Show don´t tell why you are good. Actions speak louder!

I love this campaign from Forsman & Bodenfors. It´s a part of the "exaggerate trend" where more and more brands are not just telling what makes their products really awesome, but actually shows it by overstating the practical benefit - and in that way making it emotional.

The world-record holding tightrope walker was challenged by Volvo to walk between two semi-trailers, speeding toward a tunnel in order to demonstrate the precision of Volvo’s FH trucks. Scary!!!!

Another example of a brand that exaggerates. From Psfk: 

VENDING MACHINE DISPENSES CHINA PLATES [VIDEO]

Corelle wanted to demonstrate how chip-resistant its dinnerware was, so it set up a machine that dropped down its plates when customers purchased them.

Agency Grey in China developed a unique promotion to demonstrate the strength of Corelle‘s dinnerware. The company wanted to demonstrate that its products were chip-resistant, so a vending machine was set up to dispense plates to customers. People could purchase the plates the same as they would a typical vending machine snack and they dropped down without a scratch. You can see the machine in action in the video below:

via PSFK: http://www.psfk.com/2012/08/china-plate-vending-machine.html#ixzz256IR61PH

Planning is useless and a waste of time and money

Is planning and strategy useless?

I´ve worked at agencies where planning is seen as "overhead", something extra, like a little decoration to add on to the most important creative work. Where deep knowledge is seen as unnecessary - "it only complicates things".

They might be right, those people. I am not sure. Agencies who are planning hostile win awards and those who have loads of strategists fail. After all, advertising is a creative art, and it´s mysterious and magical in its way to think completely different and evoke emotions by avoiding the straight line from message to receiver.

Maybe my role is pointless. Maybe I just disturb by adding too much insight on the market, the product, the brand, the consumer? I read a lot, spend hours trawling through articles, blogs, websites and videos to find out more - to find those nuggets of insights that will lead to revelations about the relationship between brand and consumer. To find out what really triggers them. To understand them beyond "women 22-24 y old who buy shampoo".

When it comes to shampoo I don´t need to know everything about the active ingredients or what the factory it´s made in looks like. There are such things as "too much information" - but it can be interesting to look at women´s beauty regime, psychological phenomenon when it comes to shampoo ads, trends in beauty or retail, lifestyle trends, how people speak about hair and shampoo on blogs or to interview people on brand perceptions, their view on priorities and usage. From hours spent on digging there may be insights that makes the strategy clearer, edgier.

Or not.

You could just make an ad that looks like most. Just use a sexier lady and more foam. Just say "shampoo" with a hotter voice or add a little "made from extracts from exotic flowers in remote places".  And it can work! Creative people can even be truly creative and make untraditional ads that makes you love the brand.

Sometimes I doubt the value of myself. Especially when I meet amazing talented creative people, or when I read bunches of articles without finding much new, or when others doubt the value of me.

I love my job and of course I find myself very important - LOL - but it´s a fact that strategy sometimes is simpler than you think. And it´s also true that if you never even consider finding insights, building brands, choosing among paths, using the left brain, you will most likely fail.

Guess we need a combo. Common sense. The ability to see our own value or uselessness and be creative on the subject of planning or not planning.

What do you think?

Girls: Be flirtatious but not friendly if you want to win business

Roger Dooley´s blog at Forbes.com is a gem - always full of interesting, new and useful information. Today I´m learning about something that women have known forever though...Women who flirt a little in business meetings (with men) are winners in the "get the job-promotion-business" game. Being a prude buddy, trying to act "professional", gets you nowhere. OK, I hear ya...

Friendly or flirting?

"Is flirting in a business environment ever a good thing for women? The answer is a qualified “yes.” New data shows that women using what the researchers call “feminine charm” achieved better results in business negotiations. Flirtatious (vs. merely friendly) behavior also had a positive effect.

Researchers from UC Berkeley and the London School of Economics looked at both social charm and flirtatious behavior by conducting negotiations using male and female subjects, reporting the results in thePersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin. The result of multiple experiments enabled the researchers, led by Berkeley’s Laura Kray, to conclude that using feminine charm produced better outcomes. This was true both in “zero sum” negotiations, where one party’s gain is the other’s loss, and in cooperative negotiations where the gain by both parties can be increased by working together.

You might wonder how the researchers define charming behavior. Here’s how they instructed female participants in one of their experiments to turn on the charm:

In the feminine charm condition, females were advised to be animated in their body movements, make frequent eye contact with their partner, smile, and laugh. They were further advised to be playful and to compliment their partner in as sincere a fashion as possible.

Flirty vs. Friendly

Two key components of feminine charm are flirtation and friendliness. It appears that both are important. Friendliness, which signals a focus on others, increases likability but also indicates a weaker negotiating stance. Flirtation signals a concern for self, which could decrease likability but increase negotiating strength.
One of the interesting conclusions was that friendly women pay an economic price because by demonstrating warmth signals they are seen asless competitive and self-interested. Being flirtatious (and hence apparently self-interested) helped women negotiate better deals. The exception: the deals were worse if the flirting was perceived by their male counterpart as merely being friendly.
In short, the research suggests that the ideal negotiating style for women is to avoid a neutral style and instead use feminine charm. The “charm” should include both friendly behavior and flirtation. The ultimate goal is to be viewed as likable but also motivated by self-interest.

(I feel compelled to add that this research didn’t include any highly aggressive flirtation or behavior that might cross either legal boundaries or typical company guidelines. It would be a mistake to think that if a little flirting is good, a lot is better!)

The “Friendly” Trap

How Women Should Negotiate

Note that much of the perception of “flirty vs. friendly” is in the eyes of the negotiating partner. That is, the same behaviors could be interpreted either way. This suggests that women who want to optimize their social charm benefits need to gauge the reactions of their counterpart to avoid sending the wrong signal.

While all of the experiments were one-time negotiations, this advice should be relevant to more general behavior in the workplace. Women who use feminine charm effectively with co-workers, bosses, and employees will convey the message that they are friendly but not overly accommodating.

Social marketers think all people want is info. Hahahahaha. So funny

Today I´ve borrowed from Brian Solis who found research from Pivot:

-  76% of marketers feel they know what their customers want yet only 34% have asked customers. 

- 83% of consumers seek deals, but only 53% of businesses think that’s what customers really want. 

- 45% of marketers feel that rewards programs are important to customers and 70% of social consumers thought otherwise. 

- 59% and 58% of social customers wish to engage businesses for buying insights and customers service respectively; on the contrary only 37% of marketers believe that these services are in demand by their customers. 

- There’s agreement between customers and marketers on product feedback. 55% of consumers and 53% of marketers would like to collaborate on improving products and experiences.

These are data proving social marketers have no clue on what to offer... As always, marketers and brands are stuck in the belief that they are in the centre of the world and that people are dyyyying to know more about what they need to offer. Sigh... We all need to face the fact that people are horribly selfish and all they want is goodies for themselves :) Offer what they search, and you will be loved:

Also have a look at:http://howwemove.blogspot.se/2012/05/statistics-on-how-we-use-facebook-and.html http://howwemove.blogspot.se/2012/01/why-does-4000-people-like-shoe-brand-on.html http://howwemove.blogspot.se/2012/05/statistics-on-how-we-use-facebook-and.html

Love this campaign

Thanks to Campaign Brief:

Droga5 Sydney smashes social media records and one billion target with UN World Humanitarian Day campaign featuring Beyoncé's latest single

Monday 20, August 2012 at 8:03 AM by CB

  Comments (19)

Droga 5 Sydney's campaign for the UN's World Humanitarian Day smashed its social reach target of one billion people following the release of 'I Was Here' - Beyoncé's latest single and WHD 2012 anthem.
 
The social reach for the message - encouraging people to do something good for someone else - hit the goal of 1 billion less than 20 minutes before 9 a.m. (US Eastern Standard time) Yesterday August 19, which was the deadline to sign up for a new technology platform called Thunderclap - owned and developed by Droga5 - that aggregated the social reach of each campaign supporter.
 
VIEW THE FILM CLIP

To introduce World Humanitarian Day to the world, Droga5's Sydney and New York offices partnered with the United Nations, Beyoncé, Kenzo Digital and RSA to create a campaign that would make August 19 a day to remember.
 
"There are seven billion people in the world and we reached hundreds of millions of them with our message. People really care," said Valerie Amos, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs.

At 9 am (US Eastern Standard Time) on 19 August more than one billion messages were shared at the same time: "This World Humanitarian Day I‟m doing something good, somewhere, for someone else. Join Me!" Upon navigating to whd-iwashere.org, people can now mark their good deed on a global interactive map.

The campaign numbers soared following the release of the "I Was Here‟ music video by Beyoncé on 18 August, whose support for the cause, alongside other major brands and celebrities, put this campaign on the global stage.

The agency turned Beyoncé's song into an iconic symbol and geographic marker that represents individual humanitarian actions wherever they happen, and allows individuals to make their own mark on the world and say 'I Was Here'.
 
The campaign launched with a unique performance by Beyoncé in the UN General Assembly Hall. Accompanied by a giant projection, and filmed to create a music video, the song told the story of humanitarian work around the globe.
 
Yesterday (August 19), Droga5 released the video and the single message around the world to over a billion people. It encouraged people to do one act - simply something good, somewhere, for someone else.
 
With the help of the social amplification platform 'Thunderclap', 'I Was Here' has become the largest single social media message in history, supported by brands, celebrities and events across the globe.
 
The World Humanitarian Day 2012 campaign was powered by a new technology platform called Thunderclap that aggregated the social reach of each campaign supporter.
 
Thunderclap tallied the number of friends supporters had on Facebook and/or the number of followers they had on Twitter to determine each individual's social reach and add it to the total. 

For celebrities and big brands, the number of likes each had on their Facebook fan pages were substituted for number of friends. The Twitter calculation did not change.
 
In China, social reach was calculated based on the number of each supporter's Weibo followers.

Supporters included influential individuals and brands alike, from Michelle Obama, Jackie Chan, Lady Gaga, Ben Affleck and Kaka to Coca-Cola, Sony Music, PUMA, Oreos, MTV, Toshiba, Gucci, Hershey's Kisses, Johnson & Johnson and Pepsi.

The screen used for the event in the UN General Assembly (created by SuperUber) was the biggest indoor screen ever created, weighing more than 7 thousand pounds and measuring 10,304 square feet.

On August 19, World Humanitarian Day events were hosted in countries around the world, including Australia, Papua New Guinea, Ethiopia, Colombia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"Creating ideas with a genuine sense of humanity has always been central to our approach, so forging such an exciting relationship with the UN is a brilliant outcome," says David Nobay (above), creative chairman, Droga5 Sydney. "The fact that our first campaign comes out of Sydney and is being produced in New York is strangely fitting given the UN's commitment to working within the global village. I couldn't be happier."

Says David Droga, founder and creative chairman, Droga5: "There are few forces for good as extensive and important as the United Nations. Being able to work with them and other global aid organizations for World Humanitarian Day is a humbling and extraordinary opportunity."


Supporters included:
 
Musicians;
Lady Gaga
Rihanna
Shakira
Chris Brown
Justin Bieber
JayZ
Hilary Duff
Keith Urban
 
Screen stars;
Jackie Chan
Ben Affleck
Charlize Theron
Oprah Winfrey
Katie Couric
Jamie Oliver
 
Brand support;
PUMA
Gucci
Coca-Cola
Pepsi
Oreo

World Humanitarian Day 2012_I Was Here Campaign_Credits(v2).pdf

Spend the night at Ikea!

Don´t we LOVE this idea? Can´t wait to spend a night at Ikea :) From Psfk: 

IKEA PLANS TO DEVELOP BUDGET HOTELS

The Swedish retailer’s latest offering will be a line of affordable hotels in Europe offering a boutique experience.

By Emma Hutchings on August 16, 2012.

Swedish retail giant IKEA is planning to get involved in the hotel industry for its latest offering; a range of budget design hotels across Europe. The company is looking to develop at least 100 hotels in countries such as the UK, Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands, which will offer boutique styling at affordable prices.

The Financial Times reports that the budget hotels will not use the IKEA name and will be run by an established hotel operator instead of the Swedish company. The whereabouts of the first hotel in Germany is expected to be revealed within the next few weeks, and talks are being held with hotel operators to rapidly implement this concept.

IKEA

via PSFK: http://www.psfk.com/2012/08/ikea-budget-hotels.html#ixzz23mPEhIWT

So wonderful

The Metropolitans - who are they?

United Minds in Stockholm (who I worked for during 5 years, yay) has together with Metro (a free newspaper) interviewed 15 000 people from 30 cities around the world to find out who they are, and they have found a "metropolitan mindset". Check out the vid:

 


The Metropolitans identify themselves as strongly with their city (67%) as with their nation (69%).

- The city is our new nation. Rapid urbanisation combined with the effects of globalisation is producing
a class of citizens who share many values, habits and defining characteristics related to urban living,
says Paul Alarcón, Research Director, United Minds.

The constant meeting and melding of cultures, ideas and races in modern cities produces a global and open mindset. Metropolitans are excited by new challenges, not scared of them.  Metropolitans are affluent, socially liberal, mobile, globally and environmentally conscious and well-informed. They are less defined by race, culture and geography than by their common citizenship of cities. They
embrace the diversity of urban life - with 65% saying they would rather live in an ethnically diverse community than in a homogenous neighbourhood.  53% of Metropolitans also think same-sex marriage should be legal.

- Cities are inherently diverse. Tolerance and understanding are prerequisites to enjoy life in places
you have to share with millions of others. In the long run, the emergence of the Metropolitan mindset
is bad news for nationalist parties around the world, says Wilf Maunoir, Global Research Director,
Metro International.

Recent research strongly suggests that the better informed you are, the more broad-minded and tolerant you are likely to be. The Metropolitan survey reveals that city dwellers are heavy news consumers and that they are equally interested in international news (67%) as they are in local news (65%).
Their interest in the world goes further than reading newspapers. Nine out of 10 are interested in travelling and visiting new places and every second Metropolitan has travelled abroad for leisure in the past year. As urbanization continues globally and cities get increasingly connected to each other, the future for narrowmindness and nationalism looks bleak.

A helmet that signals when you turn and stop

I love the Psfk newsletter, where people from all over the world write about innovative ideas, crazy communication campaigns and so on. It makes me curious and impressed by humans. Oh dear, how creative we have the potential to be! 


This new invention is awesome, don´t you think? :)
 

MOTORCYCLE HELMET SYNCS WITH TURN SIGNALS AND BRAKES, LIGHTS UP TO ALERT DRIVERS

The Signal concept helmet light is a removable attachment that syncs with your motorcycle’s brakes and indicators via RFID signals.

By Emma Hutchings on August 1, 2012.

• ‘Signal‘ is a helmet attachment that aims to improve motorcycle safety through advanced technology. Made from a stretchable reflector fabric and a lightweight fiber-optic fabric called Lumigram, it easily fits over any full-face or open-face helmet. The concept, currently featured on product development site Quirky, could enter production soon if enough interest is shown.

‘Signal’ syncs with your motorcycle’s brake lights and turn signals via easy-to-install RFID transmitters. So when the brakes are applied or the rider uses a turn signal, the light on the helmet indicates these to give the motorcycle increased visibility to other drivers.

via PSFK: http://www.psfk.com/2012/08/motorcycle-helmet-turn-signals-brakes.html#ixzz22McpAyJs

Smokers kill their friends - beautiful ads

This bunch of ads are amazing. And they point out a "new" problem. Smokers don´t just kill themselves, but also their friends!! 


I really can´t understand smoking in public is allowed and accepted, considering how disgusting it is when you sit at an outdoors café and get the dirty fumes all over you ... I hope this ad will work, but I´m not sure. We know smokers are a tough bunch, as are all people who are addicted. They will probably think it looks pretty and go out to admire their own smoke creations :) 


From The Inspiration Room: The Lung Cancer Foundation of America reminds us that 60 percent of new lung cancer diagnoses will be in non-smokers, with “The Haze”, a spot developed at Make Visual. A ballet dancer swirls through smoke.

The Haze spot was developed at Make Visual, Minneapolis, using 3DS Max and Fume FX. Original music is by Horner Music.