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

Integrating product and communication

At Advance we believe in the full integration between the communication and the product (experience. The more built-in and seamless this connection can be the better.  This week-end I had an experience that was a seamless experience and a quite surprising one as well.

I was invited to taste a new wine from down under (they make great wine - try a McLaren Vale). This wine wasn't an ordinary wine. On the bottle they introduced the Molly Dooker Shake - a session you should perform before drinking the wine. To do the Shaker you need to scan a QR code to see a Molly Dooker Shake video. So far just a gimmic.

Introducing the Molly Dooker Shake on the bottle

http://www.mollydookerwines.com.au/web/mollydooker_shake.cfm

But when I saw the video (try link above) I realized that the Molly Dooker Shake was part of the wine makers philosophy and actually was a very entertaining way of preparing the wine for drinking. Here is how they put it:

What Does the Mollydooker Shake do? The Shake releases the nitrogen gas which is in the wine. We use nitrogen to protect our wines from oxygen so that we can reduce the amount of sulphites, because some people are allergic to sulphites. When the wines are young, the nitrogen tends to flatten the fruit flavour of the wine (nitrogen effect). Shaking the wine releases the nitrogen (you can hear it hissing if you hold the bottle to your ear after doing the Shake) and the full flavour profile is restored.

Jan doing the Molly Dooker Shake

The result was amazing and we all (the wine tasting party) agreed that the wine tasted excellent and much better than drinking with-out the Shake. Suddenly it's much more than a gimmic and trust me I will remember this wine for ever (and Peter Haahr, I know to you this will still be a gimmick!)

BETA Management

I was a bit in doubt wether the headline should be: Management of BETA or Management in BETA. Maybe it's the same.

The management challenge is that we (Advance and the industry) have moved from a more predictable proces and out-put with a final deadline (we drop dead just after crossing the line). But the fact that the processes are changing, the competencies needed are different and the idea of a deadline is changing, the entire ball game and thereby the management issues are changing. From a creative point of view that probably sounds great, but I believe the best creative ideas are created in some kind of proces. And if the old model doesn't work, what is the new one?

The IT metaphor of always being in BETA has the implication, that we create something and try it out live with-out knowing exactly if it works. Our clients are extremely focused on ROMI and almost want proof of things working before they go live. This truly represent a challenge. The solution could be that with a BETA approach you can actually guarantee a ROMI because you adjust the solution until it works. In the old model we hope that the solution will work and if it doesn't it will be the end of the MD or the agency or both. This new BETA approach opens up for new business models for agencies - something we have discussed for ages but not found the solutions to.

To succeed we also need to define a new terminology in the future. It doesn't make a lot of sense to talk about for instance "final artwork" since it will not be final. Maybe it's just BETA artwork?

The examples above is much about managing a BETA perspective. To handle it I think Management also needs to be more in BETA. We need to keep adjusting and change in a much higher speed than previously. My experience is that the Ad industry is quite conservative so it's quite a challenge. Especially because the financial climate is negative and that somehow calls for conservatism. At Advance we have turned it up side down and want to use the crisis (and our success in the market) to make the transition. This means new processes, new organizational structures, new competencies and a management team who doesn't have the answer to everything, but definitely has an obligation to find answers and keep trying until it works. That will require an open spirit from the all colleagues and willingness to try stuff.

It isn't easy. Below you see one of 6 descriptions of the current organizational structure made in a management work-session we had Wednesday. I can reveal that all 6 were quite different and gives us a great reason to revisit our structure for the future:-)

The current organizational structure reflects new competencies added step by step over time.
It's really time to look for a future flexible (BETA) structure

The empty chair

In our industry we face a lot of time spent on waiting. Waiting for colleagues to finalize the job they are assigned to, clients to return with approvals or maybe new great ideas to appear from the brainstorm.

Some of this waiting is annoying and some is probably part of something maturing.

Our 3D department has really been dealing with the annoying waiting experience. Not so much the waiting for lay-outs to be ready or basic LOD files to be delivered from clients or suppliers - somehow that goes with the territory. No, it's the waiting for 3D scenes to be rendered to go into the next work flows of 3D. Since we work with extremely detailed stills with a lot of layers and products in 3D with an incredible amount of data the files we render are enormous. And we don't have a full blow 3D render set-up. Therefore the render time has exploded and we have examples of render time of 50 hrs. because we had to deal with renders that didn´t work out as planned and we would have to do it all again.

Below you see Martin or rather his empty chair, empty because he had to spend time waiting to continue his work.

Fortunately Martin is a not only a 3D artist - he is a creative one and he set off to solve the problem. He (and we) invested 2 weeks of programming and another week of adjustment. His 3D colleagues were covering his back doing all 3D work during the period. Martin invented a new render principle were Martin and his 3D colleagues could divide the render into layers rendered individually. Thereby the render time could be reduced to app. 2 hrs. and a lot of frustration was removed from the proces.

To be honest it wasn't easy to find the 2 -3 weeks and Martin couldn't guarantee that it would work. But it did.

Martin took charge of a problem that could have been lost in a discussion of wether we have the right gear or software or not. And we all ran the risk of not knowing if it worked. That is how progress is made and creativity flourish. Thx Martin and the 3D team.

Data in everything

Data is the future creative gold. The amount of available data and the accessibility of data is currently creating a lot of new possibilities. And I hear data mentioned in almost any meeting now. For Advance Relations it is opening a door for them to move in as experts in data, since they have a strong understanding of how to use data to establish a relevant personalized 1 to 1 dialogue. And I learned recently that the largets agencies in the world are US Database companies. Not that size is a goal in itself. It just indicates where the market is going.

To be honest data sometimes seem a bit abstract to me, it's bits and bytes. Peter Stampe introduced me to a great presentation made by Dan Cobley, MD at Google UK: http://prezi.com/tfoibcor2ggc/final-iab-engage-everything-going-digital/?auth_key=f10657c352f3c4732298d7ed159dab2201077b0a

It really shows where you find data and how data can be transformed into viable digital solutions. And by the way, a beautiful example of a Prezi presso - a true benchmark.

Data can also be very simple. When I returned after HIMC, I received a mail from Sammy, the CEO of Triobike, a company that we as an agency own a share of, see www.triobike.com. Sammy was frustrated, because sales were down (or at least low) even though he had made a great initiative, having Triobike as the prize of a competition at a major "babysite" to create awareness. Sammy mentioned that he considered not doing sponsored activities like this again, because he feared that potential buyers would be reluctant to be buy, since they could win a bike. A good point and I almost agreed with him. Until I started thinking data. OK, 1 person is winning the prize, but what about the app 7000 people who signed up for the competition. And probably because they liked the product. The site owners had permission to mail the participants. Suddenly Sammy saw the potential, created a special offer to all 7000 prospects, thanking them for the interest they have shown, the site owners liked the idea of doing something for their customers and made a mail blast for free and did banners on their site as well.  I know it's not rocket sience and true CRM experts laugh by now - it's basic. But to Sammy (and me) it was a kick and a learning. It will be interesting to see how the new activity tracks.

This blog is data and the deeper you dive, the more data and understanding you generate and something you can react to.

Here are a few examples:

Number of page views per post

 It indicates what type of posts that interest the readers. But if you dig deeper and look over time (2 weeks) the picture changes and tell another story (the energy coefficient has the highest total number of readers). So you can easily get lost in data..

Total page views over time

This chart suggests that I should quit - declining interest.

Daily split of page views

And this chart indicates, that the succes depends on what I do to attract attention. The 12th in the morning I made an announcement at Fredagsmorgenmad and sent out an e-mail and the blog had the best tracking to date.

I could go on.

I'm officially a data addict and it's one of those addictions I believe to be healthy.