Don't try this at home

As a lot of my colleagues from Advance Cph I'm planning to have duck as the main course at our X-mas dinner.

I plan slow roasted duck. To make sure that I do it right I was looking up a recipe. By mistake I ended up on a Google translated site. And I'm still laughing. Here is a small taste:

"Fill the other with prunes and apples and place it with your chest down on the grate. Cut the drumsticks from. Start by putting your thighs in the oven approx. one hour (editors advice - don't!). Come on then the rest of the bird in the oven.

Turn second (anden - this is really a fun and meaningless translation) after one hour and sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast until cooked."

I have been bitching about automated service and the example above shows that automation can lead to unexpected amusement. Everybody with an iPhone can confirm this. And both Apple and Google are the most celebrated brands and companies on the globe and still there is room for improvement. An somehow thats nice.

I will stay out of the oven and let the duck stay there for 6 hours at 130 degrees, turned once after 4 hours if you shouldn't know. If you need inspiration for the X-mas sweets see: jul.advance.dk

Have a lovely X-mas - hope to see you again in 2012.

Too much service?

In a world where the consumers are less likely to spend money and the competition is fierce I would imagine that the more service a company can give the better.

But during my Christmas shopping I experienced a situation where I felt the company was trying too hard.

Telenor is offering a a concept they call Double Deal. You can buy two cheap phones and two very cheap subscriptions. A cool offer - my kids could get 2 new great phones for Christmas at lower total costs than they have today.

I agreed with the very service minded guy in the shop, that the new phones should only be active after Christmas. No one should know what type of gift they could expect for Christmas.

So far so good - great experience. Only when I came home my son told me that he had received an SMS from Telenor (and my daughter as well)

SMS text on my sons phone - (seeing the screen you also know why he needs a new phone from X-mas:-)

Telenor was so eager to improve the service, that they almost gave away that I bought a phone for my son. And the day after I received this letter:

One of three letters from Telenor the same day

Here they tried to help me activate the new subscription and congratulated me with the Double Deal. Thank good they sent it to me and not to my kids.

Telenor is really trying hard, but they almost lost me. And I simply don't get why they don't foresee this situation. Of course it's automated. But the guy who did the rules for this either doesn't have kids or doesn't buy phones for Christmas. Telenor, you have 11 months to improve your system for next Christmas and maybe just give me little less service and dialogue, thx.

Ideas or Concepts

In our industry (advertising) we are focused on creativity as a powerful tool to solve clients briefs. Very often I hear the point of view that creativity is linked to the ideas that we generate at the agencies. We have even organized our agencies according to this thinking. The account people receive the brief, they do the strategy work alone or with planners and then it's handed over to the creative - the idea guys (typically an Art Director and a Copy Writer). From one department to another.

We are currently working hard to change this thinking and proces at Advance. So far the old structure has generated great stuff, but things are changing and so are we. To me Hyper Island truly proved that ideas can and should come from many sources. Different perspectives and different experiences add to the richness of ideas. And facilitated the right way it leads to more and even better ideas. A second advantage is the combination of people with a deep understanding and knowledge of the clients business and people with little or no knowledge. And if you are able to establish a positive culture (more YES than NO) around the proces you are on to something.

Cool ideas from a Triobike workshop

By working this way we are almost "democratizing" part of the creative work. Right now Advance is also experimenting with ways to include the clients in this ideation work. To create ownership and trust.

To me it represents a paradigme in our way of working. And to some a bit scaring. If it's "just" about more or less open source ideation, how can the agencies create value in the future? First of all I think it's all about becoming great at facilitating this proces (we are developing our own tools based on the experiences we gather) and secondly the true creative power in my mind will be in the way you put the ideas together and make them into Concepts that will solve the clients true problems. Concepts that can be communication, products or business related or a combination of all three. And a tiny insight from my work as an Expert Judge at the Commercial Court in Denmark: You can not legally protect an idea, but you can get legal protection of Concepts.

It's not a walk in the park to work in a paradigme shift and it requires new processes, new organizational structures and new ways of engaging clients. All of this we are trying at Advance. With a BETA mentality to it.

X-mas a bit more digital

When I came back from Hyper Island we all made some statements of what we wanted to do specifically as a manifestation of the HIMC thinking.

I had several things I wanted to do - one of them was to make our Family X-mas day more digital to give all our dear families a flavour of Hyper Island or maybe I should just call it a digitalized and interactive experience.

Yesterday was the day and I think we made it. Besides the traditional cosy X-mas mood with "æbleskiver & Gløgg", Santa Claus was supposed to visit our little party (of 80). Only this year we wanted to involve the kids and the initial idea was to use Google maps open API to create a Santa Claus tracker for the kids to follow him through the town. As it offen happens we had less and less time and the solution would be a bit trashy - the deadline was set Sunday at 3 PM and couldn't be changed. Christian Faber joined the team and he suggested a more interactive experience and we made another concept: Santa Claus lost his way in Cph and had to call the Agency to get some help finding his way. So at 3PM Santa called on Skype (connected to the big screen) via his account (JulemandCph) and asked for help.

Here you see Santa asking the kids for help

The kids were helping Santa navigate (they saw the Castle in Kongens Have to help them understand where Santa was located). And when Santa arrived all kids were standing excited at the Reception welcoming him.

Even though Santa lost the X-mas gifts on his way it was a happy ending since Batman turned up and saved the situation as he always does. A new super hero team has emerged.

Batman saving the day

It started as an experiment and a HIMC statement, but judging from the kids reaction it was a cool experience and maybe a new tradition was established. But no matter how digital we make it, we also decorated the real tree and it's standing in the Canteen reminding us of X-mas.

December like it should be

Today is the 1st of December and my youngest was really looking forward to the real start of Christmas. We had a great morning and my wife and Jonathan were going to school for a cosy day doing christmas deco.

I was rushing to work and starting to get into this effective mindset: "what are my meetings, what do I need to solve or do today". Christmas was already far away.

Until I met Zdenko - or rather heard Zdenko. On his own he was preparing a Christmas welcome with decorations, music and cookies and suddenly it was Christmas again. I can still here the music and I feel a little bit less effective. Thx Zdenko