technology

Gareth Kay on How To Make Strategy More Useful

I last night attended a talk by Gareth Kay (@garethk) from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners on how to make strategy more useful. Thought I’d post up my rough notes of key points he talked to.

I think the key take aways for me were that creative work is becoming more effective work over time as technology and social networks create an environment where the message of creative campaigns gets amplified. Secondly, in order for us to make strategy to drive this creativity more useful, we need to create better problems. It’s definitely a case of more creative work in is conducive to more creative work out.

Notes below:

Creative work more than ever equals effective work. Technology (being connected) & social networks amplify the message of creative campaigns. It drives business and fame plus is more efficient over time.

 How to make strategy more useful:

 1 Define better problems – not just “sell more” or “raise awareness”. Interesting problem provides the foundation for interesting creative. “make 999/1000 people not want to be a police officer” (a problem for creative regarding recruiting police officers).

 2 Be in the service of people

 3 Be a bit less visible – less interruption , visibility through invisibility, don’t necessarily expect people to come to you – be part of their day.

 4 Break the tyranny of messaging – “what should we say”, consider doing things rather than saying things.

 5 Look at the way we work – big ideas aren’t necessarily so big anymore, more small bets can create momentum. Consider an “R&D budget”, iteration, experimentation vs planning, cost of failure is less, agile cross discipline teams, can’t be perfect, improvising towards a simple goal. Embrace change.

Alex

Musings On The Future Of Radio

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We all know about the impact of smart phones,  but what about smart cars. As cars become more and more digitally enabled, what does this mean for the future of how we advertise to people in this context and thereby radio?

Take the images in the slideshow above of the new 5 series BMW for example. Here we have a passenger who is able to browse the internet from the comfort of their vehicle. Perhaps catching up with their social networks via the likes of Facebook or Twitter or checking the latest news via their favourite website. Radio could potenitally be being streamed into an environment where people are not only a captive audience, but connected to the web just as they would be in the living room (or on the street with their smart phone for that matter). Moreover, if radio is being streamed digitally, does this open up the possibility of being able to interact with the live stream much like digital TV?

Computer technology is finding its way into all aspects of our physcial lives, creating new meaning and utility. I’d like to consider two key aspects of utility that could potentially be built upon by utilising technology in this space.

Convenience – delivering relevant information when & where you need it. It’s all about making it as easy as possible for people to get the product information they require in order to purchase. Whats for sale, where, and for how much. If for example you heard an ad for groceries which you were then able to interact with via voice or a computer screen, you could potentially seek out more details about the products and where your nearest store is to purchase them. Being able to do this instantly from the convenience of your vehicle may become natural as people get used to being “always on” and connected. Perhaps in future you’ll be able to purchase groceries whilst on the way home, during a radio ad and have them delivered to your door. Convenient.

Context – relevant information delivered in the correct context for the environment. Simon Bond (BBDO) made the argument earlier this year at Cannes that no screen is equal, we must tailor our messages to the individual platform. He also discussed how we view each platform differently, relating each to Jungs personality Archetypes (PCs for example as a Sage). With this in mind, I’d see radio as somewhat of an Explorer/Sage, assisting you make sense of your environment and imparting information that is relevant to you. To this end, digitally enhanced radio could become more hyper-local, transmitting content related to stores that you are driving past, alerting you to deals that are close by. Perhaps radio could be streamed to different target audiences by selecting the types of vehicles you wish to reach. This could be quite effective as the type of car people choose to purchase is often quite reflective of their personality also. Those who drive new Audis would most likely be interested in high end products for example.

Time to order my new car.

Alex

Technology vs Advertising

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Technology

Through creation and innovation technology provides people with new material objects, networks and services. I’d like to note also that I think it is predicated by age, in that what is considered technology by us now, will just be stuff to children who grow up exposed to it.

Of interest to me, is how technology, more specifically technology involving or related to the use of computers, impacts upon  how we reach and engage with people as advertisers.

Computer technology changes our media consumption habits, from how we gain information, how we interact socially and even how we shop. As media consumption patterns change, so to must the way we deliver advertising messages to people. Needless to say the advertising and media industry has always had to adjust to changing media habits, from radio to television, how people consume media has continued to change, and will always do so. What doesn’t change though is the basic principal of what we do, to create great work which inspires the desired behaviour change.

To help us understand what is driving the rapid progress of the computer technology causing these changes, we can consider three laws which I heard Faris Yakob put forward a while back, his blog is at http://farisyakob.typepad.com

The first, is Moores Law – The number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. (Computers get faster for less money.)

The second is Kryders Law – Computer storage space doubles annually while the cost roughly halves. (Computers store more for less money, trending towards marginal freeness.)

As a side note, Kryders Law is one of the key reasons that Youtube and  Facebook are able to be viable businesses as storage space will continue down towards marginal freeness which essentially means they can store huge quantities of user content without charging anything. We now see the likes of Dropbox and Cloud systems which take advantage of this also.

Finally, we have Gilders Law – The total bandwidth of a communication system roughly triples every 12 months. (Faster internet for less money.)

Take these three laws together as a whole and you get faster more compact computers and devices, virtually unlimited storage capacity and high speed internet allowing greater amounts of data to be transferred, all at a falling price. This drives the creation and widespread adoption of new computer devices which impact our media consumption.

So what does this mean for advertising?

As people become more “connected” through computer technology, they expect media content tailored to them when and where they want it across multiple devices. These devices have enabled a new form of connected social networking to thrive, people now want to engage with their favourite brands and share these associations with their peer groups online as a form of establishing themselves within the social landscape.  There are now new opportunities for selling that aren’t confined to a bricks and mortar stores and huge volumes of data with ways to listen to customers which would never have been possible before.

All this change is forcing us to adapt in how content is delivered through each medium and changing advertising from a one way message to “consumers” into a combination of messages and conversations with people. A scary thing for brands as they loose direct control.

To survive in this environment, agencies may need to start acting more like start ups and software companies, building and prototyping agile solutions for engaging consumers across platforms.

On that note, lets get innovating.

Alex