This is the Slideshare of the talk I gave at Miami Ad School Europe on Thursday evening. The idea was to talk about great work and some thinking around it. The problem with a title like that is the presentation itself can’t live up to the content. However, the folks at Miami Ad School were really nice and didn’t complain.

So, a huge thank you to Niklas and his team for all their kindness and hospitality. And, for all to comment or steal, here’s the presentation…

You can also download the full Keynote here (inc. videos and presenter notes), but you’re responsible for all copyright on videos if you choose to download.

Just 12 days ago, on June 17th, we launched.

As expected, the launch itself was fairly manic. We had a pitch the day before and we’ve been fairly flat out since, but I thought I’d talk about it here briefly because I’m excited about it… It’s a new agency, with new opportunities. And it’s going to be something quite different.

Yes, it’s a start-up. Yes, it’s communications. Probably the easiest thing to call it would be an advertising agency, since we’ll be producing advertising (just not limited to broadcast media or digital media). And, yes, the focus is on great planning, great creative and genuinely innovative ways to connect with consumers. But we’re aiming to create a new model of agency. We’re calling it ‘hybrid’ agency for want of a better word, because there’s a few twists that make us different (or ‘hybrid’)…

Not hybrid just because we’re fusing digital and advertising. We are, but that’s not enough. You’ve got to do things differently if you want to be genuinely relevant to your audience. Today, consumers know more, share more and listen less. We’re leveraging a set of new and unique tools that allow us to get closer to the customer through their digital behaviour. The difference for clients is better insight and less guesswork through understanding what people do, not what they say they do. The difference for a planner is that you’re building insights and strategy on a more solid foundation.

We started this from a clean sheet of paper and struck the right balance of senior people from the outset – uniting the worlds of advertising, digital and technology. We did this because, in our opinion, clients need the ability to connect with their audience without media bias or boundary. There’s got to be an equality of opinion and input if you’re going to get something out that isn’t biased or constrained in some way.

Finally, we should mention WPP. We’re still a start-up, majority owned by the founders, but their support adds resources and scale. That’s a massive helping of “best of both worlds” for clients. And it gives us access to some very knowledgeable individuals and some very deep data stores.

We think communications need to grab an unfair share of attention and sales. And we think this set up can do just that.

It’s early days – there’s a lot to do and a lot to learn. But it’s got purpose.

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Here’s our press release, with a bit more info on who’s involved and where they came from. It’s the first release – there’s more news to come.

“Miller, Perry, McTear and Law launch hybrid creative agency”

Neil Miller and Chris Perry, the former Joint CEOs of Razorfish London, have teamed up with Tony McTear, the ex-Creative Director of Fallon, and TBWA’s Head of Planning, Simon Law. Together, they’re launching a new hybrid creative agency, called True Worldwide.

The agency sets out to unite the worlds of advertising, digital and technology in equal measure. The technology part is a set of new tools, built by an expert team in Seattle, that provide a unique insight into customer behaviour at every stage of campaign development and measurement.

Chris Perry and Neil Miller originally founded one of the first digital shops in London in 1995, called DNA, which sold to Avenue A/Razorfish in 2005. Following that, they were joint CEOs of Razorfish London, winning numerous digital awards and working on major brands like Audi, O2, NSPCC, Oxfam and McDonald’s. McTear’s pedigree is AMV, BBH, TBWA and Fallon, producing award-winning campaigns like Levi’s Twisted, Sony Playstation Mountain, Orange, Lynx and Club Med. Simon Law was Head of Planning at TBWA and previously spent five years out in San Francisco at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, where he led the planning team on HP globally.

Chris Perry said “We set out with a blank sheet of paper to create an agency that helps clients get closer to their consumers and to deliver an unfair share of attention for their brands.”

McTear observed: “It’s interesting to see how agencies are trying to battle each other for ownership of both advertising and digital spend. The smart money has to be on finding ideas that transcend both channels and the right balance of people from the start to make it all work together.”

Owned by the founders and WPP, the agency launches in London, with plans to create a network for global clients.

Superb – needs no explanation at all. Jim McDowell has big, huge cahonas and he’s bought a bold idea here. Love it.

See the main video here:

Then go to the FaceBook page to see the whole thing play out…

There’s good, there’s great… then there’s almost 8 million views in 8 days. Genius. Watch it again or, if you’re lucky enough, enjoy it for the first time.

Then go to the YouTube channel and watch more…

Cool piece of entertainment from Nike… Really nice.

Another lost iPhone, another glimpse into the near future…

What if your marketing strategy was to “lose iPhones” (or any other piece of tech), in order to seed interest and get awareness up pre-launch?

It would be a smart, cheap route to get PR coverage and you’d get huge awareness amongst the people most likely to be your first purchasers.

You’d have to act enraged… and in the news today, we’ve found out that “Court documents in the case of the lost iPhone prototype have been unsealed, revealing that Apple itself asked for the search warrant of an online journalist’s home.” suggesting that they are suitably pissed-off by the event.

On the one hand, it strikes me as ludicrous, because Apple’s real strategy is to design the most stunning, usable technology, then to go to every length to ensure that the launch is as eagerly anticipated as possible.

Yet, what if the leaks have always proved useful – only going to build even more interest? Would you prompt some?

To be honest, I don’t believe the theory, I just like the idea.

The shame is that another manufacturer can’t use this trick. But I don’t think many would have the following that results in big money being paid to see a new prototype. Maybe it’s because they’re all so desperately seeding everything in the hope they can drive interest? Maybe it’s because the products aren’t held in high enough esteem? Maybe they just haven’t tried…

Maybe only Apple could do it?

Great new spot from Toyota. It’s been out for a little bit, so apologies if you’ve seen it already. But what a great way to hit a minivan/people carrier positioning.

I wrote a brief years ago for the Toyota Previa that wasn’t as good as this, but was similar – it was trying to position a minivan as a symbol of virility for men – the thought being you shouldn’t be ashamed of driving a car that takes a lot of children. It just means you’re a man who produced a lot of children. Trying to take head-on the “that’s not the sort of car I want to end up in – it’s a symbol of being a man subsumed by his family.” And I think they’ve nailed that with this ad…

There’s a YouTube channel and a Facebook page to round out the social connection. As well as a link to a landing page on the Toyota site that brings in the car info and options… digging into the YouTube channel, I’m not loving the other content as much, but then it’s harder-working and they did get me to have a look, so it does the job it needs to.

Thanks to an APG Invite, I just discovered Dave Trott’s blog. And it’s a good ‘un. This piece on creativity particularly caught my attention because it’s so spot-on. The excerpt above only gives you a glimpse – read the whole thing… here. And think about attending the APG evening talk – looks set to be time well spent…

While you’re there, make sure you read this entry too – it’s hysterically funny as well as useful thinking.

CDP, the agency that pretty much defined the 60s and 70s, limped along through the 90s and is just about to become Dentsu (the parent company). The work is almost the definition of great in those two decades (60s/70s), and the best thing about this celebration site (for us non-CDP’ers) is the collection of old work that’s being collected there. Go here to see it all.

If you ever worked at CDP, though, go and claim your party invite.

And, if you’ve never heard of the agency, read up about it here on their site and here on Wikipedia.

Meanwhile, can someone tell me how on earth they got so much outdoor media spend on the A4/A40 corridors??!!?

Even DDS is in on this, with a birthday note (mentioning their own history, of course!)…

Tonight is Earth Hour – at 8.30pm locally, wherever you are.

It’s started already – go to Flickr to see the photos of people taking part in New Zealand, Fiji, etc… Look at the YouTube channel for more info. Visit the main site and sign up to take part yourself or just share in the activity.

It’s a lovely, collective piece of passion for mother earth, organised by the WWF and friends.

And it’ll be interesting to go back tomorrow and see all the images, video, etc. from people involved – I wish there was a live satellite feed to show the lights going out – maybe there is and I just didn’t spot it.