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we are here today with colum Murphy the group strategy director for droga 5 and advertising agency based in New York
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City colum thanks for being here you're very welcome when you begin working with
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a new brand or on a new campaign what are the first questions you ask what kind of data do you need to get started
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yeah so the way that we like to think about things it's uh it's actually a
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pretty simple um construct but then there can be a lot of depth within it um is we look at the world through uh
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through four lenses we call them the four seas which is um uh the company the cat the consumer and culture and within
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each of those there's different amounts of research that you might need to do
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depending on what um uh what you already have available and then what new new questions you need to answer um but you
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know we get a lot out of um digging really deep into what the company's all about what the DNA and soul of the the
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the organization might be about like what the brand really stands for not just what it's selling um what people's
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Ambitions are where they want it to go um that's the that's the first part of
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it and the second part of it is the category so what else is happening around um around the uh the business
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that this brand is in what what white space might there be what other opportunities what are the tropes and
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things that you want to avoid uh what are the category Dynamics um then the third part is consumer Insight which is
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probably the one that most people are uh would can um would be familiar with um but what we like to try and do there is
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try and try and get a little deeper trying and get into something that maybe um hasn't been uncovered by by normal
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research um and uh but then because consumers are really good at telling you where they are now what they're thinking
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about at the moment the fourth is is often the most interesting to us which is the the cultural piece so um uh which
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is where are the uh what's happening in the culture that surrounds the subject
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matter that you're thinking about because what's happening there is where
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the customers will be in the future so um we also do a lot of research there very um very qualitative research often
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with um cultural leaders and experts that can um uh help us unlock a little bit about where things are going to go
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rather than where they are now now and it was actually it's interesting because
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it kind of ties in with my next question is I was reading an article about the agency and an executive from ker had a
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really interesting quote about droga 5 when they said that droga 5 they don't
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ose their brand on the they don't impose their brand on the brand and so I was
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curious like what does that mean to you in terms of I mebe not making it about Drogo 5 and making it more about the
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brand but also I mean you want people to know it's you in some sense yeah I think
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I think the the thing that's consistent about what we do is um is the the influence that we're trying to achieve
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so it's more about the the way that it performs rather than the content of the
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work I think the um the process I was just talking about with the four C's is
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going to be different for every brand in every different situation because it has
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different customers um and and they deserve a go a fresh start every time so every every brand should have its own um
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totally unique point of view its own purpose and its own um whatever executional um elements and style are
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are right for that situation um I think what what we try and do is we have a set
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of um a set of values that we hold um that are always the same uh in how we work so we're always um creatively LED
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strategically driven um digitally native and Humanity obsessed uh which is just it's a it's just a
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um a a set of principles that I think will always apply and they they will always get us to the right product for
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the problem at hand um but I think the the similarities work in terms of philosophy more than um strategy or or
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or execution for for any particular brand now I mean these days I mean I guess when I someone like me would usly
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think of advertising you think of maybe just a commercial or an ad but today it's just I mean it's about a full
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campaign I mean it's about multiplatform and one of those a big one of those is
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social media and I wondered when you're planning for campaigns these days how do you
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determine like the right content for each platform and then also how do you plan for I guess verality I mean droga 5
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has been lucky enough to have campaigns yeah that have gone viral so for example
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you guys were behind the Newcastle ale this is not this was what our Super Bowl commercial would have been campaign for
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example and that did go viral but you can't really plan for virality so how do
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you how do you how do you kind of walk that type of I think that's right I mean
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verality is something that you are rewarded with if if you create something that people really really uh get value
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from so um you know if something's very entertaining or very useful you have a
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chance of it becoming viral but you you plan for being entertaining or useful not for being viral um that's that's
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something that you have the the privilege of of being the benefactor of if uh if if you create something that
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people genuinely want um so I think that's that's the first part of it but
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more more generally um we have after we've done the brand strategy um part of
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what I was talking about U with the four C's uh there's a just as robust
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Communications planning uh process where we um uh we we think about what are the
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tasks that Communications need to achieve what are the right channels for uh achieving those tasks um and then
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what is the right content to fill those channels so um it's all part of a of a
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plan which is far broader than than any one particular piece of content um and you just pull the right levers at the
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right time so I wanted to talk a little bit more in depth about a campaign that I think you recently worked on now this
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was a campaign by Dixie which is they make cups they make plates and this was a campaign that was planned around the
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message of #g go dark for dinner and what it was is encouraging people to take a dinner take a meal with their
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family but without their devices and this was a partly based on I think a a survey that Dixie helped do which showed
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that most people don't do that which I know from my own experience it's really
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hard to do even no matter how much you want to now can you take me through a little bit about how you work with a
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brand to decide like this was the right matchup for the brand in terms of this is you know want to promote the brand
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but we also want to promotee this particular message to people this sort of thing going on in the culture and how
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do you kind of strike that balance of you know obviously in the end Dixie wants people to buy Dixie Cubs but at
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the same time you're also sort of encouraging this more altruistic message of we also want you to spend time with
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your family yeah so I mean I I think they're they are two branches of the same thought for the brand which is that
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what we really wanted to do is find a different way of thinking about what disposable products can do for people so
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um there is uh you know it's a fairly common to talk about this disposable products as things that can save you
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time but we thought it was really interesting to think about actually what if it's about making your time better
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you know and and one thing that we found when we were doing doing our research uh
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into what we thought the brand could the the position the brand could take was we
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were finding out about um the people were really really um looking for more emotional presence in the moments that
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they had around their around their meal times um and we actually thought that the the the the plate was a a tool that
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could help you do that um so once you had established that that's what we wanted the brand to stand for it then
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became a fairly natural evolution of it to then think about so what are the enemies of emotional presence and the
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biggest one that we found from doing the survey and from other other sources were
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mobile phones it's the one thing that just like punctures the little bubble that you really want to try and create
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around mealtimes own bubble exactly and you know and and people um people love those moments and Dixie has a place in
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that in that moment um and so it's totally right I think for that brand to stand up for protecting that moment and
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I also find it interesting um with some of these campaigns like with the Dixie campaign and then also with the one that
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you guys have the the ones that you have done around honey m g crackers which has
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looked at kind of various different types of families the one I watched actually was about um non-traditional
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families and they were Blended families so parents who gotten divorced and then gotten remarried and it focused on the
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child who is spending time in both households and also has siblings in both households it was interesting to me
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because I'm a stepmom right but um what was interesting to me is just with that
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and with Dixie it's these longer kind of documentary length yeah I don't I
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wouldn't even call them ads and it was interesting I guess how do you take would you start with that and kind of
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break it down into the smaller pieces that then become the commercial the social media or do you start with the
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small and take it to the big or is it somewhere in the middle yeah that's a good question I mean I think the the the
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way that we really think about it is you know what do we want the the brand to be
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known for and then what's the right way of telling the story and and often with
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the um with the examples where we're we're getting into quite big cultural uh
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discussions it deserves a longer format um way of bringing it to life so um it'll be more about what's the right way
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of telling the story that we're that we're that we're wanting to tell and
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then um you know commercial there's a media plan to fill as well so then you
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know if if it requires breaking down into smaller segments then then you do that but I definitely would think about
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it more in a top down way um which is you know what's the story we want to tell what's the best way of telling it
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and then and then uh what's what are the right executions to do it and now that
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brings me actually to another campaign so you guys recently launched um I think it's under armour's first Global
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campaign around soccer or football as we call or football as most people call it
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soccer as we call it exactly so we're probably wrong but um how do you when you're working on a global campaign I
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mean I guess even just the wording sort of shows the differences right there between culture the culture here and
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culture and other places when you're working on a global campaign I mean how
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are you able to kind of keep that balance where you're reaching out to such I mean it's such a derse group of
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people just in one country def in the world that that's you know expanded that's expanded on by two or three or
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four or five or a million times so how are you able to kind of how do you strategize for a campaign that's Global
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how does that make it different how does that change things it's it's really
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difficult I think when you start getting into it you realize quite how much of the discussion that we have with one
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another um movies music advertising anything like how much of it does rely on local nuance and and and local
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context um but what you're looking for I think in in that particular example is
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well you're always looking for what's the highest the highest common factor
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that unites everybody that you're trying to speak to about the subject that you're trying to speak to them about so
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um you know luckily I think with that campaign we had a very specific audience which was um um young football players
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and and and they are united by football and actually there's an attitude that
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you that really um brings all those guys together um which is um you know about about the mental strength that it takes
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to just keep on like getting up and facing challenges over and over and over again which is what you can see in the
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work um and actually it was it was great we use our our um Global Network to to validate that that was a thought that we
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had and we we um we we spoke to actually um uh Scouts and coaches and people who
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were involved with um with with teaching young kids soccer uh and that's what
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they that's what they thought it was and then we tested that hypothesis in different countries to see if it was a
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thing that held true um uh and it did and that was that was great so that came from that came from the sport itself was
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the thing that United all those people at that time but yeah you're you're you
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have to find something that's Universal and that could be that can be challenging now with um you're saying
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you do a lot of cultural research in terms of trying to bring campaigns to life now with um so we're in sort of a
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period right now where Millennials are becoming the dominant consumer group and then behind them we have I guess what
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people are calling either Generation Z or MTV is calling them the founders how does as they become kind of the majority
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among consumers how does that change the way you approach campaigns I mean you're
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doing it differently than you would for say the majority baby boomer audience or
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even the greatest Generation before them all of that was definitely I mean the the inputs that you take I mean I don't
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think there's anything specifically we we would approach it with the same specificity as with any audience you
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know I mean the fact that they're that they're um Bound by an age group is is
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is is true but it's it's by the by really like we you know in like for example with the Under Armor campaign we
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were looking at um at kids of a certain age that play football but football was the thing that was uniting them so you
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know we will always um from both an insights point of view and a especially from a media point of um point of view
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look at how the group of people that we're thinking about um behave and how they think uh I I think specifically for
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for the groups that you're asking about I think there are there are certain um
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brand behaviors that are becoming more important as time goes on but I don't
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even think they're necessarily isolated to um to to to gen Z and Gen Y um but
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you know I think there there're things like um transparency for example I think
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that we're we're um in a an environment where people demand transparency from
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from Brands um it's uh the the interaction that a brand has with with it with its audience is so direct now
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that there's there's an expectation from customers and particularly from you from
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Young Ones um that they will have a transparent and honest relationship with with the the brand that they're talking
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to um and and and they're also fine with having relationship with Brands you know
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I think they they expect there to be discourse and they expect it to be honest but they're fine with having
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relationship with brand I think is is something that may be more true of that group than than others um some other
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examples I think are um personalization I think there's a lot of um room now
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there are a lot of tools available to to brands to personalize messages and I think that's another thing that's
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becoming an expectation um from um from people standards standards can be set outside of advertising you know like the
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the kind of personal service that's um the standard that's set by companies
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like Uber or um or something else where people are using um very personal data to um to provide a better service that's
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setting the standard now that brands are expected to live up to um and so I think
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personalization is another really big theme I'm curious and wondering if you
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when you're working with a brand on a particular campaign I mean what do you
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do if coming to you with something that maybe is the opposite of what you're
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coming at them with I mean how do you arrive at kind of the middle ground of what you're what what it's going to be
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in the end I mean I think generally we want to work as closely as possible um uh with with our clients and with
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everybody else who's involved in uh in the creation of the work and I think um
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there shouldn't really be surprises you know I think if you're if um the the the
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iteration of U of progress towards whatever it is you're going to do um should mean that you're you're really um
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more together than than apart on most decisions um I think generally it's better to pick pick a path and do it
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properly than it is to water it down with compromise um but yeah really I mean those are decisions that you should
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be making together and informing with um with strategy and with research so that
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uh you should you should rarely be too many million miles away from one another so we have my final question is one that
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we actually ask of a lot of people that come here to our studio which is what gets you up in the morning and
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conversely what keeps you up at night yeah I mean I think what's great about
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what we're doing at the moment is uh we're doing like the the world's best
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creative work on bigger and bigger canvases so I get really excited about that about seeing if we can know
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maintain the same level of uh of creative Integrity but do it on on the biggest possible
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scale and then for um in terms of what keeps me up at night I think um you know a big part of what what we've got to
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manage not just in terms of media but in terms of messaging and audiences and is
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is about simplifying complexity and I think that's the hardest part of our job
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and in every everything we do it's about trying to make very complicated things
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very simple and I think that that's that can be the thing that keeps you up at
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night great thank you so much for being with us you're very welcome thank [Music]
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you