29th June 2019

This is music to my ears, according to Ohio State University,

creativity peaks in your 20’s and 50’s.MIT’s 35 Innovators under 35. Over the last decade, many of the young innovators selected for this list have gone on to be spectacularly successful. Previous winners include Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg and Jonathan Ive.(who has just left Apple and is starting his own business).

Attended a great Tortoise Media ‘ThinkIn’, this week with Al Jazeera – ‘Marketing v the news: do brands have to have a point of view?’ Full video of the event here with observations from, among others, Editor James Harding, The Economist, Dow Jones and myself (reg may be necessary).

Voice Search Study, looks at factors influencing search engine rankings in 2019.

Lots of Cannes Lions wrap-up’s doing the rounds. This one from Mediacom includes – ‘We’re entering a golden age of audio (and multi-sensory experiences); Creativity + Data = Growth; Human connections are the most powerful; Brands are becoming activists (with mixed results) and the industry is getting its house in order. …and here is every Grand Prix from Cannes Lions 2019.

…whilst WARC’s Cannes’ list included; ‘Strategy is evolving in the age of experience ; There is a crisis in creative effectiveness; Judges want to see impact beyond the short term; CMOs want action on brand safety, and data on brand purpose; Media owners are talking up ‘context’; Accessibility and inclusion are feeding into brand strategy and Emerging categories hold lessons in brand-building.‘…..and this is why Cannes is the real ‘Home of the Whopper’ – is this the best Titanium Grand Prix Ever? 

Women’s brand Billie is back, with more hair down there.

In the same vein as Billie, a shaving brand that ‘seems’ to discourage shaving; I like the continuation of the Tinder campaign that champions being single with its #singlenotsorry campaign. Engaging and on theface of it surprising, but actually very good for business.

From Statista. The current  expansion of the US economy (June 2009 to date) is set to become the longest (but not necessarily the strongest) since WW2. Here is how it matches up vs the competition.

‘With childhood obesity on the rise and globalisation homogenising nutrition, photographer Gregg Segal set out to discover what a week’s worth of food looks like around the world’. Here kids, from different countries, are photographed surrounded by their weekly diet.

‘The energy in the club that night was infectious. Drag queens dressed as Beyonce and J-Lo performed under throbbing lights. Club goers swayed in a Caribbean aura out on the patio. Hip hop music blasted from another room…’ ‘Three years after the Pulse shooting, she remembers every moment. The shooter haunted her, until she decided ‘no more”. This 2 minute animation is a very personal perspective on the Pulse night club shooting and actually, any situation involving guilt and grief.

Love this. ‘As a writer and marketer, while ‘big, beautiful and powerful’ are the easiest words to describe something that is substantial in size, stature, strength and aesthetic… we could all benefit accessing some other words, every once in a while. Here are 99 powerful words.