Parody

There was no choice but to parody the Apple iPad promotional vignettes.

Someone had to do it;

and,

New Agency Model – the future?

Afternoon,

We were speaking with an old friend today about the new agency model that is beginning to make a few noises in the fair old isle of Ireland.

It’s simple. It works and it’s an Opportunity for Flagship!

Here’s the site; http://boysandgirlsagency.wordpress.com/

Here’s what they say:

“Boys and Girls is Ireland’s newest creative agency. Founded by four boys and two girls with over 80 years experience working across every major sector, we have worked on practically every one of Ireland’s Top 50 brands. We offer a full range of creative and strategic services from advertising concepts through to market research and consumer insight planning.”

Boys and Girls  includes five former McConnells directors amongst its six founders and Rory Hamilton, who is responsible for the creative output of the agency, and has worked at Euro RSCG, Ogilvy & Mather, Irish International and McCann Erickson.

It’s headed up by managing partner Pat Stephenson, who was deputy managing director at McConnells until September 2009. We were lucky enough to hear Pat explain the Boys and Girls “way”.

The Model. What is it?

Well, currently, they have all in all 7 people in the office; planners, account executives, researcher, M.D, secretary and a creative director.

So, no art and copy type creatives?

Stephenson explained that rather than incurring huge expenses by maintaining one creative department in the agency they opted for spending an arduous couple of months compiling a bible of names, number and details of every possible creative job that could be referenced to outsource to talented and well regarded free-lancers.

Sounds F’n genius to us; minimal overheads matched with 6 hugely experienced people and access to senior people leads to greater efficiencies and better work. Especially in a recession.

It also gives all the rookie creatives a shot at the big time instead of keeping the one trusty (Dusty) Art and Copy team on the payroll.

It’s a new concept in Ireland anyway, and we love it. A creative agency with just one creative heading up the creative department; the creative director.

Wonder if the model will catch on? Apparently these big corporation types are all about saving the pennies. So we reckon it could.

Interesting change in the industry though.

Keep an eye out for these guys (and girls)

Flagship

Coca Customisation

Global versus Local.

We love the local work Coca Cola did in Ireland.

It resonates so well with the local consumers, and Coca Cola, gigantic corporation, one of the biggest brands in the world engaging in local marketing communication. Genius.

We are looking forward to the Coca Cola Longford and Coca Cola Sligo 6 sheets next, we expect bigger logo!

Flagship

Separating the brand from the barley (and keeping it that way)

We’ve been talking, thinking and arguing about building brands for beers. The Do’s and Don’ts, the Why’s and Why Not’s.

Having looked closely at the Molson “I AM CANADIAN” campaign as of late and the course the brand went through to create valuable brand equity  in the growing market; we have a few thoughts.

First, have a look…

Good ad, obvious proposition and message understood.

So, why do we need to do it?

Research has shown that the general beer consumer can’t differentiate beer brands in a blind test. The biggest Miller fan apparently can’t tell their poison apart from Corona or Coors or Heineken or Carlsberg or well, you get the picture.

So, opportunity comes a knocking for some lucky agencies, who are hired to come up with the task of differentiating the brand from the others.

Taste isn’t enough.

And here are a few of our favourite ad’s that get an A+ in Brand Architecture;

Heineken are one of our favourites, they get into the minds of their target consumer, and use funny (as above) or chic (below) and make the brand reflective of what the consumers like.

The key is, keeping the message honest to the brand. The brand has been built.

Don’t stop and change when it works.

See? These work.

They are doing something right, and it has Flagship converted to loyal customers.

We couldn’t see Heineken jumping ship from their ‘cool’ image to a straight-edged, traditional proposition. It would risk too much, most importantly the consumers perception.

But unfortunately there’s a severe breakdown in marketing communications for other brands.

We see it all the time; one advertisment is a traditional, old school type advert, one which successfully builds a brand image for their beer, and then they go a fluff things up with a whole new campaign that is a million miles away from what the consumers believe the brand stands for. STICK TO ONE. It’s called integrated marketing communications and it’s all the rage!

Good advert, if that’s what you were doing from the start, not halfway through.

But you had this before guys!!

Just because the tagline is the same, it means nothing if the message isn’t similar.

Flagship

Here’s a thought on planning …

We all understand the importance of the account planner on the agency, infact we couldn’t survive with out consumer insight based strategy. It’s what drives our propositions.

But, why isn’t everybody a strategic planner in this day and age?

We can all use insight to ignite that spark; and we believe this will be something that starts to change within the industry. Flagship advocates an open, democratic and flexible framework for idea generation. When everybody’s has ideas from insight we would be foolish not to pay attention and listen. Right?

Watch account executives become as instrumental as planners and creatives in the whole process as opposed to just keeping the client happy.

We wont say we told you so.

Flagship