There is nothing worse for your business than bad presentation. There are estimated 30 million presentations each day and around 50% of them kill people. I wrote earlier about the scientific findings showing that power point isn't good for our brains, so I believe we should definitely do our best to improve those power point slides, that will probably never die themselves.
I was writing an article about freeconomics and its consequences for music business when I thought about some other aspects of things for free. Working in agency gives you access to many free things. You get magazines, newspapers, free cinema tickets, invitations to theater and X-mass gifts. There is nothing unusual in that, you get free access to media that are the substance of our work. What’s interesting is to observe how people cope with the “free”. “Free” brings status with itself. It means you’ve been noticed and acknowledged important. Free means VIP. It is social currency that communicates to your surroundings that you are someone. Someone who gets things for free. And I would believe deep down in the reptile part of the brain, free makes you feel instinctively as a successful hunter. You get your share, so you don’t have to spend resources on it any longer.
Photo by broterham
"It is essential that media agencies have more input into the creative brief" said David Kenny, the chairman-CEO of Publicis Group's Digitas
Being media savvy is really important in the increasingly fragmented and diversified media world. There is no fix solutions and creative ideas must reflect media environment in order to work. It is trivial to say it over and over but we can't make campaigns based on closed communication models that seems to be alive in many advertising agencies. I've attended a couple of meetings where ad agency presented first their great idea and then came up with a couple of slides for media agency - their media recommendation (newspapers and TV), without even giving a thought whether their message can thrive in the given media. Media aren't only about buying advertising space and optimizing reach at low cost. Media are about understanding how and when connect with consumers and establish your brand / message in their lives. Media are about well-thought communication solutions and maximizing your reach via creating social networks or becoming part of them. You can't achieve a success with your great picture and slogan on it that you throw like a bomb on the consumers. Bombs explode and destroy. Media used wisely - connect and build. We, at Vizeum work with connections planning where the starting point is not only collecting consumers insights but understanding human's motivations behind media usage. This is what should drive ideas. Ideas, messages should fit media "personality", otherwise our messages are like bull in a china shop.
"Medium is the message" McLuhan
In my humble opinion, it is not about who takes a lead, it is not about who is more important on the client's partners list. It is about COLLABORATION. Both media and advertising agencies are on the same side. It just makes me sad that we perceive each other as competitors and collect efforts to prove who's better. We should reunite our efforts and talents to create unforgettable and effective solutions. We should get married!'
Photo by *Solar ikon*
Tags: advertising, media, collaboration, David Kenny, connection planning
This is something basic and simple. This is something obvious. This is something we should stick to no matter whether we are employers or employees. Those 5 rules describe the relationship between people on the office ground. 
Thanks to Adliterate.
Tags: work, career
What will make difference for companies and take them to the success aren't workaholics, who work their butts off driven by some kind of fear of facing the life, so they fill out their time with work. The employees that will make a difference are passionate workers. People who love their jobs.
"The passionate worker doesn't show up because she's afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it's a hobby that pays. The passionate worker is busy blogging on vacation... because posting that thought and seeing the feedback it generates is actually more fun than sitting on the beach for another hour. The passionate worker tweaks a site design after dinner because, hey, it's a lot more fun than watching TV." Seth Godin
The undeniable truth is that we work increasingly in 24/7 style, surrounded by blackberries, mobile phones and instant access to mail. We have hardly time to take a break to breath in. Work becomes habit, worker becomes the slave. And slaves aren't creative. Slaves suffer. Slaves fulfil their duties decently driven by fear of being punished (fired, no bonus, etc.). Slaves don't make a difference. Only passionate workers make a difference. In a world where work is the most time consuming activity after sleeping (for some work takes more time than sleeping), job needs to be some kind of hobby to deliver on to levels - duties and leisure. This is the area where work becomes your passion and as Seth says you'd rather do something exciting connected to your work than watch another silly TV show. The people who dedicate themselves to the job, by loving what they do are the most precious workers. They have incredible engagement that can be infectious and creativity that ignites ideas and new possibilities for companies to develop.
Picture by aussiegal
Tags: Seth Godin, passionate workers, modern slaves, work, corporations
I have been sick for the last couple of days. My body couldn't handle the pressure and stress anymore. Pretty bad experience, however between headaches and fever, I have managed to reflect over the two terms that were artificially set in opposition to each other - play and work (this is what brought me into the state of being unable to work)
The Western culture regards play as unimportant and silly activity that belongs to childhood. Grown-ups have more serious thing to do. Serious things meaning work. Play stands in in opposition to work, which is so wrong. Johan Huinziga said once that play is crucial to our culture.
“Play is simultaneously liberty and inventions, fantasy and discipline. All important cultural manifestations are based upon it. It creates and sustains the spirit of inquiry, respect for rules, and detachment.”
It is impossible to have satisfying life without balancing both - work and play. Too much work without elements of play leads not only to stress and exhaustion but refrain us from development, from being creative in the sense of finding the right solutions. For me the main difference between work and play can be described by R. Kennedy words:
"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?"
Play means not only asking the WHY NOT questions and challenging status quo, looking further into future and imagining unseen and unimagined. Play means also being together, it means being connected with community. Pure work is just selling your soul to routines, duties and never endless deadliness. Work as such is pointless and deprives us of humanity (I know it sounds very hard). First when you mix it with playfulness it becomes something than can fulfill your needs and give you and others satisfaction.
In spite I am be usual suspect myself at the moment, I have hard time of understanding what drives people into giving up on play and turning your life into constant work, where family and friends are put aside, all matters is your inbox and presentations. The tyranny of being the best, of proving yourself? Even when you sick, you don't stop. You hold desperately onto it and turn into bitter, unproductive but responsible worker, who replied 50 emails just before she died. Wow, it surely opens the door to ...hell.
Never ever drop play ...neither me or any of you out there. Life is to wonderful and precious to turn it into routines and duties.
Personally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I just don't happen to think it's an appropriate subject for an "ethic."
Barbara Ehrenreich
Tags: work, play, society, culture
"We aim at nothing but mutual assistance and collaboration". (Winston Churchill, "Iron Curtain" Speech)
I have been to the very good and interesting presentation about co-creation by Rikke Grundvigt from OMD. Rikke talked about co-creation, the digitized reality where mash-ups are just another form of communication. She tried not only to show the new forms of communication, called co-creation but also tried to answer the question: how media and advertising agencies can find themselves in this new world. How can we become interesting partners in the collaboration process? How can we turn collaboration into our advantage?
I have been thinking quite a lot lately about collaboration, not only as a new form of communication but as an integrated part of the way people work.
According to online Websters dictionary:
Collaboration
1. Act of working jointly: "they worked either in collaboration or independently".
2. Act of cooperating traitorously with an enemy.
According to Wikipedia
"Collaboration is a structured, recursive process where two or more people work together by building consensus and sharing knowledge in an intellectual endeavor toward a common goal which is typically creative in nature. Collaboration does not require leadership and can even bring better results through decentralization and egalitarianism."
Collaboration means working together, collaboration means co-creation, collaboration means wisdom of crowds. Collaboration means better results, as my great-grandmother used to say: "two heads are wiser than one head" (she was 92 years old).
Collaboration, co-creation are talks of the town. They are the new buzz - let's invite our target group to co-creation! But before we jump into inviting consumers to co-creation, shouldn't we ask ourselves a question: Is our organization ready to work in teams? Do we have culture for collaboration?
From my observations and conversations with people, I think collaboration is huge challenge, due to bad communication (or lack of it), tyranny of "I in front of the computer" culture and "I wanna be a star" syndrome. Hierarchical approach and war of business cards (who has the stronger title) dominates and overshadows the potential laying in collaboration. People, companies, brands locked in their own private worlds choose to take decisions themselves, just to avoid problems and discussions. It is easier this way. This is the way to promote "I", not good ideas or solutions.
Closing the door for the challenges and unfathomable potential laying in the collaboration makes people feel alienated and limits the chances for surviving in the world dominated by the new species: powerful, creative people, previously known as consumers.
Photo by CARF
Btw visit CARF's side, and give your helping hand to Children at Risk Foundation
I was thinking about different grades of being good at something. From being mediocre good quality to being extremely good quality. What does make difference? At which level success begins? Hugh McLeod's cartoon gives an answer. You can't never stop, it is about getting better all the time, believing the sky's are limits. It is about reaching the level of being amazing and saying NO to being average.
So often clients expects from you average stuff and we fit in fear of having dissatisfied clients or losing job. In fact it is huge wastage of time and talent. None dares to grab the opportunity, takes whatever he/she does one step further and become fucking amazing. No, we feel safer within tested excel formula and power point templates. Come on there is a bigger world out there and you can make a difference by saying NO to being average. Spread the world and combat mediocrity.
Thanks for inspiration Mr. McLeod :-)
Tags: gapingvoid, mediocrity, quality, say NO to average
"An S.E.P. ," he said, "is something that we can't see, or don't see, our brain doesn't let us see, because we think it's somebody else's problem. That's what S.E.P. means. Somebody Else's Problem. The brain just edits it out; it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye."
(Douglas Adams, Life, Universe and Everything)
Doesn't it sound familiar? I stumble every day on S.E.P.'s. They lie all over around. We need the new "reality check" glasses prescription, so we can see all the S.E.P.'s piled on our way and take the serious actions to take care for them. Your job will not get easier or more bearable by producing more and more S.E.P.'s, as they don't vanish by themselves.
Great post from David Armano about Synthesizers. The more complex world becomes the more specialized functions we create. We have online planners, TV buyers, account managers, account directors, media planners buyers, strategic planners, I could keep on listing the titles we have on our business cards. Lots of people with pieces of knowledge, but so few with the overview and understanding of the whole picture. There is increasing need for synthesizers, who "... help take the inputs, distill them into something meaningful and articulate and output them in compelling, meaningful ways.", Armano says. This is the type of person agencies should invest nowadays in, if they want to embrace the increasingly complex reality.
I am a huge fan of holistic approach which is often overseen and definitely needed in our business. We deal not only with media, we deal with people, culture and technology. It is necessary to understand the interaction between them and come up with some useful conclusions for other specialists to work on. For me synthesizer is a kind of renaissance man who lives after the sentence: "omo sum et nihil humanum a me alienum esse puto". She/he is a person that opens the new door, is curious, isn't afraid, is hungry for wisdom and is able to compile the knowledge.
Who are you?
Tags: Armano, synthesizer, employee, renaissance man
I am back to work after short and rainy holidays. I am pretty relaxed and I've managed to go through the hell of unread mails. Mission accomplished. As most of the people have holidays in Denmark, it is quite and very productive time for me. Not too many mails, not too many phone calls. It is quiet and not too many people I can talk too. All in all, more productive time.
This graph pictures it in a way. You can definitely produce more work when not sitting in a meetings. It is logical. The meeting that doesn't produce anything, let it be solution, problem to solve, idea, etc. or has no clearly defined direction, is just a waste of time.
I like also this one. Too much work doesn't ignite creativity, rather stress. I think this is the problem which seems to be overseen - not enough people, huge amount of work and endless deadlines race.
I am going to enjoy the summer time and no meetings, lesser amount of work and lots of inspiration and great ideas :-)
Visit Crappy Graphs for more cool and crappy graphs.
Tags: work, productivity, inspiration, crappy graphs
On December 1, 1967, 75-year old Leo Burnett gave this speed at its annual Leo Burnett employees' "Breakfast at Burnett's." It is very inspirational and reminds us 40 years after what our job should be about.
I think we all should print the speech and read it from time to time to find inspiration and engagement.
via AdPulp
Tags: Leo Burnett, inspiration
So I've changed the job again. After 6 months at Carat I've been offered to join Vizeum as a strategic planner and to be a part of team that goal is to create the different media agency in Danish market, agency that goes beyond traditional thinking. It is a great and very challenging opportunity. I am going to work with fantastic people who has tones of enthusiasm and great ideas. I am sure we can make a difference and break through the wall of "reach and frequency" thinking.
Vizeum represents the new approach to media planning, it's about consumers experience and creating the brand stories together with consumers, not buying the media space for brand stories on TV. Vizeum's communication planning starts at understanding the motivations that drives people's behavior.
It's going to be exciting!
Tags: Vizeum
Pernille asked about the future of media planning and the presence of the right people in the business. This is a very broad subject and it makes us to face the questions about the roles media planners wants to play in the world of communication. Media agencies aspire to be the communication agencies but it demands the different mindset. It demands people who are curious and open-minded. People who are willing to explore the unknown and challenge the clients. People who are story-tellers and aren't afraid of the new ideas. But most of all it is all about enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the most important asset people should have (not only in work but also in life) as it brings out other positive features, curiosity, creativity and the will to challenge and change things. We can learn media planners how to plan media, we can learn them all about communication, etc. but this is just knowledge that isn't worth too much without engagement and the willingness to explore the world and to challenge the traditional media agency way of thinking.
I totally agree with Marc McGuiness' from Wishful thinking blog views on enthusiasm versus confidence.
Too much focus on confidence makes people being serious and professional, but to awake your audience attention and to 'take them with you', you need to be enthusiastic. Being enthusiastic about subject shows you believe in the things you are saying, it shows you are engaged. It makes you trustworthy!
In my eyes most of media planners sets confidence in the first place by hiding themselves behind big numbers, serious research, hundreds of power point slides with charts and bullet points, but it is not enough to become the architects of communication. In order to achieve that you need to be like this little fellow is enthusiastic about such a small and silly thing - ice cream.
Tags: media planning, communication, media agency, enthusiasm
"Don't be afraid not to follow the herd -because where the herd's gone, the food is already eaten."
Bob Dylan, quoted on opendemocracy.com
This quote
made me think about the positioning media agencies have. Media agencies are all looking for some points of differentiation, for being unique. They offer services hoping others don't have. But in the end they all are the part of the same herd where the main point of focus are short-term goals. It is enough to look at their websites to find out that they are all talking about the same, just using different words.
Leaving the herd isn't easy, many fear the risks it brings. The fear of being different and rejected is irrational but huge. It is safer to do the same the others have done and are doing. 'Let's use the tested methods and ideas' is the common way of thinking.
But while they fear, the clients have gone somewhere else. World has changed and they aren't adapted. They've just keep on changing their mission statements. Words, words but no actions.
You must leave the herd you keep on following if you wish to find the new herd and achieve the stronger and unique position. Otherwise you face two choices: stay in a row being nothing special, being just another media agency or kill other members of the herd to achieve better position. I think I'd rather leave the heard I am in!
Tags: media agency, herd
Polish director Dawid Marcinkowski is about to finish the work on the first interactive movie Sufferosa. It is going to be intense picture about the serious disease of modern pop culture - the cult of youth and fear of death. Film be ready in June / July. The whole project cost only $36.000. The crew and actors worked for free.
All scenes in the movie were photographed and filmed from many perspectives and then animated. And it is impossible to see the same film two times. There are no typical plot or dialogues in the movie. The characters are talking to the viewer. Clicking on one the available options will take you to see what's going to happen next. There is no one ending and you can reach the end of the movie via various roads. Sufferosa is build upon many layers that are changing constantly.
You can see movie trailer on the site. It is fantastic atmosphere and I can't wait to experience the whole movie.
via rp.pl
Tags: sufferosa, interactive movie
:-))
"Theory cannot be fabricated out of results of observations - it can only be invented"
Albert Einstein
Inisghts are the only mean to understand the processes behind things we observe, but the ideas, strategies, concepts are born in our imagination.
I do a lot of conceptual work lately about innovation and creative work processes within the media agency. It brought to my mind the distinction Aristotle made, and which seem to be forgotten. He divided the world into parts: the first in which things can't be other than they are and another in which things can be other that they are - a simple but very strong distinction. The first part is typified by the physical world in which a rock is a rock and can't be anything else. In this world, Aristotle's Analytics lays out a fabulous toolbox - rigorous, objective, quantitative analysis which goal is to establish and document the reality of the situation. This world is the most known and most of marketing communication is created within the "unchangeable reality", where the being consistent matters.
The other world, where things can be other than they are, is the 
world of people, of organizations and of cultures. For example, a bad communication strategy can be something else - a great communication strategy - if someone figures out how to turn it around. In this area analytics are inappropriate tool. Instead, Aristotle described the thinking tools: conversation, invention, and intention. Here our efforts aren't focused on the description of what is real but rather on the creation of something that does not currently exist, that must be first imagined.
Media agency must operate within those distinctions. We need to deliver both hard and soft facts. We need to provide our clients the rigorous and quantitative analysis, we can't run away from numbers and we still need to be kind of accountants for our clients and describe the reality by using the hard facts, ROI, reach, awareness, etc. But we can't stuck in that role, we need to evolve into the new type of media planners, into communication guides who take the clients, consumers and brands on the fascinating journey to the modern and fragmented world of plenty.
If media agency wants to keep up with the changes, embrace the media proliferation and get in touch
with its most important client - human being - we have to understand and operate in the second of Aristotle worlds - the world where things can be changed via creativity and innovation. I know we people are not so fond of changes in general, we are afraid of losing control. For safety reasons we stick to routines. But if we, media planners want to stay in the game, we don't need
to get the new fancy title. In order to stay in the game, we have to develop the new skills, be enthusiastic and curious. We must believe and dare to influence the world and make media plans and brands look different. It is worth it. It is a fantastic adventure.
When we choose the restaurant to eat in, we know what kind of menu, kind of service and price level we can expect. And we select the restaurant that sits right with us.
Let’s look at McDonald’s and Formel B (Danishsh Michelin star restaurant I strongly recommend – fantastic experience), whenever you go, you know what you should expect there and you know your needs will be fulfilled. But if you went for a dinner to Formel B and got served burger, even at reasonable price, you would feel disappointed, the same if McDonalds charged you double for McNuggets, it wouldn't make you satisfied or feel that you got a better food.
Why is that so? Both places has success and are known brands. The key to their success is the specialization in different segments. Both know what their clients want and expect. And they deliver it.
Unfortunately such an approach is not common in advertising market. Advertising is full of lofty wording: added value - coca cola to your drink or maybe juice to your beer?, 360 communication strategy maybe cherry to your dessert?, advertising effectiveness - jammed up or still hungry, strategic planning - Big Mac or McChicken now and here or maybe home made salad a little later?.
Well, we all use those words, but we interpret them differently, and give them different meenings. Both clients and we, agencies. Therefore it is important that there is the dialog between client and agency, so the joint goals can be established. I don’t believe anyone can work out effective, engaging, or whatever you call it communication strategies, media plans without having ongoing conversations and mutual trust. Besides if you can't talk with your client or agency, how can you talk to your consumer.
The relation between agency and the client is a marriage - but it shouldn't be G.B. Shaw's marriage:
"Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open. "
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Mark Earls: The Welcome to the Creative Age - Bananas, Business and the Death of Marketing
Philip Zimbardo: The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil
Duncan J. Watts: Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (Open Market Edition)
Brian Reich: Media Rules!: Mastering Today's Technology to Connect With and Keep Your Audience
Jean-Marie Dru: Beyond Disruption: Changing the Rules in the Marketplace
