But the talk that ignited the morning was without doubt that from Marcel Dicke who is an Ecological Entomologist. He passionately believes that we need to start eating more insects progressively replacing the protein in our diet with that derived far more efficiently from animals that have six legs. Insects already contribute $57m to the US economy by pollinating the plants we need, removing dung, controlling pests and kicking off the food chain - they now need to be a big part of our diet. Not only did he encourage the moderator of the session to eat a worm covered candy but all the venues for the coffee break that followed offered bug snacks alongside the pastries and fruit.

One of the best quotes of TED Global has to have been that from Tim Jackson the sustainability scholar. He described the sort of consumption that provides the engine for current global economic growth and is destroying our planet as the act of "spending money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last on people we don't care about". Something to ponder on plannerkind!

To say Jessica Jackley rocked the place would be an understatement and this would be my top tip for the TED Talk to watch above all the others from Global 2010 once it is released online. She is the co-founder of Kiva the online micro-lender that after only 5 years now lends over $150m a year to entrepreneurs in over 200 countries. She is a passionate advocate of micro lending over aid not only to help real people kickstart their businesses but to foster greater empathy between the people of the earth. A donation as she said allows us to "buy our distance" a loan creates an ongoing dialogue and love. That she was overwhelmed by the emotion of the moment - telling her story on the TED stage merely acted to bring home the enormity of what she is up to some of which is captured in this story of one Kiva loan.

A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.

Then two scientists fighting to change the way we see ourselves and the world. Herbert Watzke is a food scientist an challenges the idea that we are omnivores, preferring to regard us as cocktivores, animals that eat cooked food. He maintains that cooking was the most fundamental technology of early man and unleashed human potential feeding both of our brains. Yes, that it this is a tale of two brains where one is in our skull and the other in our gut. Indeed our 'small brain' as he calls it is about the same size interns of nerve cells and neurones as a cat's brain and performs many brain like functions not least the start and stop signals for consumption of food that don't come from our large brain.

Stefano Mancuso, the plant neurobiologist, is cut from the same cloth. In as much as he is challenging the orthodoxy that surrounds our understanding of plants. For him plants are not inferior creatures to animals and exhibit both movement and sensing characteristics that we have long thought separated simple animals from plants. He shows that not only do plants sense light and gravity they also exhibit sleeping and playing behaviour all without a brain. For Maneuso the tip of the radial behaves in exactly the same ways as the brain of lower animals.

And so to education. Word to the wise, find out what Sugata Mitra is up to. He is creating self organised learning environments for kids around the world believing that Education is a self organising system in which learning emerges when you leave kids to their own devices and armed with a computer and the internet. The idea of education without schools, or importantly teachers, is important since in every country there are places where good schooled cannot be built or good teachers cannot or will not go. This thinking is based on some breathtaking research like whether 26 Tamil speaking 12 year olds left with a computer and lessons in English could teach themselves biotechnology. Contrary to popular belief he maintains that learning is more successful when the adults go away, with the exception of what he calls the "granny cloud" that kids can call upon (a bit like phone a friend) and which is staffed by a bunch of global grannies who mainly seem to dispense admiration as only Grannies do. One of the longest standing ovations of the conference from where I was sitting and then standing.

Conrad Wolfram, a mathematician, is similarly enthusiastic about computers in education and maths specifically. He is a passionate advocate that we should stop demanding that kids learn to calculate by hand and leave this to computers so that maths education can concentrate on posing the right questions, turning real problems into mathematical problems and then converting the computer calculated solutions back into the real world and verifying them.

Tom Chatfield is a games theorist. he is doing brilliant stuff trying to understand how compute games transfix and motivate us as a basis for changing the way we educate kids and much more. His work is perhaps more readily applicable to the stuff we do both in his understanding of real engagement (wanting + liking = engagement) and in the lessons from games he has developed. These include the power of experience bars that measure progress, the establishment of multiple long and short term aims, constant reward for effort, rapid and frequent feedback and teaching during periods of enhanced attention. As Rory Sutherland commented to me afterward this is gold dust in the whole behavioural economics and advertising debate.

And finally, after all these are the mere highlights of Day 3! TED's curator Chris Anderson. Looking beyond the almost messiah like reverence in which he is held by TEDsters I thought his talk was excellent and not just because of a rather cute use of Prezi. In part because of the stellar success of the TED Talks online he is fascinated by the idea of Crowd Accelerated Innovation where the presence of a large audience, the ability to shine light on a particular endeavour and the desire amongst the crowd to learn and participate leads to rapid learning and new ideas . And he believes that the critical technology in this is, guess what, the power of online video. Apparently this is already noticeable in the dance community where new ideas can be introduced, learned and improved upon in ways that simply didn't exist before video became easy to upload, stream and download online. And in science he talked about the online service Jove which allows scientists to publish papers for peer review using online video, the principle benefit begin the speed with which experiments can be replicated when you show other scientists how to do it rather than describe the procedure in a journal.

So that's your lot. I bet Day Four was awesome too but alas I was not there to suck it all up.

On a similar note Elif Shafak, the most read female novelist in Turkey talked about the power of circles and specifically their ability to destroy everything within them. She quoted a Sufi saying, "Knowledge that takes us not beyond ourselves is worse than ignorance". That surely is a powerful watchout for all of us and questions exactly how wide our worldwide web is.

I'm a big fan of David McCandless and his book 'Information is beautiful' that my brother gave me recently for my birthday. His data visualisations are both powerful and extremely elegant and he talks about the per of visualisation to draw together the language of the eye and the mind to create far greater and faster comprehension of the increasingly complex subjects and data sets we need to wrestle with personally and professionally. It rather made me think that all planners need to go on a data visualisation course and master design software beyond powerpoint - something for the APG or IPA perhaps?

Other people worth following up also might include the green chef Arthur Potts Dawson who is trying to change the environmental impact of the restaurant and food business at places like the Acorn House, the Waterhouse and the People's Supermarket(where customers have to work in the store for a few hours each month). And you might check out John Hardy's Green School in Bali.

Its worth remembering that the theme for this year's TED global is 'and now for the good news' finding reasons for hope and optimism for humanity.

The star of the session for me was Sheryl WuDunn, a female rights advocate. She believes that gender inequality is the central moral challenge of our time. Not simply because brutality against women is morally wrong but because she believes women are the solution to many of the problems we face - indeed the highest return on investment in the developing world may well be in women's education. Sheryl is the author of Half the Sky.

Naif Al-Mutawa is the creator of the 99. This is a comic series that features 99 characters each from a different country and each of which embodies one of the 99 attributes of Alah. His intention is to provide a positive view of Islam for both Muslims and non Muslims.

Nic Marks talked about Happiness and the Happy Planet Index he has created. He was inspired by Robert Kennedy who said that what frustrated him was that "GNP measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile". According to the index the country that is most successful in converting resources into happiness is Costa Rica. He is determined that conversations about reducing our ecological footprint goes hand in hand with a fundamental improvement in our quality of life and happiness.

Matt Ridley is another rational optimist and talked about what happens when ideas have sex. His maintains that it is the act of exchange - of objects and ideas - that defines humanity, because it means that we don't have to do and make everything that we need ourselves and he uses the example of the pencil to prove this. There is literally no one that knows how to make a pencil - no one person knows how to provide all the elements that go into the entire system that creates a pencil. This is the collective brain - the ability to do things for each other so that all of us can specialise and do the things we are best at. For Ridley this exchange is the engine of human development and what marks us apart from other species.

I love Steven Johnson and have done since he wrote the Ghost Map, an understanding of the limits of urbanisation and specifically the way in which John Snow discovered the link between cholera and poor sanitation by mapping cases in the Soho outbreak of 1854 around one water pump in Broad Street. He talked about the conditions that create great ideas or in which great ideas are born. People recalling how their ideas emerge tend to ascribe them to one 'eureka' moment as Darwin did about natural selection (he said it had come to him while reading Malthus). In truth ideas emerge in a much more muddled and laboured way over time and critically through connections not just between existing ideas but also between people. He has written this all up in a new book Where good ideas come from - the natural history of evolution.

This is a strategy I having been wanting to try for a Minivan or MPV for ages. Because the choice of a vehicle like this is often seen as a sign that you have simply accepted your life as a parent and 'given up' it has long seemed to me that there was mileage in hero worshiping parenthood and in particular the fact that the choice of an MPV proves that its all working 'down there' if you know what I mean. This ain't a sell out its a swagger waggon. By the way the promo is Number 2 this week in the Ad Age video viral chart.

And above everything else how about that for the first work out of the blocks after the recall - that's a client with balls.

All the work is on the youtube channel here but I've posted a couple of videos below.]]> This is the promo.

And this is the back story video.

At some point I will get round to adding in all the examples and links but have this to be getting on with.

For some strange reason when I uploaded this to slideshare it duplicated the 'that was' on the title slide. Weird.

I'm sure that it's not perfect but it may help, especially if your clients or you as a client don't have an approach to briefing that is set in concrete.]]> What is the business objective?
This is the business outcome required from the activity. It roots everything we do in a clear business context and ensures the agency understands the bigger picture.

How are we going to achieve this?
This is the way that we believe that communications can have an impact on those objectives. This makes sure that the task for communications is credible.

Who will we need to convince in order for this to happen?
The target audience for the activity. Not the creative target but the clear volume opportunity. What do we know about them that is absolutely relevant to achieving the desired outcome. Keep it as objective as possible.

What behaviour do we want them to exhibit?
We always seek to change behaviour not just attitudes and so we need to understand what this group need to do in order that we meet our objective.

What is stopping them doing this at the moment?
What are the barriers – rational or emotional – that are getting in the way of our desired outcome? What do they believe or feel that isn’t particularly helpful to us.

What rational proof can we offer them to help change their behaviour?
What would make a real difference to people if only they knew about it. These are the proof points with which we can depth charge our activity.

How do we want them to feel as a result of our activity?
The emotion we want to create. Do we want them to feel reassured, surprised, joyous, excited, sad or angry?

What requirements do we have?
What are the specific deliverables that are expected as part of the activity?

What must be included in the final execution?
These are the non-negotiable elements that must be part of the work.

What is the total budget that has been allocated to this project and how does it break down?

What are key timings for this project?

How will the activity be evaluated?
The measures that will be used to indicate whether the work has been successful

Lets start with a clear definition of roles – for the people and documents involved in briefing.

Clients are marketing professionals and brand guardians. You understand what performance the business needs from its portfolio of brands, the problems that those brands face in delivering this and the way marketing communications can be applied (alongside the other weapons in the mix) to get the results you need.

Client briefs should reflect this role and should act as a contract between client and agency to deliver communications solutions that meet that brief.

Agencies are creative problem solvers that understand the way to engage people with brands both strategically and executionally.

Agency creative briefs are internal documents we use to get the solution you need from the various creative disciplines in the agency. That’s the fundamental way in which they differ. ]]> As a point of principle I don’t believe that Clients should sign off Agency briefs but maybe Agencies should be signing off Client briefs – by which I mean an agency signature on the client brief would represent a commitment to deliver against it.

The quality of client briefs is an enduring issue for all agencies and it’s a situation that appears to be getting worse

That’s if we get a written brief at all. So the starting point must be write a brief, always write a brief, no matter what the project is. They discipline your thinking forcing you to articulate exactly what is needed and they act as a reference point to go back to when evaluating work.

And don’t start by trying to write a brief, start by thinking about what you need and how communications can deliver against this, this latter point is absolutely critical. Then sit down and write a brief. The famous sculptor Eric Gill once said “first I think my think, then I draw my think”, we should all think our think first and only then write our think.

Use a briefing format if you like (it tends not to matter to agencies whether or not you do) but make sure that you are still writing a brief and not filling in boxes. They are not creative requisition forms.

Don’t write briefs by committee, we can spot it when the edges are knocked of good client briefs by multiple stakeholders all pursuing their own agenda. Sure it’s important to hear everyone’s voice in the process but one person should be responsible for delivering the final brief.

All briefs should be both inspirational and directional. Inspire and direct.

Inspiration is far more about the ambition of the task than it is about flowery language.

The most inspiring part of the brief for an agency is the objective, the problem that you are seeking to use communications to solve.

Advertising agencies are problem solving companies, albeit that they solve commercial problems by applying creativity to the task. Nothing gets an agency’s rocks off more than a juicy problem.

T-Mobile – take the lion’s share of the £30+ monthly contract market

Teenage binge drinking – reduce the harm that comes to young people when they drink too much

Police recruitment – attract quality recruits to the Metropolitan Police by making 999 out of 1000 people realise they could never be a Police Officer

Raising awareness doesn’t count as a credible objective.

Then tell us how you believe communications can be used to crack that problem and exactly who needs to be affected by the work.

Poorly articulated or ambiguous target audiences are the bug-bear of the agency particularly the use of primary and secondary audiences. And we are far more interested in a factual definition of the audience than fabricated pen portraits or quirky segment descriptions.

Tell us what they need to do – buy for the first time, start buying again or increase their weight of purchase. We are here to change behaviour not simply to change attitudes.

Tell us how you would like people to feel following the communication. No simply how you would like them to feel about the brand but specifically as a result of the work.

Briefs should give us every piece of information that we need to find a solution to the task at hand and nothing else. They are not the place to parade your prejudices or invent mandatories that are not absolutely mandatory. Creativity comes from clearly defined parameters but also from space to play, you can always rein things in later on.

Use the agency to help frame the brief. They will probably have been working with you on the strategy anyway and they will be clear on what is going to be helpful. The planner is probably a good person to bounce stuff off anyway and it avoids push back from the agency when the brief is issued.

Try and brief in person – certainly if its a project that is important to you. It makes the Agency feel the project is regarded as important by the Organisation and it allows for instant clarification.

Take pride in your briefs. They aren’t the end product of what we all do together but they are an important stepping-stone and the critical moment when responsibility for solving the problem moves from client to agency. You should love the brief that you have written.

Remember that we are in this together.

It's based on the idea that Carlsberg don't do team talks but if they did they would be the best team talks in the world. In truth the ad is simply the culmination of a whole load of integrated activity from the trade out that has been building up from the beginning of the year. As usual a Youtube channel acts as the content hub for all the participatory activity.]]>

You can personalise the film here and blame the Big Society on someone who is thinking of voting Tory on Thursday. ]]>

John Lewis on London's Oxford Street. Image courtesy of Timothygareth

This is the new John Lewis ad from Adam & Eve. I guess in a way is easypeasy to create emotional advertising for John Lewis, after all thats what we got in spades last Christmas with the 'sweet child of mine' spot. Trickier to do it around the much admired, totally nebulous and increasingly tired guarantee that John Lewis are 'never knowingly undersold'.

This is one of those ads that you start watching and immediately fall in love with then get that aweful feeling in the pit of your stomach that the brand or message is going to utterly disappoint you. And it sort of does when the price guarantee is delievered at the end. Then just as you are about to throw something at the telly the final super appears and everything slots into place. Not only does the execution make sense but suddenly the dust is blown off a brand promise that we have all grown up with in the UK (well those of us who are terminally middle class at least) but had kind of assumed JL had got bored of.

On show here we have tight thinking and achingly good execution married together. And as for the track - well I have always loved Billy Joel in his Piano Man period.

We have created an interactive film with RSA to take the spirit and message of the Labour Party's manifesto for the UK general election in May to a broader audience than normally concerns themselves with such things.

The manifesto cover was ours too.]]>

Image courtesy of BeckyAV

This is an article I wrote in the week after the Superbowl. So it lacks a little in the topical department. Thought I'd post it anyway.

In the distant past when advertising was a simpler and somewhat more lucrative business the wine bars of Adland would fizz with excitement every third Thursday of November. The cause for celebration was the arrival, straight from the vineyards, of the first pressing of the Gamay grape, a Beaujolais wine by the name of Noveau. And it wasn’t just the toast of the advertising fraternity, for a short time Beaujolais Noveau made it into the mainstream social calendar; the BBC might even follow its journey to fill out the final five minutes of their news bulletins. ]]> That we no longer mark this viticultural celebration is for one reason and one reason alone. The wine is actually rubbish. Only fermented for a matter of weeks it is rather immature and needs to be drunk immediately to stand a hope of delighting the palate. In truth the hype surrounding Beaujolais Noveau was all spin and little substance.

It’s now time to concede the same is true of the Superbowl. Not as a spectacle of sporting endevour but as a showcase for brands and their advertising. Every year the advertising community, and in truth the wider world, gets terribly excited about the festival of advertising that graces the screens of the great American public and every year they have less and less to be excited about. As Gareth Kay, the Director of Digital Strategy at San Francisco agency Goodby Silverstein, tweeted the morning after Superbowl XLIV, “if this is the shop window for American advertising, then its time to get a new shop”.

Perhaps the rot set in years ago but brands, agencies and media owners have been desperate to maintain the pretence that Superbowl advertising is something rather special. With an estimated audience of 90m this event is after all the last bastion against media and audience fragmentation and at $100,000 a second the cost of entry ensured only decent brands with decent creative appetites were able to join in the party. The reality however is all we get is a parade of mainstream brands with lacklustre ideas, few of which come close to the sort of participative work that is charting the future direction of our industry.

Sure there was a half hearted attempt to co-opt the power of Facebook this year, Bud asked its fans on to chose their commercials and Coke offered theirs sneek advertising previews but no amount of tinkering with social media can make up for the appalling quality of the actual ads. Let us never forget that this was once the showcase for the most breathtaking work in the industry’s history, it was the stage for the first airing of the seminal 1984 commercial for Apple.

The irony is the only really interesting ad was from the advertising industry’s nemesis, Google. In a desperately simple execution it celebrates the way search not only delivers information but effectively charts our lives as they unfold and concludes with a new brand line, Search On. Not only is it fascinating to witness the commercial debut for business that has become the most valuable brand on earth by never advertising but this was surely the cheapest ad to make in Superbowl history.

Ironic it may be but think of this not as an admission that to build its business further Google has conceded that it needs the power of commercial television and in particular the Superbowl but as the most obvious overture yet that it wants to be at the heart of the advertising industry and not the architect of its destruction. And I for one will drink to that.

This post originally appeared as a column in New Media Age

This is our latest poster for the Labour Party. We are running it in Brighton to coincide with the Tory Party spring conference and the their slipping poll lead.

It's just a poster of course, but even in this day and age they can still be oh so powerful. This execution is about the incompetence of the person that would like to be the next Chancellor of the Exchequer. A man that would be out of his depth in a paddling pool.

As the election unfolds I am going to try and share as much as I can with you. Regardless of your political affiliations (though I have yet to meet a right wing planner) its going to be fascinating, and I suspect very different to the last great case study in political campaigning from the US.

Click below for a bigger version.]]> 2010-04-23T12:05:27Z 2010-02-18T18:15:35Z tag:www.adliterate.com,2010://1.315 2010-02-18T18:15:35Z

The Childline remixing tool

We have created a new campaign for the NSPCC aimed at making Childline a part of the fabric of children's lives. The idea is to encourage children to express their emotions and to position Childline as the place they can do this freely with immediate online support for those children needing help.

]]> This is the film we made using a track composed by Paul Hartnoll from Orbital using sound and video of children expressing their emotions. The video elements were then projected onto the walls of an urban landscape and the film shot of that performance.

This is the 'making of' film in which Paul Hartnoll talks about the project.

We also created a remixing tool on the Childline website so that children can create their own films and enter them into a competition to be judged by Paul Hartnoll.

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