Huxley Quayle von Blog

Quote of the month

"There are a few times in your life when you have to tell someone to fuck off and mean it,"
Cramer-Krasselt CEO Peter Krivkovich

So true. And yet so few agency heads have the nerve to do so, or more truthfully the principles. Advertising is a service business, I get that. But it's also an advisory business. In the words of David Ogilvy our job is to "provide our clients with solid advertising council."

And when people refuse to take your council, when they refuse to make the best use of all our experience, passion and commitment to their brand, then it becomes very frustrating to work with that client. It kills the morale at the agency because, despite what many people think, we really do put out hearts and soul into the work for our clients.

Great agencies realize this and get out before the bad relationship hurts their business. Most agencies, however, act like a lonely five-dollar hooker on a dark Shanghai backstreet and do anything the client wants for the dough.

Anyway, great quote.

53% of Marketers Reduce Ad Budgets.

Bravo! It's about time.

We at HQvB believe that most advertisers spend too much money having their agencies design "integrated" campaigns designed for another time. A time when you blasted your audience over and over again with the same TV spot, backed up by the traditional out of home and radio "support", with a big dollop of newspaper or magazine thrown in for good measure.

And then if the agency wants to get creative, they throw in a small non-traditional, ambient or online stunt. It rarely has any effect, but it makes people feel like they're thinking out of the box.

In the process, the same agency that sold the client on "out thinking the competition instead of outspending them" blasts through the client's ad budget like a drunken wall sailor on 24 hour shore leave.

The problem is it's very addictive. After all, if you spend enough money everybody will get your message. In fact, like the new Bell campaign here in Canada, they won't be able to escape it even if they try. And believe me, we all try.

This current round of spending cuts may have been spurred on by the economy, but we think it's a good thing, as it forces people to rethink how they communicate with their audiences. It forces them to make hard decisions that they didn't have to make before. It forces them to get more creative.

Maybe it will finally force agencies to deal with the reality of the new 2.0 world and see that big media spends are not the be-all in advertising. The smarter, more nimble shops will see this round of cuts as an opportunity. Maybe smaller, more entrepreneurial shops look better in a climate where new thinking isn't just a "nice to have" but a necessity.

So hooray for the budget cuts! Bring on the cost consultants! And let's raise a glass to faltering stock markets.

They will force us all to be better, more cost-efficient, faster, leaner and more forward thinking. Just like every other industry in the world has had to do to survive.

How advertising can get you through the recession.

I read this in Ad Age this morning. Well worth a read for any clients that may be a little nervous about the economy. Interesting enough, what the pundits are saying agencies should do, is what we at HQvB are already doing.

So ha!

How Creativity Can Carry Your Business Through a Recession
Here's What a Some Who've Been Around the Block a Few Times Have to Say

By Teressa Iezzi

Published: September 22, 2008
So, a giant dragon of economic doom has rained fire upon the world. And the overall economic picture (and this is especially true if a certain uninformed product of the patriarchy being cynically sold as a beacon for women has any role to play) is not going to be fixed overnight.

In these pages, we've read about the ways in which this sort of environment affects ad spending. But what happens to creativity in times like these? Dark days have a way of producing creative breakthroughs. So I asked some creatives who have weathered a few economic "cycles" what really happens when Wall Street stumbles (or dives face first into an empty pool).

What will be the impact of this climate on the kind of work you'll be doing?

"It already has (had an impact). Clients have been in a slow trend to do more conservative work. The words 'guaranteed to work' get thrown around nowadays. The dependence on testing not as insight but as the decision maker is on the rise. Testing has become the client's defacto creative director nowadays. The messaging in the work has also become less singular and packed with as many messages as possible. It's the strategy of, 'everything but the kitchen sink. No, wait. Put that in there, too.' And tonality has become more subdued and quiet, less entertaining." -- Peter Nicholson, chief creative officer, Deutsch, New York

"It'll be more pragmatic. More measurable. More digital." -- Nick Law, exec VP-chief creative officer North America, R/GA What are the opportunities here?

"The opportunities in this type of market are abundant, but they're big 'if' statements. If a company takes a slight risk and takes a bolder approach that allows its message to have a strong point of view, it will be heard. It will stand out." -- Nicholson

"Hopefully our industry will finally start delivering on the hollow promises of a thousand "brave new world" PowerPoint decks. Agencies will stop talking and start doing. At last, the triumph of practice over theory." -- Law

"When fear is in the air, I always have the same response when it comes to our creative work: Be brave, be bold. Like steering into a skid, it's counter-intuitive. But bold works. It stands out from all the timid, fear-inspired work." -- Marty Cooke, chief creative officer, SS&K

"I've always thought optimism in the face of pessimism was a great response. As long as an advertiser has something to be optimistic about, of course. You don't want to appear clueless and out of step. But there's a way to be optimistic in a credible way. People are hearing from enough places that times are tough. For advertisers, it's a chance to be a positive antidote." -- Jamie Barrett, creative director and partner, Goodby Silverstein & Partners

What's creativity's role, if any, in shaping the next economic era?

"Our industry's creative minds will not just be concentrating on messaging. They'll spend more time on product enhancements and digital services that transform businesses." -- Law

So, in conclusion, bad times have the potential to make for bad advertising but, as always, there are huge benefits to zagging.

And before you get too excited, remember:

"Ninety-eight percent of advertising is awful. During difficult economic times, when companies can't afford to waste a single dollar on mediocre creative, and when outsmarting and creatively outgunning your competitors can lead to concrete market-share gains, that number plummets to 97.8%. That's the sad truth of our business." -- Paul Venables, founder and creative director, Venables Bell & Partners

~ ~ ~
Teressa Iezzi is the editor of Creativity magazine and Creativity-Online.com.

Business Innovation, Creativity and Taking Risks

This video talks with senior managers from various companies about how to foster game changing innovation and what the role of creativity has in business. It's well the worth the few minutes to view.

A cool site for those who love looking at ads.

A friend of mine, Dalbir Singh, started this website, www.adofdamonth.com a while back. It's a got a ton of new ads all the time from all over the world. So, if you like to see new and innovative work, or you're just looking to poach an idea or two from Botswana or Poland, then AdOfDaMonth is for you.

Click here to go to www.adofdamonth.com

I'll take "Duh" for $500 please Alex

From Advertising Age. Apparently, CMOs in the US are cutting traditional advertising while increasing digital spending.

We think people need to think in terms of big ideas first, and then media for those big ideas second. But nonetheless, the silo system that most big agencies work under is undeniably dying.

RIP, we say.

CMOs Up Digital, Cut Traditional
Survey: Marketers' Need to Target Better Benefits Budgets for Interactive

By Michael Bush

Published: September 08, 2008
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Data analytics and customer-relationship management aren't the only disciplines that have benefited in the past year from the slashing and burning of general advertising budgets as marketers try to better focus their ad efforts. Interactive- and digital-marketing budgets have experienced a healthy increase as well.
Steve Cone
Steve Cone

The first quarterly Epsilon CMO Survey reveals that nearly two-thirds of chief marketing officers said their interactive/digital marketing budgets have increased in the past year, while 60% have seen their traditional advertising budgets go south.

Click here to read the rest.

Business lessons from miraculous survivors.

I read this article on CNN.com. It tells of a study of people who have survived disasters. As I was reading, it came to me that many of the traits these survivors have in common are also useful in business.

The short version is that survivors of disasters tend to:

1. Not be arrogant. Apparently the Rambo types tend to die off first.
2. They're independent thinkers. They take the info they have in front of them and make their own decisions.
3. They have strong family ties. One could liken this to having a strong corporate culture.
4. They create a vision for the future and they hold on tight to that.

Sage advice for anyone who wants to succeed in business.

Here's the article.

Miraculous survivors: Why they live while others die

(CNN) -- Deborah Scaling Kiley still can't break free from that night.

Deborah Kiley can smile now, but she says she still has nightmares from her ordeal at sea.
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She can't shake the screams, the image of the frothing water turning red, and the sounds of sharks attacking the man who had just been sitting next to her.

She still can't forget blurting out the Lord's Prayer to block out the cries of the man dying in front of her.

"As long as I kept saying those words, I knew I was all right," she says today. "It was my only proof that I had not gone mad."

Kiley would survive that night, clinging to a dingy in the Atlantic Ocean for five days without food and water. But so have others in circumstances that seemed as hopeless. They are the amazing characters who seem to surface during every manmade or natural disaster -- those who survive against all odds.

What do these survivors share in common? That's the question that the author Laurence Gonzales has long tried to answer. Whenever a disaster hits -- a cyclone in Myanmar; an earthquake in China; a climbing accident in Alaska -- Gonzales scans the headlines for the stories of those survivors who made it out alive when all others perished.

"I know when something big happens, I know the kind of stories that are playing out and the people who emerge from them with similar stories," he says.

Gonzales looks for people like Ma Yuanjiang, a 31-year-old power plant executive who survived seven days buried under rubble by drinking his urine and eating paper after a massive earthquake struck China in May. He studies survivors like Ari Afrizal, a construction worker who survived the 2005 Tsunami by clinging to a raft for two weeks in the Indian Ocean.

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Gonzales explains what makes these survivors special in "Deep Survival," a book that dissects the psychological and spiritual transformation that takes place within people who survive against all odds.

Most of these survivors share the same traits, Gonzales says.

"These are people who tend to have a view of the world that does not paint them as a victim," he says. "They're not whiners who are always complaining about the bad things that are happening to them and expecting to get rescued."

Gonzales says at least 75 percent of people caught in a catastrophe either freeze or simply wander in a daze.

"The first thing people do when something bad happens is to be in denial," Gonzales says. "People who make good survivors tend to get through that phase quickly. They accept the evidence of their senses."

'The Rambo types are the first to go'

Gonzales says many of the disaster survivors he studied weren't the most skilled, the strongest or the most experienced in their group.

Read the rest here

Our Argument for Marketing's Agency of the Year

So a week or so back Marketing Magazine asked if we'd take part in the discussion of who should win their Canadian Agency of the Year. Which got us to thinking, and more thinking, and a bit more thinking.

After a few days, and more than a few glasses of Appleton Master Blend Legacy Rum, we couldn't come up with a single suggestion. Not a one, save ourselves and that would be a bit biased. Here's the thing: not one agency in Canada this year has really done anything to write home about.

A couple shops had a showing in Cannes, but nothing huge. There was a radio gold that stammered us for its lameness and not much else.

Sid Lee won a global assignment for Adidas, which is great (Way to go guys!), but one assignment shouldn't make you Agency of the Year.

No, Agency of the Year should go to an agency that has done something to change the game. One that has lifted the bar, or changed how we think about the future of advertising.

And although we're still in ramp-up mode, we're the only ones we could think of that meets the criteria. The only problem is that the work we're doing to prove it doesn't come out for another while.

But consider this:

1. We're showing a tourism authority how to use new technology and new media to completely change the way they communicate with people. In the process, as far as we know, we're the first in the world to create dialogues with people from around the world to promote travel.

2. Our print/online campaign for OCAD received international media attention.

3. We're working on a campaign that could see a company revitalize it's sagging marketing fortunes by doing good for society, while driving business at the same time. In the process, we're completely changing the concept of PSAs.

4. Unlike some of our competitors that have recently launched, we actually have a new vision and have put our money where our mouths are. The HQvB brand is alive and well, in the pres, online, in social media and in traditional advertising.

So like I said, when it comes to who has done the most to change the game, it's either us, or nobody.