Cheil Communications Introduces a New Vision and Slogan - Passion for Ideas

This year, CEO and President of Cheil, Mr. Kim, announced a new vision and slogan for Cheil that has enormous potential to provide clients with creative business solutions above and beyond the normal offering of traditional ad agencies. After conducting research throughout the network, the new slogan was developed based on the people, passion and purpose of the organization.

In this day and age, competition as a term seems so soft and trite. The marketing environment today looks more like a war zone, a perpetual stream of attacks between businesses and consumers and vice versa.
And consumers have the upper hand, the means, and the power to determine the success of our clients’ products. And clients thus demand more – bigger, smarter, successful ideas. So, to provide Cheil’s clients with the value needed to engage the market more effectively, Cheil Communications has taken a step
backward to assess the battleground, and made a leap forward to redefine its value to clients.

Cheil Communications: Passion for Ideas

This slogan is based on the principle that our purpose is to create ideas that work for our clients. Ideas that are relevant and bring about a desired change among our clients’ target consumers. Ideas that impact our clients’ businesses. But every agency has “ideas” as a core value. So what makes a Cheil idea different? By better understanding our clients’ needs, the macro and micro environments of the business and categories, and attitude and behavior of consumers, Cheil develops compelling insights that deliver “activating ideas”. These ideas engage and elicit desired consumers to add value to our clients’ bottom line. Ideas that have spirit. Ideas that are driven by energy and enthusiasm. Searching continuously for ideas that have never been done. Supported by the pragmatism of professionalism and the responsibility of implementing these ideas.

Idea Engineering

To live this spirit of passion for ideas, a new process and way of working has been created – Idea Engineering. To be an Idea Engineering company, we harness the power of collaboration by restructuring
the way we work. We remove barriers that impede free thinking and limit richer ideas. The passion of our people invigorates the way we think.

Our new vision requires that we re-examine thinking (ideas for the sake of ideas) vs. acting (ideas for creating value). Our focus will be on creating and activating specific and well thought out ideas, thereby
bringing new value for our clients.

We are a company of idea engineers who work with our clients to develop ideas that are fresh, startling and activated for success. With this new vision we will harness the power of collaboration – the passion of our people and the precision of the engineer – to develop and implement ideas that engage customers at all points of contact, with the express purpose of changing attitudes and behavior to impact our clients’ ongoing business success.

Mark Kronnenberg, Director,
Integrated Solutions Group, Cheil, NAHQ

■ 8 out of 10 Americans know about blogs; half visit them regularly 87% of the people who read blogs said they don’t spend less time with other media now that they’re reading blogs.

Source: Marketing Daily, August 29, 2007

■ IBM Consumer Study: Internet rivals declining TV as primary media source 66% of respondents reported viewing 1-4 hours of TV per day, vs. 60% who reported the same levels of personal Internet usage.

IBM Study, Source: Marketing Charts, August 22, 2007

■ Media usage per person drops for the first time in a decade For the first time since 1997, US consumers spent less time using media in 2006, compared to the previous year. Media usage per person declined 0.5% to 3,530 hours. This drop is mainly attributed to changing consumer behaviors and advances in the digital space.

Source: Advertising Age, August 8, 2007

■ Millennials like traditional – not just new – media Almost three-quarters (71%) of Millennials say they enjoy reading print magazines even though they know they could find most of the same information online.

Source: Marketing Charts, July 30, 2007

■ Social networking reached near full penetration among teens and tweens Social networking is approaching parity with TV time among 9-to 17-year-olds. And when kids are multitasking, they’re four times more likely to pay closer attention to whatever they’re doing online than to whatever they’re watching
on the tube.

Source: Alloy Media and Marketing, Advertising Age, June 25, 2007

Cannes [isn't just] for Creatives

This past June, I had my inaugural Cannes Lions experience. The Cannes Lions festival is widely known as being a “creative” awards show. But once I was there, I found it to be a melting pot of not only creatives, but of planners, account directors, developers – and clients.

As I walked the seemingly endless sea of blue walls, sat through seminars and workshops, and analyzed the accolades, there were several things that struck me. It’s not just the way we work that’s evolved. It’s the way we think. The way we talk. The way we generate ideas. Our audience has changed. As marketers, we should no longer be talking at consumers. They are empowered. They decide how and if they want us in their lives. “Integration” has taken on an entirely new dimension.

In the past, integration has been about how well different elements of a campaign work together. Does the online look and feel similar to the offline? The old school model of integration was made up of a pretty cut and paste media mix too: TV, print, website, banner and email. Today, it includes a much wider set of deliverables. Advertising is in places that are new and different (and even immersive enough to not feel like advertising). Today’s media mix can be enormously diverse, depending on your idea. One example is the Titanium Grand Prix awarded to Crispin Porter + Bogusky for Burger King for developing a series of video games for the Xbox 360 where users are actually immersing themselves into the world of “The King” and paying for it.

“ Titanium stands for
breakthrough ideas. It might be a
brand new idea, or it might
use an existing idea in a brand
new way. ” – Alex Bogusky

In order to reach “the people” we have to speak their language, interact with them and give them meaningful experiences. Integrated is now defined as how well a campaign utilizes these different mediums
to tell a story. It’s about context. Where you are and what you’re doing makes all the difference. These mediums don’t just coexist harmoniously, they feed off each other in order to form a collective whole.

The industry trends we face as marketers and brands were evident at the festival. The Titanium & Integrated category received a 60% increase in entries. The Cyber Lions and Media categories also contributed to the overall growth of entries this year. As a creative director, I looked at their work and asked myself, “How did they do this?” Unique use of media is quickly becoming a creative solution. Our Samsung Shout-Out campaign, which short-listed in the Media category at Cannes, used online elements working synergistically with in-stadium placements. Winners in this category included ambient, outdoor, direct, mobile and cinema (and when I say cinema, I mean that the product plays a lead in the movie itself – not just as a placement or cinema spots).

One might say the only thing that limits us is our own imagination. The truth is, it also depends on the people required to help turn a great idea into reality.

“ Today’s marketing mix brings
big ideas into emerging and
ambient media spaces such as
online widgets and customized outdoor,
guerrilla and events. ”

I looked at work through this filter while at Cannes. As a creative director, I not only have to believe in my team’s ideas and visions, but inspire others to want them just as badly. Samsung Shout-Out was one of these challenges. It was a challenge to pull together and pull it off. I think short-listing at Cannes makes it all worth it. I came back with a new attitude about believing in ideas and how important it is that others around me do the same.

The Cannes Lions festival is a must-see for anyone in the business at least once in his or her career. It will challenge you, it will educate you and it will inspire you. I’m considering spending the weekend doing some COOK uploads to make sure I get to go back next year.

Ann Marie Mathis Creative Director, Interactive http://www.whatsweb3dot0.blogspot.com

Connections Planning

Just because we can buy a space on the side of a dog doesn’t mean that we should.

Today’s media landscape offers us a multitude of ways to connect with consumers, and abounds with opportunities that just a few years ago would not have been thought of as media. While this has served to broaden the scope of advertising, it has also made it more difficult to determine which channels to utilize in order to best maximize resources.

Thus, it becomes critical that every sound communications plan takes into careful consideration all consumer touch points.

Determining whether to utilize media channels such as online, print, TV or out-of-home vehicles can be difficult enough, especially when budgets are tight. However, once a media plan has been reached, our jobs have only just begun. How can we ensure that our advertising is actually effective, that we are reaching the target in the way that we intended, that our message is being heard?

Why not tailor our advertising not only to the target audience, but to the selected media channel as well? Instead of using diverse media channels to communicate the same idea, why not take advantage of
the strengths of each unique media channel to communicate a “custom-made” advertising campaign?

The message can still be tied together by the same strategy or insight, but also give each channel a chance to shine and do what it does best, instead of twisting an idea that’s not really built with any particular channel in mind. Each media channel has its strengths and weaknesses and is self-contained to exist on its own, while simultaneously being pulled together into a greater brand narrative.
Ultimately, involving your audience is vital to any successful communication. So how do we place our brand out into the world in a way that people can become involved with? We create this connection by building relationships. We need to shift our focus to be on the brand’s relationship with people and people’s relationship with different communication channels. Bombarding people with advertisements doesn’t create relationships.

Building relationships starts with treating people as people – catering to people in their own unique and different ways. We can create and place a lot of communication pieces out there, not necessarily expecting
every person to see every piece, but creating enough interconnectivity that people will talk and eventually hear about pieces they haven’t seen from someone else. If we can only generate the following responses — “I’ve seen that ad,” “I’ve been to that event,” “I had a positive experience with an employee at that company” or “I’ve tried that product or service,” and then have our audience compare experiences
with one another. With the explosion of social media these discussions are made easier, faster and are amplified in ways that were never thought possible only a couple years ago.

Connections Planning seeks out the places where brands and people meet in the real world (both online and offline), and sparks conversation to build ongoing dialogues and relationships. Not only should Connections Planners gain insight into why consumers value particular brand attributes, but they must understand when, where, and how consumers choose to interact with the brand across different touch points. The ultimate goal is to find new ways of connecting brand and consumer through touch points that are not only useful and desirable, but credible and social. These touch points can include everything from package designs to the ambience at a retail store to simply owning behaviorallyrelated search words.


In the end, it’s all about ideas. The currency to connect with people today isn’t about great creative execution, and it’s not about efficient and effective media plans. It’s brilliant ideas – which ironically enough, make creative and media indistinguishable. A smart idea nullifies people’s ability to dismiss us and instead invites these ideas into their lives – which is what ultimately we want to do.

Marc Allen, Manager, Connections Planning, Cheil, NAHQ

Report from the Account Planners Conference

Each year several hundred planners come together for the annual International Account Planners Conference, sponsored by the 4As. Our theme in 2007 was “Creating Possibilities”. This year there were twelve countries represented, with over 700 planners in attendance. The three-day conference took place during the first week of August, a perfect time of year to visit San Diego and to enjoy the cool summer weather they have year round. In this report I’ll share key thoughts from the presentations of two speakers who told us their inspirational stories of creating possibilities.

Keynote Speaker: Sir Ken Robinson


The conference began with a presentation on the challenge of cultivating creativity. The keynote speaker was Sir Ken Robinson, an internationally recognized leader in the field of creativity for business and education. Sir Robinson’s message is that every organization has to find new ways to succeed in a world that is changing faster than ever before. Revolutionary changes are transforming how business works, creating an urgent need to promote creativity and innovation in the workplace.
Sir Robinson defines creativity as the process of having original ideas. The first step is imagination, the capacity that we all have to see something in the mind’s eye. Creativity uses that imagination to solve problems — call it applied imagination. Then, innovation puts that creativity into practice as applied creativity.

Hear more from Sir Ken Robinson:
Check out the speech he gave at
last year’s TED conference.
http://www.ted.com

The key to future success for all businesses is understanding creative intelligence and the idea of human resources. Sir Robinson argues for radical changes in corporate cultures to make the most of our human resources. He gives the example of Pixar, a company that understands the imperativeness of innovation and has enabled its corporate culture to foster creativity. The company created Pixar University – a program that offers educational classes, events, and workshops daily. Every employee is entitled to spend four hours a week at Pixar University, and are encouraged to not take job-related classes. Sir Robinson believes this keeps employees’ minds alive. One can’t be creative if their mind is not stimulated, just as one can’t be an Olympic athlete if they don’t train regularly. He concluded by emphasizing that the secret of the creative corporation is to look hard at employees and begin to realize their strengths. Because creativity is found in helping people find their talents.

Eric Ryan – Co-founder of Method, “People Against Dirty”

At the age of 27, Eric Ryan founded Method, a San Francisco-based consumer goods company that has reinvented home care products with an innovative branding and product design approach. Eric began his career as a planner, and used his planning skills to identify the opportunity to create the brand and marketing/communications plans that led to this unparalleled success. Method is a partnership between Eric and his college roommate Adam Lowry. It was founded in 2000 with $300,000 from their personal savings, friends, family, and others. Today, they have annual revenues of over $40 million.

In five short years, Method has challenged some of the world’s largest multinationals in home cleaning, laundry, personal care and air care to become the fastest growing consumer products company in the US.
Recently, Method was named number seven on the Inc. 500 list for fastest-growing companies in America.

Eric’s partner, Adam Lowry, graduated from Stanford with a degree in chemical engineering and says, “I knew as a chemical engineer that there was no reason we couldn’t design products that were non-toxic and used natural ingredients. It would be more expensive, but as long as we created a brand with more ‘premium-ness’ about it, our margins would support the extra investment in product development and high-quality ingredients”.

In essence, Eric and Adam have now crafted a master brand in home care. The brand’s tag-line “People Against Dirty” reflects more than a penchant for a clean home, but for clean air, clean water and clean living. Method is a modern lifestyle brand – not just a green leafy brand.


Consumers realize they can be “green” without making a sacrifice in performance or design, as such, package design is core to their business model. Method was going up against big soap companies like
P&G and Unilever with limited resources. They knew disruptive packaging would be required, so they recruited designer Karim Rashid and introduced a startling bowling-pin-shaped dish soap bottle that
put Method on the map, earning the brand coveted distribution with Target and a cult following. Today the brand offers green products and packages in Method’s distinct style.

As his final message to us as planners, Eric noted that the role of planners and planning continues to play an integral part in the on-going operations of the company. Today, Method’s advertising agency has a
planner assigned to the business who works out of Method’s offices in San Francisco. Planners are involved at all points along the R&D continuum, leading ideas through to on-shelf, in-store and all points of
communication. This is truly where the future of planning lies, in growing ever more immersed in all aspects of our clients’ business.

Joy Fournier Director, Customer Engagement Planning Cheil, NAHQ

The Good, the Bad, and the Unremarkable

Current trends in advertising

Advertising has always done a strange dance with the culture: sometimes leading, sometimes following, but the two are always inextricably linked. Lately, this fact seems truer than ever. There are several events taking place in the industry these days that can trace their roots to current cultural phenomena – for better or worse. The following is a look at a couple of these high- and low-lights in the biz – and where they originated.

On the positive side, one trend follows advertisers enlisting the efforts, tactics and ideas of conceptual artists like David Blaine. Blaine has made a name for himself by being something of a modern-day Houdini.
His exploits include everything from confining himself in a glass box over the Thames river for 44 days and nights to standing atop a 90-foot tower in Bryant Park in Manhattan for 24 hours without a safety net.


Target department store was quick to seize on the trend by hiring him to promote their two-day sale by giving him two days to escape from a spinning contraption five stories above Times Square. The event
was considered to be a tremendous marketing success and generated a lot of publicity in the media.

Another instance of an advertiser taking influence from an artist involves Adidas and conceptual artist Phil Hansen. Hansen recorded himself painting a portrait of North Korean ruler Kim Jong Il with 300cc of his own blood and posted it on YouTube.

The tactic was then seen in an advertising campaign from Adidas for the New Zealand Rugby “All Blacks” team. Adidas’ agency TBWA/WHYBIN created a limited-edition poster that not only featured the players,
but also included each player’s blood, which was thoroughly sterilized and then embedded into the paper during the printing process.


Sales of Adidas “All Blacks” apparel went up by 24%. All 8,000 posters quickly sold out. In fact, many are now traded on auction sites around the world for around $400 and rising. It was featured on TV news
programs, in The Wall Street Journal and other international newspapers generating millions of dollars of editorial comment; not to mention – hundreds and hundreds of blogs and sites.

On the less positive side, the portrayal of women in advertising has always been a controversial topic in the industry. And while the old advertising bromide “sex sells” seems to be repeated nowadays only with a healthy dose of irony, we all still see ads that portray women in ways many don’t appreciate, either intentionally or not. A recent TV spot for Heineken featuring a robotic blonde beauty pulling a mini beer
keg out of her abdomen seems to be the “offender du jour”.

What’s new here, however, is the way some in the industry are choosing to shed light on the problem. 3iying is an “all girl creative agency” based in New York City. Their mission is “to make better ads,
products and media for other girls”. They asked young women to point out ads they didn’t like because they found the message particularly insensitive to them. 3iying compiled the results into a video mosaic that provides a fascinating look at a highly targeted demographic responding to advertising that was aimed at them – and missed.


One video critiquing a print ad for Absolut vodka caught my eye. In the video, a young woman holds up an Absolut ad that features a man and a woman facing the camera. The woman is beautiful and elegantly
dressed, holding a drink. The man stands beside her – poorly groomed with a bulging, obviously pregnant, stomach beneath a frumpy sweater. The headline reads “An Absolut World”. What offended the young
woman was the way the pregnant man was portrayed – how he struck such a stark contrast to the elegant and sophisticated woman – that, in effect, being pregnant was shown to be un-fun, unglamorous,
and undesirable.

What I find interesting is that the ad was surely intended to have just the opposite effect: to give a nod to women, to poke fun at gender roles and stereotypes. But even with the best of intentions, the effort appears to have been handled a little too cavalierly for some. It’s a lesson all of us in the advertising industry should be mindful of.

Tom McManus Creative Director, Cheil, NAHQ

The World's Largest Market and Marketing Opportunity

“ The consumer is not a moron,
she’s your wife. ” – David Ogilvy

Women:

• Control more than 75% of discretionary income
• Over 40% of households with at least $600,000 in assets are headed by women
• Married women’s earnings are growing faster than their spouses
• 25% of working married women make more money than their spouses
• 85% identify themselves as the principle household shopper
• 90% of married women identify themselves as the principle shopper
• 80% of consumer goods purchased are made or influenced by women
• Women buy 50% of all cars and influence 80% of car purchases
• 51% of consumer electronics are purchased by women (70% of new digital cameras are bought by women)

• Women are more likely to use people as a resource in their CE research
• 56% of women turn to their friends and family versus 43% of men
• 46% of women rely more on in-store sales people versus 39% of men
• Women tend to get most of their product information from the product packaging, whereas men utilize various websites
• Women tend to ignore ads driven by features, but rather relate to brands that demonstrate purpose
• 1 in 4 women purchase consumer electronics from a mass merchant as opposed to an electronics retailer
• 6 in 10 women find consumer electronic stores cold and unemotional
• 5 in 10 women indicated they are likely to make their next purchase at a mass merchant
• Overall, women are less emotionally attached to CE than men. Their purchase behavior is more deliberate and considered than men – who tend to purchase the latest, feature-rich products