D&AD – Use of Media

Last night I went along to the creative kick-off of D&AD’s new category, Use of Media, at The Hospital Club in central London. The event, attended by a good spread of creatives and media agency workers, was hosted by Dave Birss, Editor-at-large of The Drum, in conversation with a panel comprising Till Diestel, Creative Director at adam&eveDDB; Becky Power, Mindshare’s first Creative Director; and Neil Burling, Media Director at PHD UK.

Tim Lindsay, D&AD’s CEO, introduced the event by taking us back to the 1970s. Back then, CDP were the first agency to start breaking out of the media box and using whole TV ad breaks, and double page spreads in press. Tim set the scene for a fascinating discussion about how the boundaries between media and creative agencies are fading, and creative use of media is crucial.

Each speaker shared a favourite, and we saw some well known game changers, as well as some lesser known examples: Lego’s CPR ad for British Heart Foundation (one of a wider series); BA’s mind-blowing ‘Magic of Flying’ billboards, which interacted with live planes; and Coca Cola’s partnership with 4OD on Share a Coke.

The discussion moved on to partnerships, and the increasing role of partnerships teams at media agencies. When speaker Becky wants to do something brilliant on Instagram, she works with Instagram to make it happen. Likewise, media owners have increasingly large creative teams to support advertisers. YouTube has a huge creative team working with its clients.

Critical to the success of creative media, all speakers agreed, was to strive for transparent advertising. This Sunday, millions of Americans will watch the Super Bowl – 60% of whom will watch just for the ads, Till told us. They have become a part of the show – people want to see them, share them, and talk about them. Audi’s Super Bowl ad has passed across my Twitter feed multiple times today, though I’m not sure what I’m going to do with 205mph of R8 in central London – a boy can dream. I digress.

Radio also holds untapped opportunities for the transparent and beautiful advertising that people want. Editorial content on radio comes in short bursts – songs, links, live performances – so a 60 second ad does not need to stick out like a sore thumb. In her film discussing this month’s Aerial Award winners, Vicky Maguire’s shares her top three tips for making great radio ads. One of these really resonated with me: listen to great radio and learn from it (or to put it another way, steal it). Comedy, quality banter, gimmicks, stunts: all the stuff that keep record numbers of people tuning in and listening every week.

For years TV ads have striven to be mini-programmes, narrative and gripping, and hopefully radio ads will follow suit more and more. And there is as much onus on media agencies to see this opportunity as there is on creatives: radio offers much more than a 30 second cage.

Talking of cages, K9 FM for Pedigree won Colenso BBDO a Black Pencil last year, a success that must have resulted from integrated thinking early on in the creative process between media agency and creative agency. I’ll be hoping to see more of that in 2016.

Thanks to D&AD for hosting another fascinating talk, and if you want to learn more about Radiocentre’s partnership with D&AD New Blood, that’s here: http://www.dandad.org/en/new-blood-dr-martens-brief/