These days, even glaciers are speeding up. Since the Summer
, clients and their agencies have been made hyper-aware of the global speed and performance of social media, especially when linked to traditional advertising forms. Even so, some agencies and their clients, find it difficult to get off the mark.
. Ever willing to host the new social age and prove out its hyper-ferocity and the innovation of everything, the company is trying to help agencies swim in the swirl of traditional and new media and pull together the pieces of digital, social, mobile, and traditional advertising in a cohesive, strategic, compelling brand narrative.
They’re calling it ‘agile creativity’, and the search engine cum video purveyor cum media conglom is poking agencies to become even more nimble and flexible than ever.
Actually, this sounds like a reasonable request. As of July, 2012 YouTube has over 70 hours of new, original consumer-generated programming uploaded onto it each day. Essentially it is becoming a new programming network—with entries from Hollywood, corporate video and that kid down the hall. All this content is being watched on over 350,000,000 devices. And that’s just YouTube.
New data from Nielsen shows that nearly 60% of 13-17-year-olds and three-quarters of 25-35 year-olds own smartphones (teens make up the fastest adopters of these devices). This is a surge that is spreadable across media, demographic and physical geographies, and consumable goods.
Fact is, the opportunity for brands has been flipped on its head. “Brand managers have been working in a reductive world—where there’s the one message, one takeaway,” says Google vice president Jim Lecinski. “Now we’re working in an expansive world. Reviews, social network, videos. It becomes overwhelming.”
This new opportunity for brands is daunting terra incognita for traditional agencies that have relied on the comfy couch of traditional television advertising (albeit with the nowadays requisite tie-ins to online media).
Google has been trying spark a much-needed transition for some time. Earlier this year, they published
for the digital age. Recently, they tried coaxing agencies with ‘what-ifs’ like reviving
-era campaigns and imagining how social media might have accompanied them. One of the first examples was Coke’s 1971 “I’d Like To Buy The World A Coke” spot.
features a single woman singing on a mountaintop, who is quickly surrounded by a diversity poster of youthful, bubbly faces. (Even though the spot is over 40 years old, it seems like a present-day stroll through the East Village.) Creator Harvey Gabor, formerly of agency Backer Spielvogel, collaborated with Google creatives to create an adjunct media campaign across smartphones, tablets, and laptops. The result let participants record a video or text message and send it—along with a free Coke—to special vending machines in Buenos Aires, Capetown,
City, and Mountain View, California. The recipient could also record a message from the machine and send it back. Visit
to see how Gabor and Google married the best of the old with the best of the new.
Hindsight is proverbially 20/20, but how can agencies carry this vision forward in real time?
“Every day, there are new ways of connecting with consumers,” says Torrence Boone, Google’s managing director of agency business development in the Americas. “One of the ongoing dialogues has been to get a perspective from agencies on what’s important about navigating this new world.”
Part of that discussion is what the whole world is wondering—and why
San Francisco consultants bus businessmen from around the world down Highway 101 to answer the question, How does Silicon Valley create nonstop innovation, and how can we do it for ourselves?
“We’re borrowing agile software development, rapid prototyping and lean manufacturing,” says Boone, “and applying them to the campaign development process to imagine how agencies can go to market in amazing ways.”
BBH, Big Spaceship, 72andSunny, Arnold, Deutsch LA, TBWA\CHIAT\DAY LA and others have joined Boone’s team (one way or another) in the collaboration.
If you look at the creative process outside of traditional advertising, you’ll find a gap. And where there are gaps, there can be opportunities. Why does it take agencies months to work out a single campaign, when it seems Silicon Valley can kickstart an entirely new company in the same amount of time? In the same time frame, gaming companies pull together thousands of iterations of
Call Of Duty and
Farmville. Sitcoms can turn out dozens of scripts. And so forth.
What agencies must take immediate responsibility for is the change in hierarchies happening outside of the agency brain tunnel. Top-down assembly line processing is a remnant from the rusty industrial age, and no longer works in the fluid, spreadable hoodoo environments of the information era.
“From the agency perspective, it’s about how you’re structured to get work done,” says Michael Lebowitz at Big Spaceship. “Most agencies take a waterfall approach—you’ve got strategy then production then design then technology. At every stage, about 75% of your brain trust is removed from the equation.”
Such inefficiencies would not be designed into a superchip, and they don’t fly in the new agency model. The fundamental approach is to move lean, launch quickly and often, and iterate on the fly. Then be agile enough to pivot, never leaning on blockbuster approaches.
“
Launch is just another phase, rather than an end goal,” says Lebowitz.
In sum, the structures of the industrial economy are neither agile nor inherently creative and simply do not hold in the digital age. “Process and efficiency does not lead to great ideas,” intones Lebowitz.
“It used to be that the focus was on the EPIC idea,” remembers Google’s Torrence Boone. When planners would hone in on the perfect strategy line and that single precious idea. “What we’re seeing now is that tactical points of departure and beginnings, to what accrues to a bigger and much more transformative idea.”
In fact, agencies trying to keep pace might recall there’s precedent in traditional advertising for one-offs becoming big campaigns. Jared, that chubby guy who got thin eating Subway sandwiches, was a one-time television spot that resonated with consumers and transformed the burger-battling Subway franchise into a much-desired lunch spot.
And that “Can you hear me now?” Verizon guy? A lucky piece of casting turned actor Paul Marcarelli into an advertising icon.
What’s different in today’s world is that social media can be a relatively inexpensive test ground for new ideas. When they’re off the mark, they can be redirected. When they hit, they can be exploded across other media.
“Very few successful start-ups end up with the same business plan that they started out with as a business school concept,” adds Jim Lecinski. “Get out there and iterate.”
Google’s effort may seem strange and alien for some. But this is not a dunking stool for retromorphs. Rather, it is a serious hands-on dialogue for creative agency leadership to help facilitate a forward plunge into an existing New World that already has natives.
“Agile creativity is inspirational and a framework to build the best work,’” says Google’s Boone. “The most sophisticated marketers embrace the power consumers have and embrace the notion of failing fast—and using that learning to optimize ideas in a creative way. This gives marketers and agencies more courage in their creativity.”
Today, the urgency is how to bring all of the expertise of the company (strategy, design, technology, and production) together to solve problems and create great work. Each expertise can be creative and when all of them are able to bring their passion to the project, the results can be exponential.
Silicon Valley has hackathons where programmers work for days generating code to see how they can innovate new methods. Traditional advertising has all-nighters. At agency 72andSunny in Los Angeles, the creative crew holds creative sessions on their work wall. “You have to rummage through a scrap heap of assets,” says 72andSunny president and co-founder John Boiler. “The problem with the agency model is iteration and craftsmanship, and we’re doing both.”
Sometimes creativity means seeing the assets that are already there.
“YouTube is an amazing platform that is under-utilized in terms of leveraging into a core audience,” says Boiler. “If you look at how YouTube channels are basically off-the-shelf affinity groups—there’s an audience attached to these [videos] and it’s very easy to track that audience to your core. You can find these great ascending pieces of content that might be perfectly positioned to carry a brand message that can be unique and authentic to your brand.”
Big Spaceship’s Lebowitz declares his agency has always worked outside the box of traditional agency rules, a credible statement given this crossover agency’s high profile work. “We think the best way to do things is: How do we get to something really quickly and not worry about polish as much as get the idea articulated. Then pivot and adapt. Sprint. Stop, look, and discuss. And iterate. In TV your spot airs and it’s done. We have the ability to republish and be persistent in refining. What would the world be like, if Photoshop stopped at Version One?”
Big Spaceship’s
What Do You Love? project with Google started with a very open brief: increase use and awareness of Google’s suite of products. “Most agencies think about, How do we create another thing?,” explains Lebowitz. “What we looked at is, What do they already have that can be refocused so we can make it work in a better way? We took the results of all their products and created a search tool that was a better way of articulating all these different tools.
What Do You Love? is a terrific question, because it lets people ask that question and find the Google tools inside it. It’s not a message screaming, Here’s why you value me. It’s intellectual, and not interrupting an otherwise positive experience.”
And then there is the elephant in the room, which is not an elephant at all but the greatest creative effort ever to happen on the Internet.
It all started on May 9, 2006 when someone named Sanchey posted a 1 minute 10 second clip titled
Puppy vs. Cat.
Yes, we’re talking crazy cat videos. Arguably, the greatest experiment in consumer-generated creative and virality, crazy cat videos are hit-monsters that might be the most agile innovation of all. (The most popular cat is arguably
Maru from Japan. Maru’s antics have been seen over 163 million times since August of 2008.)
Nestle brand Friskies recently co-opted this bit of catnip to draw cat lovers to their brand.
“Cat videos are (in some ways) almost an art form now,” says Friskies brand manager Shaun Belongie. Friskies is the largest cat food brand at Purina, and as the brand team looked at the explosion of cat videos they wondered how their brand could play a role. The solution seems simple. Movies have the Oscars, television commercials have Cannes, and now cat videos have The Friskies.
“We like this space where technology meets cats,” says Belongie. In its first week, the contest generated hundreds of entries—all original content created by cat enthusiasts.
Another place where cats and technology meet is Friskies-branded games like Catfishing, and
You vs. Cat (the cat always seems to win). The games attract thousands of participants plus spawn videos of their own. (Friskies digital work is handled by Fosforus in Austin, Texas.)
“We ask ourselves what can we add to cat owners’ lives they can’t find elsewhere?” says Belongie. “It’s a nice way to interact with cat owners without trying to insert ourselves.”
Can agencies match the millions of hits generated by consumers capturing random magic moments on their smartphone? Is there a way to match the intensity of krazy kitty videos?
“I think we have,” says 72andSunny’s John Boiler. “People
expect millions of viewers in the Googlesphere.” Examples? “If our Activision client doesn’t get 20 million views, they’re pissed. That’s their expectation and we deliver. In a single day, clients can have millions of online viewers, before their spot even goes on–air.”
The current agile creativity concept is a Google step forward, away from media agencies and search engines to help facilitate how creativity and social media and branding might work together.
Cautious of disintermediating the traditional agency, Google’s attempts to reach those not already embraced by the digisocial world are themselves innovative, agile and proactive.
“Too often marketers are thinking in media channels and almost fad-of-the-month type approaches, and that confuses people,” says Boone. “We have the notion of winning the moments that matter—and provide the compass to point the direction that matters most.”
“There is more of a multiplicity of thought taking place today,” adds Jim Lecinski at Google. “Brands are like personalities. You need to figure out your brand essence, but the aspect of me that I put forth may vary according to audience, context, and time of day. The ability to act out various behaviors over sideways media is what gives big brands the advantage over smaller brands, because they can act out. As marketers, we need to unlock the multiplicity of these brands.”
In the very near future, big data will interface with smartphones and agency creative will (again) have to respond in amazing ways to provoke and communicate with targeted opt-in audiences. The next layer of thinking is how brands can be responsive.
“When somebody wants something, how can we help?” asks Jim Lecinski. “Can a pizza brand help me organize my sports viewing schedule for the weekend?”
Is agility the new agency innovation? Here’s one more way to look at it.
In the late 1700s, American land speculators sent legions of young men into the wilderness to plant apple seeds. The idea was that when people came to settle years later, the trees would be producing mature fruit and newcomer homesteaders would not starve. These “Johnny Appleseeds” became part of the lore of Americana. Part of Google’s effort today is planting seeds. There’s no telling if these seeds will grow, or if these ideas will populate. But it’s worth the effort.
“It’s a high intensity business,” says 72and Sunny leader John Boiler. “If you don’t put demands on yourself, you’re not going to get to the next level.”
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