A Different Kind of Agency

Sitting in the Debussy, cold and a little tired, I watched David Baldwin explain to me what my future could be.  He didn’t know I was sitting there. He didn’t know he’d told me exactly what I wanted to hear when I hadn’t even known what it was I wanted to hear. I tried to talk to him afterwards, but he got called backstage and I didn’t run into him later at the festival. Of course I’ll email him, but this will be separate, formal, normal, not the ephemeral magic of hearing a version of your perfect future laid out.

David Baldwin is the founder and CEO of Baldwin& an independent agency operating out of Raleigh, North Carolina.  It is a self-described “hybrid branding/digital/advertising/mobile/social media thingy.”  It works for brands such as BMW and Burt’s Bees and was awarded small agency of the year by Advertising Age, a coveted prize in the USA, within a few years of its beginning.

The presentation Baldwin gave somehow managed to be humble even though it was entirely centered on the work of the agency.  It was self-deprecating.  He talked about their work and showed a few case studies, but mostly he talked about their policies. This is what appealed to me most.  He said they didn’t like to define jobs, a common theme at the festival, because it limited only creatives to being creative. The work they do they try not to categorize. It’s a sort of catch-all agency making ads, films, websites, social profiles, outdoor events, art, connections, and communication. 

Then he explained that they only took clients whose goals they supported. The only way they could do their work effectively was if they believed in what the client was doing. They never took business they couldn’t stand behind.  And that was the moment I thought: I could work there. That doesn’t mean I’m going to or even that it’s the right place for me.  But before hearing this I had pretty much crossed agency work off my list for future jobs.  I never want to end up at an agency where I’d have to do work for a company I don’t support. It’s bad enough that I already buy things from brands that aren’t socially sustainable, like Nike and Wal-Mart, I don’t need to help them get even more money than they already have.  I don’t want to wake up in fifty years and realize I dedicated my life selling the next version of the cigarette.  So I’ve been thinking of doing in-house PR work for a non-profit I support (because there are plenty of problems I have with some of those as well).  I’ve been trying out some internships in local non-profits, but it all seems a bit pell-mell, and it’s hard to get people to understand what exactly public relations is and how each department can use it to their advantage.  At least at an agency people have some vague idea that you’re making communication for a series of brands.

Hearing Baldwin say that his agency only takes work it supports was really important to me.  Maybe Baldwin& isn’t the right place for me, maybe the work I support wouldn’t line up with the work they did, but at least I know that some agencies operate like this.   At least I know I can expand where I’m looking in my search for a career that offers a way to make a positive impact on society to include agencies again.

Cannes Day 7 - The Last Day

On this, the last day of the festival, I started the day watching commercials. Luckily they were running through VW ads, which are usually pretty interesting, so it was less mind-numbing than usual.

After that I went to "Creativity Inside-Out: A New Way of Doing Business" put on by an agency called Big Spaceship that operates primarily out of Brooklyn. It focused on changing the nature of workspace to foster informal leaning. It was good, if slightly contradictory. One suggestion they had was not making set strategies of process, but then they were listing out strategies for this process. Otherwise they presented some interesting proposals like doing walking one-on-one meetings, having projects that are for fun rather than clients, and allowing new-comers to the industry to rotate through different projects every six months if they wanted.

Then I saw "Being the Underdog: Building an Identity through Creativity," during which a Hispanic American, a Latvian, Hungarian, and a Guatemalan talked about the ground breaking creative work happening within each community or country. It turns out when you're an underdog you aren't afraid of failing so you can take bigger risks and the pressure of having a smaller budget forces you to be more creative.  This was by far one of my favorite talks the entire week because I didn't know about most of the work in these populations (except the Hispanic American work having seen a number of Hispanic publications and ads in my Texan school district).  

It was also the most angering seminar because they crammed four countries into one session on the last day when most people don't come. It said a lot about how the industry is structured to favor those countries that are already in power. The clips shown at the underdog seminar were no less impressive and innovative than those shown by any other country or agency.  Each county, which were barely mentioned the rest of the festival, got twelve minutes to talk. Yet we already know and are somewhat familiar with the work coming from shops in the USA, the UK, France, and Australia. Brazil has been getting more time in the spotlight this year, and they are sweeping the award ceremonies, but otherwise I've seen a lot of work and seminars from countries I already know something about. The seminar for the underdogs made me aware of just how much is getting left out, particularly in Central America and Africa outside of South Africa.

Now I'm sitting in the theater one last time to watch the final awards ceremony and trying to put any negative feelings behind me, at least for the night.

It's been one hell of a week.

Thank you and good night.

Volkswagen Tall - Tall Girl

Volkswagen Tall is a spunky looking little car with a higher roof." The spot "Tall Girl" showcases a very tall woman going on a variety of outings with men who are about a head shorter than her. At the very end she meets a man whose head does not appear in frame at first.  When he comes up to her he is about the same height that she is. She gets in the Volkswagen Tall and they drive off together over a brightly lit bridge into the city. The tag line "surprising spacious" appears and the spot ends.

There is some implication that the car is like the woman - lovely, but a little quirky. It is charming and shows the theme of the car, a little different, a little special, more than the product itself. This creates a stronger feeling for the car than a number of car ads which show the car going quickly or the tech developments of the car. The ad used emotion rather than logic to sell and with a well know brand like Volkswagen, that has a reputation for being quirky, this ad fit into their larger brand voice well.

However, I was confused at the beginning as to whether she was going on dates with these men or was just going about life being taller than everyone. It was more clear at the end when she met the final man that she was going on dates, but I felt the previous scenes with shorter men should've been more clearly dates. A lot of them were outside or in big ambiguous buildings, had they happened in bars, coffee shops, and restaurants instead it would've been more clear.

Like my complaint about the Axe ad having really forgettable music I think that this commercial could've benefitted from some better music. The music was just background noise even though there was no speaking in the ad. When there is no dialogue to hear there is a great chance to hit the message home with an appropriate song. I wish a something a little quirky or a song about a search had been played during the ad.

Cannes Day 6

Today I went to the forum “Selling Sustainability – Are we there yet?” hosted by Y&R and Wunderman.  They discussed a consumer group they called the aspirationals – a group composed mainly of millennials, the generation I am part of. Aspirationals enjoy consumption and convenience, but they also take sustainability of a brand, either socially or environmentally, into account. If they are offered two products of similar cost they will, without a doubt, pick the sustainable brand, and they will be proud of it. The talk went on to say that “sustainability needs to be a force, not a fad” and that brands should promote the sustainable efforts they make.  As the media tends to only pick up on negative practices of brands they should try to be transparent and show the sustainable efforts they are making. 

At the end a very relevant question was asked: Will sustainability ever be more important than price?  They said it should be and would be because if a product is sustainable it’s actually worth more in the long run so it should be valued at a higher price.  There are a number of problems with this theory – primarily that the cheaper thing will often win out anyways because the majority of the world doesn’t have that extra money to spare.  Sustainable products have to be developed in way that they can be sold cheaply. Otherwise, they will only be used by the upper class. Sustainability has to be cheap or it will in fact just be a fad among wealthy consumers. Large brands with a lot of leverage should work to make sustainable products cheap enough to be priced competitively to regular products.

After this I got sucked into the screening room for the film ads again.  I love it and I hate it. When I watch a recorded TV I will usually watch one of the commercial breaks.  But watching ad, after ad, after ad is really enough to make me tear my hair out. Perhaps it’s because they’re so short, but I think it may be because they’re all so intense.  It made me reevaluate what I like in an ad. A calmer ad might actually work more effectively because it is a break from the stream of fast consumption.

After that I went to a seminar hosted by Burberry and Google where they showcased and compared the work they did that they felt pushed the creative bracket. It was interesting to see how both of these brands try to mesh the digital with the physical world.

Axe - Young and Mature

Axe is known for having racy ads trying to appeal to teenage boys and young men. The axe "Young an Mature" ad made by Ponce Buenos Aires. It was an ad for the movie theater - you needed 3D glasses to view it.

It starts with an average looking man in his early twenties moving into a new apartment complex. As he walks in a young woman (looking to be in her early twenties) walks by and catches his eye. As soon as she has turned around and gone in an older woman (looking to be about thirty) catches his eye as she leaves to go on a jog. Then an animated image pops up and explains that from here forward you can choose whether you want to watch the storyline progress with the older woman or the younger woman. If you close one eye you see images of only the young girl and if you close the other eye you see only the older woman. Then the story-line continues with the boy developing relationships with scenes of painting his new apartment, them bringing him cookies, watching a movie, kissing in an elevator, having sex in his room, and then the morning after in which the older woman leaves before be wakes and the younger woman stays with him.

I thought this was an exceedingly clever way to use the 3D medium. It actually makes a film ad interactive, giving the viewer a choice in what they will see without disrupting the experience for other viewers. This also communicates something about the brand and product - that Axe is so effective at getting women that you can choose which girl you want. 

The production involved filming one building and three characters. There was one part explaining how to use the glasses that used simple cartoon animation - it had one image and some text.  The only production bit that was difficult was overlaying the scenes of each women so they synced up well.

The music choice could've been stronger. There was no speaking, as there were two story-lines happening simultaneously, so the music needed to be strong. It was a song called Higher & Higher, which had a good intensity, but seemed irrelevant. A stronger song choice would've complimented it really well and if it was about having your choice in women it would've pushed the message through in an even more.

I also wondered why the end of the older woman's story involved her leaving and the end of the younger woman's story involved her staying. Is that supposed to link hook up versus long term relationship to old versus young? Is it encouraging relationships between people of similar age, but only hook ups with people of different ages. I don't know that this was intentional on the part of axe; I suspect not. Maybe it signified the ability of users to choose whether they want the situation to end as hook up of something longer term.  I felt that the ad was already complex enough without different endings that imply different things about the nature of Axe. Using one ending would've improved the ad because it would simplify the ad. 

Overall, it was pretty effective and a little more mature of a story than Axe usually uses.

Cannes Day 5

We started out the day talking to the woman who runs the agency MOXIE, Suzy Deering. She offered a good perspective on being a woman in the business and how she struggled not to sell herself short.

Then I went to a workshop with GolinHarris about creating and maintaining brand voice. At the end of which, I'm proud to say, I won a competition to create a fake tweet for a brand with a silly voice. My pun was some iteration of "I lost my glasses this morning and made a huge spectacle of myself." So thanks for the bad joke training, Dad.

Then I watched ad submissions in the screening room. I think my brain just about melted and poured out my ears.  I thought, since this is an international festival of creativity, that the ads submitted would be better. Don't get me wrong, they weren't horrible, but most of them were moderately clever and that's about it. Since you pay to submit entries I assumed agencies would only spend money on their best work, but watching the real go by I realized that clients probably pressured agencies to submit works for their brands or paid for them to be entered. It really made me question the merit of the festival prizes. Brands shouldn't be motivating the festival submissions, it should be about creativity, not trying to desperately beg for a Lion; it devalues the award.

I finished up the day attending a seminar hosted by Cirque de Soleil, which was actually pretty boring. The ads for it and the flexible characters they had walking around handing out flyers were more impressive than the talk itself.

Analyzing the Ads - Play Station - Cubs Win Advert

This ad shows the aftermath of the World Series where the Cubs win. It is absolutely mad. You see the entire city go out to celebrate and everyone, from a priest to an elderly man, is going crazy.  People pour into the streets, bars erupt with shouts of happiness, the stadium looks like it will burst.  Then the image goes to the field and it slowly changes to CGI. The camera zooms out to reveal it is a video game and a Cubs fan is watching the created victory with one tear dripping down his face.

I think the ad did a great job showing the connection sports fans have to their teams and how Xbox allows them to channel their obsession, their love, into an alternate reality in which their team can win.  It's a very emotional way to sell a video game and while it's funny and clever it goes a little deeper and  resonates on an emotional tie that fans have with their team. 

The major production cost would've been getting enough people to participate, there were literally hundreds of people in the some of the scenes, and getting all of the spaces because they used so many different bars, restaurants, homes, streets, and what looked to be the actual stadium.  I think that the medium of live action film, which communicated the feeling of being in a crowd of fans, and the CGI shot of the actual video game, to show how that medium connects you to the real life of sports fans was a strong choice that played into the message.  

I only saw one submission of this type, but I think the message could be used effectively for other avid sports teams as well as other sports.  My overall advice is to expand the campaign to include similar spots. Otherwise, I think it hit the nail on the head for connecting extreme fandom to playing a sports video game.

Cannes Day 4

To set the stage for today I left my festival badge at the apartment and had to ride the train a few stops back to get it. Normally, I'm a pretty prepared person so I arrived at the festival feeling young, flustered, and rather silly. 

Then I saw a seminar in which Anderson Cooper interviewed Conan O' Brien about how he uses comedy to connect and communicate with people. 

Then the UGA program was lucky enough to have a private talk with Conan. He told us some about his career and we asked him a handful of questions. He tried to pass on some advice about authenticity, which in his case is conveyed through comedy, and about trusting yourself and being confident. 

After that I went to a DigitasLBI workshop about constant content for brands on YouTube.  Comedian Katherine Ryan helped out and after that UGA students again got a private session to ask her questions. She also told us we should be authentic by "finding our voice." She illustrated this with experiences from her life.

Now I'm watching Than Khai Meng, worldwide creative director of Oglivy & Mather (a large ad agency), talk about some of his work. At the beginning he asked the room why we were all here and the winning answers were so we can creat culture, so we can change, and so we can get better.

So today I've heard a lot of advice from experts in varying fields and levels about how to change. It was nice to see some successful people and be somewhat convinced that they aren't as brilliant as they are cracked up to be; they're just people. It takes a little bit of glitter out of the future for my generation and places it within reach. 

It's interesting walking around a bunch of performers and creative people and communicators and realizing they all want the same thing - attention.  The entire communication industry can be summed up as the attempt to share an idea, whether it be funny, profound, or ingenious, with people.

All I really want from my life is to find ideas that are wonderful and convey them to people successfully. 

So, by god, give me some attention. Someday I might deserve it.

Cannes Day 3

I got myself to the Palais early this morning to attend a workshop that was supposed to give you some tools to cope with conflicts arising between creatively wired and non-creatively wired people. I would've benefitted more if I'd worked in the industry before as they talked about client meetings and briefs, things I've only read about, not experienced.  Despite feeling unexperienced, at the end of it I felt I learned some valuable communication tools for breaking down a creative idea into its pieces so others can understand. It was one of my favorite things at the festival so far.

Then I went to a master class, a rather contradictory master class.  Mother Collective tried to tell us "How to Avoid being a Douche in the Business."  What they actually talked about was how you need to figure out what kind of job environment will make you happy and to stop thinking about labels so much. I thought framing it through a douchiocity lens was a little silly. They tried to say that people are douches when they are missing happiness, that they try to make up for it with fancy cars and cool clothes and pretending to look happy when they aren't. But this model didn't hold up well because they only explained it at the beginning and after that they just talked about all the great work they did and how it made them happy. I think sitting on a stage and talking about how nice and good you are is actually a little douche-like. I wish they hadn't framed it from the douche standpoint and had just said - "this is how we found happiness, maybe it will work for you."

Then I went to a seminar (trying to cover all my bases on how I'm intaking information) put on by Innocean: Art and Design - East meets West. It was formatted like a conversation between a car designer and an artist. I had a lot of trouble paying attention because no one was addressing the audience, only the other person. It was also not organized much, it flowed like a conversation, because it was, but it was a conversation I could not participate in. I had trouble relating it to my life because I'm neither a professional artist nor a car designer.

Then I went to the forum Liquid Creativity: IAB Secrets of the Mobile Superstars. Before it started nearly every head in the room was bent down to their smartphone or tablet. It was interesting to hear about all of it, though I wish they hadn't used so much lingo.  All in all though, I enjoyed learning about the ability to tailor campaigns or programs to individuals using mobile. 

Now I'm off to play with some Legos at another workshop!

Cannes Day 2

I started out day two looking through about a hundred short-listed entries to the public relations categories. Overall I was impressed the campaigns seemed integrated across every medium, a little catchier, sillier, and simpler than a lot of the other work I've seen in seminars. I suppose this shows how quickly the field is evolving.

Then I went to google beach, complete with a real-life red dropped pin at the entrance, to do yoga. It was reassuring to see people from different agencies around the world fussing with their skinny jeans and ray bans while trying to stretch themselves into funny positions.

Then I went to see a Coca-Cola presentation. It seemed like they were just patting themselves on the back. It was a seminar, but I didn't learn much except about how forward thinking Coca-Cola thinks it is. In 1955 they used the first black model for Coca-Cola, showing them to be, "as American as apple pie." But does that make them innovative or does that make them a responder to what's already happening? The speakers actually said the brand was reading the pulse of pop culture and responding to it. But later they contradicted themselves, positing that they were both shaping and responding to culture. All the ads they showed seemed to be more of a response. I don't think Coca-Cola can claim to have a great influence on the beginning of social movements, just the response to them.

Then I watched a seminar about Networkone, a company connecting small independent agencies to international partners. Apparently last year 49% of Cannes winners were independent agencies and 83% of the Grand Prix winners were independent last year. The take away messages were: you can't categorize this work because boundaries are becoming less relevant, the counted work ($) was still an important indicator, and close client agency relationships are really important for making good work. This seminar left the biggest impact on me as I would like to work in a small agency or an in-house team as public relations practitioner. I only want to do work for companies that I can stand behind ethically.

Then I went to the master class "Glitch not Glitz: What the Future Looks Like."  They discussed a number of trends such as "the struggle to find a new aesthetic that's separate from past perceptions," creating something truly new.  It was interesting, but all the trends were focused on fashion and art. Another point for culture driving advertising rather than advertising driving culture. 

My take away message from the day seems to be that advertising follows culture closely so it can be relevant, not that it is creating the culture itself. I do think that companies adopting pop-culture in their ads are reinforcing it, but I don't think they themselves are creating it.

Cannes Day 1

Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity day one left me with so much information and advice I feel as if I could burst. With seven days to go it's hard to know what is worth taking away from all of it other than free swag and business cards.

Today I watched four seminars. Kicking it off I saw Celebrities and the Media, a panel style discussion on celebrities maintaining their own self image online featuring Martha Stewart, Nick Cannon, and former spice girl Mel B.

After that there was a good presentation on the London 2012 Paralympics and their relatively successful attempt to present it as equal to the Olympics in the UK.

Next I learned about Makers, a movie project about great women in history who haven't gotten their time in the history books. This presentation featured Gloria Steinem, a famous women's activist and poetic speaker. I felt connected and proud of the women on the stage. However, this is an advertising convention, and the leaders of the industry are men. The room was not as full as I wish it had been. The placement of the seminar on a Monday around lunchtime was also not prime time. It may not have been purposeful, but it certainly took away from the impact.

After my favorite seminar of the day I saw my least favorite seminar so far: You Need an Enemy, put on by Arnold Worldwide and Shepard Fairey (the artist behind the Obama Hope poster). I thought the concept of making an enemy to make an ad relatable was too simple for many cases. As I discussed in the Banksy post,  creating a black and white version of a situation is not effective at conveying a situation. It's insulting to the general public to boil everything down to a hero and a villain. They're smart enough to understand a more complex situation. In fact they need a better understanding to make the right choice. The Kony 2012 campaign chose a strong enemy, which did give people something to unite against and be angry at so they would donate money, but it also didn't explain the complex situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. The campaign funded the army of the ruling government, which was coincidentally responsible for 90% of the deaths in Uganda due to forced displacements and dissapearings, while Kony, while a terrible criminal, was only responsible for 10%.  In this situation giving people a black and white may have funded more killing.

I wrapped up my seminar attendance with Hakuhodo's presentation on Creative Alchemy -- a convincing version of think outside the box.

At only 5 p.m. I've got lots of fodder for thought and the day is not over yet.