by Bob Hoffman. There is a small group of men who have ruined the advertising industry.
Category archives: Adland
South African agency shortlisted for Cannes Innovation Lions
Draftfcb Cape Town has been shortlisted for the first Cannes Innovation Lions.
“The Innovation Lions have been designed to reward technologies and innovations. Lions arre awarded to such things as (but not limited to) the most innovative platforms, apps, tools, programs, hardware, products, and radical software which allow brands and creatives to communicate with their customers in a new way, or which stand alone as significant innovations in their own right,” according to Cannes Lions.
“The Innovation Lion honour more than a campaign or communications idea. It could be SaaS (software as a service), a new mobile platform, or a revolutionary piece of software that enables a new kind of customer engagement.”
Twenty five finalists from fifteen countries made the shortlist. Shortlisted countries are the USA, UK, Brazil, Japan, Canada, Sweden, Russia, Denmark, Finland, The Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, Poland and Ecuador. Shortlisted agencies includes Dentsu, ID\, Google Creative Lab and AKQA.
Hermaneutics: Jobs For Monkeys In Adland
Young and want to land a job in advertising? Join a circus. That is the gist of reader feedback on an Adland.tv story featuring a recruitment campaign by DDB Brussels in which prospective employees need to submit a 6-second Vine gif (hashtag #ddbexpress) in place of a CV.
Ten ‘new’ creatives will make the shortlist and be put together on a train to Cannes. En-route they will need to solve numerous creative briefs, on which they will be judged, and eight will be sent home (dropped off at the various stations en-route – apparently). The two that make it to Cannes will be ‘rewarded by an invitation to join the creative department of DDB.’ That’s not exactly an explicit job offer, hence some of the commentary on the original story referring to internships.
The campaign has been described as a rather demeaning process to land a job. Critics also point out that to enter you need Vine, which only runs on iPhones, and so excludes a fairly large group of potential candidates, including many for whom an iPhone would be out of reach.
Says the Facebook site created for the campaign “Creative Directors are very busy people, and new creatives need to be agile. Combine those two and you get our brand new way of hiring: 6″ recruitment. You have exactly six seconds to convince our Creative Director, Peter Ampe.”
Not too busy to make the train ride and make some kids jump through hoops, or to make the awards festival for that matter, just too busy to look down and at your portfolio. The agency seems to be snorting Cannes, really, counting the award shows they can enter with this ‘creatively lead’ take on recruitment.
Chillibush – no pretensions or clutter
by Herman Manson. Dale Hefer and her agency, Chillibush, are significant players in the SA ad market, but have maintained a relatively low profile in a space still cluttered with egos and an awards obsession bar none.
Millennial Ad-Grad: How to impress in post-recessionary adland
by Faheem Chaudhry (@FaheemChaudhry) ‘Never waste a good recession’ were Warren Buffet’s witty words of advice during the financial downfall of recent years. While this sort of philosophy has become synonymous with his unrivalled investment and business success, many business leaders will argue it’s easier said than done as they still fight the battle to full financial recovery.
As the next generation entering the advertising game, we are entering the industry at a time when marketing budgets are under the spotlight and need to prove their full worth in the boardroom.
This has certain knock on effects on an industry where ad-employment isn’t exactly available in abundance to young people. And for those beginning their first gig, it’s pretty tough out there.
But fear not, my friends. Being in an industry at such a time simply means a greater responsibility on the shoulders of those who will carry it forward. It’s an opportunity to take ownership of the current dynamic, and help steer it to calmer waters. But what are clients and advertising bosses looking for from their next generation? And what will we need to be well versed in to reach advertising stardom?
Here are my thoughts as a member of the next crop.
Letter from NY: An immigrant to New York, building an ad agency
by Matthew Bull (@StixBull) There was an ad for Porsche many moons back that I have never forgotten. It was a picture of a Porsche flying over a rise on a road. The headline said: “It’s like children. You can’t understand until you have one.” That’s kind of how I feel about owning an agency in New York – you never really know what it’s like until you own one.
Dentsu – not just big in Japan as group focuses on international markets, digital
Tokyo based communications group Dentsu Inc., which recently completed a deal to acquire Aegis Group, has released its 2012 financial report.
The group posted 1,941.2 Billion Yen in Consolidated Billings (Net Sales) (2.5% year-on-year increase), 58.4 Billion Yen in Operating Income (12.5% increase), 59.0 Billion Yen in Ordinary Income (6.1% decrease) and 36.3 Billion Yen in Net Income (22.9% increase). It recorded a gross profit of 345,940 million yen, an increase of 3.9%
Dentsu reports a gradual recovery in the Japanese advertising market following the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, but continued uncertainty in Europe and a slow-down in China. Dentsu’s estimate for advertising expenditures in Japan for the 2012 calendar year was 5,891.3 billion yen, an increase of 3.2% compared with the 2011 calendar year – the first increase in five years.
Hermaneutics: Awards or education? Guess which one agencies pick.
Yup. That didn’t take two seconds did it? You want to move on up in adland you better land a couple of awards. Who needs multi-skilled, educated self-starters anyways.
David Nobay, Creative Chairman at Droga5 in Sydney, last year told delegates at the Loeries seminar that modern award shows are oversimplifying what is considered ‘creative.’ And I quote: “Awarding winning work has become a matter of looking at a piece of work and having an immediate reaction (on the judges’ part) to it before moving to the next piece.” And while most businesses are running in maintenance mode, and need solutions that cater to this, award-winning creative has become all about the new.
Radar – now within range
by Herman Manson (@marklives) Radar has had its offices in the midst of a construction site for just over a year. It’s an easy allegory to describe the agency, which has been working hard to reinvent itself following the departure of three of its four partners just over a year and a half ago.
In 2006, four friends (Baphumze Msengana, Tricia Snowball, Karen Meyer and Jason Ray) left Ogilvy to launch Under the Radar (UTR) a specialist below the line agency. They had, says Ray, the last of the four left at the agency, believed that it was time to launch a new kind of agency that backed away from its reliance on traditional media, and had been in advanced talks with WPP, through Ogilvy, to back them. They got as far as looking for premises, but final approval just never arrived, so they departed and set up on their own.
Ray, who was Head of New Business at Ogilvy before helping launch UTR, says he knew the start-up agency would be OK when Old Mutual gave him an access card to Mutual Park at his going away party. The agency had signed Old Mutual as one of its founding clients.
UTR would live by three core rules, still in place today, says Ray. They would only work with clients they liked, they would avoid communication layering so that the client would always deal with the most senior person on the job, and accessibility and a focus on quality time will mean real agility inside the agency.
Under the Radar had been just that, operating under the radar from most of the advertising and marketing industry, but this is set to change. Ray has bought out his three partners, amicably, he says (one is rejoining agency as a staff member), and has evolved its full service communications offering. The agency has been rebranded as Radar.
South Africa Top 4 revenue growth region for WPP
WPP has released its First Quarter Trading Statement for the three months ended 31 March 2013. Revenues in sterling up almost 6% at £2.532 billion. First quarter profits and operating margin were reported as above budget and well ahead of last year. Average net debt increased by £331m (-12%) to £3.015 billion. Net new business of $1.504 billion was acquired in the first quarter, compared to $1.855 billion in the first quarter last year.
Q1 2013 showed “a similar pattern to the final quarter of 2012 with strong like-for-like growth in Asia Pacific, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East and Central and Eastern Europe and advertising and media investment management and sub-sector direct, digital and interactive,” the group reports.
In terms of revenue growth by country Argentina grew by more than 20% followed by Brazil, South Africa and Thailand, all of whom achieved revenue growth of between 15-20%.