Posts

Klaus Schwab

Painting by numbers: Why AI can do creative too

There’s no longer any doubt that artificial intelligence (AI) can be creative. The question now is exactly what role AI is capable of playing in the creative process. Will this role be limited to that of any other tool, like a paintbrush or a camera? Or could AI become the muse, or even the independent originator of new creations? Could it even be responsible for the extinction of artistic directors as a species? If so, when?

For the time being at least, I can reassure my colleagues that their jobs are safe. Nonetheless, it might be wise for them to start getting on the right side of this new co-worker. Even though the beginnings of AI development go all the way back to the 1950s, it’s only today that exponential development of the three “ABC factors” is enabling it to really gather pace (for the uninitiated: A is for algorithms, B is for big data, and C is for computer chips). That’s why the time has now come for every sector and every company to ask itself how artificial intelligence should be transposed and integrated into its everyday activities.

Within marketing, applications for AI have so far been concentrated primarily in the areas of predictive analytics (for example, for providing recommendations in online shops), personalisation (for example, for individually-tailored newsletters), linguistic assistance, and automation (for example, in media planning). Another important area of marketing, which has so far been almost entirely ignored, is creativity. This is often entrusted only to human hands, and portrayed as an unassailable fortress. With sophisticated puns, poetry, sentimental melodies, magnificent graphics, and everything else that stirs our emotions, there’s surely no way that the processors of a cold machine could ever dream up creative content – is there?

Perhaps we shouldn’t be so sure. For there are already numerous examples today of how artificial intelligence can support, expand, or even imitate human creativity – and the numbers keep growing.

AI can write

How many journalists relish the prospect of laboriously scrolling through the same stock market updates, sporting results, and weather forecasts every day? No problem: the responsibility for texts like these that follow a fixed format can now be shouldered by AI – and without the reader being able to tell the difference. Who knows when robo-journalism will lead to the first advertising texts written by machines, or copy-CADs, as they’ve already been dubbed?

AI can speak

Adobe hasn’t only created the world’s most important program for image editing in the form of Photoshop, but has been hard at work on human speech as well: Adobe VoCo is Photoshop for voice files. After only 20 minutes of listening to a person talk, the program’s AI is capable of fully imitating their voice. VoCo doesn’t simply stitch together snippets of words already spoken by its human subject either, but is instead capable of pronouncing entirely new words as they are typed in.

KI can compose

A team from the University of Toronto has succeeded in programming AI to be able to compose and write catchy and memorable songs. The program, Neural Karaoke, was fed on more than 100 hours of music, based on which it produced an entire Christmas song complete with lyrics and cover graphics.

KI can construct images and grafics

So-called generative adversarial networks are capable of producing astonishingly realistic images from descriptions written by people. Simply put, they function by using a “generator” to randomly create pictures which are then evaluated by a “discriminator” that has learned to recognise objects with the help of real images. This process can turn the words “a small bird with a short, pointy, orange beak” into a photorealistic image.

KI can paint

AI program Vincent from product design specialists Cambridge Consultants, which is also based on generative adversarial networks, has extensively studied the style of the most important painters of the 19th and 20th centuries, and can now make any sketch drawn on a tablet resemble the work of a specific Renaissance artist.

KI can do product design

Intelligent CAD system Dreamcatcher from Autodesk can generate thousands of design options for metal, plastic, and other components, all of which provide the same specified functionality. The designs also have an astonishingly organic look which couldn’t be described as “mechanical” or “logical” at all.

KI can produce videos

Working together with MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Canadian company Nvidia has developed a technology that can synthetically produce entire high-resolution video sequences. The videos, which have a 2K resolution, are up to 30 seconds long and can be made to include complete street scenes with cars, houses, trees, and other features.

KI as the Art Director

Advertising agency McCann Japan has already been “employing” AI in the role of Creative Director for some time. AI-CD ß has been fed a diet of award-winning advertising for the last 10 years, and has already produced its own TV ad based on these data.

Big changes begin with small steps

What does all of this mean for us? Although we may still chuckle at the shortcomings of such AI applications today, development is now moving at an exponential rate – and the progress being made is impressive. This is why now is the time to start getting over the prejudices and fears, and to give proper thought to how we will construct creative processes in the future, together with the role that we want artificial intelligence to play in them. Big changes can’t be made at a single stroke, and are instead better implemented in many small steps. Barriers are best removed by being prepared to play around with new technologies in order to test them out and gather experience. True, doing this takes up a certain amount of a company’s time and resources. But those of us who begin with a small project and then slowly feel our way forward have much higher chances of achieving long-term success, and maybe even of helping to shape a new development in the AI world.

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Dennis Pfisterer

Let’s free up innovation from the bullshit-bingo-trap!

Innovation is the driving force of the economy. Without it, there is a standstill. But innovations only work if they solve people’s problems. Dennis Pfisterer calls for a new approach to innovation.

IN-NO-WAY-TION

Innovation is the driving force of civilization. The engine of the economy. Without innovation, there’s nothing but standstill. And standstill is death. Everything old must be disrupted and new technologies help set us free. Digital! Social! Global!

STOP!

A new year begins and when if not now will it make sense to question how we want to tackle things in the future. Are there any new ideas or insights that will help us in 2018? Ones that will characterize us personally, commercially or even socially in the long term? Innovations promise progress, but is that really the case? Is innovation worth striving for?

INNOVATION. WHAT THE…

By definition, innovation is a deliberate and targeted process of change towards something original and new. The search for new knowledge or solutions therefore puts curiosity, creativity and desire for renewal at the fore. That explains why the term “innovation” is so eagerly and often chosen to sell novelties of any kind. From thought constructs such as communism, which sought to change individuals and society from the ground up, to very tangible products like the iPhone X, which largely claim to do the same.

If we start with the relatively new research field of neuroscience and thus the deeper realms of our brain, we realize how deeply that concept is anchored in us. If we consider, for example, the model of the limbic map developed by Dr. Hans-Georg Häusel more closely, innovation is one of the three main forces that significantly influence our thinking and actions: stimulus. In very simple terms, our brain subconsciously (in the limbic system) examines all sensory information, whether it’s a) helping us to maintain our status quo, b) stimulating us in some way, or c) possibly lending us power.

In evolutionary terms, innovation can actually be understood as a primitive human urge to free oneself from the status quo in order to secure our future. Of course, anything that’s new and innovative is always dependent on a specific geographic and social context and as such dependent on the zeitgeist. Logically, innovations are only relevant for a limited period of time. We all know the embarrassing moment when mom excitedly talks about Facebook in hopes of some recognition or the acquaintance from the country who thinks that this look or some other is totally Berlin style. Today hype, tomorrow mainstream, and the day after tomorrow old-school. One innovation overtakes the next. And that’s nothing new. But back to the question. In the future, will we really only be successful if we totally “think different” and beat our new ideas into our heads with full power?

ARE YOU DOWN WITH UBER-INNOVATION?

In any case, a problem arises when we as people can no longer keep up with our own innovations. That’s because the rapid development of technology has recently and yet again received a good kick-starter thanks to digital change. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of human evolution. On the contrary, humans have unfortunately always been and are naturally more inclined to slow and linear change. Our human processor has received far fewer performance updates over the past 50,000 years than computers over the last 50 years.

If one considers the exponential developmental curve of computing power, which follows what’s known as Moore’s Law, it can be assumed that this will reach a dizzying level in just a few decades. As such, a single supercomputer will likely attain the computing power of all human brains worldwide sometime between 2050 and 2060. The thought of what would be possible – in the technical sense – at that point is truly fantastic. But how will our largely neolithic brain handle the constant confrontation with AI-enhanced superbrain cars and vacuum cleaners in emotional terms?

Even today, more and more people seem to be suffering from the excessive demands of innovation overflow and the associated wealth of information that comes with it. Which is particularly absurd because they usually come with the promise of greater personal freedom, self-determination and happiness. At the same time, an increasing number of studies established a direct correlation between the rise of depression and the increasing use of new technologies, suggesting the so-called ‘digital detox’ as a potential treatment. Even if the architects of the big innovation forges in Silicon Valley were to confess that their technology is destroying the social fabric of the real world, seriously questioning the simple inference that innovation = new technology may be called for.

ARE WE ‘HOOKED ON INNOVATION’?

In addition to the extreme speed with which it progresses, the great danger of digital transformation may lie in the overuse and abuse of the word “innovation” itself. Anything promising global, digital-social disruption is celebrated at tech summits, in start-ups, marketing departments and social networks. This, in turn, only leads to innovative ideas brandishing a sort of ‘wow, how awesome’ technology label. Out of sheer enthusiasm for innovative technology, the truly exciting question of where it should take us is all but lost.

Of course, you could say we live in a free market. As long as it can be used to make money, and the user feels they can get through everyday life more easily or quickly, then all’s well. But on the other hand, who’s convincing whom here? Facebook recently ended its AI program because it invented a more efficient language that its creators no longer understood. How long will the masses pay attention to the flood of innovations is questionable. In addition to any block-chain-based cyber currency, attention is likely to be the true currency of the future.

The mechanics that one uses to gain permanent attention from users is called “computer-aided persuasive technology”. The term comes from the behavioral scientist BJ Fogg, now head of the Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab, where technology theorists learn the latest tricks of manipulation. Nir Eyal describes in detail how to create emotional dependency in his bestselling book “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products”. The most important part in his model is the trigger that transitions into flesh and blood. A like here, a notification bubble or vibration alert there – all to provoke user reactions. Snapchat’s Streaks, for example, reward the user for activity with small flame icons that go out if no more snaps are sent within 24 hours. And how long will these developments continue to go well? The stock market seems to be asking itself the same question and isn’t betting on rising rates for Snap Inc.

INNOVATION. FOR REAL!

So, before innovation gets completely out of hand, we’ll free it from the bullshit bingo and put some sense back into this vital concept. For example, with two well-known approaches: the honest human-centric approach and its close – very reasonable – customer value. This real-deal team might have the power to really do something revolutionary, instead of reflexively only going in the direction of technology-driven digital social disruptive progress. Because innovation that does not benefit or even harm people simply isn’t innovation at all.

As such, a step to the left, to the right, or even backwards at times, would no longer be a contradiction of innovation, provided it creates added value. A few examples: In a transformed, digital future teeming with digital voice assistants, could a service provider with real people in their support team not be at the forefront? Or could not a slightly less slim mobile phone, which offers the battery charging time of a Nokia 3310, establish itself as the smarter option? Or a car that does not have to be attached to a cable for hours, but rather whose battery can be easily switched by remote control at any gas station, not be the obvious choice for urban explorers?

In principle, those who use technology in the future to produce proximity to reality may count among the winners of digitization. Innovative new brands, such as the English manufacturer of cycling clothing Rapha, use existing social and digital channels to bring people together in the real world and have them truly experience their products in an active way. After the content-is-king-years in which “media” and “the message” were almost indistinguishable from each other, in a post-fake bullshit era, actually experiencing products almost inevitably comes to the fore.

In many areas of life, what’s supposedly old is rediscovered and represented in new innovative packaging. In the future, however, the use of as much new technology as possible, such as the virtual, augmented or mixed reality, will become less and less important. Rather, it will be crucial to use technology innovatively to create a product experience that moves the users emotionally and at the same time answers the question “Why this brand?” Such truly “immersive” experiences take more time and cost more money than purely digital measures, but also provide a demonstrably more sustainable added value for users and also generate unique brand content for all marketing channels.

Wherever this year’s journey takes you and your company, innovation will drive you. But innovation must not become a problem for people, but rather a solution to problems. As such, a key challenge for brand owners will be seeing through innovation and seeing when it’s a dead end for users.

The amount of data from business and research that’s already available allows us quite clearly to sketch a technology-driven image of the near future. The question is to what extent we want to make this reality. This year, let’s allow ourselves to hit the breaks for such In-NO-WAY-tions instead of instinctively hitting the like and follow buttons. Instead of spending a lot of time looking for the right innovation, we can use it to drive real innovation. And sometimes, it only takes a very small step in the right direction to bring the greatest benefit to our customers.

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Brett Cameron

Rethinking the shopping experience

Brett Cameron, Managing Director at Serviceplan Group Middle East, talked with Euan McLelland from INDEX about the retail market that has been transformed a lot by the digital revolution. One aspect of this change is that shopping can now be done almost entirely online, especially in Dubai, what leads to the question if it is essential for outlets to start incorporating digital elements into their interior design.

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Klaus Schwab

Artificial Intelligence: Who is responsible?

Auf dem Innovationstag von Serviceplan diskutierten der renommierte Münchner Philosoph und Kulturstaatsminister a. D. Julian Nida-Rümelin und Martina Koederitz, Vorsitzende der Geschäftsführung IBM Deutschland, gemeinsam mit Klaus Schwab, Geschäftsführer der Plan.Net Gruppe, über neue ethische Standards.

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Moe Jawhar

You won’t need a turtleneck to be creative

We often ask our self the question, where do good ideas come from? and we seem to be sure that a great idea is born in a single incident, Eureka! .. like Newton’s apple.

Moreover, we think creative ideas come from the selected few, guys with turtleneck sweaters and rounded glasses, or it has to be written somewhere in their title, they also have to work in a special place, preferably with a lot of colors and bean bags .. and the occasional pool table.

The first truth is, ideas take time to be form, it’s usually the collection of everything we face in our lives, the problems, the challenges, the stuff we read online, a story our mom told us at a certain point, and although you may not know it, your brain files all these information for later use.

Ideas are created in our daily lives, in the cultures we live in, so if you are a creative person, an accountant, a photographer or a cook, you can find inspiration everywhere, and if you remember that ideas come from creative collaboration and the impact of and the role of users and consumers in creating your ideas are guaranteed to elevate to an upper level.

The second truth is, ideas are more likely to come from the combination of different thoughts that clash together, you see why workshops are important, for an idea to be born it needs a collision, a friction if you may, that challenges the single thought in a purpose of improving it or creating something completely new out of it.

Best examples of innovations around the world we created or only find its true purpose by customers, end-users, people who created beautiful things that would not have been created by big corporations because they couldn’t see the need, the opportunity: they didn’t have the incentive to innovate.

This is a huge challenge to the way we think creativity comes about. The traditional view still follows in much the way with think about creativity – in silos.

Ideas are problem-solving, seizing opportunities, creating a change but ultimately selling a product. And if an idea doesn’t deliver on any of those goals, then it’s a waste.

Sadly, you see a lot of “waste” around us, beautiful execution and products that cost a lot of money and the most expensive media touch points, but no results, no sales, no test drives, no interest.

We need to have a mindset that allows everyone to contribute, under one roof or many, from any department, client or agency, small business or big… trust me it makes a difference.

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Ronald Focken

Three new routes to brand management

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When brands become communicative self-starters without classic advertising. Tesla, MyMüsli or Westwing have shown us how it’s done

At one time, the advertising world was highly predictable. Three things formed the pillars of plannable marketing success: a big budget, extensive reach and clear positioning. This classic mix is certainly not outdated if someone wants to sell, say, gummy bears, toilet paper or beer.

Another approach is that of not making the classic media the exclusive central focus of a campaign – which often works like a charm:  Tesla’s off-the-wall carmakers, for instance, have achieved a brand awareness level of 60 per cent in Germany according to You Gov. Tesla is not a unique case: The breakfast cereal makers at MyMüsli or the furniture shop, Westwing, are brands who have largely achieved their fame by taking completely new routes. At the same time, their products, like their makers, are very different from one another. Nonetheless, they have certain common points that could be noted down in the new textbook for modern brand management:

A good story

A new product must have its own story. But not just any old blah-blah story. It has to be one that grabs the attention, that is different, and that interests people. And, of course, it has to be in touch with the zeitgeist. That means: successful brands pick up on mega trends – but in an unconventional, indeed sometimes even surprising, way. Tesla is surfing the wave of massively increased environmental awareness that has been building over the last few decades. It all makes sense so far. In addition, they are also triggering their very own brand surprise moment. Because in terms of design their cars are the absolute antithesis of accepted eco-style and functional, home-made solar-powered mobility. Their groundbreaking electromobility is housed in an extremely elegant, exceptionally desirable and very expensive car. It’s an elitist product that clearly separates smart ecological awareness from conventional green worthiness.

This game also works if you take it down to a smaller scale. MyMüsli has picked up on the trend for organic foods as its basis. It then fitted that trend with rocket engines, enriching the product with individuality plus convenience. An organic muesli that you can create yourself with online clicks is ornamented with personal fantasy names, and is then delivered by courier directly to your breakfast table.  Pour on the milk and get stuck in. Simply laid-back, tasty and healthy – that’s the way we live and eat today. On top of that, in order to show the maximum achievable, the product developers have got their calculators running red hot: according to the company, there are 566 quadrillion possible muesli variations. No-one can try them all in a single lifetime. You really can’t get more variety than that. It’s a great story that catches the fancy of every muesli maniac, and one that people enjoy sharing. However, since online sales and online marketing alone are not enough, for some years MyMüsli has increasingly been banking on its own shops in busy locations in relevant conurbations, staffed with real-life individual muesli consultants.

Westwing has also picked up on the quick & easy feeling brought to us by the internet. Some of their smart people took a look at what’s happening in our homes. There is hardly any other nation that spends so much money on furnishing their homes than we Germans. In addition, we really love being at home – what is known these days as “cocooning”. So it’s more than logical to find some way of sparing us a journey: the previously unavoidable trip to the gigantic out-of-town furniture megastores.  Instead, this clever start-up conveniently delivers trendy branded furniture and interior accessories to your home. Since furnishings are largely chosen by women, obtaining new armchairs and tables is now no more difficult than buying a pair of high heels from Zalando.

Westwing plays very well on the psychology of consumers. A clock can be seen ticking on the Westwing sale portal. If you don’t order within the remaining time you get kicked out, and can’t get the trendy product anymore. It’s something we’re familiar with from classic retail… only while stocks last. Only after all received orders have been bundled does Westwing order the goods and deliver them. But customers pay upfront.

The stars on the top of the tree

Brands that move people, arouse interest, enthral, turn customers into fans who then become part of the brand. Participation is the new mantra.

Additional help is provided when management has a substantial media presence. Because successful brands and their stories need narrators. And they have to take to the stage. It’s something one has to want and be able to do. Self-marketing was long reviled as personal vanity. Indeed it is still widely considered a dirty word. Those successful individuals who have mastered the high art of personal presentation to perfection couldn’t care less.   They do their thing – and benefit the marketing of their brands. Tesla’s Elon Musk is the virtually ideal protagonist in this regard: A billionaire visionary as the face of the company. A man who not only wants to level e-mobility’s way into the mass market, but who is constantly making headlines in the worldwide press with other sensational projects. Sometimes it’s reusable rockets, another time he’s thinking about colonising Mars, or building a tunnel beneath Los Angeles that will catapult pedestrians from Point A to Point B. A positive madman, but one who delivers perfect storytelling, thus continuously recharging his manufacturer brand.

Although the German counterparts are far more modest, they are just as effective. Both the MyMüsli management troika – all former students from Passau – and Deliah Fischer from Westwing, are being celebrated as showcase founders, and given awards. None of them has any qualms about appearing on talk shows or blowing their own trumpets for their brand in a high-profile way. And they always make a fresh, personable impression. Deliah Fischer, who studied fashion journalism, has certainly contributed the most to Westwing’s high profile to date. A power woman who is well-received, and who is the face of a vision, an idea and, ultimately, of a brand. Those who buy something at Westwing are always buying a little piece of Deliah Fischer’s spirit as well. Just like at Tesla, where the ingenious founder Elon Musk is somehow always there as an invisible front-seat passenger. A really good feeling.

Discover the new possibilities

These days start-ups usually have a different business model and they do their advertising differently too. They are consistently living out the game change in everything they do. And that’s a good thing. Three days after MyMüsli launched in 2007 it already had 16,500 hits on Google. The founders later filmed their first TV ad – entirely on an iPhone – because their funds were limited. In the meantime the company can also afford to invest in classic advertising. However this is often also in the shape of modern, interactive formats.

MyMüsli was a huge media hit because the founders recognised the signs of changing consumer interests and adapted them intelligently. Tesla is a media self-starter, powered by Elon Musk. The marketing experts from Rocket Internet – who know how to promote start-ups online – are behind Westwing.  With the examples of all channels from social media to influencer marketing. It is the art of winning people over without a big budget and without classic advertising. This works exceptionally well on the internet which is why it is often the preferred medium for the new brand marketing.

The agencies too have long since had a rethink. They accompany their clients throughout the entrepreneurial process from strategic product development to integrated, interdisciplinary marketing.

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Serviceplan Group

“Paella Today is the most ambitious branded content process that we have encountered”

In an interview with MarketingDirecto.com Luis Piquer Trujillo, CEO Publips Serviceplan Spain, talks about Paella Today and branded content.

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Joana-Marie Stolz

What does a cultural strategist actually do?

Joana Stolz talks about her job as Cultural Strategist at the Serviceplan Group and gives insights into her “every day work”.

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Unnikrishnan Kurup

Virtual Reality – where will it take us?

It used to be a hobby for geeks. Today, Virtual Reality edges towards the mainstream: The VR industry is expected to break the $1bn (£710m) barrier for the first time this year, according to Deloitte; and with Goldman Sachs predicting the market could be worth $80bn (£56.8bn) by 2025 the opportunities are only going to get bigger, taking the industry to new heights.

However, the strongest selling point of Virtual Reality is not only taking us to new heights or places, but turning us into someone else. It has the power to influence our physical and emotional responses to reality by letting us experience this reality – in a virtual world. All we have to do is to give them the access.

Earlier this year, at South by South-West (SXSW) – the big film, music and interactive trade fair, festival and meet-up in Austin Texas – Per Poulston, Chief Innovation Officer of Serviceplan Group, had a chat with Bruce Vaughn, the former Chief Creative Executive at Walt Disney Imagineering. He told him about what the Imagineering labs call “Portals”.

He used the gate to Disneyland as an example: It’s a simple gateway you go through to enter the Main Street in Disneyland. On it there is a sign saying: “Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy”. And that is what people do. They simply and immediately accept being in a world where giant mice are completely normal, where trash collectors routinely break out singing and where the small shops on the street are not fierce competitors but best friends. “Portals” allows us to transport people into a whole new world, a whole new experience.

Once regarded a science fiction fantasy, the idea of a virtual environment is now a very possible future and it works because it puts people at the epicentre of an experience and has the potential to dramatically change the way we approach education and the world of business.

When it comes to education, VR creates a sense of presence to help students vividly absorb and remember what they’ve learned. Technologies such as Leap Motion ensure that users can utilise their gestures and hand movements whilst in a VR experience, maintaining the sense of being in a classroom scenario.

We at Serviceplan Middle East have partnered with SAMSUNG to envision and create an easily deployable VR educational platform in the Schools of the UAE. We want to enable future generations to grow up supported by VR experiences in both the classroom and the workplace – which is very much in line with H.H. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum’s vision of wanting to provide “NEW GENERATIONS with the skills needed for the Future.”

By advocating for virtual classrooms, our philosophy is deeply rooted on enabling. We would rather train children to seek and to explore, to teach and to learn from each other, rather than simply being tutored. We would rather have them creating than consuming; innovating rather than just listening. The world of VR means that students have all the information they need right in front of them, without the need to interrupt the experience to reference external materials.

But this is more than just a novelty. Students in developing nations can also benefit from the same immersive experience. VR hardware is slowly becoming more affordable and, like the PC and smartphone before it, manufacturers will seek to produce more affordable options. These devices can then be distributed to developing countries, where students can gain access to the same level of high-quality education as their peers throughout the world. This furthers the democratisation of education, putting students across the world on an equal footing from the onset.

Perhaps the most utopian application of this technology will be seen in terms of bridging cultures and fostering understanding among young students, as it will soon be possible for a third-grade class in the UAE or USA to participate in a virtual trip with a third-grade class in India or Mexico.

Innovation is in Serviceplan’s DNA. In fact, our CEO, Florian Haller, reinvented the art of keynote speeches at our recent Innovation day In Munich by taking a free fall from a helicopter whilst inviting guests to experience an array of 360 and virtual experiences on showcase by our clients and partners, as a bold statement towards our future in innovation. The full clip can now be viewed on YouTube, while the virtual showcase can be experienced –first hand – at our Dubai offices in the upcoming Festival of Innovation. Visit serviceplan.ae to book your seat.

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Rami Hmadeh

On integration we will stand

At Serviceplan Middle East, we’ve always counted on clients to recognize the fine line between defragmented and consolidated services as we stood our ground pro-integration. Here we share our successes and some hard lessons learned along the way.

A decade and a half ago, network agencies initiated the epic move towards specialization, marking the exodus of in-house media departments into global media houses. By the time we set up shop in Dubai in 2009, the argument has evolved into full service vs. specialist shops. Full service agencies were valued for their one-stop-shop solution, but were heavily critiqued for going broad but not necessarily going deep. On the other hand, specialist shops were esteemed for perfecting their individual crafts, but were deemed hugely lacking in macro perspectives.

Specialist agencies have become the norm as digitalization started to hound traditional full service agencies. Today, the territories are all but blurred. The demarcation line between creative and media houses have seemingly vanished – with media agencies becoming content creators, and creative agencies becoming learned consultants of content platforms. Specialist agencies started offering integrated and consolidated services, while big network agencies began shape-shifting again. Take the decision of one French powerhouse in late 2015 when it announced that it was restructuring its ranks into four consolidated hubs, putting client services at the heart of its mission. Transformation, it claimed, will be driven by the fusion of technology and creativity, with focused divisions in creatives, media, and technology among its four hubs.

Sticking to our “I” Guns

As believers of Integration, the plan was crystal clear from the onset. While we started the traditional route delivering only offline services in 2009, we stuck to our long-term vision of building a “Haus Der Kommunikation” in Dubai to offer specialized services under one roof. We knew there was no room for alternatives since we belong to an independent, family-owned agency group, headquartered in Munich, whose “Haus der Kommunikation” concept has weathered the industry’s shifting tides across 45 years of operations. 7 years into our own experience, we came to realize that boundaries aren’t limitations but opportunities to reinvent oneself, if only to stay profitable and above water in a region that has yet to see its full potential but is already besought with fierce competition from all angles.

When we started, well-meaning industry advisers were saying you either go big or you go boutique. Boutique was the preferred route to gain a good share off the pies of big-name regional clients who remained stable or were recovering fast post 2008. Niche offerings, they said, would help one zero-in on specific gaps that big networks may not be quick or flexible enough to fill in. Niche, they argued, would guarantee a steady flow of income for boutiques for as long as niche is delivered with measurable efficiencies.

The problem? We were neither big nor boutique. We were, in reality, gap-fillers in our own industry, occupying a niche somewhere between a big network agency and a specialized boutique shop. We were extremely careful not to get across as another “indie” house wanting to capitalize on Dubai’s diversity and central location as we highlighted the hybrid nature of our concept. “A subsidiary of Europe’s largest and most successful independent agency group poised to offer innovative communications, innovative digital solutions, brand-individual media, and strategic market research under one roof,” we soon realized, is a concept unheard of in the region. Worst, it is one that often leaves most clients baffled, and at times doubtful.

But their doubts weren’t unfounded. On lots of occasions, we were too adamant to prove our case that we barged into pitches for specific requirements with a full portfolio of consolidated ideas that span offline, online, even experiential. Most times we would leave presentations patting our backs, elated over pleasantly surprised and extremely impressed prospective clients, only to rub ourselves sore come decision time when we are finally told that while our concept was by all means strategic and commendable, budgets could only accommodate specified requirements. Yes, those heartbreaks came in a handful, alongside our more substantial wins.

But with almost 8 years worth of learnings, we’ve come to reinvent ourselves. Not only are we the first agency established outside of Europe that ultimately catapulted the group’s internationalization, we are also the first to introduce a fifth communication pillar – Serviceplan Experience, which offers brand storytelling in a physical space. Today, Serviceplan Middle East continues to stand its ground, advancing the group’s three invincible “I’s” of Integration, Internalization, and Innovation.

 

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