Reaching the underrepresented affinity groups in your community and audience

Almost all communities have different audiences and affinity groups, such as women, LGBTQ+, people of colour, and more. I have written about this before about using design to fix a structural issue impacting civil society. Forbes invited me to contribute to an expert panel on how marketing leaders can reach these affinity groups.

Forbes just published my contribution as part of this panel: 12 Methods Marketing Leaders Can Use To Reach Underrepresented Groups.

There is excellent content in this expert panel written by fellow industry leaders. If you want to ensure you can reach the underrepresented groups in your community, be sure to read this expert panel.

Day five: Cannes Lions 2022

Day five at Cannes Lions was the best day of the week.

I listened to Anne Krogh, the CMO of Ikea in Denmark, talk about how IKEA puts customers at the heart of its circularity strategy and how they approached the need to assemble a global circularity movement.

Think long-term. Rather than having old unwanted IKEA furniture go to the rubbish dump, IKEA bought back 155,000 items of furniture and repaired items where needed. They then offered second-hand items for sale, enabling customers to get what they wanted for less, avoiding the premature costs of destruction and the cost of needlessly producing new furniture.

You can multiply your efforts by the number of customers who engage by taking action. IKEA has more than one billion customers each year globally, giving them the opportunity for considerable change. In saying this, they acknowledge that as consumers, we want transparency - but we also want items tailored, delivered, and available 24 hours a day. There is massive complexity, and you must be flexible - and one of the solutions may be a new business model.

My favorite quote from this session was, "Creativity is the answer to every question. Creativity is formula resistant". Adam Kerj, Chief Creative Officer, Accenture Song.

I then moved into two sessions on short-form social video with a special session with TikTok and how to build audiences. The team from TikTok and LADBible showcased the different expectations of video content between YouTube, YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram. One of the big takeaways from this session was that "content created for TikTok works well in other places, but not the other way around".

My final session of the day and the week in Cannes was with one of my professional heroes Harjot Singh, Global Chief Strategy Officer of McCann. Harjot was, as usual, direct and personable. He walked through the simplicity of communicating for change, whether in advertising, marketing, or general communications.

We spoke through what it takes to produce the best work and the three simple elements it always contains. @Harjot, I think you would own Audacious as a first name. I will write a separate post on this session, and how it served to reinspire me in the work I need to do.

Side note: I included the image above, not perfect as it is, because the name of the cross-funciton Marketing and Communications Services function that I lead at ION, is Impact!

Impact was a word that was used repeatedly by many different speakers throughout the entire week at Cannes Lions - and it’s why I chose this name.

The effort we take and the work we produce must have an eduring impact. I am proud to lead Impact@ION.

My first Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity was an incredible experience full of different perspectives and the most brilliant people and their work. I was able to attend working sessionse with two of my professional hereos (Cindy Gallop and Harjot Singh), as well as being invited to two Global CMO Growth Council Sessions to discuss important issues facing our industry. To continue to take advantage of this event and to deepen my knowledge and deliver audacious and powerful results from my work I have subscribed to Cannes Lions Digital. I am already looking forward to Cannes Lions 2023.

Day four: Cannes Lions 2022

Thursday was a pivotal day at Cannes Lions for me. I was invited to participate in the Global CMO Growth Council sessions with industry leaders from the Marketing, Advertising and Creative industries. I attended both the 'Brand, Creativity and Media' and Talent working groups.

I was humbled to be in the room with the leaders of our industry. As a group of 24 leaders, we discussed the actions the CMO Growth Council are taking to resolve real problems facing our industry. We reviewed the steps taken to date and where there are still improvements we can make. This initiative has been four years in the making already, and I believe it will offer sustainable solutions for our industries.

Before those sessions, I was fortunate to hear David Droga from Accenture Song. David is the most-awarded creative at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, and he's Australian!

David spoke about the importance of creative leadership and that it's essential not to be constrained by the rigour or process of your industry. You can't create new solutions or new art if you limit yourself in this way. Everything we do has to have an impact, and we should include all the 'thinkers, tinkers, makers, and shakers' and allow them to showcase their ideas across a bigger canvas.

He also said that we should embrace the things we're scared of, which for creatives are often things like technology and data. If we embrace these things and seek insight, we can solve problems we've never solved before.

“The only thing worse than not having a great idea is having one and not making it happen”

— David Droga, Lumiere Theatre, Cannes Lions 2022

I then attended a session on the 'Do'conomy. The founder, Mathias Wikstrom, opened with a statistic for context.

“Every year, 23 billion pairs of shoes are made. Our innovation has accelerated human consumption.”

— Mathias Wikstrom, The Forum, Cannes Lions 2022

Mathias, based on data from 5,000 brands and a billion transactions in 32 markets, argued about the need for sustainability and what brand owners can do to future-proof their brands.

“Impact is the new language”

— Mathias Wikstrom, The Forum, Cannes Lions 2022

One of the six big changes he proposed is to have carbon labels on products. In an example of the purchase of a pair of jeans (8.98 kpCO2e and 21.45 kgCO2e) consumer behaviour changed. 32% of eco-consious consumers reduced their footprint and 12% of non-eco conscious consumers did the same. This change was achieved through labelling. Mathias also showed that consumers are willing to pay up to 10% more for products from companies that provide greater supply transparency and data around environmental and social governance.

Removing environmental waste and friction is an improvement. As creatives, as designers, as decision makers we should work to be change-makers rather than change-takers.

Day three: Cannes Lions 2022

With day three now complete, I am over the halfway mark of my time in Cannes for the International Festival of Creativity. This morning the day kicked off with a sell-out session on story-telling with Ryan Reynolds.

Next generation storytelling

Ryan talked about his approach to story-telling and social media and the need to move fast to keep up with the speed of what people are talking about and culture. Ryan spoke about his approach to storytelling and not harm. We are all, like it or not, social media companies. We have an image of ourselves and an image that we project to the world. He said that advertising should be fun and lighten people's load, not add to it. Finally, Ryan mentioned how diversity and inclusion make the stories we tell better. The day three kick-off was the most popular session I've seen this week and was full of great ideas around storytelling.

The first secret speaker session of today was Lisa Merrick-Lawless from Purpose Disruptors, who spoke about our approach to the climate crisis as a "crisis of imagination". Lisa said that we are thinking small and tinkering around the edges, and this tied in with the second secret speaker session with Txai Surui, who points out that "it's not just climate change, it's the everything change". How can we change our approach to global heating and the climate crisis to drive successful change for all of us? This remains an important problem to be solved for the future of the planet.

Marketing experimentation as a superpower

Romain Mallard, a Senior Marketing leader from Coca-Cola, spoke about it being time for a quantum leap in testing and learning at scale. With marketing being a critical driver of organisational growth, we need to be nimble in our approach to marketing and campaign execution.

Romain spoke through the process Coca-Cola took with Bain & Co to change beliefs and internal culture and drive growth using marketing experimentation. Key challenges in implementing this change included the need for it to be at the core of the business strategy, not as a bolt-on or 'skunk-works' programme. They also faced cultural differences in how different cultures affected how some national teams reacted to outcomes that could be perceived as a failure, with many not wanting to report on these tests. Romain pointed out that if you only test safe bets, you're only confirming what you already know, which has minimal value to the business and positive change.

Finally, he argued that you could not teach change. Instead, it would help if you gave people the tools they need to support and deliver the change. Narrow down the field and then let the players on the field execute. Please don't give them change: provide them with a tool. This session was positive, with lots of ideas to test and measure in our approaches to our work.

Emotional intelligence at the heart of brand growth

My highlight session of day three was the 'Emotional intelligence at the heart of brand growth'. This was also the first holocast session of the day, with bestselling author Daniel Goleman Ph. D. joining on stage from New York as a hologram. This session was my first experience of a holocast and hologram in person, and it was faultless.

Make it stand out

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

The presenters discussed the importance of emotional intelligence to businesses and brands. In their 2022 update to their first Brand EQ report in the weeks leading up to the Covid pandemic in 2020, they have shown that emotionally intelligent brands grow more quickly.

"Previously, we calculated the gain in value to be +682% from 2010 to 2020, and extending this to late 2021 increased the gain to +910%, boosted by stellar performances by brands like Google, Netflix and McDonalds. Our original observation has actually been amplified between the two waves."

These measures are linked directly to growth, and the emotional intelligence people attach to a brand. The team also outline in their report that Brand EQ is most strongly related to young people. The young, who is an audience that is often targetted, tend to be early adopters and advocates for the brands and essential businesses of tomorrow. This power goes beyond their current spending power and will continue to strengthen and deepen the brand relationship over time. This was a great session from the team at Craft, and both their 2020 and 2022 brand EQ reports are available online.

While I was comfortable with a speaker appearing virtually, and I think I'd have been fine if all of the presenters were present via holocast, it does raise the question if more of the event could be digital and online?

Highlight of the day

One of the highlights today was a reinforcement of the Nike presenters on day one. A presenter from Craft echoed back to the audience the power of Nike obsessively listening to one audience - athletes. There is such power in this focus that it resonated with others and was presented back in a separate session. Day three was another brilliant day full of knowledge, opportunity and insight. I am well over halfway already and know that days four and five will pass very quickly.

Day two: Cannes Lions 2022

Day two at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity was the busiest plan of my week, with eight sessions across talent, change, ESG, and user experience.

LinkedIn and the fight for great talent

Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn CEO, walked us through changes impacting the fight for great talent with a focus on the advertising industry. Based on LinkedIn's social graph knowledge from 830 million members and 57 million companies. Ryan said that Gen Z moves more frequently than other generations, followed by Millenials, Gen X, and Boomers. He also showed the change in roles within the Advertising industry now requiring tech skills, a 25% increase, and tech skills are becoming table stakes as part of the global arms race for tech talent.

He spoke about storytelling and the invention of the term horsepower by Scottish Engineer James Watt.

"Using a complicated mathematical equation, Watt deduced that a mill horse could push 32,572 pounds one foot in a minute, which he rounded to an even 33,000 pounds. 33,000 pounds pushed one foot in a minute. The power of one horse. One horsepower!" (The Chronicle of the Horse, https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/james-watt-and-revolution-horsepower)

Watt found a way to translate scientific measurements into a unit of measure that people could relate to - that of horsepower. Horsepower was a promise of what the steam engine could do. Ryan reinforced that we are in a promise-making business and must make promises, but promises we deliver. Apple did this with the 1,000 songs in your pocket slogan introduced by Steve Jobs 21 years ago in 2001.

Brand activism - Your power as marketers to make big change

A recent study of the top 50 brands approximated that they have 72 billion opportunities to influence consumers through the sales process for their products. This means that marketers have the opportunity to have a professional purpose with the chance of having a planetary impact.

In Diageo, at Guinness, they have adopted a three-pronged approach to sustainability around reinvention, restoration, and reduction.

• What can you do to reinvent how you operate?

• What can you do to restore the ecosystems in which you operate?

• What can you do to reduce the destructive impact across the supply chain?

How can we make a change to the way that we think and the decisions we make to fundamentally change how we approach and value the impact our actions have on the environment.

Leveraging machine learning and augmented reality for experiential digital commerce

Jeremi Gorman, Chief Business Officer at Snap Inc, showcased some of the most important features available in Snap that leverage machine learning and augmented reality for experiential digital commerce. Every day more than 250 million people engage with augmented reality in Snap. Snap view themselves as a camera company and they have used technology to extend the user experience. She said that 250 million people have already tried on 5 billion products digitally.

Robert Triefus from Gucci spoke about Gucci's deep belief in digital and he encourage everyone to lean into digital hard. Gucci have used digital to expand their community and to bring new kinds of experiences to their customers. Technology also enables Gucci to give their customers a unique experience across different channels, empowering their community to express creativity, and to provide insights to the business.

A camera is a catalyst to personal creation centering the world around the user authentically. This makes cameras and digital experience a part of the future of personal storytelling with the user an active participant in creating the future.

Break the standard leading business creation with unique experience

The design team from Minna Bank in Japan spoke about how they worked to change from business leading experience to experience leading business.

Taehan Yoo, Design Director, spoke about how many times we copy and paste a design, experience, or idea for safety. But once we have copied and pasted and made our expeirence the same as others the consumer then wants the cheapest experience and this takes us to a place we don't want to be.

At Minna, which means everyone in Japanese, they're focussed on delivering a new approach to digital banking, primarily for digital natives in the Generations Z, Y, and Millenials. Minna's users are 70% from these generations, vs traditional banks whose users are 70% from older generations. [There is a video showcasing Minna bank here](https://youtu.be/irKyj-EpTzQ).

The team of designers were very passionate about their approach to understanding their customers and delivering a frictionless experience. Many of the things they spoke about the experience of banking I could relate to from my own experiences with [N26 in Germany](https://youtu.be/IWwrfkkM4iI), and [Starling Bank](https://youtu.be/E7F7s7AOFNk) in the UK who both deliver a similar frictionless digital experience.

The most interesting thing I learned today was from Snap. When Snap added the weather feature to Snap to add the current weather in as the background to a photo people engage with it and activated the feature millions of times, but didn't save the photo. Snap discovered that people were using their camera as their weather app, and were inserting the weather to get the metrics. So Snap expanded the tool to include a multi-day forecast.

A full day with a lot of ideas around using creativity for growth, and for change.

#CannesLions2022 #IONatCannes

Day one: Cannes Lions 2022

My first day at Cannes Lions was action-packed, starting with Gary Kasparov and the Regain Ukraine brand using the power of creativity to support Ukraine in the war with Russia.

The next session was with award-winning CMOs from AB InBev and Microsoft. Marcel Marcondes, AB InBev Global CMO, spoke about building great brands and that 'without trust, there is no greatness'. Trust takes time to develop, and I believe that it must be a goal that is a foundation for what you do. Kathleen Hall from Microsoft, who won the Cannes Lions Creative Marketer of the Year in 2021, spoke about the creative work Microsoft has done on inclusion in Gaming with new devices and controllers for differently-abled people. It was inspiring to see people transform when they could play like their friends using these devices for gaming and learning.

I then worked in a group led by Cindy Gallop on rebuilding the Agency model. I admire Cindy as an intelligent and thoughtful leader who, in her own words, 'likes to blow shit up. Cindy broke us out into six teams to build our agency based on new rules without reference to out-of-date models. This session was with talented specialists making a case for what is needed to achieve these goals. There are lessons I will take back with me to use with my teams.

We were then introduced to four creative industry members from Ukraine whose worlds have been turned upside down since February 24, when Russia invaded Ukraine—hearing the stories of people who lived exactly as we do in a modern European nation now suffering a war in Europe and their experience of 'creativity under bombs'. We were fortunate to be surprised with a special guest, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine. Zelenskyy spoke about how this group of Marketing and Communications leadership could help Ukraine win the war by using branding as a tool and a weapon. Brave Ukraine is a brand to build, retain, and expand awareness of the atrocities being done daily in Europe.

The creative, brand, and marketing leadership of Nike then showcased three different approaches to working with your users to produce great results. The team from Nike spoke about how every one of us is an athlete. They did not talk about users or customers but athletes. The focus on the athlete is a vital part of the vision about who they serve and what they do for athletes. I learned about the goal of achieving the first sub-two-hour marathon and focusing on making products that deliver for athletes. Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya covered 26.2 miles in 2 hours 25 seconds - just 26 seconds short of the goal. The team then showcased the value of crazy dreams and checking if your goal isn't yet crazy enough to deliver the change you want. I have an action item to review my own goals. Finally, the team showcased the difference that can be achieved to normalise through cultural awareness and the introduction of clothing, and equipment to solve bespoke needs for groups such as pregnant women, Muslim women, and other athletes and the impact this can have on civil society.

Today I managed to make it to one of the secret speaker sessions. The speaker was AY Young, and I was introduced to him with a fist bump. AY sang, danced, spoke, and inspired a room full of creatives, communication, and marketing specialists through his work as a Young Ambassador Envoy for the United Nations and the 17 Development goals. It’s not easy to have a room full of grown adults singing, ‘we can change the world’. AY is an inspiring young performer focused on improving the world by delivering the 17 Development Goals of the United Nations. Do you know what? We can change the world, and we are the only people who will do it.

We organised the day's sessions with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. Founded initially to monitor and rebalance gender and gender roles in the media, their research now examines the intersectional onscreen representation of six identities: gender, race, LGBTQIA+, disability, age 50+, and body type. In many areas, there has been significant improvement in the representation of these identities in essential roles, including speaking and being in leadership positions. I will take away ideas from this as a framework to better present all of us.

This was a huge day with a massive amount of discussion, learning, and reflection on the power of creativity to change the world. As a creative leader, I believe we can change the world.

#CannesLions2022 #IONatCannes

Delivering service quality at scale

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

One of the challenges we all face is scarce resources. Not having enough time, tools, money, or team members to deliver can be an everyday experience. This scarcity can be overwhelming to those involved in situations where demand exceeds the available supply of a product or service. But could it be that we are looking at our problem in the wrong way?

In a recent post by Seth Godin - Mouth to mouth resuscitation, he points out the value of this lifesaving intervention. But it does not scale. You cannot perform Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) on more than one person at a time. Yes, you could scale it by training more people, but it is still a service delivered singularly, one at a time.

"It might be the best way to save someone in distress. But it doesn’t scale. You can only offer this sort of lifesaving intervention to one person at a time." — Seth Godin

This analogy has a direct relation to the concept of communications, design, and creative work. As we produce art that's on-brand and relevant to the world we are experiencing, how do you deliver bespoke art at scale?

So far in my career, I've built, managed, and lead the introduction of multiple platforms and technologies. These platforms have supported marketing, content, brand, design, video, and training. In speaking with my team leaders over the last few weeks, I've asked them to to to consider how they could deliver double the amount of work they produce now using tools, technology, and automation?

Seth's post has prompted me to think about this from the root cause. To continue his analogy, if we deliver CPR and do it well, we cannot scale CPR. But is CPR what is required? How else can we provide services around brand and design, content, media, events, video, animation, and web?

This awareness causes me to rethink how else we could solve the problem and produce the same quality results? The service must still restore and maintain the health of the patient.

What service can we deliver of the same quality or better - using technology and automation? One of the questions I'll also be taking a deeper look at is how we could use training to enable the user to self-serve and deflect the need for the service entirely?

Create. Share. Activate. Empower - The Adobe 2020 Creative Residency and Community Fund

It’s May, so it must be time to meet the new Creative Residents for the 2020 Adobe Creative Residency programme. This year, Adobe has welcomed two new residents, Christina Poku, a London, UK based photographer.

She’s using photography, GIFs and set design to make staged scenes that explore how technology can create growth, build community and change barriers to access.

The second creative resident for 2020 is Maddy Beard, a UI/UX interaction design based in Denver, Colorado.

Maddy is exploring the use of interaction design to promote mindfulness in daily life. She’s partnering with brands to design experiences that help people use tech as a tool rather than a crutch.

Both of these designers have some impressive work in their portfolio (Christina and Maddy). Combining this with their goals to build community, reducing barriers to access, and to use technology experience as a tool suggests there will be some exciting work from our Creative Residents for 2020.

In addition to the standard program, Adobe has created a new $1 million Community Fund to support creative communities.

This year, in response to the extensive need in the creative community for monetary support and career guidance, we’ve decided to expand the programme. In addition to the new Creative Residents this year, we’re excited to announce a $1 million Creative Residency Community Fund.

Adobe will be using the Community Fund to fund creative projects and to commission work for Adobe projects. You can make an application to the Community Fund online.

I think it is great that Adobe is doing something new to support members of the creative and design industry during these unprecedented times. You can check out the 2019 Creative Residents here.

$300,000 of prizes for visionary mobile design

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]If you're a creative designer, you may like to submit your work to the Huawei Theme Design Awards 2020 Huawei Theme Design Awards 2020.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

To push the boundaries of design, we are gathering artistic talent from all over the world.

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]The competition is aiming to celebrate visionary art by creating designs that explore the aesthetics of designing for mobile devices.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]There are four categories that you can enter: themes, watch faces, wallpapers, and cities. You can submit one entry per category. With $300,000 in prizes. One grand prize, 6 prizes in each category, and 98 special prizes.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]The deadline to submit your entry is 31 May for the Cities category, and 01 July for the three other categories.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Featured image by Hal Gatewood on unsplash.com[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Bar Chart Race: How to Make Your Bar Charts Stand Out from the Crowd

I was at the WPEngine Summit 2019 technology event in London last week and the keynote presenter was Jeremy White, Executive Editor of Wired UK. In his presentation, Jemery showed a bar chart race of brand value over time of the biggest brands in the world by value.

I've seen this chart, based on data from Interbrand, multiple times. It shows the market value of the world's biggest brands over time and displays the year in the bottom right corner. In this chart, you can watch the arrival of Google (2007) and then Apple (2011) and their movement through the list of brands.

Best Global Brands

Value in $M; color indicates sector. Data: Interbrand

What I discovered, quite by chance, is the required code and instructions on how to create your own bar chart race with your data. Mike Bostock on Observable details the structure and method to create your own version. I think that Mike has done an incredible job of making understandable the complexity that is behind the simplicity of what we see presented.

Photo by Isaac Smith on Unsplash