10 More Things// AI, Corona & Adolescence
In this edition: finding agency in the AI-era, the best of Corona ads & Adolescence breaks records
Firstly, thanks to the new subscribers - I hope you find this newsletter useful.
Secondly, I’m going to make a commitment to start to try to send this regularly (without any legal liability if I miss any days thank you). Seeing as most newsletters are sent on a Friday, I will aim for 9am Monday as a bit of inspiration to start the week.
Finally, I’m going to experiment with writing a short intro about a topic I’m thinking about each week. Assuming I think of more than 1 thing each week. Let’s find out together.
This week I’m think about… focus. As strategists our primary job is to provide focus when answering a brief. We might provide focus by defining an audience, creating a role for comms, building out an insight, finding a cultural tension, selecting a media mix or creating media buying guidelines.
Each of those areas provides focus in different ways. A role for comms focuses in on shared tasks and language but is blurry enough for an implementation or creative team to build from. Media buying guidelines, on the other hand, stand in sharp contrast. They leave little wiggle room for interpretation and focus a buying team very specifically.
Brand strategists - at a creative or brand agency - typically stop after defining an area to play in. A place that creatives have freedom to explore without constricting their thinking and literally telling them the answer. The camera is pointed in the right direction but we don’t yet know how the photo will turn out.
A first strategic response in a media agency usually ends with a block plan, the skeleton of the campaign starting to take shape. The first draft of the photo before all the technical settings have been played with.
Strategy in a media agency is much more fluid than other types of agencies. Sometimes we need to be a comms strategist in which our focus needs to be zoomed out and blurry, finding areas in which we can win. Other times we’re tacticians with a laser focus on the detail, specifics and line-by-line action plan.
Unfortunately we don’t always know what we need to be. What are the client expectations? What is useful in answering the brief? What is the team’s skill set? What is the scope of the other agencies?
I think we tend to be more focused than not. We’re typically more comfortable going into a meeting with an early version of a tactical plan than a strategic shift.
My contention: is that too focused?
Perhaps we could do better work if our focus changed from specifics to shifts, trusting the process will build the shifts into an idea that irons out the specifics later.
The Good Stuff
The Colours Of Her Coat. An antidote to gloomy thoughts about AI’s inevitable cheapening of art. Yes, it will make certain experiences less special. Yes, we might see a collapse of shared culture like we’ve had of shared community… but we’ll also have unique once-in-a-lifetime experiences that previous generations couldn’t have dreamed of. And just because something is happening at a societal level doesn’t mean we can’t use our personal agency to do our own thing.
Insight as a Heffalump. The week the industry turned against insight. I’ve seen this spread far and wide (particularly Andrew’s article which is linked) as we all recognise the way Insight has been framed is unhelpful. “Understanding the consumer is important - but we need to get back to chasing the best *ideas*, and get away from the endless grift of research trying to find something that's relatively unimportant in most cases."
Measureship. A manifesto against measureship (AKA the cultural rot that leads to enshiffitication). Now we have a name we can call it out. The antidote as always: customer-first.
How Airbus Took Off. Speaking of customer-first…. a story about how Airbus overtook Boeing by relentlessly focusing on what the customer wanted instead of copying their rivals. Originally the plan was to copy the industry-standard 300 seats before realising that airlines wanted a 200-225 seat plan. A smaller plane meant a cheaper engine. Ka-ching. Designating the official language English may have upset the European partners but it meant Airbus was easier to sell in USA.
Great Work
A Love-Letter To Corona. My favourite of the list (from the consistently excellent Ideas We Love) is number 4: relaxing ads. We all know advertising must stand out. Often we look at how to stand out within a category. The genius here is standing out vs all categories in a specific moment. Corona replicated bland ‘be the best version of you’ Olympics ads that every advertiser does with their own relaxing message in the style of those individual ads.
Pedro Pascal x Spike Jonze x AirPods. One of the biggest actors partnered with one of the best directors = a 5 minute ad getting 40m views in 3 weeks.
Dreamies’ Cats Going To Extremes. Best. OOH. I’ve. Seen. In. Ages.
Pick N Mix
Adolescence Breaks Records. The first ever programme from a streaming platform to top the UK weekly viewing figures. Is this an aberration or the new norm?
Posters Out Of Focus. A pixelated movie quiz that becomes clearer with each guess.
Everything Communicates. Don’t just limit media planning to what’s on offer to be bought.
Pierre Novellie’s 10 Funniest Videos. Discover the funniest videos on the internet.
Peace out ✌️
Alex