After co-presenting with CCO Peter Nicholson last week, social creative director Bridget Jewell has a few key thoughts to share.
Taking a break from the day-to-day to step back and talk with colleagues from agencies and brands across the nation at Mobilenomics last week was really a treat. Peter and I shared everything there is to know about Beardsketball, the robotic James Harden hoop we created for our client Trolli and the mobile and social extensions for the program along with its great success. It was a blast. While I have pages of notes and ideas that I could share with you all, I wanted to provide a list of key learnings from the conference that you can use to start taking action in your role today.
- Stop thinking about mobile as a form factor. We should be thinking about mobile as a mindset as we work to create strategic and creative ideas for our brands and clients. This is especially important as mobile continues to evolve and voice becomes more and more prevalent.
- We need to be “storysparking” not storytelling. While it is important to build content for a mobile device and mindset, that content also needs a purpose — to spark engagement with the audience rather than just pushing messaging.
- It IS possible to innovate on a small budget. These days everyone feels pinched with budget restraints to make every penny count. So how do you drive innovation when it has a high risk, yet is extremely important? Consider partnering with start-ups, have the ability to be nimble and build prototypes and make sure your current always-on budget is efficient enough that you can start squirreling away to test and learn.
- Talent and resources need to shift. As advertising and marketing evolves due to technology advancements and audience behavior, it’s important to revisit the talent that is staffing an account or is hired to work on a brand. We should be looking for talent to fill positions like a linguist for voice and AI technologies and data scientists to help when testing and learning. Looking outside the normal realm of agency hires can help expand our thinking and set us up for success.
- Friction is unacceptable. Long page load times, making a customer type in their address in many different boxes on a mobile device, a long wait between ordering and receiving a product — they’re all unacceptable. You’ll lose customers to companies who are doing it better, quicker, faster. In order to win, you must fight friction not just for your brand, but for your category.
