A statuesque 2017.

Buon giorno. I've sat through a few award show debriefs recently and thought I'd ping you the latest. First up, dead simple print (hurrah!). Burger King has a USP over other burgers. It's flame grilled. What's the simplest demonstration of that? How about genuine photos of their restaurants that have caught fire as a result...

And you can see a couple more of the executions here.

So. This next one was the biggest winner at Cannes this year. And it's been pointed out, it's THE most offline execution possible. The statue of the Fearless Girl. McCann made a bronze statue of a little girl and placed it so it was staring down the Wall Street bull - to highlight an investment company which specialises in funds with a high proportion of women leaders.

Check out the case study:


A bold initiative to get gender on the agenda? Or a cynical play for the judges' attention? I dunno. But apparently, this started as a B2B print brief: let other companies know that this fund does well because it has more women on the board. Cynical or not, it's a hell of a response to something that should have been a half page trade press ad...

Sculpture seems to be the in thing this year. This next one is Graham. He's an artist's impression of what a human would need to look like if he was born to survive a car crash.
So there you go. If you don't look like Graham, don't drive like a c*nt.

Up next, the second of three appearances for Burger King. Nice direct idea, again dramatising the flame grilled difference. Here's everything you need to make a Whopper at home. You just have to provide the magic ingredient yourself...


Now, you've heard me go on about 1:9:90 ideas. This is like, No one:9:90. It's fantastic, but the chances of it working for more than a handful of people is ridiculously tiny. But true to the formula, just getting it out there is enough to catch the attention of millions... This relies on you having one of those Google Home 'assistants' near enough to your TV speaker when the ad is running.


I love this next one. Dead simple but dead smart. Get kids to want to advertise milk and in the process, turn their casts into a new media format.

Come on then. Let's get digital. Couple of relatively simple ones to start with. Snickers has a campaign idea of 'You're not yourself when you're hungry'. So eat a Snickers and you'll get back to normal. There is also an expression the kids use these days of being 'hangry' - that grumpy state you get in when you're hungry. So Snickers set out to help the angriest people in the world; which is everyone on the internet.

It doesn't really come out in the case study, but this next one has a wonderful insight. The Sydney Opera House is one of the most photographed buildings in the world. But no bugger goes inside (and spends any money). So this idea uses Facebook tagging. When people tag that the building in their snaps, they get an instant response in their feed, inviting them inside...

 

Okay, brace yourself. You may or may not have concerns about this next idea. Frankly, it scares the living piss out of me. This is what it takes to win the digital category at Cannes. To launch a service that helps to launch digital businesses, this idea created and promoted NINE fake services. On the understanding that a clever use of search engine optimisation would lead everyone back to the real thing being advertised.

 

Nine. Nine entire, fleshed out campaigns, to launch one digital service. Was there a simpler way? Hell yes, I can think of loads that would take way less effort. But then, that's why I have a job signing off copy for leaflets and this smashed the Cyber Lions category. 

One more nod to sculpture now. This idea creates a new metal, 'Humanium'. It's made of melted down guns and can be turned into whatever you like (literally swords into ploughshares). A very neat framing of an idea that must have come up loads of times before.  

This is kinda smart for a cheap phone company. It set out to help its target audience 'boost their voice' at the most perfect moment in history to do so... 

And finally, a moment of light relief. I have no idea if this won anything or not but I love the insight. Look at any online reviews and someone will have put in a half arsed, pointless comment. What if you treated that comment as the epitome of the copywriter's craft and used it as your advertising line?

What would Tony Brignull say to this, I wonder?

2016.

What ho. Here's another little round up of some of the award winning stuff from Cannes this year. I didn't go myself. I sat in a conference room in London while people with sun tans pressed YouTube links...

Here are a couple of quick and easy ones that I really like. I think this first one is a cracker, because it proceeds from a strong insight into social media - you can't show women's nipples because your post will be removed. But it's perfectly acceptable to show men's.


Love this as well. It's product design as PR/advertising. Don't know what it says about the beer, but it brought the brewery to everyone's attention.


My colleague showed me this. He said his mate was on the judging panel and after sitting through worthy case study after worthy case study, this one just made them all laugh. I swear that's always worth considering.


Of course, there's a fine line. This idea not only won cock all, it was described by John Hegarty as the stupidest thing he's ever seen...


Back on the worthy side of things, here's something that proves advertising is piss. I think it's interesting because it's one of those things that 'changes the conversation'. Forget what harmful practices are doing to the planet. Here's what it's doing to your family.


A lot of people are raving about this. I must confess it leaves me cold. But the idea is that Sweden got its own phone number. As in, one number for the whole country. You ring it and a random Swede will answer. Why? Well, Sweden abolished censorship and Swedes are free to say whatever they like. But that's cool because they're cool. So as a tourism PR stunt, I believe the thought goes - come to Sweden because it's great. Ask any Swedish person. Which you can by ringing this number...


These last two are great and I've included them as 'holy shit, look at the sort of thing that's possible now.' But I'm not sure how it would relate back to student work. As in, I think these would be quite hard to describe in a theoretical competition entry. For me, they work because they were done, you can see how they worked, then track back through all the processes that made them possible.

First up, ING is a Dutch financial company. Yawn. They specialise in data-led investment services. Yaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwn. But suppose they used their data prediction model to do something other than picture the next financial opportunity.


And this is just Lockheed Martin showing off. But what I like is the evolution of VR from being a thing where you have to wear a headset and look like a twat, to being a thing that uses windows as screens to give a group the experience.


I'll leave you with an anecdote I heard from a presentation that made me smile. An ECD was championing diversity as a way to create new ideas. As an experiment, he got 10 people from non advertising backgrounds and gave them a brief to sell Converse trainers. Basically, Converse look best when they're worn in and scuffed up.

One of the ideas came from an investment banker. He suggested a pop-up shop in the middle of a council estate, with all sorts of rubble, oil spills and mud everywhere. And you had to shoplift a pair of Converse. If you could get them off the estate, they were yours. If the two security guards caught you, you'd be marched back to the shop and had to buy the trainers you messed up in all the crap you'd just run through.

 I think the idea is pretty average. But I loved the way the ECD pointed out - it came from an investment banker. And is born of the thought, if you can steal and get away with it, that's okay...

Cannes-do guy.

Here's a few things that tickled me in the 2015 Cannes Lions. These are very personal choices (a couple of them didn't actually win). But just thought I'd share as a sort of 'state of the advertising nation' right now. First up I love this. It was my favourite thing in the entire show. Neo nazis march in Germany every year and there's no legal way to prevent it. But why prevent it, when you can sponsor it? For every metre the nazis walked, a donation went to anti fascist causes. Presenting them with the dilemma - they either cancel their march, or walk and raise money against their cause. Genius.

 


So we worked on the WWF student brief. This idea had been entered, which has the creatures that will actually benefit from your donation thanking you in person. Nice enough.

 


In possibly the only light note of a very self important festival, here's an idea that for once means none of us are wankers for participating.

 


Here's one of those ideas that won nowt. I had a discussion with my bosses who said the case study let it down by being a bit dull. But the high concept is great. Prove how fast public transport is in Oslo by using it as a pizza delivery service.




I don't think this scored either but it's another great, simple product demo. Buy clothes. Get them filthy in amusing ways. Wash them in Radiant (detergent) and see if you can get the shop to take them back as an unworn return...




This one is incredibly powerful. To raise awareness for the African water crisis, this lady was entered into a French marathon. And just walked it with a container on her head and a sign saying 'I walk this far for water every day.' There were runners applauding her as they went past.




And here's the true state of modern comms. This started as social media disaster. A brand spokesman for Chevy dried up on live tv and could only mumble that their new vehicle had "class leading... technology... and stuff." Within seconds, he was being lambasted across twitter.

But within the hour, the brand (or rather their agency) very cleverly threw out all their carefully crafted headlines and endlines. And went with it, rebranding the entire campaign as - The new Chevy, with #technologyandstuff.

CLICK THIS LINK TO SEE THE CASE STUDY PAGE
An analyst reckoned the exposure created by the televised gaffe was worth $2.4 million to the brand.


On a final note, one of the campaigns that scooped the Grand Prix night after night was the Ice Bucket challenge. Interestingly, this didn't come from an agency. Just some ordinary people trying to raise awareness for family members and friends suffering from a disease. It became a global phenomenon. And it was humbling and moving to see a bunch of everyday folk being given a standing ovation and cheered by an auditorium packed with the great and the good of worldwide advertising (er, and me).

 

Mo' ideas, mo' problems. And vice versa.

A few more thoughts that may or may not be relevant. First up, free t-shirts given to right wing German skinheads after a music festival. The shirts, which bore a skull and crossbones symbol and the word 'Hardcore Rebels,' faded upon washing to reveal a hidden message: "If the shirt can change so can you. We can help you break with right-wing extremism." Ehhhh, the copy coulda been snappier, but the delivery is top notch. Tiny bit more here.

I actually met the guys who did this. In Germany, they promoted the eco creds of smart cars using 'green graffitti'. Basically, you cut a stencil then use a pressure washer to blast all the grime off of walls and pavements, leaving a cleaner bit of city in the shape of the car. Message received, all is forgiven.

Aaaaaaand finally, I love this. Dunno if you're familiar with all the times social media goes wrong. generally, a brand starts out by saying 'tell us what you think of us' and gets more than it bargained for. A fave was when Waitrose asked people to tweet 'why they shop at Waitrose' and the internet jumped at the chance to take the piss ("I shop at #Waitrose because Clarissa's pony won't eat Asda value straw"). Check out the other responses for a grin here. What has this got to do with anything? Well imagine what happened when Shell held a competition for people to create their own inspirational messages around Shell's pioneering work in the Arctic and their endline of "Let's Go". Sure enough, the online response was awesome and resulted in everything from "Because birds are like sponges for oil"and "You say catastrophe, we say opportunity!" It was a dreadful social media disaster.
Except it wasn't.
Because it wasn't Shell.
It was Greenpeace.
Or rather their fucking smart agency who understand how social media works and set up the hoax competition site knowing full well the internet would tear it pieces. Then they just sat back and watched it spread like an oilfield fire as everyone jumped online to put the boot in.
And spread Greenpeace's message for them way better than they could ever hope to themselves.
Hats off for that one, more about it here.

Thinking for change

Couple of examples and noodlings after our conversation.

First up, this is a cracker. The video is waaaaay too long but worth five mins to watch through once. They made it SO simple to change the world - all you had to do was flick a light switch. And this has rolled out to city after city around the world since.




By contrast, this video is arguably too short. But again, awesome simple thinking - give a dollar for a glass of tap water at restaurants.



It's not all 'new' thinking of course.

Your old mate Dave Trott worked out a cheap and simple way to raise a hell of a stink about the third world debt and hurt the Bank Of England while he did it. To refresh your memory with his write up click here.

And here's an example I remember from when I was a nipper. David Bellamy (yes, that David Bellamy) went round the USA with a backpack full of bricks. Whenever he went to the loo, he'd put two bricks in the cistern - thus reducing the amount of water used with every flush. Still wemarkably welevant. There's a tiny article about it if you click here.

I love this. Sick of X Factor finalists dominating the Christmas No1, a couple on Facebook just put up a post and said - hey, why don't we all get together and stick it to Simon Cowell by buying something else? These were just ordinary people, with nothing to gain. But by identifying a simple way to make a point (let's all pay 79p for a song with a chorus that goes "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me") they really struck a nerve. And the whole thing snowballed...



I reckon the key to all this is making things as simple as possible for the average punter to participate. Ask me to flick a light switch, sure no prob. Ask me to go out searching for this, spend time doing that and collect ten bin bags full of the other and you can stick yer cause.

So maybe a good way to think is about how simple a mechanic can be.

These examples aren't charity based, but by thunder they make it easy for me to get involved.

This example is for Tango, where you could get a Tango doll through the post and pay with the phone call to order it.

Here's one by my old agency Elvis. It's just a beer promo, but very clever - to tie in with the election, they branded London Pride pump handles. Same beer, but do you want it from the Tory, Labour or Liberal barrel? Getting me to register my opinions simply by drinking beer... now that's thinking.

A few thoughts.

I promised I'd jot down a few things and here they are. The main thing everyone seems to be banging on about is how 'social media' is changing the way we think about marketing brands. All sounds very modern and daunting. But I'm not so sure. Take a look at these examples. And just to give a little extra social media flavour, I've done this as a blog post. Social media used to share a little about social media. See what I did there? Get me.

For me, the important bit is that through the use of all this new social media stuff, people are the best advertising medium. That's nothing new. Word of mouth has been around since, well, mouths. Except of course, via the internet, the word can be posted, podcasted, tweeted and blogged right the way round the world. Not just muttered to your mate on the next barstool.

Take Twitter for instance. If you're not familiar with it, have a little look at this. It allows real time, online, bite sized conversations that hundreds of thousands of people can follow. Not surprisingly, agencies are starting to use it as a medium. Several brands are using it to have conversations with their customers. This idea pulls a Twitter feed into an online banner. If you're logged in to Twitter, the viewer can tweet their opinion - and that is what appears in the banner. So the customer literally writes the ad themselves. Read more here.

Here's another great way to get people talking. And find people to talk to. To see the first shot of Heath Ledger as the Joker in the new Batman movie, people could register by email to reveal a single pixel of the image. Thousands of people signed up within hours. Voila, the photo they wanted. Voila, massive database of interested punters. Full story here.

Behind both those examples though is very old fashioned thinking. Write and tell us what you think. And send away for an exclusive picture. For me, both have just used the internet as contemporary ways to implement age-old marketing.

Another word of mouth idea was used by my agency to win a pitch for Sailor Jerry rum. The main appeal of the brand is its authentic heritage and underground appeal. So the trouble is, as soon as you try to advertise it, it becomes mainstream. Our solution was to create a website that pulls everything that's already out there on the net into one place. So it's not a corporation telling you about the brand, it's other punters. Click the image to visit the site.

More and more, the gameplan seems to be to integrate online and the real world. How about this - to relaunch Monopoly, an agency put GPS devices in London taxis. You could go online and sign up to play, picking a taxi as your 'piece'. The taxi went about its day to day fares, and you were notified if it stopped at game relevant locations that you could buy or pay a fine if another player had already nabbed it. A giant, interactive, real life game. Click the picture for a movie.



When Google launched its Streetview capability, just for grins (and a little publicity) they created a real world game of Where's Wally? You had to use the technology to find him out on the streets somewhere. And here he is.

I love, love, love this. Check out this little 3 minute movie first.

The thing I like about it most is I'm not even sure what kind of idea it is. Is it a PR stunt? Is it advertising? Is it online? Who cares. It has the capacity for all these things, even on-pack promotion. Dead simple, 'dinosaur' thinking - If you can't take your mate to the pub, take the pub to your mate. But again, through the internet and webcams and the ability to chat online, what once would have garnered a few lines in the tabloids or got a mention on the nine o'clock news becomes a living, breathing event you can follow and participate in as it happens. A steel container, few classified ads (how fantastic is 'Position vacant: Doctor who can also weld') passage on a freighter and a website. In the grand scheme of things, it cost fuck all. (Click image below to enlarge.)

Clients want to see that agencies can utilise social media. This Turkish airline hid its pitch brief online, leaving a trail that could only be followed by someone familiar with the various channels. Don't tell me you can do this stuff, prove it. Daunting stuff - be interesting to see a solution that can top the ingenuity of the actual briefing. Full story here.

These guys know what they're about. They created a simple Facebook app whereby you could remove someone from your friends list and it would notify both the friend and Burger King. Get rid of ten friends and you'd get a free voucher for a Whopper. Not new thinking from a creative territory point of view - Do you love someone more than you love Brand X? But a very nous use of down-with-the-kids social media to apply it. Read more here.

That's all using the internet as it currently stands. But how about changing the way we interact with the internet itself? Have a little fun with this. It's the Don't Click It website.

Augmented reality is big at the minute, which can involve preprinted cards and phones and screens. But what's REALLY coming down the pike is not the combination of online and offline. It's a complete blurring between the two. Forget sitting at your computer, or even your smartphone. Soon enough, you will be able to use all the power and information of the internet as easily as looking at something.

This is 8 minutes long, but stick with it. The bit where a roomfull of nerds simultaneously wet themselves about 4 minutes in is worth the price of entry. It really starts to pick up after that too.

It all seems crazy rock and roll and hard to keep track of. But my thrust (ooh matron) is that underneath all the whizz bang technology, social media, web 2.0, interactive how'syerfather stuff is still straight ahead problem solving thinking. The real creativity is often done long before a pen touches a piece of layout paper. And there is absolutely nothing new in that.

Teach people to think about what the problem actually is and how to solve it. Everything else is just technique. Sure, be aware of what's out there and what's possible. But cracking that core thought is still at the heart of everything. That hasn't changed as far as I'm concerned. Though it could be I'm just the proverbial old dog...