Advertising Week (Sept. 29-Oct 3) in NYC offered a wide range of themes and initiatives, including an Advertising Futures competition designed to groom young creative talent, assorted calls for creatives, marketers and clients to embrace risk, and a dose of humor to explain why so many are risk averse.
On the latter score, Gerry Graf, founder of agency Barton F. Graf 9000, offered some tongue-in-cheek advice for those who are afraid to take creative risks. Ultimately the fear of losing money is what makes numerous people play safety first. So in his address towards the end of Advertising Week, Graf advised folks to remove financial peril from their lives through such means as maintaining low overhead, not getting married, not having children, and paying cash for all goods and services. He added that alimony can “make you stay at horrible jobs.”
Otherwise during Advertising Week, there were many more serious pleas made for risk taking. In a Tuesday morning panel titled “Fearless,” one of the moderators, Dana Anderson, sr. VP and chief marketing officer of snack foods client Mondelez International, affirmed that “being fearless is the only answer.” She added that you can’t make a splash and meaningfully connect with prospective consumers if “you play it right up the middle.”
In that vein Mondelez’s Honey Maid graham crackers went with a campaign that they realized might be subject to criticism in that it depicted families with same gender parents, a single parent, and a multi-racial makeup. The client stuck with its brand mantra of recognizing the different cloth that wholesome families are cut from in today’s society. And while there was considerable criticism, it paled by comparison to the volume of positive feedback in favor of the campaign. In a follow-up piece of communication, a video was produced showing artists taking printouts of the feedback–both positive and negative–and turning them into a makeshift piece of art that spelled out the word “Love.”
Another Advertising Week session had Krista Gibson, CMO of Chili’s, touching upon the value of confronting fear over doing something new. Overcoming this trepidation can yield viable marketing opportunities such as Chili’s involvement in On The Menu, a competition series featuring chef Emeril Lagasse and host Ty Pennington. In the debut episode, which airs this Friday (10/3) on TNT, home cook contestants try to create a new Craft Burger entree. The winner’s creation will be added the next day to the menus of Chili’s restaurants around the country, thus making a different food dish from a unique recipe readily accessible to viewers who in the process become Chili’s customers. Similarly subsequent episodes will stage the same competition relative to other restaurant chains or food service businesses.
In a separate address, Havas chief executive Yannick Bollore emphasized that creativity is still the essential currency of advertising and marketing. “Algorithm will never replace the creative director,” he said, adding that an increasingly fragmented media landscape has made it more difficult to gain people’s attention, thus making creativity all the more invaluable in helping to connect brands and consumers.
Advertising Futures
As for the alluded to dynamic of grooming new talent, entertainment marketing agency AKA NYC is mentoring a team of some of NY’s brightest and most creative high school students competing in the Advertising Futures competition associated with this year’s Advertising Week event. Students from the Academy of Finance and Enterprise in Queens will work with AKA NYC creatives, directors, designers and digital marketing experts to develop an advertising campaign. Their work, along with submissions from other teams, was presented to a jury composed of leading New York City advertising professionals on October 1.
Students will work with AKA NYC staff over the next several weeks to create advertising media that can include television commercials, posters, print advertising, websites and apps. AKA staff will provide advice on campaign concept and development, design and production, and digital marketing. The theme of this year’s Advertising Futures competition is pet adoptions.
The students aren’t the only ones who gain from taking part in the competition, said AKA NYC content director Jamaal Parham. “We are incredibly excited to be working with these kids,” Parham observed. “It’s refreshing to see the unbridled enthusiasm they are bringing to this task. It reminds us of why we got into advertising ourselves. They are amazing.” Along with Parham, AKA NYC staff participating in the event include interactive marketing specialists Crystal Chase and Ryan Greer, director of client services Elizabeth Findlay and sr. designer Rob Schnabel.
Although this is the first year that AKA NYC has taken part in the Advertising Futures competition, the agency has a history of supporting students and other emerging talent. The agency runs an annual competition in conjunction with New York’s School of Visual Arts that provides scholarships to students pursuing careers in advertising. “We love nurturing new talent,” said Parham. “The Advertising Futures competition provides another opportunity to extend our role as a teaching agency.”
