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Who wants to volunteer and take on the new insurance account?

Speaking for EMEA country, no fingers will be raised and little to no excitement is to be expected from creatives when it comes to insurance marketing.

Insurance companies are believed to consist of boring bureaucrats, hopelessly lost on the square side and of no opportunity to sharpen your creative profile.

Something went wrong with the mindset of European creatives and needs adjustment and transformation. We are utterly trained to resolve issues no matter what.

A couple years ago, I returned to Frankfurt empty handed from an Allianz insurance pitch in Munich, a not so frequent incident, I must ad in my defense. I was with zentropy then, now MRM Worldwide and in retrospect, I’d say fair enough.

Being a sucker at failure, I researched learnings from US insurance companies and have come across an astonishing psychological finding. With buying insurance, people want to cut a deal with the devil, a bit of horse-trading by which, bad things are prevented from happening with making the purchase.

 

Motivation for purchasing insurance

Preventing bad things from happening with the purchase of insurance.

Getting reimbursed in case of damage.

 

Two topics, that should get the creative juices flow, for there are great stories to tell as this example of an Adweek ad of the day comes to show for State Farm insurance.

An entry on Amsterdam Ad Blog, made me wonder, why no agency with an insurance company in their portfolio has wrapped their minds around an authentic testimonial approach, by which people get to tell their story: How they emerged unscathed from fate in blogger style.

With so many unfortunate, yet curiously strong catastrophes happening around the world, an insurance company will likely take on the role of the guardian angel and savior with current real time events of magnitude as long as the brand stays subtly in the background as an enabler and curator for true stories to get told and talked about in the new world.

Dolly Rogers, an ad agency in Amsterdam published a blog, portraying citizens of Amsterdam, one at a time. This way Dolly Rogers gets talked about and gains popularity (without necessarily having to show off client wins and great work).

 

 

To escape without a scratch

With an authentic testimonial campaign consisting of consolidated and curated empiric reports, including a small demographic, illustrating fact and figures to prove the case, and dialogue unfolding between insurants and family/friends having withnessesed the insurance case and outcome, the insurance company establishes an account of lively case studies in the new world. Exciting true stories told by the insurant. Rolled out in collaboration with help organizations, the effort could raise funds, even for the not insured victim of circumstance.

An excellent and most exciting example to help you get your hands around this observation, can be found here and here.

The insurant themselves manage their blog entries and responds to comments with the help of social media practitioners assigned by the agency.

The insurance company gets into the conversation as an increasingly appealing, popular figure.

Trust in the insurance company is gained or returned organically and is strengthened by supporting figures and fact.

 

New international Allianz insurance campaign

The new campaign is centered around the viewpoint of the customer on behalf of the Allianz performance and its 10.000 representatives, a press statement declares on their corporate website.

A close call to my observations, allas a far cry… Grey, their agency has chosen to deliver good old in your face advertising, rather than relying on authenticity, transparency and access as key attributes for good social engagement to bring the magic back.

With their new campaign, Allianz fails to deliver on my observations and misses out on the drama unfolding in the new world. No reasons to believe any of this, are being given.

Empiric reports can be viewed as videos here and are perceived as what they are: adfilms.Testimonials are no longer being delivered as empty promises, dear Christian Deuringer (in charge of marketing). Experience must be shared to be relevant and trustworthy. Grey has been dragging their feet and delivered advertising messages for the old world while we are living in the new world with exciting opportunities for participation marketing and amazing things to talk about.

Have a look here, at how 3 BBH interns raised $24,000 to help 89 year old barber after his livelihood was devastated by recent unrests in London. You’ll get the idea.

 

Immediately following the urban unrest in London, three interns of London creative agency BBH, Björn, Sophie and Omid, had the idea to try help 89 year old Tottenham Barber whose livelihood was devastated in the riots.

Aaron’s business was ransacked but he had no insurance, and at time of writing the project had raised over £27,000 to help him out

With support from the BBH Barn programme, that’s designed to “expand and mix both the power advertising wields and youth’s inherent energy, then channel both for good”, Björn, Sophie and Omid, published a blog and filmed a video interview with Tottenham barber Aaron.

With your kind help, the three aim to raise money for damage repairs, to allow Aaron to retain his barber business for years to come. Check out the Keep Aaron Cutting project and help with a small donation if you like. Every little helps. Via Neil Perkin’s Only Dead Fish.

 

Not our thinking changes our doing, our doing is changing our thinking. Less prosaic this could mean: Just do it.

By means of what emerging technolgies hold in place, we can now create facts by doing little things. It’s often easier to take on responsibility by just doing it, than all the words explanations take to convince others and reach consensus. Economy and politics make use of Nike’s claim to mobilize the troops and public opinion. Alas for politic and economy it remains true: Easier said than done.

To act responsibly, does not mean to reach Konsensus, it means to create facts that make the life of others and our own better.

 

Claim and fulfillment must be demonstrated in close proximity to one another

It is neccessary for both, businesses and politics to create projects for whatever betterment in such a way, so that claim and fulfillment are realized at once. I belief this to be the art and craftmanship we need to exercise to gain or regain trust. Promises and their fulfillment can only be exhaled in public in a breath for it to take effect.

Apple Inc. keep their secrets notoriouly guarded, until the day, when a new product is introduced on their homepage. A world class innovation gets introduced nothing less. Something radically new.

With Apple, claim and fulfillment get released in a breath. The same Holds true with the neighborhoos butcher, he won’t hang the meat in the window unless its for sale.

Björn, Sophie and Omid, our BBH interns, do as Steve Jobs and the neighborhood butcher would. Promise and fulfillment make a public appearance at once. With your involvement, barber Aaron will be a happy man come Monday.

 

The Race is on

Timing is everything. What keeps politics and businesses from doing good and regaining their trustworthy?

The jokey wins the race, when he presses his body close to the horses to reduce head wind. Head winds business and politics are facing when not making involement available to stakeholders from the very begining on. Jokey and horse make themselves small to win the race.

Business leaders and politicians can create likewise dynamics, if only they could keep quiet until the day they can demonstrate promise and fulfillment in a breath. Just like the butcher, Steve Jobs, Björn, Sophie and Omid did.

A whee bit of attention and openess and ist easier done than said.

When I left New York and arrived in Frankfurt, I had to call a girlfriend in London to learn that the Sachsenhausen riverside is poplar-lined.

Today we no longer talk to each other, so it’s good that Peter Belhumeur has brought to market leafsnap, a free of charge iPhone app, which identifies trees by their leaves. You take a snapshot of a single leaf preferably placed on a piece of paper and leafsnap returns the name of the tree. It also works with flowers, fruit, petiole, seeds, and bark. Leafsnap currently includes the trees of New York City and Washington, D.C., and will soon grow to include the trees of the entire continental United States. Let’s not get ahead of the game, but make good use of leafsnap, eventually one day it may include countries of Europe as well. Columbia University, University of Maryland and Smithsonian Institute are collaborately working on establishing and curating leafsnap’s database. More than for reconciliation, I wish for leafsnap to expand its bionic powers and come up with similar apps such as birdsnap, recognizing birds by their chirps. I trust it will increasingly take mobile technology for us urban animals and our young to become reconnected with nature and recognize its beauty. Leafsnap turns users into citizen scientists, automatically sharing images, species identifications, and geo-coded stamps of species locations with a community of scientists who will use the stream of data to map and monitor the ebb and flow of flora nationwide.

The Leafsnap family of electronic field guides aims to leverage digital applications and mobile devices to build an ever-greater awareness of and appreciation for biodiversity. Get leafsnap here.
 

 

 

 

Ideas that do¹ require active participation of the involved and aim to create high volume participation / involvement with a brand. When marketed, the idea must be immediate and instantly usable by way of its execution.

McDonalds Germany executed such an idea that does, and determined in a crowdsourced effort, the most popular new burger recipes with a burger configurator on their brand site. Five burgers which received the most votes were then tested with their creators at a lab cuisine and are now available at McDonalds throughout Germany. 100.000 people invented their own burger and helped determine the most popular burgers by casting their votes. Starting today a tv commercial is being aired introducing the five burgers one by one and their creators. N.Y. Cheesebeef by Marko, the overall favorite burger invention is currently available at McDonalds in Germany for one week. Each burger gets featured for one week only. The ads have now also been made available on Facebook. Please take note that this social media campaign worked well without Facebook. All required activity took place on McDonalds brand site’s burger configurator, no facebook needed. And no money reward (or cheesy below the line incentive) was needed to get a hundred thousand people and their family and friends excited over the course of the past couple months.
 

 

We now live in the age of ideas that do

Edward Boches: “We’re living in a time when the diminishing impact of traditional advertising and the consumer/citizen’s ability to control and influence media and content requires all of us to get better at creating utility, experiences and baked-in brand qualities, not to mention social value, if we’re to serve and guide clients in their behavior, actions and branding efforts.” (read more)

I’d be interested to learn how this idea was ignored by the jurors currently active at this years Cannes Festival. Any pointers?
 

 

¹ ideas that do was coined by Gareth Kay from Goodby Silverstein & Partners.

 

Agency: Neue Digitale / Razorfish, Berlin,
TV and radio: Heye & Partner Munich.
Produced by E + P Commercial
Media: Heye OMD, Munich.
In 2008, Alexander Schramm, Director Corporate Affairs McDonald’s Deutschland Inc. announced Neue Digitale / razorfish to be their agency.

 

German language references:

Deutschland baut Burger—Pressemitteilung McDonalds

McDonald´s startet TV-Kampagne für “Mein Burger”-Gewinner—Ingo Rentz, Horizont.net

MC Donalds startet mein Burger in Deutschland—Enrico, Marketing-Guide

This is my burger—the courage of others

 

 

What makes your think you can help your fortune 500 brand sparkle throughout today’s conversations, if you can’t even get your website to ping?

There are 196.854.201 commercial websites on the web. In January 2009 the total number of website was 185 million (answers.com). Including blog sites which constitute 6%. Today, I know of only two agency websites that take advantage of trackbacks and pingbacks by default. They are powered by WordPress: Mullen and my former agency MRM Worldwide. Now please read the headline over again.

Today for an idea to be big it better be a long idea

We now live in the age of ideas that do. The post digital- and post pc era and most exciting time in the history of advertising. How so? We are good at problem solving. We are confronted with and asked to solve much of what the great founding fathers of advertising had to do. With a difference: We must bring the magic back to our industry.¹ Gareth Kay², bionic ad man, who introduced a rather practical solution on how to bring back the magic in his year old, 4 A speech on what the ad industry can learn from the mating habits of birds, now suggests a quote from Mahatma Gandhi: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

¹ Cindy Gallop was first with the discovery that bringing back the magic is what we must do for our ad industry to prosper.
² Gareth Kay coined ideas that do. A term and practical solution on how to bring back the magic most immediately.

 

Slow Marketing and the Long Idea—Nigel Hollis, Milward Brown

A story of change and the long idea, from Grey EMEA—Kerrie Finch, adforum

 

 

A view from our window seat reservation, makes us realize that the wingtips now every so often show a sudden upward bend.

With the decrease in fuel resources and increasing air traffic, airlines have finally copied from birds and learned, that by diminishing the turbolence at the wingtips, they can save fuel and perhaps improve flight dynamics.

Three ‚S’ now dominate our anorexic economy – taking their interdependence into count: spending, saving, sharing. It has increasingly become obvious, how little things can make a big difference and how bionics offer orientation with administering and increasing productivity of our ad branch.

Savings can be easily achieved by our choice of software while making everyday more fun and easier to come by. The omnipresent MS Word is known to be bloated, 80% of its features will never be used during business hours nor beyond. Apple’s Pages offers far superior price performance ration. With a €60 licenceplace, Pixelmator could replace the €700 Photoshop pricetag as tool of choice of our creative units. Pixelmator loads at a fraction of the time Photoshop requires and offers much, if not all comparable functionality in a more elegant user interface design. Comparing Powerpoint to Keynotes may result in even more drastic results. Apple’s iCloud may lend some magic to inter office communication and provides most elegant sharing with the client side. If only corporate America can snap out of resistance -it’s so french!- and with more iPads moving the corporate space, a swift switch to easier to use, more efficient offers from a supplier who has a proven understanding of Zeitgeist and how to move things in the post-digital age may become reality. It will help make the American workplace a more sparkling, more desirable one and eventually help fight stupidity and unemployment.

Classic creatives are great in turning things around and do brilliant work, when they are shown where to go with their work.

“We now live in the age of ideas that do.”¹
The Fun Theory by VW and DDB Amsterdam provides a grabbag of what ideas that do may look like. As far as I am concerned, Gareth Kay has long cracked the code on how to bring back the magic to our ad industry, with his presentation last year at 4A’s transformer conference and what the ad industry can learn from the mating habits of birds. Watch the video here. You may also want to watch Cindy Gallop’s 3 min. manifesto to get a more complete idea of what makes us be transformative. Practically and mentally.

 

¹ Ideas that do was coined by Gareth Kay from Goodby.

 

 

Amir may be ill adviced to pay further lipservice to an earlier idea of Chris Clarke from Nitro (that of an agency model movig closer to being a respected, creative business partner aka McKinsey). Amir Kassaei has already brought back some of the magic to our trade. DDB Amsterdam have proven with The Fun Theory how to make the VW brand stand out in our post-digital age. A grabbag of ideas that do¹ and way to go. By creating ideas that do in our day-by-day, routine business, businesses around the world will likely come to respect us as their creative partners.
Please welcome Amir Kassaie in New York City.

¹ Ideas that do was coined by Gareth Kay from Goodby.

 

Amir Kassaie—LinkedIn

Amir Kassaie—Facebook

Amir Kassaie—Posterous

German language talk show video with Amir Kassaei—NDR, public tv

Chris Clarke departs SapientNitro to Launch Venture Capital Project—Finanznachrichten

 

 

Valued newspapers such as the New York Times, The New Yorker or Washington Post may perhaps want to collaborate and pass out a reader for free and create a new audience of subscribers. Side by side with a publishing solution such as PubIt they would just as much create a new generation of authors and an open eco system for all.

 

• Via First Look: Barnes & Noble’s New Nook, One of the Lightest E-Readers Ever—Linda Tischler, Fast Company
• Ammunition—Design Firm
• pubit!—selfpublishing-platform by Barnes & Noble
• Authors catch fire with self-published e-books—Carol Memmott, USA Today
• iPad: Ease of being—Mark Sargent, New Advertising

 

 

Leagas Delaney is to succeed with having many tell the brand story and to continuously doing so not without surprise. A first step has been taken into to long tail marketing for what may once be known as masterpiece, once the bio brand has been established on the German market and Followfish has become a household brand for the entire family.

 

• Followfisch—brand website
• Followfish: True Taste, Tracking and Transparency—sustainability marketing
• Followfish uses tracking system—Organic market info
• Fish & More, Friedrichshafen—Kundenwebsite
• Legas Delaney Group—credentials
• Texter gesucht—Stefan Zschaler blog