Katherine Glasson’s Post

Best blog in the biz. This post applies to every industry. This line is so dead on for the generic copy that's everywhere: "The new ____________. It's driving electrified." More like: "The new ____________. It's <your industry here> <current trend point / industry move>."

George nails it here, especially after the warmup about his stranger-in-a-strange-land sojourn among the digital natives: Relationships - good ones - are the thing. Communication is the glue. The capacity to build long-term, trust-filled, mutually-nurturing relationships with honest, relevant, interesting communication is the now rare but necessary ingredient. It’s just that the business of creating great communication through advertising wants to be small. Small teams have always built even the biggest brands. But, after a golden age, clients stopped compensating agencies for the value of the brands they built. Financial manipulators came in to agencies and started inventing ways to explode billable hours. Effective brand-building communication became passé. But that whole shell game is being disintermediated, and one result is that clients are once again turning to smaller, better, agencies… like GeorgeCo, and if I may say it, DiGo. #trust #relationships #agencies #marketers #advertising #brandbuilding

There's a backstory to this Polish Joke Book ad (as it was called) for Wills Filter that makes it even more memorable: the Calcutta office of the erstwhile HTA (later rechristened JWT and now VML) had created it circa 1989. And it ran uninterrupted for several years (a decade if not more) on the back covers of magazines (India Today, Outlook, the movie rags) and billboards. Many attempts were made to create alternatives, but two factors prevented them from being published: research by what was then IMRB (now Kantar) inevitably showed that this ad scored higher on memorability, likeability, etc, than anything else the agency designed; and the brand managers at ITC Limited had become superstitious by then. So, this ad stuck. Now comes the twist: this particular shot was not what the art director (Srirup-da) and the writer had in mind. The layouts showed something else and the photo-shoot continued for some hours. Tired, and bored, everyone took a break for lunch. The models found this book lying around and were laughing at some of the jokes in it. The canny photographer (I forget who it was) spotted them in this relaxed mood, quietly picked up his camera and clicked this moment. That's all he had: one shot. Just one negative. When the final ad was being designed to be presented to the client, the HTA team realised the magic was missing. Someone remembered the solitary shot and took a punt. She/he may well have developed this alternative artwork under the radar. But when it was presented, it struck a chord. And research showed that it would work... so, it went from becoming history to creating history. Disclaimer: I wasn't in HTA then but because I was in Contract India and had a free run of 30 Bondel Road (Thompson's legendary office) thanks to Mr Ghosal, I was privy to many such stories. And I never smoked, though I'd work on ITC's corporate account for 16 long years. But, that's life. And advertising. And memories. Thank you Swati for resurrecting this classic. #onlyconnect #advertising #brands

Great advice: humor is a forgotten pillar of great advertising. We welcome a return to form here for creative work, frequently ads that make us laugh have the highest recall and persuasion rate. Also, the world could benefit from more laughter here. https://lnkd.in/eyr9Yats

The death throes of Detroit's creative industry are but a microcosm of the grand farce playing out across our economic landscape. From the crumbling soundstages of Hollywood to the emptying cubicles of Motor City, we see the same grotesque pantomime: The masses scramble for scraps while the puppet masters gorge themselves on golden parachutes. The IATSE strike looms, threatening to strangle an already gasping entertainment industry while the media titans quibble over crumbs. The chairman of Warner/Discovery amasses a fortune that would make Croesus blush - $500 million over four years - while entire industries teeter on the brink of oblivion. In California, the promised land of creativity, 40% of the nation's homeless huddle in the shadows of gleaming studio lots. The same state that produces dreams for global consumption can't house its dreamers. This is not a bug in the system but its defining feature. The very apparatus meant to fuel consumption devours its own children. But let us not delude ourselves. Advertising was never meant to solve the riddle of the vanishing middle class. That’s not why it exists. It exists as a tool of distraction, a glittering lure meant to alert consumers of products they should buy. The cruel irony today is that those who craft these messages are, for the first time, finding themselves unable to partake in the very lifestyle they peddle. What then, is the solution? Certainly not more advertising. Nor a glossy campaign extolling the virtues of consumerism. Those days have passed. Perhaps it's time to turn our creative energies towards dismantling the very system that has brought us to this precipice. Perhaps it’s time for the people who make the ads to wield it in the service of themselves instead of for a system that discards them at will. Perhaps it’s time to use our powers of persuasion to advocate for genuine change? In the end, the fate of the middle class will not be decided by clever slogans or viral campaigns, but by a fundamental reimagining of our economic priorities. This is something that advertising CAN help do. But until then, the people who work in it will remain trapped in a cycle of their own making. Selling dreams they can no longer afford to buy. In the words of Howard Luck Gossage: “I yearn for the day advertising will become a business for a grown man.” Or woman. Let’s make today that day. Click the link in the comments to see the post that triggered this #advertising #marketing #creative #digital

The Golden Age of British Advertising Creativity Watching this twenty-year-old plus documentary on the rise and fall of British advertising is a worthwhile endeavor. The film is centered on groundbreaking revolutionaries at the agency CDP. This was a unique moment when all the stars aligned perfectly to create something quite remarkable. The agency had leadership that enforced a creatively-led culture, the world was changing and a fresh approach was required- as in the 1960s cultural revolution, advertising before this period had been direct and pretty dull and CDP's talent was on a mission to change the business- with Alan Parker and David Putnman two of the leading lights. The agency exploited the media revolution dominating the most important media of the day by buying all the slots on the key commercial break on the news at 10 and buying every print space in the radical Sunday Times Magazine- the first news magazine printed in color. The agency brought wit, art, and an understanding that people were prepared to watch and look at entertaining and engaging ads. The film makes it clear that Bernbach's work for VW influenced the people at CDP, but their brilliance was to find a unique British approach. At one point in the agency's evolution, it used just two directors to make its TV commercials: Ridley Scott for the expensive, luxurious, flashy stuff and Alan Parker for the witty, more down-to-earth British work. The film's major failing is that although it mentions several of CDP's brilliant alumni- including Hegarty and Saatchi, it chooses to focus only on Saatchi and ignores BBH's impact and the impact of other notable agencies like AMV and HHCL to mention just two. The world appears to end when Saatchi tries to buy a bank, which is not quite what happened. The big takeaway however is the importance of the media changes that opened up slots for brilliant creative work to fill. With limited options, people were captive and would pay attention as long as the ads were as good as the content. The major impact of the evolution of digital advertising has been to reduce the window available for creativity, and the advent of AI is likely to reduce this window even further. What the film proves if anything is that while the talent at CDP was undoubtedly brilliant, the conditions played a critical role in providing a platform for creativity to thrive in a way that is impossible to imagine today. While creativity is still very much alive there are many reasons why we are no longer operating in a world that's as kind to creativity as Britain was during the period 1967-1978. #advertising #creativity #british #cdp #franklowe #saatchi #sirjohnhegarty #ridleyscott #tvads

Reflecting on 50 years of protecting children from deceptive or inappropriate #advertising, Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU)'s latest blog explores the foundational years of the 70s and 80s, highlighting landmark cases and the development of guidelines that have shaped responsible advertising practices. Dive into CARU's detailed history: https://hubs.la/Q02wNSxK0 #ChildSafety #EthicalAdvertising #CARU50

Don’t be surprised if an 11 year old walks in with us for a presentation! We are not made up of creative and servicing and planning people alone. No. We are a bunch of hardcore advertising creatives, homemakers, kids, mimic artists, creative strategists & research people. We don't function out of glass cabins. We travel, we roam around on the streets. Try us. We are willing to compete with anybody. Anybody. Provided evaluation is on the basis of the goodness of idea/script/campaign alone. And not on the basis of who or how many came for the presentation. #SmallisBig #GetWhatYouSee #advertising #marketing #brands #adagencies #brandstories

For some, a reaction.  For others, an inspiration.  For us, both.  Because, we strongly agree, the world does not need another ad agency. Ad agencies are already responsible for cramming their messages into the crevices of our lives, our culture, our world, our everything. They try to buy our eyeballs without first earning our respect, or even our attention. They mass produce unwanted, undesirable, uninspiring messages and expect us to care. And to further insult us, they do it in the most conventional, boring, mediocre ways possible. Unsurprisingly, it mostly doesn’t work. We already know what it is, and we have become brilliant at tuning it out before it lulls us to sleep. You see, the most prolific product of most ad agencies is white noise. That’s why we started Black Noise. Because we believe that when you create signal in the noise, you gain an unfair advantage. If you agree, and are curious how we would help move your brand forward, signal us. BLACK NOISE™ Make Signal ***

As a non John Lewis customer, I am not sure I get the main message of this new TV ad. Lots of details to take in. And the end line ‘Never Knowingly Undersold’ is lost on me. Maybe because I am not a UK native. If this new ad is about John Lewis’ value proposition, I am just not getting it. But that’s me after a single exposure to it. Let’s see how the next 2 ads in the Xmas trilogy play out. #marketing #brandproposition #brandbuilding