Creativity is not a process. John Jay ECD at W+K. Breaking out of the Silo

I have been thinking about "silos" quite a bit recently and was pulling some stuff together to do a piece. Then along comes this brilliant clip, by Fast Company, with John Jay, ECD at the Wieden+Kennedy agency, who neatly nails the "silo" problem-solution in just over two minutes.

Let me back up a bit. There seems to be a cultural paradox out there, in this 24/7 connected age of collaboration, between what agencies and companies say and what they actually do (between talking the talk and walking the walk, if you will). This "silo paradox" seems to be both outward and inward: outwardly the company "silo" mind-set that  limits interaction with outsiders and the internal "mini-silo" thinking, that limits interaction between departments and disciplines (Marketing from Systems/IT; Marketing from Finance etc.).

I have shared these observations with people I know in larger, supposedly outward looking, cross-disciplined, team orientated, organizations and the typical response is: at the outward level, "sure we want to be open and collaborative but, we have to maintain confidentiality"; or at the inward level, "boy they (insert department) are hard to talk to". OK, fair enough. But isn't there an obvious downside here: credibility?

Anyway, back to John Jay. Here are my favorite quotes from the clip.

• "Get out of your comfort zone, culturally. . ."
• "We get silo-ed to death. . . ." 
• "The longer you work the more people want to put you in a silo, so they can define who you are by their terms. Never let anyone define you by their terms".

Do you have a POV on "silos"? Comments most welcome.

Behind most successful brands there is always an interesting storey.

I love a good brand story, especially ones that go to the roots and essence of a successful brand; because these stories nearly always reveal key lessons for brand building in general. The Oakley story is a case in point.

History of Oakley from Defgrip on Vimeo.
From Threebillion.com . From bike grips to eye-wear.
  
According to Wikipedia, Oakley was founded by Jim Jannard in 1975 with an initial investment of $300. The name came from his dog, Oakley, an English Setter. Oakley-the-brand began making handlebar grips during the BMX biking  and Motocross boom of the 70´s and 80´s, but not just any grip. As the video points out, right from the beginning Oakley was obsessed with design, product quality, connecting with their core users and incorporating feedback into their designs. (Eco's of the Nike brand essence?).

Protective biking goggles soon followed. 
Today Oakley produces a wide variety of sports equipment and eyewear: sunglasses, prescription glasses, sports visors, and ski goggles , as well as watches, clothing, bags, backpacks, shoes, American football and hockey eyewear, golf gear and other accessories. Oakley currently holds more than 600 patents for eyewear, materials and performance gear.

Naturally, as a front line equipment brand, Oakley has signed up many leading athletes for endorsements and collaboration. Of these the association with cycling legend Lance Armstrong was probably the most successful in taking the brand to a wider global audience, as the fame of the seven-time-consecutive Tour de France winner spread internationally. 
Lance Armstrong is also a cancer surviver and fundraising activist,  through the Lance Armstrong Foundadtion.  Launched in 1997, the LAF has raised $325 million, including sales of the yellow "Livestrong" wristbands. 
Those yellow wristbands signified a powerful human story. By including a matching yellow grip in the product design, the Oakley brand became part of both sides of the story: the yellow jersey - the, competitive, winning side and the yellow wristband - the story of resilience and human fortitude. The Oakley advertising at the time reflected this compelling chapter of the brand story in an involving, understated, tone. (Let the picture tell the story). 

Fast forward a few years and Oakley had evolved into a truly youth-fashion-icon, brand. The brand's core values (design, functionality and contemporary sheik) are carefully crafted into the advertising. (Think Apple?).

In November 2007, Oakley Inc. was acquired by the Italian Luxottica group for a reported $2.1 billion and became a part of the Luxottica eyewear brand portfolio along with Ray-Ban, Persol and Vogue.


Some brands tend to loose their luster when absorbed into a global conglomerate and their brand stories and mythology fade from contemporary consumer culture (a wordy way of saying - irrelevant). 
In 2010 thirty three Chilean miners emerged, from their 10 week ordeal in total darkness, into the glaring sunlight and global media attention. Oakley had donated sunglasses with specially selected lenses to protect them from the glare and the Oakley brand became embedded into that incredible rescue story.  
Opportunistic, crass, publicity? Or or a continuation of a great brand story? The story wins out, as an "earned-media" coup, because of its human connection that resonates with consumers at a higher level than product attributes alone can ever do (resilience and human fortitude - the "Livestrong"  yellow wristbands again). 

How to generate authentic brand stories:
Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith of the The Dragon Fly Effect, outline 3 practical ways to collect and spread brand stories. 

• Create an internal storybank, or database of stories, where employees and even customers can write and submit stories complete with titles. (Don't forget the pictures and videos!)
• These stories are then keyworded, so that people looking for stories can easily find them. Employees looking for stories can reach out to the authors. 
• Nike, Apple and eBay harness stories as tools to crowdsource ideas, such as what consumers are really passionate about. They do this as a way to give employees language and initiative to tell personal stories of meaning, and to amplify and distribute brand initiatives in story form.

Feel free to comment on Oakley or your own favorite brand stories.  

The Learning-Curve. Still early on the journey.

With all the changes going on in Brand Planning, Advertising and Digital Media 

it's easy to feel that the craft skills and methodologies we have worked so

hard to master are now irrelevant and feel we are sliding backwards down 

the learning curve again.

   

Perhaps we are just getting used to the idea of fluid learning, new skills and multiple learning curves.

A logical starting point for any learning curve might be developing new skill-sets and methodologies around the familiar 4 Ins of planning: 

• Bringing together relevant Information (about the Brand, the Consumer and the Culture).
• Producing an Interpretation of the data that clearly sets out the issues to be addressed (Infografics).
• Uncovering consumer Insights that deliver long-term value for the brand (Think Johnnie Walker - Keep Walking - life is a journey, not a destination).
• Developing a strategic brief that will deliver Inspired, contagious, ideas that people will  engage with and share with others.  

A central question is: 

How should the brief, or the briefing process, be adapted for the new world of digital communications and the new players that are becoming involved?

New Players:

This now involves a number of digital specialists that are reshaping the traditional creative and production team: technology web architects and developers; designers and  video content specialists; public relations content developers and social media moderation specialists to name a few.   

The Challenge:

A lot of agency planners I know are still rather tight-lipped on this issue. Perhaps still early on their learning curves?. So, kudos to Gareth Kay of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners - a Full Service Integrated Ad Agency, for this presentation on "The Brief in the post digital age" which brings into focus the challenges for planners and strategists.

Take Away:
The central challenge then, on any new learning curve, is to get away from the traditional thinking of messages and propositions and focus on how to involve people with contagious ideas they will want to get involved with and share.

As Richard Huntington - Adliterate points out in this post, the challenge of "involving people" requires a new mind-set:

You cannot hope to involve people in a campaign unless the brand is up to something interesting. And you cannot hope to involve people in the life of a brand unless the brand seems to care about something or things that real human beings care about, rather than endlessly repeating the brand’s obsessions to them. And that’s about as complex as it gets, they are if you like three sequential steps to participation heaven.

1. Start by making sure your brand cares about something that people care about, that it has a point of view on or a contribution to make to the lives that they lead. 

2. Then do something interesting with this.

3. How are we going to enable people to join in and play? 

What does your new learning curve look like?

Feel free to comment and share.

Back again, rejoining the conversation.

Now, what to write about. So much has changed/is changing. So how to offer something interesting and relevant. Let's start with the Charlie Rose interview with Chris Anderson of TED (ideas worth spreading).

I am a big fan of both Charlie Rose and TED. Here Chris Anderson talks about the power of clarity, empathy and low ego that personifies good TED speakers; spreading TED for free (750,000 TED talks are now viewed daily) and how knowledge is passed on through story telling and personal experiences.

Feel free to comment.

(Thanks to Steve Goldner for the Tweet)

Off, for a while. . .

The OneBrand Blog will be closing down for a while. I shall be posting my BrandWidth column that I do for The News of Mexico City here for those that are interested in general marketing topics. This is definitely a "good news - bad news" thing. The good news is that the old work load has picked up a lot in the last couple of months. The bad news is, of course, that there is less time for blogging and reading the great blogs that are out there that feed the ideas, links and the thinking that gets posted here. So, "we'll be back"!!

Blog of the Year.

For my money, David Armano at Logic and Emotion has been the most influential blogger this year, in and around the TED triangle - Technology, Entertainment and Design (with Brand Experience at the center).
He has come up with some brilliant charts (the Ecosystem is my favorite) and has taken up the slack for daily inspiration. Keeping the energy and interest going is hard work. Well done David and keep those charts coming!

Santa – The Brand
The Magic of North Pole Marketing

Important disclaimer! If you are over the age of ten, please read this as it was written: tongue firmly in cheek. If you are under 10, please believe every word!

Walking through a busy shopping center the other day, I overheard a child talking to her mother.
“Hey Mama, I need to get my letter off to Santa. What’s his e-mail address?”
“Hmm. . .” I thought. “I wonder where that idea could take us.”
Here then is a quick update on Santa - The Brand and the workings of his marketing department, North Pole Marketing.

Brand essence: Santa Claus is one of the oldest and most endearing of brand icons. Rooted in the European folk law and mythology of St. Nicholas and Good King Wenceslas, Santa’s core essence is all about gift giving and helping those less fortunate than ourselves: the universal spirit of Christmas that Santa Claus brings to millions of children all over the world. The distances, coordination and logistics involved are mind boggling but, Santa and his team have managed to adapt to changing conditions, urbanization and architecture. The change of entry point from chimneys to elevators was particularly challenging.

Production and logistics: The original North Pole toy factory ran out of capacity years ago and NPM now outsources to production centers all over the world. Partner programs, with DHL, FedEx, UPS, Amazon.com and others, ensure a constant two way flow of technology and know-how. It is rumored that NPM hosts an annual workshop with suppliers and partners, during the summer, to exchange new ideas and upgrade technology for the coming season.

Retaining and refreshing the brand’s core values: Movies, such as the Polar Express, reinforce the magic and splendor of the North Pole enterprise and the dramatic departure of Santa in his sleigh, piled high with gifts. This year’s Santa movie, Fred Claus, reveals a more human side of Santa and his real-life sibling issues that every child can relate to.

The Brand experience: Santa cannot be everywhere, so depends on thousands of proxies and volunteers to appear in stores and shopping centers to deliver an unforgettable experience to children. Santa likes to stay in touch and sits in whenever he can. The Santa Brand experience involves 4 core elements: Have you been a good boy/girl? What do you want for Christmas? Santa humor . . . . Ho, ho, ho! and a photo for the children to take home.

Standards and dress code have been slipping lately. Santa has had to remind his team that Nike and Reebok sneakers are not in keeping with the Santa Brand identity and could seriously degrade the experience for children.

Code of Practice: Nobody actually owns Santa. This means that anyone can use the Brand for commercial purposes. Luckily, in most cases, his codes of practice and good taste are respected. As added insurance, NPM mails out a special card every year to remind marketing communities all over the world to respect the Santa Code.

People tend to forget that Santa still likes a snack when he has finished arranging all the presents under the tree. I understand cookies and a glass of milk are still his favorites ;-)

(From my Brand Width column in The News - Mexico City, Thursday December 13th.)

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Wish I had been there. .
From: garethk,
"Charts from Polygamous Marriage Connections Planning conference, New Orleans October 26 2007. Argues that we need to stop being in the message delivery industry and instead be in the business of creating energy for brands".
As I said, I really wish I had been there and not just for the food! Gareth has put together most of the salient ideas on new brand thinking and makes the point that we (planners and strategists) have a lot to unlearn first ("stop being in the message delivery business. . .).
Gareth's presentation mirrors a lot of the thinking that Russell Davies, John Grant, Richard Huntington, Jim Carroll and few others have been advancing. (See the "blogs we like" list over in left hand column). This new thinking started to take root before and during the dot com bubble of 2000 and has been gaining momentum in the last two years.
The problem, for many of us (with yours truly very much included), is how to communicate new brand thinking to our clients and potential clients.

Specialists or Generalists. Who fits where?

A thought provoking chart from xxxxx via xxxx at Logic and Emotion .
All this must, inevitably, bring us to the polemic of the Executive (OK, Suits if you want), Nerds and Geeks. We will get to that in a couple of days.

Epic 2007 - Ethnography Conference -
Keystone Colorado. Oct. 4-6th.

"EPIC is the premier international forum bringing together artists, computer scientists, designers, social scientists, marketers, academics and advertisers to discuss recent developments and future advances around ethnographic praxis in industry. Please join us in beautiful Keystone CO USA as we explore the theme of Being Heard".

I am not a member of the Association of American Anthropologists. The theme was intriguing, the venue incredible and the price very acceptable, so off we went, not really knowing what to expect but suspecting it might be interesting for a few days in the mountains. We were not dissapointed.

Brand Definitions at Your Fingertips

Here is a neat directory table for brand definitions from Kolbrener (brand consultants) by way of the good people at threebillion.com, who are one of my main sources for youth trends and other brand related news. They always seem to filter their sources well and nearly all their posts are worth reading.
The Kolbrener table is a good reference for structuring projects but beware of some of the definitions as it would appear that our friends at Kolbrener also specialize in MBA speak. Nothing wrong with that, just a bit irritating after a while. If you really like that stuff, try the MBA on a page from Value Based Management. They have managed to cram literally everything you might ever need to know about management theory on just one page with links to the detailed sources. Amazing! Just the thing if you need to brush up on the 3C´s, 7P´s, 7S´s or Activity Based Costing. I´ll bet you´ll be clicking over there right now!! I think that one came from Guy Kawasaki a few weeks back.

Not so forever young?
(Click on image for larger view)

According to the TGI (Target Group Index) Global Barometer, Mexicans are becoming less concerned with looking young than they were a few years ago; less now than Germans and Russians. 50% of Mexican adults, 18+, agree that "it is important to keep looking young." Of course averages can be misleading. In all probability at least 75% of Mexican women would agree, leaving just 25% of men make up the average of 50%. Or is the growing population of Mexicans over 45 starting to accept the inevitable?
Mexico has one of the highest of per-capita consumption levels in the world for skin creams, moisturising creams, skin treatments and cosmetics. So any change in consumer attitudes towards looking young could be cause for concern. However, there is a difference between maybe not looking young, but looking younger than you are. In other words the response would br quite different if, let's say, the question was reworded as "it is important to look younger than you are." But would that alter the ranking of responses by country? Probably not by much.

Technorati Profile

Great TV Advertising. . . Great Brand Entertainment.

Research studies from all over the world show that quality TV advertising is still unmatched in its ability to create emotional connections between brands and people, get talked about and passed around. Like this great work for Brahma Beer. I haven't had time to check out who did it, but whoever it was . . Bravo!
The question is, where does the brand go from here? Hopefully not just another TV commercial, but something that takes this idea, this spontaneity, this relevance and builds it into another piece of great brand entertainment. Because I think this is not just a great commercial for Brahma, but great Brahma entertainment. i.e. the brand takes full ownership of the idea.

The 7 Deadly Sins
From: garethk, 4 weeks ago





Presentation on the 7 'deadly' sins of account planning given at the 2007 AAAA Account Planning Conference by Gareth Kay of Modernista! and ... less Mark Lewis of DDB San Francisco

This is a good, if lengthy, presentation from Gareth and Mark at the APG conference in San Diego. It´s not really a wake up call, to new brand thinking, anymore, but more of a warning that staying stuck in the traditional (5, 10, 20+ year old) thinking of the way we thought brand communications worked back then (Awareness- Interest- Desire- Action) is now darn right dangerous to a planners health (i.e. career prospects) not mention the health of the brands they are working on. We might have heard it all before but do we really put it work for our clients, when they still don´t quite get it yet?

New Media?
Your Rocket is Waiting

Sorry, I just couldn't resist the chance to sponsor our very own company rocket!
You can get one at GlassGiant.
Since the Virgin involvement in private sector space travel, this is not such a far fetched idea after all. Maybe it's scalable too!
But this is not just about paid media passivity, we would actually have to get involved in the mission. Probably by getting Myth Busters to solve something really weird that only happens in orbital space. They say the only way that that can work is if we sponsor them. OK, I guess that makes sense, but that will push us way over budget.
But hey, now we have Discovery Channel on board. So we will need to produce some really dramatic video on the "making of the making of", if that makes sense.
Now some really savvy client wants to sponsor a web page that kids can interact with. Wow, now our sponsorship idea has its own sponsor. Great, we also get the budget back in line.
Somebody else just called who wants to make the whole thing into a video game.
It's late, I had better call it a night before this gets out of hand.

A Mexican Middle Class Revival?

Fragile to be sure, but it's there.

Most economists agree that the fundamental engine of sustained economic growth is dependant on an expanding middle class. In Mexico the middle classes have still yet to recover from the massive crash of 1982 and the "lost decade" that culminated in the Tequila meltdown of 1994. So, news of a Mexican middle class revival (from a number of sources) is welcome news indeed.
An article in the Economist points to a resurgence of the the lower middle (D+) class in Latin America, specifically in Brazil and Mexico.
" According to Alejandro Hope of GEA, a consultancy in Mexico City, the number of (D+ and lower C class) families with a monthly income of between $US6,600 and $US17,600 has increased from 5.7m in 1996 to 10.7m in 2006." An increase of 88%.
As the Economist article points out, evidence of an expansion in the Mexican lower middle class are plain to see:
> The growth in low cost home construction and mortgages
> Expanding credit (the Mexican Bank Association recently announced that 3 million new credit cards will be distributed to lower middle class consumers.
> First time use of air travel. A survey by a new low-cost Mexican airline found that 47% of its passengers had never flown before.
> Record levels of new car (sub compact) sales
Data from AC Nielsen (a leading market research company) points to growth, but at the upper end of the middle class, the C+ and Middle C groups: from 29% of the population in 2000 to 32% in 2006. Nielsen produces an excellent market overview of key trends (Cambios en el Mercado Mexicano 2007) which you down load as a pdf here
As one might suspect, these trends are far from being uniform across the country. According to AMAI, 2004 data, the C class represents 22% of the population in Monterrey, 21% in Guadalajara, falling to 15% in Mexico City and 12% in the south of the country.
What is interesting, are the ways in which middle class values and aspirations are changing. The Economist article sees new middle class as being well educated and more self-reliant than the traditional middle class, that relied on their political, professional, commercial contacts and protected markets to succeed, rather than initiative, innovation and competition which are beginning to provide the opportunities for people now entering and climbing the middle class ladder. Aspiration, status and upward mobility are still the key drivers of middle class habits and attitudes. But, perhaps, now joined with a self-reliant northern work ethic. That should be wake up call for brands wishing to connect to the new emerging middle class.

World´s Top 100 Brands

The Business Week - Interbrand Top 100 Brands listing is here again. You can down load the full article pdf here and check out the the Interbrand methodology for arriving at a brand’s economic worth.
Top 10 brands show little change: Coca Cola is still valued as the most valuable brand in the world at $US 65.3 billion, followed by Microsoft, IBM, GE, Nokia, Toyota, INTEL, McDonald's, Disney and Mercedes Benz. For a closer look at the McDonald's, BW has an interview with CMO Mary Dillon, who talks about the brand dialogue they have developed with consumers.
Probably the most interesting trend in this exercise is the difference between the big winners and the big losers according to the tables.
The big winners are Google (#20) with a gain of +44%, Zara +22%, Apple +21%, Nintendo +18% and Starbucks +17%. These brands stand out as being innovators that have successfully redefined their categories and challenged existing conventions. BW has an interview with David Lawee VP marketing for Google, who summed up Google's innovation very succinctly:
"You can't say your are innovative. You actually have to be innovative. The best marketing for innovation is to put out a new product or improvement every two weeks. We're releasing stuff almost every day. That's much better then an ad saying we're innovative."
The big losers stand out as brands that have not kept pace with the pace of innovation and have seen their brand value decline as a result: Ford -19%, The GAP -15%, Kodak -12%, Pizza Hut -9%, and Motorola -9%. "Hello Moto" has faltered by not being able to capitalize on the huge success of the RAZR model. The others seem to belong to another era and have failed to innovate sufficiently for the new century.

A Final Word on Generators. . . .

Maybe this is a cultural analogy to the old fairground game. The idea of popping your head out of another body, plant or animal cartoon and having your photo taken.

The analogy transfers well to world of brand experiences: its an engaging experience you can share, imitate, talk about and pass on to others. All it needs is a broad band connection and a photo to work with.

Time to get Simpsonized




More fun with generators. This is an interactive element in a Burger King promotion for the Simpson's movie. You can have your photo "Simpsonized" here. Believe it or not, that is me (on the right).
I am not a great Simpson fan, but the promotional effort on this movie and the integration of affinity brand partnerships has been well planned and implemented in a very engaging way. Result? It could break $80 million opening in the US last weekend. We will know tomorrow.
I am starting take in movie promotions more than I used to. Or is that they are just more entertaining than other categories. Here you get to interact and do fun stuff around the brand. Meanwhile, outside, Ford is handing out the same old flyers-folletos-brochures for their summer, end of model year, promotion. Compared to the Simpson's, Shrek the 3rd. or Harry Potter stuff, the Ford effort looks a bit tired and dated. Yawn, into the trash can goes yet another bit of junk.