As the Sunday papers clamour to provide us with their predictions for the year ahead, I had a think about a few things the past 12 months have taught us / me.
Here are ten to start with:
1/ 0.02mm is interesting in the right hands. Especially if those hands are the D&AD award winning team behind Sagami’s ‘Love Distance’ campaign
2/ Markets can behave irrationally. How else can we explain UK bookmakers making England second favourites for the World Cup? (Yes I know, it’s the punters not the market that are behaving irrationally).
3/ We’ve gone real time. We’re texting, twittering, facebooking …. It’s all about ‘Now’. Admittedly Vodafone cottoned onto that a while ago but Samsung tapped into that nicely with ‘impatience is a virtue’
4/ Hash can be bad for your health – hash tags that is – as Habitat found out earlier in the year when trying to use coverage of the Iranian election to sell sofas.
5/ The success of a campaign can be judged on recall of a TV execution? That was the argument some experts made to explain why an ad by ‘Confused.com’ had performed better than one by ‘Compare the Market’. Missing the point I think when you see that Mr. Aleksandr Orlov now has well over 600K Facebook fans.
6/ That being said, TV advertising is far from dead. Comcast proved that without question – simply genius
7/ There is more than one way to skin a cat. Or launch a new car. As VW showed with the Golf GTI in the US
8/ You really are only as good as your last burger. See Fallon + Sony + Balls.
9/ Baku is interesting the first time you visit. On each subsequent trip it is blustery, dusty and a long way from home. Bakcell were doing well when we left them though.
And finally, one other thing that I now know all too well:
10/ Nappies are easy. Not pleasant, but easy. Thanks for every one Avie x.
Richard Mabbott, Group Head of Planning at b2b agency, gyro