Selection for the curious: not the headline news in brand

Retail: Zara back in black for the first time since 2007. Zara returns to profit as new shops boost sales via@retailweek

Design: Students from Les Ateliers-Paris Design Institute have created a project called Fabrique Hacktion that aims to improve collective spaces in the city via @LSNglobal

Design: Why two brains think faster than one. Video interview with Antenna Design by @the99percent

Big ideas: No Boinking: Raising awareness of India’s population control problem with a playful ad that works even without understanding Hindi for Idea 3G, by Lowe and partners: When the power goes out, don't boink, play 3G games!

Social / Tech: White House: Twitter helped debt agreement. Virtual pressure pushed the deal, whilst Obama lost 36,000 followers.

You’ve got FAIL: Windows Office365 team Punks Gmail via @ADWEEK

TaskRabbit iPhone App Lets You Post Errands On The Move via @PSFK

Innovation: The British Egg Market—An Incubator of Innovation via @popsop_com

Back to the love...

Is it just me or have you too stopped bothering to read the articles about the changing nature of the advertising industry? Like a twisted self-introspective fairy tale, articles depict a combination of sky falling, big bad wolf coming, ark-building, fleece-chasing and the search for El-Dorado.

It's boring.

Isn't a industry which exists to help brands and people connect meant to be all about them, not us.

Call me (happily) simple.

In the words of David Ogilvy, A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself. Works for agencies too.

Stop talking about yourself. I'll try to stop talking about myself.

Let's talk about amazing people, amazing brands and what makes them great.

Always great for inspiration...http://www.lovemarks.com/ (Dettol is trending up - who would have guessed!)

Photo credit: The Chicagoist

Day 13: In a blank space, everything is art

Observation: Strolling through an amazing exhibition at the Barbican, I noticed some of the performers' shoes beneath the stairwell. Amongst the stark background, they appeared to be making a statement all of their own.

Anything in clear space has impact.

Opportunities:

- Why not try this for your marketing communications? It could be creating a separate micro-site for a specific product, simply highlighting its uniqueness. Test it against the traffic you get on your normal site. Some of the most effective ads I have seen start with this principle, creating a visual or aural white space at the beginning of a TVC that itself creates cut-through from the clutter of the medium.

- Place your business locale where least expected (but still useful). A small village that happens to be the central point between key commercial areas, an art gallery space or a container in the middle of a dock? The space itself will help you make a statement. Where you choose frames that statement.

- Similar to the 'Blue Ocean Strategy' concept, find the clear space in your industry and go there. A great example is a friend of mine who targeted the clients no other financial advisors wanted - those with less money. He looked after these clients well, they grew wealthier and his multi-million dollar business was built on referrals.

Who is the unfashionable target in your market? Could they be your clear space?

Are brands better with less...and a little more skin?

Why is it that when I look at the media strategies for big brands I often feel as if they haven't gone beyond "what we've always done" + "the web". And when I speak to small to medium businesses they can go from one extreme to the other from innovative to old-fashioned, but never just thinking - ok, what TARP weights and frequency do I need to hit to have a high likelihood of success? And to impress our retail buyer?

Which makes me wonder - would big brands actually do better with less?

Smaller businesses feel the impact of their activities immediately, and therefore test and measure faster and with more direct customer feedback than some of the big brands. This is done with less time and dollars, forcing creativity.

One of the key differences is immediacy...having some skin.

They literally have skin in the game, unprotected by layers of budgets and departments for dispersal of impact.It is sense checking not just with sales dollars, but relevance to customers and impacts on perceptions at the same time.

So, would a big brand do better with less dollars, but more skin in the game?

There are many ways to make this happen, even when you work on some of the biggest brands!

• Make a case for a proportion of the promotional budget to be experimental - including allocated people time to support that experimentation!
• Figure out what skin is for you - is it spending an hour a week on the customer service lines, venturing into online conversations, hosting a customer party or walking the supermarket floor with your buyer?
  
• Is there a way you can do fast, small tests for promotional ideas - and keep them coming? Try giving free hot chocolates as people are waiting for public transport in the cold, negotiate directly with a friendly store manager to test some new point of sale...how can you test, now?

This is not suggesting strategic planning gets scrapped, it is about planning for flexibility and putting in place methods for low cost testing to increase the overall effectiveness of execution - and acting like it is your skin in the game.

Flickr photo credit: Brandon Schaefer