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My three-year old daughter has discovered swearing. Three-year old style swearing. Somehow she has discovered that ‘poo’ is different from other words and so occasionally, when you ask what she’d like for tea or what she wants on her toast, she’ll tell you ‘poo’. And then she waits for a reaction. She knows there should be one.

The desire to shock and the pleasure we derive from it seem to be innate in human beings. Shocking people can be fun. Everyone from Marcel Duchamp to the Sex Pistols has made use of it and advertisers are no different. At its best, the shock factor cuts through, causes a bit of a rumpus, attracts plenty of attention to the brand and the product and is brutally effective. At its worst, it’s just a lazy and unimaginative way of getting attention – like burping loudly in a restaurant. Read More »

Usually I find Klout perks quite lame, especially for those of us not based in the US. My highlight so far had been a ‘digital lottery ticket to play and share with friends’. But I have to admit that I did get quite excited when I read that my social media influence could be exchanged for free beer (well, for access to American Airlines’ business class lounge, including free wi-fi and free beer).  The airline is now offering those people with a Klout score of 55 or above a one-day pass to their fancy Admirals Club in 40 different airports. Perks also include snacks, showers to ‘unwind and relax’ and more importantly, the feel-good factor of climbing up the ladder of influence.

One can argue how accurate Klout is and if it means anything at all. There was an interesting article on Wired a while ago about Calvin Lee, a graphic designer from L.A, who, in order to keep his score up would tweet up to 45 times a day, to the extreme of worrying about his Klout score going down while on holiday. Lee’s current Klout score is 73 and yes, he has already claimed his AA lounge perk – instagraming it on the way. If we look at Lee’s Klout score and compare it with, let’s say, Warren Buffet’s, 61, does that mean Lee is more influential than Mr. Buffet? Read More »

So we’ve moved into our first office, at 24 Greville Street in Clerkenwell.  Everything’s new – from the fridge (there goes the first month’s budget) to the ‘phone (which I can only assume is broken, as it hasn’t rung yet).

But the building itself is actually pretty old.  In fact, it’s mentioned in Oliver Twist, as the site of Fagin’s Den – a fact which some friends have suggested we should play up in our creds.  Now, given the fact that Fagin was a grotesquely anti-Semitic caricature of a conniving, child-exploiting criminal, I suspect we won’t follow this advice.  But the character’s creator, on the other hand, would be an excellent role model for us all.

You see, although Dickens is the quintessential Victorian writer, he also had all the traits that a modern creative company should aspire to.

He was a relentless innovator, both in terms of format (for instance, his pioneering of serialisation) and content (for example, his revolutionary use of dialect and slang).

He created big ideas that worked across all sorts of formats, from magazines to books, public readings to plays, cartoons to musicals and (ultimately) TV and film.

He championed great causes and made sure that his output was always opinionated.

He worked in real-time, exploiting the periodical publishing model to improve things as he went and using the public’s reaction as a guide (hence why the first 38 chapters of Oliver Twist contain 257 references to “the Jew”, while the last 15 have virtually none).

In short, he was a master storyteller: as commercially successful as he was creatively lauded.

Like I say then, not a bad role model.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if he hadn’t died 6 years before the invention of the telephone, his might have been ringing quite nicely.  Might grow the old sideburns a bit more and hope that a tiny smidgeon of his luck rubs off on us…

Over the weekend, I was discussing with my husband and some friends whether or not the author William Gibson was a prophet, especially as relates to technologies like Google Glass. Where does the influence lie? Is it that these technologies were already nascent and Gibson heard about them? Or is it that clever and inventive people read books like Gibson’s (and others’) and make things happen? Is it the chicken? Or the egg? Read More »

One of the great clichés of starting your own business is that it’s an extraordinarily liberating experience.  As I take the plunge with my partners, I can confirm that this is indeed the case: so far, our little enterprise has already relieved me of all my money, time and holidays…

But the upside of this newfound freedom is the ability to choose who you work with.  (Including the right to screen out pedants who would point out the two grammatical errors in that sentence).

Obviously, it’s not just start ups who have a monopoly on good people: all the agencies I’ve worked for have been stacked with talented folk.  But there’s something delicious about assembling a team and network from scratch, from the accountants to the production guys.

Actually, like all the best things in life, very little assembly is required: the really nice thing is that good people come to you.  We’ve been inundated with offers of help, from premises to people, IT to HR, data to design.  The fact that some of these overtures have come from direct competitors simply shows how unique our industry is.

Of course, we know it won’t last forever.  As Sir Martin Sorrell recently remarked, “It’s like hand-to-hand combat in the trenches” right now.  So this outbreak of goodwill is the equivalent of the football match in No Man’s Land, at Christmas 1914.

But before we go over the top and normal hostilities resume, I’d like to say thanks to all of you who who have lent a hand (or just an ear).  At a time when the industry feels a little bit beleaguered, it’s refreshing to be reminded that it’s full of big hearts as well as great minds.

No, this isn’t going to be a tirade against Twitter.  Or a paean to the days when creatives threw TVs out of windows, while snorting coke from the rolled up manuscript of their latest novel.

The thing that’s puzzling me is why there are so few advertising-created characters these days.  Years ago, the industry churned them out and we can still remember the best of them.  So we had the Milk Tray man, the Scottish Widow, the Flake girl, the Oxo Family and the Secret Lemonade Drinker.  We had a veritable menagerie of Dulux dogs, Andrex puppies, Anchor cows, Duracell bunnies, Hofmeister bears, Esso tigers and Lloyds horses.  We had double acts like Latham and Boff, Papa and Nicole and the Gold Blend couple.   We had a kindergarten-full of Milky Bar kids, Bisto urchins and Hovis boys.  We had Martians, for God’s sake.  Funny, potato-eating Martians.

So why do we no longer create characters like this?  Well, one reason might be that media and budgets are too fragmented to build momentum nowadays – although one could argue that using a recognisable figure would actually help on this front.  Another explanation might be that consumers are more sophisticated these days, and would reject such devices as superficial – although one could equally retort that they’d welcome the simplicity.  Or perhaps agencies avoid them because they feel old-fashioned and creatively limiting – although the few exceptions that exist today (such as the Old Spice guy, the PG Monkey or the Cravendale cats) suggest that this needn’t be the case.

At any rate, it’s interesting to watch how characters have been adopted by another industry, just as we’ve dropped them.  Mario, Sonic, Pokemon, Lara Croft, Angry Birds, Moshi Monsters and the Master Chief from Halo have helped sell billions of games between them.  They have created vast franchises beyond the core product, spanning magazines, movies and merchandise.  They have built an industry that is bigger than Hollywood.  And one that is considered more modern and creative than our own.

In short, characters don’t seem to be holding them back.  And while I’m obviously not advocating them as a formula for success, maybe we shouldn’t see them as a recipe for disaster either. “Simples”, as another one of our honourable exceptions might say.

The idea that it’s “not what you say, but the way that you say it” has been around for a long time now.  So why is “Tone of voice” invariably the least well written part of any creative brief?

There’s a delicious irony that the section that’s supposed to be all about personality usually turns out to be a charisma-free zone.  The same old descriptors abound (“confident”, “positive”, “down-to-earth”, “trustworthy”, “contemporary”, “fun”, “empowering”, “optimistic”).  Words that nobody can argue with, but that do nothing to inspire creatives or give brands a unique voice.

In contrast, I was always proud of our definition of Hovis, as being all about “grit and goosebumps”.  These words were incredibly evocative: they immediately conjured up a world of cobbled streets and coal mines, spirited kids with scabby knees and snottery noses, faded posters on gable ends and decaying hilltop farms.  They brought to mind other creative influences too, like Kes, This is England and the beginning of Great Expectations.  But perhaps most of all, they were words I hadn’t seen on a brief before: least of all together.

Thinking about this, I think we should all dig around for a new vocabulary for our briefs.  Banning the words listed above would be a start.  But why not go one step further and try to use qualities that feel plain wrong?  After all, it’s often a personality’s flaws that make them interesting and cherished (e.g. Amy Winehouse’s vulnerability, Jack Dee’s pessimism, David Mitchell’s priggishness or Sir Alex Ferguson’s grumpiness).  Likewise, it’s often a negative quality that gives a brand a uniquely appealing tone of voice (e.g. Ronseal’s bluntness, Pot Noodles’ filthiness or Blackcurrant Tango’s belligerence.)

If Honda can make “Hate” loveable and Three can make “Silly” smart, then it suggests that there is scope for much more variety in this area.

I look forward to seeing all your sad, disturbing, pompous, arrogant, amateurish, shy, lurid, dumbass, ludicrous, sleepy, cowardly, cruel, flirtatious, bitchy, pervy work….

Two announcements this week have bemused but perhaps not surprised me. And they reflect the changing nature of the relationship between media agency and media owner, not all of which is healthy.

‘’Twitter reaches biggest ad deal yet’’ read the headline in the FT reporting on the ‘’ non- exclusive’’ yet ‘’preferential’’ global deal that had been reached between Starcom Mediavest and Twitter.(http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/1179499/twitter-signs-major-advertising-deal-publicis-groupe/)

Once you get beyond the headline and read a bit of the detail behind the deal, it appears that it allows Twitter to offer the same ‘’preferential’’ treatment to others . It would have to do so to avoid the fury of most advertisers and agencies . For Twitter, there appears to be no downside. As they prepare for a multi-billion dollar IPO they can tell the market that they have secured vast budgets and commercial endorsement from a leading buyer, on terms that they can offer to anyone else in the market.

Laura Desmond, Starcom’s CEO is, I assume, enjoying the afterglow of being seen to be there first to market ? She is quick to highlight how they have already innovated with Twitter on behalf of certain clients and to talk the big ‘D’ word (Data in case you didn’t work it out). I assume that their experiences to date gives them confidence to ramp up their commitment. This will go a long way in her mind to offsetting the obvious criticism…well obvious to me. And the criticism is this…what is the purpose of cosying up so publicly to a media vendor? Spending money for a specific client, returning a commercial benefit to that client ,and in the process receiving a sensible reward for the agency, is what an agency is meant to do. But now when a Starcom planner recommends Twitter on a plan might the advertiser question whether there may be a motivation to do so beyond their own commercial ends? To fulfil the terms of the deal? Might they rightly worry that having made such a splash about the importance of Twitter that the planner is under pressure to bring them to the planning table even when it may be just a nice to have rather than a must have. Laura Desmond says that Twitter is ‘essential’. If so then that stock is going to FLY! And their stock price won’t be the only price that will be rising.

Starcom’s defence will be that they are getting one step ahead of the competition and thus feeding their clients first with the fruits of Twitter. In the past ,smart advertisers have beaten their competitors through stealth, doing things well without drawing attention to the media they have found is working. Why would a media agency want to draw attention to the benefits unless it is some way to try and make themselves (and not their clients) more sexy? If the announcement of the deal is a piece of marketing for the agency how should the clients of that agency feel?

I said there were two announcements…the second one was Facebook UK’s announcement of the creation of an Advisory Board (http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/News/MostEmailed/1179870/Coke-Tesco-MediaCom-join-Facebook-advisory-board/ ) . I have been aware for some time that this existed in the States because people I know well and respect either have sat or continue to sit on it.

I have already made my view clear to them. If they are doing that in a personal capacity I think it is acceptable as long as their companies feel no compunction to be overly friendly to Facebook by virtue of their participation. If they are representing their company’s interests, why are they doing it? Are they being paid , are they simply flattered , or are they frightened of being left out in the cold? Their response unsurprisingly was that it gives them a bird’s eye view of the cutting edge of digital and social media. Oh ,and face time with the likes of Unilever’s Keith Weed!

If ITV, Channel 4, Associated Newspapers, News International and Global radio all decided tomorrow to follow suit what would media agencies do? Facebook have clearly gone out of their way in the UK to ensure that most Holding Companies have a seat on the Board. So presumably the same agencies would happily commit to help develop all these other important media owners too?I would argue we have as much to gain from improving their offering as we do in helping to develop Facebook. It’s not like Facebook can’t afford to buy good advice. So why are agencies so keen to offer it for free?

It could soon get out of hand as media agencies fight amongst each other to do landmark deals in public and to sit on Advisory Boards. I suspect though that their interest is limited to digitally centric, stock price sensitive announcements.

Facebook’s argument might be that they are responding to criticism that in the past their advertising opportunities have been sub optimal and that they want to consult with the customer to ensure that the maximum impact is generated for advertiser’s investment. Can’t argue with the ambition but surely the solution is to just do their job better, not to co-opt the buy market onto a Board.

My criticism here is not of the media owners. Twitter must be delighted and they are hardly going to bury the news that Starcom seemed so keen to promote.

Facebook are to be congratulated in getting big agency buyers to sit on their side of the fence.

As an agency person I know which side of the fence I intend to remain on.

After a hiatus, it seems Dove is returning to its ‘Real Beauty’ theme with the beauty of a film about self-image. It packs a real emotional wallop. And, it’s had more than 8.8 million views, demonstrating some great retransmission.

Read More »

As a grad at AMV, I once saw Peter Mead give a fantastic talk on the secrets of great account management.

As you might expect, it was full of inspirational stories, practical advice and the odd expletive.  But surprisingly, for such a paragon of persuasion, there was very little about selling work. Read More »