Live From New York: Hot Takes at 4A’s StratFest 2022
By Brennan Mullin
After two years virtual-only, the in-person StratFest is back, celebrating the planning industry with key insights on how to communicate big ideas with data and help brands on a larger scale.
It was my first in-person strategy conference and excitement in the air was palpable. This year’s theme, Hot Takes and Great Debates, was interwoven throughout each panel, each campaign, and each conversation. By flipping typical marketing conversations on their head and sharing viewpoints that often go unspoken, attendees were treated to thoughtful banter and engaging points of view.
Some questions discussed and debated included:
How can planners spark more effective creative work?
What kind of data fuels winning campaigns?
How does inclusivity play a role in modern marketing campaigns?
From 4A’s website:
“The role of the planner has never been more varied or central. Not only do agency strategists set the course for brands and inspire creativity, but they also play an essential role in setting client and agency business strategy. To define the best course, planners must foster debates and champion new ideas that challenge the expected and the accepted. The importance of these debates grows as we tackle old and new challenges that will determine the future course of agencies, clients, and brands. Diversity in our teams and briefs, sustainability in our brand strategy, emphasis on technology in our work, and data-driven approaches to informing our briefs and measuring our success are examples.”
The biggest through line at this year’s event? Hot Takes and Great Debates. Here are my three biggest takeaways:
HOT TAKE #1: Agencies have a responsibility to become stewards of a better world.
Several panels and Jay Chiat Award winning campaigns dealt with social responsibilities that come with advertising. Alain Sylvain argued that brands can no longer be bystanders to social change and must address it head on to move the needle forward and create positive change.
A few award-winning ads for nonprofits stood out as particularly noteworthy examples that move conversations forward in interesting and memorable ways. (Content warning for gun violence and frank conversations about mental health in the two videos ahead.)
In The Lost Class, former NRA President David Keene addresses 3,044 empty chairs, each representing a student lost to gun violence. In a Borat-style stunt, he believed he was rehearsing a speech, but he’s actually speaking in front of The Lost Class. The final ad is harrowing.
Similarly, Grown Up Problems, from McCann, uses an audience bait-and-switch to create an artful campaign. In it, adult actors read calls from a mental health crisis line. After the reading is finished, it is revealed that the calls are real, some from children as young as 10.
HOT TAKE #2: Paying attention to culture is no longer optional.
In Sean Choi’s presentation, “Cultural Strategy: The Dress Rehearsal Is Over” Choi explored the gaps in current creative strategy through a cultural lens. He argues that brands must combine a sense of differentiation and relevance to create a cultural strategy that is socially disruptive. This is especially important when creating memorable campaigns, as only 84% of advertisements are even remembered.
Consumers live in a cross-cultural multiverse that must be catered to in new, relevant campaigns. Choi used the popular film Everything Everywhere All At Once to describe this framework. As the film’s protagonist Evelyn Wang jumps through different versions of her lives, she begins to decode the ways they could all fit together to enrich her real life.
Consumers do the same thing with campaigns. Identity isn’t A or B, it’s A-Z. It’s fluid, it’s a spectrum, and we take in culture from a variety of sources and mediums. People no longer create a singular identity from the media they consume but can zip in and out of identities as they please.
A few Jay Chiat winning ads played with this multiversal concept by playing with established identities. Leo Burnett Chicago’s Thighstop campaign for Wingstop showcased a pivot for a brand traditionally known for one thing (chicken wings) and created a new vision for the future, where chicken thighs rule.
Similarly, Ogilvy’s IKEA Audio Catalogue moved a beloved brand forward using a newer medium. As the physical IKEA brochure was eliminated, the Swedish furniture giant teamed with Ogilvy to create a podcast (which has since been scrubbed offline) to give the brand’s biggest fans a new, innovative experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOMbX9VKTuY
HOT TAKE #3: Marketers must think more deeply about the problems their brands solve.
How are agencies thinking about the brands they represent?
What are the deeper problems being solved by seemingly simple services like a hotel?
No campaign better exemplified the importance of going deeper than OYO’s recent Jay Chiat Award winning “Come to Oyo” campaign. Created by OYO themselves, this clever campaign from India invites viewers to think more deeply about the function of a great hotel stay.
By using a Jobs-to-be-Done framework, the multi-spot campaign showcased the different ways hotels give us so much more than a place to sleep.
Hotels can be a genie in bottle, giving travelers the comfort of home, away from home.
Hotels can be the “meet in the middle” location, and a conduit to a happy family reunion.
Hotels can be a concert hall for those who want to rock out…just not too loudly.
IN SUMMARY
I thoroughly enjoyed my first in-person StratFest experience. By hearing these hot takes, our organization can have more powerful conversations and create content that gets brands seen on a bigger scale.