27th May 2019
‘Hey you! Look at this sleek piece of branding. This is an ad for a direct-to-consumer product. Now, you’re going to look at it, and at no point will you fully understand what is going on…’ This is an ad targeted at millennials….
From Adweek. How AI will change the insights you’ll get from social media. A 3-Minute cheat sheet on the future of social media intelligence. Download the ebook here.
‘For 57 years, D&AD has stimulated and celebrated creative excellence in commercial creativity. Symbolising all of this is the iconic D&AD Pencil. For those who achieve one, it is career-defining’. Here are this year’s winners.
The Importance of Diffusion. ‘Networks rule our world. From the chemical reaction pathways inside a cell, to the web of relationships in an ecosystem, to the trade and political networks that shape the course of history.’ This essay is interactive, there are sliders to pull, buttons to push, and things that dance around on the screen.
This week saw the return of Google Firestarters. This session was based around seven rapid-fire provocations on the theme (subtitled ‘The Magnificent Seven’) of Ever-Changing
Marketing.
‘Think of the world as a series of transactions and interactions. Transactions are mechanistic. Interactions are organic. Transactions are the way of the industrial era, interactions the way of the Digital era. They are scalable, repeatable. ‘Being on Facebook is not the same as being in the pub. Uber isn’t the same as phoning up the local taxi firm. Amazon isn’t like going into a great local market.’ That’s because all of these businesses are converting interactions into transactions.
A couple of nice pieces from @faris. ‘Advertisers want your attention, but how do they know they have it? Drawing attention to advertising powers the likes of Google and Facebook – but in the digital age, measuring it remains shockingly fuzzy.’ and… this piece looks at the corrosive impact of the concept of storytelling, on the assessment of advertising effectiveness – Of Fictions and Funnels.
Punchy and pithy Scott Galloway video piece on Amazon – ‘Well, there’s been a culling of the herd, because the old and the weak have been taken out by this opportunistic infection called Amazon’. SG starts at 1’46” in.
Always interesting to see some stats from Statista. Here are charts – showing the most visited museums in the world; and the % of words spoken by men in Game Of Thrones – season eight was the highest so far, at 78%. Think a good chunk of this was down to Tyrion warbling on…
Still with #GOTR – here, apparently, is the real reason fans hated the last season of Game of Thrones. ”It’s not just bad storytelling—it’s because the storytelling style changed from sociological to psychological.’
A little unsettling, but ultimately charming Vimeo Pick Of The Week – The Coldest Race On Earth. ‘Always Last’, embarks on an adventurous marathon through the ice cold landscape of Lapland. But she soon discovers that the run is not going to be a straight line between start and finish. Finally, it is not about winning or losing. The risk is losing yourself.(A seven minute animated short.)
‘Count Cesare Mattei was not technically a king, but he was the king of his own castle in Italy’s Northern Apennines. The inventor of a homeopathic treatment for pain using the physical energy of plants, Count Mattei began building Rocchetta Mattei on a scenic hilltop in 1850 and didn’t step foot outside the castle for the last 20 years of his life.’