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

Social Media China Report

The OgilvyOne Connected Report (English)

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Global Web index Lite

Use the tool embedded below to find out social media stats. Nifty little tool.



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The Digital Agency Death Knell

So farewell AGENCY.COM, to be broken and absorbed in TBWA and others. As digital ceases to be seen as a channel and becomes a specialism within other disciplines, traditional digital agencies will continue to creak at the sides and break under the weight of trying to do everything digital. They will rapidly have to focus on what it is they actually do. The digital agency roster will die, at least in its current form, and client will pick discipline specific digital agencies. The chart below is 3 years old. Social Media and Mobile agencies take note...



I spent 3 happy years at AGENCY.COM building out their digital advertising unit in the UK and developing some groundbreaking work on BA, oneworld and Heineken. They also had the foresight to allow us to create AgencyRepublic a JV between them and ClaydonHeeleyJonesMason of which I was one of the founding 4.

Interestingly AgencyRepublic is another digital agency fallen on tough times. 5 times winner of best digital agency in the UK it has just lost it's flagship O2 account to.....you guessed it a traditional agency with an integrated digital offering, VCCP.

Likewise the more traditional offline agencies will have to rapidly adapt to accomodate this influx of highly creative and very non traditional people and approach. Digital will have to be part of everyone's role and they will quickly have to staff up (and down) to get the right mix of people and fundamentally change how they approach pretty much every part of their business.

Manifesto For A New Ad Agency

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re write the future nike spoof

Nike might have won the wc2010 marketing war but I still hate the ad and love the parody above.

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the best digital in cannes

my choices:

phone book - mobile

mother xmas card - viral

myspace music - site/social

pilot handwriting - site

hbo film - entertainment

golden grahams grant - social/site

verbatim monsters - gaming

IS parade - social

yellow pages chocolate - social

polo public - integrated

stockholm pride how hetero - twitter

gatorade replay - entertainment

mentos beatbox - banner

burger king $1 - augmented reality

v&a decode/recode - art

true city nike - mobile

last call home - entertainment

bluedot gps chairs - integrated

walls smile activated vending machine - experiential

radiotjanst hero - social

hamberg city orchestra - site

ikea catalog - mobile

monopoly city streets - gaming

vw piano staircase - activation

nike chalkbot - integrated

heineken football match integrated

met police choose your ending - social

northface conquer china - integrated

just call us - experiential

canon photochain - integrated

walkers sandwich - activation

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See Through Walls With Wimbledon iPhone App

Live streaming video from centre court, web cam of the taxi cue and augmented reality overlays telling you where the toilets are and how big the queue for the strawberries is. 2010's IBM SEER pushes tech limits.

Caveat: I worked on the original version of this last year.

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Web 3.0 in 14min 25sec

Web 3.0 from Kate Ray on Vimeo.

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Is The New Nike Ad Rubbish?

A friend just sent me this saying it was the best ad of the year. My perspective: it talks about the consequences of activities on the pitch almost over what is happening on the pitch. I don't care if Wayne ends up in a caravan or some random russian ends ends watching Cirque du Soliel in a tittty bar, I care about the game.

Whilst it taps into the current trend of all powerful football; red top papers, wags and gossip columns it adds weight to the notion that football is a sell out.

I don't really like it.

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ogilvy reel