1) A welcome shift for me has been more brands willing to invest in, and take the leap into, long-form digital storytelling. It seems like yesterday there were cries of the fractured attention economy and the need to go “short, short, short.” Telling an emotional story in six seconds was the challenge. The industry answered with a resounding “yes,” producing bite-sized content in droves and forcing inventive, creative thinking to tell an emotional story in such an abridged fashion. And this is likely to continue. But now the conversation has done a 180 as brands flex their storytelling muscle without the constraints of time. And now, free of these constraints and in this attention-deficient world, it’s about getting and holding the consumer’s attention. This is the true ambition of any good storyteller and a very welcome shift. Get it right, and length is almost irrelevant. Get it wrong, and you might have been better off sticking to six seconds.
2) I’m seeing two things that, in my opinion, must remain steadfast for real success going forward. Firstly, we must never lose sight of our connection with our everyday coworkers inside the company. It’s so important to lead with empathy than with an iron fist. Secondly, we must never lose sight of perhaps the most important connection of all – the consumer. Ensuring you give a shit about what they give a shit about, as opposed to doing what we think is right for the moment. At VaynerMedia, we do this by starting close to the consumer and working our way up, rather than pushing an idea for a brand from the top down. We make lots of small, creative bets on social media, and once we see heat around an area, we increase the bet and go from there. The goal: to go from a simple tweet to a full-blown Super Bowl ad.
It’s about working together to create amazing things for our clients. Let’s do it with more smiles than jabs and make sure our true audience is Timmy in South Dakota, not just advertising people in a dark room in the South of France. Everybody wins, but mostly Timmy.
3) Great work that works for our clients makes me proud. If that work also starts a conversation that changes the world? Well, that makes me even prouder. The work we’re doing with Budweiser and the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), in my opinion, is starting to hit that mark. The Women’s World Cup had everyone clamoring to capitalize on the U.S. team’s success. But Budweiser and VaynerMedia wanted to make a difference and elevate the women’s game in the long term. The day of the final, Budweiser announced it was becoming the first official beer sponsor of the NWSL, simultaneously launching a film and a full-page ad in the NYT encouraging fans to keep supporting the women’s game. But it didn’t stop there. When the NWSL Championship arrived, the Budweiser team shifted its focus to recruiting other brands as sponsors. Its social posts and print ads featured Megan Rapinoe posing with generic versions of products, all branded with “Future Official Sponsor” labels. These ads, paired with a sixty-second TVC, directed people to TheFutureOfficialSponsor.com, where fans could pledge support for future sponsors to attract their favorite brands’ attention. To date, the campaign has led to unprecedented support from new corporate sponsors.
6) This is a very subjective business. But if we are going to evolve, we have to be open to new and diverse ideas like never before. So my New Year’s resolution is to fully realize that my opinion on work, while tested through the years and garnered with industry accolades, is just that–my opinion. Going forward, this means being truly open-minded on what is considered “good,” leading with that rather than ego. Not always having to be the one with the answer, but promoting a workspace that’s conducive and judgement-free to get to the right answer, where everyone from the bottom up is comfortable sharing ideas without fear of getting shot down. The same applies to working with clients – creating a collaborative culture of “make and share” together versus the traditional “present and pray.” Of course, there will come a time to make a subjective call. But I hope I have the humility to share that I am, in fact, making a subjective call. I might be right, I might be wrong, but one thing is certain: we gave creativity a pretty long leash to truly flourish. It is only then that we will truly uncover real new ground. It will be a process, it will be a difficult muscle not to flex, but that delicious unknown is where our future strength may lie.
