The world's worst advertising agency scope of work defined by a marketer. I know that no one except lawyers, and some procurement people enjoy reading contracts, but in fact contracts are interesting and important documents as they define the terms and conditions of a relationship between two parties. My legal friends tell me that most litigation is due to the variations of interpretation of the language within the contracts and disagreement over the meaning of those interpretations and the consequences and implications. Therefore imagine my surprise and horror when asked to review a current agency contract worth several million dollars which defined the scope of work of the agency as: “To provide the strategic, creative and production implementation to fulfil the advertising requirements of the <company> as directed by the Marketing Department”. While it is short and simple and could be seen as an excellent description of the services the agency is to provide, it is no “scope of work”.
In fact it is a particularly bad scope of work. Why? The Most Creative Country In The World. Cannes has wrapped, and that means it is Lion counting time. While big countries such as USA, England, Brazil or Germany can be proud of their mountains of shiny metal, one tiny nation regularly defies the odds: New Zealand. In 2011 Kiwis pocketed 1 Lion per 155,989 citizens.
And since they enjoy taking the piss out of themselves as well as sticking it to the Australians, here is a fun film advertising their national ad award (Axis). And yes, it won a 2012 Lion as well. Notes: There is a creative rivalry between Auckland and Wellington. Apologies to Martina and her native country, Italy. Agency: Special Group. Get On The Shelf. Top Executive Recruiters Agree There Are Only Three True Job Interview Questions. The only three true job interview questions are: 1. Can you do the job? 2. Will you love the job? 3. Can we tolerate working with you? That’s it. Click here for more on the only three true job interview questions for potential board directors Click here for more on acing your answers to these interview questions Can You Do the Job? Executive Search firm Heidrick & Struggles CEO, Kevin Kelly explained to me that it’s not just about the technical skills, but also about leadership and interpersonal strengths.
You can’t tell by looking at a piece of paper what some of the strengths and weaknesses really are…We ask for specific examples of not only what’s been successful but what they’ve done that hasn’t gone well or a task they’ve, quite frankly, failed at and how they learned from that experience and what they’d do different in a new scenario. Kevin Kelly at World Economic Forum (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Will You Love the Job? Can We Tolerate Working With You? Warren Buffett On Housing Market: I Was 'Dead Wrong' OMAHA, Neb. — Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said Saturday that he was "dead wrong" with a prediction that the U.S. housing market would begin to recover by now, but he remains optimistic about the nation's economy.
In his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Buffett said he is sure housing will recover eventually and help bring down the nation's unemployment rate. But he did not predict when that will happen. Investors eagerly await the letter from Buffett, 81, the so-called Oracle of Omaha, who built a roughly $44 billion fortune by following a steadfast, no-nonsense investing strategy. Buffett said housing "remains in a depression of its own," but he predicted, in typical plainspoken style, that the housing market will come back because some human factors can't be denied forever.
"People may postpone hitching up during uncertain times, but eventually hormones take over," he wrote. The housing prediction proved painful for Berkshire Hathaway. Online: KONY 2012. The Credit Card Is The New App Platform. OPINION: Why would clients say 'no' to 37 per cent better agency performance? - Blogs & Opinions - Opinion. Cost of Living Comparison Between Sydney, Australia And London, United Kingdom. Droga5 Creative Invents Adhesive Bandages That Save Lives.
Next time you cut your finger and need an adhesive bandage, you could save someone's life in the process. Not your own life, of course—unless that paper cut is particularly deep. You could save someone else's life—someone who needs a bone-marrow transplant—thanks to Graham Douglas, a creative at Droga5. Douglas has come up with an ingenious way of spurring marrow-donor registrations—he's getting Help Remedies to package donor kits with its adhesive bandage products. All you need is a drop of blood to complete the registration—a drop that may well be available if you're reaching for a bandage. Help Remedies—whose strange and compelling advertising we've written about before—introduced the product on Monday. It's called "Help I've cut myself & I want to save a life. " For Douglas, it was very personal project. Top10 strangest beer commercials.
Ranging from ‘WTF’ weird to ‘offensive-on-so-many-levels’ weird, these beer commercials come to you from across the world and the internet. Note that we use the criteria ‘strange’, ‘beer’ and ‘commercial’ very loosely, and please also note that numbers 6 and 3 contain blood. On that note, we bring you this instalment of Marketing‘s Top10 – the strangest beer commercials we could find: 10. Japanese beer for kids This one is last because it’s not actually beer – but it is a drink coloured, packaged and promoted to resemble beer, marketed to kids. If you can’t see the videos below, please refresh this page 9. Not as strange in content as some of the others, the weirdness here is wondering why Bud wanted the audience to associate the smell of burning horse gas with their beverage. 8. Even the ad is old style… because it is, well, old. 7. SERIOUS WARNING: This ad was a joint venture with a Sea Shepherd anti-whaling campaign about 5 years ago. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.
Related posts. Mobile Trends 2020 Africa. Nike announces FuelBand smart wristband. 12 Social Loan Opportunities - From Youth-Oriented Finances to Collateral-Free Microcredit. In the early 1990s, Muhammad Yunus founded the Grameen Bank, which at the time -- due to its social loan opportunities -- revolutionized the way in which business people consider people in the Majority World as a profitable market in and of themselves. The Grameen Bank uses a system of peer-pressure to allow for collatoral-free microcredit. By creating innovative and purpose-driven products, loan providers targeting the bottom of the pyramid prove that it pays off -- socially and economically. That profit, however, is not the only bottom line. Social and environmental factors are increasingly important, of course in the social business space, but also for corporates who are merging toward a middle-ground.
This top list of social loan opportunities explores a different way to lend whether it be through community, microfinance or an apt mix of both. How To Be An Optimist In A Pessimistic Time. Editor’s note: Contributor David Kirkpatrick the author of The Facebook Effect and founder of the Techonomy Conference, taking place Nov. 13-15 in Arizona. It’s no secret to most readers at TechCrunch that technology is changing the world. Unfortunately, there are a surprising number of people who don’t get it. Many of them, even more unfortunately, are important leaders in business, other powerful institutions, and⎯most⎯governments. To meet the challenges that face us⎯whether as leaders of organizations, as leaders of countries, or as the global community addressing our collective challenges⎯we will only be successful if we unreservedly embrace technology and innovation as essential tools.
For those of us who believe in the vast potential of technology to solve problems, it is both an exciting and a frustrating time. Those tech-empowered billions in the developing world will not be satisfied languishing in second-class status. Despite all our optimism, tech is no panacea. Infographic: How, When & Where People Share Content. Today being Wednesday, the odds are better than any other day you’ll share this post with someone else. Or so say the stats from social sharing service AddThis, one of several it compiled into an infographic. Other interesting stats? People tend to share the most around 9:30 Eastern Time (so we cunningly timed this post for just before that peak moment),75% of clicks on a share will happen within the first day that the content is sharedMost users click within 2 minutes of a shareCopy-and-paste to share can be used up to 10 times more than those social sharing buttons out there More from the infographic: Want the infographic for yourself?
The full-size files were provided through the Clearspring Flickr account here (Clearspring owns AddThis). Most Shared In 2011 AddThis also told us that among the most shared content in 2011 from its tracking were: Social Sharing “Half-Life” & More Information Related Topics: Channel: Social | Infographics | Social Media Marketing | Stats: General. TV Ads' New Digital Role - Shiv Singh. By Shiv Singh | 11:45 AM November 10, 2011 Television advertising has undergone significant changes in the last 30 years. However, it is arguably on the verge of its greatest changes ever. From where I sit as the Global Head of Digital at PepsiCo Beverages, charged with navigating our brand’s foray into the digital world, I see three big changes: –The value we put on an advertisement will change as we seek to account for engagement metrics in the pricing.
–The narrative arch will change as we think of the advertisement as a trailer versus the whole story. –Location-aware technologies will force a greater degree of engagement on a format that had historically been passive, impersonal and certainly without any extensions. When you look at the statistics, the reasons are obvious. 1. 3. 4. 5. 6. Startups For Good: The New Breed Of Social Impact Incubators. It takes a village to raise a child, but it takes an ecosystem to scale a business that will transform the world. For many industries, support networks already exist in the form of business incubators, accelerators, venture capital, and other tools that will help grow an organization.
For businesses designed with social and environmental impact in mind, there are far fewer resources to nurture them to world-class status. That’s the niche Mission Markets hopes to fill. So far, the company--essentially an integrated platform providing access to investment capital, technology, markets, and advice--has reported success turning around (or resurrecting) some of the best ideas from corporate R&D labs, university departments, and failed startups out in the wild. But getting a new investment model, and the support systems, off the ground is a difficult task that few have attempted. That’s a contentious figure (and too far into the future to have much basis in reality).
26 Promising Social Media Stats for Small Businesses. Is your small business “all in” with social media? New research shows incredible opportunity for small businesses. Keep reading to discover why social media is changing small business for the better. Six months ago, I highlighted many benefits of social media for small business, but several new research articles add urgency to this message. Swiftly Changing Landscape Social media marketing is a rapidly changing environment, as we all know. But the good news is that your customers are embracing social media as a normal part of their lives. The following 26 stats should impress upon you the importance of developing a social media strategy for your business. #1: There are now more than 800 million active Facebook users, with over 200 million added in 2011.
Facebook is growing rapidly. Nielsen found the following in their 3Q 2011 Social Media Report: #2: Over 80% of all Americans use a social network. #3: Americans spend more time on Facebook than any other U.S.website. Key Takeaways: Key Takeaway: Gapminder: Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view. 5 Steps for a Successful QR Code Marketing Campaign. Hamilton Chan is CEO and founder of Paperlinks, which provides the leading QR code infrastructure for businesses. Codes generated through Paperlinks app can be scanned by the free Paperlinks iPhone app or by any QR code reader on any smartphone platform. While the debate rages on whether QR codes are a passing fad or a marketing phenomenon, those little suckers continue to pop up all over the place. From product packaging to retail signs and even to food, almost any surface in the universe seems fair game for a QR code.
However, if brands deploy QR codes merely to claim they are using the latest social media marketing tool, then QR codes are doomed to fall in the “fad” bin, never to realize their full potential. SEE ALSO: Why QR Codes Are Here to Stay So, how can you assess whether you are using QR codes to their full potential? 1. The first thing to realize is that QR codes can be as much about utility as they are about marketing. 2. 3. Understand that looks matter. 4. 5.
7 Ways To Build A Brand From Scratch, Inspired By "Playground Sessions" Used to be the best an agency could do is build a rep as a stellar service provider. But recently, they've become more entrepreneurial--building their own brands along with their client's fortunes. Take agency BBH and its brand development unit Zag, launched in 2006. The company has developed a number of intellectual property projects, taking to market the Ila personal security alarm in the U.K. and Mrs. O, a book and site about the first lady’s style, out of New York. Its latest effort, Playground Sessions, developed out of Zag New York, may be its most ambitious. Playground Sessions is a new human/software combo approach to learning to play an instrument. Playground Sessions allows users to learn piano by playing popular tracks, with Sides acting as a step-by-step video guide. Zag worked for two years with its two partners to bring the product to market. “We identified different territories of brand lag and one was around adult learning,” says Vance, who joined Zag in 2009. 1. 2. 3.
DO IT THEN FIX IT | Dave Trott's Blog | CST The Gate. The Elements of Fucking Style. FailCon | 2011 Highlights. The 99 Percent - It's not about ideas. It's about making ideas happen. Infographic: The anatomy of an agency « Big Orange Slide. Ideavelopmentreation Outside the agency environment, I was introduced to Agile development: [...]
Forgiving a pretty face In the late spirit of Valentine’s day, I’ve been thinking [...] …And a Social New Year Evolution of the Community Manager as we know it: The profile [...] The Season of Giving ‘Work hard, play harder’, the phrase often used to describe [...] Infographic: The anatomy of an agency The following infographic was a joint collaboration between Grip’s own Julia Morra and Trevor Gourley. Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
BS&T Mobile. CONTACT + 2. Internet Trends 2011. Moneyball. How BNP Paribas Drove Customer Acquisition via Facebook on the Anniversary of its Virtual Branch. BMF Short Snacks - A short snack of inspiration, innovation and general genius that we have seen from the world of communications and beyond.