Paul Yole’s Cannes Diary: Day Two and Three
The Brand Agency’s Paul Yole has written for the Campaign Brief Cannes blog for the last eight years. He’s at it again this year.
There’s a cartoon showing a young girl tucked up in bed. Her father is at her side, with a book in his hand. The little girl says, “Daddy, instead of reading me a story can you share some branded content?”
I fear that the irony of that cartoon may be lost on some of the presenters this week because Cannes loves jargon. So it’s refreshing when somebody shares their approach to modern day marketing using simple language and relevant examples. Kevin Burke, Chief Marketing Officer of Visa Inc, did just that.
Keith told us about the four principles that shape Visa’s approach to storytelling.
1. Have a meaningful purpose.
The story must communicate the brand’s core promise, which in Visa’s case is that wherever you want to be, Visa can help you get there. This promise is encapsulated in Visa’s brand platform “Everywhere you want to be.”
2. Reveal universal human truths.
Communicating with other people is always likely to be more successful if you take the trouble to understand them. The latest World Cup campaign for Visa out of AKQA, The Samba of the World, looks at how people from the countries of the 32 participants celebrate the beautiful game.
3. Be unexpectedly delightful.
You need to earn people’s interest.
4. The idea should be inherently social.
Visa’s campaign for the Sochi Olympics used social data to determine media placement in real time.
Each of the sessions I attended today used the word storytelling. It’s going to be a long week.
Day Three:
At The Brand Agency we’ve been interested for some time in what the agency might look like ten years from now. How do we compete? How do we make revenue? How do we use our skills to add more value and make an impact on our clients’ businesses?
So it was good to hear from Yves Behare, founder of The Fuse Project, about how design is now core to business and how his company is applying its talents in all sorts of new areas and actually creating business ideas.
Hakuhodo talked about their vision for agencies in 2024. Indeed their agency today is already vastly different to what may be considered the norm for Western agency networks. Morihiko Hasebe and Kentaro Kimura described three themes they see emerging.
1 What expertise will be needed?
The future is not something you wait for, it’s something you create. This reminded me of a quote from Leonardo da Vinci, “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
So Hakuhodo is developing ‘market design’ skills that take them outside advertising. They’ve designed a new people’s hospital, Hito, and a business hotel called Remm. Effectively they are using their people skills to move from image branding to tangible branding by combining multiple skills to deliver what they call “Hybrid Expertise”.
2. What organizational structure will we need?
Hahuhodo has encouraged start ups from within their organisation, to create united ventures with their creative people. Initiatives include a new bookstore called B&B (books and beer – seriously) and Data Stadium.
3. What will be our mission?
Hakuhodo believes they will be in the life design business, playing a role that will upgrade people’s lives. So far they have embarked on some amazing projects such as ‘Rice Code‘, its own rice field and the Rice Art project, as well as the creation of an off-grid house that’s entirely energy self sufficient and integrated with the Nissan Leaf electric car.
By applying our creative skills to a much wider range of business problems it’s clear that the agency of the future can generate much-needed new revenue streams.
Hakuhodo seems to be one step ahead already.