The Digital Conferences You Should Go To

None. I was asked recently what were good digital advertising conferences to go to. But I actually think most of them are rubbish.

You have the same people saying the same stuff that everyone has been saying for 3 or 4 years. Or even worse new people saying the same stuff as if they invented it. Often professional speakers doing the circuit or people in agencies trying to push their own personal agenda.

Generally it is a bunch of hacked presentations showing really interesting/engaging/disruptive/social (delete as appropriate) work and saying that what we need to do and brand/advertising/social/digital/direct (deleted as appropriate) are the best agency to deliver it.

But that is lazy. It is sodding easy to bash advertising and show examples of cool stuff we should be doing. Very few people actually offer constructive advice on how we need to change our process as well as our product. Global marketing business re-engineering. That's what interests me and I have had a bash at it here.

So don't go to a conference spend 3 hours on slideshare.com, follow the right people on twitter and think & talk alot. Alot, a lot.

But if you do fancy a conference, here is a list one ones my good Ogilvy friend Nicole Yershon recommends. Attend or follow the buzz online.

As you can see most of them are not about advertising but look at music, film, arts, technology and business.

UK Specific
thinking digital - 24-26 May in Sheffield
TED salon events - London 3 times a year
google zeitgeist - May in UK
click - Nov in London
power to the pixel - Nov in London
media pro - Nov in London
sounds digital - Apr in London
the childrens media conference - June in Sheffield
the sheffield doc fest - June in Sheffield
PSFK global events - London & Global
iStrategy - London & Global
likeminds - Nov in Exeter & Lon
b.tween - UK

Global Economic & Political
(that all have digital/tech on their agenda)
World Economic Forum - Jan in Davos
DLD - Jan in Munich
TED - All the time, everywhere
Clinton Global Initiative - Sept in NY

Business
(that all have digital/tech on their agenda)
allen & company sun valley conf - July in Idaho
all things D - June in San Diego)
monaco media forum - Nov in, err, Monaco
berkshire hathaway annual shareholders mtg - May in Omaha
summit series - Apr in USA

Global Digital, Tech & Innovation
techcrunch disrupt - Spet in San Fran
le web - Dec in Paris
the lobby - Sept in Hawaii
fortune brainstorm tech - June in Aspen
sxsw - Mar in Austin
CES - Jan in Vegas
picnic - Sept in Amsterdam
IBC - European CES - Sept in Amsterdam
WEB 2.0 - Nov in San Francisco
miptv - Apr & Oct in Cannes

So I have probably missed afew out and I am sometimes happy to be proved wrong. If someone fancies inviting me to attend or speak, after all I have my personal agenda to pursue and a couple of borrowed decks I can hack together...

Every Agency Needs An Innovation Lab

Safe adventure, investment marketing, risk marketing, measureable innovation. Call it what you will but the more I talk to agencies and clients the more I am convinced that to survive, the first/only rule we reallly need to adhere to is McKinsey's 80/20.

Spend 80% on stuff you know works and 20% on measurable innovation.

As the environment continues to be challenging clients are stripping back budgets and expecting those budgets to work hard. They and their agencies are shying away from doing anything that can't be very closely related to sales or is out of the ordinary. No real issue there but this will over time deliver diminishing returns, sacked clients and bored agencies.

To survive we all need to try new things and develop new ways of reaching our audiences. But it needs to be measurable. If the ideas work they are rolled in to the 80% if not we learn and move on. Rather than try and sell those in on an adhoc basis, fighting for budgets in the weeds, we need to all buy into this at a high level.

It keeps work interesting but most importantly keeps us moving, keeps us evolving...and we get to do stuff like this...




giles rhys jones

Instant Digital Ad Agency

Just follow the instructions:

DIGITAL @ (INSERT AGENCY NAME)

30/3/9

Work: Business as Usual

Digital isn’t a discipline; it is a specialism within other disciplines. We believe that any agency can produce innovative marketing solutions that connect brands and their audiences using digital media and/or leveraging on people’s digital behaviour. Just as they currently do through offline channels.

Fundamentally it’s about finding ways to make advertising useful: be that informative, educational, functional or entertaining. The diet of work that traditional agencies ought to be associated with will not be large site design & build but smaller, campaign based marketing solutions.

Cool shit that drives (INSERT AGENCY APPROACH) and ultimately changes perception of the client’s brand.

Culture: Everyone is Digital

To change output, we need to change culture, behaviour and process. Everyone in the agency have to get onboard and feel like they participate in the digital change. This could be simply building digital metrics into teams business targets and incentivising clever use of new digital platforms/digital media. More importantly, we would set up ways to share ideas and thoughts inside the agency. Training will be a key part of educating the client and agency teams as would competitive and trend monitoring to keep them both inspired/afraid.

Delivery: Work the Network

Given the accelerating change in technology and digital channels we believe that a network of trusted, specialist suppliers alongside a small in house capability, working closely with existing account and creative teams is the optimum way to deliver digital. Building and actively managing ecosphere of companies with proven capabilities that is strategically and creatively overseen. We would quickly set up a list of approved suppliers and establish SLA’s.

People: A Thin Agency
As digital is everyone’s responsibility we would leverage the existing teams – planners, suits, creative – to manage clients, much of the process and drive the digital business in their own accounts. There are a couple of key internal appointments and a small team (freelance or fulltime) detailed below who would provide specialist skills.

· A senior suit - internal - to help navigate/circumvent process, client relationships, general agency culture etc...

· A team PA

· A Creative Technologist – is it possible/will it work/ a senior technologist, probably a technical director either freelance or currently working in a digital agency.

· A Senior Digital Project Manager – managing digital projects is far more complicated than any TV-production and have many more moving parts. There is also a perception that ’anything can be changed at anytime’, where a project manager has a key role in pushing back/keeping everybody in line throughout the development.

· Prototype Team - consisting of 3, 4 designers with decent action script skills and good understanding of cross-platforms interface design to build some of the lower level work

Plan: Phased Approach
’Discovery‘
Investigate client list to select the top five digital opportunities based on:

a. digital maturity,

b. agency-client relationship,

c. estimated speed of conversion,

d. propensity to invest in innovation/test activities,

d. activities in the client’s market space.

’Planning’
Develop strategies for the client business leveraging on existing employees knowledge. Collectively we would convert the market & business understanding into ’digital opportunities’ and ’digital briefs’. Some of these initiatives should be pro-active, others could be developed in conjunction with wider client briefs.

’Creative’
Engage current creative teams work on digital briefs but with the addition of the digital resources outlined above. In this phase we need to engage ’digital project managers/producers’ to anticipate implications and production of any ideas that come up and prepare for the ’production phase’.

’Production’
Prototyping is also essential both as a ’sales tool’ to demonstrate the experience to clients and as a ’briefing tool’ to developers. This can either be done by an in-house team or be handled by selected design house. We don’t foresee that (AGENCY) would have any large in-house design/build capabilities, but would outsource all design and development to the partner with the most suitable skill set and ’flavour’.

’Deployment’
Launching a project is only the beginning. Seeding, PR and reputation management needs to be well-orchestrated to ensure success.

‘Measurement’

Measurement and ongoing optimisation are keen to demonstrate success and prove the case for digital. We would connect the teams with the most appropriate suppliers as well as educate and consult with them to structure the appropriate criteria.

‘Education & Inspiration’

Training, trend and competitive monitoring will be ongoing. We have a number of tools we can deploy but ideally a junior planner or account person in each business group would be responsible for collating and distributing much of this.

‘Positioning’

Pretty early on we will need to develop the agency’s digital point of view, something that is uniquely yours. Everything we develop should ladder up to this as a thought. To promote this we should endeavour to get speaking, writing, judging and committee engagements as well as attending the most appropriate conferences and events.

Written last year.

Some of it still valid.

Tags: giles rhys jones

Innovation At Ogilvy Reel

This is what I do.

Tags: advertising innovation lab ogilvy giles rhys jones

dont do digital...

...do innovation.

agencies who are not being bought as digital shops should leapfrog digital and sell innovation.

more later.

Tags: giles rhys jones

Got A Digital Chip On Your Shoulder?

To celebrate the 10th edition of NMA Top 100 Agencies they are asking a bunch of guys who managed to survive the past few years for their thoughts - mine below. Please add, ignore, delete...

1) What inspired you to start working in interactive?

In '95 two days before the pan european print and poster advertising review I had painstakingly spent weeks collating via post, ups, fax and and old school 4 colour printouts, which was carefully laid around my desk, the cleaner at saatchi & saatchi threw the lot away. 48 hours of hell ensued during which I made enemies across the whole of the network and couldn't help but think "there must be a better way". Out of that frustration 'saatchi brains' an internet based digital asset management system was born. Everthing I looked at from that point I kept thinking "there must be a better way" and it went from there.

2) What has been the biggest challenge of the past ten years?

The digital chip on most digital peoples' shoulders

3) What's been notable about the way client needs have changed?

The used to need to be pushed, now they need to be held back.

4) What's been most overhyped in our industry? What’s not been hyped enough?

Over - The digital consumer

Underhyped - The consumer

5) What innovations are just around the corner that excite you?

The whole notion of Innovation Marketing; the phrase that McKinsey coined afew years ago. An 80/20 budget split; 80% on what you know works and 20% on measureable innovation. This will radically change how we and our clients work and are remunerated.

6) How does the agency landscape need to change?

Apply 80/20 to yourself. Send out tug boats - some will sink, some will drag you in the right direction to survive.

Tags: giles rhys jones

The Only Numbers You Need In Marketing

80/20

80/20 paretos law - 20% of audience delivering 80% sales/content/contribution

80/20 creative media split - 80% media budget, 20% creative budget - swop them

80/20 innovation marketing - 80% on proven techniques, 20% on measureable innovation

80/20 distribution - 20% on your destination, 80% where your audience are

any more?

Tags: giles rhys jones

One Rule To Save Advertising

Safe adventure, investment marketing, risk marketing, measureable innovation. Call it what you will but the more I talk to agencies and clients the more I am convinced that to survive, the first/only rule we reallly need to adhere to is McKinsey's 80/20.  

Spend 80% on stuff you know works and 20% on measureable innovation.

As the environment continues to be challenging clients are stripping back budgets and expecting those budgets to work hard. They and their agencies are shying away from doing anything that can't be very closely related to sales or is out of the ordinary. No real issue there but this willover time deliver dimishing returns, sacked clients and bored agencies. 

To survive we all need to try new things and develop new ways of reaching our audiences. But it needs to be measurable. If the ideas work they are rolled in to the 80% if not we learn and move on. Rather than try and sell those in on an adhoc basis, fighting for budgets in the weeds, we need to all buy into this at a high level. 

It keeps work interesting but most importantly keeps us moving, keeps us evolving...

Tags: investment marketing 80/20 giles rhys jones

Stop Telling Me To Invest In A Recession

Show me.

If I see another well crafted article from an agency or media owner on how clients need to invest in marketing in a recession I might jump from the nearest bank executive suite - don't worry i'll be taking a couple of bankers with me. 

Dont tell me you are funny, tell me a joke is a much used analogy that sort of applies here. (I am too tired to overthink this.)

But basically agencies should invest in themselves and show the way. Not trumpet blowing but I spent this morning mentoring at Seedcamp london with Ogilvy Innovation Labs.

Follow the McKinsey 80/20 rule, the Google 70/20/10 or microsoft recession investment to avoid missing the boat in the Satir theory of evolution through a crisis...

Tags: giles rhys jones

Dalai Lama Does Twitter

"His Holiness thought it was prudent to make his office open and assessable to a more youth and technologically advancing audience."

Over 10,000 people in 16 hours.

I also note Stepehn Fry just broke 100,000 last friday and is now up to 156,179

True 1-2-1 communication on a massive scale.

Ps one way to get innovation through your clients - dont tell them - I set up the marketing publication - brandrepublic on twitter for the fun of it a couple of years ago when they were a client of the agency and to this day I dont think they know they have 1,500 people following them or what to do with them.

Tags: twitter dalai lama stephen fry giles rhys jones

Awesome Home RFID Object Reader

So many possibilities my head hurts. From the guys and girls at Violet.

Tags: rfid mirror advertising innovation giles rhys jones

Merging Digital And Traditional Agencies

Always a car crash. Funny - both haha and uhohh- points made by Lost in Tech on the mistakes

of integrating digital and traditional agencies.

Essentially they are fundamentally different disciplines but don’t integrate, conduct, execute a skill/will cull and hire t-shaped people,. All parts of the black swan agency…

Interestingly you could replace digital with branded content, creative (in media agency), media (in creative agency),  innovation or pretty much anything new and get the same result.

Tags: integrating digital and traditional agency of the future lost in tech giles rhys jones

Ogilvy Innovation Lab

Some great coverage, pictures and video of the Ogilvy London Lab on mobiadnews.

Tags: ogilvy innovation lab future of advertising giles rhys jones

Will Recession Kill Advertising Innovation?

In the recession marketers can go to 2 extreemes. The bold ones will take the phrase "war breeds innovation" to heart and look to innovation to get them through and put them in a better place longer term. Others will retreat and stick to the channels that currently work for them delivering at least some return in the short term. 

As mentioned in number of posts a healthy 80/20 mix of proven/innovative approaches is needed. I guess the question is will agencies respond with the people, the resource and approach to drive and deliver this. 

In 2000 was at Agency.com working on the JV with Claydon Heeley Jones Mason that spawned Agency Republic when they walked half the company into one room and half into another to do the X-Factor. Globally we lost a huge number of what would be senior digital marketers in that cull and the concern is we might do exactly the same thing again.

I just spotted this diagram on Jmac's Screen: the Virginia Satir Theory of Organisational Change. 

Pretty similar to Black Swan Theory - in that an unexpected event causes huge chaos, but ultimately improvement, until the next unexpected event does it all over again.

So this current and chaos in the market place will ultimately lead to an improvement in how and what we do,  it is up to agencies and clients whether they want to be leading this or watching from a safe distance, then having to buy their way back in.

Tags: satir theory organisational change advertising recession giles rhys jones

The Black Swan Agency

I am on the plane back from Customer Futures Exec Council in Johannesburg presenting on the state of the South African digital marketplace. I just been reading  The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, a book about randomness and uncertainty by epistemologist Nassim Nicholas Taleb. 

I found a nice quote; " almost no discovery, no technologies of note, came from design and planning...focus on maximising tinkering and recognising opportunities when they present themselves... aggressive trial and error"

Great advice for a comms agency and some thing the smaller players and start ups seem to do as a matter of course.  So how do the networks build a Black Swan agency process and way of thinking, avoiding the robotic approach but empowering and respecting the commonsense of the employee.

More Mr. T shaped people for a start, a skill & will cull for another, maybe abit of the floating fiver for another (another post for another day) and a good chunk of innovation and risk marketing. Finish off with lashings of black book conducting.

Tags: black swan agency of the futures marketing trends giles rhys jones

All Ogilvy Bloggers

If you like your digital news with a bit of Ogilvy attitude here is the list of Ogilvy bloggers from around the world, if you know of any others please shout.

21st Century Public Relations - US
Adventures in Tokyo - Japan
Approvingly Lounging - Planning - UK
Attias - Fr
Benoit Octave - Belgium
Blog de Max - Costa Rica
Blogilvy - NL
Digital Influence Mapping Project - US
Digital Innovation - US
Digital Mix - Belgium
Digital Native - UK
Digital Watch China
Dirk Eschenbacher - China
FishTank News - UK
Flagged For Follow Up - US
Fluido - Italy
G Marketing - Fr
Harmless Bananas - Brian Koh - SG
Hypnotype - India
Influential Interactive Marketing - US
Inquiring Eyes - India
MisEntropy - India
Mister Dutta - HK
Navigator - Asia
Ogilvy PR BlogFeeds - US
Tech PR Nibbles - US
The Intersection - PR - US
The Open Room - SG
User Have The Power - Italy
Users Have The Power - IT
Vita in Community - Italy
Web Marketing - China
Whirlo - UK
Word of Mouth Marketing 2.0 - US

I have aggregated all the RSS feeds from the above into a single RSS feed via Yahoo Pipes and put into a Blog Widget, Alltop! & Twitter.

Tags: ogilvy twitter ogilvy yahoo pipe ogilvy blogs giles rhys jones ogilvy alltop

The Agency VC

As agencies search for a/the new model many seem to be favouring the approach pioneered in the communications space by Anomaly NYC: Partnerships with entreprenuers and innovators to develop their proposition and take to market strategies in exchange for shared IP.

Ogilvy has had an Innovation Lab based in Singapore for several years developing mobile applications and the model has just been rolled out to London and New York. At MIPTV the Lab recently ran a 2 day workshop as part of the Content 360 competition to identify and refine cause related marketing initiatives for our clients. Rachelle Boyle, who I was mentoring, won for her fantastic Fanta's Unxepected Heros idea about raising money to educate third world countries on the Sodis filtration process. Basically if contaminated water is left in a soft drink plastic bottle, of the type that Fanta comes in, for 6 hours in the sun it becomes drinkable.

It looks like this is one of a number of initiatives by ad groups and holding companies to establish units to determine the future of digital media.

The Interpublic Group set up a Futures Marketing Group, which houses its IPG Emerging Media Lab.

WPP Group has WPP Digital, which handles its investments in emerging media companies like Spot Runner, Jumptap and others.

Publicis Groupe has Denuo, a new-media consultancy that advises start-ups on ad models in exchange for equity positions in them.

Havas media lab is a research and development unit to partner with clients and start-ups to find new ad models.

Vincent Thome, fresh from a whorld tour, has an interesting take on the shared future of VCs & agencies.

Tags: Ogilvy Innovation Lab Giles Rhys Jones Marketing Trends agency vc Media Lab

Risk Marketing

McKinsey suggested a couple of years ago that 20/25% of marketing should be spent on measurable innovation because, as Rory Sutherland loves to say; "best practise is often unique practise."

However there seems to be limited take up of this approach so how about we re-brand it "Risk Marketing". It sounds more empowering and affirmative than an "innovation" budget or "testing" pot. It is also more honest and I am sure will avoid some delicate conversations as it clearly implies that "the value of your investment can go down as well as up".

Maybe clients can select an investment scale from risk-averse through risk neutral to risk-seeking depending on what they are willing to bear.

marketing trends giles rhys jones mckinsey rory sutherland advertising risk marketing

More balls please

More crystal ball gazing, this time from the guys at trendwatching.com, and looking a little further in the future BT's Innovation Timeline.

Tags: trends, future, bt