Designing for cultural strategy

- As an ad agency, most clients come to us because they want ground-breaking ideas, and they're really eager to get to the creative, but like an iceberg, there's a whole lot of work that goes on under the surface. If you think of the creative process in three stages, typically most clients and agencies spend about 10% of their time prioritizing and defining the problem, 75% pf their time coming up with creative solutions and only about 15% of their time testing and learning. Ideally, we'd like to flip that on its head where we spend an equal amount of time prioritizing and defining problems, as we do coming up with creative solutions, let's say 40% to each, and give more time to testing and learning as we go, 20%. On the road to creating great work, it's more than just ideas. You'll need a plan for how your ideas will behave in the world. And you'll need to understand the barriers your audience face, when it comes to getting their attention. One of the best brands to do it is Burger King. Not only do they create some of the best work in the world but they created conversation-worthy work. And they showed they had a great plan and understood their audience better than anyone else. In 2016, the Cannes Lion Award show, the biggest show in advertising that celebrates the most creative work, named Burger King, Marketer of the Year. I'd like to share with you three of my favorites. Burger King ran a series of print ads as part of their flame-grilled campaign, featuring photos of real-life restaurants burning down, as a way to demonstrate how their flame-grilled method of cooking is. While print may be considered old-school media, the best ads have an interactive relationship with their audiences. Burger King turned what, for others might be considered a crisis moment, into something playful, edgy and conversational. Another example of why Burger King can connect with their audiences is how they partnered with PlayStation. In an effort to capitalize on the global e-sport market, which is expected to reach roughly $1.5 billion in 2020, Burger King sought to get a foothold in the market in Spain, as a large portion of their audience is already into gaming. And by partnering with gamers to bring them in-game food delivery. The campaign called Burger Clan, allowed gamers to use their microphones to place their orders from within the game to take advantage of Burger King's 99-year old special deal. As part of their campaign, they enlisted YouTube influencers, created a demo video, invited the media along, and created a launch event in Madrid city center. What I really love about this campaign is that Burger King knew their audience and adapted to their lifestyle, and created a solution that served their needs, that when people are playing, they don't want to stop. Another example of why Burger King was Marketer of the Year at Cannes, was how they hacked Google Home. At the time, voice-activated assistants, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, were relatively new technology, and Burger King sought to create the first-ever TV commercial that activated Google home devices on purpose. The campaign ran 15-second spots that featured the phrase, Okay, Google, what is the Whopper Burger? Any Google Home device within earshot, upon hearing the prompt, took users to the chain's Wikipedia page, which sounds pretty cool, right? But then that's when things got really interesting. People got to editing the Wikipedia page, contributing disturbing things, and making it a viral hit. It became such a success that people were saying, Okay, Google, what is the Whopper Burger, just to take them to Burger King's Wikipedia page to hear all the wild things that people edited on the page. Soon after, Google disabled it. So Burger King and their agency released Tweet versions of the ad that would trigger the device once again. Using technology to infiltrate people's homes, and have bit of a laugh, is yet another reason why Burger King is at the top of their game.