Our PRIVATE VIEW(S) podcast returns for a new episode, and this time we’re talking with OTHERWAY about our collectively dwindling attention spans and the need for branding to do more, and faster.
London- and San Francisco-based creative agency OTHERWAY specialises in two things: “launching the new and transforming the established”. It’s led them to work with an impressive range of brands, from upstart challengers like Lucky Saint, Butternut Box and Cherrypick through to venerable names such as Fortnum & Mason, Strongbow and Birra Morretti.
In the decade since the studio launched, they’ve seen the pace of branding pick up, as companies navigate more platforms, more creative demands and an audience that’s increasingly overwhelmed by content.
OTHERWAY founder Jono Holt joined us to talk about whether it’s time to lay the 60-second ad to rest, and how brands can create impact within the first few seconds.
Scroll down for some soundbites from the episode, and listen to the whole thing on SPOTIFY, SOUNDCLOUD AND APPLE PODCASTS.
ON OUR CHANGING RELATIONSHIP WITH ADVERTISING
“It’s maybe a controversial statement coming from someone who grew up in advertising and inherently loves the industry, but it’s my job to watch ads, and I find it hard to watch them even being fully motivated. We watch longer form content than we ever have before, so we’re giving attention to longer formats – but that’s formats on our terms, rather than advertising’s terms.”
ON EMBRACING SHORT-FORM
“I think the fact you can pay now to avoid the ad industry is quite a scary prospect. At Otherway we’ve decided to embrace the future rather than fight it. I don’t think we should fear it. We should work for it. And if it’s about short-form content, and making sure brands are super-relevant and at the heart of culture, then let’s work out how we do that.”
ON FINDING AN AUDIENCE
“This idea that there’s an audience sitting there, waiting for your message to turn up in front of them, is just not real anymore. Every brand has to start to think about how they actually grab attention and participate in the world. If no-one’s listening to what you say, then it doesn’t matter what you say.”
ON THE NEW STATUS OF BRAND STORYTELLING
“When we look back at the the last 15 years of content, the amount of money that’s been spent on brand storytelling that hasn’t moved the dial is probably huge. People, in general, are looking towards entertainment vehicles for stories. And from a brand perspective, you’ve got to work much harder. Back to the old school, it’s like, what is the brand’s role? Does it have a role in culture? If not, how do you get one? How do you create interest in entertainment? Or do you just have to be really useful?"
ON COMPETITION
“Every potential piece of content is competition to cut through, and stand out. And you have to beat comedians, and musicians and people’s friends. That’s the challenge for creativity and advertising and branding and design. You’ve got to create these things that are culturally relevant, because if you don’t, they get scrolled past.”
ON BRANDS CENTRING THEMSELVES IN CULTURE
“If brands are going to play their role in culture and be part of the conversation, then the quality has to go up. Brands that are succeeding are the ones creating content that cuts through. If you take Jacquemus’ giant handbags flying down the street in Paris, that’s a four-second clip. Think about how effective that was … these are the new rules, and if brands want to be part of this cultural conversation we need to look different, sound different and behave differently.”
ON IN-HOUSE CREATIVITY
“You can definitely see this new generation of brands coming out with creative leadership that makes creativity so important that it has to sit in-house with the brand. And I think that’s great. It shows how important it is to these brands that they don’t want to ship it out, or have other people doing it. But it means from an agency perspective, you have to think: how do we stay relevant? And how do we help?”
ON THE PACE OF THINGS
“We’ve always worked quickly, but we’ve never worked this fast before and it’s getting faster. It’s hard to slow it down. The reality of the world is it’s speeding up, and the audience is speeding up. I think that forces the agency model to have to speed up a bit as well, and work faster.”
ON THE RISE OF THE SHORT FORMAT
“I think historically, the shorter format has always been the bit that no-one wants to deal with, at the end … it’s probably much closer to creating work for outdoor posters, because it’s that one moment you’ve got to grab attention. It’s that instant hit, and that’s how we think about it. If we’ve got one go at this in one frame, or one hit, or one second, then it’s much closer to writing good outdoor work than it is thinking about a cutdown of a 60.”
