Using hootsuite.com a social media dashboard he conntected with websites supermarket e.g. health pages, fat secret.com and Apps e.g. Pedommeter pro (GPS). This personal campaign resulted in 550 fans/followers in a few days. Among these were health and fitness coaches, health clubs, chefs and even professional food photographers.

Variety

Social networkers, like learners like to process information in different ways e.g. text, image, location, audio. McKendric contends that variety leads to engagement.There are lots of tools available, which creatives should be aware of, like social media dashboards, tweetdeck, cotweet, hubspot, spredfast and tweetadder. Social bookmarking sites like delicious are useful for content syndication e.g audio boo is intergrated with itunes, which is a massive platform.

Future

The future is the knowledge economy. Where knowledge and 'know how' is shared freely and content is king. Give it all away is McKendrick's advice, write for fans using community words and phrases. Promote and share. Social media strategies entail an investigative role and thrive through conversations on new media platforms e.g. blogs that also contain imagery that creates/reinforces brand value. McKendricks gives the metaphor of creating a honey pot; social media strategy is about making something attractive, something that people will tell all their friends about (creates buzz). He adds that it can be particularly useful for B2B campaigns. Finally, he ends by point to the 'next big thing' - curatorial software like pinterest which gathers 'collections' of 'stuff' that people are interested in, in real-time, a sort of bespoke magazine. As you can guess many products, services and brands will appear in these 'live' publications.  

Thoughts

In what ways do you think that using social media strategy could impact upon conventions of copywriting and art direction? Please share your thoughts and comment if you have found this post of interest.

Hopes and dreams cannot be exchanged or refunded exhibition by Paula Chambers

The talk by Paula Chambers earlier today was really interesting. Particulaly in terms of the ideas that influenced the objects such as experiences of motherhood and the study of (1990s) feminism with Griselda Pollock. The subversive details included in the two sculptural pieces Daddy's Little Princess and Daddy's Little Girl were particularly provocative. Made with vintage sewing patterns in the form of two single-bed headboards these pieces depict behaviours by females, not usually found in commercial imagery. One of the panels in the headboard made of 1950s patterns includes a girl holding a copy of The Second Sex by Simone de beauvoir. This reminded me of all the clothes that my mother made for me with the skills she learnt from her mother (pictured left). Likewise the 'fake archive' Mother Knows Best for Beatrice reveals moments where anger is expressed towards children by their mothers. This was shown in the visual language of illustrations by Beatrice Potter, whose stories often include violence. The exhibtion continues until 10th April 2012 enjoy!