Creativity
gets itself cemented into a belief that the wackier, more tech-engineered and
more animated the idea, the more authentic and opportune the venture that it
generates.
As
I have written in this blog already this year, television ad spots are a great
case in point.
Millennials have
now taken over the day-to-day workforce of the ad agencies. Ad agencies have now become addicted to
“off-the-wall” ad formats. These naive newbies perceive scripting the TV ads as scripting a mini-video series.
I
purposely did not post a blog right after the Super Bowl. I avoided voicing then, as many others
did via the mass media, the ads that ran were horrific.
Since
then, like a virus, the ad agencies have generated follow-ups that appear in a
pre-packaged format that continues the next chapter of the initial ads.
I
am an advocate of brand consistency.
I abhor the continuation of idiocy.
Several
great cases in point.
I
am sure that the production teams producing the insurance ads for brands like
Geico, Progressive and Farmers tell their friends about how they are cooking up
the next star character episodes.
I would a $100 down on the table that the same productions teams could
not describe the insurance products sold by each client.
The
revolving new venture capital Dot-Com start-ups are running ads where there is
limited conveyance of what the heck the website or app even does. The site hit rate might increase the
10-15 minutes after the ads run, but I would hate to see those digital
financial returns.
And
the Chevy ads featuring the past focus group moderator that now freely and
directly biases and sways the opinion voiced of the ignorant representatives of
middle America is not that much more of a media-investment redline as the
Toyota ads that at least paint a slightly better IQ level of its ad
participants.
Okay,
enough about the ad agencies.
There’s
a great story buried in today’s Wall Street Journal about Amazon… and the
article never mentions New York!
Instead,
it talks about how Amazon is exploring the dis-assembly of health insurance and
how to re-engineer health insurance to more efficiently operate.
Taking
conventional products like health insurance and reconfiguring the models might…
just might… lead to a totally new product model. Is the process an easy one? No. It causes a
lot of discomfort and sleepless nights.
And that is GOOD.
Amazon
also announced that they are launching a new grocery store chain with the first
stores opening up in evolving neighborhoods in LA, Austin, Washington and
Seattle.
Are
they opening up in the urban, historic-Millennial past-trendy
neighborhoods?
No. They are opening up where the
Millennial families are moving to and purchasing their first homes.
I
was in both Kroger and Publix stores over this past weekend and felt that I had
landed in a brand environment that was scraping to survive.
While a majority of the new, online
order prime parking spots were empty, staff inside the stores where pushing
large warehouse carts up and down the aisles to grab items to fill bags for
those who ordered their weekly grocery supply online.
Can’t
wait to see the new Amazon grocery stores. My bet is that there will be a very clear, defined point of
difference from the retail store-warehouse hodge-podge into which the soon
post-mortem brands evolve.
Apple
announced an internal team shake-down.
AT&T is re-engineering Warner Bros. and Turner Entertainment and
past top leadership has been replaced.
And
it’s not just the Millennials driving the re-thinking. Boomers are the historic drivers and
believe it or not, they are still around!
It was never my intent to go after the
funeral homes, but EXPERIENCE has worked with a set of them from the east coast
to the Pacific west.
In this
morning’s WSJ, there’s a story titled, “The Freeform Funeral” that features an
immediate family on a beach that just honored a passing member of the family. The Boomers just might re-define funerals as technology did in redefining travel agencies.
We
have become re-entrenched in healthcare with a great project work in tandem
with a very hip global architectural firm. Last week I spent three hours with the healthcare leadership
team in getting-to-know the changing neighborhoods around a new hospital
acquisition.
Many
were surprised to learn that the neighborhoods that they assumed to be
comprised of a certain type of end-consumer had changed… and future change is
churning fast.
Were
the ideas generated concentrated all around the digital world of the
Internet?
Absolutely not. In fact, the ideas included pets,
coaches, yoga studios and even a nutritional work-from-home café.
Whether
its modular housing or new ways to manage health or designing a grocery store
for 2030, the catalyst in innovation is driven by the consumer / end-user
need.
Not by what’s cute or funny
or high tech or social or engineered.
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