BILL DUNN
“Shit that travels at the speed of light is still shit when it gets there.”
David Abbott
I never met David Abbott, but I did often see his colleague Peter Mead at AMV, who was fond of relaying this quote to me – although in a very gentlemanly way. I’d remember these words every time I pressed send on a social campaign for a brand. It made me ask questions like: Who’s the audience? Is this worthy of their time? Or are we just annoying them?
I always try to tackle “content” like I would the pages of a magazine. Inject some humanity. Ask proper questions. Do your research. Make the words and the pictures work together. Make it fun.
CUMBERBATCH
Mercedes came to us with a nice problem to have. Benedict Cumberbatch would give us two hours of his time… tomorrow.
In 24 hours, I organised a fashion shoot for Instagram and Facebook and researched questions for an interview for video content that would appear on YouTube. Two days later, we delivered the images and the finished film – all in time for London Fashion Week.
Interviewing skills were vital. If you ask closed questions, it shuts everything down. If you ask open questions, you have a conversation.
G-WOMEN
Mercedes-Benz wanted to emphasise their presence at London Fashion Week, and raise awareness of their halo model, the G-Class. All in an inclusive way that would attract the attention of people with only a passing interest in fashion. I created content with four influencers – Vogue’s Sarah Harris, singer Ella Eyre, Maya Jama and presenter and Instagrammer Laura Jackson – that really chimed with our audience.
LIVE
INTERACTIVE FACEBOOK LIVE
I devised something special and engaging for London Fashion Week Men. Using two social influencers – Ollie Proudlock and Jim Chapman, plus Facebook Live – we asked our audience to style their own fashion shoot, choosing the car and the clothes for each personality. Once each influencer had been styled, we did an actual fashion shoot with them, creating more content for Mercedes-Benz's Instagram channel.
Daisy x Tinie x G-Class
LIVE WITH PADDY
To celebrate Walkers' new sandwich flavour crisps, they opened a pop-up, speakeasy style crisp sandwich café. I was asked to do something novel to promote it before it opened.
So I did a Facebook Live with Paddy McGuinness as host. He was to explore the various attractions of the café before hosting a sandwich making competition. I wrote a script and Paddy added to it. The clients were white with fear when we went live. But they needn't have worried. Paddy was a pro and we got simple, silly entertainment that was totally in keeping with this fun brand.
I learned two important Facebook Live lessons from the afternoon:
1) Don't believe it when someone says they've got "great wifi". Check and check again.
2) A Facebook Live is only as good as the presenter and the script.
OATS
Porridge isn't exciting. But I won a YouTubeWorks award for our data-driven, time-relevant, precisely-targeted campaign for Quaker. So if you received a video of an old man on a bike eating oats at 6am, I'm truly sorry. That was interruptive. I think we've moved on now.