What’s the most relevant business and/or creative lesson you learned in 2023 and how will you apply it to 2024?
The lesson I want to take into 2024 is this: while data can inform briefs and prove the work’s efficacy, it can’t replace the magic of that pen to paper moment when something new is created. People still respond on a purely visceral level to great, unexpected creative. That has nothing to do with analytics, and I hope it never does.
While gazing into the crystal ball is a tricky proposition, we nonetheless ask you for any forecast you have relative to content creation and/or the creative and/or business climate for 2024?
Content has been squeezed in an ever-tightening cobra grip for years, as the tools needed to make it—from concept to creation to final delivery—have gotten more accessible and affordable. The expectations are more for less, and I don’t see that trend stopping. But on the bright side, comedy is on the upswing. I’m sure the empirical evidence that funny work is more memorable and effective is helping, but I also like to think we’ve collectively realized there’s plenty to be distressed about in the real world, and advertising doesn’t always have to reflect that. So my prediction is even though ’24 will almost certainly be hard, it’ll also be hilarious.
Does your company have plans for any major diversification and/or expansion/investment in technology and talent in 2024 and if so, what? How will this investment or diversification add value to what you can offer to clients? If instead you have already realized any actual expansion, made such an investment and/or diversified significantly recently and brought on new talent and expertise, share those developments with us along with what they mean to your staff and clients.
We’re building out TMA’s Resonance Connect Platform. It’s a predictive tool that helps identify our audience’s passions, and then we leverage our culture platforms like Gaming, Sports, Music, and Entertainment to find ways to connect with that audience on a deeper level, and deliver Cultural Resonance for our brands. The net of this tech and creative mash-up is that we bring bespoke solutions to our partners tailored to their specific needs, versus a traditional one-size-fits-all approach.
We’re also working on Generative AI Platform integration across the agency by weaving GPT technology into our workflows, to increase efficiency and also the availability of data. And we’re enabling image and video generation tools for our creative and production teams. That’s all geared to help us produce high quality content at a faster rate. I want to repeat the “high quality” part again, because while everyone is using AI now, most of the outputs are pretty banal.
Gender pay disparity, sexual misconduct and the need for diversity & inclusion are issues that have started to be dealt with meaningfully. While the industry has made strides to address these issues, there’s still a long way to go. What policies do you have in place or plan to implement or step up in order to make progress on any or all of these fronts?
Internally, this has been a priority for years at TMA, and in 2023, Enbaling Our People is one our three main strategic priorities. We all need representative, diverse thinkers who reflect the audience working on brands. And we’ve made progress—for instance, our multicultural offering has grown exponentially. But we still have a ways to go, and we are committed to getting there.
Externally, TMA’s DE&I Creative Audit is an objective, automated testing platform that provides extensive creative pre-testing to ensure the audience feels represented in our client work, and that the creative is relatable to their situations and environments.
What was the biggest challenge posed to you by a recent project? Or share insights to a recent project you deem notable. Briefly describe the project, why it was particularly noteworthy or what valuable lesson(s) you learned from it. If the work is complete and you’d like to share a link to it, please include.
Our work for this year’s State Farm NFL campaign had all the usual challenges of a large-scale production with celebrity athletes—managing tight schedules in multiple cities with talent, and navigating unique approval processes that involve the talent. This year, we set out to create meme-worthy language, even though we were fully aware aiming for “cool” usually backfires. We’ve been thrilled to see “Nuggies”, “MAAUTO”, “MVB” and “Not if you bundle ‘em” fast become part of the vernacular, and get fully embraced by the fans. There’s a lot of fun ones, but our favorite by far is fans calling for a “MAHOME to MAAUTO” play during games.
State Farm NFL Work source: YouTube
State Farm NFL Work source: YouTube
