If you think you're in marketing, think again.

We're creating brand engagement through brand experience. In whatever form that takes.

Press and TV are still fantastic for expressing a brand's essence.

Sometimes.

But they're still shackled by the passive mediums they inhabit.

Increasingly, I'm seeing sites as passive entities, where interactivity rarely extends beyond the turning of a page in a book.

Smarter brands are starting to live beyond the website.

Smartphones put them in people's hands. Social puts them in people's lives.

Sometimes brands spring to life in a specific place at a specific time. Sometimes, just at specific times.

Yes it's complex.

Yes, it can appear bewildering.

But, yes: this is the most exciting time in the history of marketing.

Lines are blurred; erased.

Walls kicked down.

Ideas are judged on their elasticity. 

And in an increasingly complex comms world, the one thing that will stand out is the idea, the idea, the idea.

Recessionary thinking

Seasick Steve brings down the roof on the Hammersmith Apollo with a piece of string, a jerry can and a broom handle.

Miles Davis strips everything out of be-bop and gives birth to the cool; Satie strips away the whole orchestra.

The teenage Picasso makes single line drawings of animals that make his father quit a successful art career to support his son's genius.

Biggest, whether that's an orchestra, a canvas or a budget, isn't always best. A small spark can turn into something huge.

The same applies to budgets.

Big budgets can overburden creative thinking. They can bury an idea under a mountain of style. 

No matter what the size of your budget, I think it's a good discipline to try to give the client some change back.

It can be quite liberating. It's liberated me on several occasions.

Years ago, I pitched for a charity called Concern. They are to Ireland what Oxfam is to Britain.

They loved our thinking, but none of the pitchwork ran as it was too expensive.

Their brief had mentioned a budget of 8p per pack but the first mailing we did had to be done for just 3p per pack. We gave them 1.5p change back on each unit.

What landed on people's doormats was a piece of A3 brown parcel paper, folded several times down to A6. 

The typography had all the sophistication of a potato print and the imagery looked like it had been photocopied several times over. It looked like the charity was desperate for money in more ways than one and it worked a treat.

It felt brilliant to be part of a project that people to responded to and which brought help to thousands more, and for just 1.5p per pack.

Years later I produced a spec ad for The Phobics Society. The idea ran, but as a sticker. It looked like a hygiene sticker you see by sinks in public bathrooms: Now wash your hands. Only with the added thought: Or call the National Phobics Society on { number }. 

A sticker was much cheaper to produce and run than a press ad. It was my mentor, Steve Harrison, who dug into his own pocket to make it happen. He spent £4k.

We covered Manchester centre in 1000s of these stickers as a stunt. Stunts are sometimes newsworthy, so we called the BBC. They picked up on the story and it received nine minutes of prime-time airtime and brought the Phobics Society to national attention.

It secured the agency the business and a silver at Cannes.

More recently, I spent £12k on a Land Rover viral that was played in its entirety during BBC1's Football Focus and then discussed.

That's a huge amount of airtime, and on the BBC. Our film also featured on several of Sky's sports programmes. In all, our 30 second film secured a total of nine minutes' time on TV.

For £12k, Land Rover were associated with English rugby - something O2 spend millions on each year.

The smaller the budget, the harder you think. The harder you think, the more likely it is that your thinking will be innovative and relevant.

Of course, the happy irony of such thought is that it also delivers its own financial rewards to those who can be bothered to think that way. 

 

Fancy a threesome?

Steve Henry’s blog on Brand Republic this week is about his Road to Damascus conversion on social media. His enthusiasm’s infectious. But I can’t help but wonder if, in his ardour, he’s thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

Anyone working in social media right now is convinced that it’s going to herald the death of advertising next week. (Just as those who worked in DM predicted that access to increasing amounts of personal data would lead to the death of advertising in the late 80s.)

Reports of the death of advertising are premature. That’s not to say its dynamic won’t change due to the growing influence of social and that one day it may pop its clogs in its current form.

To me, social is a way to engage with an audience that bypasses print and telly. It’s also a way to augment advertising. There’s a lovely campaign for Honda at the moment where the TV works with a handset. QR codes augment print. And I think there’s also huge potential for social-based advertising via interactive magazines that tablet PCs can offer.

I also predict a flip side: as more and more social tools, sites and apps launch it’s going to become increasingly difficult to tell which is the one that will deliver the best value to you. This is when telly and print could work to augment social brands.

Y’know, in much the same way that the world’s biggest search engine is currently using OOH to tell you about its new voice search services.

Social won’t entirely replace telly, at least not for a generation or two. There’s a lot of fun to be had until then (and after). As Steve says, “That’s the thing about change. It’s no good “embracing” it. You’ve got to get into bed with it and fuck it.”

I’d go further. Why don’t we hop into bed along with advertising and social and enjoy a threesome? The offspring will be beautiful.