Advertising is dead. So why am I excited? (Renny Gleeson- Wieden + Kennedy)
creativity-online.com

The Future of Marketing + Advertising by Paul Isakson
paulisakson.typepad.com

How do we predict the next day? What trends will stick? Which technologies should we back??
Experiencematters

Philippe Starck says design is dead and his work ‘unnecessary’
News.com.au

Gestures are taking control (replacing the remote)
Australianit.news.com.au

Google’s Schmidt on the web’s future
Australianit.news.com.au

Want Results? Cut the Complexity!
ClickZ

The Long Tail Batters Borders
Brandweek

Can CRM Handle Web 2.0
E-Commerce Times

Microsoft Prepares ‘Albany‘ to Compete with Google hosted productivity suites such as Google Docs and Google Apps
PC World

My Starbucks Idea: Venti, Non-Fat, Iced Frappacino Storm (is it as good as Dellideastorm?)
experiencematters

If you have a few more spare minutes, a more extensive list of headlines is available - click here: BABELFISH Full latest headlines

BABELFISH - Recent Blog posts

#9 12-3-08: The secrets to harnessing innovation (notes from presentation @ Proxxima 200

#8 10-3-08: Communications design: Not a cheap pick-up line, but brands longing for true-love

#7 29-2-08: The opportunity cost of over-producing TV Commercials

BABELFISH - Recent Blog posts

#9 12-3-08: The secrets to harnessing innovation (notes from presentation @ Proxxima 200

#8 10-3-08: Communications design: Not a cheap pick-up line, but brands longing for true-love

#7 29-2-08: The opportunity cost of over-producing TV Commercials

BABELFISH - Top Headlines – Mar 24, 2008

The Experts vs. the Amateurs: A Tug of War over the Future of Media
Knowledge@Wharton

The Future of Advertising: A Conversation With Jeff Einstein
ClickZ

10 Ways Digital Can Help You Thrive in a Recession
Experiencematters.com

GM USA Roars Forward Into Digital Ad Channels: Changes at Dedicated Media Shop Lay Groundwork for Auto Giant to Shift Spending to Encompass Multiple Online Channels
AdAge

Why Some Aren’t Onboard for Online?
Brandweek

Web changing journalism, but not as expected, study finds: News agenda seems to be narrowing
SignOnSanDiego

JupiterResearch Site Publishers Must Actively Engage Online Users to Combat Audience Fragmentation
JupiterResearch

Bringing Self-Service Devices Back to Life with Digital Signage
Centre Daily Times

Retailers Harness Digital Media for In-Store Experiences, Product Sampling
Advertising Age

Online Retail Is Ambivalent About Blogs
eMarketer

For a more extensive list of headlines, click here: BABELFISH Full latest headlines

Form + Function - Digital design goes well beyond Web sites
Adweek

Alternate Reality Game (A.R.G.) Gone Wrong
Contagious

Social Media Biggest Shift In Marketing Strategy Since Television?
Futurelab

An Inside Look at Obama’s Grassroots Marketing
AdWeek

Disney: Search Engines Are Our Allies
MediaWeek

Yahoo makes semantic search shift
BBC News

Bill Gates predicts decade of convergence
Macworld.co.uk

Digital Magazine Ads Grab More Attention than Print
ClickZ Network

More than Half of Auto Dealers to Include Internet Video in Their Marketing Mix Within Next 12 Months
The Kelsey Group

Ads Can Be Content, But to Whom?
ClickZ News

For a more extensive list of headlines, click here: BABELFISH Full latest headlines

Increasing demand for innovation

• Increased user sophistication - particularly due to new digital content access forms
• All companies striving to gain a competitive advantage to maximize it’s stock value.
• Looking to differentiate their product from increasingly similar competition
• Not just special effects and, new delivery devices e.g.:
  • Process
  • Presentation,
  • Product / service,
  • Geography,
  • Value chain,
  • Industry structure

• The life-cycle of innovation is accelerating
• 4 levels of competency
  • Unconsciously Incompetent – Don’t know that they don’t know e.g. Homer Simpson – get hit by innovation / lightning but don’t know what happened
  • Consciously Incompetent – Know they don’t know, don’t want to know e.g. Dilbert – actively watch and avoid lightening complicating their lives
  • Unconsciously Competent – Brilliant talents but undisciplined. Successful using instinct but lack process and can’t teach what they do. e.g. Muttley & Dick Darstardly – generate lots of lightening / ideas but often have trouble managing or harnessing it’s potential
  • Consciously Competent – Innovation is a disciplined process of test, learn, measure, go-forward / discard e.g. Einstein or DaVinci – have lightning in their palms – like a sparkler from a birthday cake or putting your hand on a lightning ball.

Challenging dynamics of innovation

• Two types:
  • Tactical / evolutionary / incremental. Problem is that often the idea is easily replicated. One hit wonders: Bling Bling
  • Sustainable - 5 pillars of breakthrough innovation:
    • Can’t imitate,
    • Profitable,
    • Departure from existing standard (in your category),
    • Change perception of industry,
    • Charge premium for your product / service (affect stock price)

• Barriers to successful sustainable innovation
  • There is often a gap between where companies need to be and where they are (called Innovation Gap)
  • There is also a delay in activating innovation that is often proportional to size of a company. This is due to added layers of bureaucracy and resistance to change
  • Process unfortunately can be considered to retard innovation because it gives more opportunities for people to say no and retards agility
• Risk management
  • Understand the difference between real and perceived risk
  • Most of our effort in innovating is managing acceptance of risk
• Dimensionalise and define brand need to risk because of pressures from:
  • Stock market
  • Corporation
  • Category disruption
  • Consumer disruption
  • Personal – career
  • Political
• Risk from different perspectives
  • Client
  • Client marketing
  • Client media
  • Digital
  • Traditional Account director
• Managing risk
  • Understanding risk from several perspectives:
  • Your risk profile
  • Risk profile of your customer
  • Profile of stakeholder in decision process.
• Checkpoints & Accountability
  • Controls, checks and balances
  • Gateways for progressive approval at various stages e.g. tough decision points to decide whether to progress or stop and concentrate on another effort
  • Clear, simple measurement metrics
  • Results – because the approval isn’t important – the final result is

You can innovate through Leadership

• Understand dynamics. I can help you identify / understand the dynamics of a situation, but I can’t give you the solution to every problem. If you understand the pieces to the puzzle, you can put them together in different ways to solve problems yourself.
• Create a vision of what could happen to dynamics for your industry (and similar)
• Increased discipline: FIRE (Focus, Ideation, Rank, Execution)
  • Focus: Ask hard questions, deeper insights for briefs
  • Ideation: Pushing the ideas, metaphors, parallels
  • Rank: Sorting ideas (realistic, ownable, 5 pillars etc)
  • Execution: Checkpoints, measurement metrics
• Strive for Conscious Competence
• Connecting the dots in different ways

Powerpoint available on SLIDESHARE

ABC’s Sweeney Touts Benefits of Web Content
Mediaweek

Why older people hate Gen Y
News.com.au

Media Agency Of the Year: Mediaedge:cia
Adweek

Kenny: Digital Requires Enhanced Navigation
Adweek

Customers Are Good For More Than A One-Night Stand
Adotas

Mapping the Complete Path to Success
ClickZ

Remote control works on the blink of an eye
News.com.au

Seth Godin: ‘What ad agencies ought to do….’ Did I say that?
Seths Blog

Google: Really, We’re Not Getting Into the Agency Business
Advertising Age

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Whether it is between a customer and a piece of brand communication, between two customers discussing a brand or an interaction with a contextual situation associated with a brand, communication is all about starting a conversation.

The more relevant the content of the conversation, the more immersive the experience and the more willing people are to engage and consistently participate.

The objective of the conversation can have a short-term objective. If you want a short-term reaction, the unstructured ‘bling-bling’ of a pick-up line may get a superficial reaction (good sex). Though, as we all know, relationships mature over time. Participants expect the connection to get stronger to maintain commitment. Hence, ‘bling-bling’ is an exhaustive and unsustainable way to maintain interest in / participation in a conversation.

Relationships that stand the test-of-time normally start with conversations built on mutual respect and admiration.

‘Communication Design’ is exactly that exploratory process. It is the process of carefully constructing an integrated architecture of messages that remain consistent in their personality and tone across many different content forms, contexts and contact environments.

For brands that are serious about their commitment to their relationships, each conversation needs to firstly be inherently linked to a human behavior or insight. To be considered ‘Good design’, each experience, message, content piece and delivery context needs to be intuitively architected and have continuity and consistency.

Lastly, well designed messages don´t have to rely on tedious repetition to force engagement. The immersive connection leverages relevance and aesthetic appeal.

I´m under no illusion that ‘good design’ is easy. Actually, it is actually near impossible in the fragmented, competitive and dysfunctional communications industry. We need to explore the dynamics and disciplines required to stimulate a conversation that can help us make the small steps necessary to bring this to life.

Cheers. BC

Digital Pushes Media Agencies to Offer Full Service
MEDIAWEEK.COM

Spot Runner (self-service template based content company) buys online ad firm Weblistic
The Business Journal

Why Widgets Don’t Work
BusinessWeek

Location-based services to reshape mobile VAS market
The Economic Times

Mags Grow Online but Still Dwarfed by Web Bigs
Advertising Age

For a more extensive list of headlines, click here: BABELFISH Full latest headlines

Business users prefer iPhone to BlackBerry
ZDNet UK

Yahoo to Offer Behavioral Targeting on Newspaper Consortium Sites
ClickZ Network

Girls Rule in Internet Content Creation
eMarketer

Leading Media Companies Expand Roles and Capabilities, Meeting Marketers’ Ever-Growing Digital Needs, Says Joint IAB/Booz Allen Hamilton Study
Interactive Advertising Bureau

Customers use interactive kiosk to access high-rise restaurant
The Business Journal

The Disney-ABC Television Group announces the launch of Stage 9 Digital media, an experimental new media content studio
YouTube

NEC announces video wall solution, driving next-generation digital signage
NEC Display Solutions

Google Sets Its Sites on Google Apps
Google

2007 Digital Agency Of the Year: AKQA
Adweekf

The Race for the New-Media Nomination - As they grapple for votes, Clinton and Obama are also locked in a battle of the brands
Adweek

Success Is A Tug Of War, Push And Pull To Win
Adotas

Slave to Technology - More campaigns are going mobile, but the medium remains limited
Adweek

Net users multitasking in front of telly
News.com.au

How Cell Phones Bridge Old and New Media
Adweek

Portals Losing Out to Long Tail
Adweek

Microsoft’s ROI: Giving Ads Fair Eval?
Mediaweek

Nielsen, Arbitron Shut Down Project Apollo
Mediaweek

Why Commodity Inflation Helps CPGs
Brandweek