A History of Brilliance from 2007 - Today Ian Haworth
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A history of brilliance from 2007 - today Ian Haworth Chief Creative Officer, selfie and tell you the state of your gums. Wunderman EMEA Elsewhere we have partnered with Spotify to create an alarm- clock that wakes you every morning with the sounds of the Amazon rain-forest. And we are working on a haptic experience so that blind fans can follow a game of football through their fingers on a screen. Directory has watched and noted as brands have learned to communicate through how they do things. In offering new products and services, they become valuable because they are helpful. I’m thinking here of the app for a Telco in New From the Zealand that gave the Maori word for the things its customers photographed on their mobiles. (Issue 49, Colenso BBDO for Spark). Or the haptic dress from Schweppes that shames men in pulpit Brazil into being more respectful of women by recording how they touch women without their consent in bars and clubs. The first thing to say is congratulations, Directory, on getting (Issue 47, Ogilvy Sao Paulo.) this far. 50 issues. And as one of only two people to have Over the same period that I’ve been a subscriber, my job subscribed from the very start, that gives me permission to has changed too. I call myself a curator of talents. I am still take over the pulpit. a generalist, because someone needs to be able to take an In the twelve-and-a-half years since Issue One, we’ve all seen overview but we now need an array of specialists with skills some big changes. And that’s what I love about Directory. that simply didn’t exist in 2007. It has been a barometer for both where the industry is and The one thing that hasn’t changed in all that time, though, is where it’s going. For me, the curation of great ideas has been the value of a good idea. what sets the magazine apart. If you go online to find what’s And that’s what Directory has been true to. Identifying clever, new, you can be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff innovative, effective ideas before anyone else. that gets posted up every day. It takes time and effort to sort the wheat from the chaff. I hope you’re still at it in 2031 when Issue 100 will be due. Every three months, I get a supply of wheat delivered. It’s from Directory I get to see things that are genuinely inspiring, though often for very different reasons. I remember being completely blown away when I read the “Driving Dogs” case study back in Issue 27. I’d never seen a charity pair up with a commercial brand before let alone a dog driving a car. But I also remember “$hred” for BNZ and thinking that the craft behind it was superb. Looking back at Issue One, over half the contents was Direct Mail. Today, there is a lot less of it. Personally, I still believe that Mail is an important part of the marketer’s armoury. “Driving Dogs”, from DraftFCB Younger creatives at Wunderman, when they get given the New Zealand for MINI and the chance to work in 3D love it and come up with some amazing SPCA. The video has 15 million There were 17 examples of DM in ideas. Well, like the “Garden Drop” idea for BT Sport that views on YouTube. Issue 1. Just one in Issue 49. appeared in Issue 49. That said, Directory has reported on the transformation of creativity with the arrival of a range of new, tech-driven skillsets in the business. At Wunderman, we now have creative technologists and experience designers who have brought with them completely new ways of solving problems. Today, brands communicate as So, back in the day, when innovation didn’t mean technology, much in what they DO as in what we won an innovation award for mailing out a MUAC tape for they SAY. So, here’s Schweppes a third-world charity. It measures malnutrition and when you in Issue 47 campaigning for see how tiny a malnourished wrist is, your imagination does greater respect for women with a the rest. It raised a lot of money. dress that registers every man’s Compare that with the sort of things our teams are working inappropriate touch. on now. For a healthcare client, we are developing a digital For Spark NZ, Colenso BBDO speech-therapy tool. created an app that helps Kiwis For another, we are prototyping the tech that can scan a learn to speak Maori. | Editorial 2 50 brilliant ideas from our first 50 issues. Viewed together they give shape to the new rules of communication. 50Patrick Collister,Up Editor For the last twelve-and-a-half years, producing Directory 2. Clients were not media owners. every quarter has been a labour of love. Twenty years ago, when I was the creative do-dah at Thanks to the sponsorship of Royal Mail’s MarketReach, we O&M London, Keith Weed was my client at Unilever. He actually made money for a brief and glorious period around gave us a bit of money to explore what Dove might do in September 2012.* this new digital world that was taking shape. More valuably, though, Directory has been a window The wonderfully talented Alun Howell came up with through which I have watched the evolution of advertising. the idea of a portal, a general - interest site where The 2,500 case histories we’ve published in 50 magazines women could explore and share ideas about beauty in a are together a history of change. complicated and challenging world. They reveal that what we think advertising is and the way we Whatever Keith may have had in mind when he briefed think it works have been utterly transformed. us, it was not to start making TV programmes. Today, Over the coming pages, I have selected my personal though, that’s exactly what many brands are doing, favourite campaigns. putting out short, sharp shows on YouTube and their This has not been easy. own channels. My first shortlist came to 219 great pieces of work. Red Bull has gone even Further butchery and I got it down to 50 ideas from 50 issues. further and now sells Seen together, they provide, I hope, evidence of the new advertising space to other rules of communication. brands on its channels. Before the new rules, though, what were the old rules? We suggested to Dove that they should be making documentaries 1. Clients used to spend 90% of their money on media. about women like racing driver Vicki 10% went on production. Butler-Henderson, who, though Today, there are plenty of examples of the exact opposite. competitive and successful, still wanted to feel feminine. Fallon Minneapolis showed the way with BMWFilms. com, when 90% of the spend was on production. Eight 3. The marketer was in control. Hollywood directors made short films, each starring Clive In the old days, the marketing director would devise a Owen as “the Driver”. strategy, plan a campaign, put it into a test region, roll 10% of the budget went on small ads directing people to it out and then pause. Look at the numbers, regroup, BMW’s website to see the films. It was the beginning of amend and then either begin again or go large with it. branded content. I’ve just seen it reported that in 2018 Today, the consumer is in control. (S)he’ll let you know in no there were over 200,000 branded content campaigns in uncertain terms if your advertising sucks. As Pepsi found out the USA alone. within hours of launching the “Riot” film with Kendall Jenner. “Beat the Devil” was filmed by When film-makers Eepybird Tony Scott for BMWfilms.com. showed what happened when It told the story of a car race you dropped a Mentos mint into between James Brown and the a bottle of Diet Coke, there were devil. The history of branded tens of thousands of copycat content started here. videos uploaded to the internet and there was nothing Coca-Cola could do about it – except be the first major brand to hire a Director of Social Media. 3 4. You built brands with advertisements. Rather than posture behind corporate social responsibility The problem today is that people will zap, block, delete programmes, which are often just window dressing, or fast-forward through anything that looks like an some brands are trying to align with the real issues of real advertisement. However, they can be persuaded to customers and are being rewarded for it. engage with advertising. At its simplest, an advertisement is a message about a product which is shoved in your face. Advertising is altogether more subtle. It comprises ideas that people choose to interact with in some way. So, advertising can be content or a ‘viral’ or it can be an influencer endorsing a brand or it can be a branded app. Brands communicate today in what they do as much as, or more than, in what they say. (See Optus ‘Clever Buoy’ on page 36). So Tommy Hilfiger’s Adaptive clothing tells me more about the company’s values than any ad ever Dove’s campaign for real beauty helped the brand grow in worth from could. (See page 27). $200 million in the 1990s to $4 billion today. Values have value. The story of ‘Cleverbuoy’, a shark detection 2. Insight system, was big news People used to say, “data is the new oil”.