Archive for May, 2010

Q&A with Claudine Cheever

Friday, May 28th, 2010



Interview with Claudine Cheever by Tangerine NY

Where are you right now?

Sitting in an atrium soaking up the sun and trying to work. 

What was your first job?

Working in a children’s book shop. I was in charge of doing the window displays and booking storytime readers. As a result I have a real way with tinfoil and an incredible collection of Caldecott-award-winning books signed by the authors and illustrators.

What do you worry about?

Competitors – to my agency and to my clients’ brands.  You know, that “****, they did something cool” feeling.  Or is that envy?

How do you handle stress or pressure?

Very very large bag of Twizzlers.  Only the red ones.  The fresher the better.

What motivates you the most?

The amazing people I get to work with every day.  Particularly the planners in my department who are doing such amazing things at an age when I was still like waiting tables or whatever.

Which company do you most admire?

So hard to pick just one!  I love Southwest Airlines—-their consistent and instinctive lens through which they view and do everything.  They make it look easy and my personal experience flying with two young kids matches the expectation every time.   I also really admire my client General Mills for the investment they make in their culture and people. 

What blogs have you read today?

Facebook live feed (not a blog but I do read it pretty obsessively), hudsonhouston, designspongeonline, agencyspy (guilty pleasure), awfulplasticsurgery (double down guilty pleasure).  I also watch Sesame Street with my kids every morning when they get up at an unearthly hour – lots of good ideas there like today Oscar the grouch repositioning a broken washing machine as a Grouch Messing Machine.  As Gerry Graf would say, “smaht.”

What have you seen recently that you wish you’d been associated with (new product, service, advertising)?

Most of the iPhone apps that I use daily, from Smacktalk for the kids to the new New York Times real estate app.  When they are good they are such perfection: beautiful functionality, great design, empowering, and you still get that little “wow” every time you use it. 

If you weren’t in this business what would you be doing?

I’d probably be a literary agent.  I had a brief episode as an assistant agent at the venerable Curtis Brown right out of grad school, working for the agent who represented Vikram Seth and the A. A. Milne estate. I unpacked the manuscript for A Suitable Boy direct from Bombay, 5000 loose pages arriving in a dusty suitcase smelling of spices, and got to dine at Aqua with Sonny Mehta.

Tell us something surprising about yourself.

My closet is much smaller than my husband’s.

Front page image source: Current.org

Category: Our People

Ping Pong

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Tonight marks Saatchi & Saatchi New York’s 1st ever game night and Cooper Challenge! The night’s events include sport, food, and beer (= fun). Starting at 6PM, the Atrium Café will be converted into a Colosseum of table tennis. As you may well know, our Interactive Creative Director, James Cooper, is a world renowned Ping Pong player and enthusiast. In addition to his stellar work for Saatchi & Saatchi, he devotes his free time to producing the authoritative periodical of contemporary Ping Pong – Celebrity Ping Pong Magazine. James created the magazine in 2008 with a class he taught at Miami Ad School, and it, along with cool clubs like SPiN, have been building a big buzz around Ping Pong in New York

When CPP launched, James promised Ad Week it would be “a bit like Freud’s couch, but with less mothers and more top-spin.” CPP is filled with that sort of comedic gold. To put you in the right mood for tonight’s tournament, check out this amazing video of Mike Myer’s pinging it up for Canada at SPiN!

For a geo-political perspective on the significance of the game, see “Ping Pong Diplomacy“. In 1971 China invited the American table tennis team to visit for a series of exhibition matches. They were the first group of Americans allowed into China since the Communist takeover in 1949. Their visit was the precursor to the visit by then US President Richard M. Nixon to China a year later – the first US President to ever visit China. Time magazine called it “The ping heard round the world.”

Category: Events, Our People

Delivering Priceless Value

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

Keynote address by Kevin Roberts to the Snacks & Sweets Expo, Chicago, May 25. This speech is relevant to many of our lines of business. Ed

It’s good to see Sweets and Snacks together in one conference. Working together, collaborating, is the way of the future for brands and retailers. While we have been focused on looking at the power balances between the two industries – manufacturers and retailers – the consumer, empowered by the Internet, by Twitter, Tumblr, Digg and every other social media device you can think of, has driven right through the middle to be in control.

We are now living on planet VUCA. The atmosphere on VUCA is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. There are a bunch of pressures on us:

* People pressure; people want it all. And they want it now; they are looking for their expectations to be exceeded in this “more for less” economy; they want honesty and transparency; they want genuine nutrition; and they want everything you do, from instore navigation to packaging that utilizes new exotic technologies like augmented reality, to be simple and easy to use. Otherwise they’re gone.

* Competition and cost pressure: this is the market speaking. Whether it’s the usual battle with commodity prices and the impact of energy costs in everything from manufacturing to distribution to display, through to a competitor out-innovating you or out-communicating you run the risks of being ground down, munched up and blended out. 

* Pressure from regulation – in the form of DC decrees for your contents, packaging and marketing, or knowing how much you should self-regulate. Of course the consumer has already moved on.

While we’re dealing with a world that is complex, uncertain, volatile and ambiguous, the consumer has already reframed VUCA as Vibrant, Unreal, Crazy and Astounding. So what is it to be: see life through the eyes of your company or your industry, or see it through the eyes of the consumer? You have to do both. It’s an AND/AND world. You have to be continuously empathetic to the realities around you, sifting the sands of retail customers, consumers and regulators – and you have to get on the front foot and help the consumer get to the Future First.

I have five ideas that you may want to think about. I think they matter whether you make it, market it, distribute it, display it, or sell it.

#1 Deliver Priceless Value The consumer retrenched some time ago but she refused to compromise. She redefined price and value. And is insisting on priceless value. She is much less interested in functional elements than in how your product is going to benefit her life, improve her moment, involve her in something bigger. Voltaren did this, moving from pain relief to the Joy of Movement. It’s “And/And”. Wal-mart says it brilliantly with “Save money, live better.” P&G says it beautifully with “Touching lives, improving life.”

‘Product as hero’ is now a deadzone for communication. It’s an era of ‘consumer as hero’. Companies that say “we put the consumer at the heart of everything we do” have got it wrong. The right construction is that “we put ourselves into the hearts of consumers.” This is much more difficult to achieve, because priceless value requires you to be joyful, something most corporations are not. This is the great reframe. Emotion. Neurologist Donald Calne says “Reason leads to conclusions, emotion leads to action.”

#2 Lean into her World Remember when everyone proclaimed” “mass marketing is dead”? How we lamented. And for good reason. Overnight marketing got a lot harder. The good news is that mass marketing is back. The Consumer is Boss. And the Consumer is the media. If the idea is big, relevant and cut-through, she’ll spread the word. As Estée Lauder said: Telegraph, Telephone, Tell-a-woman.

The seismic shifts are from Attention to Participation; Inform to Inspire;  Distraction to Interaction; Return on Investment to Return on Involvement; Market to Movement

Winning is now about participation in her world – online, in the street, on the go, in the store. Fact: Only 6% of all sales are executed on the web, but 50% of all sales are pre-qualified by web research. Shopper marketing today is all about “search to shelf”. And your entire business can be derailed by a quality or service lapse that goes straight into the “Tweet-is-phere”, because Gen “Right Now”, the millennials, are transforming shopping around immediacy, usability, mobility and authenticity. The question to ask is: “Why not”?

* Your store isn’t open 24 hours? Why not? 

* Your product can’t be shared? Why not?

* Your service isn’t fun? Why not?

* Your supermarket has no café? Why not?

* Your coupons aren’t on iPad? Why the hell not?

We are all screenagers now. The future is screens in shopper hands and screens are the next packaging as long as the instructions are instantly intuitive. The key to success in any connecting channel is an idea that will course through people’s veins and through their networks. We live in the Age of the Idea; Ideas are the currency of the Future. There are a multitude of delivery systems from in person through to digital, from live events through to social shopping. But it all starts with a great idea. Winners use sisomo – sight, sound and motion – to connect ideas and emotions into what matters most to people.

Only 3 questions matter:

* Will they want to see it again?

* Will they want to share it?

* Will they want to improve it?

#3 Get on the Pathway to Love Brands are commodified. Fried. Welcome to the future … Welcome to Lovemarks

* Brands are owned by management, marketers and stockholders. Lovemarks are owned by the people who love them.

* Brands are built on Respect. Lovemarks are created out of Respect and Love.

* Brands build Loyalty for a Reason. Lovemarks inspire Loyalty Beyond Reason. Beyond Price. Attribute, Benefit. Loyalty Beyond Recession.

* Brands invest in Performance, Reputation and Trust. Lovemarks involve through Mystery, Sensuality and Intimacy.

* Brands are about selling by yelling. Lovemarks are about solving by involving. Involvement is the right ROI.

* Great Brands were Irreplaceable. Lovemarks are Irresistible. For your business ask: are you Irreplaceable? Or are you Irresistible? For example: PC versus MAC, MP3 versus iPod.

#4 Come Together I saw a TV ad the other night that surprised me by being completely obvious. It ended by say “find me in the baking aisle”. Our own advertising industry has generally been terrible at bridging home and store. Brand advertising has been in an ivory tower and retail advertising has been stuck in a pocket calculator. With “shelf back” thinking we can achieve collaboration for mutual competitive advantage. Retailers, manufacturers and agencies working together with shared goals. You’ve heard it before, you hear it now, you’ll hear it again: we must all work together. The consumer is boss. We are her servants. Let’s build harmony and flow together.

#5 Fulfill Sweet Destiny The role of business is:

* To create shareholder value (Drucker) – or,

* To create and grow a customer (Welch) – or,

* To make the world a better place for everyone

To build a product brand, a store brand, any brand you must stop talking and start listening. “The consumer is not a moron, she’s your wife.” Empathy is everything. Stop. Listen. Feel. Here’s what she might be saying in this Screen Age:

* I’m getting fat, and you don’t care.

* I have the tools to find out what you’re not telling me, and if you’re just screwing me.

* Love me, or I’m leaving you for another.

This industry is about impulse and indulgence – so it carries serial responsibility. We must be honest about its impacts. We are bigger than every individual. Few individuals can withstand our collective clout, so we must lead people responsibly. Fact – the world now has more obese than starving people. Consequence stands at our doorstep. How to turn our negatives into positives in this people-powered Participation Economy?

Three points to finish:

* We must be purpose-inspired, benefit-driven. People are happiest when they are part of something bigger than themselves. I’m not referring to waistlines but making the world a better place. Empathy is the greatest Lovemark element you should take away from today. Listen to the winds of change and be pro-active. Take a chance on life.

* We must put truth on the front of the package. Children are being educated in schools about what is healthy … and what is not. They know how to read labels. Sugar and salt, fruit and vege: let’s get the balance right. McDonalds has shown how we can turn our distribution muscle into destinations for people who want to be healthy.

* Finally, what matters is language. You’re not actually in the sweets and snacks business, you definitely don’t want to be in the “4th meal” business. You’re in the “moment of time” business. Saatchi & Saatchi has just done a big study of the luxury business, and one thing you can extract from this is that the “moment of joy” is a bubble, a cocoon, a minor wonderland of mystery, sensuality and intimacy.

Think about this as you work together. Change the language, you can change the conversation.

Category: Clients, Lovemarks, Retail & Shopping, Thought Leadership

7X7′s thriller chess match

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

International Chess Grandmaster Maurice Ashley was a star of the recent 7X7 event presented in the S Space. In this video he speaks briefly about his own chess journey before launching (and commentating on) an epic game of “Blitz Chess” between two student players, one in Brooklyn NYC and the other in the jungles of Belize. The Belize Guardian reported an estimated 20 million people watched the game – surely an exaggeration but flattering nonetheless. Introduction by Mary Baglivo.

Category: Creative, Events, New York

Saatchi Y-Spot: The Age of Me

Monday, May 24th, 2010

Gen Y, Millennials, Twixters, YAdults, The Boomerang Generation – so many labels fabricated by marketers scrambling to understand our generation. Instead, how about learning the perspectives of members of the generation themselves? Saatchi & Saatchi asked our interns, a group of savvy college students from all over the country, to teach the agency something new about their generation. Together, they pooled their individual experiences, interviewed friends, and explained what the life of a “Millennial” is really all about. Being part of this generation myself, I’ve culminated their responses and my own personal perspective into this bi-weekly blog series, The Saatchi Y-Spot, to tell you everything you need to know about our generation.

Our generation has coined the 18-25 chapter of our lives as “The Age of Me,” a period of unbridled self-experimentation and self-exploration. For every generation, this life stage has always been shrouded with transition and uncertainty – switching college majors and career choices, falling in and out of love and relationships, forging new and diverse friendship circles, hunting for first jobs, and learning how to really be on your own for the first time. But our generation is driven by four inherent values – “The Four Cs” – that allow us to navigate this uncertain period with ease and enthusiasm.

Confidence is our greatest driver. We have been raised as the most child-centric generation, told by adoring parents since birth that we can conquer our dreams and succeed in doing whatever we put our minds to. We’ve had self-esteem boosting classes telling us we’re unique, special and winners. We’ve been given smiley-face stickers in class and shiny trophies in sports no matter our performance level. So once we reach the 18-24 life stage, we assume we’ll succeed – it’s just a matter of finding out what we really want to do in life. And if we make mistakes along the way? Our parents graciously offer us a safety-net waiting back at home with welcome, open arms.

Although we are confident of success, we are also aware that “what we really want to do” can and will change. That’s because change is another driving factor for our generation. We’ve grown up in an era marked by drastic cultural changes – globalization, the democratization of media technologies, 9/11, the Iraq (and Afghanistan) War, global warming, the financial bust, and of course, the election of Barack Obama. Witnessing these transformations our entire lives has affirmed that old Buddhist philosophy, “change is the only constant in life,” and taught us that you can’t count on anything to stay the same. There’s no telling what tomorrow brings. So we’ve adjusted to this constant state of flux by becoming masters at living in the present and adapting to whatever the moment holds.

Choice is another fundamental value of our generation. The digital world has endowed us with endless choices and opportunities at our fingertips. Through the instant global access of the internet, we discover people creating ideas and embarking on adventures that we never dreamed of being a possibility. We become inspired by the endless opportunities around us. As such, whereas previous generations may have conformed to traditions and expectations from their family and society, we feel that there is no limit to the prospects of our future. We have the freedom to choose whatever obscure path excites us, and even create something completely new for ourselves, be it a self-selected job title (like mine, the Strategic Storyteller of Saatchi & Saatchi!), or a new product/company for the world.

This brings us to the final “C” and our greatest asset for success – Creativity. Creativity is defined as “the generation of new ideas or concepts”. Creative thinking is the realization that there is no virtue to do things the way they’ve always been before; this is a principle that we live and breathe everyday. Perhaps the value of creativity is embraced by us so much because it’s becoming embraced by society as a whole; as the competition of the global economy grows fierce, 81% of corporate leaders in America have declared that “creativity is an essential skill for the 21st-century workforce.“ One-third of MBA programs now offer students courses on creativity and out-of-box thinking. Furthermore, the explosion of reality TV also promotes creativity as the route to success, with shows like American Idol, Design Stars and Project Runway demonstrating that pursuing your creative talent will lead you to exquisite fame and money. Thankfully, the democratization of new media technologies like Photoshop and iMovie have provided sophisticated tools for creativity for all of us (we can thank Apple for that!). These cultural expectations and creative tools have empowered us to become a generation of content creators, fueled by the belief that if we want to be successful in this world, we must unleash our inner creativity.

With the “Four Cs” driving us throughout our lives, what happens when we enter the unknown transitional period of the 18-25 years? Well, let’s take a step back and assess this timeframe in the overall context of our lifespan. While the 0-17 years were a relatively stable period during which we followed a set path established by our parents and school system, and the 25+ years mark a return to stability as we settle into our own families and careers, 18-25 is a wonderfully self-indulgent time bracket devoted wholly to ourselves. That’s why we call this period the “Age of Me”; with endless confidence and limitless choices, we feel free to embark on a collection of adventures during these years, exploring multiple versions of ourselves across multiple life experiences. This is our time to soul-search, experiment, learn, grow, and reinvent the wheel… all in the quest to create a unique lifestyle that’s on our own terms, in our own way.

We’ve identified five insights that we believe really define “The Age of Me,” and which this blog series will reveal to you in the upcoming months. “Slash/slash” explains how our generation approaches that age-old question, “What do you want to do with the rest of your life?”. “Digital Mirror” reveals how we craft and re-craft our digital identities. “Living Frugally” shows our clever abilities to work the system to get what we want in life (with little money). “Home Redefinition” shows how we create new versions of “home” for ourselves as we grapple with the tension between comfort and independence. And the “Party Production” reveals how our generation has transformed partying into an elaborate, five-act production, complete with a dress-rehearsal and critical review.

Stay tuned for the next post on The Saatchi Y-Spot, “Slash/Slash,” for a deeper look at our generation’s approach to constructing our life-path, and how your brands can play a role in the journey.

Nisha Gupta is a Youth Connection Strategic Storyteller at Saatchi & Saatchi New York.

Image source: chathri.wordpress.com

Category: Xploring, Youth Marketing

Saatchi & Social

Friday, May 21st, 2010

Kevin Roberts in conversation with Alexis Glick about “Business & Love”, presented by The Academi of Life, 12 May, at the Stephen Weiss Studio, May 12, above Donna Karan’s Urban Zen store on Greenwich St. Photography by Jay Ackerman.


Jane Wagner, James Cooper, Mary Baglivo


Mary Baglivo and Alison Gragnano


Audience at The Academi of Life


Shirley Moulton of The Academi of Life and Diane McArter, President of Furlined


Kevin Roberts speaks on ‘Business and Love’


Alexis Glick interviews Kevin Roberts


Pre-event reception


Pre-event reception

Free Arts NYC Annual Art Auction at Saatchi & Saatchi NY, 14 May

The Olsen Twins were the hosts of an event in the SSpace on last Friday evening for Free Arts NYC. Sponsored by Vanity Fare, David Yurman and Saatchi & Saatchi, the event raise $550,000 for Free Arts NYC’s mentoring program, which helps low-income, homeless, abused and neglected children re-imagine their worlds through the creative arts. Saatchi & Saatchi’s involvement was co-ordinated by Jane Sutherland. Photographs by Chris Cassidy.


Hosts Ashley and Mary Kate Olsen with Michael Shulman


Liz Hopfan (Executive Director Free Arts NYC) & Nigel Barker


Marnie Kain-Cacossa, Gigi Goettsch, Maggie Sumner


Giles Mendel and Mary Alice Stephenson


Maria Helena Vianna


Marnie Kain-Cacossa and Kerstin Krall Walz


Chris DeLorenzo, Allison Rosenwinkel  and Jane Sutherland


Brian Sweeney, Mariana Sanchez & Thierry Dumoulin


Michael Shulman with students from the Free Arts NYC project



Elliot Coakley, Jenny Pratt and Alice Coakley


Todd DiCiurcio and Megan DiCiurcio


Ron Prince and Jane Sutherland


Eric & Kathleen Jensen


Alexandra Otero & Justin Roth, Chris DeLorenzo (red hat)


Donna D’Cruz


Donna D’Cruz (DJ) & crowd

Category: Events, New York, Our People

Social Listening

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

A few weeks ago Claudine wrote about Digital Exploring and mentioned that at Saatchi & Saatchi, in addition to partners we work with to help us find and understand online conversations, we also use some free tools.

While none of this is scientific and I certainly wouldn’t bet the farm on their accuracy, they are really useful in our planning process. They can delight and inspire in unexpected ways—and more than a few times have started us on a path to pretty powerful insights. There are dozens and dozens of these, but here are a few I’ve had some luck with.


This is a really attractive interface that aggregates twitter, blogs, music, and video. It’s my absolute favorite way to start peeking into a topic. It’s so much more fun than Google, Bing or Yahoo.


How much are people talking about a brand or topic? You can compare up to five. Of course we have no way to know how much data they are looking at—or over what period of time. But heck, it’s still directionally interesting. For example, when I was doing some research for an insurance company in context of Gen Y—I compared “Life Insurance” with “Shoes” and “Rent.” It gave us all a good laugh and a poignant reminder about the significant of shoes to tweeters.


Enter any search term and get a word cloud of the recent conversations. The only difference between this and searching in twitter is that you get to see related terms and concepts. It’s useful when you are just beginning to dig.


This is cool. It feels like someone’s college thesis project and, unfortunately, is super slow. But it’s proven insightful. Have patience.


This tool looks across multiple platforms. A lot of these tools are just looking for keywords. “Good Job Apple!” “Good god, what is Apple thinking?” Most low-end tools (and some expensive ones too) don’t know the difference between positive and negative sentiment. Even so, it’s a good tool to dabble with.


This has a faster and nicer interface but can also be pretty random (and you need to create an account). Their professional service is likely much more accurate and I’ll write a little bit about “for pay” social listening services next time.

A few other tactics we like… call it anthropology lite.


Do flickr searches on ideas and brands; collect images and make collages to illustrate ideas. Also, read through the comments and look for patterns. Maybe even start a flickr group with photos you seed and get community participation in your project. What is freedom?


Go to youtube and find popular videos about your topic or brand, read through the comments, look at the reply videos, maybe even make a reply yourself. It may seem tedious at first, but brave on. How do the comments change over time? What patterns do you notice? What kind of people are responding? Do they feel credible? Dr. Michael Wesch has an outstanding video: An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube. It’s a must watch for anyone who thinks YouTube is just about cats on treadmills.

We shouldn’t have to say this, but always be transparent when you are doing market research and interacting with users online. There is nothing wrong with curiosity and learning from others. There is a lot wrong with deception and exploitation.

- Shel

Shel Kimen leads Digital Strategy at Saatchi & Saatchi New York

Note to Art Directors from Editor: the source of the primary image is armyyouhave. The image is of social homeostatis in a termite colony. In biology, the most important contemporary science, social homeostasis is a phenomenon of social insect colonies, in which the collective activities of the colony’s inhabitants regulate the colony environment. For a full discussion, see http://www.esf.edu/efb/turner/termite/social%20homeostasis.htm

Category: Clients, Digital & Interactive, Strategic Planning, Xploring

True Blue Update

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

Sustainability is part of our language and an increasing part of our everyday practice. Adam Werbach is leading the effort across out network – in new business, in thought leadership (with his book Strategy for Sustainability published by the Harvard Business Press) and in our personal sustainability practices (DOT – Do One Thing). We’re coming close here in New York to our rooftop garden – Erin Lyons will be keeping you posted on progress. Here’s a short video from Adam updating us on the sustainability program.

Category: New Business, Our People, Sustainability, Thought Leadership