Google's Project Re: Brief. It's like Inception for Advertising

I hadn't yet heard of Google's project Re: Brief and came across the full version documentary that was released a couple of days ago. Cheers to Ben for the link. I watched it this afternoon, here are some thoughts about it. For info, this video is a project initiated by Google to bring several advertising people who created iconic ads out of retirement and bring them on with young teams with the intention to use their experience and insights for new digital media advertising. The video director is Doug Pray who also created the excellent Art & Copy documentary.

The four original ads and their art directors and copywriters are:
Harvey Gabor - Coca Cola 'Hilltop' or I'd like to buy the world a Coke song
Amil Gargano - Volvo 'Drive It like you Hate It'
Howie Cohen & Bob Pasqualina - Alka Seltzer 'I Can't Believe I Ate the Whole Thing'
Paula Green - Avis 'We Try Harder' their copy platform and brand positioning

Firstly it's very "meta" to such extent I think the ultimate person targeted for this video is basically Abed from Community (or an advertising equivalent if such a person exists). It's a documentary that is an advert from Google for Google, featuring advertising people, talking about advertising and working on new adverts for other brands and overall celebrating advertising for advertising people. It's like Inception for advertising. An ad inside an ad inside an ad. It's certainly heavy on advertising and technology geekiness and the main audience is most certainly that: people who work in marketing and advertising. Which makes perfect sense as that's who Google sells their ad technologies and platforms to. 

It is an excellent idea from Google to promote themselves and by the end of it they're probably the brand coming out with the most original idea of all the ones covered, well obviously given none of the other ones would have come to life otherwise. I recommend watching it if you're in this business or if you're interested in finding out about the inner workings of advertising - I'd also recommend watching Morgan Spurlock's brilliant The Greatest Movie Ever Sold if you haven't seen it, just for some counter-balance on the advertising theme.

[There are probably some spoilers following and given it's a geeky advertising documentary, these are geeky advertising thoughts]

The subtitle is 'A Film about Re-imagining Advertising' and that part I was kind of disappointed about, because they don't actually re-imagine anything about advertising. On the contrary, they focus on the heart of the ideas and concepts that the iconic ads they had made in the 60's and 70's were about, regardless of digital media and online display advertising. Which is great, and I think that's how things should be - but it's not really re-imagining anything. It's a good sub-title in that it helped make me want to watch the hour long documentary, though not as strongly as 'from the director of Art & Copy and the makers of these famous old ads for Coke, Avis, Alka-Seltzer, and Volvo'. They start on a premise that they want to rethink online display advertising because it hasn't really changed in 15 years but I don't feel there's any progress from that particular perspective by the end of the movie - after all the format of TV ads haven't changed that much either and there is nothing wrong with them (or is there? There are no direct stats as for online banners). Maybe they'll bring out some results from the campaigns later..? They are focusing on narrative, storytelling, and extensive technology for thei ads. That is no different from the celebrated campaigns these days; I haven't really followed Cannes this year yet but let's say Old Spice for an easy relatively recent reference. 

I was disappointed by the lack of current context in terms of media consumption habits for the audiences brands are trying to reach in advertising. There were a few mentions in terms of media that struck me: Cohen and Pasqualina (I think it was Cohen's comment) say: "Three [TV] Networks, when you put it on, everybody saw it". In the following scene Amil Gargano says about the Volvo ads: "When you ran an ad like that in a full page bleed in Life magazine [...] it jumped off the page." 

While these creatives are rightly focusing on the concepts and ideas for the ads, their experience of their success seems interestingly tied to media and the media context of the time they were ran. There was a lot of mentions in the film of very complex technologies and the huge amount of things you could do with them though almost no mention of the people these online ads are trying to reach and their behaviour, only mentions of the technology available. There are hundreds of TV networks in the US alone, over a trillion websites people can visit, people surf the web and multi-task across different devices like using their laptop or iPad while watching TV, the print industry is dying right now, many magazines are closing down, etc. I am doubtful a full page ad in Life magazine has the same impact today than it had in 1962. 

Or does it? 

I wouldn't know, the last time I bought a magazine was at least 2 years ago. The film is about re-imagining these classic ad ideas and expanding them using complicated digital technologies for advertising which is great and they are or at least seem to be great digital executions, but not really anything about the premise of innovating on online or mobile display ads. They talk about interactive banners on mobile and tablets in the film, I have never clicked on a banner with my mobile phone or iPod Touch - I don't know if many people do.

My best guess as to the intention is to inspire more brands to take risks with digital advertising as well as storytelling. Again, I'd be really curious to see results from these campaigns. Effectiveness and proof - if at all possible - is what might encourage more brands to go in these directions, because they are business decisions first. If there is no conclusive proof, I wouldn't be surprised if many marketing directors choose to keep investing in what they know or feel works: TV advertising and online search ads for example, and reserve these kinds of neat digital media cross-media shiny things for a day they'll have extra budgets to play around with...

All that aside, the ideas and executions they came up with for Coke, Volvo, Avis, and Alka Seltzer are really lovely, and I thought the most interesting common denominator - aside perhaps from Ralph - is that they are about real people and real stories enabled and/or with nifty technology. Coke in particular given people played and had a direct experience with the interactive Coke machines was probably the one that really stood out for me. Volvo and the 3 million miles car seems full of lovely stories though Honda also had a similar activity with someone completing one million miles with their Honda Accord last year.

Avis was interestingly the only of the four brands who rejected the first idea and they told them what they wanted and the team went and created something to match. As Paula Green says: "It was a very important learning meeting because in saying what [the client] thought, she outlined a lot of stuff that we didn't know". Or in different words from Morgan Spurlock after his pitch meeting with POM Wonderful in The Greatest Movie Ever Sold: "Then basically they told me what they wanted me to pitch". A reminder of how important it is to get as much information and the right kind of information out of clients for a brief.

Tell me what you think of the film if you watch it!

Foursquare Specials in Kuala Lumpur

While I was in Kuala Lumpur a few weeks ago, I had wifi connection and thought I'd fire up Foursquare and check in. I was slightly surprised to see the Specials yellow icon show up with 15 Specials in my area, though I checked it out as I usually do, out of curiosity for how location owners are promoting their services via Foursquare.

I have no idea how many people use Foursquare in Malaysia, I'm guessing not that many, and the amount of people using a phone with a Foursquare application (Android or iPhone - even though, yes I know one can use Foursquare via any old phone, but that requires more commitment than I suspect the average user has). The interesting thing is that's it was the first time I see pretty luxury brands / companies advertising on Foursquare.

In London I'd see either chains of eateries (Domino's, Pho, Pret, etc) or independent small businesses (local pub or sandwich shop). In Kuala Lumpur, it's the Sheraton. I may have missed the fact that Sheraton has signed some sort of deal to advertise on Foursquare worldwide, though I thought it's an interesting point. What kind of advertisers to do see Foursquare Specials from in your area?

8 more - Social Media -things meme

Photo by Omer Simkha

Laurence just tagged me for the social media meme - basically it's about sharing 8 ways in which you've used social media (original post form C.B. Whittemore here). I like memes - it allows me to write a potentially/relatively interesting post without making the effort to think of what I should write about. I know, I'm a lazy bastard...

1. I started blogging last year in October - I wondered at the time why it was I wasn't already doing it - though I probably answered that question in the previous paragraph. I really love it and got into a whole world that in all likelihood will never ever be able to fully apprehend nor comprehend, which I find find very exciting! Technorati tells us they're tracking 112.8 million blogs at the moment, and that's by no means an accurate representation of how many blogs actually exist (Do they use it much in China..?). Over 112 million simultaneous conversations on every possible interest human beings have - awesome! And pretty overwhelming.

2. To waste time. Mostly with Facebook last year (though now I use mostly to find people and to let old school friends find me), and just recently with Twitter - I'm just starting to get into it and quite liking it; though I still don't think it can be "useful" on a day to day basis.

3. For recruitment. In other terms, I'm a complete online stalker (I'm sure you're all very happy to know that about me ;o). I've been looking for professionals in the digital space for close to 3 years and if I can't find them and unravel a good chunk of their lives on the web most of the time, they're probably not the associated digital geeks and nutters I'm generally looking for (I include myself in that bunch - can't say if that's good or bad). Prime suspect for this channel is LinkedIn, as well as Facebook and any other website that has some kind of community aspect (Not revealing all the tools of the trade). Google, while not exactly what goes under the vast "social media" umbrella, will lead you to it pretty quickly if you start googling people's names.

4. As an (important) extension to the previous point, I essentially sought and found my current job through social media channels. Pay me a drink some day and I'll go into more details

5. For meeting new people with similar interests. I used to play role playing games (table top, not video games) back in Paris with a group of good friends. I only stopped when I moved to London because I didn't have that circle of friends anymore. Last year, I decided to get back into it and found people doing all the research online, going through MySpace, Forums of UK RPG shops, conferences, etc. I managed to find a group of cool people and we (try) to play once or twice a month. Similarly, I got hooked on the Rhum arranges website, as you can see from the previous post - who again, have a very cool widget.

6. I started using too many websites for my own good. Fortunately Netvibes allows me to manage pretty much the whole lot of them as well as my blogs and other feeds. I've checked out a few other sites like that, but I don't think I'll be changing soon. And it's French so "Que demande le peuple?" It also has a community aspect, though it's still in beta (As are most such like sites these days) and I don't know many people using Netvibes so far, so it doesn't make it as interesting.

7. Not exactly using, but I read about social media. So far my favourite book in the domain is Wikinomics - loved it! Read it if you haven't, it's awesome. On the opposite end of the spectrum, The Wisdom of Crowds - which I didn't really like. Read it only because it's so hype right now and then you'll be able to quote it in meetings or something. Essentially there are some good enough parts in the book, but overall I thought it was a few interesting points poorly strung together into a (non) unifying theory. Just my opinion, glad to talk about it over a drink...

8. Actually talking about books, I love Amazon. How do I sometimes choose books to order if not from other reader's comments? Most of my library and DVD collection is on Amazon (I've rated them, but not commented for each - it's on my "maybe I'll do that someday" list). I also put nice pics such as the one on this post from Flickr, and I use it to to share my beautiful pics! (I need to upload plenty more...) On the music side of things, I'm now a complete fan of Deezer - best music/online radio/music community around by far (And also French!) - definitely tops Last.fm for me. I'm not using the community side too much yet, but using the music part every day!

Done! And to finish I'll tag Will, Michelle, Neil, Priyanka, Amelia and George for the meme.

Rambling: digital, names and stuff

Photo by aeu04117

I was reading the digital supplement to Campaign earlier. I don't read Campaign that much these days, generally getting my industry information from blogs rather than the press. But apparently the conversations that took place in the lunch they organised gravitated around some things I've been thinking about on and off for quite a while - mainly around the place of digital agencies, the name "digital" itself, and such vast topics.

I've been thinking I would wait until having really thought the whole thing through before blogging about it (Probably with some romantic notion of it being completely amazing and ground breaking) but actually I've been thinking about maybe doing something for the past 8 months and never starting, so I'm using the blog to draft some ideas and things will take shape over time.

Names are very important and human beings are pretty addicted to labeling stuff ever since the rise of language. And it's damn useful to be able to make sense of this whole wide world around us. Also, in numerous mythologies and folklore names hold great power, you can even practice ancient forms of magic with someone's/something's true name.

If there's one thing we surely kept from the myths, I think it is that names still hold a lot of importance in our minds, whether consciously or in the background - all the time. Looking at it from that point of view, it isn't that surprising there are so many arguments around what to call a digital agency (not "digital" apparently is the new thing). The number of words that have tempted to or have been used so far to describe an industry is ridiculously huge, and most are right and wrong at the same time, depending on what you're referring to.

Essentially I thing the whole names argument is a function of the technologies used and the work developed and/or created evolving faster than anyone can name and describe them.

But for all these ingenious buzzwords, does it really matter? It's all about communication and experiences in the end. Do people in the real world really want to know how the company that built this nice website/banner/interactive wall/application/widget/thing defines itself..?

I think that's it for now. I may give that some more structure later on. next rambling about the rift between digital and advertising (which I get on some level, but I find completely silly overall)

Deezer

Just a quick snippet given I haven't written anything here in 3 weeks, need to get rid of the cobwebs and give this blog at least a semblance of life ;o)

Lots of things have been going on in April, and I'm not going to go over everything now, but this is my favourite find of the weekend, I went to Paris and Orleans and to visit some friends and family and one of my best friends converted me to Deezer - I'm loving it!

Deezer is a (French - woohoo!) online music service, way better than Last.fm or Pandora in that being a radio is only one of it's functions - it's also accessible wherever you live - and completely free! In addition to being able to search and listen to any title from a very large array of different artists, users can also create their own playlists and upload all their MP3 so that your whole music library can be available online anywhere, anytime. It also ha a strong community element, where you can make friends and then be able to listen to their own playlists, enabling people to hook up with people with similar music tastes and discover more bands.

My friend told me of a couple of occasions where he saved parties from dying by overtaking the host's computer, logging into Deezer and launching one of his wild party music playlists full blast ;o)

I'm just starting in the Deezer world, but check here if you want to be my musical friend!

That's my mate Jo aka BMF

Geeky news

A friend of mine just showed me this pretty cool little freeware called Compendium. I've just installed it and started playing around with it, it's really cool!

In the words of the creators: "Compendium is a software tool providing a flexible visual interface for managing the connections between information and ideas."

You can do things like this:



My friend is using it a lot for work, but he's also using it to map out information for the Vampire the Requiem campaign we're playing these days (a role playing game - not computer games, pen and paper type - I like it because we play with lots of twisted political intrigues). Work wise for me, I can see it being interesting to map out research information and marketing campaign ideas...

And to round off this post of completely geeky news, I've seen and held the new MacBook Air - it looks cool! But I think I'd rather wait for the next generation... Well anyway, I can't afford one right now, so it's a moot point.

Feeding myself

Geeky news for a change: I'm just trying out Netvibes and it's absolutely awesome so far! A friend had told me last month that it was a better aggregator than Google Reader, and he was right.
There are loads more possibilities and it also links to all the major sites used these days (email, FB, Flickr, Twitter, Del.icio.us, etc), I'm going to subscribe to plenty more blog feeds now - I'll never be able to follow everything, but now I'll have a easy visual way of checking out what interests me or not!

Flex user group meeting

I went to the London Flex User Group Meeting last Thursday, it was really interesting. It was a special meeting, 2 Adobe Evangelists, James Ward and Serge Jespers (wouldn't you like such a job title? Sounds just a bit weird at the same time, though) came over to talk about the lates Adobe are working on as well as some of the new possibilities available with Flex Builder 3. About 250 people turned up in Shoreditch Town Hall, and Adobe gave out a lot of free beer, which is always good.

I was particularly impressed with a new product they're developing called Thermo, the intention of which is to bridge the gap between design and development. Looks really cool, check the demo video here.

They also showed some impressive functionalities with Flex, from optimising the size of applications to embedding HD videos in Flash Player. I'm no developer, so I didn't understand everything when they started talking about code, but it was simple enough for me to follow what the results are and get some insight into the next possible things in Rich Media Applications, which is cool. Oh, and did I mention there was free beer, too? It's the first time I go to a conference where the speaker stops in the middle and encourages everyone to go get themselves another beer! You could say I was slightly drunk by the end of the evening...

Thanks to Chester at Emak Mafu, and to all the other Mafus for organising the event!

Digital for Dummies

Photo by Clairity

I'm absolutely loving my new job!
Above any other responsibilities I've taken on, I'm going to create and lead a seminar to train some people at iris in the basics of all things digital.

Here is the premise I very quickly wrote to get the ball rolling:

“Digital for Dummies” - This new and exciting seminar could be for you if:

• You truly don’t get what the whole Facebook fuss is all about.
• You think del.icio.us is a website for food and gastronomy lovers.
• You know that Blogging is a bit like Curling, but played in the Summer Olympics.
• You heard that “Rich Media” was the new nickname for Time Warner.

I'd love to have all and any kind of suggestions from the blogosphere! (I still hate that word...)
What do you think are the most important things to cover for basics? (Imagine talking to a traditional agency suit wanting to get into digital, for example. I'm sure it happened to you!)

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Online Evolution?

I'm slowly and steadily evolving my online identity (another point of view might be that I'm becoming more and more of a complete geek), I just opened a Flickr account. So at the moment I'm on MySpace, Facebook, Xing, LinkedIn, Del.ico.us, Google Reader (currently 32 subscriptions), Hotmail, YouTube, Amazon, TED, Second Life and I started my own Blog (on Blogger). Next in line are Twitter and Technorati I think...

That's already 13 different sites to follow and/or participate in. Really, I wonder how many things you have to be signed up on to be up to speed with the digital world these days... And that's only until the next next hot thing shows up, which can't be very far away... Oh well, I'm having fun and it's a fascinating world to explore! I just wonder how I'm going to be able to keep up when I have a new job - it's a good thing I'm want to get into digital and advertising, so it will pretty much be part of my job to be up to date with all this!

I just read earlier the excellent post from Skelliewag about posting Flickr images, so I just had a quick look and found this beautiful pic:


Photo"Christmas #2" by Kevin Dooley

To me, this is the Internet: I'm one of the intersections, and you're another. Can you see how we're connected?

The more intersections you have, the stronger your online presence. Each line represents a site or an online community, they are coloured so you can easily determine at a glance the influence of each of them and much they are used. Simple, really - Just like the Internet!