predictions and resolutions for 2009

I've come over all fuzzy and hopeful what with it being New Year's Day. So here are a few predictions for the coming year: 1. Augmented reality will be in lots more places. 2. More campaign sites will cease to bear the trace of their calendar-driven marketing budgets. That is, they will wear in, not out. 3. There will be no more think, only feel and do. Am I just being too optimistic? Oh well...here are some resolutions: 1. Do and think more on invisible writing. 2. Do more extra-curricular things and make sure more slow projects are seen through to fruition. 3. Don't take any shortcuts - when necessary, rip it up and start again. Hope 2009 rocks for you. (Pic courtesy of this person.)

be as good as your words

Have you ever noticed that bad copywriters rely too much on alliteration when talking about themselves? It seemed that way when I was looking through about 70 CVs earlier this year. Three Ps - powerful, punchy and persuasive - kept coming up. It didn't feel very surprising the first time I saw those adjectives strung together. And by the third or fourth time it was downright boring. This is the kind of thing I was referring to when I mentioned writing to be interesting versus writing to persuade. Too much brand communication simply sets out to convince or charm you - to sell, that is - and it's usually pretty boring. To stand out, as a brand or as a writer, I'd say you have to stand for something bigger. You have to be able to be interesting. You have to give the reader/viewer/listener something they can engage with. You've got to care how you make them feel. (Yes it's obvious, but it's rarely achieved.) In the craft of writing you've got to have your bag of tricks, but always use them in service of an idea. Great writing lives and breathes the idea - even if that means leaving your tricks, including the plosive alliterations and other such devices at home. After all, in a communications world which is increasingly about bringing brand values to life through real-life experiences and digital toys, words have never mattered more. They help to provide the right signposts and emotional touchpoints, frame the experience and reinforce the brand connection, so they have a powerful part to play. Add to this the fact that people also consume each other's lives as content now through their preferred social media. Your competition for attention is a thousand times stronger than any other sales message. The acid test for a successful campaign is now probably, "Would I post this on my profile page?" So "how interested am I?" becomes much more important than "how persuaded am I?" Just remember that in order to be interesting you have to respect the people you're talking (or writing) to. You have to want to share the idea. Anyone who knows me understands I'm really bad at coming to the point when I care about something. So, finally, I suppose what I'm really trying to say is that the best copywriting - the most interesting copywriting - feels invisible. It doesn't really feel like copywriting at all. (Pic courtesy of this person and that person.)

the direction of the digital agency?

Over on his excellent Dictionary of Specific Generalities, Dave has started a really interesting series of posts about the future of digital in the marketing mix. His contention is that digital thinking is now (or should now be) so interwoven with other disciplines that the nature of the digital agency is changing. Perhaps even becoming less of an ideas factory in its own right, and more of a production house for the ideas created by an above-the-line agency. Of course Dave's right that digital is, or should be, at the heart of any communications strategy nowadays. And Dave's a much wiser, more experienced head than me. But I felt a little dismayed at this kind of working model. I think it's because so many of the creatives I've met from above-the-line agencies still leap to TV or poster scamps as a means of expressing their ideas. I'm not convinced that all (or enough) of them do think particularly digitally. Yet. Right now, some of the best ideas are still coming from digital creatives, aren't they? Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong. But whether you're above, below, through or sideways to the line it'll be worth staying tuned to Dave's blog for a series of golden tips about digital creativity.

think happy thoughts

I've found a new creative blog I quite like. It's Happy Thought, written by a creative geek/geeky creative at digital agency, AKQA. It contains the usual mix of self-promotional agency stuff, opinion on what makes for good/bad advertising and digital especially, and some homeless ideas. I especially liked his/her idea for a black ops advertising agency, doing bonkers pro bono work for the bravest clients out there.

destination advertising

I went to the Internet Advertising Bureau’s (IAB’s) summer debate this week, where the motion was: Online advertising doesn’t need to be creative. I’ve never been to an IAB event before, but the speakers were interesting, and, needless to say, the free bar impressed me very much. So it was a good night, despite a surprisingly low turnout. Perhaps inevitably, the motion wasn’t passed. It always needs to be creative. But the team arguing for the motion made some interesting points that have led me to ponder a couple of questions. Firstly, where is the/is there a real boundary between creative and strategic decision-making? Paid-for search was talked about a lot, and although a couple of lines of text on a search results page aren’t going to compete with Balloonacy for awards, surely there’s some creative thinking that goes on there? Sure, you can analyse the search terms to pay for, but then you have a choice of what you write for the result, don’t you? It could, for example, be filled with brand positioning, some other grammatical sentence or a string of key words. Isn’t that a creative decision, rather than a strategic one? Also, more importantly, what do consumers think websites are for? They are brand experiences, but do they seem them as destinations in their own right, or shop windows? Or, put in a more industry jargon way, why/would a consumer differentiate between advertising and experiential marketing? If they wouldn’t, should we stop seeing them as separate things? (Pic courtesy of this person.)

the annual review of the future?

Pearson's online brochure says everything it needs to say about the company's values and objectives through animation and film clips. It's an altogether richer experience than a PDF, obviously, and it makes me wonder how long it will take many other organisations to do something creative with their annual reviews and other flagship corporate publications. I know I'd rather play with this for half an hour than read another 48-page booklet filled with too much text. I'm no doomsayer for printed stuff, but sites like this do mean printed booklets and the like have to work much harder in future to engage you on an emotional, experiential level in future...especially if big monsters like Pearson are already doing them.