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Showing posts from 2014

What's the state of relationships in a digital age?

As humans, we need to be safe; we want to belong; we yearn to be loved; and, most of all, we hope that we  matter –  to our friends, to our families, within our communities, and to the companies with which we do business.  Relationships help satisfy these basic needs.    That’s why we seek them. That’s why we need them.   A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to give the keynote address at the annual JD Power Automotive Marketing Roundtable in Las Vegas and pose this question to the audience: What is the state of human relationships in the digital age?   This isn’t an abstract question. As marketers, we have no choice but to confront and resolve this question.  ( Click here to see the speech. ) I’ve come to embrace a simple truth about marketing – what’s true in real life should be true in marketing .    Listen to our vocabulary:  Brand relationships; Customer relationships; CRM.   If our goal truly is to build customer relationships, then we should dig deeper to better u

Meet Generation Z

I don't like the name Gen Z. Given that this young cohort accounts for nearly 26% of the U.S. population, we could show them a bit more respect by giving them a better name.  They are not last in line, as implied by the letter  Z , but in fact are at the forefront of new trends that will impact culture and commerce. Unlike other generational names, Gen Z conveys little insight into the characteristics of this group.   Boomers aptly described the population boom that follwed WWII.   Gen X drew its name from the cohort's embrace of extreme sports, music and culture.  And the term  Millennials came about for obvious reasons. Gen Z (basically anybody under the age 18) will have an enormous impact on the U.S., both from a social and an economic standpoint – they deserve a better name: Gen Tech , because they draw inspiration from technology, not just the internet. Inclusives , describing their multicultural and co-creative nature. Makers , tapping into their desire to

DE$IGN

This is a good video about the role that design can play in driving commercial success.   John Maeda is a graphic designer, computer scientist, author and all around big brain.

A quick peek inside Team Detroit.

My previous post summarized Team Detroit's commitment to training and inspiring the next generation of advertising professionals.  This video, produced by our winter crop of interns, gives a peek inside the agency and why it's a great place to grow your career.

David Ogilvy's "teaching hospital" is flourishing in Detroit.

David Ogilvy once described his agency as a “teaching hospital” – a place where young advertising professionals simultaneously learned and practiced their craft.  As the legendary ad man said, “Great hospitals do two things.  They look after patients, and they teach young doctors.   We look after clients, and we teach young advertising people.”  Having spent the first 15 years of my career at Ogilvy, I can attest to the benefits of growing up in a culture of learning.   Team Detroit has picked up the baton that David Ogilvy passed to the next generation and are proud to continue his teaching hospital tradition. We start our training with the greenest of the green – our quarterly internship program, aptly named The Greenhouse.  Each quarter we take approximately 15 paid interns to work throughout our agency – creative, brand integration, digital marketing, design, media, etc.  In addition to their day-to-day projects, our interns experience job shadowing, community s

Anatomy of a TV viewer.

Interesting new data on TV usage among Millennials ( via Adweek ).

Vision of the future, from those likely to invent it.

A fascinating & quick read – POVs from leading thinkers such as Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman and others.  Which industries will tech make obsolete? Which technologies will soon be antiquated? What futuristic tech will soon be commonplace.

Marketing as a service.

What if we re-imagined marketing as a way to serve customers?  What if we designed it as a way to provide real-time value and utility to customers? Our SXSW panel at explored these issues and more.  Marketing as a service harnesses Big Data to provide more meaningful and helpful experiences for customers.  It is a principle born of the belief that the dynamics of customer loyalty have fundamentally changed.  Loyalty can no longer be solely defined by customers staying loyal to a brand.  Because the internet provides us with unlimited choice, the tables have turned – brands must now demonstrate their loyalty to customers by serving them.

The power of design in a connected world.

Michele Silvestri, who leads Team Detroit's global design practice, along with fellow designer Christine Jones, led one of our more popular panels at South by Southwest, discussing how design can help brands become more elastic and integrated in a hyper connected world.

The evolution of storytelling: brands as broadcasters.

This is the keynote address from Team Detroit's panel discussions at SXSW, given by Toby Barlow, our Chief Creative Officer.  We are hard wired to understand stories.  Stories convey meaning.  They help us understand ourselves and our world.  And while the nature of storytelling keeps changing as media platforms evolve, the principles of great stories are timeless.

The audience has an audience.

Here's the video of my speech to the 4As conference last week. Marketers must remain relevant at a time in which consumers are themselves the broadcasters, sharing content with their own audience via social, mobile and online channels.  By adopting a brand syndication model, with the persuasive power of video's sight, sound and motion at its core, marketers can authentically join the conversation.

A look at two Americas.

Informative report from the Wall Street Journal illustrating America's rural/urban divide.   The gulf has never been wider or more stark – something to think about when creating national marketing strategies.

What leading CMOs are thinking about.

CMOs are beginning to last longer in their jobs.  Executive search firm Spencer Stuart reports that CMO's are staying in their post an average of 45 months, a marked increase from 2005 when the average tenure was only 23.5 months. So why the increase in job security?   I am seeing more and more senior marketing leaders focussing on enterprise marketing solutions, not just branding strategies.  CMOs are getting closer to their customers through Big Data, digital technologies, multicultural trends, and more contemporary media strategies.  They are working more closely with their company's CIO to develop smarter, data-driven strategies.  This is a welcome change from the days when a new CMO would put their stamp on the company by firing the agency and developing yet another advertising campaign. The new CMO agenda is focused on four big questions: How can data and analytics help optimize my company's marketing investment and mix?  How do we embrace Marketing Cloud s

What MBAs can learn from kindergartners.

What do you get when you mix 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow?  A deceptively simple design exercise that reveals clear and instructive lessons in collaboration and innovation. During an innovation forum today at Team Detroit, Elyse Pachota on our Enterprise Digital team introduced me to  The Marshmallow Challenge , which asks teams to build the tallest free-standing structure out the spaghetti, tape, string and marshmallow (which must be placed on top of the structure!). Watch Tom Wujec's TED talk in which we learn how The Marshmallow Challenge underscores the benefit of rapid prototyping, iterative ideation and the need to uncover hidden assumption early in an innovation process. Wujec also reveals how Kindergarten kids embrace these innovation principles better than MBA grads and CEOs.  (CEOs score better only when their Executive Assistant participates.  Seriously, I know.)

Brands as Broadcasters

Several months ago I attended the Future of Storytelling Conference (#FoST) and helped lead some workshops on "Brands as Broadcasters" and "The Empathetic Corporation."  Great experience. Yesterday I participated in a follow up conversation held via Google Hangout where a few of us explored these themes more deeply as part of an ongoing effort to harness the power of storytelling, both its timeless principles, and also the new non-linear forms of storytelling.

The future of advertising is in Motown.

If you're looking for the future of advertising you will likely find it at the intersection of real time analytics and custom content creation. Team Detroit , Ford's global marketing communications agency, is putting this to work today for the launch of the 2015 F-150 – revealed this morning at the North American International Auto Show. Our Content Studio combines the talents of our analytics, strategy and creative teams collaborating side-by-side with Ford's marketing team (which also includes real time legal input).  Walking through the room feels more like a news room than an advertising agency, and that's the point.  The team's goal is to use real time social sentiment analysis to inspire custom content that responds to the conversation surrounding the launch, thereby amplifying the impact of social media and public relations messaging.