Juniper Park - Stephen Bennett

Oct.1st 2010, our guest lecture was Stephen Bennett - CREATIVE DIRECTOR at Juniper Park. He loves all things digital.

  

 About Stephen Bennett

• E-mail: STEPHEN.BENNETT@JUNIPERPARK.COM
• CREATIVE DIRECTOR, DIGITAL at Juniper Park

 Pure Play

• Blue Zone
• mod7
• Blast Radius
• ninedots
• Henderson BAS

Integrated

• McLaren McCann
• Grip Limited
• Juniper Park

  

About JUNIPER PARK

• Web site:  http://www.juniperpark.com/
• Contact: 416-413-7301
• Address: 2 Bloor St. W. 6th Floor, Toronto, ON, M4W 3R6
• JP is just over 3 years old and has 75 employees.
• Art Directors, Designers, Writer, Developers, Producers, Strategists.
• Juniper Park is not a convention ad agency. 
• Juniper Park is a place where the disciplines  of strategy, design and advertising come to play.
• Create brands from scratch or they can take existing brands and point them in a new direction. 

WHERE Advertising - Strategy - Design COME TO PLAY

• consider strategy as your differentiator - it's about designing solutions - we're design thinkers first
• design thinking is based on strategic thinking- broadcast, print, ooh, digital, statement pieces

We Use a Vendor Model 

• creates ideas, establish brand movements, think about what digital space is. 
• JP actually don't handle production.
• vendor produces this for them (it's really unique, and doesn't get done in Canada as much - more so in the States)
• they use production companies (they send it out to 3 companies and they then design who they want to go with)

Brand question:

• "if you wake up tomorrow and they were gone, would you care"
• like Starbucks and Tim Hotrons
• what is it that establishes that connection with the consumer

companies sell products, brands sell ideas

• we're more concerned about establishing what the product is about 

Brand is something you want to be a part of or belong to

• they do this by creating and telling good stories
• a brand narrative is the story that is shared between people as they gather around a brand

Great ideas need to be embraced and talked about

• this is important for digital, it's not about a moment, it's about a movement
• it's all about the stories and conversations created by these ideas
• seeing something that's worth talking about and getting consumers excited about

The secret that apple knows: people are creative but lack the tools needed to set it free.

Apple's gift to the consumer: simple tools that make creativity easy

Their job is establishing an emotional connection - teaching people that this is something that they need

  

PCS : efficiency

                    

MACS : humanity

• can look up 1984 commercial during the super bowl and it only showed once
• comps with no personality to a place where it unleashes people's creativity

Still played out today with "i'm a pc and I'm a mac"

 

The secret that Sunchips knows: people are holistic in their approach to life - small steps  can make a difference

Sunchips' gift to the consumer: a company that brings you a  healthy wholegrain chip also makes small steps to a better planet

• they have solar powered factories, and compostable chip bag
• they want it to become part of your lifestyle, if you were to wake up and it was gone, your life would feel different
• greeneffect.com (that's our step, what was yours?)
• 5 best ideas get money and can go to national geographic and present their ideas to leaders (campaign) 
• consumers can come in and be a part of our story
• they were doing "green things" so that gave them permission to tell the consumer this - create this conversation.

Quaker:  Does your breakfast make you amazing?

The secret that Quaker knows: Amazing mornings can lead to amazing days.

Quaker's gift to the consumer: The right breakfast in the morning to set you up for amazing day.


A few things I have learned

• Client thinks differently 
• Digital is very healthy and my place now

It's not about who you know, it's about who knows you.

• digital is in a really healthy place right now - challenge is the scale, this world is huge

Make friends.

• They are asking each other first if they know anyone, if no THEN they look to see who's around) You're going to make friends through industry events

Be curious

• Expand your tools, get really excited about what's going on out there . 
• The moment you stop being curious, you should start thinking about something else.
• What we're thinking about today, we weren't talking about last year. 
• The place where we are now, we have to be curious. 
• find out about foursquare, put stuff on your to do list, research things, learn new tools) The story that you bring to us about all the cool things you're working on
  (including hobbies) is so important for a creative person. they except that you know stuff. 

IT'S A CREATIVE ECOLUTION BABY, TAKE YOUR TIME

• Intern, designer, Art Director, ACD, Creative Director, ECD, CCO

EXECUTION IS EVERYTHING

• It doesn't matter how good the idea is, if it's not executed correctly, it doesn't work
• Be more careful with spelling mistake, forgetting to attach things, incorrect urls
• It is not just your work but how you present yourself in the industry

Latency

•  Latency describes the lag between a cause and effect, between the moment when something is initiated and the moment it takes effect
• Cultural Latency is: the correlation between the amount of time it takes to distribute something, and the amount of time it takes for that thing to have an effect, and consequently the amount of time that thing stays relevant and interesting
• Cultual Latency is becoming ZERO
• Like Michael Jackson, he just died and yet on twitter ppl were already on the hospital before he even got there
• ppl don't necessarily sit down and have long meals, they snack on a lot - like newsfeeds
• Be relevant everyday
• The price of technology is nearing zero - it's so much cheaper now .. video, computers, internet, tools

The correlation between the amount of time it takes to distribute something, and the amount of time it takes for that thing to have an effect, and consequently the amount of time that thing stays relecvant and interesting.

YESTERDAY WAS ABOUT SEARCH. TODAY IS ABOUT DISCRETION.

• Different ways to view search results 
• They have different views so you can challenge and compare different views

BRAND NARRATIVE AS A CHAIR

• Your brand should always go back to the it's brand narrative
• love, for one or more people, cushy, hard, soft, is it oversized but not big enough, modern, rustic, sexy, rounded

PROCESS:

• What are you trying to establish
• How would you be doing distribution
• Bring it to their agency

+ IPAD

• the space is actually controlled 
• it can bring magazines back to life 
• can go back to basic design principles 
• what it brings to the table - a new way to approach the digital 
• application development that sits within these things will be a huge growth  
• not just about the device, it's about how we interact with it 
• new level of accessibility to it

+ Facebook

• you can do a lot of work within Facebook
• why have so many people gravitated towards Facebook, they use to create microsites to sell something, but would have to spend more money to tell people to find that website, so now with fb, they have a gathering of where their audience is. there's different demographics.
• CRM customer relations tool - built it, because the audience they're looking for for anything is on Facebook
• clients want us to be there
• see what ppl are doing. there are a lot of promotions
• you must understand the movements
•  challenging place