G’day everyone. Sorry for our two day absence. We were competing in the Media Lions competition and were thrilled to pick up Silver. But more on that later. Now it’s back to the awards.
Today’s winner was an easy one, as we both had exactly the same Lion to give out.
Our Joint Lion – ‘The Second Mover Advantage Lion’
Kristine:
Yesterday I listened to Mark D’arcy, Director of Engineering at Facebook and David Droga talk about where ideas come from and how they’re celebrated.
So many times we kill ideas because they’ve been done before. But D’arcy pointed out that when their photos product was launched it was riding the coat tails of the more popular Shutterfly and many others. Basically, it wasn’t a new idea at the time, but it’s now the number one photo site online. Why? They added the ability to tag friends, which was the single most important thing to the consumer.
Imagine if the team that created Instagram had killed the idea because they weren’t the first to think of social photo sharing.
In advertising we don’t do enough celebrating of improvement to existing ideas. We always say ‘don’t reinvent the wheel’. But maybe sometimes we should give it a go.
Paul:
D’arcy made what I consider to be the best point made at Cannes so far. “Advertising is the only art form where we don’t celebrate taking an existing piece of work by another agency or client as a means to build a new idea”.
It seems that the media is already on board with this message. Take Google’s ‘Re Brief’ project for Coke where they simply tried to apply a different lens over something that was executed 60 years ago.
Kanye’s ‘Gold Digger’ is a perfect example of taking something old like the sounds of Ray Charles with something new, like the rhythmic beats and lyrical flow of Kanye himself.
All biases aside, we as people in agency land need to start learning from the Kanyes of this world. We should build in an element of immersing ourselves in the old to come up with something totally new.
Call me crazy, but maybe we could create the most innovative work by simply taking a piece of work that a competitor had previously produced and filtering it over a different lens to build something new.
Our One-Lioner Of The Day
“I hate watching commercials. Just like everyone else. The truth will set you free” Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs
Young Lions (Media)
Kristine Ballensky
Paul Den
UM