Gareth Kay, Chief Strategy Officer at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, gave this presentation at "Ambidexterity," the VCU Brandcenter's executive education program for account planning on July 18th, 2013 at the VCU Brandcenter in Richmond.
4. “The task of any imaginative agency, any creative company, is to
understand and serve its client’s business problem. Too often, our
business has sliced and diced its tasks in the style of a sub-prime
mortgage bundler. A corporate task set by the chief executive,
reframed as a comms task by the marketing director, refined by
the brand consultancy and reduced by the ad agency to the stuff
advertising can do: grow awareness, nurture engagement.
Too many links, too indirect and weak a connection
between commercial possibilities and creative resolution.”
— Laurence Green, founding partner 101
5. We need to stop defining ourselves by output
and start defining ourselves by outcome
6. “The further backward you can look,
the farther forward you can see.”
— Sir Winston Churchill
12. How might we get more people
registered as bone marrow donors?
13.
14. How do you get people to use Hellman’s
as more than a sandwich spread?
15.
16. HA CKS ARE M ORE POWERFU L TH AN AD S
Remove the gap between the commercial imperative and the creative solution.
Put people at the center.
Simplify and get out of the way.
Inbuilt disdain for the tired, old solutions of today.
Help us move as fast as culture.
17. EM BRACE TH E HACKER W AY
Break big problems apart and put them back together again
Ask ‘why’ until you can’t ask why anymore
Ask better questions to get to better answers
Put different people together in different ways to get to different ideas
Speed is good
Releasing and learning > perfecting
For every problem there’s a way to get something done better, faster and easier
41. “Too many brands have too many sub-brands
and too many SKUs.
They use too many agencies. Too many messages.
Too many media.
They invest in too many brand diagrams, with too many words.
They buy too many research reports, with too much useless data.
They pursue too many NPD initiatives, with too many dead ends.”
— Andy Nairn