Friday night saw the third STV masterclass talk, I've been to see Trevor Beattie, I missed the Mark Waites one, both from what I've seen and heard were very useful.
The advertising guru this time was none other than John Hegarty and his talk was on:
With the ability like never before to do something and then put it out to the masses via any media channel for pennies means ideas can go viral without asking it too.
They leaked four of their new tracks for buskers to play, uploaded content to youtube, let everyone know where they were playing next and all Oasis fans went nuts. They even managed to break the US billboard chart for the first time.
Audi wanted to have a constant foothold in the car market. So BBH created Audi TV, the first branded content channel that makes all sorts of programmes that just include Audis. Check out Audi Tv for more.
BBH created Lynx (Axe) Gamekillers for MTV. This video will tell you more.
Okay, this is a BBH budget, but they decided with the whole marketing spend of $400k to blow it all on production then put it on youtube. This meant the idea had to be viral. The product was Smirnoff Tea, and this is the outcome
BBH was trying to sell the xbox. It instead of making one TV ad, negotiated and managed to get three. These three went on youtube and whichever gets the most hits, gets aired on TV. This is the one that won. Can you see why?
Banardos Break the cycle started life as a web banner in which you click to stop the video replaying. Simple, and it went on to win Simon Veksner and NIck Allsop a few awards.
Dean Woodhouse and Hugo Bierschenk created Mentos Kiss, a webcam interactive kissathon with a rather good looking male or female. Won a bucketful of awards too.
360 for the Audi R8 looked like this:
Internal comms
Product placement
Factory TV
Interactive TV
Online
Outdoor
Press
TV
Microsite
Web banners
Magazine PR
It was a lovely spider diagram.
BBH have a Zag Department, for the times when everyone else zigs.
They study brand lag, and look for gaps in the market. So far they've created:
Both these products they've created they have given 75% of the company to someone else to make it their own and then help out with the design and comms of each product. Pretty nifty
Final point.
Enough said. Simple as that.
Questions:
What make a great accounts person?
A hostage negotiator - they can sell something by listening
Or
Jerry Judge - could sell an ad without you seeing it
Nigel Bogle - has a brain the size of Pluto
Steve Culshaw - loved what he did
Are creative pitches the way forward?
We used to sell strategy, now everyone does so sell the way the brand can dominate the marketplace.
How much advertising works?
It all works, we just argue how engaging it is. 75% of it DOESN't engage.
25% DOES. In his opinion.
What gets you up in the morning?
It's brilliant, I walk into BBH, have free coffee, look at beautiful girls, get people to spend money on my idea, pay me more to make it then I get to see it in the real world. Oh how life is hard.