“We are in the grip of a terrible recession. And recessions are always times when we isolate and withdraw into ourselves, when we do not take risks, when we become more cautious.

And yet every day you ask yourself: how to grow, how to create more organic roles at a time when you have less resources.

This is where we can contribute. This is where creativity can contribute. Provided that creativity focuses in the right direction.”

In his first public lecture in Moscow Jean-Marie Dru covered three areas, that he believes are essential for the future of our business:  (1) Brand Ideas (2) Brand Initiatives and (3) Brand Content.

“First I will underline the importance of brand ideas, then the fact that brands must take more and more initiatives, and last but not least that brands must create new content.

At his return to the company in 1997, Steve Jobs decided to remind the world of what Apple stood for.  You all know the “Think Different” film, it works as well today as it did 10 years ago.

This film has stood the test of time.  It works just as effectively at the depths of the worst crisis we have never known. In fact, it may even be more inspirational today

You surely know that the person behind that film is Lee Clow, the creative soul of TBWA. He is at the origin of all our campaigns for Apple.  And here is what Lee likes to say on ideas such as Think Different: Brand Ideas Win, Good Ads Don’t.

What he means by this is that we cannot be satisfied merely with advertising ideas. What is needed now are big brand ideas.”

“In fact, communications strategies can sometimes contribute to reinforcing companies’ business strategies. By “reinforce”, I mean that strong communications can create great enthusiasm and more conviction around the companies’ strategic direction. And this happens more often than we think.”

“The old saying « actions speak louder than words » has never been more true. And that’s why we’re not just in the business of telling brands what to say, but also in the business of guiding them in how they should behave. (…) All initiatives that go beyond the mere products and services you brand delivers, initiatives that reinforce what a brand stands for.”

“My last point is that we are going to create more and more brand content. This is a consequence of the end of repetitive advertising.

So we have to come with unexpected or entertaining ways of communicating. All the stunts we are doing for adidas are good examples.

The first one is a billboard campaign in New Zealand for the All Blacks. A drop of blood taken from each player on the team – thirty of them in all – was mixed into the ink used to print the posters.

You can imagine the impact in a country where each citizen sees himself as an All Black. Rather than just being a slogan, “Impossible is Nothing” is actually a declaration that you’re ready for anything. Like playing vertical football: Slide One CNN journalist called it “Sky soccer”.

“For the soccer World Cup in Germany, Slide the Cologne train station ceiling was painted in the style of a Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, featuring the world’s greatest players. And we also built this huge bridge with Germany’s famous goalkeeper, Oliver Kahn, at the exit of the Munich airport. This gives you an idea of the scale of the installation.

Then, at the last European football cup, we imagined this spectacular representation of the Czech goalkeeper, on the giant wheel in Vienna made famous by Orson Welles. The goalkeeper was able to stop all the shots thanks to his numerous arms.”

“We should not underestimate the importance of ideas like these. They accelerate the penetration of the central idea. More than that – they bring it to life. And they make it bigger. And the bigger the idea, the stronger the brand.”

The final part of our look at innovative Russian ideas.

The exploits of Peter the Great (ruler of Russia from 1682 to 1725) can be seen as a good illustration of how having a strong Vision can totally re-shape a system.

Peter changed the country by having a clear vision of what he wanted to achieve: to turn Russia into a progressive European state and to shed its image as a medieval “northern neighbour”.

He invited foreign specialists to the country and sent young Russians to study abroad. He constructed a port city on unpromising marshland, but with an opening onto the Baltic Sea that connected his country to Europe. He built Russia’s first fleet and strengthened its army. He encouraged the introduction of modern fashions (encouraging noblemen to shave off their beards, for example). In short, he led a technological and cultural leap that put Russia in line with the strongest empires of the world. He did this by overturning conventions and adopting a new behaviour.

Far more recently, Roman Abramovich demonstrated disruptive thinking by buying Chelsea football club in 2003. At that time, his rivals were plunging millions into natural resources within Russia. Abramovich’s move not only paid off financially, it also propelled him into the gossip columns and made him a leading figure in European life. He could have remained the wealthy governor of an obscure province. His foresight recalls that of Peter the Great and proves, once again, that when it comes to innovation, we Russians know how to play the game.

To read part one, click here. For part two, click here.

Continuing our dip into Russia’s culture of inventiveness.

Examples of Russian innovation emerge throughout our history. For instance, in the 19th century the inventor Dimitri Mendeleev literally cleaned up chemistry.

Before Mendeleev came along, chemistry was an inexact science. It was known that mixing certain chemicals produced certain reactions – but nobody was entirely sure why.

Mendeleev’s disruptive idea was to suggest that there were no more than eight groups of elements. All the elements in each group shared characteristics. This simple idea turned an art into a science. It was called the Periodic Table, and it was officially unveiled before the Russian Chemical Society in March 1869.

You can see what I mean when I suggest that innovation is in our blood. It explains why, in 1950s, the Soviet Union introduced a special holiday: the Professional Day of Inventors and Innovators. There was even a prize (created as a Soviet response to the Nobel Prize) awarded to the most innovative ideas. The solemn ceremony took place every year on the 26th of June.

More recently, we’ve continued to take pride in our disruptive approach to science. Some time ago an interesting fact was published online: “Americans spent one million dollars creating a pen that will write in zero-gravity conditions. Soviet cosmonauts just use pencils.”

Part one, click here. Part three, click here.

]]> http://www.mad-blog.com/2010/03/10/a-short-history-of-russian-innovation-%e2%80%93-part-two-of-three/feed/ 0 http://www.mad-blog.com/2010/03/09/a-short-history-of-russian-innovation-2/ http://www.mad-blog.com/2010/03/09/a-short-history-of-russian-innovation-2/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:20:04 +0000 admin http://www.mad-blog.com/?p=5111 In this series of posts, Tatyana Strashnenko (Strategic Planning Director TBWA\Moscow) celebrates Russian innovation with disruption stories from the country’s past and present.

Resourcefulness is one of the key traits of the Russian mentality.  Since life has never been easy and the state has always tended to smother initiative rather than stimulating it, we’ve had no choice but to innovate. The saying “necessity is the mother of invention” could have been coined for us.

One of our most famous novels, of course, is Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Perhaps this is not surprising, because in battle, Russians have often been innovative. They’ve disrupted conventional military theory and defeated superior forces with unexpected tactics.

Perhaps the best example was the decision by General Kutuzov in 1812 to leave Moscow open to Napoleon. After the brutal battle of Borodino, the Russian army was in no state to defend the city. And so it was quite literally abandoned. Napoleon entered a dead metropolis. The few remaining provisions soon ran out. Napoleon was forced to move further south, where he was met and defeated by a fortified and morally superior Russian force. Kutuzov had been criticised for abandoning Moscow – but his unconventional strategy won the day.

On a lighter note, in peacetime Russians are famous for being able to make practically any object out of the materials at hand. Cotton, cable and a box of matches will get you an electric water heater. A record can be copied onto an X-ray photograph. And there is practically no car part that can’t be replaced by something concocted from a few items bought in a hardware store.

Humorists say that this is why Russians are not afraid of any crisis or calamity. Click here for examples.

Check again later for the two posts to follow.

Influential business thinkers commented on Dru‘s idea, among them the founder and chairman of the Virigin Group, Richard Branson, who said „Disruption goes way beyond advertising, it forces you to think about where you want your brand to go and how to get there“. The bestselling author Tom Peters simply calls it the „most powerful idea in business today“. Now for the first time Dru share his insights in Russia.

Disruption is both a mind-set and a methodology that TBWA uses every day in developing ideas that help its clients find a completely original way of presenting a brand to the world. It is a driving success for brands, by collaboratively, collectively and systematically interrogating and challenging the conventional thinking that prevent so many brands and companies from succeeding.

Dru is not only the intellectual father of Disruption, he has also authored four books on advertising and marketing, including his latest publication “How Disruption Brought Order” (Palgrave, 2007), “Beyond Disruption” (John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2002), “Disruption” (John Wiley & Sons Inc.1996) and “Le Saut Créatif” (Lattès 1984).

Today Jean-Marie Dru is the chairman of TBWA, which has grown to be the 5th largest network in the world with more than 267 offices, in 77 countries and 12,000 employees. TBWA has been recognized by both Advertising Age and Adweek magazines as Global Agency of the Year in 2008 and by Creativity magazine as the most-awarded Agency Network. Fast Company listed TBWA last year among the 50 most innovative companies and named the company an „Innovation All-Star“ in 2010.

To sign up for a free ticket to the lecture by Jean-Marie Dru, simply send an e-mail to events@tbwa.ru including your name and company.

March 10, 2010, 11:00 am (doors open 10:30 am)

THE STATE TRETYAKOV GALLERY

Enter the building through Maly Tolmachevsky Pereulok 9, Moscow

The economic crisis on the one hand, the digital revolution on the other…

Our profession has never been so shaken. These two circumstances create multiple effects. And we are all wondering what tomorrow will look like.

Concerning digital, communications groups are developing varied, often opposing strategies. Some, through a series of acquisitions, attempt to create a technological barrier between them and their competitors. Others, like our Agency, are putting digital at the very center of their conventional activities. Neither strategy is, by definition, the winner. There are different ways to succeed. What makes a strategy effective is the quality of its implementation, and the commitment to it.

To ensure that everything starts with digital, the 180 agency in Amsterdam totally reinvented itself. The result of their actions was even more radical than they had imagined, and the price they paid was heavy, with no fewer than 55 out of their total 120 staff changing. This is a dramatic illustration of the size of the task. The path ahead is narrow, and it is difficult.

Too often, we are more comfortable talking about digital ideas than making the inherent changes that are necessary to provoke the right solutions in the digital world. As Colleen DeCourcy, our Chief Digital Officer, said to me recently: “Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.”

In an industry faced with such challenges, the relevance of award shows, and even The Gunn Report itself, comes under scrutiny. It is a recurring subject. I remember back in the ‘70s, industry colleagues who announced the imminent demise of the Cannes Festival. We know what it has since become. Its turnover increased tenfold, because today more than ever, the celebration of creativity is essential despite of the difficult environment in which we are operating, or rather, because of it. And it’s why, although they avoided awards shows for over 50 years, the world’s leading advertisers now participate actively in them, and celebrate when their own campaigns are recognized.

In a speech I gave in Cannes last year, I underlined that “Big can be beautiful too.” In 2007, both Procter & Gamble and Unilever were awarded a Grand Prix at this festival. Today, a lot of great work comes from large companies. They have internalized the fact that audiences are not captive anymore. If you don’t entertain and engage people, they will simply ignore you. “Safe advertising“ is becoming invisible. At last.

There’s no getting away from that fact that, today, creativity is no longer optional. It is vital to every product category and to every communications discipline.

In fact, there are two factors that are contributing to put creativity in the center. On the one hand, the imminent demise of repetitive advertising, and on the other, the understanding that each and every touchpoint between a brand and its audiences must be creative.

Advertising is part of how brands behave, but brands are judged on everything they do, not just how they appear in advertising.

We need to embrace all the ways to tell a brand’s story: its packaging, its retail presence, the content of its website, its PR programs, the products themselves. And to ensure that everything is creative. This is why, even when an agency is not directly in charge of one of these elements, it must nevertheless feel a sense of responsibility. There can be no room for compromise or mediocrity if you have the ambition to be a brand leader. Advertising agencies will rediscover their original reason for being; they will again become true generalists.

But contrary to the past, they will only achieve this if they learn how to change rhythm. The problem is no longer just to ensure the coherence between the different elements of a brand’s communication, which some continue to refer to as 360°. But rather, to feed a constant conversation with our audiences, 365 days a year. From 360 to 365…it is the very rhythm of communications that digital has shaken up. Agencies need to move from a quarterly to a daily cadence.

We have to organize ourselves to deliver constant communications. A fleet of small initiatives coming together to create an ongoing communication program, generating more frequent conversation points. We need to own these conversations, not just the creative work.

Otherwise said, in this digital era, traditional agencies will only succeed if they adopt the rhythm of the pure players. And as for these, they will need to learn, or rather to understand, how brands are built. These two symmetrical challenges are vital for the agencies concerned. The challenge for so-called conventional agencies is immense. The challenge for the pure players appears to me even more formidable.

Agencies need to repatriate part of the media thinking process. We can no longer think of media as numbers on a spreadsheet or a list of options for places to buy our audiences’ attention. We can no longer think of media as just a means for brands to talk at consumers, but rather as all the places, spaces and experiences where people live their lives. “Media” does not have to be paid for, and it does not have to be measurable to matter to our audiences. In essence, media is any space between an idea and the audience.

It is time for advertising agencies not to be media neutral anymore, but to be media passionate. It is time to grow ideas that turn brands into media themselves.

The industry adopted “Communications Planning” as a way of describing this. A new discipline, at the crossroads of audience planning and connection planning. We do not talk to “consumers” anymore, we talk to audiences who are marketing savvy, who know the brands, who respect them and who program their own media lives. Today, each of us plans his own daily itinerary through all these “media” solicitations. We need to understand the members of our audiences, how they connect with the world, how they digest media and all the technology that surrounds them…

If we treat people like “consumers,” we are interrupting what they are interested in to talk to them about our brand. If we treat people like an “audience,” we become what they are interested in, and become an integral part of them.

As for Connections Planning, it is much more than just a tool for allocation of resources. It is about understanding the interaction between all the different points of contact, rather than just the impact of these individual contact points.

This is why, as an illustration of this, we often discuss the magic triangle formed by advertising/event/digital.

Each of these three elements rebounds off the two others. Like a kind of ricochet. Back and forth between the real and virtual worlds. An event created in the street is picked up and circulated on the net and nourishes the brand idea developed in the advertising. Or the other way around, a community receives a text message on its mobile that provokes a reaction in real life. Or another case, where an event can become content for both offline and online advertising. The virtual decouples the effects of the real, and the real gives substance, life to the virtual. Brand conversations are organized around these exchanges. And the role of agencies is to organize and feed these conversations. To enrich the brand story, on a daily basis.

In other words, the way media is used has become a creative issue. And from now on, every advertising agency presentation should start with media.

At TBWA, we regroup all these thoughts and practices under one expression. We call it Media Arts. Because we believe each point of contact must tell the brand story gracefully, artfully.

Whatever they choose to call it, however they approach this new discipline, traditional agencies, the big networks, cannot ignore this new reality. There is only one way to define brand behavior, and that is to integrate everything, and do this in a creative way.

Our mission is to design brand behaviors to serve brand beliefs. Agile brand behaviors, to support brave brand beliefs.

And it is here, digital revolution or not, that nothing has changed. Our business has always been to build brands, to give them more sense and substance. It is up to our agencies to imagine and to formulate what these brand beliefs are.

At TBWA, this is the role of Disruption. Disruption is about brand belief, whereas Media Arts is about brand behavior.

Most often, this brand belief is encapsulated in a few precise words. A few examples I know well are: “Think Different, Shift, Impossible is Nothing, Dogs Rule, In an Absolut World, Go Visa…” Agencies’ true reason for being is to bring to life the meaning that resides in these words. This ability to express in a few words what a brand stands for, what impact it can have, what the brand believes in. In fact, in this ever-changing world of content and clutter, brands with a clear point of view are more valuable than ever.

These few words that “say the brand” will be the starting point for storytelling. They are at the same time the source of creative inspiration and the strategic backbone for all the communications plans. Today, more than ever, in a fragmented world where everyone is seeking signposts, we need big central ideas that serve as lighthouses. As Lee Clow said recently: “Big ideas win, good ads don’t.”

Agencies are experts at distilling a thought into just a few words. To understand the essence of a brand, to give it a larger share of the future, to share the idea with all the brand’s audiences, this is, and will always be, our role.

To achieve this, we have at our disposal today a multitude of means of expression. So many new delivery systems, formats, screens and experiences available to us to deliver the brand story. The consequence is that creative output is increasing exponentially in quantity. Where we used to produce 30-second formats, we now have to think in terms of websites, blogs, e-webs, digital radio, SMS conversations, social media on the web, street events, PR, and a whole array of new communications opportunities.

On the financial side, the implications of all this are critical for the future of our industry. More content produced in more different ways should result in more fees to conceive it all. However, with the crisis as an excuse, the trend is rather the opposite.

The stakes are clear: thanks to the interactions between all the disciplines, to the digital boom, we know that we can achieve levels of effectiveness with partially lower “media” investment. At the same time, we need to increase our creative resources. Depending on the agency, the cost of these represents only about 2% (between 1% and 3%), of the clients’ overall investment: a very few percentage points that can obviously have a huge leverage effect on the value of the total 100% investment. It is vital that our clients understand that a part, albeit minor, of the savings made in media investment should be reinvested in creative resources. This, for them, is where the true creation of value lies.

1 or 2% more…this is the necessary condition for a total transformation of our industry. Because the creative revolution we are embarked upon needs to be funded. There is no other option for our clients than to contribute to making this happen. They will be the first to benefit.

On the other hand, great brands have to be angry sometimes. Angry about the status quo. Angry that their products may still not be good enough. Angry that they’re not providing their audience with enough entertainment.

That’s why they’re constantly striving to improve their brand behavior. Great brands care about what they do – in everything they do.

The concepts of Media Arts and Disruption seem to be the best way to create success for brands. I am sure that some of the most admired brands in the world understand this. Some do it naturally, others have incorporated that way of working after experiencing how their performance in the market has changed after doing so.

Great brands have a clear belief-system, and they have a vision about their future. But they also understand the value of three fundamental thoughts that lead everything they do:

(1) They don‘t hunt for target groups. They entertain an audience.

(2) They know that the HOW and the WHERE are as important as the WHAT for a brand.

(3) They say good-bye to 360 degrees communication and welcome the 365 day approach of constant communication.

This changes dramatically how they behave in the world: these brands are artists in the way they use media.

For one year we have been celebrating big disruptive ideas as well as outstanding examples of brand behavior. More than 7.500 people have signed up to our feed and the incredible number of 4.500 individuals have visited the blog more than 200 times. Thank you all very very much.

Let‘s continue to be mad.

Ulrich

The Innovation All-stars report specifically calls out TBWA for getting “huge props for its work over the past 10 years – Adweek called “Get a Mac” the Campaign of the Decade; and iPod “Silhouettes” the Out-of-Home Ad of the Decade. Ad Age named TBWA the decade’s third-best agency also citing its work for Pedigree and Mars.”

Fast Company’s annual Most Innovative Companies issue honors major brands including Cisco, Disney, and GE along with such rising newcomers as Spotify, Gilt Groupe, HTC, and the Indian Premier League. Facebook leads the annual ranking of the Top 50, after growing its user-base from 150 million to 350 million in just one year.

Overall, Fast Company recognized 250 plus companies, including more than 75 non-U.S. businesses.

To create this year’s Most Innovative Companies issue, Fast Company’s editorial team analyzed information on thousands of businesses across the globe. The result is a package unlike that of any other business media. It’s not just about revenue growth and profit margins; it’s about identifying creative models and progressive cultures – to define the many forms of innovation that exist across the business landscape.

“It was invigorating to engage with so many exciting new ideas and developments,” said Fast Company editor Robert Safian.  “Our goal was to offer a snapshot of the creativity at work in the global marketplace, and to inspire the Fast Company audience with illustrations of how powerful and effective business can be.”

Something smells different at Old Spice. P&G is not exactly saying that Old Spice body wash will make your man smell like a romantic millionaire jet fighter pilot, but that’s clearly what we’re meant to infer. It will be interesting to see how this ironic tone will affect the brand behavior of Old Spice. Will it be available in hardware stores and sports outlets?

Actually, we’re afraid that it still will be sold in the good old drugstore around the corner.

]]> http://www.mad-blog.com/2010/02/18/old-spice-still-on-its-old-shelf-at-the-drugstore/feed/ 0 http://www.mad-blog.com/2010/02/17/wired-a-sneak-peak-into-the-future-of-magazines/ http://www.mad-blog.com/2010/02/17/wired-a-sneak-peak-into-the-future-of-magazines/#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:01:28 +0000 admin http://www.mad-blog.com/?p=5016 Last week Jeremy Clark from Adobe and I unveiled the first glimpse of the Wired Reader at TED. Below, you’ll see a video, narrated by Jeremy and Wired Creative Director Scott Dadich, who led our tablet team, that shows more. It explains why the tablet is such a groundbreaking opportunity for magazines such as WIRED.

As Chris Anderson continues in his blog EPICENTER on wired.com continues: much is still to be answered about magazines and other media on this emerging class of devices, from the business and distribution models to the consumer response. But what is already clear is that they offer the opportunity to be beautiful, highly engaging and immersive, going beyond what’s available on the web.

Is this the future of magazines? No, I guess it’s a future scenario for media brands.

WIRED’s future is digital and a perfect example that reflects how people today and even more tomorrow will digest media. It will change how content is consumed and it will change how brands have to behave.

But one thing is not changing: The people that edit great content, people that manage to entertain and audience, people that curate content and have great creative ideas are back in power. That is a bright future for our trade.

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.