Having joyfully scrutinized the best print work in the world with my esteemed colleagues; elegantly lead by Mark Tutssel, I realised that the answer lies in the purity and art of print.

We should celebrate the power of well-crafted copy and exquisite art direction which combined with brave ideas is still one of the most powerful tools we have. Print is one of the only mediums you can create an intimate connection with the reader; as you read it in your hands or as it stops you in your tracks.

What we might take from this is to be less digital and more analogue, more real. Print can inspire, intrigue and fill you with goosebumps. It creates more intimacy between the brand and the audience.

Billboard, Almap BBDO Sao Paulo; Scrabble, Ogilvy Mexico; St. John Ambulance, BBH London; Volkswagen, DDB London and Dixons, M&C Saatchi London prove this. Press is alive and flying high.

Despite all this glorious work, press, a category famous for capturing most of the Lions was almost empty. The usual suspects, like cars, FMCG, clothing and home electronics clearly abandoned press. Budget migration to the sexy “alternative media world” was clearly felt.

When it came to choosing the Grand Prix (no point adding further to the massively covered final scandal), we had two clear winners, Billboard and Scrabble. Both celebrated the purity and unseen creative genius of press; pristine art direction, engaging copywriting and an ignitable concept. In the end victory was Billboard’s with its essence of music piece. A concept born for press; but truly expansive way beyond print. The campaign, a golden lion winner in Design and a strong Cyber entry is clear proof of how the new print can interconnect with other disciplines and celebrated without losing power or uniqueness. Like the sunshine, pure print excellence shone in Cannes too.

By
Christoph Becker
Chief Creative Officer

World Cup 2010 spectators wave their vuvuzela horns while watching the opening game between South Africa and Mexico in Durban. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

Now I live close to the Heathrow flight path in TW1 so I probably get used to background noise quicker than most BUT surely, surely, surely the noise and atmosphere created will be one of the key elements that will make this World Cup what it will become –special and unique. The alternative – to ban the vuvuzela – is to celebrate the generic. To long for a World Cup just like the last one and the one to come. Think about it. Ban the vuvuzela? Where would we go next? Or perhaps more pertinently, what would our memories be made of if we had previously thought like this? Let’s take to our time machines, go back to Buenos Aries in 1978 for example and outlaw ticker tape. We could then set a course for the Azteca stadium in 1986 and stop people from standing up and throwing their arms in the air. Yes it’s a simple point yet I’m amazed to see the volume of counter arguments running rampant on twitter and the wires. This World Cup will be great in spite of global brands that sponsor it and the global media owners that cover it. It will be great because of a 30-yard pile driver from someone we least expect, a dazzling piece of artistry from a Messi or Kaka, a crazed celebration from Maradona and inevitably a penalty shoot-out for England. But more than that it will be great because of what Africa and African culture brings to it. It will be great because of the vuvuzela!

By
Richard Mabbott
SVP, Planning
GyroHSR London

Pitching for new business has become just such a balance. It is no longer enough to win through on great creative work or strategy alone, nor is getting on like a house on fire with the client enough to secure a successful result. Because today the process is, more often than not, driven by purchasing departments.

Now, don’t get me wrong, we work with many purchasing departments who do an excellent job (and if you’re one of them and you’re reading this, then I’m definitely talking about you), many of which have mastered the art of achieving value for money whilst simultaneously allowing for successful agency partnerships. They do this by taking the time to understand the requirements of their own organisation and the partner agency alike; they understand the importance of organisational fit and of creating an environment where the exponential effect of true collaboration can be harnessed; and then they crunch the numbers, crunch them a bit more and strike a hard (yet fair) price too…

We’re lucky enough here at GyroHSR to work with many purchasing teams who partner with us in just this way, and I can see a direct correlation between those accounts we get the most satisfaction from working on and those purchasing departments who strike the balance between brain and heart.

But I’ve recently experienced pitch processes where that other kind of value, that which can’t be measured in price, hourly rate cards and discounts, appeared to get forgotten. In some extreme cases this has meant that the ‘i’s were dotted and the ‘t’s crossed before a brushstroke of creativity had been applied or a single human being met another in the name of chemistry. Where on reflection, the pitch result was determined by the price long before the agency got to show the work. Now that can’t be right can it? I struggle to think that even Mr Spock would agree with it.

Price is important (especially in these times), but there is always negotiation. More often than not a common ground can be found. Surely, finding what it is you actually require should always be the first step. And what price the wrong agency at the right price?

For me it’s about partnerships: mutually, commercially-beneficial partnerships between organisations and their agencies. Finding this ideal balance should surely be the aim of any purchasing department in setting out on the pitch process – to match their Captain Kirk with Doctor Spock and rocket their marketing efforts into hyperspace…

Chris Hare
VP, International Client Service

Perhaps if I explain the choice we all have to make, you’ll forgive the hyperbole. We’re all familiar with the current status quo, the received wisdom on integration. Consumers have access to more channels. They engage with different disciplines in different ways, and the TV spot is no longer king in the way it used to be. That much is recognised. So, until now the solution has been ‘take a brilliant brand idea (usually from a TV or press ad) and replicate it across all these brave (if slightly scary) new channels.’ Big Ideas, usually straplines from big brand campaigns have been simply handed down to other channels and expected to fly in the same way. After all, a big idea that doesn’t travel is a dead idea, right?

Well, yes. And no. A big idea must travel – but that doesn’t mean it must simply be slapped on a direct mail piece or a viral and expected to deliver in the same way as a 30-second TV spot. For too long, the ad agencies have created something beautiful, and once they have envisaged how it will deliver to a mass audience –they’ve chucked it back to their below the line friends and expected the same creative to translate virally, digitally, experientially. It won’t. It never will. And now, our world is divided into people who accept this and embrace it and people who won’t, who can’t.

This brave new approach should be about understanding the communications challenge and then feeding it through to everyone from every discipline at the same time. That way you aren’t pushing an idea into the confines of one discipline or another. Rather, you are celebrating and respecting each and its ability to deliver the big idea. Give everyone the challenge at the same time, no artist every delivered the masterpiece from a Paint By Numbers canvas – they always start with the raw materials. Change the way you look at your role. You aren’t the Creative Director, or the Marketing Director. Rather – you are curator, a facilitator – you bring the elements together and let them sing in the loudest, most relevant and exciting way possible.

Just as the Old World was once transfixed by ‘media neutrality’ and ‘seamless execution’, now we must embrace new additions to our lexicon, and challenge the old ones as we do so. For years, we have chased Fool’s Gold, the dream of seamless, cross-discipline delivery. And what does seamless mean to us? It means no interruptions, no surprises, no joins. But if you don’t deliver these clear differentiations between channels, then how can you engage through each one? A viral and a TV ad can’t be ‘seamlessly’ joined. They are fundamentally different, and that difference should be celebrated. The joins, the moments of difference are what will surprise the market.

And indeed, we should challenge the notion of the ‘Big Idea’ itself. What does ‘big’ even mean? Where once it meant ‘easily transferred’, now it must mean ‘expansive’. A true big idea just keeps on giving, and can be ignited across any channel, in any way. For so long, we have thought of our big ideas as fireworks for instant gratification. But we have been all about the visual display, and forgotten about the big bang we should be leaving.

And this new approach works. It is living, breathing happening at this very moment, as we speak. In the US, telecoms brand Sprint had one aim in mind – to be associated with the one thing consumers really want from technology – immediacy. The brief was ‘help us to own immediacy’ – and it was issued to everyone. And the result? A beautiful, engaging mishmash of touchpoints that celebrated the concept of immediacy in the way best suited to their channel. So, the Big Idea expanded. It became a brilliant, throbbing, fact-filled TV ad, a revolutionary widget, an interactive Yahoo takeover. These elements weren’t seamless, they were linked but they had their own characteristics, they existed as their own celebration of the Big Idea…this became the “Now Network” campaign.

I have seen the dramatic differences when you hand someone an idea, not an execution. When I worked with the US’ Office of National Drug Control Policy to help combat habitual drug abuse, the team and I started by identifying the insight that the issue wasn’t exacerbated by drugs themselves, it was driven by the ‘influence’. We personified this influence as the enemy and called every agency together in a room – planners, media buyers, PRs, creatives. We asked everyone to come back with their interpretation of “the influence being the enemy” and in return, they showed us the power of letting a great idea breathe through an endless number of creative (and sometimes unexpected) collaborations and channels. It worked in print, it worked in film and it worked digitally. It didn’t roll seamlessly over every channel. This became the “Above the Influence” campaign.

If you can’t remove yourself from the mindset of ‘seamless’, ‘transferable’ and ‘adaptation’ then you will never champion the new version of ‘integrated’. If you think integration should be about taking an execution and applying it everywhere then you should be working somewhere else, in branding perhaps. After all, that is the branding approach isn’t it? Making touchpoints consistent, keeping a unified identity. Advertising and marketing must be about igniting, not soothing seams.

We must believe our ideas live longer than an awareness campaign – we must have faith that they can fly in millions of ways –not through careful adaptation, but through noisy, viral, visual ignition. Because if they don’t, they will fester in the seamless wallpaper of old-fashioned integration. Let us never forget who we should be talking to, and no consumer ever said “the best thing about that campaign is the way it looks the same on the posters and on the website”. Never did, never will. So you can keep chasing that reaction or you can become a curator and let each element bring the Big Idea to life. The time is now – you are with us or against us, in support of creative eclecticism or in opposition.

Choose wisely, the future of the brands you are looking to ignite will depend upon it.

By Christoph Becker
Chief Creative Officer
GyroHSR

The following classic essay “Agassiz and the Fish” that I read as a young man reminds us all of just how important focused, concentrated attention span is to understanding anything. And I assume we’ll all agree that understanding something is the first step in being able to do anything with it or about it. Great work doesn’t happen on the fly but, if you will, by focusing on the fish.

Rick Segal
Chief Executive, North America
Global Practice Leader, B-to-B

Louis Agassiz was the founder of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and a Harvard professor. The following account was written by one of his students, Samuel H. Scudder, under the title “Agassiz and the Fish, by a Student.”(American Poems, 3rd ed. [Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co., 1879]: 450–54).

Agassiz and the Fish
by a Student

It was more than fifteen years ago that I entered the laboratory of Professor Agassiz, and told him I had enrolled my name in the scientific school as a student of natural history. He asked me a few questions about my object in coming, my antecedents generally, the mode in which I afterwards proposed to use the knowledge I might acquire, and finally, whether I wished to study any special branch. To the latter I replied that while I wished to be well grounded in all departments of zoology, I purposed to devote myself specially to insects.

“When do you wish to begin?” he asked.

“Now,” I replied.

This seemed to please him, and with an energetic “Very well,” he reached from a shelf a huge jar of specimens in yellow alcohol.

“Take this fish,” he said, “and look at it; we call it a Haemulon; by and by I will ask what you have seen.”

With that he left me. … I was conscious of a passing feeling of disappointment, for gazing at a fish did not commend itself to an ardent entomologist…

In ten minutes I had seen all that could be seen in that fish, and started in search of the professor, who had, however, left the museum; and when I returned, after lingering over some of the odd animals stored in the upper apartment, my specimen was dry all over. I dashed the fluid over the fish as if to resuscitate it from a fainting-fit, and looked with anxiety for a return of a normal, sloppy appearance. This little excitement over, nothing was to be done but return to a steadfast gaze at my mute companion. Half an hour passed, an hour, another hour; the fish began to look loathsome. I turned it over and around; looked it in the face—ghastly; from behind, beneath, above, sideways, at a three-quarters view—just as ghastly. I was in despair; at an early hour, I concluded that lunch was necessary; so with infinite relief, the fish was carefully replaced in the jar, and for an hour I was free.

On my return, I learned that Professor Agassiz had been at the museum, but had gone and would not return for several hours. My fellow students were too busy to be disturbed by continued conversation. Slowly I drew forth that hideous fish, and with a feeling of desperation again looked at it. I might not use a magnifying glass; instruments of all kinds were interdicted. My two hands, my two eyes, and the fish; it seemed a most limited field. I pushed my fingers down its throat to see how sharp its teeth were. I began to count the scales in the different rows until I was convinced that that was nonsense. At last a happy thought struck me—I would draw the fish; and now with surprise I began to discover new features in the creature. Just then the professor returned.

“That is right,” said he, “a pencil is one of the best eyes. I am glad to notice, too, that you keep your specimen wet and your bottle corked.”

With these encouraging words he added—

“Well, what is it like?”

He listened attentively to my brief rehearsal of the structure of parts whose names were still unknown to me; the fringed gill-arches and movable operculum; the pores of the head, fleshly lips, and lidless eyes; the lateral line, the spinous fin, and forked tail; the compressed and arched body. When I had finished, he waited as if expecting more, and then, with an air of disappointment:

“You have not looked very carefully; why,” he continued, more earnestly, “you haven’t seen one of the most conspicuous features of the animal, which is as plainly before your eyes as the fish itself. Look again; look again!” And he left me to my misery.

I was piqued; I was mortified. Still more of that wretched fish? But now I set myself to the task with a will, and discovered one new thing after another, until I saw how just the professor’s criticism had been. The afternoon passed quickly, and when, towards its close, the professor inquired,

“Do you see it yet?”

“No,” I replied. “I am certain I do not, but I see how little I saw before.”

“That is next best,” said he earnestly, “but I won’t hear you now; put away your fish and go home; perhaps you will be ready with a better answer in the morning. I will examine you before you look at the fish.”

This was disconcerting; not only must I think of my fish all night, studying, without the object before me, what this unknown but most visible feature might be, but also, without reviewing my new discoveries, I must give an exact account of them the next day. I had a bad memory; so I walked home by Charles River in a distracted state, with my two perplexities.

The cordial greeting from the professor the next morning was reassuring; here was a man who seemed to be quite as anxious as I that I should see for myself what he saw.

“Do you perhaps mean,” I asked, “that the fish has symmetrical sides with paired organs?”

His thoroughly pleased, “Of course, of course!” repaid the wakeful hours of the previous night. After he had discoursed most happily and enthusiastically—as he always did—upon the importance of this point, I ventured to ask what I should do next.

“Oh, look at your fish!” he said, and left me again to my own devices. In a little more than an hour he returned and heard my new catalogue.

“That is good, that is good!” he repeated, “but that is not all; go on.” And so for three long days, he placed that fish before my eyes, forbidding me to look at anything else, or to use any artificial aid. “Look, look, look,” was his repeated injunction.

This was the best entomological lesson I ever had—a lesson whose influence was extended to the details of every subsequent study; a legacy the professor has left to me, as he left it to many others, of inestimable value, which we could not buy, with which we cannot part….

The fourth day a second fish of the same group was placed beside the first, and I was bidden to point out the resemblances and differences between the two; another and another followed, until the entire family lay before me, and a whole legion of jars covered the table and surrounding shelves; the odor had become a pleasant perfume; and even now, the sight of an old six-inch worm-eaten cork brings fragrant memories!

The whole group of Haemulons was thus brought into review; and whether engaged upon the dissection of the internal organs, preparation and examination of the bony framework, or the description of the various parts, Agassiz’s training in the method of observing facts in their orderly arrangement, was ever accompanied by the urgent exhortation not to be content with them.

“Facts are stupid things,” he would say, “until brought into connection with some general law.”

At the end of eight months, it was almost with reluctance that I left these friends and turned to insects; but what I gained by this outside experience has been of greater value than years of later investigation in my favorite groups.

Our work, our ideas, our use of language, our imagery, our mastery of applications and technologies must be so much more awe-inspiring, cutting-edge, arresting, provocative, engaging and memorable than what some clever fellow might cobble together with a MacBook and flip phone.

We must be exceptional; the very best at what we do. We must be able to think thoughts and do things that not everyone can do—and not everyone can think such thoughts and do such things. We must show the world that we are gifted.

Easy means of media production and distribution have closed the competency gap between wannabes and the time-passers of our profession. But tools can’t close the gap between wannabes and the truly creative, the real masters of the communications trade.

There will always be rich rewards for the purveyors of great work, but mediocre creative professionals will soon be overtaken by clever consumers who are frankly willing to put more energy and passion into it, even as their pastime.

Our emphasis on our idea culture should be regarded as a wake-up call. It relates not only to our futures at GyroHSR, but also to our futures as communications professionals, in general.

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Rick Segal
Chief Executive, North America
Global Practice Leader, B-to-B

Ferruccio’s secret? Realising that a simple element he was selling as functional, effective and reliable, could expand outwards into something that was beautiful, awe-inspiring and world-famous. Now, of course, Feruccio could have stuck to turning out his tractor clutch for tractors. But he didn’t. He realised he was only selling a percentage of what his product was actually worth, and went after the remaining potential.

It’s a lesson direct marketers would do well to learn. No, it’s a lesson direct marketers must learn, or risk finding themselves staring into the abyss. For too long, we have marched into pitches talking about data, targeting, response, measurement – all that solid, commercial stuff that we know budget-conscious clients want to hear. “Don’t spend your cash on those beautiful, but intangible brand awareness ads”, we urged. “Go for DM. It works, and here are some cold, hard (if boring) stats to prove it.”

And, for the most part, that approach has worked. Who wouldn’t want to engage with consumers in an intimate way and be able to track where every penny is spent? But the landscape has changed. The consumer has changed. And if direct marketers don’t learn to sell everything else they can deliver, then they can kiss a share of tomorrow’s marketing spend, goodbye.

So why now? What’s changed?

Well, the direct marketing industry has been focusing on the clutch – the fundamental cornerstone of its heritage. We’ve been selling our targeting and measurement. Which is great. Only now, everyone else is starting to walk the walk – or they are at least talking the talk. We all know that with a long history of understanding customer data, direct marketers are those best placed to navigate the new digital landscape for clients, but it’s unquestionable that other disciplines are staking a claim on cross-channel targeting and measurement.

Add to that the lightning speed at which consumer channels have fragmented and multiplied and the ensuing land-grab this has created. Where direct was once a one-to-one channel, it has fast become a one-to-many channel, and this has fundamentally changed the way we must operate.  We predict that we won’t see disciplines drop off, but we will see them continue to multiply.

Taking this new landscape into account forces us to reassess the way we view disciplines and channels within it. Contrary to what some may think, direct marketing is not just a tactical tool, it is a strategic approach. It can build brands and it can create an intimacy that no other approach can. Believe it, because if you don’t, you can’t sell it. And if you can’t sell it, you might be left to turn the lights out as everyone else embraces a new era somewhere in the future. This is an approach we had to adopt when launching a US campaign for agricultural and construction equipment giants John Deere. (If only these essays were themed ‘DM…and tractors’…).The challenge was clear: John Deere wanted to enter a new digger category. The audience was contractors, landscapers, farmers and dealers. So a simple offline DM piece, targeted and tracked, might have done the job.

It might have done. But then, it might have gone down as another classic example of the real potential of direct marketing going well and truly unexploited. Instead, we created a campaign that incorporated the stalwarts of direct marketing and used them to create something much, much bigger.

“Smackdown” involved staging a series of head-to-head battles featuring the top machines in a ‘robot wars’- style duel. The events—the hill climb, visibility test, power lift and serviceability—were based on real-world situations that drivers experience and were staged in front of a live audience.

Initially, the audience was engaged via offline mailers, but that was only the beginning. At the heart of the programme was the ‘SkidSteerSmackdown.com’ microsite, featuring videos of digger battles. The site was fully interactive, enabling visitors to engage in a number of ways. For example, fans could create e-postcards which could be customized and distributed to friends and co-workers. This simple tool converted dealers and operators into the campaign’s strongest advocates. A series of eDMs were distributed to alert both dealer and prospects when new content was available on the site, and finally – traditional elements such as print ads were also incorporated.

And through this activity, John Deere gained a cult following. Since the site launch in April 2008, the microsite has had more than 150,000 visitors with 125,000 unique views and more than 350,000 page views.  Smackdown videos have garnered more than 100,000 views on YouTube. Offline, the Smackdown-themed lead generators yielded a 4 percent response rate, outpacing many other similar mailers during the year. Drive-to-site banner advertising had click-through-rates of approximately 3 percent, and eBlasts promoting the site had response rates of more than 7 percent.

This was a campaign that had direct marketing at the heart – there was an identifiable audience, a clear proposition and a measurable response. But to encapsulate it in this way does no justice to the true reach of the activity. We could have sent out the mailers and waited to track the sales. But we didn’t. We took the brand to a new marketplace and created a following populated by genuine advocates. We drove awareness, created buzz and instigated WOM. And if I’m starting to sound like a traditional adman, then I make no apologies.

And neither should DM as a discipline. It is perfectly poised to tell complete brand stories through this brave new media landscape. But if DM professionals hide behind data and measurement without talking about the inspiring creative, groundbreaking online innovation and power to build genuine brand experiences, then they will be selling themselves short. They will be moaning about their Ferrari clutch, whilst never looking beyond to the potential of their own product. Go forth and sell it all, sell it now. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about

By Christoph Becker
Chief Creative Officer
GyroHSR

Links: http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/944635/PROMOTIONAL-FEATURE—Direct-marketing-round-table/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH/