9 Digital Storytelling Tips From Star Wars. How ad agencies change and evolve in the digital age. The good folks of Cleveland’s advertising community recently invited me to keynote at an AAF event there.
Cleveland is a pretty nice city and to my surprise is a foodie town — it’s the home of Eric Williams – and even the some of the suburban restaurants are pretty darn good. Anyway, they wanted to hear a little bit of my story, the culture and transformation of Mullen and some thoughts on how we think about the business today and where it might be going. Here’s the deck I shared. As is typical for me, the slides don’t say much without a voice over, but here’s the story in a nutshell Slide 1: You don’t survive in this business, from the past to the present, or from the present to the future, without constantly evolving and embracing change. Slide 2: In 1983 we launched the computer shoe for Puma. The first: the sneaker maker asked the question, “Can we build it?” The second point: we made ads. (Slide 15–16) Once ideas were crafted out of words, pictures and stories. Our culture: Curiosity.
Technology And Advertising, Together At Last. I suspect 2011’s Cannes Lions festival may be looked back upon as the year advertising and technology agreed to meet and get married on the beach.
Sure, previous years have seen tech company attendance (Yahoo! Is a regular at the festival) but this year the commitment to one another was unprecedented, visible and visceral. Unquestionably, the two industries have much still to work out about each other. Nonetheless, the re-branding of that bastion of old school ad cool, Cannes Lions, as a ‘festival of creativity’ this year signaled a broadening mindset. And Facebook’s VP of Global Marketing Solutions, Carolyn Everson, took a big step towards agencies, speaking compellingly about Facebook as a “platform for creativity” and the company’s desire to “stay small and empower agencies.”
This shared acceptance spilled out beyond the seminar speeches and awards. Mel Exon is a Managing Partner of BBH and founder of BBH Labs. [Image: Flickr user Giampaolo Macorig] R/GA Tech Blog » The Great Divide. Smart brands realize that to succeed they need to bridge the gap between marketing and IT.
North of the Arctic Circle, a top priority for fishermen is to catch and dry enough char to last the winter. Fishermen near the equator race to market before insects and bacteria spoil their catch. Climate is the driving factor shaping these vastly different fishing practices. In many corporations, the same is true for marketing and IT departments. Previously, marketing and IT departments worked independently of one another. While both kinds of executives share high-level goals, their priorities differ.
Unfortunately, that boat is rocking. The solution is climate control. Here are four simple steps that CEOs can take to control climate. 1. 2. 3. 4. The digital revolution is blurring the line between IT and marketing. This article originally appeared on Forbes.com. Agencies As Incubators. Does it make sense for an ad agency to launch an incubator for tech start-ups?
You could (and many no doubt would) say that this was merely a distraction from the day job. An unnecessary aberration from what agencies are meant to be doing. Personally, I think it makes a bunch of sense. Here's why. This year's Cannes Lions seemed to be a marker in the sand of how the tech and ad worlds are increasingly colliding (or 'marrying on the beach', as Mel eloquently put it). The Portland Incubator Experiment has been going for a couple of years, actively supported by Wieden & Kennedy, and serving "as a hub for community, entrepreneurship, and creative thinking.
" This reminded me of this rather intriguing (and anonymous) answer on Quora about how Apple uses its significant cash reserves to maintain a decisive advantage over its competitors in product quality. What Apple have foreseen, is the advantage that comes from building a unique pipeline of smart cutting-edge technology. Image courtesy.