John Drake

This Week, June 18 2018

In 1993 I was in our Backstage Pass program. It was just me, it was only called an internship, and it was a bit different then... mostly driving around art proofs and production items to different places. I liked the industry then but I really fell in love with it when Got Milk? came out.

Got Milk? was the first time that I looked at advertising as strategy. Prior ads which got me excited were Absolut Vodka, Nike and Isuzu. But those all just seemed “cool” to a 19 year old. Got Milk? was clearly an act of advertising re-looking at something and giving people a new way to perceive a product in a story that was amazingly authentic, memorable and meaningful.

2018 is the 25th anniversary of the campaign from Goodby Silverstein.

Some highlights:

-A deprivation strategy of denying people the product for a week and then having the focus groups revealed how important milk was to people.

-“Got Milk?” was originally a moniker on the agenda for a part of the client meeting. It was written by Jeff Goodby almost immediately after research. 

-The launch spot, Aaron Burr, was directed by Michael Bay right out of film school. He’s credited with giving the unique look to that spot.

-All of the Got Milk? mustache photos in print were taken by the iconic Annie Leibovitz who wisely saw the potential of the campaign and locked up all rights to shoot each one for however long the campaign lasted.

-The Dir. of Marketing was key to getting the somewhat controversial campaign approach approved and then extended into new areas beyond health that the dairy board was not comfortable going.

-According to the lead creative teams, every ad was wrapped around a central approach: "They have a dark mood that hurls the viewer face-first into stories that don’t explicitly reveal the product being sold until the final seconds."

Saving milk consumption decline is an impossible task because of today’s competitive choice (vs pre-1990), health changes, etc. But imagine how much faster and further it would have fallen without this work?

From John’s Pinboard:  

-World Cup time. For you fans out there Adidas has a nice display of the official shoes going back to the 1950s.

-And here are some of the best World Cup posters and illustrations with a bit of story.

-Beautiful example of a well-done landing page. Love all they ways to learn about the product and the data capture insight from the choices. (Leagas Delaney has been the agency for decades.)

-Here’s the best hippie town in each US state.

-Turns out, according to Spotify data, the music we liked when we were 13-15 shapes our musical tastes as adults. Which explains the Guns N’ Roses thing...

-Forsman and Bodenfors has done epic work for Volvo. Here is their latest collection of :10 ads celebrating whatever “family” means to you.

-Check our how our friends at CBH redesigned a local non profit. Awesome work.

-Cannes has begun. I enjoy following the nightly releases of winners as it goes, by category, all week. Makes it easy to digest and appreciate. It’s the highest creative award to be won. There are also some great presentations. WARC does a nice job keeping up on it so follow there or directly on the Cannes site.

This Week, June 11 2018

There was a fan out there who wanted Weezer to cover Toto's "Africa". They got their wish.

"Africa" isn't a deep song. It's just about, well, Africa and written by an aspiring 80s L.A. rocker who was fond of the place from reading National Geographic. Weezer adds a few contemporary moments but keeps it pretty straight. Cool they did that for a fan. 

Anyway, it's kind of like Ryan Adams recording "1989," or Miley Cyrus singing "Every Rose Has Its Thorn."

Classics we leave alone. You'd never dream of re-making Casablanca. But the Thomas Crown Affair? Sure. Creation, with a lighter degree of pressure. 

 

Sometimes in life original thought isn’t happening. It’s too hard or elusive often for reasons we can’t control of force. So it’s nice to have the light stuff too. 

 

As Picasso said: “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”  

From John's Pinboard:

- Beats has done a pretty cool ad for the World Cup, directed by Guy Ritchie.

- Corona has become a large sponsor of clean oceans. You can even buy a cool shirt.

- This is welcomed news because our earth needs it, largely because of the staggering amount of plastic cups we use.

- Great brands have purpose, which I bang on about all the time. WARC honors great brand purpose through their own awards-type of show. See the winners here.

- Co-Op has a nice redesign of their packaging tying everything around more of a branded house.

- In our world, Ogilvy redesigned their logo and identity. Looks sharp. Not much change from where they were but there's a class to it which is nice.

- In the not surprising to anyone category, Americans believe there is too much news. We simply don't have enough content to fill the supply of all the 24 hr news outlets we have. Which creates mistakes, sloppy journalism and eye-ball catching directives.

- Should cities have a Chief Design Officer?

- Tiffany has been struggling. They revived their brand, tied some new work to the royal wedding, and seem to be having a rebound.

- Here are the 100 most influential stories ever. Any thoughts on why Harry Potter would make the top 30 but Star Wars didn't? 

 

- Finally over in #readers Vina posted the 1999 New Yorker article that started Anthony Bourdain’s road to fame. 

This Week, June 4 2018

Every time I hear “The Joker” by Steve Miller I get a little happier. Regardless of what one might think of Steve’s musical portfolio, there was a fabulous article on him written by a young man who Steve befriended when the writer was a teenager in Texas, and a hopeful musician.

Steve Miller was hugely successful several decades ago and he’s still doing music today. (Lived in Sun Valley for many years.) What struck me was Steve’s advice to his young friend while they were skiing Baldy after he listened to a demo...

“Your CD is promising, Max. Especially for a fifteen-year-old.” Steve fixed both poles in the ice. “But in music, you have to hit a real home run. And then two more home runs, and then a triple immediately afterward. And then maybe you own the world for a while, but then you either have to write something even greater, or you disappear, and that’s how it really works.” If I wanted to “climb the mountain,” he told me I’d need a routine. I’d need to master my songwriting voice: writing every day, charting other songs’ chord progressions, feeling out the rhythms of words and the arcs of melodies. I’d need to tighten up my guitar voice: practicing scales every day, exploring tone in my fingers and through an amp. I’d need to find my singing voice: practicing scales, studying harmony, controlling my breath, learning to shape tones in my throat and phrase them through a line. I’d also need to find the right musicians, practice until we were a single organism, and figure out how to bring a song to life in a crappy venue with a bad P.A. Of course, we’d also need to develop an aesthetic and learn how to produce. Then, if we pulled all that off, we’d need to set up a publishing company and sign a contract that preserved our blood in an industry famous for leeches.

The point, of course, is that being great at a craft is a long term game—it has high times and low times.

Being great at a craft requires deep study of that specific craft along with wide understanding of things that attach to that craft.

And being great at a craft requires constant practice and a disciplined routine which must be self-imposed.

I’m not a music aficionado by any means. But I love taking insights from how people create music (and all entertainment) to help understand our industry better. Because in the end, all of it is mixing some form of art with some form of commerce.

From John’s Pinboard:  

- Fabulous production work right there.

- Do take some time and check out Mary Meeker’s annual review on the state of the web. Appreciate JB breaking down the key bits from 300 slides last week. Thank you sir. 

- Enjoyed reading how the US Census Director recently wrote about the protection of individual identity on census info.

- The letter from Starbucks CEO last Tuesday to everybody is good to read.

- Urban and Rural America actually have some similarities. Key: neither one feels understood. 

- COPPA ensures that kids under 13 aren’t aggressively marketed to. Now there is a movement to extend a lot of this to kids 16 and under.

- Next time you’re in Seattle check out the Nordic Museum. Before you do, read about how the design firm refined the brand this year.

- As you may recall, Publicis stopped sending people to Cannes last year to save $ to create their own AI tool: Mercel. They had help from Microsoft and it’s rolling out in January.

- Wings, by Nike.

 

This Week, May 28 2018

It seemed like the only thing I could do on the web last week was reconfirm my interests and settings and field GDPR-like requests from the hundreds of things I apparently subscribe to. So in the spirit of brand strategy, below are six personal favorites from the last couple of years that I go back to again and again. Some of these I re-read the night before important meetings.

Don’t Confuse Strategy With Planning. About: Seeking to have strategies always ‘make a choice’.  

Brand Building During The Age Of Invisible Tech. About: Thinking across 3D, sounds, and all the bits a brand can own today.

How Marketers Get You To Buy New Stuff. About: Developing the ‘most advanced yet acceptable’ brand things. 

Why Your Brand Doesn’t Need Anyone To Participate In Anything. About: Never forgetting that heavy product usage doesn't always mean there's "a relationship"--people just love the product.

The Case For Chaos. About: Embracing the free-flowing work nature that our craft quenches in order to do great work. 

How Brands Grow Five, Years On. About: Being consistent not varied, and distinctive not different; getting casual buyers to buy more often; and making brands more accessible in the mind as well as in the market so there are more occasions to buy.

This Week, May 21 2018

Hi everyone. Hope you had a great weekend. 

 

Wonderful seeing one room full of DC friends, clients, and all of us. For an agency to make it 40 years is no small feat. For example... 

Ally & Gargano lasted 27 years.

Ammirati and Puris went 26 years.

Wells Rich Greene had about 25 years.

Cliff Freeman went 22 years.

Modernista! got 10 years.

Marstellar had 28 years.

And so on.

Who else started the same year we did? 

 

Adweek launched its first issue in 1978. 

Dentsu, the worldwide holding company based in Tokyo, formed that year. 

AMV and R/GA both started in 1977, but they probably really got going the following year so let's put them with us, too.

The Home Depot opened their first store in 1978 and Boise's own Cobby's served its first meal that year.

Not many can say they’ve been ‘delivering great since '78’... 

 

Brands are grown by many people lending their special talents to it. So cheers to everyone at DC because it takes a cool bunch of rock stars for something to reach such a milestone. 

 

From John's Pinboard: 

 

- “Flint Is A Place” is an amazing collection of work. It’s a great example for illustrating how all of the possible channels out there create so many choices to tell the best story. You feel that with this work. 

 

- Furthering the point, National Geographic puts different content bits together brilliantly in this sad tale of plastic in our oceans with a staggering view of an island in the pacific that simply collects trash. 

 

- Adweek has a nice piece supporting the power of long-form online video with examples from Rag & Bone, Apple and more. 

 

- Reversing this and going for less is more, Carlsberg has redesigned some packaging in what they described as “visual simplicity.” 

 

- Movie fans will love this piece about why filmmakers chose LA as their new home in the early 1900s.

 

- Shifting to the smaller screen, TV predictions are out for the fall season. Short take: watch for the reboots to do well—Magnum P.I and Murphy Brown. 

 

- Did you know classical music might reduce crime? 

 

- Switching to the future of finance, Apple joins up with Goldman Sachs to create a new credit card while Amex talks about the power of their brand purpose with the physical card meaning very little. 

 

- And finally, the challenges of AR for marketers? The ability to reach large audiences at scale, per eMarketer. Which, of course, is the same challenge most new channels have as they grow. 

 

This Week, May 14, 2018

“I was terrified,” Stephen Tisdalle, chief marketing officer for State Street Global Advisors, admitted to delegates at the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) 2018 Brand Masters Conference.

“It was critical to me,” he recalled. “I said to myself, ‘If this doesn’t work, Tisdalle, you know you’re toast. Your career’s over.’ But at least you’ll go down in flames.”

His trust in Fearless Girl’s components, however, outweighed his concerns: “I felt confident. And sometimes you just have to trust your own instinct.”

Tisdalle grounded his green-light decision in his comfort with his agency partner: “I had enjoyed a very long working relationship with the team at McCann/New York prior to going to State Street Global Advisors. I handpicked the team I wanted to work with.”

Critical to the Wall Street installation was the look of the statue, meaning not just the posture of confrontation, but the look on the young girl’s face.

She’s not making a protest. She’s not shaking her fist at the bull. She, instead, is exuding confidence. She knows who she is. She’s optimistic about the future. She’s standing there with her fearless-girl pose. She’s ready to jump in to contribute her unique talents and gifts to the economy.”

Outside of McCann and marketing, there were concerns from the State Street Global Advisors C-suite – the kind of apprehension that could have undermined the project.

The question kept popping up from the leadership team: “Since when are we in the statue-building business to begin with?”

Tisdalle's response: “We’re the third-largest asset-management firm that no one has ever heard anything about. What people really don’t know much about is our mission of helping investors achieve their financial objectives while enabling social and economic progress.”

When Tisdalle signed on he had to answer two questions:

• “How do we make our brand stand out?”
• “How do we stand for something that separates us from all of our competitors?”

That led to more questions:

• “Are you going to lead?”
• “Are you going to follow?”

Tisdalle decided to lead and, with that, came the most daunting query of all:

• “What are we going to lead with?”

The response was in the enterprise’s DNA: “At the very foundation of our investment philosophy is something we call ‘asset stewardship, a simple set of principles that look at protecting the long-term investment objectives of our investors with three fundamental aspects:

• “independent board governance;
• “environmental sustainability;
• “greater gender diversity within the leadership of companies that we invest in.”

The third point was the driver that guided State Street in a fearless direction.

“We’re finding that companies with women in leadership perform a lot better than those without over the long term.”

Enter the four-foot-eight-inch 280-pound Fearless Girl staring down the traditions of Wall Street. 

“The brief was really simple. It was to create an experience that could communicate this in a novel way for just a one or two-week period.

The rest is history. Fearless Girl overstayed her 14-day lease and will soon be relocated to face the New York Stock Exchange, buffeted by public enthusiasm and a stack of marketing metrics that carry a value somewhere between $27 million and $38 million.

Three months prior to the installation of Fearless Girl, State Street share of voice was 7.8%. The three weeks post- installation that shot up to 37.4%.”

On Wall Street, “within just the first three weeks we saw a 170% increase in the daily trading volume of our gender diversity ETF. We also saw a 450% increase in the page views on strategies that pertain to gender diversity investing.”

And State Street Global Advisors garnered all that for a marketing investment of $250,000.

“I was confident,” he said. “And I was willing to live and die by it.”

 

The stories behind the world's best campaigns are always interesting.

You can read even more about Fearless Girl on WARC.

From John's Pinboard:

- eMarketer is out with global ad spending predictions: In short, global spending is forecast to grow by 5%. 

- CBH is amazing and The Statesman ran a very cool piece on them last week. One of my fav parts: why Boise has so many 3 car garages and how they use them. 

- A very cool piece of innovation from agency R/GA to automatically broadcast sports from players’ shoes and such. Very popular in high school sports and made possible by the LA Dodgers Accelerator program. Go Dodgers :) 

- Terrific interview with Jony Ive of Apple, who doesn’t do many interviews: “I don’t look at watches for their relationship to popular culture, which I know is so much of the fun – but rather as somehow the distillation of craft, ingenuity, miniaturization, and of the art of making.”

- For all you podcast fanatics, here’s a good list of the best of 2018. 

- Google launches a new news thing. As they say it: “Today we’re rolling out an all new Google News, which uses the best of artificial intelligence to find the best of human intelligence—the great reporting done by journalists around the globe.”

- I’ve always try to read anything about the iconic Anna Wintour; Here’s an important story about using her influence on The Cut. 

- 98% of us Americans have skin in the game, but the country’s decisions are being made by the 2% who don’t have any skin in the game. 

Have a great week, looking forward to 40 years. 

This Week, May 7, 2018

One of the most prestigious award shows in the world also seems to be one that's not discussed enough in the US. D&AD has impeccable taste and the latest show was just held.

Sometimes D&AD awards Black Pencils. It's the highest honor and some years no one wins any. But this year three brands did. Among the top three winners (Black Pencils plus more) are two efforts you know very well: Tide's Super Bowl ad and State Street Advisors' Fearless Girl. But also at the top, winning 8 pencils (!) was the Palau Pledge. You may not have heard of this one... 

The Palau Pledge is an in-flight movie pointed at visitors coming to the island of Palau. It's a wonderfully told story that ends with requiring each visitor to the island to sign a pledge that they won't hurt Palau while they're visiting. Host/Havas in Australia is the agency.

It's a sweet tale and a great creative idea to begin the week. Hope you enjoy. 

From John's Pinboard: 

- Steve posted this ad in #greatcreative from Facebook showing just how bad it’s become down there. For a company to do this type of ad themselves, about themselves, says a lot about the seriousness of the subject matter. 

“Hay que poner un poco de locura a veces en la cordura.” Or, in English: “You sometimes need to inject a little madness into the sanity.” 

 

- Who says the box office is slowing? Avengers: Infinity War broke all global records last week. 

 

- A point-of-view stated as a fact about how to do something creative is a powerful thing. Look no further than the amazing Coco Chanel for a great example of this: “Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.”

 

- This is a great piece to bookmark about choosing talent and team members from learnings surrounding the NFL draft. Key point: create complete individualized judgement throughout all interviews and evaluations. 

 

- Chiat\Day, the first US Agency to staff accounting planning in the 80s, knows how to dig out an insight as seen in their latest piece for long-time client, Gatorade. 

 

- Our huge loss of US manufacturing jobs... It’s automation right? That might be wrong. For the last 30 years economists might not have looked at the data details in the most accurate way. I think this is an important story and applaud Quartz for pursuing it how they did. 

 

- But regarding automation, because it is happening, for the human side, employers are looking more at purpose based branding needs. 

 

- It’s uncharted waters but blockchain development is the hottest freelance skill right now. 

 

- According to RAND Corp. the biggest obstacle facing government today is speed. RAND's answer to work with speed is to take control of the tempo. That’s a brilliant philosophy toward managing speed and you can read about it here.

This Week, April 30, 2018

An award show is always a reminder that as creative agencies one of the things we are tasked with doing is making the intangible, tangible. We get provided with briefs, assignments, projects, goals and ideas from organizations with the direction to go and create a thing.

I was recently struck by another profession which does this: casting directors. The Guardian has a well-shared piece about Nina Gold who recently ascended to be one of the most sought-after people in casting. She’s cast Game of Thrones, The Crown and the recent Star Wars movies.

Scripts are abstract and Nina makes them living and breathing. Here’s my favorite bit:

“Done right, casting is an invisible act. The choice of an actor should seem obvious in retrospect. No one but Eddie Redmayne could have played Stephen Hawking. No one but Claire Foy could have played the young Queen.”

You could switch “actor” for “creative idea” and that bit isn’t too dissimilar from our craft. ‘Like a great act of casting, a great brand idea should seem obvious in retrospect.’

Looking back it’s now hard to consider that any other brand could have been created besides BTQ to represent the needs of Idaho teens so well. Cheers to the whole team at DC for Best In Show.

From John’s Pinboard:

- Loved this latest effort by The North Face. The agency is Sid Lee and they have long been a personal favorite of mine to keep up with. They are based out of Canada and have such things as an architecture discipline in-house.  

- Two Spotify things: first this excerpt from their head of product discussing how Spotify is now the R&D arm of the music industry.
 
- Then, here’s a cool guerrilla piece for the Bowie exhibit in NY.

- Donatella Versace can describe her brand vividly and distinctly using no fancy marketing words or lingo: “The brand never breaks character. The clothes always radiate the same fantasy of f***-you money. There are hundreds of places to shop if you want to project intelligence or sophistication. But if you want to look rich, you go to Versace. The danger of looking like an idiot is significant. If you don’t inhabit your tiger-striped velvet with sufficient confidence, you will be severely defeated by your own clothes”

- Team Ponywolf, how are things going with Ludum Dare? Cool lookin’ stuff for that.  

- Shonda Rhimes has some great moments in this piece talking about the hit scandal and how even when characters do bad things the audience still loves them.

- CVS is no longer adding photoshop to their ads. Here’s the first line of work out under that direction.

- Important moment on video by the two leaders of North and South Korea—which actually gives hope.  

-I just love outdoor ads. Jeremy found this cool piece in NPR about how popular it still is.

This Week, April 25, 2018

The other day the topic of ‘who’s the best global advertiser’ came up in a conversation. I think there are three solid answers: Nike, VW and IKEA. The Gunn report data backs this up as well. 

Consistently across multiple countries the creative advertising and marketing that these companies approve is industry-leading and, in two of their cases, within categories that are either very crowded (cars) or traditionally not creatively amazing (home furnishings).

To this point, IKEA’s latest is very fun... It’s this ad with ghosts. Purely enjoyable and memorable while making the point of easily improving a home for not much money. Mother is the agency.

IKEA’s core brand purpose is to “be the leader of life at home.” One way they do this is the brand constantly has ethnographic studies in-market to see first-hand what people need and how they live in their homes. IKEA even publishes a quarterly report called “Life At Home.”

Creatively, they do fun stuff like this that riff on pop culture, important stuff like this when Deutsch was their agency, they make retail interesting with stuff like this, and they surprise people with guerrilla marketing like this.

The brand has been winning “life at home” for a very long time. So every time I see great work & thinking from IKEA I always root for them. If you'd like to read more, Leontyne Green Sykes was their Dir. of Marketing for a long time and she has a very good interview here. 

From John’s Pinboard:

- Under Armour has done an incredible job taking share in sports apparel. Campaigns like this from Droga5, featuring a range of athlete and led by Dwayne Johnson is partly why. 

 

- Two very interesting examples about how data, such as the weather, can be crossed to improve relevance yet not become creepy or invasive. 

 

- Starbucks is shutting down company-owned stores on May 29 for diversity training. This is very important to do. It will cost them ~$24 million dollars in revenue. 

 

- NBA ratings have hit a 5-year high.

- National Geographic reveals some new branding and new fonts.

 

- Reddit’s redesign is explained by their head of design. The user involvement during creation is unique—much like how Mozilla included users too in their redesign.

- Fake influencers are beginning to rise. Anyone follow Lil Miquela on Instragram?

 

- Rosanne's return is doing great in the ratings, as DF reminded us of in #Outreach.

 

- The way we dress is largely the way we feel. I watched Harrison Ford talk about the critical nature of wardrobe one time and here’s another example from Charlie Chaplin: 

I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on to the stage he was fully born. When I confronted the director, I assumed the character and strutted about, swinging my cane. Gags and comedy ideas went racing through my mind.

 

Finally, SY found this photo of George Bush Sr.'s socks of books that he wore to honor the late Barbara Bush's commitment to promoting literacy.

 

This Week, April 16, 2018

Compton Cowboys is terrific. Have you seen it? The work speaks for itself. Here’s the brand strategy behind it:  



AMV/BBDO has been the Guinness agency for years. The work has been grounded in the “Made of More” idea for awhile but has evolved to the level of Compton Cowboys.

When “Made of More” first came out they did this, and Planning and Creative kept working together. After the first effort they talked to consumers and discovered the work was right but it was missing something... the display of the unique characteristics that made Guinness itself a beer “Made of More”.  

Then they did this. But, per consumers again, it was still missing something. What it needed was an infusion of characters. Perhaps, showing people who were also “Made of More.”  

Then, once they did that final refinement they created this, and this, and now there’s Compton Cowboys.

It’s all an excellent example about how getting to truly great advertising is often an active process. It’s re-examining what’s working, recalibrating what can be even better, and then having strong, long-term driven relationships that allow the collaboration and refinement needed to create true magic.

From John’s Pinboard:

- Some of you might know the story of how “Just Do It” was written. If you don’t here it is.

-Pentagram is one of the best brand design firms in the world—and still an independent. Natasha Jen is one of their best and gave a terrific interview on 99U.

- Do take a moment and read how P&G is relooking at Agency relationships. As the largest advertiser in the world when they do things like this it has a ripple effect.

- Fascinating story about how you create and build Symphony of the Seas—a staggering cruise liner that is bigger than a resort.

- Molly shared some great work from Delta Airlines on Slack. Beautifully done work. 

- American Express has an updated logo. The way the designers talk about modern day marks, and the importance of being flat, is worth reading.