#50 – On Crafting Dreams, Making Posters, and the Climate Impact of Reply Alls
Hello again,
to another issue of Strategy Bites. This week/the last weeks I’ve been reading about lots of things, among which there was a piece about different kinds of differentiation, the climate impact of memes and reply all’s, crafting dreams at LVMH, and making good posters. And if that wasn’t enough a reader kindly submitted a piece – a first for this little publication! – about nostalgia. You can find that one below as a little bonus read.
Enjoy the clicks.
Six Links of Inspiration
Differentiation. A handy little overview of the different ways brands can create differentiation for and amongst themselves. It’s taken from Kantar, who obviously have a vested interested in banging the differentiation drum (it’s part of their measurement system), but regardless of that, this system feels like a good crutch for workshops or brand strategy if you’re trying to get to a defendable position.
Excess memes and ‘reply all’ emails are bad for climate, researcher warns. I have a colleague who rolls his eyes and audibly blows out air through his nostrils whenever someone hits reply all on an email. Now he can pretend it isn’t just because he’s continuously grumpy, no it’s because he’s concerned about the climate: “By 2030, the National Grid anticipates that datacentres will account for just under 6% of the UK’s total electricity consumption, so tackling junk data is an important part of tackling the climate crisis.”
‘Living for the weekend’ has become a nightmarish obligation for Gen Z. I urge you to read past the lazy generational label in the headline because this article ponders an interesting tension (that doesn’t necessarily feel very unique to younger people): the felt pressure of making the most of the scarce spare time we all enjoy, for example the weekends. “I’ve succumbed to the pressure of going excessively OTT on the weekends. Think of it as trying to compensate for the dreariness of my weekly routine, which consists of eating, sleeping, working and repeating.”
Learnings from the Client Side. I’ve shared stuff from Mark before (despite the fact that I then can’t tag him in my posts. Silly.) but this one I found particularly interesting because it resonates with someone who loved (still loves, to be honest) the occasional Tah-dah! Look here’s the one thing that’s going to solve it all moment. Mark points out why that’s often not representative of the reality of a client’s business and their operations. A somewhat obvious and maybe soul crushing point is his observation that the purpose of a meeting is to get input for the next meeting. Anyway – go read it, because it’s not just helpful if you want to make the switch to the client side, it also helps you become a better partner to your clients.
LVMH On The Art Of Crafting Dreams. LVMH’s Global Brand Officer Mathilde Delhoume talks with WARC about the big trends in marketing (which, she insists, LVMH doesn’t talk about, instead they talk about building brands) – which she handily summarises in three C’s. Firstly , it’s about the importance of craft, because “the word ‘luxury’ doesn’t mean nothing. It means that you’re offering exceptionally well crafted products and experiences. […] Craft is becoming more important than ever. […] The second one is creativity. […] It’s important to have a creative point of view on everything. […] And the third one is culture.” A more interesting point she makes shorty after, when she points out that absence of the customer C: “Luxury doesn’t follow the customer. In FMCG we try to meet the customers need. In luxury it’s different. We try to create desire for our brands and desirability isn’t about solving problems. We don’t follow the customer, we try to surprise, delight, elate the customer, to a level where he wasn’t thinking it was possible.”
OOH Best Practice is so simple. Andrew Tindal shares his four rules for great OOH with The Drum and it’s all about play. He argues a good OOH execution plays with the brand (assets), culture, words, and, of course, the rules. In other words: posters just need to be iconic, topical, resonant, and surprising. It’s really simple, in theory, the problem is just that keeping it simple is so fucking hard.
Bonus: Dumb Phones Are Making A Comeback. Deniz Karaman shared this article with me about dumb phones making a comeback. The article calls out mental health worries as one of the key reasons. Deniz take-away is interesting: “Despite mass hype over technological progress usurping our lives, products of the past often reappear in culture. People discover a new admiration (or passion?) for things like film photography, or find that maybe the way that we used to do things was actually practical and useful (like scribbling in travel guidebooks). Interestingly, when these things make a comeback, they're usually considered edgy, and are often the preserve of niche communities as opposed to the mass practices/products they were in their time. I find this mass-to-niche reality of old products quite fascinating.”
That’s it for now. I hope you found these articles as interesting as I did. If you have read something that you think should feature here, please send me a note or drop a link in the comments.
Read you soon,
Maximilian