2. HELLO #DIGIWORK
THE BRIEF IN THE POST-DIGITAL AGE
Gareth Kay
Director of Brand Strategy
August 9, 2010
3. This isn’t really about the brief or digital...
It’s about the long, slow stuff of culture,
not the tech du jour
It’s about digital as a type of idea, not a channel
It’s about ideas and planning, not just briefs
All that being said....
10. All very similar
A problem to be solved by advertising
‘Consumers’ to ‘target’
A message to say at them
Reasons to believe
Tone of voice
Maybe, if lucky, what space you’re filling
21. “This stuff is as mainstream as it
can be. Google, the iPhone -
these move the culture more
than The Beatles did in
the ’60’s. It’s shaping the human
race.”
- Andy Hertzfeld
24. “Nobody comes out of a movie
saying, “that was a really good
movie. I really enjoyed it. It
was really clear.”
- Russell Davies
27. Technology has driven dramatic, and
continuous, change
More participatory
More social and communal (arguably amplifying who
human beings are)
More fragmented
More transparent
More playful
‘Always on’
Location increasingly important
44. Stop communicating products and
start making communication products.
Useful entertaining or memorable,
not interruptive, experiences.
Create, don’t fill, media space.
72. Radiohead went out to
where people are and built
experiences there with
partnerships like:
- iTunes for remixes
- aniBoom for an
animation contest
- Google for 3-D video
73. “Media is less and less
often about crafting a
single message to be
consumed by
individuals, and more
and often a way of
creating an environment
for convening and
supporting groups.”
76. “The bigger a brand
gets, the smaller it
should act, because
no one likes big.”
78. “Any idea is dangerous if it’s a person
only idea”
A culture full of depth and complexity
The rule of 5% requires lots of matches to start a fire
Why not when the economics have changed and the
cost of failure is near zero?
80. “The mistake of science is to
pretend everything is a clock
when the world is a cloud.”
-Jonah Lehrer, referencing the work of Karl Popper
81. Coherency, not consistency
specials eg
language, frappucino
eg ‘skinny’
habits
formation
‘my sister’
book range
and options
book
barista Provide an
culture reading
uplifting experience ordering
that enriches system akelah and
used grounds people’s lives the bee
for gardeners in store
starbucks
sofas and performance
company
social ambience and art starbucks
responsibility salon
africa 05
hearmusic
fair trade Xm
coffee
music cd
cause
burn your own
publicity
cd
in store
Source: John Grant, ‘The Brand Innovation Manifesto’
82. It’s about understanding
distributed identity
Google
Books
Blogspot
Youtube
Google
Google Google Scholar
411 Search
Google
Docs
Organize the
world’s information
Google and make it
Shopping universally
accessible and Google
useful.
labs Chrome
Browser
Google
Maps Google.Org
Google
sketch Fossil fuel
Challenge
85. Pre-digital Post-digital
Interruption Participation
Image manipulation Value creation
Saying things at people Doing things for people
Intangible value Tangible value
Perception Behavior
88. Better questions
What’s the real problem?
Who is this among?
How might we best approach solving this?
Why might they talk about this idea?
How do they get involved?
What keeps the conversation going?
89. There are no great briefs,
only great ads.
There are no great briefs,
but there are a lot of bad ones.
A good brief is probably about as
good as a brief gets.
90. The piece of paper is less
important than the journey.
97. Modern communication ideas are different
They are more about what they do and how they feel, not what they say
They come from culture, not commerce, first (it’s about how you can
make a positive contribution to culture; be interested in what people
are interested in, not yourself)
They are participatory and need to be designed with gaps
They are always on
They are liquid or linked
They might not be ‘ads as we know them’
They create, don’t fill, media space; media positive not media neutral
98. But at their heart, there is simplicity
GET the audience
TO do, feel or think something
BY the power of an idea