1) This year we have seen a big increase in the amount of attention that luxury brands are paying to millennial consumers. We all know that younger consumers are the future, but for aspirational brands, this can be a tricky demographic to communicate with. Besides the fact that the forum where the conversation takes place is different and unpredictable, younger consumers are a demanding group. If you don’t offer them some sort of emotional experience with the media you put in front of them, they will immediately tune you out. From a production sense I love this challenge since aspirational brands require that everything is premium looking—and they will usually have the budgets to support that—and it is always fun making things for a discerning audience as you really need to perform at a high level to keep them interested. Younger aspirational consumers also tend to be really passionate and vocal about the brands they interact with, and that is also great as there is nothing more fun than producing content that sparks a conversation.
2) Donald Trump’s Twitter feed has been pretty remarkable. However you might feel about his politics and persona, Trump has undoubtedly mastered the media feedback loop. The interesting question that Trump’s feed raises is what is the correct balance between attracting attention and building a sustainable, successful brand? We will find out the answer to this question come November when we see how he and the rest of the Republican party fare. Whatever the end result, you have to acknowledge that Trump has exploited a strange quirk in the system, as I can’t think of any brand that has gained more attention for so little financial outlay.
3) The entire Deadpool campaign was great as all of the work—whether it was the social content, the billboards, the trailers, the GIFs, or anything else—was engaging, worked well for the space it was in and expressed the point of view of the film. Deadpool is not the easiest film to market, but the fact that it had the best-ever opening weekend for an R-rated movie and surpassed the studio’s projections for that opening weekend by roughly $60 million is a testament to the efficacy of the work.
4) As an industry, we will continue to deal with the challenge of cutting through the clutter. There are a number of great solutions to this challenge—making amazing things that people want to watch and share is an obvious one—but I think the most promising is continuing to customize and micro-target content. Digital partners such as Facebook are making it increasingly easy to speak directly to individual consumers, and at Team One we have done a number of campaigns utilizing that technology. Recently, we created more than 1,000 customized video ads for one piece of communication and then delivered those ads in a very targeted way. I find the creative, financial and technical challenges of this sort of project fascinating, and the results we have seen have been really strong, so I hope that this trend continues in the future.
5) I don’t know if you can approach all awards shows as a cohesive whole as, for example, Cannes Lions and the Emmys function in different ways and have different criteria for judging work. For the advertising-specific awards shows, the industry has historically embraced and struggled with technology. While much of the awarded work I’ve seen is novel in the way it uses technology, much of the prominent “scam” work is also of that nature. As an industry, our love of technology is generally a great thing—and as a production guy, I love the newest gadgetry as much as anyone. That said, it is always imperative that we as an industry do not lose sight of how technology needs to exist inside of larger business objectives.
6) Earlier this year Team One built out an industry-leading virtual reality (VR) lab, and it has already begun paying huge dividends. The lab is allowing us to figure out how to tell stories and communicate effectively in this new space—not the easiest task, as what makes VR amazing is also what makes storytelling in that world so difficult—as well as helping us to figure out the best practical applications for the technology. It isn’t just experimental at this point either, as we have completed several VR projects, including the Lexus “Elevate” cycling POV piece and a VR-based media partnership with ABC’s Quantico that was a big hit. VR is a really exciting technology, but one that you definitely need to roll up your sleeves and dive into in order to utilize it effectively, and having the lab right here in the building has been a big reason we have been able to be so successful with it.