More ideas, new ideas

We’re in the midst of the awards season at present. It’s one of the best times of the year, seeing great work from anyone is always so motivating and inspiring. And it’s 10 times better when that work comes from our own agency. 

Most of our focus has been on the inaugural year of our own Maxus Magnet awards. With entries across ten categories ranging from Insight to Trading and everything in-between, they are designed to reward the most ‘magnetic’ work from around the Maxus family.

As many of you know, I can bang on forever about the importance of creativity, the power of ideas and how to create structures and behaviours to help us deliver genuinely magical communication more often than not. (If you’re interested in that then please do drop me a line).  But for this piece I thought I’d share two thoughts that occurred to me while judging the Magnets. But I’m not going to call out any campaigns in particular because we haven’t announced winners or shortlists just yet.

The appetite for innovative work has never been greater

We have been completely overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of work that we have received for the Magnets: over 180 entries, with nearly every Maxus office delivering something outstanding.  This is interesting to me because my experience of judging awards historically is that during their first year the work comes through as a trickle rather than a flood. Also, because one would have expected that, in the 2010 economic situation, client business would be more conservative in the type of work they were buying.

This is obviously not the case. Challenging work is being developed, sold-in and most importantly delivered by media agencies like our own and the quality is generally extremely high. I think that a key factor in this has been our willingness to embrace technology, developing new types of idea that amplify brand messaging but, most importantly, also have a profound effect on business. And this leads me to my second thought…

We are seeing a clear evolution in media creativity

Traditionally, media creativity happened when we took advertising lines or ideas and then thought about how we could deliver innovation in media space to bring the channel and message together.   We delivered special builds, stunts and the like. Then we started to enter the realm of branded content, delivering product placement, making TV shows or segments therein.  Many of the Magnets entries that we’ve had exist in those three areas. 

But the really interesting developments are where we have properly harnessed technology to build new types of ideas. Looking through our work, I think we can identify four trends that emerged in 2010 or that are emerging in 2011:

1. Brands’ digital homes are changing. It used to be all about the brand’s website: we put URLs on the bottom of ads and directed consumers to the ‘experience’ we had built there. Interestingly, visits to branded websites have reduced year on year and continue to do so; people just aren’t really that interested in visiting www.bigbrandswebsite.com anymore. Smart brands have realised that they need to build new online homes, ideally ones that exist in the places where consumers are already. Smart brands are building YouTube channels or properly experiential  Facebook areas and then using them as the hub of their entire digital presence, or else opening their sites up to consumers, stripping them of brand content and treating them as ‘walls’ where consumers can post whatever is appropriate.

2. Democratising creativity. We are seeing more and more ideas that stimulate consumer created content and then distribute the result in a big way. Brands have flirted with user-generated content in the past, but too often there were low levels of interest from consumers because it was just too much hassle. That’s changing now – I think because brands are understanding the power of ‘fame’ as a consumer motivator. When there is the opportunity for your piece of content to be seen by all of your friends, relatives and the rest of the population because there’s a big media buy behind it – that’s pretty compelling. And also people are willing to get involved more; crowd-sourced ideas are beginning to take off in 2011.

3. Next generation shopping. In 2011, we are seeing the emergence of social and mobile retail.  Smart brands are beginning to follow the Groupon model, bringing groups of consumers together to bulk buy products at a discount. Brands are beginning to open retail spaces that sit within Facebook and mobile-based promotions and couponing is becoming more interesting and engaging.

4. Online video is becoming more interactive. We are starting to see brands creating video that changes the game from the old passive model of sitting in front of a screen and watching, to becoming a much more interactive, personal and controlled experience. Last year’s Tippex campaign on YouTube – ‘A Hunter shoots a bear’ – was the start of this but now we are seeing it evolve further. Brands are creating long-form video experiences that are driven by consumer choices. And the ability to click on the products featured in a piece of video, and then instantly buy them, is technology that is with us, but too little used right now.

The judging of the Magnets has been an extremely worthwhile and stimulating experience. It’s certainly whetted our appetites to continue to push the boundaries of ideas further, and really made it clear that we are ideally placed to do it at Maxus. Let’s see what 2012 has in store!

Our Magnets award winners and runners-up will be announced in April.

Nick.Vale@maxusglobal.com