“Change requires acts”

Was it Conan O’Brien, who noticed, that not one but two popes already had gotten work during president Obama’s time?

Daphne Groeneveld, Liu Wen, Lindsey Wixson & Joan Smalls

Why fashion models on the catwalk won’t smile

A smile could be interpreted as a sign of submission, the fashion brand represented by the model’s demonstration aims to captivate its audience and prospective buyers into submission rather.

Horst Seehofer, Prime Minister of Bavaria claims Nr.1 pole position in the digital revolution and my socialist friends are joking that this is because Seehofer was given an e-mail account

Make no mistake – Germany in particular Bavaria is well equipped to succeed as late entry to the digital economies

True, much like the Irish are not known for their command of the English language, Bavarian politicians are having a hard time in Berlin and don’t speak proper German, yet Berlin is funded by Bavarian tax money. The city of Munich is surrounded by a ring of top notch high tech firms no other German city can show for. Network infrastructure is not based on olc fashioned copper wiring as is the case in the states but on fibre optics. Munich evolved from farmland with an inherent mindset of independent farmers used to rely on their craft naturally opposed to government and state. Think of Bavaria as of the dixie state.

successfully funded Munich projects

 

Miles Young photographed by Jeremy Goldberg

The kitchen (not shown) is from Ogilvy client Ikea

Big campaigns made by big agencies for big products are still binding more human beings to brands

(For one, I am still becoming more aware of products by tv ads or outdoor advertising than through the internet, which I am consumed by most of the day.)

Double fistet integrated marketing

It gets done in the fashion Young does it, from inside out, from bottom to top, as much as in reversed order. Young’s global role makes it inevitable to also work it top down and outside in. Integrated marketing can’t get done any other way, it requires hands-on local activity as much as organisational assertiveness from a more distant stand point.

A drama of keeping a distance in close proximity

A global player, as the article desribes Young, no member of the American ad club, by which the later is due to change with the won awards and successful new business acquisitions being recognised in the North American ad industry.

On the inside, Young took on the all to common helplessness of other global agency CEO’s, he merged the operations of Ogilvy One with Ogilvy’s advertising offerings, aiming at improving integrated marketing. Momentum is unfolding from successes for Ogilvy and Young with executing rather detailed pitches, his personal involvement, the resulting energy behind it and the wide acceptance in the Asian markets. That much I get from O’Leary’s 4 pages.

THE MRS: CARTER SHOW

World class return of classic advertising

The Mrs. Carter Show poster nodding at husband JayZ who’s real name is Carter, is not Ogilvy work, however it contributed to Beyoncé’s concerts being sold out and makes print look glamorous for a brief moment in local time.

left: Micah Lexier right: Christian Bok
Both texts make use of the exact same letters and punctuation marks including their frequency.
Seen as such the texts are the same. Photo: Jacklyn Atlas.

Metropolis Maria man machine, 1927.

Star Wars android C-3PO, 1977.

 

An early work in my destination as designer was pulled of the market due to plagiarism infringement. Even so I remained under the illusion for another 10 years that ideas were mine.

Even today it is possible and likely, that people out there suffer from the illusion to be creating their own ideas, while Kirby Ferguson has long busted the myth with “Everything is a Remix” to social engineers’ fullest satisfaction.

A condensed version of an excellent Sunday read of ‘Digiday Confessions’ of an anonymous top executive’s frustration felt in trying to change a huge agency infrastructure and why the task is impossible. Find the full article by Brian Morrissey here.

Why do big agencies hire chief innovation officers/chief digital officers?

It’s tempting to say that big agencies are so desperate that they will literally do anything to try to look modern. So they hire “innovation” people to do just that even though I don’t think there is a one single example of an innovation person or department doing well at a big agency.

Why is it that digital people who have been extremely successful at pureplay, smaller digital shops seem to struggle in driving change at big agencies?

Clients who engage a digital agency want a digital product. They have a budget, a deadline and a need. Clients at traditional shops are being sold something, often quite hard, that they have not asked for. So a person with good digital skills should be able to produce something pretty good with a willing client. the cycle is head of innovation person gets the agency stoked up for a piece of work, it launches (having cost the agency a fortune), people talk about it, but it does nothing for the client and is terrible for the bottom line of the agency.

Why do agencies struggle with innovation so much?

All agencies get the clients they deserve. That will never change. Most big ad agencies have big clients that have a scale need rather than a creative need. The majority of middle American clients do not want innovation. And if by some miracle they do, they have a handful of alternative agencies that are better placed to do digital or innovation. They have smaller shops that will do a better job for less money.

Why do clients often not trust their general agencies in digital?

Clients have been burnt too many times by the big agencies that every year or so will hire a new bunch of digital people to try and go win some more digital business. The big agencies do this because their normal revenue is shrinking. So they are on the defensive. But there is nothing worse than an agency being on the defense.

So why would anyone take a job that seems doomed from the start?

All of these people are very smart. Many have run their own businesses, won multiple awards and made interesting things. So why would they ignore the cycle? Why would anyone take any job? The answers are different person by person. Sometimes it’s money. Probably most of these people are taking home around half a million. Sometimes it’s security – or at least the perceived notion of security. Sometimes it’s a change of scenery; people want to live in New York or LA and so take big jobs in big agencies to do that.

Big agencies seem to often fall back on the playbook of paying a hotshot a huge amount and thinking it will fix a lot of things. Does that have a lower success rate in digital than traditional creative?

I think that goes back to what I was saying about inflated salaries. You have to pay someone a lot to get them to go somewhere that in their hearts they know sucks, but they do it for a paycheck or a move to another city.

Is the current vogue of “making things” just a bunch of B.S.?

No, I think everyone is being judged on what they make.

What’s the one thing agencies should do to modernize but won’t?

They can’t win. It’s just not possible.If they want to modernize, then they need new clients. But new clients won’t pay what their existing clients are paying. The global networks are remaining in business because the emerging markets are making them money. These smaller offices have grown in the last five years because they started from scratch and have been able to operate on a small budget and, through necessity, have become good at making things other than TV spots.

If you were to start an agency from scratch, what would it look like?

You have to work out why you are doing what you do. If you want to make money, then there are two ways. Go to a big agency and just wait it out. Play by the rules, don’t try to change too much, but make the appearance that you are changing. Don’t fight for any real change or interesting work but enough not to get fired.

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That’s right, much like the merry girl operating the remote, Bavarians have begun to have empathy with machines. After all, don’t young Bavarians spend more time with machines, than with parents, teachers or their peds?

communication agency Schultze. Walther. Zahel. GmbHis the incubent of the Bavarian metal and electrical industry employers’ account