Archive for the ‘Strategy’ Category

I love social media experts … Just don’t call them experts.

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

The great debate

Editors Note: This post originally appeared on Tim Leake’s (awesome) personal blog

There are a couple articles flying around the internet at the moment arguing whether we need “social media experts” or not. (This guy says no. This guy says yes.)

I think I agree more with the “yes” guy on the subject at hand. But there’s a lot I like about what the “no” guy says, too. (Particularly his ideas that it’s all about Transparency, Relevance, Brevity, and Knowing your customer.)

IT’S TOO NEW
My issue is really with the word “experts.” If you take the Malcolm Gladwell definition of an expert being someone who’s invested 10,000 hours (approximately ten years) in developing a skill, then it’s not even possible to have social media experts. The discipline hasn’t been around long enough. At least not the way it exists today.

Twitter is only five years old. YouTube is five and a half. Facebook, barely seven. And Facebook, as it works today, is a completely different animal than it was a few years ago.

Also, in my experience, “experts” like to act as if they know everything there is to know. They make themselves seem important and vital by throwing around declarations and buzzwords that nobody else feels empowered to question.

CONSTANTLY LEARNING IS BETTER
These days, I’m most attracted to the people who realize that knowing everything is impossible. The ones constantly on the search for a better way to do things. The ones who don’t claim to have all the answers, but know how to go find them for each unique set of circumstances.

While it’s really just a matter of semantics, I prefer the word “specialist” over “expert.” Specialists (like my friend and colleague, Rosie Siman) dig deep into understanding the intricacies of social media that the rest of us don’t have the bandwidth for. And there are plenty of intricacies. Keeping up with changes at Facebook alone deserves having a Facebook Specialist. And “Social Media” is a lot more than just Facebook.

YOU’RE NOT OFF THE HOOK
Certainly, that doesn’t take the burden off the rest of us when it comes to making an effort to understand and immerse ourselves in social media. Imagine trying to write a TV spot if you’d never watched TV in your entire life. Imagine trying to produce a TV spot with an entire organization that had never done it before.

There’s a huge benefit to having people on your team with experience and a focus on social media. Just don’t call them experts. The world is changing too fast for that word to mean anything anymore.

Category: Digital & Interactive, Strategy, Thought Leadership

4664: A cool Palindrome

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

William Willis on his raft - the embodiment of "Nothing is Impossible"

Shel Kimen is SVP of Digital Strategy at SaatchiNY. In response to a recent Nielsen study on the baby boomer generation, she’s started a website dedicated to breaking down age barriers and opening up a discussion about one of the most misunderstood generations around.

4664 

1946 marks the beginning of the ‘baby boomer’ generation. And 1964 marks the end of that era. In 2010 those born in 1946 will be 64 years old, like my father. And those born in 1964 will be 46, like some good friends of mine.

Not Your Grandfathers Baby Boomer

In July, Ad Age reported on a Nielsen study with the hapless title: This Isn’t Your Grandfathers Baby Boomer that challenges marketers to look away from the shiny new mom and towards the highly influential, with disposable income, and not nearly-so-brand-loyal-as-we-think, market of baby boomers. Amen.

It seemed like a perfect opportunity to launch my new blog. A blog that thinks ‘boomer’ is an unfortunate pigeon-hole stereotype for people who are frickin’ cool and interesting and are in most cases much much smarter than me. Boomer says: Old fashioned, afraid of technology, and stuck in one’s ways. But when William Willis was 60 years old he built a custom raft out of 7 Balsa logs and sailed solo from Peru to Samoa… And he did it again when he was 70 (on a bigger raft that went farther)!

Age is irrelevant. It’s mindset we care about. So this slowly growing collection of anecdotes is about defying expectations and embracing the chutzpah of people who have enough experience to teach us a thing or two.

Check it out: http://sixty4.tumblr.com/

Category: Our People, Retail & Shopping, Strategy

Prius Harmony: Network Idea of the Year

Monday, June 21st, 2010

Saatchi & Saatchi New York congratulates our colleagues at Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles who last week were awarded Network Idea of the Year by our Worldwide Creative Board for the “Prius Harmony” campaign for Toyota’s gas-electric hybrid car.

“Prius Harmony” extols harmony between people, nature, and machine. An extensive Los Angeles team created outstanding work in conveying this theme through a campaign that employed social media, apps, print, installation, television, web, and out-of-home including electronic billboards, floral mural gardens, and 18-foot high solar flower installations featuring environmentally-friendly public seating, wi-fi hot spots, charging stations for phones and laptops, and street lights.

In May 2010, reported sales of the Prius were 14,248 units for the month, up 41.2 percent over May 2009.

Image source: Clean MPG

Category: Brand Building, Clients, Creative, Strategy

30 Cups of Coffee

Monday, June 14th, 2010

Claudine Cheever (Head of Strategy) and Bob Seelert (Chairman, Worldwide) make an appearance on the Meet the Boss TV’s leadership channel. They discuss their ideas and experiences about management alongside Tom Schmitt (President and CEO of FedEx Global Supply Chain Services), Jim Finley (founder of Finley Resources Inc.), Al Reese Jr. (CFO of ATP Oil) and Susan Reeves (CEO of Public Gas Partners).

You can watch the minute-long preview of the episode in the embedded video above, but you’ll need to register to watch the full 15 minutes (takes less than 30 seconds and only requires your email and setting up a password). Well worth the effort to hear Claudine and Bob on:

  • The importance of creativity
  • Moving outside of your comfort zone
  • Inspirational leadership
  • Emotionality Vs Rationality
  • Who you get the best lessons from
  • Managing the toughest time in any leader’s career: the first 90 days
  • What happens when you drink 30 cups of coffee in 48 hours

Stay on MeetTheBossTV for other interviews with leaders and marketers from adidas, BMW, IBM, Island Def Jam Records, Lego, Ninja, Rolls Royce and Zappos (what a combo!)

Category: Management, Our People, Strategy

Theory and Practice

Friday, May 14th, 2010

I like to think that our best practices at Saatchi NY are in some ways like the iPod. The fundamental purpose of everything you love in your pocket never changes, but the form and functionality just keep getting better. Our purpose of creating loyalty beyond reason for our clients’ brands never waivers, but how we achieve this is always improving.

Here are a few aphorisms written on the whiteboards around our office on Hudson street.  Well, OK, written on the whiteboard in my office.

1.

This is a fundamental belief for us.  What I love about this one is that talk about making an emotional connection with people blah, blah, blah, can easily start to sound like we want to send the world a greeting card. But the reality is that rational information, while comforting to those dispensing it, leads people to make decisions.  Emotion leads to action. This is not soft stuff – it drives business growth. 

2.

See comments above about dispensing information: no one is waiting around to be told messages. Brands today need to help people do the things they want to do if they are to connect.

3.

The accepted wisdom used to be that you had to show a woman in an ad to sell her on the product. Anything for young people had to feature a skateboard and someone who sounded like Pauly Shore circa 1995. I remember a car insurance company out of the UK that targeted women – with an entirely pink website. But the best way to attract a certain target (be it a demographic or a mindset) is to do just that: attract them.  Don’t depict them.

4.

“Media neutral” feels weird to us.  How do you stay neutral?  By not having an opinion. By not caring.  Good ideas are not media neutral, they’re media hungry and they know where they need to go to be interesting and useful to people.

5.

Powerful human insights are the holy grail in this business. Really good ones feel like a revelation. But in order to connect with what people care about AND with what they want to do, we need to understand their motivations too.  Only then does the idea have a chance of participation, and earning its own way in the world.

Category: Creative, Lovemarks, Strategy, Thought Leadership