The ultimate creative brief

There’s no perfect template for creative briefs. But with the iPad there could well be. This template would be interactive and customizable in real-time – just drag ‘n drop the elements you need. Or download new ones.

The name of this software? iBrief of course. Could somebody please invent this?

Designing an agency

Entrance: Welcome to a British Gentlemen’s Club

Our advertising agency is expanding its offices next month, and discussions on how the interior design of the office should look like has been a topic of interest among many (including myself). As I’m quite allergic to Barcelona chairs and Arne Jacobsen, I’ve made my own concept boards. Here’s a how an advertising agency should look like, in my opinion. Keywords: Functional, personal and fun.

Like it?

Meeting room: keepin’ it clean. Big table, retro chairs.

Idea rooms: eclectic and  inspiring, bring your own personal things.

Landscape area: open, social, efficient.

The Copywriting Room: inspired by Harvard Law School.

Help me retire!

By voting for The Planning Lab, which is the only nominated planning blog in this Swedish blog award.

Thanks!

Augmented (hyper)reality

Keiichi Matsuda via CR blog

The value of creativity

How much does creativity matter in business? According to the research of Micael Dahlén, a professor at Stockholm School of Economics, a company’s success in terms of sales, market share, profitability and customer satisfaction is highly correlated to two areas: creativity in marketing and creativity in product development.

Some numbers to illustrate: if a company invests in marketing at a new product launch, the value will increase from 405 million dollars to 929 million dollars. If it doesn’t it will decrease to 122 million dollars.

The importance of marketing vis-a-vis product development is explained by the fact that most new products are incremental innovations on mature markets.

Money talks, and creativity should therefore not be taken lightly.

[Thanks to Camilla for the tip]

Oldism

You have probably heard “Trust me when I’m saying this won’t work” or “Back in the Eighties when I started out in advertising…” echo in your ear. There are indeed a lot of old people in the communications industry. There is one key problem with relying on old thinking: today’s world of communications requires a lot of new thinking – just to stay in business. To prove my point: David Ogilvy might have been a star 60 years ago, but his agency the way it was set up in 1950 wouldn’t survive for two seconds in 2010. One day your knowledge will be outdated and irrelevant, if it isn’t already.

Remain dissatisfied.

Time-tested

It's a classic

Picked up this classic Volkswagen ad in a vintage shop in Stockholm today (not sure from exactly what year it is, do you?). More advertising should be timeless like this.

Conflict planning

Creating social or cultural conflicts is a great creative strategy for achieving communicative momentum. Especially when the brand allows for it. Above is a “promo trailer” for a fictive company called Sandhamnstek (part of a social media campaign to generate PR) we set up for our client TV3 who will air a reality show about an island outside Stockholm that gets invaded by a certain group of people during summer. Unless you’re Swedish, it may be hard to fully appreciate this, but the strategy is to create tension by addressing real issues that are opposite to Swedish norms and values. Not to be confused with simply pissing people off, although there’s a fine line between the two.

You’re not innovative

This guy is.

Key success factor


ffffound