Posts Tagged ‘Agencies’
IKEA. Do You Need a Hand?
März 11th, 2010 • Comments Ads
Tags: Ads, Agencies, Brands, Cool, Creativity, Funny, Grabarz & Partner, Ideas, IKEA, Print, visual, We like
There are ads and then there are ads. The clever, simple and intriguing idea below does three things at once (which is not common for German creation anymore): It describes a problem, it solves it using the brand’s means and it’s not just award-focused Zombie creation. High five Grabarz & Partner. I love it.
How True. It’s not about Digital, Stupid.
März 7th, 2010 • Comments Allgemein
Tags: Agencies, Cool, Philosophy, Prediction, Trends, Truth, World
I found this convincing mission statement by Sidekick Studios UK on Neil Perkin’s (fantastic) blog. It’s just a well written piece of PR for a digital conference in the first place. But it is so right.
Agency Strike. Belgian Agencies show the Finger.
Februar 9th, 2010 • Comments We like
Tags: Agencies, Business, Cool, Experimental, Funny, Ideas, Pitch, Truth, We like, World
Basically it’s an update to my post from yesterday which reacts on Bud’s article about the future of agencies. Today the agencies of Belgium went on strike to protest against the erosion of pitch norms. They synchronized their websites to display one message which you can click through one after another and jump from website to website – an impressive act of resistance against what seems to be the sad truth in the industry nowadays.
I have posted the screenshots of all 14 pages below. The virtual strike will only last for a week.
Let’s call it reality. Why agencies will pretty likely stick around.
Februar 8th, 2010 • Comments Allgemein
Tags: Agencies, Brands, Business, Debate, Experimental, Future, Prediction, Strategy, Trends
Bud Caddell from NYC’s Undercurrent has published a great rant about the question on how the agency of the future looks like. As usual it is a great text to read but it ends with a plea to share our opinion. And that is what I do now.
Hi Bud.
I would like to share my opinion with you and I appreciate the time and effort it took to write such a long article about the agency of the future. First up, it’s a good perspective to start a discussion. But before we talk about the question what the agency of the future might look like, let’s begin with the essential question what an agency actually is. At this point we encounter the first logical problem. You won’t find a global definition of “Agency” on Wikipedia. But you will find a definition of “Advertising agency”.
An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for its clients.
If you scroll down a little bit further you will find the chapter “Types of advertising agencies”. It separates different types of agencies – such as Inhouse, Interactive, Search Engine etc.
Simply stunning!!! This little chapter alone demonstrates the disadvantage of 99% of the world’s agency models. It is not at all focused on the core business needs of their clients but on the output the agency founder once planned to generate – SEO, Social…you name it. But do we still have a clear understanding about what we are supposed to produce? In a small poll on my blog last week I asked if there is still such a big line between traditional and new jobs in the industry. The answers ranged from ‘Absolutely. Traditional agencies haven’t got anything to do with digital ones’ to ‘Not at all. The future model is integrated’. Or, to put it another way, there is no average ad guy who has got a precise understanding about what he is supposed to produce anymore. Pure confusion, no matter where you look.
The problem
Agencies are just normal companies in the first place. And then there was the web, this fantastic engine that made all these fantastic concepts of crowdsourced products, E-Learning, brand fandom and LOLcats possible. But, the web is half as old as I am. And 7% as old as the Top 3 ad networks nowadays. Companies such as Ogilvy, JWT, or McCann have been around for decades. They produced innovation at a certain point in time. But unfortunately they cannibalized their own concept. Customers drowned in messages and meaningless awareness campaigns while more and more products hit the markets.
It may sound a little bit cheesy, but my dad told me about his childhood days in Germany last weekend. There was not too much choice when you were a kid in Frankfurt in 1960 – there were only a handful of products, few toys and most of the time you played soccer outside with your friends. According to a study from earlier this month modern kids spend enough time with screens of all kinds to make it a full-time job – 53 hours per week!
What I say is, the crisis of the agency business is the crisis of our society. We just have anything we could dream of. And it’s not a question of traditional versus ‘new’ agencies. It’s not a question whether I drown in traditional or digital messages. It’s just a problem that we possess anything and nothing seems special enough to us anymore. We are not not thrilled by brand campaigns anymore. We aren’t thrilled by anything anymore. We just struggle to stay alive in a sea of stuff.
adidas. Preparing the Social Push for NBA All–Star Weekend.
Februar 5th, 2010 • Comments Brands, Experimental, Social
Tags: 180, Adaptation Marketing, adidas, Agencies, Brands, Cool, Creativity, Dwight Howard, Experimental, Ideas, Riot, Sharing, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, TBWA, Tools, We like
For about three years I worked on various adidas accounts here at my employer, Neue Digitale / Razorfish. That’s why I’m pretty interested to watch what the brand is up to when it comes to new digital (mainly social) concepts. In fact, the days of big digital presentations are over are getting reinterpreted at adidas HQ, Amsterdam.
On NBA’s All-Star Weekend Orlando Magic Center Dwight Howard takes the lead in a push by 180/TBWA Riot and adidas to socialize….umm…..big shiny ad productions. They will air a 30-second spot starring the basketball god which unlocks more Howard-related content the more it is shared. Additionally it will be intertwined with the website and a Youtube channel.
Slightware. The difference between a campaign and a conversation.
Dezember 22nd, 2009 • Comments Brands, Social, Strategy
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Agencies, Brands, Campaign, Conversation, Diagram, Social Business Design, Social Influence Marketing, Trends, visual, World
Kenneth J. Weiss’ book Slightware is a book on the challenges brands face in nowaday’s complex marketing realities. Reader praise the book as a great compendium about today’s marketing. Plus it comes with quite a bunch of great pictures info visualizations. I found this one particularly interesting: Campaigns vs Conversations. No, it is not completely new. But it summarizes a couple of key properties in one visualization. Info visualizations – a great way to promote your blog, book or whatever since 1853. 
Strategy. Pinning it down on one page.
Dezember 16th, 2009 • Comments Strategy, We like, Work
Tags: Agencies, Cool, Diagram, Ideas, Presentation, simple, Strategy, Tools, visual, Work
As I am in the process of working on a big strategy project I am looking for good ways to visualize stuff in a simple and intriguing way. Churchofthecustomer (via Bud Caddell) has come up with this nice example of a one-page-strategic-plan. I think it’s rather an internal sheet that you print out and put on the wall to keep everyone on the same page. Plus, it probably interacts well with creative briefs. I love its simplicity but as in good creative briefs – coming up with something so simple, is quite a complex task. (Full graphic here)
Time. Much more than the Present.
November 15th, 2009 • Comments Strategy
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Agencies, Bud Caddell, Business, Cool, Creativity, Fast, Future, Philosophy, Prediction, Presentation, Strategy, Time, Trends, Undercurrent, World
Bud CaddelI is a strategist the awesomest strategist ever at Undercurrent NYC and I read his blog for quite some time. This deck by Bud is about time. Basically about the question how we design experiences around how humans perceive time. I am not quite sure if you gave an answer to this question, Bud, but I love the way you tell your story (especially the Austronaut Allen part). By the way, I found this deck on Griffin Farley’s blog which I hereby recommend to my readers as well.
Nike. NY Stands for New York.
November 13th, 2009 • Comments Ads, Brands
Tags: Ads, Agencies, Brands, Cool, Creativity, Ideas, Nike, NYC, Out of Home, Sport, visual, We like, Yankees
As a citizen of Frankfurt, Germany, I don’t feel too sorry for the inhabitants of NYC (because actually it’s the coolest city on the planet). But it’s interesting to see how this hurt metropolis always reinvents itself to focus on the stuff that makes this city so unique. Wieden + Kennedy has created this great out door ad for the NY Yankees. Nothing else to add than ‘Great’. (Via AdFreak)
FEED. New Razorfish report on how brands and consumers interact.
November 9th, 2009 • Comments Reports, Trends
Tags: Agencies, Business, Feed09, Presentation, Razorfish, Report, Strategy, Trends, World
My employer Razorfish has once again published its annual FEED report. The document sums up findings from surveys among online users with the goal to answer how brands and consumers interact in the digital realm.
In August 2009, Razorfish surveyed 1,000 U.S. “connected consumers” across four major age groups. FEED focuses on “connected consumers” because this is the demographic our clients care most about; they are defined as consumers who have broadband access, regularly spend money online, and who actively consume or create digital content.
This year’s report differs from its predecessors because its focus is not on how consumers are adapting new digital technologies, but trying to understand how their adoption of these technologies affect the ways they engage with brands. Some key findings are:
- Digital brand experiences create customers. The overwhelming majority of consumers who actively engage with a brand digitally are much more inclined to purchase products and recommend the brand to others.
- Consumer wants to interact with a brand: 73% have posted a product or brand review on a website like Amazon, Yelp or Twitter, 70% have read a corporate blog, 65% have played a branded browser-based game and 40% have “friended” a brand on Facebook. These interactions are shaping their perceptions of the brand.
- The other major driver of digital brand engagement in customer service. Being responsive and solving customer problems in real time builds brand loyalty.
- Digital can make or break a brand. 65% of consumers say a digital experience, either positive or negative, changed their opinion of a brand. And in that group, almost all (97%) indicated their experience influenced whether or not they eventually purchased from the brand.
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