TBWA/CHIAT/DAY

This week we visited the renowned TBWA/CHIAT/DAY! The interiors are the best I've seen yet - almost like yellow fever in a good way. This giant warehouse environment is one giant open space with each cubicle having a distinct character to it - be it the furniture, the beautiful display of lights, art, you name it - it's in there!

Similar to our visit to 180LA a week earlier, we started off with meeting our speaker for the day - Scott Stanner, who is the Planning Director @TBWA.

There he is.. Do all marketing professionals have interesting LinkedIn pictures? So far, it appears that way.

We started off with some of Chiat/Day's notable works whose clients include Airbnb (a company that I love as I am a 'Superhost' currently and have met a bunch of interesting people through the portal), Disney, Buffalo Wild Wings, Gatorade, The Grammys, Netflix, Twitter and many other notable brands that any marketing professional would be honored to work with!

I love this agency's philosophy of 'disruption'. The philosophy works this way - there are a set of conventions surrounding a brand/activity/idea that makes it difficult for it to move forward. And then there is the vision, that the brand is trying to achieve - this may be a certain specific way that the brand wants to be viewed through the perspective of their current/prospective customers.

And how to get from 'convention' to 'vision' is through 'disruption' of the convention and setting in an idea in the consumer's mind that moves the brand to it's vision.

Stanner gave an example of Buffalo Wild Wings - how they beat the convention of it being just another wings & beer joint to positioning it more as a sports bar where people meet to enjoy a game together where they can also get the most sort after food for such occasions - beer & wings.

Another example would be Gatorade's ad, targeting athletes saying 'it's what's inside that matters' then moving on to the athlete drinking/chewing Gatorade. The ad shifts the focus from physical workouts which focus on what's outside to what goes inside.

Two thoughts I found interesting from this session were:

1) People are most likely to be artificial when they are being watched.                                                              2) Be a good actor.

I found Scott Stanner's approach of 'living the brand' very inspirational - in context to his Best Buy client - and is something I will always keep in mind when encountering a marketing issue going into the future. 

For more on Scott Stanner's journey in Best Buy : http://projectblueshirt.blogspot.com/