In response to a recent new biz request from the good folk at Five by Five, I came up with this. The brief: “I want an agency that can help me with thought leadership for the next 3-5 years”. A chance to say our piece and inject my own thoughts and build on some recent activity from some splendid world wide webbers. I blatantly stole the headline from the recent AdAge Power 150 bloggers article too (see a few posts back). I’m enjoying the freedom to come up with this type of stuff. More to come soon. What do you think?

Crystal Ball 2.0

We could talk to you for hours about how we’ve evolved from web 1.0 to web 2.0 and what cool and funky new things you should be involved in. We could even start to blind you with the black art that is the semantic web, or web 3.0 as some unimaginative web folk have termed it.

Or we could just say this…

If you think in three years that you’ll start with the intent of having 60% of your budget on TV, 20% on Press, 18% on PR and sponsorships and a generous 2% on digital (up from current 1% of total spend), then we’ll happily work with that 2% and magic up some digital greatness.

But…

… your starting point tomorrow should really be the same as today.

Strategy and ideas.

Why?

The best idea always wins.

That will never change. Whatever new-fangled digital technology comes our way in the next three to five years, if we set out to “do a You Tube channel” or “have a group on Facebook” then we’re missing the point entirely. Chasing after the next big thing (or Big Shiny Object Syndrome) pushes you toward tactical execution rather than strategy.

Digital will never be about one piece of technology or ad format. It will never be about a destination site alone. Or just banners driving to it. Great brand strategy is and will continue to be delivered by utilising the world of digital marketing opportunities. Detaching it. And then having your brand advocates distributing the message, rippling it through their social network.

Great strategy and execution is, and always will be, under-pinned by great insight.

As the digital world evolves, so must the process for garnering these insights. No longer just pontificating and navel gazing, digital planners need to listen. And observe. Using a variety of emerging methods beyond the focus group: Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, Utterz etc. You’ve probably heard of Facebook. If you have no clue about the rest, better come talk to us now.

As we evolve, so will our digital marketing opportunities, especially co-creation. We need to let go of the legal and corporate reins and allow our consumers into our world. Collaboration leads to innovative experiences. And brand engagement.

Just talking (advertising) and having a destination site is not enough today. Certainly not tomorrow. Experiences, participation, being personal and attentive, continuous learning and evolving is.

Evolve with us.

Inspiration:

Katie Chatfield – Get Shouty : http://katiechatfield.wordpress.com
Matt Dickman – Techno//Marketer : http://technomarketer.typepad.com
Paul Isakson : http://paulisakson.typepad.com

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Thank you to the good folk at Major Players who kindly delivered on their promise of sending a load of muffins in return for filling out a survey. To be honest I had completely forgot I’d done it so a very welcome foody surprise. Muffins are Fabulous Bakin’ Boys and you too can send a dozen muffins through their not at all double entendre named website muffinthemail.

This is what a creative director’s brain looks like. Patrick (esteemed CD of Five by Five) drew this in a meeting we had last Friday to simplify a certain something. I’ll buy a pint (or frappy latte mochachino if you must) either in person or via the magic of paypal for the person who comes closest to explaining what this is. Exclusions apply: basically anyone who was in the same meeting.

Some stuff about different agencies:

Mother have let the creatives loose and released a comic called Four Feet From a Rat. Source: AdRants.

Modernista have a siteless site using web 2.0 to it’s full potential. More explanation here.

Citrus have a funny new business agency firing site. Source: adweek

Agency re-positioning waring following this reaction to Publicis Worldwide’s recent effort. Perhaps they should have just stopped at “Contagious Ideas”. But they didn’t. The press release is summed up as:

Right now what we’re wondering is, is it prerequisite to learn how to talk like a transcendental coke addict before an agency promotes you to exec status? As it was, David Ogilvy was iffy about using the word “creative” — he’d have a conniption fit if he had to sit through this “contagious ideas” and “lionhearted spirit” crap. Here’s a contagious idea: what if we just focus on selling stuff and staying real?

Stepping away from agency land, is America the land of the free?

And just for fun, found this on PostSecret

Just spent an hour or so watching Aki Spicer (the Chuck Norris of account planning according to one fan boy on the live chat) of Fallon presenting to both the internal audience at Fallon and the global audience (of 60 at the peak) who were interested in social media. A smart presentation with good, clear examples. Aki was honest up front to say it was a kind of social media 101 as essentially the “socials” are to inform, inspire and educate internally at Fallon but even still some good thoughts and inspiration. I really enjoyed it. Especially the fact that it was done using social media - check out all the options to participate (detach and distribute in the flesh, people). It’s so damn easy now to use these things that it’s almost criminal to not do it. A big round of applause.

Fallon do these every month so I look forward to checking in again. However, I will probably choose a different channel to view the session as the live chat on Yahoo! Live was a bit pointless and distracting, especially as each comment makes the irritating “boing” and distracts from the speaker. The broadband pipe at work also held up pretty well for the streaming and any pauses didn’t actually lose any words which is usually the case. Although the time delay when Aki got a bit excitable and waved his arms made me lol.

What will I take away (apart from the content which is down below, obv): I would like to do something like this with our planning function. And that delivering these things using social media has to be the norm, not the exception. Makes a mockery that location is important when I can tune into the US at 5pm GMT and participate live. Walk the walk and all that. Great job, Aki. I’m enthused and inspired.

Here’s a great presentation from the Techno//Marketer himself, Matt Dickman. Definitely worth 40 minutes fo your time. A really well structured presentation with neat examples and good brain food to start the day.

And here’s 8 future trends from Leo Burnett in London. Nice to hear a British voice too.

And here’s another! This time from Paul Isakson (found via David Armano)

If these three things can’t help me pull together a “what’s next” point of view then nothing will.

Starbucks want your ideas to develop their future offering. A really simple concept - ask your 50 million customers what they want. Especially as they’re basically the nomadic home of the homeworkers or those wanting to escape the office. I’ll be interested to watch how the “see” section develops as that’s basically the proof of the pudding.

Thanks to Charlene Li on Twitter. Additional info from AdAge.

I forgot about this when I posted my somewhat lengthy stuff about New York until I found the flyer in my bag. Puma have joined forces with W Hotels to allow guests at this trendy venue to… well, let’s use their words:

… bring you the freshest and most fabulous ingredients so you can spice up your step with custom sneaks that sizzle!

Despite the fact it’s trainers rather than sneaks, a really good idea. Puma became cool again by getting in on the street level action of boarders and skaters and this then facilitated their cool factor with the kidz. Recently this has extended to aligning the brand to anything and everything to do with stylish, contemporary living. And W Hotels does just that.

The site itself is not unlike Nike ID and allows you to choose oodles of combinations sans a Manchester United line. Thankfully. They also have a gallery where you can see what other like-minded stylish folk have created.

“Markets are conversations.”

Well, we all should know that by now and should be putting it in place in all our work. But this statement originated in 1999. Way back when dial up tones were the norm. The statement came from the Cluetrain Manifesto which was way ahead of its time. This report from Technorati and Ogilvy revisits that manifesto and shows how to put it into place when you get into work on a Monday.

What I like is that there are some real examples of conversational marketing, social media, call it what you will. And how they worked and why. These case studies cover:

• An Inconvenient Truth
• Microsoft sponsored Live Earth site
• Shut up and sing campaign
• Scion and the Indie film community
• Sun microsystems

There’s a nice diagram too for finding, concentrating and syndicating conversations (above) and we all like more pictures, less words in any document.

I’m not sure it was necessary to devote a half page to a proposed conversational advertising code of conduct considering the one word that springs to mind and sings from the page is “transparency”. And somewhat disagree that “the real spoken language of peers is so much more interesting than copywriting.” Not if you have a good copywriter and they’re released from any corporate and legal shackles.

But well worth a read first thing on a Monday to get the old grey matter warmed up.

Found via Greg Verdino.

In a blatant bit of self-promotion, I really like this post. Spinning Around (thanks for the tag) has pulled out the UK blogs from the Ad Age Power 150 and ranked them. I’m pleasantly surprised (and I’ve moved up from the +500 rank in the overall list). But more importantly, this list also gives me an opportunity to discover more home grown talent in the UK blogosphere.

And while we’re on the Ad Age Power 150, here’s what some of the bloggers on that list think will happen this year.

Update 25.03:

And while we’re on blog lists, here’s the most powerful 50 blogs in the world.