With the agency moving to London I’ve been keen to immerse myself in ‘London life’ and engage with some of the cool stuff on our doorstep. I discovered the D&AD Festival as I was looking for an event that was all about campaigns, as that’s a big focus for me this year.
Alongside wanting to understand what people want from campaigns, I wanted to learn about what makes a campaign award-worthy. The event included Judges panels talking about the campaigns they’d judged and why they worked. They also spoke about where certain things didn’t work and what could be learnt from it. Given StrategiQ’s ambition to win a Cannes Lion in the next three years, understanding how judges think and the nuances was really helpful, it really underlined why insight led work was automatically elevated.
There were lots of great talks throughout the day but the three that really stood out for me were:
1. The Psychology Behind Craft
Ben Langsfield, Buck | Teo Connor, Airbnb | Dr Paul Marsden, UAL.
Teo Connor, is VP of Design at AirBnB who had just released a new app which has led to them being the industry design leaders right now (pinching Apples top spot!). She spoke on the concept of craft, what it is and why you should care about it.
Psychologist Dr Paul Marsden focused on a behavioural learning mindset. He talked about AI and the idea of craft, defining it as “care and confidence”. He went on to encourage us to ensure that the human element and care goes into everything we’re doing, thinking about the story we’re telling an d the human our work is connecting with.
The statement he made that stuck with me the most was that “everyone has three billion heartbeats, what are you going to choose to use yours on?”
2. Jury Insights: Creative Wins in Gaming and Other Virtual Worlds|
Charlotte Willians, The Thought Partnership | Jorge Calleja, Meta | Claudio Lima, Druid Creative Gaming | Kadine James, Artificial Rome & The Immersive KIND
I’ve been increasingly interested in the connection between games and culture and how we can harness it for a campaign I’m working on. This was a fascinating session on how advertisers are using the gaming industry to sell stuff.
They used the FC25 game sponsored by McDonalds as an example. When FC25 was released (September 2024), Burger King wanted to be part of it, but McDonald’s had locked them out through forming an official partnership. How could BK get in on the action? Their creative agency, Happiness, knew that they couldn’t afford to miss out on these vital connection points with their key audience so they thought their way around the problem.
The most popular game involves building your own ‘Ultimate Team’ with any player from any division. Within the player base are those called ‘Burger’ (like ‘Wouter Burger’ – Stoke City) and ‘King’ (Like Joshua King’ – Toulouse). So Happiness used social posts and influencers to teach FC25 fans how to trick the in-game AI commentators into saying “Burger King”. It was simple, all they had to do was select players called ‘Burger’ and ‘King’ and score “Burger to King” goals. By using the new in-game record feature, they could capture these gameplay clips and post them to their social channels. In return they’d receive a voucher in a direct message.
This bold campaign really challenged me not to jump to the obvious solution with campaigns. It also made me think how important it is to know where your clients’ audience are and meet people where they are. It really refocused me on the audience.
If they’re gamers, they’re sitting in their room, living in the game, not on social media. If you’re going to persuade them to order your burger over another, you’ve got to be there engaging with them, and the more fun and immersive that is, the better. It was certainly a really smart agency take-away take-over!
3. Precipice (How to start a creative company at the worst point in history to start a creative company)
Nils Leonard, Founder of Uncommon
Nils was really generous in speaking about his journey with Uncommon, sharing loads of tips on why you should and shouldn’t do certain things, which really made me think. He talked about doing work for the right reason and basing it on authenticity and getting your thinking the right way round, wanting to “do fantastic work and if we win an award for it that’s great”.
He shared a really interesting perspective on pitch decks which I’ll carry on thinking about, “worry less about the facts and more about the emotions”. StrategiQ are always conscious of balancing our work on Intelligent Performance and Emotive Brands, it can be easy to lean more on our ‘proof points’ of performance than the emotion of creative storytelling.
He explained that if we worry less about the facts and more about the emotions and focus on that, we’ll approach things in the right way because it forces us to think about why we’re partnering with the client and the motivation for the work. It made me think about how passionate I am about a campaign I’m working on at the moment and how we as an agency can get behind it if we really believe in it. It was a fantastic session.
It was great to bump into Lee Bofkin of Global Street Art again, who was there delivering a masterclass and I enjoyed meeting loads of different creatives from really diverse backgrounds which was awesome. I think my main takeaway from the day was (no not a Burger King) ‘Think Differently and Be Creative’.
