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‘Front-foot Phil’ gives ISBA a new sense of urgency

‘Front-foot Phil’ gives ISBA a new sense of urgency

ISBA’s newly appointed boss, Phil Smith, is using his energy and experience to put the advertiser body on a far more aggressive footing than previously seen, writes Dominic Mills

Bloody hell, what’s going on at ISBA? In a manner that is both timely and makes you think ‘what have they been doing all this time’, the advertiser trade body is raising its game.

Exhibit one was the decision to hold last week’s annual conference at a proper venue, the Metropole on Edgware Road, rather than, as last year, the Oval. Now I like a good sporting venue, but there is nowhere more depressing (or cheap to hire) than a cricket ground in early March.

And come on, let’s be honest, adland’s finest don’t want to trek round to the nether reaches of Vauxhall.

So moving to the Edgware Road is a sign of an organisation putting out the message that it wants to be taken more seriously.

But let’s focus for a moment on ‘Front-foot Phil’, aka Phil Smith, ISBA’s recently appointed new boss (pictured). He’s energetic, experienced and, given his track record at Kraft and Camelot, can add some real-world heft to the debate.

Judging by both his actions so far and his public comments, he is determined to put ISBA on a far more aggressive footing than before.

Well, hooray. About time too. With all the crap circling round the ad industry – loss of trust, financial and trading opacity, and the digital media problems identified last month by Marc Pritchard – the one voice that has been missing in the UK part of the debate has been that of the advertiser.

Smith seems determined to change this, and indeed to lead the charge on behalf of his members. This must surely be right. Ultimately it is their money that is both at risk and can be the instrument of change.

Of course it is not easy to galvanise the membership of a trade body like ISBA. I asked someone in the know if the problem lay with membership sclerosis or organisational lassitude. I was told it was the latter.

I think this is a little unfair, because ISBA’s own internal member surveys show how clients are disengaged from the issues.

Nevertheless, you can detect some coded criticism in Smith’s opening speech to the conference. “A quiet life as an industry spectator is not an option,” he said. “Our enemies are not each other but apathy and a failure to lift our sights.”

And he promised that ISBA would be a) clear about its objectives b) do fewer things better and c) see them through. It feels like the stiletto has been not just wielded, but twisted too.

So how does Smith align the weight of his members – or, to be more nuanced, their money – behind an issue that is all-too easy for them to stick in the ‘too-difficult-to-think-about’ box?

To use planner-speak, it’s all a question of framing. And I think Smith/ISBA has got it about right. “We want a media environment that works for advertisers,” he said – meaning one that is responsible, transparent, accountable, diverse, and supports and rewards quality content.

Without this, he says, advertiser choice would be curtailed, and further down the road lurks the spectre of regulation.

In other words, without this healthy and diverse media system, they’re buggered: media is crap, consumers are turned off, the threat of a Google/Facebook duopoly reduces choice, and governments step in.

My worry is that dealing with these issues becomes just another excuse for more talking shops where the main activity is mutual hand-wringing. At some point, we need action.

But it’s a start, and the advertiser voice – not before time – is critical.

Robots do creative

We’re hearing a lot about how robots/AI will take white-collar jobs across all industries, including advertising.

But robots doing creative, robots swilling it up in Cannes…no chance.

Er, not so fast. The very charming Shun Matsuzaka, a creative planner from McCann Japan, introduced the ISBA conference to a bunch of metal and wires called AI/Creative Director.

Yes, folks, those Japanese have built a robot that can do creative work. So how does AI/CD goes about its day job?

Well, the McCann humans tagged 1,000 commercials by about 20 criteria – communication concept, tone, manner, content, music, celebrity and so on – and shoved them into AI/CD.

The humans then gave AI/CD a brief for Mondelez’s Clorets – one they’d written, obviously. I’m not sure I followed every detail of the brief, but it was something about how Clorets gives you an instant, 10-minute, fresh-breath hit.

Stick it in, hit the button, and out comes…well, not an ad but a creative concept. Yes, you still need humans to make the ad.

To make it interesting, Matsuzaka gave the same brief, with the same budget, to a human team. Both ads ran, and consumers were invited to a) guess which was which and b) which was better.

I don’t think it’s that hard to tell the difference. The human ad sees a woman doing calligraphy. The AI/CD ad features a world-weary dog revived by Clorets.

The former is subtle and lovely to look at; the latter is in-your-face, energetic, with a semblance of humour but a bit obvious; even robots know dogs have fresh-breath issues.

I’m not an expert in Japanese creativity, but I’ve seen enough to know the dog ad would not be out of place in a commercial break there.

The dog lost the poll, but by a Brexit-size margin (46:54).

If you’re a cynic, you’d say the experiment proves human-driven creativity will always triumph over the robots. Agencies or clients looking to reduce costs by automating creativity may achieve a short-term win but at the cost of longer-term effectiveness. No need to panic in the creative department.

But I wouldn’t be so sure. McCann’s AI/CD is the equivalent of the Wright Brothers’ first aircraft – crude and simplistic compared to today. But AI/CD will get better fast.

For clients (or agencies) looking to knock out cheap work fast – and we’re going that way anyway – it might be a viable option at some point soon.

Disclosure: From time to time I do work with and for ISBA.

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