Robert's PlayGround

Small is better

This Summer, as usual, I took a large pile of books with me on my holidays. However, I chose to spend my nights sleeping this time so i finished only three books in two weeks. Eckart's Notes was one of them and I raced through it. Eckart Wintzen is the man who turned a small ICT company BSO into a big multinational one. Wintzen found that if you want to grow fast, you have to stay small. This thought lead to a management filosophy later known as 'cell division'. A company should never exceed a size of 50 - 60 co-workers. By the time a BSO company employed 50 people, its management had to find and prepare a new management team. And when the company reached 60 people, it was divided in two new companies - each about thirty people in size. Both new cells split up the business according to strict agreements. One of the big merits of this management filosophy is the transplantation of the comporate DNA (culture , knowledge) into ambitious, coherent cells. Along with it goes a style of management that is at least as interesting as the principle of cell division on itself. It comprises such things as sharing and trusting. On the go Wintzen gives a great explanation of the the true meaning of assigning work to others (Dutch: 'delegeren'). I recommend this book to anyone involved in management (as an entrepreneur, a 'manager' or a consultant). And not just for its contents - Eckart Wintzen is a gifted storyteller and writer.

Bad is good

Maybe it's because I'm a guy. But I can't help feeling sympathy for brands that try and seduce women to get in touch with their own dark side. Such as Magnum Ice cream did with its Seven Sins campaign. Probably that works because it is built on the easily embraceable truth "Forbidden fruit tastes better". For we all have a little devil inside that needs a bit of a wake-up call every now and then.

Disarmingly bold

I consider it an art if you can be so disarmingly honest and yet so brutally bold at the same time. The truth is always the best strategy. As long as it is interesting.

 

Street wisdom (2)

Charitainment to charivolvement

If you wanted to recruit supporters for your charity, you would try and make the good cause urgent and personally relevant to your audience. The latter still holds true. However, if your audience are young people, there is a fair chance that beating the drum of urgency and drama will scare them away. It’s a bit like Richard Huntingdon’s better advice to young planners: be interesting first and right second. It works in two steps. Offer a strong piece of magnetic content first (charitainment), then try and engage them in whatever it is that you do (charivolvement). You will only succeed if the bait is well intertwined with food for thought and calls for activism. As a charity you need to be cool as a license to connect. Dance4Life understood that quite well and I’ve spotted a prominent follower: Amnesty International. Yoko Ono gave them the rights to John Lennon Music (activism beyond the grave…) And 180 smartly simple turned that into a contemporary concept by inviting cool bands to cover Lennon songs and offer them for download on a microsite.

Live long enough...

I think strategic planning is much about finding a convincing, compelling or at least interesting truth. Something the people you are trying to connect with will embrace. Some notion, vision or thought that could elicit a response like "...and THAT's exactly how it is!" The fresher the thought, the better. Yet the quest for freshness of thought often ends with far fetched and constructed ideas. This French AIDS prevention commercial (TBWA/Paris) is, in my opinion, a good example of great strategic thinking - i.e Truth finding. For it isn't particularly easy to convince youth of the clear and present danger of AIDS/HIV. If you talk to youngsters you will find out that they all aspire to have an exciting active sex life (inspired to search at the fringes; just look at MTV...). And at the same time they share a quite oldfashioned hope to get married, have kids and start a family life. "Live long enough to find the right one." That's the clever truth of this commercial - clever because it unites two different and seemingly contradictory worldviews (I want lots of sex AND I want to settle in the end). Great execution, too!

Update: This commercial is a sequel; find the (first) girl version here. (thanks Yves)

Pimp my fashion brand

They sell instant fashion copied straight from the catwalk. If you wear the stuff a couple of times is gets out of shape. Color washes out straight away. Yet, everybody loves H&M. And with reason. After flings with superstar Madonna and couturier Karl Lagerfelt, H&M entered a new love affair with the successful Dutch designer duo Viktor & Rolf. This is how you make a brand cool. Bravo!
See Dutch women loot the Amsterdam H&M store, this afternoon. Or shop on-line.

Demo ads (2)

I think this will become my favorite post title. For this kind of communications concepts are my very favorite. Look here for my first post about demo ads. This Lufthansa commercial (Springer & Jacoby) is a classic. I was happy as a child when I managed to get a digital copy. Besides an arresting and clever idea, I love this for its smart strategic insight. The people behind this idea succeeded in making a valid, very true point about the use of airline service. *****

Time for a new beauty myth

I think Dove perfectly understood how to build an icon brand. They recognized that Northern European women deep down don't agree with the beauty myth they've been brought up with. Dove started a revolution. By telling the story of true, and thus imperfect, beauty. One that will be happily picked up by modern women and girls to cement their identities as strong and independent personalities.

Hurray: we'll finally get to know how expensive crap advertising is!

STER, the advertising sales organisation of the Dutch public radio and TV has just introduced a new service: Admeasure. Admeasure is pretesting. In some reinvented form probably, but that doesn't get very clear from what I read about it. It doesn't appear quite new to me. Yet, I was struck by one feature provided by Admeasure: it can forecast the amount of grp's needed to realize your advertising objectives! In their words: :"Given the quality of your <radio/TV> commercial, Admeasure provides a connection between the deployed amount of GRP's and the advertising effect. From now on you know what media investment will deliver the required result." Very interesting. Let's just assume (dangerous ;-) that the better ideas and their execution are recognized by this pretesting system. Then it means that we can get some more solid proof behind the opinion that whilst repetition is the power in advertising, it is way cheaper to stand-out with something that is different and original. I just wonder how often this new research tool will be used to separate great ideas and beautifully crafted advertising from all the crap that is forced to work with mega budgets...