Troy Scarlott
SVP/ECD
Ignited

And the best Super Bowl ad award goes to…a spot with a dog. Of course, the critiques and USA Today Ad Meter voting is underway (as we are writing this article) yet it’s a safe bet that the winner will be a dog or a baby. Regardless of who ultimately tops USA Today’s Ad Meter, the real standout star of Super Bowl Sunday, besides Eli Manning of the Giants, is the “second screen.” With the rise in power of social media, the second screen proved to be a dominating force yesterday and ultimately proved itself as a real player for the game of advertising.

Yesterday, as we were watching the Super Bowl on our first screen and obsessively Tweeting on our second screen, and checking in on our third screen (iPad), something extraordinary occurred to us. The second screen wasn’t going to change the dynamic of appointment viewing, it already changed it, and definitely for the better. Thanks to the active, real-time participation of those we already chose to follow on Twitter, we were immediately transported to the biggest Super Bowl party in the world, without actually leaving the comfort of our homes. Whether it was celebrities such as Steve Martin (@SteveMartinToGo: ‘Since the coin toss ceremony is such a highlight, why not hold it after the game to hang onto viewers?’) or industry veterans such as Edward Boches’ (@edwardboches: ‘Nothing comes close to M&Ms for likeability’), having access to their perspectives throughout the game added an element of surprise and delight to an event that has become a bit too predictable in recent years.

Speaking of surprising and delightful – KIA’s “Dream Car. For real life.” spot contained all the elements of what we love about commercials (nice idea, quality production and fun entertainment), and then threw in the clever twist at the end that prompted us to tweet it’s praises (@JordanAtlas23: ‘KIA Optima delivers a dream spot. Thanks for remembering the idea’). It wasn’t just us either. And we obviously weren’t the only ones participating and experiencing the power of the second screen. It was contagious. Check out these stats (from Clearspring) that were published this morning:

• Sharing via mobile was up 500% from last year
• Overall sharing was up 143% from last year
• Shares to and Clicks from Twitter was up 116% from last year
• Shares to and Clicks from Tumblr was up 615% from last year
• Shares to and Clicks from Facebook was up 18% from last year

We also saw initial “Social + Super Bowl stats” by Bluefin Labs (@bluefinlabs) today. They tracked more than 12.2 million social-media comments during and after Super Bowl XLVI, primarily on Twitter and Facebook. That’s a 578% increase over the total Bluefin tracked last year (1.8 million).  And even more staggering, Twitter announced via its official @twitter account, that the final three minutes of the Super Bowl helped push total tweet volume up to an average of 10,000 tweets per second.

And Bluefin Labs tracked stats that make the Super Bowl a new social-TV high-water mark. With 3.1 million social media comments, last night’s Super Bowl was the biggest social-TV event that they have ever recorded. And to support the fun and power of the second screen, Bluefin Labs also tracked more than 985,000 social-media comments specifically related to just Super Bowl commercials. We know a few of those comments were ours and more than a few were probably yours, too.

Over the past few years, we often debate the future of advertising or the death of the TV spot. We believe the future is here and they are playing nicely together. Big TV Spots + second screen + millions of engaged consumers = powerful advertising.

Whether you liked the Super Bowl spots or were disappointed by them (again), we have a recommendation for consumers, agencies and clients. Turn on your second screen and have some fun with it.

There are many reasons why IHAVEANIDEA is proud to partner with the VCU Brandcenter. But why are we beaming with extra pride these days?

Since 2006, the Brandcenter competed in the Innovation Challenge four times. The first time the VCU team went into battle, they came in 20th, the second time 15th, the third time they jumped up to second place and this year?

Well, this year they were deemed “the most innovative business school in the world.”

That’s right. The Brandcenter’s “Team Brandslam,” comprising Team Leader Jennifer Clinehens, Art Director Cody Pate, Copywriter Katlyn Williams and Creative Technologist Ryan Dowling won the 9th Annual Innovation Challenge, besting 185 other teams. They were up against the world’s most prestigious business schools, including UVA, London School of Business, Harvard, Wharton, Notre Dame and more.

The Innovation Challenge is a well-established international business innovation competition that matches graduate and Masters students with leading brands, charging each team to find solutions to current business and social challenges. For the first time this year, the competition was held entirely online.

All first-year VCU Brandcenter students participate in the Innovation Challenge as part of Professor Don Just’s Business of Branding class. “Team Brandslam” brought varying levels of expertise to the competition; Pate and Williams came straight to the Brandcenter from undergraduate students, while Dowling worked as a graphic designer before beginning grad school.

“Team Brandslam “worked with AT&T in the “Strategy/Business Model” category, helping the brand develop a product that used cloud computing, specifically for small and medium-sized businesses.

The method to their brilliance?

“We stayed true to our unique voice, and abided by Lee Clow’s saying, ‘If you wish to outsmart, out simplify,’” Clinehens said, “With every image, message, and word we chose, we did so knowing that our point of view was different from the MBA programs. We positioned ourselves as different from the typical MBA presentation in every way, and it was a gamble that thankfully paid off.”

The effort involved intensive quantitative and qualitative research, talking to potential consumers and developing strategies based on key consumer and marketplace insights.

“This win serves to validate the Brandcenter’s focus on developing unexpected consumer insights and then using those insights to craft imaginative strategies that enhance the market power of brands. Here a great deal of energy is expended searching for big, business-building ideas, innovative ideas that resonate with today’s consumers, building brand equity. There is no better example of this approach at work than the winning effort of our Innovation Challenge teams,” Just said.

In addition to the title of “The World’s Most Innovative Team,” “Team Brandslam” won $20,000 in prizes and the honor of ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

“Ringing the bell was an experience I’ll never forget. It’s something that no amount of money can buy, and we will remember our entire lives. I also got to bang the gavel, which was extra exciting!” Clinehens added.

Congratulations to the team have been pouring in from alumni, fellow students, faculty, staff, the VCU community, and industry leaders. Of course, the happiest of all is the Brandcenter’s own Director, Rick Boyko, who said, “We’re very proud of the team’s success and for the opportunity to prove to the world what we’ve known all along…. that the VCU Brandcenter is “the most innovative business school in the world.”

IHAVEANIDEA would like to add our congratulations to the mix. Being that our mission is to dramatically shape the future of the advertising industry for the better, it is partners like the VCU Brandcenter and winning efforts like “Team Brandslam’s” that give us faith in the future of our industry.

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Nick Bailey

When I was at art school, I understood what the word ‘Media’ meant. It was paper, charcoal, pencil, canvas, paint – and later, in my YBA phase, it was telescopes and pocket televisions. It was stuff you could see, hear, touch, (and sometimes taste and smell). It was the stuff I used to express my ideas.

Then I started working in advertising, and I still understood what the word ‘Media’ meant. Print Media meant words and pictures on paper. Out of Home Media meant words and pictures on a surface outdoors. Broadcast media meant words, pictures and sounds filling time on TV or radio. And online media meant words and pictures made up of pixels on screens.

Media was stuff you could see, hear, touch, (and sometimes taste and smell). It was the stuff I used to express my ideas.

But I’ll admit: I’m having trouble with what the word ‘media’ means when it has the word ‘social’ attached to it.

Everybody in our business talks about Social Media. Everybody nods when they say how important it is. Everybody seems to agree that there’s an awful lot of it. But what no-one seems able adequately to explain is how you make an idea out of it.

There’s a very simple reason for this.

It’s because you can’t see, hear, touch, taste or smell ‘Social Media.’ It’s because ‘Social Media’ isn’t stuff you can use to express an idea. It’s because ‘Social Media’ it isn’t media at all, in the sense described above.

‘But’, goes the argument; ‘you can see it when someone writes a Facebook post or Tweets about, or comments on your idea; that has the same effect as a media placement’.

It may have the same effect. But two similar effects are not proof of a common cause. There’s an important distinction, and it’s this: you can make your media do what you want. You can’t make other people do or say what you want. People talking about ideas online is not media, it’s plain old word-of-mouth. And that’s been around for an awfully long time.

Why is this important? Because thinking of human beings interacting socially (which is after all what a social network is) as ‘Media’ can lead brands and agencies to a series of unfortunate misunderstandings about the social web and its potential.

The most important of these is the audience myth:

People who talk a lot about Social Media like to talk about how extraordinary and unprecedented it is that there are 800 million people on Facebook. On one level they’re right. It’s extraordinary and unprecedented that social interactions are being facilitated by technology so effectively, and on such a massive scale.

However, what these 800 million people are doing on Facebook is far from extraordinary and unprecedented. It is as old as human interaction itself.

They are sending messages to their friends about what they are thinking, feeling or doing. They are showing each other stuff that that they like. They are having conversations. They are doing what the other 90% of the world’s population is doing offline. Facebook is a large collection of small interest groups, connected by Friendship, concerned first and foremost with people with whom they have a personal connection.

It is no more meaningful to talk about a ‘Facebook audience’ of 800 million, than it is to talk about a ‘planet Earth audience’ of 8 billion. A brand is just one voice in the crowd, competing for attention with conversations that are generally more meaningful and more interesting, because they’re personal.

There is nevertheless, an extraordinary and unprecedented opportunity for brands in this space, and it’s this: for the first time, it’s possible to find the people who care about the same things you do; to listen to what they are saying, to converse with them directly, to find out what they really want, and to provide it directly. To do this, brands must listen, brands must be responsive and, most importantly, must have something tangible to talk about.

Nike Football has been phenomenally successful on Facebook because they’ve done just this. Instead of pushing content out to an imaginary audience, the brand has earned a place in the conversations of millions of football fans, by responding directly and providing real access to athletes and real inside information on products and content the community cared about (for example previewing the ‘Write the Future’ TV spot on Facebook first). In doing so, Nike gained 15m fans in 18 months and – much more importantly – became the most talked-about brand on Facebook during the World Cup, with Nike posts achieving 176,000 interactions on its busiest day.

Which brings us to the second ‘Media’ myth: the Facebook Fan Fantasy. Clients love high Fan numbers because they’re an easy metric to claim success with, and few people really understand what the numbers mean – all-too-often they equate the number with reach. As Nike knew, it’s not the headline number, but the extent to which they’re interacting with your brand that matters.

Here are some numbers to conjure with: 96% of people who ‘like’ a brand page never return to it. Moreover, Edgerank, the algorithm that determines what content gets surfaced in people’s newsfeeds, will only display brand content on the feeds of ‘active’ fans (those who interact with the brand). Typically this is 0.5% of people. So, for a brand with 1m fans, a new post will appear in the newsfeeds of a grand total of 5,000 people. Clearly there’s some value here – but not enough to tear up your whole Media strategy yet.

Finally, there’s the ‘channel’ myth, which is that people treat social networks as a destination to go and seek out content from favoured sources (see the ‘Fan Fantasy’ above). There is no destination on the social web – only a continuous live conversation. A tweet has a ‘half life’ of just five minutes. The Social web is primarily a communication space: relevance is everything.

But it’s also a space where content matters. Mark Zuckerberg recently came up with his own version of the famous ‘Moore’s Law’ of computing power: the ‘law of social sharing’, which dictates that each individual will share 100% more content with each subsequent year.

The opportunity is there: brands that recognise that content is part of conversation and not a destination in itself, which are quick to respond, which are responsive timely, relevant, and which listen as well as talk will reap the rewards.

So, if not ‘social media’, what? How do we describe the opportunity that the Social Web offers to participate in conversations, to inspire, move and connect with people? We could do worse than the increasingly current ‘earned media.’ I like this, because it recognizes that the stuff we want to use to express our idea in the social space does not initially belong to us. It’s not ours to control. It’s something we need to respect and, crucially, it’s something we have to work for.

Here are my 10 and-a-half books for you:

Mode En Module by Wim Crouwel

I don’t speak any Dutch, but that doesn’t really matter with this incredibly beautiful book. Wim Crouwel’s designs have served to lift me out of a creative black hole many a time.

A Year With Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno’s Diary

The only book I have read more than 5 times. A brilliant account of the year 1996 in Eno’s life. Spiked with loads of eclectic observations on life, music and everything in between. Very inspiring and life affirming.

Printed Matter by Karel Martens

Another Dutchman, but this book is in English. What I love about this book is the fact it comes across as an object as well as a book, Japanese bound and wrap around cover. The colours of Martens’ prints will blow your mind. 

You Are Not A Gadget by Jaron Lanier

Yes, I have just crawled out from under a stone, but I only just discovered this book. Every single word is like a drop of vintage wine served at perfect temperature. A Silicon Valley veteran’s humble views on how technology is shaping who we are. Good and bad. A very important book for future generations. If you are connected and interested in digital-ness, you cannot afford to not read this book.

Russell Brand: My Booky Wook 1 and 2

Don’t laugh. The man’s a genius. Regardez.

Nabokov’s Butterflies by Vladimir Nabokov

One of my true obsessions since I was a child: entomology. A brilliantly written science book about the Blue. A poetic butterfly. Admittedly not for everyone.

The Search for the Giant Squid by Richard Ellis

And this is my other obsession. The hunt for the last true giant on earth that no one has ever seen alive. Careful. This obsession is infectious.

Hinkepott. Autobiographische Hüpferei in Briefen und Aufsätzen. Bd. 1 by Horst Janssen

When I studied art in Munich in the early nineties I first came across this artist from Hamburg and subsequently devoured everything he’d ever written. Not sure how well known he is outside Germany, but check him out. His etchings are exquisite. This is his autobiography.

Super-Cannes by J.G Ballard

I am not much of a fan of science fiction writing, but Ballard’s work is different. Science fiction set in the near future. Unsettling fucked up scenarios painted in everyday situations of corporate boredom. Scary, fascinating and probably true.

And this what I am reading right now…

The Machine Stops by E M Forster

A short story describing what can only be the first account of the internet – in 1928. Spine tingling.

Oh, and here is one more since the last one is only a short story:

The Faith Of Graffiti by Norman Mailer

The only book on graffiti you need to own.

Mike Bayfield
Senior Copywriter
balloon dog

When I was a kid, growing up in the UK, wrestling was big. So were the wrestlers; larger than life grapplers like Big Daddy, Kendo Nagasaki and Giant Haystacks – a seven-foot, six hundred pound man-mountain of blubber, beard and badness.

It was more pantomime than sport. When Big Daddy floored Giant Haystacks, little old ladies watching at the ringside would jump up and beat him with their handbags, umbrellas, tyre wrenches… They were so absorbed by the spectacle that they completely suspended their disbelief. They bought it. How do we get our audience to do likewise?

‘Willing suspension of disbelief,’ as Coleridge coined it, is what you do when you read a book, watch a movie, go to the theatre. Or to the wrestling. You say to yourself, “Okay, I know this isn’t real, but let’s go with it for a while, see where it takes me. I want to be entertained.” But with entertainment the key word is ‘willing.’ The audience have tacitly agreed to suspend their disbelief in advance – in a kind of contract – by buying the book, the ticket or hitting the button. With advertising they haven’t.

Advertising is inherently intrusive. People don’t ask you to interrupt their day. So, when we do, we have to try that much harder to suspend their disbelief. Make them forget, for a moment, that they’re watching an ad. We have to reward their attention, but unlike with a movie or a book, we need to do it fast.

We’ve got seconds. Or less. That means there has to be something immediate that enables the viewer to suspend their disbelief, without even thinking about it. There must be a meaningful message about their world, delivered in a convincing, original and maybe entertaining way, which transports them into the one we’re creating. We need to short circuit the ‘Yeah, right!’ reaction. Because if they don’t buy the ad, why should they buy the product?

Take a beautifully simple print campaign for Lego a couple of years ago. Each ad just showed a couple of Lego bricks stuck together to form rudimentary, shape, against a plain coloured background. But it cast a shadow. The shadow represented what a child saw – a ship, plane, dinosaur…. No headline. No strapline. No doubt.

Now, on the face of it, we know they’re just simple bits of plastic, stuck together. A kid didn’t really do it. An art director did. And they definitely don’t make a shadow like that. But the point is made so beautifully, we buy it. It captures the magic of childhood where anything is possible and momentarily takes us back there. We really do forget it’s an ad. Our disbelief is completely suspended and we’re left feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. By two small pieces of plastic.

There are hundreds more ads you could probably think of that do the same. Well, maybe dozens. Look at some of them again and ask yourself why they work. For every one of these though, there are a thousand that don’t. That you simply don’t buy. They make it impossible for you to suspend your disbelief, even for a second. They lack that central human truth. The unthought known.

Suspending disbelief in advertising is always a tough call, but some brands just seem to do it time and time again. Volkswagen for example – ever since Bill Bernbach told us a Beetle would make your house look bigger.

Adweek voted The Force, by Deutsch for Volkswagen, 2011 Commercial of the Year. Why? Because it connected so beautifully with just about everybody who saw it. Even many hardened cynics. It wasn’t ground-breaking, radical or revolutionary, just warm and human and perfectly executed. And we rolled with it. Our disbelief put comfortably on hold.

However, it’s not quite as simple anymore as a single killer spot in the Super Bowl. With the explosion of digital/social media there are so many more touch points – which this year’s ‘killer’ spot from Audi is aiming to utilise.

On the one hand digital media gives us more opportunity to engage people, helping them tell the story too by being part of it. But there are also more potential pitfalls, more chances to unsuspend the disbelief. Like the kid going back into the house in a slasher movie.

Last summer, Tribal DDB created a brilliantly original campaign in Ireland; the Budweiser Ice Cold Index.

A series of ads, website, social media presence and an app allowed users to claim money off a pint of Heineken in pubs across Ireland. The hotter the weather the cheaper a pint became. When the mercury hit the heady heights of 20C it was free. Hard to believe? Then you probably haven’t been to Ireland in the summer. It’s not so different from the winter.

Of course it’s completely counter-intuitive. Which is why it’s brilliant. Any economist would tell you they should have put the price up. But hey, look at the economy.

With the ever-changing digital landscape we can involve and engage people so much more, to be part of the story, to create real benefits for themselves. Like free beer. That will always work for me. But the benefits don’t necessarily have to be as tangible. The medium really is the message.

For our audience, digital is the link between the artificial environment we’ve created and their real lives. It actually becomes part of their real lives, adding value before they’ve even set foot in the store. Like those little old ladies at the side of the wrestling ring, it helps them cross the suspension of disbelief bridge.

All products (with the possible exception of sprouts) help fulfil an elemental human need. Otherwise nobody would buy them. We simply have to convey how brands can meet those needs, in an original and believable way. And now there are lots more shiny new tools to help us do it.

Troy Scarlott
SVP/ECD
Ignited

Advertisers and brands that are destined to raise the proverbial advertising Lombardi Trophy after the 2012 Super Bowl “Ad” Game might want to look beyond simply producing that “one great spot.” While that “one great spot” may win the USA Today Ad Meter, garner positive reviews and chalk up numerous industry accolades, the true winner of the Super Bowl “Ad” Game will be the collective client/agency team that both created that “one great spot,” and pro-actively built an in-depth social hub for that “one great spot” to live on well after the big game ends.

Working across multiple disciplines, the true winner of the 2012 Super Bowl “Ad” Game will have thought about much more than thirty seconds of air-time. The winner will have engaged in the following process:

• Build media and mass audience excitement through pre-game press releases, announcements and video teasers. This year we have seen numerous teasers, the most popular being VW’s The Bark and Honda’s Ferris Bueller video.

• Launch a social media ecosystem before the game. Brands like GoDaddy and Doritos are building entire online campaigns around their spots and driving action as opposed to just brand awareness.

• Deliver a call-to-action to watch the spot in a specific quarter of the game. Almost every brand is taking control of its destiny and telling consumers when to take the bathroom break so they don’t miss their spot.

• Run the spot during the big game and make it good. As creatives who have worked on past Super Bowl spots, we know that creating Super Bowl commercials takes months of hard work, a brave and trusting client and a little bit of luck. Simply making a great spot isn’t enough. It’s only the price of admission. What each brand is actually hoping for is that they have lightning in a bottle or at least a little kid in a Darth Vader costume. Consumers want to be entertained and the best clients are the ones that always remember that, especially when it comes time to make the final decisions on what will run.

• If and only if the idea dictates it, buy a full: 60 seconds for bigger production value and richer storytelling. With the average cost of a :30 spot coming in at $3.5M this year, many brands not only didn’t blink, they actually upped the ante. Many have adopted a “go big or go home” strategy by producing :60 spots. In instances such as this, when more time serves to enhance the idea, the entire creative team (from agency to client to production company) is afforded more opportunity help bring the story to life, build emotion and deliver a well-crafted message that will hopefully elevate the work beyond the requisite cliché guy humor, talking animals or hollow CGI-driven executions.

• Build hubs online for the spot(s) to live. Everywhere. Before, during and especially after the game, consumers will be grabbing some device to view the spots they loved or the ones they missed. Be ready for them.

• Engage in social activation around the campaign (spot) so that it remains relevant. One of the goals of a Super Bowl spot is to avoid being just a $3.5 million one hit wonder. The spot needs to work harder for both the brand and the campaign. It is estimated that 110 million people will watch the Super Bowl. That’s a lot of eyeballs. Which, of course, begs the question; what happens after your :30 seconds are over? The winner will be the brand that knows this answer and is ready to drive more impressions, greater awareness or even pursue purchase intent. This strategy will generate huge dividends for advertisers like Best Buy, TaxAct and even the movie studios.

• Win awards in the ad industry. Both client and agency worked hard, and found success in their strategy, production and final spot. Enjoy the rewards.

• Generate millions of views on YouTube. Now that you received a pat on the back, get back in the game and continue to drive. VW’s Darth Vader spot has over 45 million views on YouTube, nearly half of the number who watched the Super Bowl last year. And these are quality views as people chose to view it. You do the math.

• Build on the momentum and start planning for 2013. The planning, creative and media strategy are all working together and creating success. Remember to build on it as today’s consumer has three screens vying for what little attention span she or he has.

In looking back at the past three years, the USA Today Ad Meter’s winning spot was a clever, funny :30 second spot, for a big brand (2009 Bud Light, 2010 Snickers, 2011 Doritos). All three of these were fun to watch and provided a lot of discussion during the game. However, we believe, the true winners of the Super Bowl “Ad” Game will be the brands who remember that the “ad” game really begins when the big game ends.

Of course, since this is a Super Bowl article attempting to forecast what will and won’t work on the big day, it wouldn’t be complete without our prediction. Based on what we’ve seen so far, Chrysler, M&M’s and VW have the strategy to win. Let’s see if they have the spot to get it all started.

Oh, and the Patriots by 4.

Renata Florio

I open the door to my house and there they are: two deliverymen from the household appliances store bringing in a brand new washing machine (what happened to my former one is a story in itself and I can talk about that some other time).

The first one to come in is obviously the boss (he’s too old to be reporting to the other guy). Actually, I will find out exactly how old he is because today is his birthday and that’s the reason for this article.

The boss says, “Where is the machine going, miss?”

I respond, “Downstairs, in the basement.”

The look he shoots to his partner is not very positive. They both seem to know something I don’t. They come in. The boss looks down the stairs, then looks at my machine and says, “Hmmm, not sure this machine will fit through the passageway. I’ve seen that before. I’ve been in this business too long, know all kinds of houses and apartments in Manhattan and New Jersey… it seems too small.”

Obviously I become apprehensive. The last thing I need is to have to break the wall to make room, or even worse have to send back the washing machine.

But since I joined Wing, everything is all about the Hispanic market to me. What this man just said takes me miles away from the possible problem and all I can concentrate on is the fact that he is Hispanic and has been working for a long time at this. He probably raised his family doing that job. ‘How big is his family?’ I think. Three, four kids? He doesn’t seem to have been born here. I wonder where he’s from. I wonder if he left relatives somewhere back home. I wonder when was the last time he bought a washing machine himself. I wonder what brand he would get if he had to buy one.

A cell phone ringing brings me back from my thoughts. It’s his phone. He picks up the call and says, “Thanks mom, yes, sure, sure, thanks… yes, I know.” The man who knows all about his work and sounded kind of bitter at first, smiles at me very sweetly and says, “You know, it’s my birthday today. That’s my mom, she lives with us — my wife and my three kids— and she doesn’t want me to miss dinner. You know, they’re cooking something special… Mexican food, you know… we’re Mexicans and for my mom a party must have our food.”

I almost gave him a hug. Not only because it’s his birthday, but because he’s just answered some of my demographic questions: a Hispanic household, originally from Mexico, living with at least one adult over 65 years old, plus a wife and three kids.

The younger guy reminds us of the reason we’re all there.

“So,” he says, “are we going down with the machine or what?”

They start speaking in Spanish. I understand and smile at the joke. The younger man is saying the birthday boy is probably getting too old and that’s why he doesn’t want to bring the machine down. The boss pretends to get angry when his phone rings again… yes, halfway down the stairs.

He stops, holding part of the machine with one of his legs, one arm supporting the other side, while telling us, “It’s my wife, I have to get that.”

When the call is over, we don’t have to ask, he doesn’t have to tell. We know; she doesn’t want him to be late for dinner.

I can’t help thinking about how Hispanics relate to their families, how they value being among their loved ones. It’s not that non-Hispanics don’t. It’s just that the unique way Hispanics do it is a whole different and exciting world for me. See, they do answer calls from their wives and moms at work as if they were young kids, even if they’re 50 years old (yes, he told me very proudly, “50 years old, 30 in this business”).

The men get to the narrow passage at the bottom. The machine doesn’t seem to fit.

The phone rings again. It’s his sister from New Jersey; she won’t make it for dinner because her kids (she has three as well) have to study for tests tomorrow.

I don’t care about the washing machine anymore. All I see is an image; a live demographic showing me that yes, family plays an important role for Hispanics in the U.S. Right now in my basement I can see that. I see they celebrate birthdays with home cooked meals, and they care for their elders and want to be happy together. This is great inspiration for me. I must depict them as naturally as possible, so when they see the work we do at Wing for them, they can identify, hopefully entertain themselves, and say, “Yes, that could be me.”

I realize we are all speaking in Spanish now, no more Spanish between them, English with me, their customer. I feel proud. I am having the experience of being both a customer and a hostess; they are working but are also my guests. We are all playing these roles within roles in such an amazing cultural event called the Hispanic market.

The machine is now installed and all set. They did it!

The phone rings yet again. It’s his mother again, this time she’s checking if he’s already on his way home. I can almost tell she’s mad on the other end.

Let’s hurry.  No one wants “El Jefe” to be late.

Still very quickly, I say, “Feliz  cumpleaños, señor.” And he says, “Thank you, Ma’am.”

If you too have a story or a thought about Hispanic families please share them with me at rflorio@insidewing.com or in the comments below.

Michael Weiss

So you think you know how to present? Let me be the first (or maybe the 10th) to tell you that you don’t. In fact you have no idea how to present. How do I know this? Because you’re making it to finals and you’re not winning. Why? Because you are focusing on yourself and not the client. It’s that simple.

Why is that agencies feel that ME ME ME is the way to go into a pitch? If you are lucky enough to get into the room with a client, then chances are there is a reason you are there. No client is going to take the time of their stakeholders and have you schlep to their offices for just another meeting. The client has read (or at least scanned) your proposal, they have spent time on your website, and they have checked with trusted sources to see if you are worth it. Bottom line – they already know you can do the job. In fact they have created a short list of three agencies that can do the job. The pitch is not the time to prove you have what it takes – they already know that. The pitch is your chance to differentiate yourself from the competition.

If you walk in there with a 90-page PowerPoint deck chock full of past client Logos and Case Studies you are going to lose your audience in a matter of minutes. Each of the finalists has the same client list and skill sets. On paper you all look the same. At this point it is not about your past. Clients do not want to hear what you did for OTHER clients. They want to know what you are going to for THEM. What’s their future look like?

The truth: The client most likely has already made up their mind before your even open your mouth. So you’ve got 60 minutes to either confirm their decision (they already chose you) or change their mind (they chose someone else). Do you think talking about your past is going to inspire them? Not a chance. Chances are 90% of the people in the room do not want to be there – to them it is just another meeting. Well, what if it wasn’t? What if you turned it into a riveting, inspiring, engaging performance? I am not talking about interpretive dance, but not too far from it…

Take the time to think about what you can do in 45 minutes (leaving 15 minutes for Q&A and/or applause) to win them over. What can you do to make them put down their Blackberries and iPhones and pay attention? The clients want new ideas; your proposal and website highlight your creative – well, why not be creative when you are in the room with them? You have the opportunity to set the stage for a collaborative and successful partnership.

Some of you already know this. You know that you have to be different. You create compelling comps and weave in a story. It’s a step in the right direction, but you put together epic pitches that should take 2 hours and make you look desperate. You are trying too hard. Again, the client put out the RFP and you already answered every question in your proposal. At this point you should not be retelling that story. They have their answers. Instead, why not choose a couple of key points that you can get creative with and expand upon with them in the room? What I am saying is that you do not have to tell the whole story! Show them just enough so that they “get it,” they see the potential. Basically, leave them wanting more.

If you are an agency, then you are in the service business. It’s your job to deliver high quality work within time and budget. It’s your job to manage expectations. It’s your job to “wow” them and remind them why they chose you in the first place. 99% of your relationship with a client is based on whether you can work together. Do you actually like each other? This is a personal relationship, which could last for many years. Oftentimes the initial pitch meeting is the first time you are meeting each other face to face. Think of it like a first date. You don’t want to come off egotistical and only talk about yourself. You need to ask questions, be witty, smart, likeable. If you take away one thing from this rant, remember that a pitch is not a meeting; it’s a performance. It really is your time to set yourself apart from the pack. To be different, creative, fun, engaging and most importantly to focus on THEM, not on yourself.

Okay, jargon alert! I’m going to talk about T-shaped people. While I’m there I may throw in the odd reference to silos, pushing the envelope and fluffing the sausage. So get your jargon bingo cards ready and eyes down for a full house…

Back in the 1950s Bill Bernbach, DDB’s founder and philosophical guiding light, was the first person in the industry to formalise the Copywriter/Art Director relationship. Prior to this, writers would dash off witty headlines in between cocktails, cigarettes and sexism and the art department would then lay out the ads in a fairly predictable and formal way. But Bill Bernbach came along and shook it up. He didn’t just get rid of the silos (make sure you tick that off your jargon bingo card) he also hired people from ‘outside’ the industry. He didn’t hire WASPS, he hired immigrants, Jews – kids from Brooklyn. He mixed it up, challenging the collective wisdom with his hiring policy the same way he did with his ads.

But advertising today is a more complex business. We don’t just create print ads and TV spots anymore, we need to innovate (tick), build relationships (tick), earn media (tick) – oh, and still sell stuff. So by my reckoning that makes us inventors, psychologists, media planners, marketeers and shit-catchers (not on your card?). What can we do?

There are two things agencies can do; they can either hire someone from every single discipline they touch; which is an expensive hobby as it’s impossible to make everyone billable, or hire versatile or ‘T-shaped’ people (tick – that’s the jackpot.) For those of you who’ve been living under an ‘O’ shaped object, T-shaped people describes those who have a strong single discipline such as copywriting – that’s the vertical stalk of the T – whilst the horizontal top of the T reflects their empathy and ability to understand other disciplines. Of course, this was always true to some extent. Writers have never just been writers, they’ve had to understand art direction, strategy, photography, directing, editing etc. But in these digital times, the list gets longer and longer as copywriters and art directors need to be able to talk media planning, UX, creative technology, service design, mobile technology, trend watching – but still be able to write great scripts and create compelling advertising that people want to share.

So where do we find these people? In Amsterdam at a local level, people with this level of expertise and experience are often found running their own agency. Even if they’re not running their own agency, they’re still very hard to find, very senior and very expensive. If you want a big T you have to pay for it.

At Tribal DDB Amsterdam we have hired a range of smaller T’s with genuine variety in their make up. These idiosyncratic-mini-T’s (I’ve just invented a new term that won’t be on your cards) are actively mixed up thanks to our new office redesign to hopefully create an agency that can handle the complexity of modern advertising and the demands of digital. Here’s how it works. We have classic creative concept teams (in name, not make up) who are curious about digital and love new stuff. We sit them in project teams alongside an interactive designer, a user experience (UX) person, a tech lead and just off to the side we have strategists and creative directors who work across multiple projects but can dip in at a moment’s notice. Even project management and account managers are invited to share the space when the project demands it. The office has been intentionally designed to have all creative disciplines around one table sharing a space, knowledge, ideas and respect. So what we end up with are T-shaped pods that can handle anything clients want to throw at them.

Of course, finding the right people who can work in these teams is still a challenge, but it’s not as hard as finding people who can ‘do everything.’ We have to hand pick these teams to make sure we have not only the right mix of disciplines (our vertical stalks of our Ts) but also a good and varied selection of tops to our Ts. Some creatives’ ‘tops’ might be better suited to social media, others may have a traditional background that makes up their top, and some are

happy talking e-commerce. But ultimately everyone learns from everyone else because we literally knocked down the walls, we think hard about casting and how we mix people up. Many innovative companies run on casual interaction – but what we have done is accelerate that casual interaction to help us come up with the kind of ideas our clients have come to expect from the agency of today; socially led campaigns with digital at the centre.

You could say that we simply put a lot of smart people in a room and give them a bit more of a free rein than other agencies. It’s probably the main reason I work in innovation driven advertising (tick); I like being surrounded by smart and curious people because it makes me smarter and more curious. My T gets bigger, which means I can spot the skills and interests of other Ts, who in turn help influence other Ts and help them grow.

We all know that our ideas are only as good as the people who come up with them, our work is only as good as the people who touch it and our ability to change and innovate is driven by versatility, a willingness to adapt and the need to fluff the sausage. (Full house!) More T anyone?

I recently read a compelling New York Times Op-Ed piece by Susan Cain entitled, “The Rise of the New Groupthink”. In it, she highlights a dramatic trend in business, education and religion that moves us away from individual thinking to an almost forced collaboration, something she calls “The New Groupthink.” It’s an intriguing comparison between the solitary efforts of “lone geniuses” and the seemingly homogenization of the work that occurs with endless meetings and brainstorms.

The fascinating content of the article led me to apply Ms. Cain’s ideas to the advertising industry. I was surprised and intrigued by how my opinion fluctuated back and forth with each passing paragraph. I was desperately trying to pick a side with which to align my own personal beliefs and behavior within these two extremes. Should we spend more time ideating in solitude? Does true innovation only come from individuals working alone? On the flipside, how can we deny the power of what happens when the right people connect, collaborate and selflessly serve the greater good of the group?

During this process of going back and forth, thinking about the merits of these conflicting ideals, something occurred to me. The question isn’t whether one of these is better than the other. The question is why does one have to be better, and ultimately replace the other? Or, put another way, why can’t we leverage the power of both so they can exist equally and in harmony?

This got me thinking about the bigger phenomenon that we’ve seen time and time again. In the face of the newest and latest trend, we have a tendency to replace rather than repurpose the knowledge that we’ve spent so long accruing. We make grand statements proclaiming the end of this and death of that only to realize that in this day and age the only true certainty is that there are no absolutes. With the rapid speed at which our industry is evolving, it’s counterproductive, if not irresponsible, to categorically abandon elements of what works today with the allure and promise of what tomorrow will bring.

Take digital for example. When our industry first began to shift from traditional to digital, in order to take advantage of (or moderately experiment with) this highly-targeted, easily optimized new frontier, daily eulogies were written for the :30 television spot. While people were definitely consuming media in a radical new way (skipping and/or ignoring commercials), moving entirely from traditional to digital wasn’t the answer. We swung the pendulum too far back to the other side of the spectrum only to find ourselves, as marketers, being ignored in a whole new way. It’s only when digital was able to leverage the power of storytelling and elevate itself above the tactical that we were able to fully realize its extraordinary potential. Replacing traditional with digital risks doing so at the expense of the story and ultimately an emotional connection with consumers. Replacing digital with traditional fails to take advantage of unprecedented access to data which, when used correctly, provides a utility and value rarely seen in traditional advertising.

I believe when moving forward, our success will lie in our ability to shift from a mindset of “this or that” to a behavior of “this and that”. If we can learn to repurpose the suite of tools that have worked in the past and marry them to the emerging platforms of today and tomorrow, we have the best chance of doing the kind of work that we all aspire to do.

Repurposing rather than replacing applies to the teams we assemble as well. Instead of being seduced into hiring people with fancy new titles with buzz words that reflect an ever changing marketplace, let’s repurpose the skill sets of the people that have made us successful in the past and partner them with the folks that we see as having the capabilities of the future. The truth of the matter is, none of us really knows what lies ahead for our industry and I believe that to be exciting, if not a tad scary. In this case, a little fear is a good thing, so long as it doesn’t lead to panic and short-term thinking. To replace rather than repurpose, in an attempt to try and gain temporary footing within these choppy waters of uncertainty seems like an ineffective way forward. Put another way, our understandable tendency to forsake all we know in attempt to align ourselves with what we don’t shows the lack of vision that has made our industry such a formidable entity.

As I’ve said before, the power lies, not within the extremes of “this or that” but within the powerful combination and assembly of many different pieces. There has been plenty of memorable work over the past few years, and when I think of an example to demonstrate my point of repurposing in an effort to create something new, there is one pretty clear example.  The Wilderness Downtown was an interactive HTML5 short created with data and images related to the user’s own personal childhood. Set to Arcade Fire’s song “We Used to Wait,” the experience takes place through choreographed browser windows. For me, it kicked open the door and sent a wake up call letting everyone know what was possible when you combine elements of what we’ve seen and showcase them in a way we haven’t. Perhaps the most important element of this project, beyond the magical integration of video, HTML5, music, and nostalgia was the inspiration it ignited in its wake. An awesome TV spot will leave you saying; ‘I wish I’d done that.’ The Wilderness Downtown left you saying; “I can’t wait to do something like that”.

In my opinion, the future belongs to our industry’s artisans and craftspeople with the unique ability to lean forward and innovate without ever abandoning the undeniable core principles of what has gotten us this far.