No Right Brain Left Behind

This is a project I am working on in collaboration with several other planners. I am currently creating a questionnaire to interview people that work in education. We are exploring the topic of how U.S. schools are or are not nurturing creativity. Then after we brief them during Social Media Week 2011, teams from creative industries will have 5 days to speed innovate ideas that will help schools to do a better job.

No Right Brain Left Behind

View more presentations from Viktor Venson.

You know my methods, Watson.

As a fan of Jeopardy, I was happy to learn that on February 14th, a supercomputer named Watson that was designed by IBM, will be competing against Jeopardy Champions – Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. What is being considered IBM’s most ambitious foray into deep analytics and natural language processing, began back in 2007.

In this video, Dr. John E. Kelly III, Senior Vice President and Director of IBM Research says, “We decided that we needed to build a system that could extract knowledge at a must faster rate from enormous amounts of data than human beings or any other computer system could do.”

Could we as Account Planners be competing with computers in the future?

Why I think Planet Fitness has introduced the most effective advertising campaign of 2011.

1.) It’s funny. “I lift things up and put them down.” I can’t tell you how many times I have said that since seeing the commercial.

2.) They are taking a clear position. They are a gym for the casual exerciser, not the die-hard body builder. While this may be a risk, they believe in something. It is impossible to love something that has no identity and does not stand for anything. By giving people something they can latch on to, Planet Fitness is sure to create more enthusiastic evangelists for their brand.

3.) There is a strong call to action. $20 down, $10 a month if you enroll by January 12th. Ok, so I know what you want me to do and I know I need to do it immediately. Too often I see great advertising, but I don’t take action. As in sales, it is impossible to close a deal if you don’t ask for the sale, and give people a sense of urgency.

4.) The campaign has legs. All of the characters featured so far have been hilarious. They are an exaggeration of the muscle heads we have all seen at the gym before. But there is no limit to where they can go with these characters. I firmly believe that this is only the beginning.

Good job Mullen!

Harley-Davidson Turns to Crowdsourcing

Harley-Davidson is a culturally iconic, famous lifestyle brand, but it wasn’t always that way. In the 1970’s, Harley Inc. faced bankruptcy, as they could no longer compete with cheaper priced Japanese made bikes. In 1983 Harley decided to create a group called H.O.G, or Harley Owners Group, for owners to participate in rallies and remain closely in touch with the corporation. One member at a time, the company built a community using newsletters and a magazines. Harley Davidson’s President began making regular appearances at events to constantly gain input into what customers love. Here it is almost 30 years later and the company is still employing the same principles of tapping into the power of their customers to drive their marketing.

In November, Harley announced it would be parting ways with its advertising agency-of-record, Carmichael Lynch of Minneapolis, to start working with the ad agency Victor & Spoils of Boulder, which bills itself as the world’s first creative (ad) agency built on crowdsourcing principles. In October, John Winsor, the CEO of Victors & Spoils presented at the Jay Chiat strategy festival in Miami. Here is the video: