Mindshare, the global agency network that is part of WPP, is today issuing an invitation to the wider industry to #ChangeTheBrief and use its skills to address the global climate crisis.

Our greatest challenge as a society is to find a way to live sustainably.

Our greatest challenge as an industry is to show how living sustainably is possible, enjoyable, fulfilling and aspirational and that it can also drive our clients’ business. #ChangeTheBrief is Mindshare’s response to that challenge.

A recent project saw Mindshare work with Volvo in Australia on the Living Seawall project – where Volvo partnered with the Sydney Institute of Marine Science and Reef Design Lab to create a Living Seawall that actually helps to clean the water.

#ChangeTheBrief helps brands unlock and activate their social purpose in media.

Agencies that support #ChangeTheBrief commit to creating work which answers the ‘Now’ brief, to help clients sell their products, but also the ‘Future’ brief, to encourage the attitudes, lifestyles and behaviours which are consistent with a transition to a carbon-free world.

#ChangeTheBrief encourages the creation of marketing and media plans designed to encourage small changes in behaviour that will help address the climate crisis when done at scale – such as promoting shorter showers with 4 minute ad free ‘songs to sing in the shower’ playlists on Spotify or developing packaging that encourages people to freeze unused food to avoid food waste – the idea being to normalise these behaviours in society through advertising and use media and marketing investment to achieve this.

Every creative campaign, every media plan, every production proposal is an opportunity to #ChangeTheBrief, an opportunity to normalise the behaviour, the products, the services and the attitudes we all know we will need to adopt to achieve sustainable living.

With the global advertising industry investing circa $600bn a year on behalf of its clients to drive the consumption of their products and services there is a huge opportunity for brands and agencies to work together to direct that investment to bring the future forward.

Mindshare is using #ChangeTheBrief with some of its clients as part of its Mindshare Day 2019 celebrations – looking for fresh advertising, content and media ideas, which demonstrate the actions we can take to help end the climate crisis.

Mindshare has a strong history of helping brands with sustainability initiatives.

The agency recently worked with eco-friendly home and personal-care brand Seventh Generation to help it donate its commercial airtime on NBC’s The Today Show throughout the week of Sept. 16, all in the name of the climate crisis.\

Mindshare also created a product called Dooonate, which allows the user to donate out-of-office autoreplies by turning them into media space for charities.

#ChangeTheBrief builds on these efforts but has a specific focus on scaling smaller consumer actions to make an impact in the world.

Read the #ChangeTheBrief manifesto

GroupM, WPP AUNZ’s media investment arm, today announced that it has become a launch partner in Adobe’s inaugural Advertising Ambassador Program.

The Adobe Advertising Ambassador Program has been created to provide the most comprehensive Martech training and support structure in Australia and New Zealand.

The pilot program is a global first across Adobe Analytics, Audience Manager and Advertising Cloud and will culminate in certification and strategic understanding across the Analytics & Advertising Cloud products.

Being part of the programme will power GroupM’s Martech Centre of Excellence, driving certified experts across multiple Adobe solutions and embedding the media and marketing skillset of the future within GroupM’s agencies, Mindshare, MediaCom, Wavemaker and Essence.

WPP AUNZ executive director of marketing technology, Adam Good “I’m excited about the GroupM program, with Adobe being one of our key Martech partners. Great experiences using technology can set you apart and increase revenue growth, customer retention rates, and customer lifetime value. CMOs like to see agencies using multiple Adobe cloud products to help create and managing experiences that are being deployed and orchestrated across Omni channels.”

GroupM Australia’s head of trading intelligence, Liesa Newland said: “As our clients’ needs change, they are increasingly seeking guidance in the Martech arena.

“GroupM’s Centre of Excellence will provide holistic strategic support, to help brands execute on their technology and deliver their objectives across data, media and creative.

“Being part of the Adobe Advertising Ambassador programme will help our most data-driven and curious teams to dive into the technology to collaboratively solve our clients’ challenges.”

Newland continued: “GroupM are excited to be selected as a media group partner in Adobe’s inaugural Advertising Ambassador program and proud that GroupM is leading the charge for media agencies in the Martech talent space.

“These Advertising Ambassadors will supercharge our existing Martech capabilities and become knowledge hubs within GroupM on Adobe’s Marketing Stack, providing value and competitive advantage for our clients.”

Adobe Advertising Cloud APAC head, Phil Cowlishaw said: “Australian brands are increasingly adopting Adobe Analytics, Audience Manager and Advertising Cloud as they look to get a single, independent view of their customer.

“This provides greater insight into behaviour across the entire customer journey, as well as an omni-channel buying platform.

“The demand for people who can help brands succeed across these solutions has never been higher and I’m incredibly excited to see this first cohort learn, grow and drive success for our mutual clients.”

The Adobe Summit in Las Vegas is where I find myself this week in the constant search for creativity using martech. It has been running day and night from March 26th and is wrapping up today April 2. The big pressure on companies and brands now to produce creatively using their current Martech investment is a key program of work for 2019.

Company web sites have evolved from the static content and word processor approach to the primary business, marketing and sales application to create brand preference that grows the companies e-commerce approach primarily driven via machine learning and new digital applications.

The high-pressure environment for CIOs, CTOs, and CMOs who are currently making decisions on their martech investment is now a constant conversation in many board rooms and investment working groups.

Brands need much more than just touching up of existing photos combining with some long-form copy to great a category winning customer-led business solution that drives new revenue. Hence why some feel when discussing technology license and renewal agreements their current Adobe tool investment has not gone far enough. More work to be done in other words.

Brands require creativity first to go alongside a digital economy strategy and then the technology and toolset license agreement that delivers and creates compelling and personalized customer presentations always looking to improve customer experiences and revenue outcomes.

This is done using frictionless customer journey programs using a combination of text, sound, and videos that can be assessed in omnichannel environments using gesture and voice commands.

At Adobe Summit, Adobe unveiled the latest Adobe Experience Cloud innovations, including Adobe Commerce Cloud and Marketo Engage, as well as global availability of Adobe Experience Platform.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly, Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig, Intuit CIO Atticus Tysen and SunTrust Bank CMO Susan Johnson shared their respective enterprise playbooks for digital transformation. Additionally, Adobe announced key strategic partnerships with ServiceNow, Microsoft, and LinkedIn to accelerate Customer Experience Management (CXM) across enterprises.

Adobe continues to push to be the only martech tool provider that is constantly acquiring leading capabilities across the customer journey, adding marketing automation and commerce capabilities to bookend its strong digital foundation of content and data within experience cloud.

WPP is a key partner to Adobe for many years and has strategically developed a leading set of capabilities to respond to market demand for agile, technology-enabled customer experiences across the Adobe experience cloud suite.

At WPP we have over 2,225 Adobe Experience cloud practitioners, over 375 Adobe Experience Cloud Certificates and 6 Adobe Experience Cloud Advisory Board seats so our commitment is high to this martech partner.

The Adobe Sumit was attended by over 16,000 people that included Adobe direct clients as well as clients that use Adobe through a myriad of partners and add ons who assist organizations implement their big, complex solutions.

At WPP our unrivaled Adobe capability has the most comprehensive experience and expertise than anyone else in the industry. Period.

Our specialized WPP agency brands have a long-standing and deep relationship with Adobe and other experience technology companies for many years.

Adobe is a long partner of mine personally both direct to client and to the agency as a toolset for our creativity. At WPP we use them in four key areas of our business offering across communications, experience, commerce, and technology.

WPP as a creative transformation company know two things: there’s a future in becoming a systems integrator for the likes of Adobe and it is a key offering when stitching together Microsoft, Google, Salesforce and other web CMS platforms together to create business solutions.

The prospects of one company owning all of a customer’s data remains a scary one for our clients and marketing leaders now either have full responsibility, or part of a key stakeholder in the companies overall enterprise technology decisions and that landscape constantly changes.

Adobe is a giant tech company at a market cap of ($130.21 billion) but they are still small in the titanic battle martech industry is on. If you decide Adobe you will likley need to integrate with Microsoft ($919.36 billion) SAP($141.80 billion), Oracle ($184.55 billion) and IBM (127.10 billion) via your direct digitial ecosystem or via partner programs.

Outside of these key martech players, you also have integration points to the media platform providers with the market caps of Google ($844.52 billion), Amazon ($900.53 billion) and Salesforce ($122.52 billion) and LinkedIn ($26.2 billion acquisition from Microsoft.

This challenge of constant change and evolution of technology keeps everyone at WPP engaged and challenged and we enjoy being a strategic partner at the intersection of all these points with our clients.

Our WPP agency team were aplenty at the Adobe Summit as we scattered ourselves across the 300 sessions and labs either presenting or we found ourselves within the eleven content tracks that included;

• Advertising
• Analytics & Data Management
• B2B Marketing Automation with Marketo
• Content & Experience Management
• Design-Led Customer Experiences
• Email & Omnichannel Marketing
• Experience-Driven Commerce with Magento
• Marketing Innovations
• Personalization
• Platform, Machine Learning & Ecosystem

The most interesting aspect of the Adobe summit this year for me personally was seeing Microsoft getting heavily involved in the conference with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadellaand keynoting and showing the integration of their business tools and putting some life into the category beyond Office.

Microsoft is doing great with Azure but the other office tools and larger applications like the Dynamics portfolio have some slow traction in client uptake. What was signaled at the summit was the relationship between Dynamics CRM and the Adobe marketing suite is going to get stronger. Microsoft and Adobe pushed an extension of the Open Data Initiative (ODI) partnership with SAP and their investment in Account-Based Experiences (ABX) with LinkedIn is going to see a lot of new opportunities.

Adobe and ServiceNow announced plans should enable integrations between Adobe Experience Platform and the ServiceNow Now Platform to enhance Adobe’s real-time customer profiles with ServiceNow’s rich customer support data. This will create a more comprehensive view of a customer across the entire digital journey, from acquisition to service. Additionally, Adobe Experience Cloud solutions will integrate with the ServiceNow Now Platform, including its Customer Service Management (CSM) solutions.

Adobe and ServiceNow will partner to enable their mutual customers to integrate and leverage digital workflows, service catalogs, intelligent content and knowledge management capabilities (see press release).

5G is the fifth generation of wireless technology is now available and rolling out in Australia.

The connectivity benefits of 5G will make businesses more dynamic, efficient, and give consumers access to more content experiences faster than ever before. Super-connected autonomous cars, smart communities, industrial IoT, immersive education—they all will rely on 5G.

5G is also expected to allow for up to 1 million devices functioning at full capability in 1 square kilometer. Energy, Efficiency, and Service Deployment are the next key areas that will be changed by 5G, allowing for devices to consume a staggering 90% less energy in data operations compared to 4G networks.

5G will bring a world where little storage on your phone is required because everything, including mobile apps, are instantly available from the cloud.

To take this further, imagine a gaming console that works years longer than what a current one does today because you will never have to upgrade.

Instead of getting a different console with a new disc reader that supports bigger games, or better hardware to handle the newest titles, all of that processing power could be offloaded to a remote server and then streamed to directly to a device in real-time.

Some early, and simple, examples of 5G AR include projecting emails and text messages into the room or creating multiple floating monitors to extend a users computer’s display. It will be like erecting a virtual HDTV into a living room.

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are very bandwidth-demanding technologies, which 5G can handle with no problem.

Right now, AR and VR require bulky headsets, with the technology either embedded in the device or linked to a computer via a hardwire connection to help with latency. With 5G, the headsets can get much lighter, with the connection able to instantly stream content from the cloud.

Where we are today in Australia is only three mobile phones – the LG V50, Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, and the Oppo Reno 5G, along with the HTC 5G Hub which is offered at the home user looking for super-fast broadband.

It is happening fast, so hold on tight.

Frank Health Insurance has launched Australia’s first voice app via WPP AU NZ whiteGREY, for the Private Health Industry (PHI) category, built for the Google Assistant.

The ‘frank insurance’ app provides easy answers to the complicated PHI questions that plague the industry. 

To get access, users simply ask any google assistant to ‘speak to frank insurance’.  The app has been developed as an extension of frank’s ‘easy as frank’ brand platform.

OK Google ‘Speak to Frank Insurance’

whiteGREY head of technology Juan Garcia said the voice app is designed for members and non-members alike, as both a customer utility and demonstration of frank’s brand ethos.

Says Garcia: “With the cross-channel voice era now well and truly here, service categories like private health insurance are looking for innovative ways to keep up with public expectations of simplicity and convenience.

“frank found themselves uniquely suited to lead the PHI industry into voice technology, not only because of the brand’s role as a digital insurer but because of a mission to set the standard in ease. With imminent changes to the category in the near future, an app for consumers to easily get the right answers was a great opportunity to set the brand apart.  We knew immediately what was needed and what would make it unnecessarily complicated.”

Says Diane Pavlicevic, who holds duals roles as the head of frank Health Insurance as well as marketing head of parent company GMHBA: “As a digital health insurer that lives to simplify a complicated category, building Australia’s first health insurance voice app was a natural decision. Not only is it a clear demonstration of the ‘easy as’ proposition that defines frank so well, it sets up the brand to continue innovating into the future.”

The frank insurance voice app will be promoted through a media partnership with Spotify and accompanied by an awareness campaign encouraging consumers to not direct their PHI questions to the wrong people. This will run purely on digital channels (display and social).

I’m excited to announce that WPP has appointed me into a newly created role of Executive Director, Marketing Technology Australia, and New Zealand. I start today located at 1 Kent Street, Miller Point in Sydney.

WPP AUNZ is the leading marketing communications services group in Australia and New Zealand. No other group comes close to our scale and breadth of capability comprising 5,500 people working across over 80 companies in over 170 offices.

WPP starts 2019 following twelve months of unprecedented growth and client investment in technology services, and my new role aims to provide a valuable resource for all WPP AUNZ Group agencies to access best in breed technology and programme delivery capability.

I am excited to be joining at a time of new WPP vision to be a creative transformation company, bringing together creativity and expertise in technology and data – with the purpose of building better futures for its people and clients.

WPP’s future offer will cover four areas: communications, experience, commerce, and technology.

• Communications
  Focuses on advertising, content, media, public relations and public affairs, and healthcare.
• Experience
  Reflects the growing need of clients to create new brand, product and service experiences.
• Commerce
  Allows WPP to expand its growing omnichannel commerce business and its work with brands to help them succeed in marketplaces such as Alibaba and Amazon.
• Technology
  Underpins WPP’s work with both CMOs and CIOs to build and operate marketing technology that supports their consumer- and customer-facing activities.

My role is to focus on establishing an interface for all WPP agencies, connecting with global WPP network shared service models, plus evaluating and filling any resource gaps at each of the Group’s agency brands – while leveraging existing capabilities. I look forward to collaborating with many of my colleagues in the expanding MarTech and AdTech industry.

This role is about providing guidance and support to our agencies today while future-proofing our client relationships. It’s about being technically astute and deeply aware of digital, technical, scientific and business model innovations. Connects these to business benefits and human values is essential. As a transformational professional, I also know how much it is about a ‘felt experience’. To be able to bring the worlds best transformation tools, processes and techniques to maximise the benefits and minimise distress.

In other words, evidence-based decisions to understand and apply the role of evidence to all our client work and solutions.

I have been working at the intersection between business strategy, creativity, technology, data, marketing, and digital customer experience for more than twenty-five years, living and working in the United States, China, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore and it’s always great to be based in Sydney.

I will be calling on my agency side experience working with Omnicom and more recently Dentsu Aegis, and client-side roles with Microsoft, Newscorp and Telstra who have taught me so many life lessons to use straightforward language without lessening complexity.   Able to bring order and simplicity to ambiguity and complexity.

I feel very privileged to return to Australia and join an organization dedicated to creative transformation. I have always been passionate about how brands and businesses combined with technology can create participation with consumers to enhance the customer experience and advance the users purpose.

Non-profit initiative ‘Project Revoice’ by BWM Dentsu Group Australia for The ALS Association has bagged the Grand Prix for Good at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

The ALS Association is a non-profit that provides assistance for people with ALS (Motor Neurone Disease). Their mission is to build hope and enhance quality of life while aggressively searching for a cure.

Within a couple of years of diagnosis, most ALS patients end up paralysed in a wheelchair and forced to communicate via text-to-speech devices, typically through a default ‘computer’ voice.

‘Project Revoice’ introduced a breakthrough in speech technology for people living with ALS (motor neuron disease), enabling those who lose the ability to talk to continue speaking in their own authentic and personal voice.

In the past, people with ALS could use pre-recorded messages to communicate, but the team at BWM Dentsu Group worked with Canadian software partner Lyrebird to create a complete voice clone.

To launch the initiative, Project Revoice has given Pat Quinn, co-founder of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, his voice back.

Quinn did not record (or bank) his voice before ALS robbed him of his ability to speak. Using footage from his many Ice Bucket interviews, the team were able to re-build his voice.

It allows Quinn to speak freely and naturally in his own voice, rather than a ‘machine’ voice, when linked to his eye reader assistive technology. The man who gave ALS a voice now has his own voice back.

Some highlights from this work.

Over 900 million earned media reach.
Week one: Over one million organic video views.
By week two: Over 41 million people joined the conversation online.
Over 680 articles globally.
Over 500 patients joined the program in the first month alone.

Every 20 minutes a teenager is reported missing In Australia.

In the search for missing persons, the first 24-hours are the most critical, but traditional alerts are failing to reach the public in time – particularly teenagers.

So, BWM Dentsu created a new social media tool to assist Queensland Police with missing person investigations. Sent through Snapchat, Disappearing Person Alerts instantly notify the public when someone goes missing near them.

Using the native functionality of Snapchat, the alert communicates an informative and emotive message, ‘Help find John Citizen before he disappears.’

Launched in conjunction with the 2017 National Missing Persons Week, Disappearing Person Alerts continue to be used today as a powerful policing tool.

‘Disappearing Person Alerts,’ helped BWM Dentsu Australia earn Agency of the Year honors at the 2018 Asia-Pacific Tambuli Awards held at Shangri-la at The Fort. Dentsu Aegis Network earned the coveted Network of the Year award.

The awards for ‘Disappearing Person Alerts, included In Responsible Citizenship, Humanity & Culture cluster and Gold was earned by the same campaign in Youth Brand, Humanity & Culture cluster; a Silver in Mobile, Media & Digital cluster; another Silver in Social Media, Media & Digital cluster; and a Bronze in Best Brand Idea for Good, Creative cluster.