lead/marke | ralf schwartz

lead/marke NET: Helge Tenno > "Is This a Time for Status Quo?"

Note: Right on Spot, Helge. My Golden Rules 10, 11, and 12 of Leadership: Challenge Yourself! Question Everything! Improve Continuously! - Enjoy!
(lead/marke NET proudly features Helge's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

Are we challenging the status quo just to settle for an updated version? Is this even a time for status quo?

One of my personal mantras has always been: “Never stop, as soon as you’ve found a solution – start questioning it”. In an ongoing email discussion William Channer, he asked me to elaborate. I thought the answer would be well worth posting on the blog:

WC: Why is this important to you?:
“Never stop, as soon as you’ve found a solution – start questioning it”

Two reasons:

1. This is not the time for status quo’s. Working in an environment where the pattern of platform usage, media consumption and technology awareness in the general public is in constant development means that the currency of our products needs to meet this change. As we have not yet “landed” on the next big thing but finding our way there (we are currently in between generations), settling down can quickly either leave one stranded or result in the loss of a big opportunity.

For our clients this is the time to gain market opportunities through new business models, utilizing technology and behavior in tailored ways (like Amazon has done for the book industry or Google for the media industry the last fifteen years). If we are not helping our clients discover and develop new opportunities, but milk old ones, are we doing our job?

2. Deconstructing concepts, taking them apart and challenging each fragment is a way of exploring and discovering ideas. Amongst others described by Stephen King in the book A Master Class in Brand Planning: Find one idea and then try to destroy it.

The benefit of this process is both a chance to polish the final concept and make sure every detail is perfect, but also to understand how and why the details work, and uncovering new insight in the process. Deconstructing something you’ve already did that worked gives you great ammunition not for copying it, but for finding out why it was a success, and then understanding which specific details in it made it work and why other details did not.

As an example advertisers have always known what types of communication gave an intended effect, but it is only in the last twenty years brain science has been able to tell us exactly why. Which has led to an offspring of brand new ideas based on the specific knowledge of how the brain works as opposed to just copying known “advertising rules”.

To put it briefly: People constantly adopt and implement new ways of communicating and of fitting technology into their everyday life. By deconstructing our big ideas into smaller fragments we have a better tool for knowing what will work when building solutions on new platforms for new behaviors – and by that the “risk” or “guts” people often talk about when explaining creativity becomes rational and logical – even safe.

This does not make marketing and design boring, but it demands more thinking about thinking. – And it demands as much creativity from the strategic department as from the creative department.

Helge works as a Planner for SDG, helping brands and organizations discover WHY they are valuable in consumers lives, and HOW they can create deliberate value on the arenas and inside the interfaces where they connect with them. @congbo

Engagement & Agility: Edelman's Six Digital Trends to Watch

Via designmind / frogdesign.

Brand Engagement: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn - When Shall we Three Meet Again? In Thunder, Lightning, or in Rain?

Ever more often I judge Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn as Macbeth's 3 witches: "When Shall we Three Meet Again? In Thunder, Lightning or in Rain?".

Ever more often I meet marketing guys and girls deeply fascinated by the magical powers of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. But there are no magical powers!

They are just tools - if you cannot handle them, because your agency, your department, or you yourself do not understand them, and their potential & limitations, nothing - literally nothing - will happen.

You yourself will have to add the secret sauce. You yourself will have to add meaning and relevance to those tools. You yourself will have to give life to them.

You yourself will have to anticipate the new individuality, independence, and impatience of your clients, customers, consumers, fans - born out of the web, digitalization, and mobility. You will have to amaze and inspire them - like you yourself would like to be inspired.

Do not believe the silly whisperings of the 3 witches. Do not fall prey to them. Do not rely on the magical powers of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn - identify, grow, and use your own powers!

Be a Spark! Change the Game! Leave a Mark!

Engagement: Social Gaming Graphs 2010

Via Hiten Shah.

More at "Social Gaming Graphs 2010".

Engagement: Diesel Simulating Facebook > Facepark: "Analog is stupid. Be stupid."

Great stuff from Diesel again!

"The philosophy of the day was based upon the fact that the park is much more fun then the internet. “Instead of wasting our lives in front of our computers, we chose to waste our lives in the park“, Diesel stated. Digital is smart. Analog is stupid. Be stupid", writes viralblog:

Via viralblog.

"However, telling your audience to screw digital and become a fan of analog while driving the traffic towards the offline event through social (and asking to become a fan of the Facebook page for example) is a nice paradox. I guess digital isn’t so stupid after all".  Read more at viralblog.

Background: "Personally, I love the idea of the “Be Stupid” campaign. Its a intelligent move to turn a jeans brand into a philosophy that can be adapted by a large group among the target population. With great copy such as: “Smart sees what there is. Stupid sees what there could be.” and “Smart listens to the head. Stupid listens to the heart.“, Diesel engages their target audience to bond with their emotional side, instead of their rational."

Addendum

View also > "Facebook: Fiat sprüht es an die Wand".

For Your Weekend: Alex Bogusky > "Who the Hell is Max Lendermann and What the Hell is Experiencial Marketing?" - Video

Via Alex Bogusky.

Flipboard - Why doesn't Great Stuff like that Come from Our Publishing Industry?

Via gyokusai.

The publishers seem to be in much bigger trouble than I thought till now. This is so much more the future I envision - as opposed to what publishers and magazines present on the iPad these days (by copying their printing into bits and bytes).

Please read more about it: "Flipboard iPad App Pretties Up, Declutters Your Social Web Life Into Magazine Form", fastcompany.

The media will (finally) have to transcend their existing markets, change their ways of thinking, break the rules of their business models to literally stay alive.

Going back to their own roots will be a vital first step in this quest. The secret lies not in the question how to earn money, but how to amaze, inspire, and service the consumer - as usual.

And the businesses' Sacred Cows have to die first, I suggest!

lead/marke NET: Tom Fishburne > "Devil's Advocate"

Note: That's exactly why I labelled my lead/marke process' 3rd part 'Advocatus Diaboli' - to make a clear statement very early in every project! Please enjoy!
(lead/marke NET proudly features Tom's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

(to license this week's cartoon, click here)

I've been hooked this week by Seth Godin's latest book, Linchpin. Seth briefly profiles the Devil's Advocate, which he describes as a "card-carrying member of the Resistance" -- a force that prevents remarkable ideas from coming to life. In his blog, Seth occasionally advises his readers to "uninvite the devil's advocate, since the devil doesn't need one, he's doing fine." 

The Devil's Advocate is a regular staffer in most offices. "Let me play Devil's Advocate" is a socially acceptable way to shoot down an idea. It's a guise that allows anyone to criticize an idea without offering an alternative. It's far easier (and safer) to tear down than to create. You can undermine what someone has just proposed without actually challenging them directly. 

The Devil's Advocate is over 400 years old. The Roman Catholic Church officially created the Advocatus Diaboli position in 1587 to be the official skeptic when debating sainthood applications. His job was to be the official naysayer: slander the candidate's character and argue that the miracles were fraudulent. 

In 1983, Pope John Paul abolished the Devil's Advocate position. As a result of this reform, he was able to canonize 500 and beatify 1,300 people in his tenure, compared to only 98 canonizations from all of his predecessors in the 20th century. 

When the Devil's Advocate lost his job with the Church, he started to hang out in business meetings.  Swap the process of canonizing saints to canonizing ideas, and you can see the wet blanket effect that this role creates. It's very hard to overcome the Devil's Advocate's argument because belief in an idea is an act of faith, not just an act of proof. There will always be reasonable doubt and the Devil's Advocate is there to seed it. 

If the Roman Catholic Church can abolish the Devil's Advocate, why not your business? That's not to say that you remove critical thought from the idea vetting process. Just channel that critical thought through a positive lens. Force yourself to start every sentence with "Yes, and" to make the idea stronger, not weaker, by the composite effect of the crowd. Don't offer criticism unless you have an alternative solution to share. And don't be afraid to take leaps of faith. Not all remarkable ideas can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. 

In your next meeting, ban the Devil's Advocate and invite the Angel's Advocate instead.

Tom, when not cartooning (eg. for Marketing Week), is method's international managing director. Based in London, he frequently speaks at campuses, companies, and conferences about marketing, cartooning, and how to spread business ideas. @tomfishburne

Brand Engagement: Social Media, the Brand Lady of Easy Virtue & Clean Beaches

Quite funny, that marketers still crave for the masses, no matter why they come and stay around. Interesting, that marketers do not care for quality, but single-mindedly just for quantities. Desperately they collect friends and fans and eye balls, still negating that a fan's value might be zero.

Instead of understanding the values and virtues of social networking (forget the term social media, please), they literally just dress their brands up to collect fans. They hire agency beauty surgeons to rejuvenate the brand skin-deep. Brands get furnished with brass earrings, instead of gold, a shorter skirt, more make-up, false eyelashes and fingernails, a suntan, to attract followers by the number.

They create little brand whores instead of (finally) injecting a core, a back bone, and a meaning into their brand.

All this to attract strangers to the brand, to win the battle (against the competition) for fans, to annihilate themselves with lesser targets - yes, easier to achieve, but adding no value at all - just wasting time, they desperately would need for true innovation, engagement, and communication agility.

All this to attract the masses, to crowd the beaches of twitter and facebook ...
But have those marketers seen these beaches in the evening? When the crowd is leaving? When they move to the next party? The next gifts, coupons, rebates, sensations? When they leave nothing at the venue except their trashes?

Wouldn't it be much more rewarding, sustainable, and successful in the end to attract the true fans, the decent ones, engaging in the product and brand? Giving them a remote beach to enjoy, one of those scarce high quality beaches? A beach they talk about and want to bring their friends to? A beach truly taken care of by the fan community itself?

Those fans you do not win with brass, not with glamour, not with coupons. Those you cannot blind with trumpery. Those you must earn. With virtues and values. Those you must inspire. With engagement. With a back bone. Performance. Relevance. Demanding and rewarding Win-Win situations.

Brand Engagement: mymuesli films and edits commercial with iPhone 4

Via deutsche startups. - Above: Clip plus making of.

lead/marke NET: Adrian Ho > "Being New" - and the New German Soccer Team

Note: Obviously, if you look at the photo, there is also some charme in bringing old and new together. Please enjoy!
(lead/marke NET proudly features Adrian's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

Image via flickr.

I watched a bit of Ken Burns’ Unforgivable Blackness this morning about Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champ at the turn of the last century in America, (it’s really good). Johnson was a part of the “New Negro” movement; blacks who opposed the segregation theories of the day espoused by people like Booker T. Washington, and who rejected the idea that blacks should be submissive. It was radical thinking for the time that instantly made everything else look and feel old. Watching, I got a sense of what a revolution it must have been at the time.

I got the same feeling watching Germany demolish Argentina. The tactics and play of the “new” German team felt so fresh and revolutionary that, by contrast, Argentina looked old, sluggish and predictable. New Germany were, in fact, so good that they sent two of the greatest footballing nations in the world home to rethink how they play the game.

I think “Being New” has infiltrated a broad spectrum of business and culture. There is a fresh aesthetic, and a fresh approach that can often be identified in the most unexpected places. Often it’s still too new to have been named or classified, but it is unmistakable because it instantly shines a harsh light on being old.

Adrian is founding partner of Zeus Jones a branding company believing actions speak louder than words and that modern brands are defined by what they do not what they say. He speaks (and writes) regularly about non-communications based models for marketing & branding. @adrianho

Engagement: Twitter's Great CSR Campaign

Let me say just that: I want to see more brands and corporations involved in CSR campaigns like that. Use your imagination!

"Twitter has launched its own wine label to promote literacy because, as its founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams put it, "If you can't read, you can't tweet." The social media website is collaborating with Crushpad, a San Francisco-based winery, and the nonprofit organization Room to Read in what they call the Fledgling Initiative. Customers can pre-order $20 bottles of pinot noir or Chardonnay and follow the wine making process via Twitter. The wine is scheduled to be bottled in August, and $5 for every bottle sold will be donated to Room to Read for literacy initiatives in India." Via Forbes.

Design: Iconic Products Ask for Iconic Accessories

"The Icon is a backup power solution inspired by the battery icon on the iPhone. Its been a concept for a while but now you can actually buy this iconic design and award winning battery pack solution for your iPhones or iPods", writes kushu.

Via design-fetish.

Take-Away for your brand design: The better and more iconic your own design is, the more iconic all accessories will be. You yourself decide very early in the product development process, if your product will be a winner.

The better you design it, the higher you raise the bar - and the more fun will all those involved (in development, accessory industries and consumer markets) have.

Do not go for the average or second-best solution. Go for gold - and everybody else will, too.

lead/marke NET: Drew Neisser > "Ben Franklin: Social Media Enthusiast?"

Note: Still a role model, even 220 years after his death: Mister Benjamin Franklin. Please enjoy!
(lead/marke NET proudly features Drew's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

The great patriot and social media enthusiast Benjamin Franklin would surely enjoy the communications revolution that has swept our fair industry and would have plenty of good advice for modern day practitioners.  Advice well earned.  At 15, he adopted the pseudonym Mrs. Silence Dogood just to get his articles published in his brother’s newspaper.  This ruse pissed off his brother to no end and ultimately forced young Ben to flee to Philly where at the age of 21 he formed an early social network called Junto, a group of “like minded aspiring artisans and tradesmen who hoped to improve themselves while they improved their community.”

Once in Philadelphia, Franklin quickly distinguished himself as an agent of change, a man Malcolm Gladwell might be forced to describe as connector, maven AND salesman. At 22, he established The Pennsylvania Gazette, essentially a printed blog of his essays and observations, a vehicle that earned him tremendous social currency.  Shortly thereafter, he set up the city’s first library, the Wikipedia of its day, complete with America’s first librarian.  A noted scientist, perhaps his least known invention is the concept of paying it forward, freely sharing his ideas, inventions and on occasion his cash all with the hope that “it may thus go thro’ many hands.”  Clearly, without Franklin there are no open source API’s on Facebook and certainly no #good tweets on Twitter.

Having established his bona fides as social media pioneer let me now call upon the ever-humble B. Franklin to offer us instruction on how modern day marketing patriots can declare their independence from social media silliness.  And while this piece is no Poor Richard’s Almanac, it will approach the topic at hand with a similar clarity of purpose and simplicity in language.  It will also do so knowing Franklin would have supported this author, “So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.”  Finally, it will encourage marketers to take AIM, a simply acronym that befits a Franklinian approach to social media.

1.  A is for Audit

All too often, marketers take the “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach to social media.  The numerous social media pundits who prescribe dabbling over diligence encourage this philosophy.  Back in 1748, Franklin would have warned you of the risks of this approach, noting, “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.”  Instead, Franklin would have encouraged a rigorous social media audit, offering, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

Hardly revolutionary, a social media audit lays the groundwork for a successful campaign, fulfilling Franklin’s prognostication that, “Diligence is the mother of good luck.”  These audits can be done in-house but as Franklin warned, “Those that won’t be counseled can’t be helped.”  Kinaxis, a supply chain management company, sought the help of Forrester before it went on to triple its leads and double its site traffic via a rigorously planned social media program (see detailed case history.)

2. I is for Implementation

A great communicator himself, Franklin would have been undaunted by all the new options, evaluating each carefully in order to “Never confuse motion with action.”   When it comes to content creation, Franklin’s remarkably timeless advice to, “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing,” is as true for Twitter and YouTube in 2010 as it was for patriotic pamphlets back in 1775.  Anticipating the transparency that enlightened marketers now seek, his proverb “honesty is the best policy,” is truer today than ever before.

Franklin inherently understood social media implementation, and the critical roles of likability, entertainment and patience.  For brands that want to build fans on Facebook and the like, Franklin offered, “If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.” For brands afraid of having a little fun with their audience, Franklin encouraged, “Games lubricate the body and the mind.” And for brands in an unrealistic hurry to gain traction in social media, Franklin noted, “He that can have patience can have what he will.”

3. M is for Monitoring

As Postmaster General in 1768, Franklin monitored the routes of British mail ships to discover why it took them two weeks longer to reach US ports than private merchant ships.   Conducting his own focus groups with merchant captains and whalers, Franklin ultimately charted and named the Gulf Stream, which was acting like a firewall, slowing the movement of data from East to West across the Atlantic.  Not new to the idea of monitoring, Franklin approached even minute details with earnest, noting, “A small leak will sink a great ship.”

So too must social media marketers monitor their activities with rigor and respond accordingly.  While lots of free tools are available to monitor everything from conversations to web traffic, organic search performance to lead generation, Franklin reminded us that, “Lost time is never found again,” thus the anticipating the use of time-saving paid services like Radian6.  With such a disciplined approach to social media, marketers can, in Franklin’s words, “Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.”

Even 220 years after his death, Benjamin Franklin remains a beloved character bestowing a treasure trove of wisdom for good citizens and good brands.  In fact, among the 12 virtues that he drafted when only 20 years old, you will find the single best guidance for any brand I’ve ever read, “Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.”  (This article originally appeared on MediaPost.com)

Drew is the CEO of Renegade, the digital & guerrilla marketing agency from New York City that helps clients make more out of less by transforming communications into "Marketing as Service." @DrewNeisser

Brand Engagement: Ooops - the Value of a Facebook Fan is Zero!

"It is a question I hear several times a week:  What is the value of a Facebook Fan?", Augie Ray begins his post.

And I know all the answers. They just depend upon who is giving them:
Agencies want to sell their stuff, so the value must be high. Everybody is doing the facebook game, so it must be right, and have a high value.
Marketers want to sell their works internally, so the value must be high.
Both want to get higher budgets, appreciation and bonuses.

But, says Augie:

"The smart marketer will approach the question of value as if the answer is zero -- there is no intrinsic value to a Facebook fan. This might sound sacrilegious to social media marketers, but think of it this way: What’s the value of an email subscriber if the company never uses the database for anything? And what’s the value of the same email subscriber if the company has a smart, user-focused strategy for email? It is what companies do with fans that creates value, not merely that a brand has fans. "

Too many marketers just mirror into Facebook every activity they pursue outside of Facebook. That does not make sense. Fans want to interact, fans want to be entertained with a difference, informed, 'incorporated'.

Fans want to get to know the real stuff, they want to know the secrets, they want to be near their object of desire. They want to belong to the inner core.

Real fans that is. But most marketers just try to enlarge the fan base by gimmicks, gadgets, rebates, competitions, free samplings. They want to buy fans. They have not understood what happens at Facebook or other social media venues of people. Why people are here - and what the benefit of a real fan might be.

If you have to buy your fans, they are worth nothing. They are just a number. They will have no loyalty. They symbolize high reach, but they do not symbolize high quality. And without quality - why should they have any value at all?

lead/marke NET: Helge Tenno > "Social Media 2012"

Note: 'Social' will evolve, 'Media' will blur. But what will be next? A 3-dimensional step into the very near future by Helge. Please enjoy!
(lead/marke NET proudly features Helge's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

I’m not a big fan of the term Social Media. It might be that it translates poorly into Norwegian, the fact that it sounds like its the technology that is social – not how it enables interaction between people or identities, or that I find the term itself invites us to a limited set of ideas in regards to what it can facilitate.

Either way, the following question was sent to me, and several others, from a student, Trude Stokstad, this week:

What will social media be in two years?

Having a blog makes one fortunate enough to answer a lot of questions from readers, students, enthusiasts or people just being plain curious. This gives you an opportunity to search for answers outside your original train of thought and is surely one of the most important benefits of having a blog.

With the assumption that we will still use the term social media in two years, as media and platforms become more nuanced, difficult to categorize and are having their functionality integrated with each other. I still found three things I think will make a difference:

Three things:

1. There will be no social media but social operating systems. There will be an integration of participation and dialogue into everything – or, where it benefits core business models or goals (no more being on Facebook for Facebook’s sake).

In the short time span of two years there will still be destinations and sites like Facebook, youtube, linkedin. But one or more of these databases will own your information and it will be fed out and made accessible on a range of other destinations and services.

This is interesting both in what we are already seeing from services like Facebook Connect, connecting 60 million people to Facebook outside Facebook.com, or the fact that half of all Twitter activity is already taking place off-site.

link: Social media silo

2. In the future our objects will become our friends. We don’t necessarily need to communicate exclusively to people, we communicate with identities that might as well be objects (people follow the Tower Bridge twitter feed or get SMS’s from their plants that their running out of water).

In the future the stuff around us would want to communicate with us and we would in some way interact with that communication.

One could already ask the question if it is people or objects that help us communicate and organize on Nike+ (the sensor in the shoe and the iPod are the ones collecting and creating the data that connects us)?

link: Our future Identities

3. The language will expand. Today we focus on conscious, tangible communication like the written word or uploaded videos or music. This will change and future communication will be in richer forms. Social Media is not about exchanging words and opinions, it’s about sharing ideas, expressed through any language or data.

link: Are we to focused on getting people to talk to us rather than exchanging ideas?

Helge works as a Planner for SDG, helping brands and organizations discover WHY they are valuable in consumers lives, and HOW they can create deliberate value on the arenas and inside the interfaces where they connect with them. @congbo

Business Innovation: "Speed and Agility trump Size and Experience"

Kevin Kelly: "In the highly turbulent, quickly reforming environment of the new economy, the competitive advantage goes to the nimble and malleable, the flexible and quick. Speed and agility trump size and experience. Fast to find the new is only one half the equation; fast to let go is the other important half."

Funny enough consumers are very good at it - very much better than brands and businesses. Consumers have adopted the internet, mobility, and digital culture to maximize their independence, individuality, and impatience. Traditional structures, principles, and intuitions cannot cope with that anymore.

And: Consumers becoming entrepreneurs are the new force, not big corporations. Students founded - out of an individual need - now multinational corporations like Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Facebook, twitter, tumblr.

Kevin Kelly: "Of all the lessons that biology has to offer us as we begin to assemble a network economy, the necessity of abandoning our successes will be the hardest to practice."

We cannot be truly innovative, if we fear changing the game, breaking the rules, abandoning our worn-out path of success. But if we don't do it ourselves, Steve Jobs will do it, or any of our potential consumers, anybody with ambition, aspiration, courage, engagement.

David Gillespie: "Therein lies the issue that confronts not just the music industry, but any company who gets very, very good at making money off of something. They focus all their energy on how they can make more money off that something, rather than looking at ways they can disrupt their own business model. One of the reasons Apple is so successful is it is hell-bent on making its own products obsolete before someone else does."

Be a Spark! Change the Game! Leave a Mark!

lead/marke NET: Anthony Kalamut > "Alex Bogusky Resigns at CP+B"

Note: We desperately lack such personalities in Advertising Germany! Please enjoy the following appraisal of Alex by Prof. Anthony!
(lead/marke NET proudly features Anthony's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

He was known as employee number 16 in early 1989.
He became Creative Director of the agency five years later.
He was named a partner in 1997.
He became Co-Chairman of Crispin Porter + Bogusky in January 2008.
He charted his own future as Chief Creative Insurgent at MDC in early 2010.

Then suddenly, Dr. Alexander M. Bogusky resigned. He resigned from his MDC post and maybe advertising life altogether.

I have had the privilege to meet, chat and exchange ideas with Alex and with each encounter I left feeling smarter, more passionate and humbled, fueled to bring more to my students and to what I love to do. I met Alex for first time during Advertising Week in New York City in the fall of 2007. Since then he has been a mentor, inspiration and friend.

THIS IS NOT AN OBITUARY

Under his and Chuck Porter's direction, the CP+B has grown to over 900+ passionate minds. In Boulder, in Miami, and along with CP+B Europe in Sweden, he and CP+B have become the world’s most awarded agency in history including being named Agency of the Decade by Adweek and Alex being name "Creative Director of The Decade” in one of the most tumultuous times in advertising history. This growth and success showed no signs of stopping - as recent as last week CP+B was named Interactive Agency of the Year at the Cannes Advertising Festival and winning the Titanium Grand Prix for Best Buy Twelpforce.

The "great work" and "awards" earned him many honors, but it also brought some unusual attention along the way. There were fake Facebook pages, fake Twitter accounts and even a curmudgeon who would retweet any reference to @bogusky as "Bogusky Garbage" devoted to him. From time to time many blogs writers gave "play-by-play of his every move. Some would ask, not always kidding, “What would Alex do?” There was even fake merchandise created from decorative "plates" and "WWABD" (What Would Alex Bogusky Do) bracelets.

During his career Alex has been profiled in almost every industry publication from Communication Arts, Adweek, Adage, Business 2.0, Fast Company and Business Week. His work and thinking has has been featured in main stream media such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Newsweek, and TIME, as well as countless appearances on national television and radio. Two honors placed upon to Alex that defined his career, but his personality where his 2002 induction into the American Advertising Federation’s Hall of Achievement and the highest of honors for an Art Director, induction into the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame. Pretty cool for guy who really wasn't sure this crazy business was in his cards. He remains humbled by all of this.

I asked him to offer my students some insights on the ADC honor, some advice to help them in their careers. His response to me remains and defines what makes Alex an inspiration to me: ...

... please - for once, due to the post's length - continue reading at Anthony's blog.

Anthony is a Professor of Creative Advertising at Seneca College@York University in Toronto. As former award winning Creative Director his passion is now focused on nurturing and motivating new young talent on strategic planning & creative concept development of advertising. @southsideadguy

Addendum

Please also read: "Finishing the story" by Alex Bogusky himself.

Digital & Social Media: Are Agencies the Solution, the Problem, or just Scenery?

For some time now I am observing that agencies do not really know what to do in this age of Digital and Social Media. They just do the very obvious. This will not be enough. Kevin Brennan, Kellogg UK marketing director said it in his words a few weeks ago:

"Whilst it's great to have widgets and apps and stunts on Facebook that isn't going to make the Kellogg company stronger. We need an integrated solution."

Today it needs more than a (more or less) creative idea. Today the brand communication needs to deliver real value in itself. It needs to deliver value on top of the (physical) product. That is not what agencies are known for to supply. Agencies tell stories, pick media, negotiate rebates. They are not really deep into the product itself. And planning still does not get its priority in consultancy.

Agencies will have to reinvent themselves from scratch if they want to be part of the solution. But who should do that? The creative director, not knowing about digital, mobility, the future of communication? Or the traditional media guy (or girl), emphasizing HR because she does not know how to develop a vision for the agency? Or the buyer? Best friend of tv stations and publishing houses? Or the social media guru 'round the office corner? Who ain't capable of true business thinking?

Obviously they all are not keen to let go of influence, power, and compensation. It is easier to choke change and innovation right from the top. Make some incremental changes and wait for a miracle to happen, while the agency is losing business, image, and strength.

Kevin "hinted there could be another ‘Mad Men’ like golden age for agencies if they could put the right services together for FMCG firms and guide them through digital age: “If we had the [ideal agency] I think they would make a lot of money”. But not if they stay at the buzzword level of facebook and twitter.

Kevin "said that the digital revolution “is probably as profound as the advent of television but way more complex” because of that mash of social networking, search, shopping, video on demand and websites". Qed, change of game!

Great Innovation must be like: I could do that! - Yeah, but you didn't!

For me the best, potentially most successful business innovations are like 'modern art' in the following equation:

Via morenewmath, by Craig Damrauer.

I want to be stunned, otherwise it is no innovation. I want to be overwhelmed by its simplicity, otherwise the innovation will not find the masses. I want to be amazed by a new perspective, otherwise there will be no viral spread, positive word-of-mouth, and cocktail party effects, etc. I want disruption, otherwise there is no breakthrough, no breaking all the rules. I want to move forward. I want to feel the change. I want to make quantum leaps.

I do not want incremental change, I do not want adaption or adoption, do not want just another colour, taste, packaging, story. I do not want just the word 'NEW' to tell me this should be the innovation.

I just want to think 'I could have done that', and 'I wish I had done that' - I want to admire the corporation or brand for 'Yeah, but you did not - we did'.