Sledge Blog

Fast Strategy

I attended the first half of the IPA's Fast Strategy event earlier in the week. There were a number of great presentation but two stood out for me, the first was Adam Morgan, he of Eat Big Fish fame. Adam spoke about the value of brands identifying a monster to battle, these could be other companies, processes, the status-quo. A great example is Method who's entire business is based around fighting toxicity in the home. Amongst other things, Method created pop up stores where people can exchange their toxic products for Method products, in an amazing piece of theatre, the products they leave behind are removed by someone in a chemical protection suit.

Other examples of brands, people, organisations, identifying monsters are LoveFilm who fight the whole DVD rental process, Channel Four with Jamie's School Dinners and Oprah who has maintained her number one spot by constantly championing community monsters such as obesity.

To help you find a monster, Adam suggests exploring the 7 types of conflict found in stories; men v women, man v nature, man v machine etc. The value of a monster to a brand is that they threaten not just an individual but a whole community. Having this narrative of conflict to rub up against is powerful as it can highlight your own strengths and, let's face it, harnessing your consumers to fight a monster should be fun. 

Richard Storey from M&C Saatchi gave one of the most useful presentation I've ever heard. A simple list of top tips on how to find a strategy quickly, here goes:

Don't goal hog (leave something for the creatives to do)
Don't panic
Don't expect to get it brilliantly right (choose a route and go with it)
Turn the task into a challenge (sell more Shredded Wheat became can you eat three?)
Find the real problem
Be precise about what it is you want people to do
Prioritise one audience
Admire your audience (PG celebrated tea drinkers British stoicism)
Eddie Izzard's Secret (an insight is something you know, but don't know you know)
Find one fact
Redefine the competition (no frills airlines)
No idea, no strategy (develop creative alongside strategy)
Beware of fat words (quality, care trust - use more precise words)
Fish somewhere new (if the client is always looking in the provenance hole try something else)
Switch Categories (100% Pure New Zealand came from imagining NZ was a soap powder)
It's the beat you leave out (edit out the guff)
Scribbles look better when worked up
Keep your arse on the chair until you have an answer

Planning in Greenland

I heard a really thought provoking talk from John Grant, formally of St Luke's, this week. John was giving an overview of a book he is writing on the relationship between brands, marketing and the environment.  He started with a quote by Phil Gander on changing consumer attitudes to the environment - 'one of the most complex and speedy revolutions in consumer attitudes ever seen.' Having established that as well as  an ethical obligation there is a very definite consumer demand he explored the different ways in which brands can and are changing their behaviours and how they communicate those changes. His main points were:

Green is a principle not a proposition (ie people fundamentally choose Green & Black because it is nice chocolate)

You have to live up to the standards you set for yourself

It is a complex moving target (one week bio fuel is a good the next it isn't). The speed of change is dramatic.

John's blog is  well worth a look.

Jez

Trendwatching Predictions for 2007

The first trend briefing for 2007 from the cunning linguists at trendwatching.com includes their top 5 trends to watch for the year ahead, these include; Status Lifestyles, Transparency Tyranny,Web N+1, Trysumers and The Global Brain.

Most relevant to Sledge, (and we're very pleased to see it as a top 5 trend for 2007 as an agency that creates brand experiences!) would have to be the Trysumers overview, highlighting and developing their previous trend identified as Tryvertising. Since traditional advertising is as trusted as a certain president with two more years to go, trying out and sampling a brand/product/service is the new advertising. Find loads of examples in the Tryvertising briefing, in which it is stated that “introducing yourself and your products by letting people experience and try them out first, is a very civilized and effective way to show some respect.’’ Amen.

Little Thinking

One of the most interesting and thought provoking presentations at The Battle of Big Thinking was a presentation by Trevor Beattie. As you'd expect from a creative director and especially from Beattie, he completely debunked all the whole premise of the event. Instead he spoke in praise of little ideas and warned of what Russell Davies on his blog has referred to as the tyranny of the big idea.

This all made a lot of sense; if you spend your whole life searching for big ideas you will miss a lot of little ideas. Where we can all make a real difference to the projects we work on is to focus on the little things. Often clients don't want to hear our so called big ideas, they just want the best possible result for the particular project they are responsible for and great brands are in fact a collection of lots of brilliant little ideas. Remember when Innocent first started putting fun messages on their labels, a little idea that really added to the brand's personality.

Often tiny new businesses show evidence of great little thinking, The Bush Garden  on Goldhawk Road is a great example - you get a real sense that this is someone's baby and they have spent a lot of time thinking about every detail. Yet many big brands miss so many opportunities to improve the little things, perhaps because everyone is scratching their head looking for the big idea.