John Winsor

When Fake Campaigns Bring Real Results

Back in May 2013 ,Victors & Spoils got a call from Bolthouse Farms asking if we’d be willing to work with them and Michael Moss, the author of “Salt, Sugar, Fat,” to create a “fake” campaign to promote and reposition the lowly vegetable, broccoli. The question was intriguing: If you used the same tactics and skills used to promote the biggest and most powerful food brands, could we move the needle on broccoli sales? If it worked, it might be a blueprint for how produce marketers can turn healthy foods into fun foods and in the process fight the U.S. obesity epidemic.

We applied the Victors & Spoils open philosophy and got over 100 people — from food experts and farmers to chefs and school lunch experts and of course a few marketing experts — involved in the strategic and creative process.

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5 reasons why brands are cutting out agencies

Agencies lean on their status as “valued partners” of clients, but the reality is that your brand might not need an agency anymore.

There’s already a shift taking place. A recent Association of National Advertisers study which found 60 percent of Fortune 500 brands are thinking about replacing agency work with in-house capabilities. Building an in-house agency might be a large task, today, as many agencies cling to their old business models a whole new crop of alternatives are there to help brands both strategically and creatively.

Here are five reasons to rethink whether you need an agency:

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Is Innovation Dead?

A few weeks ago Sony, Sharp and Panasonic announced http://www.hdtvexpert.com/?p=2486  their earnings. Will one of them become the next Kodak. 

All of these companies have been seen as very innovative at one point in their histories. But, like most companies innovation happened at the fringes. Whether it was bringing in a new leader, making an acquisition or launching a new, paradigm shifting, product innovation has come to usually mean swat teams working at the edges. 

While Kodak created digital photography it was siloed on the edge so that it didn’t disrupt the core, moneymaking divisions of the company. Likewise, those divisions weren’t focused on or compensated for innovating but instead on running their businesses as efficiently as possible.

It happens in every industry. Look at book publishing. Originally, book publishers were all about nurturing authors and building a relationship with readers. It was an intuitive process run by editors that had a “feel” for the business. Certainly, there are a few great editors left but as the business grew it was much more important to focus on the production and distribution of books than it was on developing authors. It seemed to make sense because that’s where all the costs were and a small savings could be leveraged into larger profits right up until the moment that putting ink on paper and books on shelves became suddenly irrelevant.

It’s not unusual. Every business goes through the same cycle. It becomes conservative when it has something to conserve.

And, it’s only natural that innovation gets pushed to the sides of the companies. 

The bolt on approach to innovation might have worked in the past yet with the speed of change brought about by technology and the radical transparency of social media nurturing innovation as the rest of the company does “the real work” is a model that’s threatened.

Maybe it’s time to give up on innovation and focus on transformation. From the bottom-up. From the core of the company out. Maybe it’s about transforming the most profitable parts of the business first instead of last.

If you not willing to disrupt yourself first by focusing on transformation then there are a lot of folks out there that would be happy to do it for you.

Suddenly, The Kodak Moment takes on a new meaning.

 

Collaboration is the Key to Innovation

I continue to be surprised by the lack of ad industry innovation. Maybe it’s because of history, when Mad Men ruled our world and the media landscape was pretty simple, create some nice print with a little TV thrown in. Or, it’s because of the way we’re compensated, not only as individuals but from our clients, as well. The current model is broken and is threatened to go the way of the Dodo bird, like manyother industries before us.

Collaboration is key. Not just with clients but with other agencies, as well.

A few weeks ago I got a call from a friend, Frank Striefler, the Chief Strategy Officer at DW+H with an intriguing idea. He asked if we could help rebrand their agency.

It was intriguing to us. Frank and I have talked for years about the idea thatcollaboration is the new competitive advantage. As Frank told me, “We believe an idea can come from anywhere so lets open the agency rebranding exercise not only to all DW+H employees but to the entire world with V&S. We subscribe to the premise of the crowd being smarter than the smartest person in the room.”

I truly believe that creating a world where collaboration gets us further than conventional competitive thinking as a philosophy is the future. In an effort to make our industry abetter place for clients and agencies we must learn to collaborate.

This project with DW+H is a good signal that the future is bright. We’d love for you to jump in and participate. 

We look forward to collaborating with Lucas Donat, Amir Haque, Frank, the whole DW+H crew and, of course, you.

The Unbearable Lightness of Media

I’m shocked. As an old magazine guy, I guess. After reading David Carr’s latest article, Wondering How Far Magazines Must Fall, I wonder the same thing. The newsstand sales numbers for the first half of 2012 David quoted were simple stunning, The New Yorker off 18%, Time down 31%. And, it’s not just in one category, it’s across the industry. Couple that with the decrease in ad pages and magazines seem to want to float away.

But, is TV that far behind?

 Reading about HuffingtonPost’s launch of Live, seems to point to an acceleration in the democratization of television. When anyone with a web site and a video camera can set up their own narrowcast channel, viewership and ad dollars in broadcast are going to accelerate their current rate of shrinkage.

For the ad industry, fees can’t be far behind. As fees, have begrudgingly become decoupled from media spend and the cost of producing quality content with new production tools and faster broadband, fees and revenues are going to fall.

However, one thing is consistent across all three industries: the inability to innovate for fear of disrupting the current, very profitable, business model. It’s too late for the magazine industry and the window is closing quickly for broadcast. Can the ad industry do any better?

What Happens Now?

As an entrepreneur that’s sold a few companies, I’ve had the experience of what it’s like pre and post transaction three times now. It’s something that entrepreneurs talk about and certainly worry even more about. It’s your baby. You’ve put your blood, sweet and tears into something. You have a team of fellow rebels that have taken a leap of faith, usually starting with lots of passion and a lot to learn and experience.

The conventional rumor is that gaining a new strategic partner can be a bit like Jekyll and Hyde – During the courting phase it’s all wonderful but when the deal’s done things change radically.

A month into our partnership with Havas, I’m more inspired than I ever thought I could be. Everyone I’ve met and worked with have been truly amazing. Not just positive but realistic, transparent, passionate, and accepting. From the beginning of V&S our vision has been to change the way advertising works for the benefit of clients and agency folks alike using collaborative technology. Working with the leadership of David Jones and the Havas team, I’m more confident that our vision will be radically accelerated on a global scale.

Finding a partner like Havas is what every entrepreneur dreams of.

Hello, David

While today it might seem commonplace to think that the 3 C’s, collaboration, co-creation and crowdsourcing play a major role in the future of advertising it was a bit of an outlier idea only a few years ago. Nonetheless, it’s something that’s been fueling my quest my whole career. I’ve always looked for opportunities to create more cultural momentum around the ideas. Changing an industry’s culture around an idea is more of a marathon than a sprint.

When I started my first company Sports and Fitness Publishing back in 1986, I was intrigued with how early adopter consumers, or in the case of our magazines, core athletes, could help influence the marketing and product development of the leading brands in a category. There’s a long history in outdoor sports, like climbing, where the lead users and the top brands worked together to push a sport forward. While it wasn’t called co-creation back then, that’s what it was.

After selling Sports and Fitness Publishing to Conde Nast, I was obsessed with applying co-creation to a wider audience, which became the basis of Radar Communications in 2000, as well as the central theme of my second book, Beyond the Brand: Why Engaging the Right Customers is Essential to Winning in Business.

“In this new era, beyond the brand, it is the creative citizens – the people and the brands – that will survive and thrive by co-creating from the bottom-up.” and  “Brands that can make the transition to provide honest, original, cultural materials will win.”

It was certainly early days for collaboration and co-creation, more of a theory than anything else. While Radar was a great success, the opportunity to work with Alex Bogusky came in 2007 (to put collaboration and co-creation at the center of Crispin, Porter + Bogusky’s brand strategy). The Radar team became the planning department, a bigger stage to influence culture with the ideas of collaboration and co-creation. As Alex and I wrote Baked-In, we started talking about a sub-category of co-creation: crowdsourcing. We put that theory into practice as we crowdsourced for a client. The results were astounding.

After leaving CP+B I wanted to take the exploration into co-creation and crowdsourcing even deeper with the founding of Victors & Spoils. My good friends from Tango, Scott Beck and Chris Marks, believed in and helped fund Claudia, Evan and I as we explored the new world of abundance in digital and social technologies, accelerating the cultural momentum of the 3 C’s.

In the last couple of years, I’ve had the chance to talk with some of the best thinkers about the future of advertising. Along the way I had the good fortune to meet David Jones.  While many in the advertising industry talk the talk about innovation, very few walk the walk. David takes it one step further and runs the run. I was impressed not only by his vision for Havas and One Young World, but also by his bold philosophy outlined in Who Cares Wins. Every conversation we had flowed from a similar world-view that collaboration, co-creation and crowdsourcing are the future of not only advertising, but business itself; and that a deep dedication to becoming a social business can make the world a better place. We both believe that the new competitive advantage is a collaborative advantage.

From those conversations grew a vision to work together to create even more global cultural momentum for collaboration, co-creation and crowdsourcing. I believe that Victors & Spoils and Havas together can change the way advertising is done for both clients and creatives for the better.

Our connection with Havas will give us the ability to accelerate our vision and global reach, enabling us to continue building our community and our digital collaborative tools.

As the Chief Innovation Officer of Havas, I’m honored to be a part of David’s team to help spread this vision even more broadly.

Who Needs An Advertising Agency, Anyway?

 

When we started to work with Harley-Davidson we had this crazy idea. If you could source ideas from advertising professionals around the world using digital management (via Victors & Spoils' digital collaboration system which we call Agency Machine) then why couldn't a brand source ideas from their own most rabid fans?

With all of the attention that is on social media, and the significant investment by brands in fan acquisition, why not put fans to work? By doing so you could figure out a couple of things. First, who your most important fans are. And second, by allowing fans access into the brand in a substantial way, we’d create radical engagement. Fans would no longer be customers but co-creators of the brand.

These questions lead us on a journey to create Fan Machine.

Fan Machine is software that allows a folks who have "liked" a brand on Facebook to submit ideas directly to the brand. By giving fans an easy way to contribute ideas and vote on submissions from other fans, Fan Machine facilitates real co-creation with the brands they love, while giving them a chance at prizes and a seat at the creative table. And brands can wrangle the conversation by posting specific "briefs" for their fans to work on. These briefs might relate to an upcoming advertising campaign, new product or seasonal promotion.

We launched Fan Machine last November with Harley-Davidson as our first client. Harley-Davidson has some great passionate fans that really went to town. 584 people threw down ideas for the first brief and 16,000 people voted, to create campaign ideas for the model year 12 1/2. Harold Chase, from Tukwila, Washington, submitted the idea that became the advertising campaign, “E Pluribus Unum.” The V&S team shaped Harold’s idea then used Twitter to cast fans and followers, all bike owners, for the spot, above.

In a world where ideas can come from anywhere - and amateurs are getting better everyday at creating everything from videos to posters -  what is the role of an agency? While it might seem like there’s not much of a future for them, our experience is that agencies play an even more vital role. With an abundance of ideas, it’s easy for a brand to get crushed by the sheer volume of possibility. Agencies are evolving to focus on three areas, 1. The development of a great brief that gives anyone the ability to deliver good work; 2. The creative and strategic direction of ideas; and 3. Brand stewardship.

Under the leadership of Mark-Hans Richer, Scott Beck, Dino Bernacchi, Mark Peine and the rest of the Harley-Davidson team, we at V&S have the ability to focus our creative energies at the front edge of advertising. Their visionary approach, that great ideas can come from everywhere and can be curated into great work, will be a model for many other brands to follow.

Sitting here at my fourth TED I've been reflecting about how much the world has changed. Crowdsourcing, co-creation and open systems is the main theme at TED this year. There's been a paradigm shift in culture. Consumers now know they're in charge. It means a new openness. A new narrative. One not built by closed systems, they are all quickly collapsing. But one built by the people. By the crowd. 

Any closed system, whether it's an Arab governent, a big brand or an advertising agency, is doomed if it doesn't open up. Yet there is a lot to hold to. While closed systems exert hard power, protecting the status quo, open systems exert soft power. It's like water, slowly ebbing and flowing all the while erroding the hard surfaces around it.

In this flat world openness is accelerating. With it comes more fluidity, more generosity and more opportunities.

And, that's a world I want to be apart of.

 

I've noticed how my own social media use has changed. I'm apart of a dozen or so social networks, everything from Path to Twitter and Facebook to Instagram. And, the latest, Pintrest. That's only a small fraction. We live in a networked world and in this social media 1.0 phase it's been all about the network. 2011, will be remembered as the year that social media really mattered. From the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street and a rash of corporations learning the hard lessons of the power of the network. 

But it was all about the network. I believe that 2012 will be the me-ification of social media where the focus will move from the network to the individual helping people manage and share massive amounts of information in a very intimate, socially focusd way. A couple of great examples are Strava, the cycling and exercise site that let's you share massive amounts of information from your rides to your friends and coach. 

 

And, Vail's Epic Mix that helps you measure your vertical, compare with your friends, find your family and even check the traffic.

 

EpicMix was born on a chairlift ride at Vail with Alex Bogusky, Winston Binch and myself. It was a solve for a small group of us and while it's driving Vail's customer strategy, it started small. It was all about the collective me.

Expect that more micro-networks that are all about the collective me to arise this year. At the end of the day it's a natural progression.

 

The Flattening of TED

Sitting here at my fourth TED I've been reflecting about how much the world has changed. Crowdsourcing, co-creation and open systems is the main theme at TED this year. There's been a paradigm shift in culture. Consumers now know they're in charge. It means a new openness. A new narrative. One not built by closed systems, they are all quickly collapsing. But one built by the people. By the crowd. 

Any closed system, whether it's an Arab governent, a big brand or an advertising agency, is doomed if it doesn't open up. Yet there is a lot to hold to. While closed systems exert hard power, protecting the status quo, open systems exert soft power. It's like water, slowly ebbing and flowing all the while erroding the hard surfaces around it.

In this flat world openness is accelerating. With it comes more fluidity, more generosity and more opportunities.

And, that's a world I want to be apart of.

 

The Me-ification of Social Media

I've noticed how my own social media use has changed. I'm apart of a dozen or so social networks, everything from Path to Twitter and Facebook to Instagram. And, the latest, Pintrest. That's only a small fraction. We live in a networked world and in this social media 1.0 phase it's been all about the network. 2011, will be remembered as the year that social media really mattered. From the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street and a rash of corporations learning the hard lessons of the power of the network. 

But it was all about the network. I believe that 2012 will be the me-ification of social media where the focus will move from the network to the individual helping people manage and share massive amounts of information in a very intimate, socially focusd way. A couple of great examples are Strava, the cycling and exercise site that let's you share massive amounts of information from your rides to your friends and coach. 

 

And, Vail's Epic Mix that helps you measure your vertical, compare with your friends, find your family and even check the traffic.

 

EpicMix was born on a chairlift ride at Vail with Alex Bogusky, Winston Binch and myself. It was a solve for a small group of us and while it's driving Vail's customer strategy, it started small. It was all about the collective me.

Expect that more micro-networks that are all about the collective me to arise this year. At the end of the day it's a natural progression.