Category Archives: content creating

advertising, awarding, celebrating, co-creating, collaborating, content creating, creating, marketing

Crafted to Win: Four Approaches That Delivered Media Lions at Cannes 2025

In my most recent post I shared some thoughts on the vibe from last week’s Cannes Lions festival, and noted that: “Along La Croisette and in the Palais and everywhere in between was an industry grappling not with the future to come, but with a future that now lies behind us. The current source of unfair advantage is being able to marshal your resources – be they marketing, agency, creator, or anything in between – to leverage better than your competitors the world around you.”

That idea of marshalling what’s possible to gain unfair advantage was on full display in the awards category perhaps closest to my heart – media.

Cannes 2025’s Media Lions recognized 66 pieces of work from over 2,000 entries, with the Grand Prix awarded to Dove’s “Real Beauty Redefined for the AI Era” from Unilever. The campaign tackled AI-driven beauty standards by retraining Pinterest’s algorithm to prioritize inclusive representations, delivering brand lift and widespread engagement.

Beyond the Grand Prix, twelve Gold Lions were awarded to campaigns that the jury believed best demonstrated what’s possible with media – showing contextual understanding, innovative media thining, and platform-native creativity.

My personal highlights include Streaming Bars by Heineken, which turned Netflix ads into real-time bar experiences; Coupon Rain for the formidable Mercado Livre by the equally impressive Gut, São Paulo, which transformed news coverage into shoppable coupon moments; and the Redditor Edit for Skoda by agencies including PHD (hurrah), which co-created car features with Reddit superfans. As well as Vaseline’s Verified campaign which co-opted creators to be part of the brands marketing by verifying and rewarding their hacks, and Waitrose’s Sweet Suspicion, by agencies including MG OMD (hurrah again), which leveraged some festive whodunnit storytelling to cut through the Christmas foodie clutter.

Overall, 2025’s winning media work signals a shift toward media experiences that blur entertainment, utility, and advocacy – where effectiveness is derived from earned engagement, tech-enabled storytelling, and brand bravery in reimagining how media is planned, shaped, and shared.

Across the Grand Prix and Golds, four themes emerge. They don’t just tell us where media thinking is now – they hint at what’s possible for brands and agencies aiming to gain competitive advantage by understanding and leveraging platforms, content, and communities.

So, let’s talk about

  1. Native Platform Innovation
  2. Media-as-a-Service (MaaS)
  3. Culture Hacking
  4. Collaborative Storytelling

Native Platform Innovation

This year’s highest-awarded Media Lions work didn’t just use media space – they re-engineered the platforms they were using.

Dove’s Grand Prix-winning campaign didn’t run ads on Pinterest; it partnered with the platform to rebuild its algorithm around inclusivity. Skoda used the upvote mechanic on Reddit, enabling users to collaboratively and collectively design a car. Heineken made Netflix ad breaks contextually relevant by mirroring the show you were watching.

What these ideas all have in common is that they don’t just think of platforms as media – but as media environments with logic, language, behaviours, and levers to be understood and hacked.

Dove Real Beauty Redefined for the AI Era (Grand Prix)

Redditor Edit for Skoda by PHD, London and Leo, London

Octavia Redditor Edit

Streaming Bars for Heineken by LePub, São Paulo

Want some of the action? Don’t think in terms of ‘placements’ but in terms of ‘platform logic’. Winning in contemporary media means understanding how people behave within platforms, and building the interventions that leverage, shift, or enhance those behaviours. If the media plan doesn’t ask, ‘What can this platform uniquely do for the idea?’ – there’s a danger that you’re undercooking the opportunity.

Media-as-a-Service (MaaS)

Many of the Gold Lion winners this year didn’t just run communications – they used those comms to deliver functional value. Coupon Rain transformed football coverage into real-time discount delivery. Ziploc dynamically revalidated expired coupons if the product was in a shopper’s cart. Tata’s Rewards Bag doubled as a QR-enabled shopping assistant.

In all cases, media wasn’t a message – it’s a service, a utility layer. These campaigns served value, solved problems, and made the experience deliver something of tangible value.

Coupon Rain for Mercado Livre by Gut, São Paulo

The Rewards Bag for Tata by VML, Montevideo

Preserved Promos for Ziploc by VML, New York

https://www.vml.com/work/preserved-promos

So, some ways in to building MaaS. Media that does something is more persuasive than media that just says something. Especially in an attention-fragmented world, marketers should treat media as a delivery system for value – not just as visibility for a message. Ask yourself: how can your media plan reduce friction, add convenience, or embed utility? Consumers increasingly reward brands that solve, not just sell.

Cultural Hacking

From Heinz’s Deadpool x Wolverine mashup to Skol’s retroinfluencer Instagram hack, many of this year’s big media winners didn’t wait for cultural permission – they inserted themselves into it. These campaigns exploited timing, tone, and trends to become instantly relevant and shareable. They were less about crafting traditional narratives, and more about inserting brands into the stories that culture was already telling, and cared about.

Can’t Unsee It for Heinz Ketchup & Mustard by Rethink, Toronto

Retro Influencers for Skol by Gut, São Paulo

https://gabimarcatto.work/retro-influencers

Sweet Suspicion for Waitrose by MGOMD, London and Saatchi & Saatchi, London

So, how to hack into culture? The opportunity here is no longer in owning the narrative – but in engineering and earning relevance. How can you build teams and approaches that pay attention to, are curious about, and have a point of view on culture? Ensure that your thinking and activities are explicitly reacting to or riffing off the current vibe. Equip teams – as well as senior leadership decision-makers with the tools and confidence to listen to and react to communities and ideas.

Collaborative Storytelling

Some of the strongest Golds this year weren’t broadcast ideas – they were co-performances. Vaseline co-opted into their marketing over 450 content creators who had created Vaseline hacks. Rocket Mortgage turned a Super Bowl ad into a live singalong experience. In Colombia, an insurer let viewers buy insurance for fictional characters – with real-world policy results. These ideas weren’t passive; they required something of the audience, and rewarded participation with narrative ownership or tangible rewards.

Vaseline Verified for Vaseline by Ogilvy, Singapore

First Ever Live Commercial Crossover for Rocket by Zenith, New York, Mirimar, Los Angeles

Fictional Insurance for RCN/Prime by DDB Colombia, Bogotá

So, how to you encourage collaboration with audiences and communities? The key is in building out engagement architecture. Brands that unlock collaborative storytelling build media experiences that invite audiences in, not just push messages out. Ensure that your approach includes moments where the audience can ‘play their part’, and are rewarded for doing so.

Awards are, of course, always subjective. You might agree with this year’s juries – or see things differently. Let me know in the comments below. Ultimately, it’s part of an important process that I once described as the industry’s ‘engines of objectivity’.

Because what matters is not so much what wins what (there, I said it), but rather that we are able to collectively surface and celebrate the thinking and ideas that inform, inspire, and empower us to do the best work we can. That’s the work of Cannes.

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awarding, content creating, creator-ing, streaming, trending

The Future’s Behind Us: Dispatches from Cannes Lions 2025

I love the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.

There. I said it.

I’ll admit that I’ve had my moments of scepticism over the years, but we need Cannes – perhaps now more than ever.

We need it for the celebration of the work. For the ideas. To shape and focus the industry agenda. We need it to logistically get people in one place at one time. For the opportunities to reconnect with old colleagues and friends – and make some new ones. Because it reminds us of what we do when we’re at our collective best. We need it for all those reasons, and many more besides.

I used also to think that we needed Cannes to show us the future – but I don’t think that’s the case anymore. Because the future has arrived already. We are living inside it.

My take on the vibe at Cannes Lions 2025 was of an industry not bracing for a future to come, but rather one wrestling with the reality of its arrival. It was a thought that dawned on me Tuesday whilst I was talking with a long-time industry acquaintance; that the future has moved from being something rushing towards us – into something that now lies behind us. It simply moved faster than our ability to keep pace with the changes it wrought. And now we’re playing catch up.

And so here we were. Navigating together the shared reality of our transformed world.

There was no better example of this new reality than YouTube’s presentation in the Palais des Festivals cavernous Lumiere Theatre. Less a presentation than a victory lap, the streaming platform’s CEO Neal Mohan shared with the audience that a billion hours of YT are watched daily on television sets – YouTube is the new TV. With Kaizen – the story of Inoxtag’s Everest climb – he suggested that YouTube creators are also now the new Hollywood start-ups.

Alongside creator content’s expanding influence over the industry is the halo of fan content that accompanies it – often in podcast form. Mohan shared that 1bn people watch a podcast every month on YouTube, noting the power of the connection between creators and fans – observing that “fans don’t follow culture, they shape it … fandom itself is a form of creative expression”.

Brands need not miss out on the action. Chicken Shop Date’s Amelia Dimoldenberg and Call Her Daddy host Alexandra Cooper were on hand to announce the launch of ‘open call’ – a new feature powered by YouTube BrandConnect, which enables brands to discover and partner with creators.

In a blog post, YouTube notes that “Open call gives creators of all sizes the opportunity to pursue new relationships with brands. And brands can lean on the relevance and trust of YouTube creators to get more from their social strategy on YouTube.”

Amelia and Alex put it more bluntly: creators can “take the middlemen out” and work directly with brands.

I was left in no doubt about the popularity of creators as the audience began to swell on the Palais’ Terrace Stage Wednesday, not for the excellent daily festival lowdown from Contagious’ Alex Jenkins and Chloe Markowitz – but for the following session featuring TikTok’s Global Head of Business Marketing and Commercial Partnerships Sofia Hernandez in conversation with creators Keith Lee and Logan Moffitt – the latter rocked to fame earlier this year with this viral cucumber salads.

It was bedlam.

Again, that sense that I was sat in a future that had already arrived.

We’re living and working in a world in which creator culture has supplanted the advertising model, in which streaming distribution has overtaken the broadcast model, in which clicks from search engines are declining as the foundations of search evolves – all of it powered by the invisible hand and accelerating force of AI (I got 650 words in without a mention, people).

In response, brands and marketers have changed their strategies and approaches to media and marketing.

Duolingo’s Emmanuel Orssaud described how the platform eschews the conventional integrated model (too expensive, trying to do too many things, doesn’t get people talking) in favour of a social-first model where 30% of all spend is focussed not on proven effective comms but on “figuring out what else will work”. They’re expanding next into long-form content with a Duolingo Gameshow, and an anime series.

It echoes Liquid Death CEO Mike Cesario’s comments on last year’s Cannes Lions Creative Impact stage in which he shared the brand’s category-redefining approach to marketing. The brand focusses on standing out and being entertaining. The only game in town for Liquid Death is capturing attention, because “if you can get people to stop and look at your product, you’re already ahead of 99% of the market”.

Even the vibe of the awards competition this year felt like a body of work negotiating with itself. The customary smorgasbord of brands’ ideas and innovation were competing with – and often losing out to – their own past body of work.

New campaigns for Apple competed with ten years’ worth of the ‘Shot on iPhone’ campaign’, while Dove’s 2025 entries vied for metal with ‘Real Beauty for Dove’ – a 20-year-long body of work for the brand.

As Contagious’ Alex Jenkins put it – it’s a bit like bringing a gun to a knife fight.

One juror in a post-panel discussion shared with me that brand campaigns competing with the whole back-catalogue of others caused a fair bit of debate. I bet it did. The same juror indicated that they would be referring the issue to Cannes Lions. I can’t imagine it will be allowed to happen again.

So it turns out that the hero of Cannes Lions 2025 wasn’t innovation or ideas, nor was it comms platform vs tactical campaigns, or creativity vs tech or ads vs content or anything vs anything else.

The hero of Cannes 2025 was change itself.

Along La Croisette and in the Palais and everywhere in between was an industry grappling not with the future to come, but with a future that now lies behind us. The current source of unfair advantage is being able to marshal your resources – be they marketing, agency, creator, or anything in between – to leverage better than your competitors the world around you.

It’s tempting to suggest that it was ever thus; but we all know, deep down, that it’s never before been like this.

On stage in the Omnicom Space, Malcolm Gladwell noted that “There is a nobility in failure. [and that] the stories of failure are the most compelling stories that are not being told. The costs of trying crazy shit are not nearly as high as people think. This is exactly the moment to be trying crazy shit and failing!”

Or as Mercado Libre CMO Sean Summers puts it, “The industry is facing a tsunami. The biggest risk, is not taking a risk.”

//

I’ll be publishing more thoughts and perspectives from last week’s festival. Subscribe to catch the rest as soon as it drops.

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co-creating, collaborating, community-building, content creating, creator-ing, realtiming

Streaming’s Next Decade: From Ads to Audiences – and Why Creators are Set to Win

I evaluated in my previous post some media and marketing predictions I made in late 2014. Netflix had announced their arrival in Australia for the following March. My expectation that content would win out over channel, that ability to deliver on desire for choice on-demand would determine growth, and that programmatic would swallow huge swathes of the industry – have all proved I think, largely, true.

My prediction however that the industry would largely fall out of love with the ‘ad’ didn’t come to pass as expected. Adverts have remained the predominant unit of currency for paid branded messaging.

Instead, the group that capitalised on the opportunity as I saw it – to create “platform-neutral content strategies that can adapt to platform and context more quickly – generating more relevance for brands’ comms” were not brands, but creators. The “native content in video form” that I foresaw becoming predominant in video did come to pass, but with a generation of content creators – rather than brands – at the helm.

For many brands and marketers, success is now dependent on engaging and fuelling this generation of content creators – who intermediate between products and services on one hand, and customers and consumers on the other.

Last week saw two awesome examples of this now established marketing model in practice.

How Capcom Inspire an Army of Creators to Fuel Monster-Hunting

Monster Hunter Wilds, which released worldwide on February 28, has had a great launch. Within the first three days, the game sold over 8 million copies (it’s now over 10m), setting a record as Capcom’s fastest-selling title. On Steam it attracted more than 1.3 million concurrent players shortly after launch, securing a position among the platform’s top 10 most-played games by concurrent users.

Whilst this success wouldn’t be possible without a great product – Wilds has been critically well-received, earning 90 out of 100 on Metacritic with reviewers praising engaging combat, impressive creature design, and innovative gameplay features – its success is also down to a determined effort to engage audiences thru the game’s affiliated army of creators.

Last Tuesday’s Monster Hunter Wilds Showcase, hosted by producer Ryozo Tsujimoto, revealed the first free update, which is scheduled for this coming Friday. The content is relevant of course for people who play the game (declaration: I’m 49 hours in and counting), but I’d suggest that’s not the primary audience for this content.

Rather, Tuesday’s content was designed and deployed not primarily for the game’s 10m players, but for creators. The update had more than enough new information to fuel new content, but enough details held-back and teased to allow room for all-important speculation and prediction. This video from the awesome Khraze Gaming channel is a great example.

There’s now a very established – and mutually beneficial – relationship between the Monster Hunter Wilds dev team and the game’s content creators. The game’s owners are supporting their community of content creators, who in turn are producing content to build their community of subscribers.

This isn’t all one-way. There’s been plenty of pushback from hardcore fans of the series, critical that the game is too easy. But the devs aren’t shying away from this. They are embracing this community feedback, in an open letter this week announcing that:

“We would also like to thank you for the many comments, thoughts and feedback we have received since the game was released.

The development team has been reading your feedback, and we are encouraged by it. We are also using the comments and feedback we have received to help us plan our future actions.

Future updates will see more Tempered Monsters (★8) added to the game … And for even more of a challenge, Arch-tempered monsters will make an appearance. These are even stronger versions of tempered monsters.”

Another masterful example of a marketing team engaging and fuelling content creators was from Marvel.

How Marvel Inspired Creators to Create with a Five-Hour Plus Livestream

In this even more astonishing and finely-tuned example of the marketing-to-creators model, Marvel revealed the cast of the now-in-production Avengers Doomsday via a five hour plus live-stream – with a new cast member being revealed on the back of a director’s chair every 12 minutes. The announcement concluded with Robert Downey Jr. – who will play Doom in the strategically crucial film for Marvel – walking out to sit in the final chair and asking the audience to be quiet on set.

Just to reiterate in case you read that quickly – the Avengers Doomsday cast reveal announcement video was a panning shot of 27 director’s chairs … which lasted five and a half hours.

This clearly is content designed not to be watched by audiences. Rather – just like Monster Hunter Wilds – its content precision-made for creators. Content machine-tooled to be poured-over in crazy detail in real-time by an army of creators (many of whom are of course huge fans).

Creators like The Breakroom team, who scrambled into their studio to livestream their discussions and reactions to the Avengers announcement video, in real-time. A livestream of a livestream. Marvel designing and deploying content for creators.

This is the new and now established model. Content from brands tailor-made for creators, designed to fuel the production of content for their audiences. Creators are the intermediaries and amplifiers of brand messaging. Communities are maintained and managed not directly by brands, but by a team of creators the literal job of who is to drive engagement with audiences for brands; either because they are fans, or their income depends on it – and in reality, usually and probably both.

This is what will underpin brand success over the next decade of video.
This is a model about to be supercharged by next-generation AI production capabilities.
This is what marketing precision at scale really looks like.

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advertising, content creating, creator-ing, predicting, streaming

Streaming’s First Decade: Three Predictions I Got Right – and One I Called Totally Wrong

It’s been ten years to the month since Netflix launched in Australia (where I was lucky enough to be working at the time). A decade on, it’s worth reflecting on what’s changed, what I called right, and what caught me (and the industry) off guard.

There’s been some great commentary from Tim Burrowes both via Unmade (paywalled) and on the MediaLand podcast about the impact of the streamers on the broader media landscape down under. In a Mediation post back in 2014, I made some predictions about what the arrival of streaming would mean for marketing in Australia, and the broader media landscape.

I think I mainly called it right.

Three Out of Four Ain’t Bad: Three Predictions That Nailed It (and One That Didn’t)

Prediction one: “In the immediate term there is undoubtedly going to be a firestorm for views and scale – brace for plenty of press releases in the first quarter of 2015 about content deals, views and reach. in the medium term this will play out in a battle for content – with many shows already locked away in local deals, there will be fierce competition between the platforms as distribution rights cycle into play.”

Verdict: Totally called it. The fight for content has not only played out between the streamers, but more broadly across the industry as legacy broadcasters and streaming platforms battled for the content that will drive and retain subscribers. In Australia that battle continues to this day, with the launch of Max on Monday locking HBO’s content library onto the platform – and the arrival of ESPN on Disney+ introducing an additional potential bidder for many of the market’s upcoming sports rights negotiations. Content has, for the last decade, remained king and has been a key defining element of the success – and conversely the struggles – of the streaming platforms.

Prediction two: We’ll see “a radical shift in viewer expectations. more choice, more freedom to choose what we watch and where, how and when we watch it. This future has been a long-time coming and has been with some for much longer than others”.

Verdict: Two for two. If anything has defined streaming’s impact, it’s the expectation of choice, on demand. That expectation has spilled beyond streaming—into podcasts, and even cinema. The streaming age taught many of us that, for the typical movie, it was easier to wait and watch at home – a behaviour reinforced by ever-reducing windows between theatrical and home release.

As the Entertainment Strategy Guy put it in a recent post, we’re drawn to the cinema now for ‘events’; “the actual most popular “genre” isn’t really a genre, but a style: exciting. People go to the movies to see spectacle, which often means action or exciting set pieces …18 of the top 25 films [in the US 2024 box office] have a lot of action set pieces. (Even Wicked ends with one).”

Prediction three: “With increasingly fragmented and diverse platforms and viewing services, advertisers and their agencies will increasingly rely on programmatic solutions to build reach quickly.”

Verdict: Absolutely. Over the past decade, programmatic advertising has transformed the industry by enabling real-time bidding, automating media buying, and enhancing targeting capabilities. On one hand, this shift has driven greater efficiency, has undoubtedly improved ROI, and empowered marketers to deliver more personalised experiences. But it’s also led to concerns about transparency, data privacy, and brand safety – not to mention the broader impact of an over-reliance on short-term, performance-based media on brands and long-term brand-building. It’s all our jobs to ensure we build tech that will serve us better over the next – AI-powered – decade, than we did for the last.

Prediction four: “Many advertisers and ad agencies will finally be forced to break out of the ‘advert’ model – using instead platform-neutral content strategies that can adapt to platform and context more quickly – generating more relevance for brands’ comms. think native content in video form.”

Verdict: So this one is a lot less clear. I genuinely thought back in 2015 that the industry’s long-held affinity for the ‘advert’ would wane. I thought the classic ad, so effective in the broadcast age, wouldn’t survive in a streaming world; a world in which tolerance for content interruption would be significantly reduced.

I was genuinely wrong on that. The power of the ‘ad’ holds sway to this day. The industry didn’t wholesale move on from the ad. It didn’t predominantly leverage more diversified content and ideas-based marketing to create fewer, better, more transformative experiences for audiences.

Too expensive. To difficult to scale and measure. Too hard.

Only it wasn’t.

Because while the industry remained predominantly stuck in ad-land, the last decade has seen a content revolution that has more than delivered on my prediction of ‘native content in video form’.

Native Creators: The Creator Economy Delivered What Marketing Didn’t

In parallel to the growth of streaming over the last ten years, the creator economy had, by 2023, blossomed into a $250 billion industry. This expansion is projected to continue, with estimates suggesting the market could reach $480 billion by 2027.

A report last year (admittedly from YouTube) found that an astonishing 65 percent of Gen Z responders self-identified as video content creators. The number of content creators worldwide has surpassed 200 million, reflecting the increasing appeal of content creation as a profession. The market for global influencer content has more than tripled since 2020, reaching approximately $33 billion in 2025.

It seems trite to point-out that this incredible growth – and it is incredible – is largely down to the fact that creator-made content is typically significantly more engaging than traditional ‘adverts’; it feels authentic, personal, and tailored to specific communities … because it IS authentic, personal, and tailored to specific communities.

Audiences tend to trust creators they follow, viewing their recommendations as more genuine and relatable than polished brand messaging—leading to higher attention, interaction, and emotional connection.

The prediction I made a decade ago suggesting that the industry’s ad-venture would come to an end was correct, it just turned out to be a generation of creators – powered by platforms like YouTube and latterly TikTok – that delivered on that strategic opportunity of ten years ago. The great irony of course is that advertisers did end up being an integral part of this creative content revolution; they were the money.

In other words, it wasn’t the brands who changed the game—it was creators and their audiences. And it’s that shift – from ads to creator-audiences – that will define the next decade of streaming.

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content creating, praising

“Don’t act like you’re not impressed”: Lessons From Ron Burgundy On The Importance Of Being An Extension of Product, Not a Signpost To It

so I’m loving the marketing for Anchorman 2 which is seeing Ron Burgundy comment from his newsdesk on current events. Pete (hey Pete) sent around the above, in which Ron comments on the Melbourne Cup, part of the #bestdayever earlier this week … I also caught Ron taking over the Telstra-sponsored ‘please switch off your phone’ message on a trip to see Thor 2 (which was Thorsome) on Sunday.

it’s a great example of something I touched on several times both on this blog but in a ton of client conversations over the last few years … product-out communications.

the working paradigm for the broadcast age was that marketing worked as communications that were pushed out to consumers to make them aware of a product or service (and subsequently drive interest, desire and ultimately action). comms were a signpost to the product. a wealth of research, theory, evidence and smarts has evolved that paradigm to where we are today …

Ron’s message isn’t a broadcast-out signpost to increase awareness of the movie. instead Burgundy’s commentary is a great example of a product-out approach … of the product extending itself out to create value or utility (in this case entertainment). the fact that content exists for Aussie cinemas and the Melbourne Cup suggests that it’s a localised content strategy that could well be playing out in every major country in which the movie is being released. which is very smart.

all in all a great lesson in Paid being used as Owned media which (judging by the media and sharing pick-up) has generated a very respectable amount of Earned media on the way … nice work Paramount on a very elegant execution of a strategy which should pay dividends … after all, as Ron would say, “they’ve done studies, you know. 60 percent of the time, it works every time.”

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branding, content creating, creating

The Joys of Burberry, Part Two – Brand-Corporate: the authenticity of a business that communicates like its brand

about two minutes into the above video Angela Ahrendts, the outgoing CEO of Burberry, delivers a marketing masterclass:

“we needed to keep the story authentic. we needed to keep it pure. we knew we were going to target different audiences. we knew that the mediums would be different. we knew it would be so much more global than maybe things has been in the past, but the story had to be the same. so we said everything we’re gonna do is target this Millennial customer, and if we do that we’re going to have to speak in their language, and their language was rapidly becoming digital. so we studied this customer and then adjusted each of our strategies in order to be relevant and authentic to this audience that we were catering to. because I think everything you do going forward, you can’t do anything the traditional way. it has to be so visual, and we hit on this word ‘energy’ early on and said we want everything we do to have energy.”

it’s a very elegantly conceived and expressed set of convictions: things Burberry knew, clarity of audience targeting, the implications of engaging that audience on their own terms, and a set of beliefs that challenge convention and set a strategic behavioural direction for the brand. ask yourself how many of the brands you do or have worked on have that clarity of focus?

I wrote about the joys of Burberry’s marketing back in July. I described my admiration for their flip of the online / physical retail approach, the digital-first strategy and the pleasure in watching kisses fly across the world; and I described the prolific investment of time and energy into content.

what’s so interesting and awesome about this content strategy however, is the extent to which it’s spread into Burberry’s corporate culture … they have an entire section on their YouTube channel devoted to corporate videos. from financial results to exec travelogues, taking in a discussion of the group’s acquisition of its stores and related assets in China on the way. the video content is an authentic, consistent voice not of the brand, but of the business.

there is much to admire. this is a business with the story it wants to tell and conversation it wants to have firmly in its own hands. it’s not solely dependent on it’s relationship with reporters and journalists to share its news, agenda, and take on the world. the story as they see it is there for anyone to watch, not hidden in a column in the financial section or the ‘recent press releases’ page of the corporate website.

but more than any of this its a glorious demonstration of the business behaving in comms the same way as would the brand. this is important. and its rare. I can think of only a few businesses that try and succeed in doing so. mine certainly doesn’t … although I’d rather like it to. because more than anything else it’s a phenomenally effective way for a company to communicate to the constituency who are hopefully its most ardent advocates – it’s own employees.

of course there is an obvious danger; the assertion that such a ‘brand-corporate’ strategy is nothing more than a smart and elegant attempt to over-control the message. that a business journalist can’t question a YouTube video. that a shareholder can’t challenge a per-recorded statement. or that style will mask substance. to which there is only one simple response … just behave on brand: in the knowledge that consistency, transparency and authenticity will out.

and you don’t get more transparent than a YouTube video of Burberry’s Chairman Sir John Peace talking with an outgoing and incoming CEO about the news that Ahrendts will step down as Chief Executive Officer by mid-2014, with Bailey (on whom I have a purely marketing crush) assuming the role of Chief Creative and Chief Executive Officer.

of course its well-packaged, and of course its practiced and of course well-finished.

but so is a great fashion brand.

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advertising, branding, commenting, content creating, marketing, planning

From ZERO to Hero: its Joseph Jaffe versus the world as he shares his theory on surviving the Mediocalypse

“In a perfect world, the optimal paid media would be zero”

and there you have it. in sixteen short syllables Joseph Jaffe yesterday laid the gauntlet to, well, everyone.

in a Mumbrella Hangout with Tim and Nick, Jaffe took aim and didn’t hesitate in pulling the trigger as he took on the concept of paid media, it’s media agency proponents, media owner benefactors and client conspirators – all of whom are collectively woefully unprepared for the coming mediocalypse (that last word is totes all mine fyi).

Jaffe’s alternative vision is ZERO – a word that serves the dual purpose of being, in Jaffe’s opinion, the target investment a brand should make in paid media … and also an acronym for the elements that make up Jaffe’s counter theory … Zealots, Entrepreneurship, Retention and Owned assets (not media).

to say all this is brand new territory would be a stretch, but to say that it’s rarely been delivered with such zeal is not. Jaffe gleefully takes on Sorrell (“self-serving”), media owners (“complacency and mediocrity are not causes to be able to keep your job. being also to achieve … objectives and demonstrate proven value-add and utility and return on investment is a cause to keep your job”) and clients (“morons”). by the time Clive Burcham of The Conscience Organisation joins the conversation the platform is well and truly burning and we may as well all just run for the hills.

it’s easy to line up against Jaffe’s argument and theory: Ehrenberg Bass’ analysis would tackle the importance of Zealots, Entrepreneurship doesn’t offer the guarantee of exposure, success and ultimately growth that shareholders demand of businesses; on ‘Retention is the new Acquisition’ you can pick your counter-play, and there’s no client worth their salt that hasn’t developed and deployed an Owned asset strategy and plan. but here’s the thing … Jaffe is right.

the 30 second-shaped solution is to predominant. the ad venture is coming to an end. agencies and clients aren’t co-conspiring to create sufficient entrepreneurship and innovation. media is commoditised, and media thinking is undervalued. clients customers have become more important than their consumers, and despite billions of dollars of effort the scarcest commodity in the world remains human attention.

run for the hills indeed.

but despite Jaffe’s verging into hubris, he offers some wonderfully salient and sensible advice. his assertion that “the vision of ZERO is to move from being a tenant to a landlord” is a nicely articulated vision for how brands should increasingly approach their media planning; the idea of a “customer-employee ecosystem empowered by technology” makes total sense; that we should be advising our clients on how to redress the balance of their direct to indirect (media) investment is absolutely right; and to ask “why are we paying for attention, when we should be paying attention” is good enough to put on the t-shirt (should that be your inclination).

whatever side of the debate you’re on, you can’t deny that our negotiation of media’s future is the better for having Jaffe’s voice in the chorus. there will be heroes and outlaws aplenty in the coming mediocalypse, which one Jaffe turns out to be will be decided first by your perspective, and then by history.

PS if you want to skip to a couple of highlights in the above video jump to 13:17 to hear Tim deploy Nick to search for someone who has tattooed toilet paper onto themselves with the immortal words “Nick, to the Google …” or 13:44 to see’s Tim‘s earnest nodding and eyebrow raise at the news of Charmin’s acquisition of website ‘sit or squat’

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broadcasting, content creating, distributing, experiencing, phdcast, popping up, television

PHDcast 02.08.13 – its not the ooh laa la edition of the PHDcast as we talk TV, The Power Inside and Magnum Pop-Up

Player not working? click here to listen on Audioboo

morning PHDcast listeners. Nic was in the hot seat this week for the not-the-ooh laa la edition of the PHDcast. bien sur 😉 … awesome job Disco

much of the debate this week was in and around TV watching – how it’s changing and what the implications are, especially for brands. I wrote about some of the aspects of this in my post on Friday, but it’s worth dwelling on a point Stew makes at the twenty minute mark around people watching programmes not channels. I think that’s true but I also think its not quite as clean cut as that, and as the CBS / Time Warner stand-off enters it’s second day – leaving 3 million American’s without shows like Hawaii Five-0 (I know) – it’s clear that there is much more to come as the distribution wars heat up.

also on the cast we got round to talking about the Magnum Pop-Up Experience hitting Sydney. following the success of the store in other cities, the ground floor of Westfield in Sydney’s CBD has for the last three weeks been the latest place to get the pleasure pop-up. you get to design your own magnum … white, milk or dark chocolate plus plenty of toppings, all for a mere $7.

as I say on the cast, it’s a phenomenal example of a brand pulling the trick of landing marketing that gets people to pay for its own existence. and the fact that people are queuing up for it is proof positive of the indulgence for which the brand is known.

Magnum_pop-up Magnum_pop-up_2 Magnum_pop-up_3

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campaigning, content creating, creating, engaging, experiencing, marketing

Joy: How Brands are Spreading a Little Love and Happiness, and What This Surprise and Delight Tells Us about the State We’re In

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpCsp1u1i88

the always amazing media update from James, Sisse and the gang brought with it this week a couple of treats which kinda got me thinking … the first is an effort, above, from Virgin Atlantic who transformed a Manhattan park bench into a Virgin flying experience, complete with champagne, food and real life movies.

the other was an effort, below, from Molson, who built fridges full of beer that could only be unlocked by someone with a Canadian passport, much to the delight and joy of the crowds that had gathered for the unlocking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8gper3YkzMg

these both share a fair bit of DNA. they both are great experiential efforts designed not really to be experiential – but rather content; content designed to be enjoyed, shared and of course land a comms message in the process. and they both rely on the participation of innocent strangers – collateral vantage if you will – to bring realness and credibility to the situation. they’re pretty much givens, but there’s something else they both have in common … something deeper and I think more significant.

but this week our own Mimi, not one to miss a sweet treat, dropped us a note that the Magnum Pleasure store will be opening in Sydney. hurrah. this is off the back of Cadbury’s Joyville effort locally …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMmlE6Yq748

so what’s going on? well I think we’re seeing a definite increase in the amount of random acts of kindness from brands. we’re witnessing nothing short of a surge in desire and investment into spreading a little love and happiness. the evidence of the brand-inspired Joy is all around. like love, and so the feeling grows. sorry.

now you could argue that this isn’t really anything new; that the last few years (if not decades) are riven with examples of marketing sharing a little love and happiness … be it Coke’s vending machines (or even back to teach the world to sing) or the playful inventiveness of Skittles or T-Mobile from Liverpool Street to Heathrow or insert-your-example-here … you could argue that brands have always been in the business of creating Joy. however I think this is distinct for two reasons:

one, these acts aren’t surprising and delighting the passive massive through broadcast, but rather the more tangible and meaningful individuals on the street. these acts are very deliberately public – that strikes me as significant; the acts are witnessed, at that witness makes them realer, more credible, more meaningful and more potent. and I think this is important.

the other reason is that I think it says something about the state we’re in … I read ages ago (and I honestly can’t remember where) that popular culture generates content opposite to the prevailing mood of the times. Sorkin created Bartlett when America needed him, then post-Obama positivism was countered by darker, less sure-footed heroes like Nicholas Brody. I’m wondering if the same can be said for marketing?

from the collapse of states to environmental insecurity, via PRISM, to economic uncertainty and the realignment from west to eastern dominance … we’re in pretty shaky times – you could say that winter is coming.

perhaps our collective unleashing of marketing Joy is the brand equivalent of the contemporary prevalence of the superhero: shear joy, positive unabashed certainty at a time when our world no longer gives us these for granted.

I’ll leave you with one last little bit of joy … a video from Google celebrating how we have and continue to build the web together. it’s a genuine joy … so, well, … enjoy.

featured image via adweek

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advertising, content creating, planning, rewarding

Why Lost is the New Found: How Heineken and Jeep are inviting us to get lost in very different ways

Heineken’s Voyage Ad, currently playing on a cinema screen near you

so last night I enjoyed a cheeky Sunday night trip to the cinema with Connerty, Jez and Fingers to see Brad take on the zombie apocalypse – which you’ll be happy to hear he did magnificently. before the action started however the above effort for Heineken played out. its a great ad – if slightly indulgent (btw if you think the 60″ is indulgent check out the ‘exclusive version’).

all of which is all very well and indulgent, and good on Heineken for the effort … but at the end there’s a blink-and-you-miss-it call to action directing you to www.heineken.com/voyage alongside the copy ‘legendary travelers wanted’. so having literally been called to action and after a few seconds of digging today I tracked down – via said website – another website entirely … a branded YouTube channel in fact, called Heineken Dropped:

heineken_dropped_youtube

… a content-generating, exclusive-experiencing, PR-generating platform of a thing in which guys (the site is quite clear on this aspect) are ‘dropped’ in the middle of nowhere.

adventure, of course, ensues – as evidenced by the trailer for episode one

and then in one of those frequent ‘wait for a bus’ moments I was catching up with the awesome James’ Media in Brief document from Friday (Volume 2, Issue 18 to be precise), the video of the week in which was only this little effort for Jeep by Leo Burnett Buenos Aires:

so within 24 hours a beer and a car brand both inviting me, in two very different ways, to get lost. Heineken through a competition to experience an exclusive adventure in the middle of nowhere and Jeep through a GPS that takes me on my very own individual trip to, well, the middle of nowhere.

what’s interesting (to Mediation at least) is how one territory can be explored through two very different and contrasting media models. one exclusive, the other open to anyone (presumably with a GPS and a four wheel drive) … one fulfilled through content and the other through technology … one in which nowhere is idealised and the other in which nowhere is radically accessible … and one which operates at the head of Anderson’s Long Tail and the other which thrives in the tail.

in a post far back in the mists of time (July 2009 specifically) I described the need to think about audiences with a new lore of averages.

“when we describe target audiences we should be thinking of them as sitting along the above spectrum.  how do we plan on one hand for the very few but valuable super-attention givers from whom a lot of the effectiveness of the media investment will derive?  whilst on the other hand plan for the ‘mode’ individuals, the vast majority who will contribute the smallest amount of attention to what we have to say?”

what’s interesting is how these two platforms operate exclusively against each: Heineken creating content to be distributed to the passive massive along the tail, Jeep inviting individuals to experience nowhere for themselves. neither is, I suppose, more right than the other … but I can’t help but wonder what they have to learn from each other?

how could Heineken enable more participation in their Dropped platform, and how could Jeep amplify the individual experiences of finding nowhere to maximise reach of their investment? after that I suppose that there’s only one question … how would you prefer to get lost?

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