Propagation Planning

How Ad Agencies invent new products

PSFK had a panel where they invited Anomaly, BBH Labs/Zag, Trumpet and Fuseproject to talk about the experiences that these agencies have had inventing and going to market with products that they have designed. Very interesting talk moderated by Fast Company.

Seventeen Stages of the Monomyth

Brought to you by the Royal Society of Account Planning:

Joseph Campbell's MONOMYTH - The Seventeen Stages - presented by the Royal Society of Account Planning

Clients challenge Agencies to change

"In the old world, agencies were way out in front of clients.
Now, clients are ahead of the agencies - and the consumer is ahead of all of us."
    - Mary Beth West, chief marketing officer of Kraft Foods

My lovely wife is an avid reader of the Financial Times, which basically makes me a fan of the FT if I want to stay on her good side. This morning I was reading the paper and was a little surprised to see a marker for an Augmented Reality experience in such a publication with the quote from Mary Beth West challenging agencies to catch up to consumers. 

Here is a link to the full article:

 

"I can't think of many other industries where the fundamental process of producing the product hasn't changed for 40 years," says John Ferrell, until last month a member of Publicis' executive committee.

The article goes on to read, "If agencies are to avoid longer-term decline, experimentation in new models of remuneration and agency structure is only going to increase."

I think in the long run this is good for both agencies and clients to have a third party like the Financial Times call them out and get them to re-focus. Some agencies are already trying new models but need some clients to catch up, and other clients are already seeking new models like crowd-sourcing strategies and ideas.

PSFK: Good Ideas in Advertising

Great week with Jim Elms and FL 2

I had a really good week with two days of great meetings.

On Tuesday I had a chance to see my old friend Jim Elms who is the current Global Director of Context Planning at Grey Worldwide. He was in town from NYC for the day and was nice enough to have lunch with us. We talked about connections and context planning, spoke about specific documents that context planners create compared to the creative briefs that account planners create. He shared some good stories from his W+K days and we also talked about a Harvard Business Press book I just read called: Plugged In, The Generation Y Guide to Thriving at Work. Even though both of us are outside of Gen Y the information is really interesting.

The second meeting was with an interactive agency out of Denver called FL-2. They came in to show us some of the work they have done in the iPhone App world and the Augmented Reality world. Very impressive stuff if you get a chance to work with them take them up on it. They are on the cutting edge of getting people to talk about your digital work, something we care about deeply in Propagation Planning.

22squared sponsors Social Media Conference

I'm excited to see that 22squared is a key sponsor of the Adweek Social Media Strategies Conference. If you are in San Francisco September 22nd you should attend the event at Fort Mason Conference Center (on the Marina side, I walked all around the base the last time I was there). The event works well with our friendship model, "How brands can win friends and influence people through social media."

 

Smart Ideas are Spreadable

Great post by The Viral Blog today on an idea that a designer had to improve the iPod headphones. It's great to see smart innovative ideas being spreadable. I love how he was inspired by real human behavior and did something about it:

Lee Washington from London is currently studying product design. And he seems to be paying attention. In above video he is presenting an idea to prevent tangling of iPod headphones; when not in use, the two wires join together.

Lee was inspired to develop these headphones after having seen this woman on the train, struggle to untangle her headphones. Lee was very surprised to see his video hit over 123,000 views at YouTube and Vimeo within just 3 days.

Lee is currently in conversations regarding protection - patent law dictates that he has 12 months from release of the idea.

New Groundswell Research on Social Technology Adoption

With a tip from Made By Many, Groundswell has recently published new research on social technology adoption. I'm sharing some of the findings here but you can read the full report on this link:

Starting with the book "Groundswell" and continuing now for three years running, we've analyzed consumers' participation in social technologies around the world with a tool called the "Social Technographics Profile." The profile puts online people into overlapping groups based on their participation (at least once a month) in the behaviors shown in the ladder. We've kept the ladder categories consistent to allow us to make comparisons year-to-year, across ages and genders, and across geographies.

 

The Creative in Account Planning

William Charnock, Co-Head of Planning at JWT, announced the short list of Jay Chiat Awards for Strategic Excellence yesterday. These awards play a much different role than the Effie Awards because the creative output is a major part of the criteria. The Effie's focus heavily on results where these awards must showcase a link between consumer insight and creative production. I believe these awards keep Account Planning true and to the role and purpose of the discipline.

Here is the short list, some excellent examples of account planning contributing to good work. You'll see many of these examples also had Propagation Planning techniques incorpoated (Tourisim Queensland, Ray-Bans, Stride, Jet Blue for example):

Brand Experience
•    COLLINS:, New York: CNN (“Fingerlicking and Politicking”)
•    CumminsNitro, South Brisbane, Australia: Tourism Queensland (The Best Job in the World”)
•    Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco: Doritos (“The Scariest Place on the Web: Hotel 626”)
•    Ignited LLC, El Segundo, Calif.: U.S. Army (“Virtual Army Experience: The U.S. Army’s Potent New Recruiting Tool”)
•    JWT Brasil: Coca-Cola (“Who Was better: Maradona or Biro-Biro?”)
•    JWT, London: Wilkinson Sword (“Going With the Mo, Not With the Flow”)

Campaign for Existing Brand
•    BBH, New York: Vaseline (“Vaseline Clinical Therapy: Prescribe the Nation”)
•    DDB New York: United Technologies (“Cross Section”)
•    DDB West, San Francisco: Brita (“Filter for Good”)
•    The Escape Pod, Chicago: OfficeMax (“Power to the Penny”)
•    Euro RSCG, New York: The Atlantic (“Is The Atlantic Doomed?”)
•    Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco: Cheetos (“WTF Happened to Chester?”)
•    JWT, New York: Cadbury (“Stride: Enough Is Enough!”)
•    JWT, New York: JetBlue (Bigwigs: Making Jetting Newsworthy”)
•    JWT, New York: Microsoft (“Because It’s Everybody’s Business to Take It Personally”)
•    JWT, New York: Stouffers (“Reigniting Stouffer’s Iconic Status”)
•    McCann, New York: Dentyne (“Making Face Time With Dentyne”)
•    Ogilvy & Mather New York: Post Shredded Wheat (“Progress Is Overrated”)
•    TBWA\Chiat\Day, Los Angeles: Pepsi (“Refreshing an Icon”)
•    Team One, El Segundo, Calif.: The 2010 Lexus RX (“Making Change Matter”)

Campaign for a New Brand
•    Bates141, Mumbai: Virgin Mobile (“Building a Youth Brand in a Youthful Country”)
•    CumminsNitro, South Brisbane, Australia: Tourism Queensland (“The Best Job in the World”)
•    JWT, New York: Schick (“Making a Private Buzz Public”)
•    M&C Saatchi, London: Ladbrokes (“Forward Accountability”)
•    Olson, Minneapolis: Nike (“Nike Bauer Hockey”)

Idea for New Product or Content
•    Anomaly, New York: By Lauren Luke (“Lauren Luke”)
•    JWT Brasil: Johnson & Johnson (“Band-Aid by Alexandre Herchcovitch—Reinventing One of the World’s Greatest Product Inventions”)
•    BBH, New York: Mrs-O.org (“Mrs. O: From Blog to Brand in Under Six Months”)
•    Cutwater, San Francisco: Ray-Ban (“Never Hide Films”)
•    MRM Worldwide, New York: U.S. Army (“Straight From Iraq”)

Innovative Design
•    TBWA\Chiat\Day, Los Angeles: Gatorade (“Packaging Re-Design”)

Media/Communications Strategy
•    Anomaly, New York: Converse (“Domaination”)
•    BBH, New York: The Commission on Presidential Debates Online (“Tearing Down the Spectacle & the Spin”)
•    CumminsNitro, South Brisbane, Australia: Tourism Queensland (“The Best Job in the World”)
•    Fallon, Minneapolis: Syfy/NBC Universal (“How Battlestar Galactica Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the DVR”)
•    Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco: California Milk Processor Board (“You Really Can’t Lose With Gold Spandex”)
•    Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco: Adobe (“Layer Tennis: Season One”)

Research
•    DCSNET Comunicações, Brazil: Group2 (“The Group That Analyzes a Group Is a Group2”)
•    The Martin Agency, Richmond, Va.: Wal-Mart (“Rediscovering the Soul of Walmart”)
•    MotiveQuest, Evanston, Ill.: Toyota Prius (“Selling a Car by Not Selling a Car”)

Social Strategy
•    Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco: Häagen-Dazs (“Where My Bees At?”)
•    Grey London: Women’s Aid (“Calling ‘Cut!’ on Domestic Violence: How Women’s Aid Used Celebrity to Change People’s Minds”)
•    JWT, Mumbai: The Times of India (“Teach India: When Over Two Million Unlettered Indian Kids Said ‘Jai Ho’ ”)
•    M&C Saatchi, London: Change4Life (“How Open Source Marketing Is Helping Us Change4Life”)
•    Neiman Group, Philadelphia: Coalition to Stop Pennsylvania Teens From Drinking and Driving (“Full Apologies”)
•    R/GA, New York: Ad Council, That’s Not Cool (“Helping Teens Draw Their Own Digital Line”)

Toyota Corolla Cat Ninja Campaign

In November of 2008, Toyota in Australia launched a Corolla campaign featuring Ninja cats, with live action on television, outdoor advertising, and an animated graphic novel online. “Kittens” were created to connect to a younger audience and showcase a new edge for the brand.

“We just really wanted to make something a younger audience could be intrigued by, and sell a different side of Corolla, other than how practical it is,” says Micah Walker, Creative Director, Mojo Sydney.

The Heist

The Inspiration Room described the campaign like this, "A kitten-headed hero battles a gang of feral ninja cats to grab his supply of fish before taking off in the getaway Corolla hatchback."

Click on the image below to play the video in YouTube (HD)

The Getaway

The story continues online with ‘The Getaway’, an animated graphic novel. Here our hero kitten Max and his sidekick Misty make their way through an adventure in three parts; 9 Lives and Counting; Landing on all Fours; and, The Sound and the Furry. Car and specifications are also featured, integrated seamlessly into the story. The site includes a growing collection of downloadable media for people to enjoy.

How Propagation Planning would have made it different

Not saying that Propagation Planning would have made it more successful but the roll-out of the campaign would have been different. I would have liked to see them seed the storyline with comic book influencers (reviewers, writers, etc.) and then launch the Television campaign later instead of starting with television.