Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

Nice: another iPhone debunker ad.

Thanks, Sandra.

In the same line… we have 2 new TVCs from Apple.

Surprise

Top of the line

A pretty interesting and recent case of how to do a social media led campaign is the Who Killed Summer campaign by Vodafone.

The idea is that you can follow a bunch of contestants who were invited to a 9 week stint of parties across Europe. The last one standing this excessive party-trek and can hunt down the biggest celebrities wins. What the contestants don’t seem to know: as time goes on, they are actually have to work for Vodafone to organize the parties, and the whole thing becomes a bit reality show (reminiscent of “the apprentice”). On the youtube channel the campaign is described as

Who Killed Summer? is a groundbreaking multi-platform drama set against the backdrop of an online reality show.

Strategically, the whole thing seems pretty well thought-through and planned in terms of awareness/reach, target relevance, multi-platform spread, content, drama, the works… However the youtube channel only got 300+ views so far. Maybe it is the lack of participative elements.

So far, the site traffic rank is 30,000 in the UK, 90,000 in Germany. Average time on site is under 2 minutes. 40% of traffic comes from and goes to facebook and twitter.

We’ll see…

I saw this somewhere last year and never found the link and I finally stumbled across it on TED.com, where the maker Golan Levin was a speaker this year. I think it is still awesome. Imagine creating interactive situations where you interact gesturally with people instead of saying something. Very very cool.

Double-Taker (Snout), Interactive Robot from Golan Levin on Vimeo.

WWF’s Earth Hour today launched a world first social mapping platform aimed at illustrating the global mandate for action on climate change.

The new ‘Show Your Vote‘ platform, developed as part of Earth Hour’s Vote Earth campaign, asks people to show their Vote for Earth (over Global Warming) in the lead up to the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen this December.

The platform was developed using Google technology and launched with Earth Hour creative partner Leo Burnett at Google’s Creative Sandbox event last night in Sydney.

http://www.earthhour.org/

The last few weeks in German advertising have seen an interesting backlash of people reacting to blatantly fake and dishonest brand communications. Brands that don’t seem to have a purpose, that don’t listen, but keep promising the same old stuff.

First it was the Vodafone campaign using bloggers as Advertising vehicles to gain credibility, only that the exact opposite happened. Now it is the backlash that is generated by Greenpeace commenting on the TV spot of one of Germany’s largest electricity utilities RWE.

The spot is subtitled by Greenpeace debunking the greenwashing ways of the utility with straight facts, such as enlightning people that RWE only creates 0,1% of its electricity with wind, and has no tidal power plants whatsoever, even though that is what they say. Also, the subtitles tell you that some of the power lines are from the pre-war era and that’s why they toppled over some winters ago, and this in fact the company creates 20% of Germany’s CO2 and facetiously asks: “Where are the nuclear power plants in this spot?”

Seriously, didn’t they think this through? Don’t these brands know that people can actually easily check into the facts and converse about their brand? A jolly green giant won’t sway people today. You need to listen, and act instead of wasting your money on an unauthentic TV spot to get people. RWE could have created more positive brand perception more cheaply by using a social media strategy to listening to people and transparently addressing their concerns instead of using their twitter channel to just disseminate press releases.

Last weekend some strategy and long-term digital agency career friends (Dirk Reinhardt, Shailia Stephens-Würsig, Björn Sternsdorf, Gerald Hensel and Angela Becker) and I held a seminar at our Leo Burnett offices on digital planning for traditional planners.

To be honest, we were a bit sneaky. To most of us, there ain’t no such thing as “digital” strategy. Or can you tell me what “analog” strategy is?

Fact is, there is so much confusion and mystery regarding the term “digital”, even to supposedly “channel-agnostic/media-neutral” strategists, that it seemed like a great strategy (haha) to offer a course in “digital planning”. In doing so, we had the pleasure to work with the top 20 of Germany’s planners who don’t just hide behind the hackneyed term “channel-agnostic” for lack of their own change-ability, but rather exercised their confusion tolerance and went into the whole thing full-on. The most engaged folks I had the pleasure to work with in a while!

Hence, our aim wasn’t sneaky at all: debunk the myths around digital planning, its complexity and hopefully provide some pointers that alleviate some angst concerning new terrains in research, discovery, strategy development and shaping the creative outcome. And above all: make the segregated planning community come together.

Therefore, the day started with the statement:

“Digital” strategy doesn’t replace traditional strategy. Strategy is strategy and always was. It simply rams home the point that we need to extend strategic planning overall so it can remain relevant as a discipline that can lead brands to success by making a qualitative difference in people’s lives again.”

Techniques and tools (such as information architecture, touchpoint analysis, contact planning, purchase funnels, etc) have existed for a long time before the term “digital strategy” became the mot du jour. They   may have given us an irritatingly confusing mess of terminologies, but also a gift: we can make brands relevant again, without unsuccessfully and repeatedly pressing the “mass media onslaught” button because we’re out of ideas.

Therefore, we see digital strategy as a way to go back to the roots and deliver what strategy was always about: know what to do, not just what to say. This is the most relevant job a strategist can do in a time when people wonder if they should listen to your brand.

Therefore, we try to make digital the stuff that adds a PLUS to your strategic effectiveness versus being a completely new discipline:

Each section of the workshop then explored each PLUS with practical exercises and theory moving along the planning process from research to strategy to creative briefing and team constellations.

Result of the workshop:

At the end of the workshop, we had a discussion on whether we succeeded in offering an intergrated approach to planning, and if indeed digital (and other) planning methodologies in fact can be seen as a plus or if it isn’t really something different out there.

Here are excerpts of the discussion:

On brands:

“I think one of the biggest issues is still that brands and their clients feel that they have to be perfect. But people don’t expect you to be perfect. They want a conversation about your products. I mean, would you trust a person who disappointed you and walks away when you want to talk to them?”

“I think if brands didn’t understand the importance behind people’s digital behaviors before, flailing a dead business and brand model, the recession could end up helping in finally understanding it. There didn’t seem to be enough pressure to have to change. Maybe now marketers will understand that it’s not them that change everything, but rather the people themselves. Strategic planning needs to accompany that.”

On Technology:

“Traditional planning has been moving this way anyway, but there seem to be so many barriers still for brand planners because they think they can’t do something that in the end requires a technological solution.”

“I am so relieved the new planning isn’t about technology. On the contrary, I am happy that it is even much more about people than before. Looking at human behavior and having all this detailed insight instead of just asking people is what we should do anyway!”

“For brand planners, it is second nature to look at trends in categories. It might help to think of technology as a thing that keeps generating trends that change people’s behaviors. It is much better than getting scared about technological details. And we need to know what people do anyway. How else can we plan for anything?”

On the planning process:

“What really helped was to understood that my team just got so much bigger and what the different roles are. It helps me because I now that my brand strategy is not seperate from digital stuff and I feel there are people to talk to about my strategy and get it working everywhere else.”

“Digital always seems so overwhelming when you don’t know you don’t have to know everything. Knowing there are experts really helps.”

On taking clients into the digital space:

“I am still worried about being able to give a client security about delivering, so he moves forward into the digital space, but to be honest was I ever able to give him this security before? My client spends loads of money on TV and I can’t really say if it works anymore either.”

“In a way, tradititional planners have an advantage: they speak the brand and marketing client’s language better than some digital agency people. Using that advantage, also in terms of tradititional techiques to make them feel comfortable to try out new stuff is a big opportunity.”

“It makes sense to think in little steps and strategies instead of trying to solve for everything at once and selling the client a holistic castle in the sky. Taking the client on a journey with achievable milestones and giving them a sense of success in the space and growing from there works better.”

Conclusion:

While not all myths can be debunked in one weekend, not all issues solved, we feel we started a discourse in the right direction and everyone involved feel that this kind of collaboration can open doors to better strategy with less siloes. As workshop participant, Stephen Rothman, Head of Strategy Saatchi Frankfurt said:

I believe that as the world of marketing and communications moves forward, the work will demand that we come to the place where classic vs. digital planner will become an anachronism. Because “consumers” aren’t digital or classic. This seminar got us all started in that direction.

Reposted from davaidavai.com

You know how these things start.

You discuss with friends, you drink wine and finally you’re convinced you got a ‘really good idea the world definitely is waiting for’…

About 6 months ago, the people on this picture asked themselves what digital strategy is. Is there a digital planning? If yes, what makes it different to what we did since the 1970s? There were a lot of question marks.

The only thing which was clear was, none of knew if there is a real genuine digital planning approach. We knew we did something different…but we didn’t exactly know what. And I believe this open question made us structure a workshop for traditional account planners which took place last friday and saturday: An open discourse in which we asked

http://skittles.com/ is a new website with a nice idea and execution. Let’s just bild a menu and use the several social network tools to comunicate with the users.

Well everybody is trying to do it… but Skittles manage to buid it in a clever way

Skittles

Take a look in http://skittles.com/

Yasmin Ahmad (July 1, 1958 - July 25, 2009) was the executive creative director at Leo Burnett Kuala Lumpur.

Reviewing some of her amazing work i’ve found a Petronas commercial for Malaysia’s 50th Independent Day made in 2008 called “Tan Hong Ming in love”. I’m sure most of you know it already as it was several times gold awarded in different competitions, but it’s so expressive and touching that it’s worth to see it over and over again.