“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.”

(Part One)

(Part Two)

Hunt was born in Zambia and educated in England and South Africa, he was the Creative Founding Partner of TBWA Hunt Lascaris.

 TBWA Hunt Lascaris has now grown to be South Africa’s premier advertising agency – named Agency of the Year six times in the last seven years. 
In 1993 John was intimately involved in Nelson Mandela’s first ANC election campaign. Three years later, he joined the South African Advertising Hall of Fame – the first working creative to be so honored, and in 1997 he received the Financial Mail’s Long Term Achievement Award.

TBWA has been named by Adweek magazine as the “Global Advertising Agency Network of the Year” in both 2007 and again for 2009. Led by CEO (and Berlin School Board of Governors member) Jean-Marie Dru, the full-service agency has more than 250 offices in 77 countries. Some of its major clients include Adidas, Absolut Vodka, Apple, Henkel, Mars, Nissan, and Sony PlayStation.

Check out reviews of the book on adage.com and mad-blog.com.

More background, click here.

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

This ubiquitous barbershop signage is an African art form or African graphic art with its naïve renderings and pragmatic use of wood, metal and any material that is close at hand.

To celebrate the Confederation’s Cup being played for the first time on African soil, adidas commissioned a series of ‘barbershop’ artworks that honour their galaxy of stars like Gerrard, Messi, Kaka and Pienaar. A ‘cut’ was created for each player according to their skill. So, ‘The Kaka’ is all about dribbling skills while ‘The Gerrard’ is about powerful strikes.

Essentially, we africanised international players.

The word Kopanya is a South African word for ‘together’, which effectively makes this artwork an African interpretation of adidas’ global advertising position of “together I am strong.” Kopanya is also the name of the official adidas ball, that will be used at the Confederations Cup.

If you have any suggestions or comments please email Gavin Heron.

The full list of Epica results will be announced within the coming days on the website www.epica-awards.com. A prize-giving ceremony will be held in Belgrade in January.

Le Figaro: Why did you make a digital specialist your right hand man?

Guillaume Pannaud: It springs from the absolute and essential metamorphosis of our industry. Philippe Simonet is one of the pioneers of the digital sector, yet this is the first time in France that a talent from that area has joined the management team of a large agency. It’s an upheaval – there will be a ‘before’ and an ‘after’. Fifty years ago, agencies were trying to integrate television into their offering; today it’s the turn of the Web. This process must be carried out at every level of the agency – and not via external growth or complex agreements. In that respect, two different visions are confronting one another in the market.

You’re subscribing to a logic that has already been adopted by TBWA at a global level.

GP: Branches of the group worldwide have recruited digital specialists and that has borne fruit, as TBWA now handles the interactive accounts of Pepsi, Visa and Adidas internationally.

Why not create a separate digital entity, like TBWA Interactive was before?

GP: That agency was founded within our marketing services arm, Tequila, two years ago. But today interactive must be anchored in a permanent and strategic manner at the heart of agencies. As for production tools, they can be externalized or outsourced – as is the case with regular audiovisual production – or indeed integrated. These are tactical or secondary choices that will be driven by the evolution the market. But TBWA certainly doesn’t want to get involved in a digital agency acquisition spree. That results in a juxtaposition of businesses and, inevitably, in the departure of talented people. On the contrary, TBWA wants to integrate them.

How do you explain the scarcity of digital talents in such a vibrant sector?

GP: You can count on the fingers of one hand the pure digital agencies whose breadth and savoir-faire are compatible with our mission as brand advisers. Their managers are sought-after by the entire market, because there’s such a huge need for them. And the talent battle has only just begun, because it’s not the production tools that count – they’re available to everyone – but the genuine advertising talents who are capable of responding to the new challenges of communication.

Read the full interview in Le Figaro or click HERE.

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

Jean-Marie Dru, the inventor of Disruption and Chairman TBWA\ Worldwide delivered today a speech at the TBWA Creative Academy at this years Golden Drum Festival in Portoroz (Slovenia). Here are some sound-bites for all of you who couldn’t attend:

“Disruption has been invented in the mid 80’s. So you could ask: is it still relevant in the current decade? And is it still effective in the middle of the digital revolution?”

“The answer is without any doubt YES, but I will make two observations:

In the last 15 years, the focus of the methodology has moved progressively from convention to vision. Adidas believes that impossible is not a fact, but an opinion. Visa encourages to go and do things, in spite of the tough environment we are in. Nissan explains that “everything they touch, they try to shift”. Pepsi revitalizes the Pepsi generation theme by reminding us that “every generation refreshes the world”. And Absolut makes us discover what would be a perfect world, the world of Absolut.”

“As a summary of this first point concerning Vision, I would say that in this turbulent world, the role of Disruption has pivoted. Today it is more about creating a rallying point for a company or brand, a focal point, and this despite the increasing tribulations of the market – or rather, because of them. We need to create a reference point that we can constantly look back to, whatever unexpected directions the market may have taken us in.”

“The second observation I would like to make about the status of Disruption today is coming from the fact that we are living in a totally new world. In the digital world, we don’t talk to targets anymore, not even to consumers, we talk to audiences. Audiences who are not captive anymore. Audiences who judge brands on everything they do, on all the initiatives they take. Today more than ever, “actions speak louder than words”.

So the way a brand engages the audience in this new media world is key for its success. Therefore Disruption which is about brand belief must be augmented with another discipline, a discipline about brand behaviour. We call it Media Arts.

It starts by repatriating part of the media thinking into the agency. 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. It is time for advertising agencies not to be media neutral anymore, but to be media passionate.

It’s also time to understand that each and every touch point between audiences and a brand must be creative. And this whatever these touch points are: the packaging, the retail presence, the content of the website, the PR programs, the CRM initiatives etc. And we called this Media Arts because we believe each point of contact must tell the brand’s story, gracefully, artfully.

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…”

“Brands are judged in the way they act and in all the initiatives they take. That’s why Media Arts is so important.”

“In a nutshell, Disruption is about brand belief, whereas Media Arts is about brand behaviour.”

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

Bestselling author and the inventor of Disruption – a way of unlocking the hidden potential of brands – Dru is a passionate believer in the power of big ideas. In his speech he will explain why brands now have an even greater need for smart and innovative thinking. And he’ll offer insights into how that thinking has helped mega-brands such as Absolut, Apple, Pedigree and Adidas.

With Disruption, Jean-Marie Dru gave TBWA an idea that has consistently set the agency apart from its competition. Both Advertising Age and Adweek magazines named TBWA Global Agency of the Year in 2008. And Fast Company magazine placed TBWA 24th on its 2009 list of The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies.

Disruption is both a mind-set and a methodology that TBWA uses every day to create the ideas that enable its clients to present brands in entirely new ways. It drives success by collaboratively, collectively and systematically interrogating and challenging the conventional thinking.

October 7, 2008; 10:30 a.m., Kodak Hall (Grand Hotel Bernardin, Portoroz SLO)

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

This is the 200th post on mad-blog.com. Congratulations and a big hand to all those who have contributed so far. Over 20,000 absolute unique visitors from 134 countries joined us, spending an average of 2:59 minutes on the blog. Over 4,550 people have subscribed to our rss feed. Thanks for all the interest and support.

This is the perfect opportunity to share the most read stories celebrating Media Arts and Disruption. Enjoy and pass them on:

(1) The audience is always right. (by Michael Zorn)

(2) Some brands don‘t like change. Change doesn’t much care. (by Michael Zorn)

(3) Cannes Lions 2009: Who will be the big winners? (by Rob Schwartz)

(4) Disruption is liberation. (by Sven H. Becker)

(5) Let‘s do things we think we cannot do. (by John Hunt)

(6) Change: What business can learn from politics 2.0. (by Frank Striefler)

(7) The age of media arts. (by Lee Clow)

(8) The Zimbabwean Trillion Dollar Campaign. (by Gavin Heron)

(9) Act like lovers do. (by Stefan Schmidt)

(10) adidas Originals: Connection with the original tribe. (by Moritz Kiechle)

(11) Images travel but disruptive ideas thrive. (by Perry Valkenburg)

(12)  The beauty of big. (by Jean-Marie Dru)

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

Bread & Butter’s new venue is a key reason behind its return to Berlin from Barcelona, where it relocated for a couple of years. The city’s mayor promised that the organizers would be able to use Tempelhof, the historic former airport built in the 1920s, as the site for their event for the next 10 years.

But the site is only part of the story – the city counts too. Inspired and inspiring creativity is all around us in Berlin, on the backs of local design students or in small boutiques where young designers benefit from Berlin’s famously affordable rents. Leading brands like adidas discovered these phenomena years ago.

On Münzstrasse in Berlin Mitte, the epicentre of urban fashion, adidas opened it very first adidas Originals shop in 2001. A truly international audience comes together in the three central neighborhoods – Prenzlauer Berg, Mitte and Friedrichshain. This is where industry trends are  set and where brands initiate a conversation with their audience. See what adidas has done recently for its original tribe:

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.