the art of creating Simple, Smart and Social.
Or… Mommy, how I learned to stop making advertisements and start making things that advertise.
Blech! Recession. Advertising agencies and brands are running scared. “Digital” agencies are renouncing sight, sound and motion. They’re being forced to seek out alternative means of engaging consumers because their excessive marketing habits of the past have been rendered obsolete, both by technology and by lack of consumer interest. Face it, no one wants to be advertised to, online or otherwise.
Do you?
it sucks you feel that way. but I get it.
We who work in advertising have been screwing with you for years. We’ve been talking at you when we should have been asking you questions. We’ve been attempting to dazzle you with our catchy tunes, rather than just simply delivering you value. We’ve been disrupting you when we should have been engaging you. We’ve been buying the worlds largest billboards because we can. (And acting like that’s a good thing.)
forget thinking big. think Simple, Smart, and Social.
It’s time to think small. It’s time to stop creating advertisements and start creating useful things that advertise. It just takes one tiny shift in your thinking: Design is everything.
Your customer journies, your service maps, your engagement platforms, even your shelf talkers - they’re all design. And the more you think of them that way: “I’m designing something—a thing—for my customer.” Suddenly everything shifts. You’re not making something throw away - you’re concieving a piece of your product strategy.
try it right now.
If your brand, product, service is in need of community love and affection, consider the following:
What can your brand do to make the lives better of those that you target?
What does your product already have the right to talk about and publish?
What incredible new invention could your service bring to market?
If your b/p/s fully understood and thrived in the digital world that its target does, what would it invent tomorrow? What companies or influencers can it partner with that are already delighting your very target. How can you MESH with them? Align this thinking with your already defined brand vision and voice. You’re already halfway there.
you already have the idea.
Now for the hard part - bringing it to life. Welcome to my world.
It’s funny, designing something simple and useful is harder than you’d think. And measuring how social and successful it is? Even harder. These pages are dedicated to those that quietly execute Smart rather than Loud. And all that embrace Value over Intrusiveness.
♥,
TOM