The Drip Edition 5

This week my colleague Olivia (Iconic Collective’s ECD) and I attended the Facebook Future Of Retail event hosted in Cape Town. There were talks from a number of industry leaders, including Bruno Bertrand, Digital Commerce & Marketing Director at Estée Lauder. It was very insightful and I think it reinforced a lot about what we know of the digital and technological impact on in-store retail experiences, and vice versa.

The thread that wove throughout day was the idea that these channels are not in competition, but rather support one another. This reinforces the notion that retail and e-tail are part of a strong multi-channel journey for a brand, rather than standalone channels trying to outdo one another. And this includes how brands can utilise multiple avenues to sell their products, such as other online retailers.

Some key insights: 

90% of retail sales worldwide (and in fact 95% in SA) are completed in-store. And complementary to that, 56% of in-store purchases are influenced by online.

It begs the question: how do brands bridge the gap between online and offline retail?

My key takeout: PUT THE CONSUMER AT THE CENTRE OF YOUR THINKING. Don’t let your thinking (try at least) drive consumer behaviour.

We’ll be hosting a soap box of the day soon, so stay tuned (Olivia doesn’t know this yet so if you see her, please tell her how much you are looking forward to her in-depth presentation and analysis on this topic).

This week you can look forward to reading about journal ramblings, and how to make use of this trending craft to create growth in your work and personal life; a look at brands that are killing it with tone and style; podcasts this week: the 7 best podcasts of 2019 as well as a look at a list of insanely good marketing and advertising podcasts and I also take a look at deep fake videos.

And finally, what you WILL NOT SEE this week is the most brilliant Cannes Lions case studies deck with all the juicy details, including the full brief, the insights behind the campaigns, the aha moments, how the agencies activated these campaigns and what the results were. The presentation was uploaded by Peter Komyanos and lived for about 6 hours before it was promptly taken down.

I emailed Julian Cole (author of Planning Dirty newsletter, which was where I found out about it) to find out if the Cannes Lions Case Study presentation would be put back up and why it was removed but sadly he doesn’t know why either.

But you can subscribe to Julian’s email here.

This is what it looked like:

Ok, on with the show.

Cannes Lions Case Study: 

Ok, so I actually got to look at about half the Cannes case studies, and whilst I can’t remember the others that I read (memory of a small fruitfly) I DID remember this incredibly insightful and memorable campaign on male suicide, Project 84.

There have been 47,500 suicides in the UK in the past 10 years, of which 45,000 were male. That’s more than 4000 men killing themselves every year in Britain alone.

Project 84 was developed in partnership with Harry’s.

The insight was that people don’t truly understand the gravitas of a number like that. So the team dug around to see what number did impact people, and found that 84 men committing suicide each week was a number that truly hit home. It was comprehensible in an incomprehensible way because it felt so real.

The team erected 84 human statues around London, each one representing a real man who took his life.

You can find all the details and read about each of the men represented here. 

Start Journaling: 

In my early twenties, I had a series of MIND-NUMBING jobs, one of which was (don’t laugh) as a security guard/ receptionist.

I had dropped out of university and was “finding” myself in London – a city where you can be anyone you want, but it can also be a very hard place to live when you have no money and are just trying to get by. I would while away the hours writing in a journal, and came to find a passion for writing that would eventually lead me to return to university and study journalism. It was not so much a calling, as an accidental art form I began to craft out of sheer desperation for mental stimulation.

Through journaling I also managed to stay sane. 12 hours a day working behind a desk where your only purpose is to check people’s security passes is not the rock-n-roll life you might imagine it to be. This was also pre-smartphone days, so…

But somewhere along the line I lost the art of journaling. Somewhere between the hundreds of emails and reviews and reports and work that had to be done (when I finally got a job that actually required me to do something), I stopped journaling.

So I’m here to promise you that I will be taking up this great art form again.

And I don’t think journaling means what a lot of us might think it means. It is simply a way of noting down thoughts, goals, aspirations and planning for the day ahead, or recapping on the day passed. It is not the lame “dear diary” you are imagining. I am probably explaining it terribly and therefore you should read this article that explains it better.

Some of the benefits of journaling:

Brands That Are killing it With Tone, Style and Voice:

Just something to spark creativityfor those of us who work in the content space (hint: we all work in the content space)

Cards against humanity:

Slack:

Slack is all about making life easier. A simple proposition that they reinforce and live by again and again and again.

Dollar Shave Club:

Blunt, unlike your razor.

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Podcasts – The Best Of The Best:

Here are the 7 best podcasts of 2019 – I mean, I’ll be the judge of that, but some of these are pretty decent, and of course some of them will be familiar from my past newsletters.

And, if you’d like to listen to specifically marketing and advertising related podcasts (everything from strategy to digital and branding), thenthis megalistis for you.

Fake News!

This is so alarming (and impressive), I find it difficult to even comprehend that technology is capable of doing this, and I find it even more alarming that agencies and animators are creating work like this, but I suppose creativity is used in weird and wonderful ways.

Deepfake videos as they have now been dubbed are ULTRA real videos that depict people doing or saying things that they didn’t do or say.

This oneis relatively harmless as it was released as a fake, and the voice is clearly not Zucks, but imagine the issues it could bring up? You could have people doing or saying things that are not real – and have proof of it.Think fake wars, fake news broadcasts, fake murders…

Brands Should Be Talking Human Fictions:

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Donald Trump is the 45^thPresident of the United States of America. […] And just like that society changed. 20th January 2017, the day of Trump’s inauguration, the day a reality TV star became President, marks the day that the lines between reality and fiction in modern society were officially blurred…

Did The Blurring™happen because we started playing on our phones so much that the fiction just seeped in without us noticing? Memes are how we communicate, flirt and stay in touch. Bus journeys are portals to space, the Sahara Desert, or whatever you happen to be watching this week.”

How do you find the human truths in a world that is becoming more and more fiction-driven? Read this article on why brands should be talking human fictions.

The world is after all full of shared fictions – the obvious ones in movies and books, and the not-so-obvious ones – like the idea of an economy; or government or the notion of a family or the shared notion of the value of physical money. These are all fictions we have created and we share together in order for them to work. Sapiens is a great read for anyone interested in these shared fictions.

15 Trends That Will Shape The Cultural Landscape in 2019:

This is a great trends reportbecause it looks at human truths in an ever-evolving landscape, and not just from the point of view of brands or marketers. How refreshing. Start with the consumer and work backwards, right?

It covers topics such as identity integrity (fragmented selves), fake news and what is reality (see above video), spiritual selfishness and much more.

You can download the full report here

And das all folks. Have a wonderful weekend and I hope to see and chat to all of you soon 🙂

As ever, if you have any thoughts you’d like to share about any of the content, or you want to just have a chat, or even have some things of your own you would like to share, please send them to me throughout the week 😊
I am an open book.
Much love,