Photos by Frans Schellekens (1993)

images © Maria Ogedengbe

While Greta is not a “brand” exactly, she has sparked phenomenal awareness. And brands and marketers can learn something from her. In our conflicted times, they can be inspired by her example to find new ways to grasp consumer attention. Greta appeals to a new breed of consumers. In a world of virtue-signaling and “clicktivism,” she’s an action figure who has decided that just talking about climate change isn’t going to help. She’s unafraid to call out adults who don’t make this stuff seriously enough, even if they’re world leaders. Others are following her example. People across cultures and generations are changing their behavior by being more action-oriented. They volunteer for nonprofits, fund good ideas on Kickstarter, wear fitness trackers and demonstrate to address climate change. These are people for whom doing, engaging and acting is the new badge. They are doers, not talkers. And they engage with brands they see as acting according to their values. In the absence of functioning governments, people want brands that act, help and do. They’re tired of powerful organizations that make empty promises and are instead looking for corporate action. It’s no longer enough for brands to just send their own messaging and wait for people to listen and act. Look at Greta: We’ve seen her demonstrating outside Sweden’s Parliament, meeting the pope, addressing the EU and the UN, giving a TED Talk, contending for the Nobel Peace Prize, gracing the cover of Time magazine and referenced by global leaders.  Her personal mission has become a global mission of gigantic proportions. While the rise of brands is hardly ever as comet-like as Greta’s, it is possible for most brands to have far more impact. Many brands are doing a great job by creating consistent brand moments at scale. However, most brands fail to be interesting or stimulating.   No matter how smart and inspired your brand strategy might be, it’s just strategy. People never experience brand strategies, they experience brand moments. So if you want to become the Greta Thunberg of brands you have to focus on these moments, concentrating on how your brand behaves and the actions you take at every touchpoint. Let’s call it “story-acting” rather than the popular “story-telling.” Take REI”s #OptOutside 2016 campaign, in which it physically closed its doors on Black Friday in order to discourage consumerism and encourage outdoor experiences. In October, Miller Lite encouraged people to unfollow it on social media, as it tries to tackle social media addiction. At Publicis, our recent work for Diesel has portrayed the brand as an outlaw. Its “Enjoy before returning” campaign encourages people to wear its clothes and then return them—something it knows people do anyway. Such campaigns exemplify how a brand story and purpose are more credibly brought to life through action than meaningless statements. So, how do you become a brand of action? First, search for your sweet spot between brand DNA, product strength and consumer tension to inspire marketing actions. Call it your purpose, belief or whatever else you choose. Define the persona who guides all your actions. Be a hero, a caregiver, a creator, an explorer or a sage. Go by archetypes or any other persona model you prefer. Whoever you choose will determine how you speak. Then capture your brand’s actions in an inspirational, behavioral statement to which every creative can relate. This can even work in a crisis. Take KFC’s “FCK” apology ad, which diffused the situation when its U.K. store ran out of chicken. You could even draw parallels with Greta’s reaction when Donald Trump characterized her as “a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.” She trolled him by changing her Twitter bio to that description. While your brand might not be addressing the UN or meeting the pope, Greta’s attitude can inspire us all.  Source: Adage Read the full article

In a tweet thread on Wednesday morning, Jack Dorsey announced that Twitter would be financially backing an independent team of five architects, engineers, and designers to develop the standard, with the goal of ultimately integrating Twitter’s platform as a client. Per Dorsey, Twitter will adopt an entirely hands-off approach to the project, dubbed Bluesky. The effort is being spearheaded by Twitter CTO Parag Agrawal, who will hire the initial team lead. “We’re facing entirely new challenges centralized solutions are struggling to meet,” Dorsey explained in his thread. “For instance, centralized enforcement of the global policy to address abuse and misleading information is unlikely to scale over the long term without placing far too much burden on people.” Aside from tackling the platform’s oft-reported issues over abusive content, this new standard would, ideally, shift the platform’s overall value for its user base away from the current recommendation algorithms, which are built to reward sensationalized or polarizing content that’s imminently clickable, but has garnered bad press for every platform. Second, the value of social media is shifting away from content hosting and removal, and towards recommendation algorithms directing one’s attention. Unfortunately, these algorithms are typically proprietary, and one can’t choose or build alternatives. Yet. The standard, in Dorsey’s words, will ideally “allow to access and contribute to a much larger corpus of public conversation, focus our efforts on building open recommendation algorithms which promote healthy conversation, and will force us to be far more innovative than in the past.” When asked for elaboration, a Twitter spokesperson added that Bluesky is ultimately “about exploring the fullest and most participatory vision of our service.” Source: Ad Week Read the full article

Lamin Manjang, CEO Standard Chartered spoke about the digital bank and their new brand ambassador. He expressed the bank’s excitement to be working with Burna Boy. Manjang called the artist a multi-talented artist. According to him, the star is not only an inspiration because of his musical excellence but also because of passion and commitment towards youth empowerment and placing Nigeria on the global scene. He stated that Burna Boy’s passion for empowering the youths and positively amplifying the Nigerian brand is very much in line with the Bank, making him an ideal partner for this momentous new offering. According to him, going digital also means progression, not just for their business, but also for their clients. Dayo Aderugbo, Head of Corporate Affairs, Brand and Marketing, Nigeria also spoke. He stated that the star was the natural choice for them. According to him, the partnership opens up a great opportunity to contribute to the social and economic wellbeing of the country where they have been operating since 1999. The campaign which Burna Boy will spearhead aims at not only raising awareness for their innovative digital offering but also at further enhancing financial literacy and inclusion initiatives across the country and this is an exceptionally important undertaking for the future of banking.’ Read the full article

All Ages Welcome Rather than being portrayed as slowing down or needing help, older subjects in advertisements will be represented as “attractive, productive and in their prime.” “Until recently, older subjects were typically portrayed in terms of needing help and slowing down. Even ‘active’ representations of folks over 50 tended to be patronizing or condescending—think frail, little old ladies dutifully power-walking in ads for hospitals or financial institutions,” Milis wrote in Adobe’s blog post summarizing the 2020 trends. “That’s changed, in a big way.” Milis wrote that “every major industry from finance and banking to travel and healthcare has gotten the message that older people expect more authentic representation of their lives and aspirations.” Express Yourself People in 2020 will increasingly demand that brands, politicians and other public figures be authentic, raw, honest and reflective of the diversity in culture. “With Express Yourself, we’re focusing on the way people around the world are sharing more of their raw, honest life experiences online and in public—and demanding the same from brands, politicians and other public figures,” Milis wrote. “This trend is our way of describing the prevalent, new, visual form of ‘inclusivity.'” Makeup Is Not a Mask Personal style is no longer about trying to attain a linear ideal standard of beauty. In 2020, it’s about “breaking all the established rules of beauty in pursuit of authentic self-expression,” Adobe said. “Contemporary grooming focuses on celebrating a person’s unique looks and style,” Milis wrote in the blog post, “and colour appears in expressive, artistic and inclusive ways.” From Me to We Mainly led by Gen Z and millennials, people will come together more than ever in 2020 to meaningful lifestyle choices” will resonate best. support causes, which is why images “presenting a strong sense of community and “When it comes to visual imagery,” Milis’ blog post said, “brands are finding that images presenting a strong sense of community and meaningful lifestyle choices resonate best, creating a quick connection between companies and conscious customers.” The trends are multifaceted, because, as Milis pointed out, visuals need to operate on more than one level. “Creative professionals need to work with topics the speak to viewers’ identities and interests as well as simultaneously knowing which kinds of images capture customer attention and successfully communicate their messaging,” Milis said. Source: Ad Week Read the full article

The new harassment guidelines are part of YouTube’s efforts to clean up its platform, which has been plagued by videos that advertisers, users and regulators find toxic. In June, journalist and YouTube creator Carlos Maza publicly accused Steven Crowder, a conservative comedian, of repeatedly harassing him with homophobic remarks on YouTube. The company said Crowder’s videos didn’t violate its policies and didn’t remove them. Employees at Google protested the decision. YouTube responded by pulling ads from Crowder’s videos, sparking accusations of bias from some politicians. “We will no longer allow content that maliciously insults someone based on protected attributes such as their race, gender expression, or sexual orientation,” Matt Halprin, YouTube’s head of trust and safety, wrote in a blog post published today. “This applies to everyone, from private individuals to YouTube creators, to public officials.” Channels that “repeatedly brush up against” YouTube’s policies may be removed from its advertising program, Halprin added. This means that the controversial Crowder videos would now be considered a violation of YouTube’s policies, a company spokesman said. But there are exceptions. YouTube said videos that include harassment languages in certain contexts, such as a documentary or a scripted satire, will not be removed. Neither will clips featuring or discussing powerful people “like high-profile government officials or CEOs of major multinational corporations.” YouTube will decide when videos meet these exceptions or not. Source: Adage Read the full article

The ad begins with a close-up of Ruiz’s face, much like her wide-eyed shot from the Peloton ad where she looks nervously into the camera before starting her year-long exercise routine. From there, it pans out to show two friends flanking her, not really knowing how to react for 10 uncomfortable seconds as the camera continues to pan back and reveal that the three are sitting at a bar with three gin martinis. Ruiz then breaks the silence by saying “This gin is really smooth.” That opens the door for the friends to tell her that everything is OK and that she’s in a safe place with them. They then cheer “To new beginnings” before Ruiz downs her entire glass in a prolonged chug as her friend offers her another. The action then moves to a glamour shot of the gin in a Christmas setting as we hear one of the friends say, “You look great, by the way,” in a final razz of the Peloton ad. In one more dig, the ad is titled 'The Gift That Doesn't Give Back' which pokes fun of the Peloton's 'The Gift That Gives Back' header. https://youtu.be/H2t7lknrK28     Source: The Drum Read the full article