John Drake

Great Work

I started reading Ad Age when I was 16. Of course at that age you're too young to comprehend most of it. But something I always had an affinity for was the rankings and the agencies themselves: who was up, who was down, who was producing the best work. Acknowledging and studying the shops doing the good stuff has always been important to me.

So when Campaign Planning launched in 2007 one of the first things I did was to create a TypeList of my favorite shops. Never worked at the majority of them, just places I study, follow and learn from. That initial TypeList has since grown to about 45 creative companies doing all types of things, advertising and beyond.

On that inaugural 2007 list was Modernista! I've always had a fondness for their work. So I felt sort of glum when I heard that they were going to be shutting things down. But then I thought about Ammirati & Puris and Ally & Gargano and Wells Rich Greene and other fine agencies which are no longer. And then I felt better.

Today is Modernista!'s final day of operation. So this week's Great Work post is a collection of personal favorites from their portfolio. Enjoy.  

Hummer H2

 

Gap Holiday

 

Cadillac

 

(RED) Details here.

 

Agency Website Redesign in 2008: not a site at all but a "siteless site"-- a transparent window on the web.

 

Animal Planet

 

Gap Holiday

Discovering Brilliant Ideas

When Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877 he wasn't quite sure what the point of it was. So he sat down and made a list of the possible uses for his new device which he submitted to the North American Review in 1878. He thought, perhaps, it could help clocks announce the time, enable the preservation of accurate language pronunciation, record the last words of the dying for family posterity and many other things. Buried somewhere in the middle of that long list? The reproduction of music.

I heard this story from a talk that Kevin Kelly gave last year and was reminded of it once again while reading this article by former VC, Peter Sims which talks about how it's often the little bets that become the billion dollar ideas. Not the big bets. Which is true because of this insight: most successful entrepreneurs don’t begin with brilliant ideas—they discover them. And that process is best enabled when entrepreneurs look at things through "affordable losses" rather than calculating expected gains from the start. True of Pixar, Twitter and, I guess, the entire industry of recorded and reproduced music.

Your One Word or Symbol

Here's a great project called The Noun Project. The vision is to create a language that can be understood by all cultures of the world. The symbols are free to use. And it's amazing how accurately they guide you.

The moment before I found The Noun Project I was reading an article about Coppola on the 99% where he talks about the primary thing to keep in mind when making a film...

"When you make a movie, always try to discover what the theme of the movie is in one or two words. Every time I made a film, I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word. In “The Godfather,” it was succession. In “The Conversation,” it was privacy. In “Apocalypse,” it was morality.

The reason it’s important to have this is because most of the time what a director really does is make decisions. All day long: Do you want it to be long hair or short hair? Do you want a dress or pants? Do you want a beard or no beard? There are many times when you don’t know the answer. Knowing what the theme is always helps you."

These two things reminded me once again of the importance of simplification. But you can't just leave it at one word, can you? You can't walk into a briefing meeting, throw out a word like, "jubilation" and be done with it. It needs a well-thought out explanation. But once you leave the room, what remains without prompting or re-asking is your one word. "Jubilation".

And that's what people will refer back to when they want to re-center themselves on the task at hand. You can have a brilliantly-crafted strategic positioning line or an amazing mission statement or a beautiful collection of values but that focused word or symbol will probably still be the strongest tool for leadership and team cohesion.

If indeed it's possible to design an entire language out of symbols, or fit a feature film into one word, then brands and organizations should be able to do the same.

Great Work

Here's some of the good stuff as tracked by me over the last two weeks... enjoy.

 

Use Monopoly money as real money at McDonald's via Cossette, Vancouver.

 

 

The next extension of the Old Spice campaign via W+K. "You smell like you look amazing." Classic.

 

 

A new commercial every day for a year for IKEA. Via Lemz.

 

Great showcasing of the product... for Melbourne Skydive Centre.

 

 

This is terrific. Wonderful public service campaign by Master Curtiba to combat the dangers of jaywalking in the city.

 

Now that's good thinking: a coat check chair by Joey Zeledon. 

 

To launch a monster book, how about creating a museum exhibition of the crazy monster characters in the book? Aschehoug Publishing and Try Advertising did just that. 

 

I think this is a beautiful site for the Oglala Sioux Tribe in Pine Ridge, South Dakota from Design Direction.

 

This is certainly worth experiencing... from Desperados via Dufresne Corrigan Scarlett, Paris.

 

I think more brands should do this: find a common message and then pool resources. Droga5 for Method and Virgin America.

 

 

And finally, one of my favorite cartoon characters of all time is Foghorn Leghorn. So every time this GEICO ad comes on from The Martin Agency, I just crack up. "It's called ad libbin!"

 

On A Mass Scale We Choose Emotion

When a company is in it for the long term it's essential that an emotional reason to buy plays at the heart of activity. I call this Purpose Driven Marketing. Others have other names. But what's starting to play out is that over the last several years there have been lots of one-off ideas, cool tactics and tons of "you gotta check this out" moments. These are good. These work. But when the goal is long-term victory and dominance across a vast scale of consumers, then the emotional core is the most fortified of approaches.

Quick example... If you watch network TV on Sunday night you have a viewing choice at 8pm: Secret Millionaire (ABC) or America's Next Great Restaurant (NBC). Both are new and unique. But nearly 6 million more people choose Secret Millionaire. The difference between the two: Secret Millionaire stirs emotions while the Next Great Restaurant is pragmatic.

Back to companies... McDonald's vs. Burger King. Over the last several years BK has focused their marketing efforts on one-off ideas surrounding big food, such as Whopper Virgins and Whopper Sacrifice. On the other side, McDonald's has continued globally with I'm Lovin' It, a comprehensive message that taps our emotions greater than one-off efforts. BK experienced solid sales increases from 2005 through 2009 but today (long term) they are off 2.5%. McDonald's is up 4.4%. Mark Kalinowski, restaurant industry analyst with Janney Capital Markets summed it up concisely last month: "Burger King is a brand that needs to find its voice in the market, and right now it's having trouble doing that."

Another example... Coke vs. Pepsi. Ad Age recently reported how Pepsi fell to #3 behind Coke and Diet Coke respectively. I don't believe this points to what Pepsi did wrong ("Refresh" is genius) but rather what Coke did amazingly well across the world: a global refinement of the emotional positioning of "coke brings joy" across packaging, branding, advertising, sponsorship and engagement. Take this spot or these elements and you can put them immediately into the US, Spain or China and it translates the same. No explanation needed. 

Many brands are doing great work today. This I truly believe. (And if you don't believe it you should probably expose yourself to more work.) But when it comes to communicating across a vast amount of consumers over the long term, one-off ideas can win the round but it's the emotional, purpose driven approach that wins the match.

It's Hard to Make Predictions

Philip Tetlock is a professor of psychology and political science who set up a 20-year experiment that involved 300 experts in politics. He asked them to predict the future. And they didn't do very well. Those who assigned probabilities to rosey scenarios found out that those came true only 15% of the time. But the ones who assigned doomsday scenarios were only right 12% of the time.

For some reason I find some delight in learning that the doomsday-ers did worse, if only by a few points. It's comforting to know that, odds say, the negative and the dramatic are often incorrect. So it's probably good to use such doomsday speak as only a general guide for re-evaluation and prompting of further thinking.

In any event, the book Future Babble looks good.

Great Work

Seven things worthy of a re-look from the week that was... Enjoy.

 

A beautiful site for Volvo Cross Country Travels via Forsman & Bodenfors.

 

Very creative outdoor from Hot Wheels via Ogilvy & Mather, Colombia.

 

 

Music, fashion and filming all come together beautifully in this spot for Nike and Precint 5 in Amsterdam.

 

 

YouTube page takover from Schick via JWT and Engine... watch it here.

 

Excellent Diet Coke packaging collaboration with CHANEL/Karl Lagerfeld.

 

Outdoor projections are becoming more and more common, but Hyundai took it an extra step with a suspended car.

 

There's something about being able to see behind the scenes at NASA (for two hours or even two days)... and all you have to do is follow.

 

All from this bookmark on Delicious.

Myers Briggs Personality Types and Social Media

Since the mid 1960s the Myers-Briggs questionnaire has been one of the world's leading ways to measure psychological preferences and how people perceive the world and make decisions. Everyone is born with certain ways of thinking and acting. This is important to consider when thinking about social media and the social web... especially after doing some math.

There are 16 personality types in Myers-Briggs, each with a specific four-letter designation. People are drawn to a tendency of either judging (J) or perceiving (P). Thinking (T) or feeling (F). Sensing (S) or intuition (N). But it's the way these feelings are expressed which is perhaps most important to consider when it comes to the social web: extroverted (E) or introverted (I).

Interestingly, if you break down the 16 personality types by median percentages of Extroverts vs. Introverts the world slices almost equally in half: 50% of us express our feelings through extroversion, the other half, introversion.

Extroverts draw their energy from expressing themselves outwardly. It they are inactive, their motivation tends to decline. To rebuild their energy extroverts need breaks from time spent in reflection and become very social. Introverts, on the other hand, are the exact opposite. They prefer time away from activity. At a cocktail party E's naturally feed off the interaction while the I's are in an environment where it takes extreme energy to participate.

We see the E's vividly in social. It's very natural, frequent and energizing for them. For the I's, not so much and it turns out that's 50% of consumers. In America, roughly 153,503,000 people who are present in social (watching, following, internalizing, liking) but may not show themselves as vividly in conversations. It's not that I's can't be extroverted, it just takes harder work. Like being right or left handed... we're born with a natural tendency to prefer one and shifting to use the other takes lots of concentration.

I find it interestingly clarifying to learn that we split right down the middle, introverts vs. extroverts. And I think this is most important to consider as we create, engage, measure and refine in social.

Oblique Strategies

Next time you're stuck on a problem perhaps consult Oblique Strategies. Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt created a collection of remarks designed to help break through deadlocks and dilemmas. You can also buy them as playing cards.   

Photo Mosaic

There's a button on Flickr that allows you to view icons of all the photos taken by other people that you've favorited over time. Above is mine. It's nice to look at a snapshot of stuff that's caught your eye... No rhyme or reason per se, but definitely an overarching theme. (Each of us have themes, of course.) But it's a pleasant feeling to look back at a collage of lots of images--favorited at random times on random days in random moods--and immediately think, yep, that feels about right.