'Cross The Breeze

Why marketers should think more like entrepreneurs

February 21, 2013 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

A while ago I did this interview for a new venture of mine (Belgian Cowboys) with Johan Van Dyck. Now before you walk away because you have no idea who that is, you should hear me out. Johan used to be the CMO of the brewery Moortgat which is most known for beers such as Duvel, De Koninck, Vedett, Achouffe, … most of which are sold all over the world. So pretty decent job to say the least, one he did so well he became local Marketer of the Year his last year on the job. And yet, one day he decides to leave this all behind to start his own little brewery. In a market that is in decline and in the country with probably already most beers in the whole world – aka Belgium – that is not an easy one.

It’s not like it was a one-day decision, Johan had become fascinated with the history of beers that had dissapeared, some of which had been hugely popular at a certain point in time. One of those beers was Seefbier, during the 1900′s the most popular beer in Antwerp. But partially due to WWI and II it didn’t exist anymore. Even worse, the recipe was lost as well, nobody knew how it was made anymore. So while at Moortgat Johan went to great lengths to try to find that recipe during his free time. Libraries, old relatives of brewers, … you name it, Johan researched all. And with succes, because he found the recipe and got to make a sample.

What started of as bit of a hobby out of control I presume got really serious then. The beer tasted actually pretty good and he started planning for his own brewery. Something he couldn’t combine with his work at Moortgat obviously so he totally went for his own adventure. Today Seefbier exists again for about a year now and it’s pretty darn good.

Seefbier

So back to the interview. While we were actually talking about this adventure, marketing, … a lot of it seemed to related to a kind of entrepreneurial attitude, but from a marketers point of view. Therefore I decided to write it down that way, why marketers should think more like entrepreneurs:

Manage your marketing from the POV of the CEO. Plan as if it were your own money, is if it were your own business. This way you won’t just mark todo’s off your list but you will have to care about the full picture.
Know your product. I know it sounds obvious to many but still not to all. New on the job or new people in the team? Provide a way to make them learn the product very well before starting. Not with slides, but there where the product is being made.
Put the hours in. If you want to be succesful as an entrepreneur you will have to have your business on your mind all day long. Work doesn’t stop when you close the office door at 6PM. There’s not such thing as a free lunch.
Value entrepreneurship and not just success. This attitude is very different in the US compared to Europe. In the US people value an entrepreneur, even if eventually things don’t work out, you will still get respect for trying. It shows courage and initative. Don’t just value success.
Take risks. You would expect entrepreneurs and startups to be much more careful when it comes to taking risks – it is their own money, their own loan right? And yet that is not the case most of the times. Marketers who work with other people’s money tend to be a lot more for playing on the safe side. Don’t.
Take decisions, give directions. Don’t just distribute all the work incl. all decisions to other people or agencies, in the end it is your business and you’re appointed to be able to design strategy and direct marketing yourself. People can support you on that but don’t just put all the hard issues with other people.

A last thing Johan told me before we finished our Seefbier is something I want to share with you as well. I wondered if he wasn’t scared about the size of his competitors (AB Inbev, Moortgat, …) to which he replied: “The bigger the plates, the bigger the holes. I need big competitors to be able to function. Bring ‘em on.” I like. Good luck Johan!

advertising, marketing

duval, entrepreneur, lesson, marketer, moortgat, seefbier, tips, tricks

Why you should be using short-form video in your online communication

September 14, 2012 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

I’ve been a close witness to some of the impact short-form video has had on campaigns I was involved in. Small campaigns like the launch of IKKI.be (which most of you will be unfamiliar with) where the video was responsible for creating so much buzz within the target audience that we had reached the platform sign-up target within days instead of months. Or campaigns where the video travelled the world such as we experienced with “Bikers” for Carlsberg or “Push to add drama” for TNT.

All of these (and other) cases made me get a firm believe in short-form video used within online communication strategies. Fast Company believes the same – read “Why Short-Form Video is the Future of Marketing” – where they highlight some key reasons why that is the case:

More and more users are consuming their video entertainment online
Marketers are using video to engage with social media audiences
Barriers to entry are low
Quality is expanding quickly
There are plenty of avenues for dissemination

All true, but apart from the 3rd point, all of these are mostly observations of what is happening and not really reasons of why it is happening. So I agree, but I think they are missing the point a bit.

Video is a very rich audiovisual experience but it allows brands as well to keep control of the story in a time there’s no more control. You can craft a message in such a way (editing, music, …) that you get the maximum effect and when people share it they share it generally for the full 100%. So basically if you’re doing a good job, people will share your video content adding comments etc so taking over control – but not over the message, because when it is consumed again, it will be again exactly how you as a producer crafted it in the first place. That is what makes it very powerful for online communication, the combination of this fact with the knowledge that more and more people consume online video entertainment.

This doesn’t mean video should always be the center piece of your communication online, but try to get video in that communication in some form as much as you can. It’s pretty powerful.

My 2 cents

advertising, branding, creativity, internet, marketing, media, video, viral

communications, consumer, future, innovation, marcom, marketing, online, video

Agency of the year. And what a year it was!

June 25, 2012 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

What a week. What a month. What a year. Exactly one year ago we announced that Duval Guillaume would merge it’s Brussels and Antwerp offices into one called Duval Guillaume Modem (in Antwerp). When I look back at the interview both our Executive Creative Directors did with ‘De Morgen’ then I read:

“It’s time for the next step: to be the first Belgian agency to play a real part internationally and again write advertising history.”

We’re not there yet, but we certainly made a good step in the right direction. Last week at the Cannes Lions our agency won 8 Gold Lions, 4 Silver, 2 Bronze and the Media Agency of the Year award. A new Belgian record that placed the agency at the 6th place worldwide in the final agency ranking at the festival.

All of that only 2 weeks after we already won the Belgian Creative Agency of the Year award at the 2012 CCB Awards. And 7 months after winning the Digital Agency of the Year award for the second year in a row. Proud. Very much so.

Yes it’s been a lot of hard work for everyone at the agency. But what a reward. Being celebrated by the industry both locally and internationally for the work is just friggin’ awesome! What a good way to celebrate my 3 year anniversary at the agency :-)

advertising, creativity, duvalguillaume

agency, agency of the year, award, awards, bronze, cannes, cannes lions, ccb, celebrations, gold, lions, silver

Create value & value creative

June 11, 2012 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

When Lee Clow speaks, you listen. The man renown for his work on Apple and Absolut at TBWA/Chiat/Day talked about his thoughts on agency compensation a few weeks ago in a video for an event organized by the 4A’s.

In the video he talks about how good creative ideas can be very valuable brand assets and that other than in most creative industries (media, artists, …) you don’t get paid for the value of what you create:

“Unfortunately, in our business, we get paid like we’re doing our clients’ laundry. We haven’t figured out that the ideas that we create can become a very powerful asset to the brands we work for. Many of the ideas — whether they be slogans or advertising forms and styles or a voice that we create for brands — could be listed on the balance sheet of our clients as an asset with millions and millions of dollars in value.”

I think he’s right to the point that the power of good creativity gets undervalued. Good creative and good results go hand in hand and therefore it’s important for businesses to realize that it’s not something you can commoditize, like Mr. Clow mentions in the video. We should – together with our clients – work out different ways of valuing ideas though:

“We’re supposed to be a creative business, but I think we have been probably the least creative industry in the history of the world in terms of figuring out how to get paid.”

With businesses under pressure due to the ongoing crisis there seems to be an always bigger focus on the end (marketing) product – what you see is what you get. The time or talent needed to make the best creative possible are often ‘invisible’ to clients which results in what Mr. Clow talks about in his video.

This also puts pressure on the client - agency relationship, something which doesn’t lead to the best results either as shown by Frank Shuring at the ‘My message in your brain’ conference (NL). His neuroscience research showed that better client – agency relationships directly lead to much better results. Surprised? Not really. Sounds obvious, so now let’s make it happen. And let’s discuss what it is that both sides value most, so we can get out of this crisis together.

advertising, bringtheloveback, creativity, inspiration, interview, marketing, research, strategy, video

absolut, advertising, agency, apple, chiat, client, compensation, creativity, day, lee clow, relathionship, value, worth

Want something new? Ask a talent without experience.

March 9, 2012 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

About a year ago one of the founders of the agency Duval Guillaume I work for wrote a post in which I recognized myself quite a lot. I looked it up again this week since I was recently contacted to help on an innovative project which in the end didn’t go through as the prospect ended up going for someone with a long life experience in the industry they were in. And I didn’t think that was a particularly good choice. Especially since that industry has seen only little innovation in the last decades, so why chose one with a lot of experience in that industry for an innovative project? Still don’t get it.

Guillaume wrote a good post about this ‘phenomenon’ after getting similar questions from advertisers at the time he was still in the agency:

“How many times advertisers have asked me: "do your people have experience in our market?". I would answer: "Why? You want them to do the same as all the others?" When your prospect has a yoghurt brand, they’ll be so happy to hear you’ve worked for Danone or Nestlé. Even if you were only running around with coffee in the same building. They need it as reassurance. They want to make sure that you understand the yoghurt consuming human being. Actually, what they want is that you understand the Danone or Nestlé eating consumer and if you say yes, you’ll be doing me-too ads for a couple of years, until your prospect has decided it is time for someone else with the experience.”

He also made a good analogy with nature to explain even more why this isn’t a good idea:

“I use an example from nature to explain this phenomena and a solution. Listen to the frogs on a summer night. The frogs call. What they actually do is trying to get selected by a sexual partner. The frog that produces the most decibels probably has the best genes for the offspring. What happens after a while is that the frogs synchronize their calls. It gives them all individually the feeling they are loud callers. Just like small brands, they are happy to be part of something bigger. Off course, it misses its effect, because it will only confirm the big frog’s dominance. But keep listening, and you’ll see nature has found a solution to this. While all the frogs croak together, one little frog croaks off synch.

CRRRROAK!! croack. CRRRROAK!! croack

That is what you hear. And all the attention goes to the little frog.”

A lot of companies want to be different, want to zig when others zag, … but when it comes down to business they don’t act that way. They don’t hire people to zig.

“The lesson is this: If you want something new to happen, ask it to people with zero experience. Chances they come up with more of the same are small.”

Thanks again Guillaume. For this lesson and for getting me on board of the agency without having an agency background.

advertising, inspiration, marketing, strategy

experience, guillaume. duvalguillaume. modem, new, talent

Launching a unique duo iPhone app

April 5, 2011 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

Yesterday we launched a new iPhone app for Nutricia. In a new approach to support moms even more we’ve created with Nutricia this new app that helps to get dads more involved in addition of moms tracking their pregnancy.

Another pregnancy iPhone app you say? That’s what we though as well and therefore we’ve taken the new approach to involve dads because ‘Baby Connection’ works best when you use it as a couple. There’s a mum version and a dad version – and everything each parent adds is automatically synced with their partners’ phones. The app can also transform the two iPhones into one big screen. More about that in the video below:

To launch Baby Connection, we came up with an idea to make men pregnant… well kinda. You can see what we did below:

advertising, ageofconversation, consumer, creativity, duvalguillaume, marketing, mobile, technology, video

app, application, babyconnection, iphone, nutricia, pregnancy, pregnant

Step into this TV ad…

March 3, 2011 by Kris Hoet 3 Comments

We’ve launched 2 new campaigns for AXA during the last few days. In line with our “i-Ad” campaign using digital to make a print ad come to life, we’ve now come up with an idea to get more out of a TV commercial using a QR code. The code doesn’t serve as a link to a nice extra piece of information, it actually let’s you enjoy the full story. Check it out in the video below.

Only a few days earlier we also launched a campaign for AXA’s new renovation loan, using a billboard on which we’ve created a QR code with 3.800 paint pots. Quite a bit of work as well to make that one happen :) See video below.

advertising, duvalguillaume, inspiration, marketing

advertising, axa, bank, campaign, duvalguillaume, featured, iad, imercial, marketing, paint, qr, renovation, tv, video

The crying invoice

November 29, 2010 by Kris Hoet 2 Comments

Did you know that 1 in 3 invoices in Belgium are paid late? That brought us to the idea for this campaign we created for ikki, a new service of USG People developed to support freelancers. From now on invoices will never go unnoticed again: the crying invoice.

Hats off to my colleagues at Duval Guillaume who developed the idea.

advertising, beta, creativity, duvalguillaume, marketing, pr, technology, video

advertising, belgium, campaign, duvalguillaume, freelancer, ikki, invoice, usg, usgpeople

Check out Alfa Romeo’s MiToManiacs

October 4, 2010 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

Last week we launched a new campaign for Alfa Romeo: MiToManiacs as part of the Alfa MiTo launch. MiToManiacs is a nonstop race that will take you from site to site via banners. The best and fastest banner-racer will actually win a real Alfa MiTo.

And like all good games, there are some shortcuts built in. Depending on the co-driver you chose, you can unlock some shortcuts. I’ll give you one, in the scene above you can actually follow a different way to avoid being annoyed by the octopus.

Game on! I’ll tell you, you will need some practice and find those shortcuts if you want to get into the top 10.

Thanks to the people from Clint.be for the collaboration on this one.

advertising, belgium, duvalguillaume, games, inspiration, internet, racing

alfa, banner, clint, game, mito, mitomaniacs, online, race

The promise of interactive television (part 2)

September 27, 2010 by Kris Hoet 2 Comments

There are 3 reasons I once decided to get a digital television at home:

Better quality. Especially with one of those fancy new full HD screens that’s a much better experience.
Comfort features. Think about the EPG, easier recording, movie rental, …
Interactivity. Push the red/blue/whatever-color button and you will get a richer experience

The end score, 2 out of 3. I don’t know how it is in the rest of the world, but in Belgium interactive part is pretty nonexistent. I’ve used the red button less than 5 times in the 3 years I’ve got digital tv at home. It was always a disappointment. Useless information, bad experience, ugly, … Content makers nor advertisers seem to show any interest in it. Too bad because I had really high hopes for this. It’s pretty easy to imagine how this could be used in many really cool ways. Didn’t happen.

When I read about the My Generation iPad app from abc it sounded like they built an app to do what interactive tv couldn’t. The same promise all over again, but you’ll need another device to experience it. And only with My Generation on abc.

Don’t get me wrong, I think these are cool evolutions. I’m just wondering why none of the richer tv experiences have ever really succeeded without the help of peripheral devices. Sounds like a missed opportunity to me for television makers.

Anyway, good stuff from abc. Curious to see how this will evolve further. What do you think?

advertising, belgium, consumer, electronics, software, technology

abc, app, digital, interactive, ipad, mygeneration, pvr, television