1. Lessons Learned from:
TEN YEARS OF BREAKTHROUGH THINKING

2. Lesson
Learned
www.creativebusinessidea.com
This presentation is insipred by Euro RSCG Worldwide’s news book,
THE CREATIVE BUSINESS IDEA BOOK: Ten Years of
Breakthrough Thinking.

3. Find Your Prosumers

4. Find Your Prosumers
Source: http://beniceartfriends.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Wheres-Waldo1.jpg

5. Prosumers Are Vital to the Development
of Creative Business Ideas
By understanding what matters to
members of this group, the trends
they’re driving, and their changing
attitudes and behaviors, we are
able to forecast how mainstream
consumers will change in coming
months and years.

6. Prosumers Drive Trends Across Markets
Laggards
Mainstream
PROSUMERS
Prosumers
10–20% ADOPTION
Instigators 6–18 months

7. Who are Prosumers?
• The 15-25% of men and women who make and break
% Consumers markets— in every category and geography
• Leading edge consumers who help us understand what’s
next
• Predict what consumers will think, feel, say, or buy in the
next 6-18 months
• Proprietary algorithm
15–25%
6–18 months
PROSUMERS
Source: Euro RSCG Worldwide Prosumer Studies, 2002–2009

8. Find Your Prosumers
All consumers are not created equal. By
developing a way to identify and segment a
category’s or brand’s most influential
Lesson customers, strategists can make highly
Learned informed decisions based not on where
markets are now but on where they’re headed.
For our agency network and our clients,
Prosumers are a window to the future.

9. Get the Buzz Going

10. Get Consumers on Board

11. Give Them Something to Talk About

12. The fact that anyone, anywhere, can
create the next Internet sensation that
goes viral through social channels
creates an environment where brands
have to push further and more
deliberately into the world culture.
— Rahul Sabnis, Executive Creative Director, Euro RSCG New York

13. Get the Buzz Going
The power of viral marketing lies not in
building buzz but in making consumers feel
more deeply connected to the brand. The
Lesson
best campaigns offer a sense of ownership
Learned
that ties consumers in emotionally and
makes them feel they have a genuine stake
in the brand’s success.

14. Cast Your Net Far & Wide

15. Creative Collaboration Is Vital in
the Intangibles Economy
In another era, a nation’s most
valuable assets were its natural
resources—coal, say, or amber waves
of grain. But in the information
economy of the 21st century, the most
priceless resource is often an idea,
along with the right to profit from it.
—International Herald Tribune

16. Open Windows and Doors

17. Build Collaborative Partnerships

18. Cast Your Net Far and Wide
Today’s demand for constant innovation
requires a mix of collaborative contributors who
can shake things up and deliver together more
Lesson than any one of them is capable of delivering
Learned alone. That makes it imperative to cast a wider
net to bring in more thinkers, partners, and
outside influences. That applies to companies
and agencies. And it applies to brands.

19. Make It Meaningful

20. The Search for Substance

21. Dulux: “Let’s Color”

22. The new consumers are ready to play the “brand
game” to the full, which means that simple,
unidirectional, repetitive communication is over for
them. Precisely because they are closer to brands
and understand them and their role, they want
brands to do their job: keep in touch, keep alive,
keep being meaningful, keep making a difference,
keep the entertainment up, be a good citizen…This
makes it really interesting, does it not?
—Juan Rocamora, Chairman, Euro RSCG Asia Pacific

23. Make It Meaningful
It is our job as marketers to help clients
understand the triggers that will be most
successful in attracting customers and building
Lesson brand loyalty. In this new era, these triggers are
Learned connected not to the outdated archetypes of
hyperconsumption but to the traditional values
people have begun to crave, including community,
simplicity, sustainability, and rootedness.

24. Keep Moving

25. Electric Typewriter, Meet the Mac
Image credit: Creative Commons/Chris Campbell@flickr.com; apple.com

26. A new brand is all promise and vision. Then a
market develops and the brand builds trust by
delivering on its promises. But the natural cycle
of brands means that, left alone, it cannot
maintain momentum. In the absence of
innovation and dynamism, it ceases to meet the
needs of its customers. Brands require tending.
A static brand is a dying brand.
—Naomi Troni, Global CMO, Euro RSCG Worldwide

27. Goodbye, Nursing Homes; Hello, Nightclubs

28. Keep Moving
To retain and gain market share in any
category requires constant innovation and
repositioning (sometimes subtle, sometimes
Lesson major), building on people’s trust while also
Learned relentlessly pushing the brand forward in
new and fresh ways. In this new
environment, “business as usual” leads only
one place: a dead end.

29. Don’t Let Your Brand
Be Boxed In

30. Going, Going…

31. Think Bigger

32. Generally speaking, the
broader the brand values,
the more room there is for
a brand to grow.

33. Evian: “Live Young”
EVIAN’S “WE
WILL ROCK
YOU” SINGLE
SOLD 600,000
COPIES
WORLDWIDE

34. Don’t Let Your Brand Be Boxed In
Rather than cling to old business models,
constantly reassess what category and
industry you’re in, whom your target
Lesson customers can and should be, and how you
Learned should be conducting business. This will
keep you a step ahead, always moving
forward rather than scrambling to follow the
lead of upstart competitors.

35. Utilize Your Inner MacGyver
… or where there’’s a will, there’’s a way
… or where there s a will, there s a way

36. The Golden Age of Advertising?
Image credit: Creative Commons/Paul-W@flickr.com

37. The technological revolution has fragmented the
audience and made it extremely difficult for
brands to reach their targets. This has forced
brands to interact, to engage further with their
audiences, to deliver experience, to focus on
building loyalty with their current customers—in
other words, to produce a more valuable and
involving content beyond what their products
and messages were traditionally delivering.
—Christian de La Villehuchet, CEO, Euro RSCG Europe

38. Mortein: “Modern-Day Ramayana”

39. Utilize Your Inner MacGyver
… or where there’s a will, there’s a way
Never be limited by the tools at hand and what
others already have done. In emerging markets
especially, reaching a target through existing
channels may not be possible. If a
Lesson
communications channel doesn’t exist, invent it.
Learned
If the brand clutter seems impenetrable, find a
way to get consumers to come to you. This is
the golden age of advertising for those with the
creativity and drive to make it so.

40. Don’t Be Afraid to
Cede Control

41. Collaboration Over Control
Image credit: http://www.crowdsourcing.org/

42. TckTckTck: Campaign for Climate Justice

43. To make a difference there had
to be one message, and
everyone had to own it.
—David Jones, Global CEO, Havas and Euro RSCG Worldwide

44. Don’t Be Afraid to Cede Control
The impenetrable divisions that used to be rife
within the corporate world are crumbling.
Businesses are learning that collaboration and
sharing can accrue benefits unattainable under
Lesson
a traditional structure. More and more we’ll see
Learned
that the strength of a creative idea lies not in
how well it can be controlled but in how widely
and rapidly it can be shared. Even the very best
ideas can’t get terribly far with clipped wings.

45. Be Social

46. Everyone Connected
Image credit: Creative Commons/deanmeyersnet@flickr.com

47. Share This

48. Up until recently, traditional media were the main
vehicle with which to attract potential customers. It
was mainly one-way communication. Now the wired
consumer is keen to engage with the brand and
other consumers, through social media, before he
decides to espouse a brand or a product. He wants
the brand to be a statement about his personality,
his beliefs, and the social group with which he
affiliates himself.
—Pierre Soued, Managing Director, Euro RSCG Middle East

49. Be Social
For marketers, it’s no longer a question of
whether to use social media, but how and to
what extent. Being part of the social
conversation is essential in every consumer-
Lesson
facing category. No one can say with certainty
Learned
how social media will evolve over the next 10
or 20 years, but we know for sure that it will be
critical to the propulsion and trajectory of our
most brilliant ideas.

50. Get There First

51. In the Beginning…

52. Digital changed everything—for our industry and for our
agency. With our ‘Digital at the Core’ Creative Business
Idea, we took the bold step of integrating the world’s
largest digital network, Euro RSCG 4D, into Euro RSCG,
our main advertising and communications entity. This
integration was not just in words, but philosophically,
creatively, structurally, and financially. Our digital arm
has been suffused throughout our company’s body. And
that is driving our clients’ businesses and ours. ‘Digital at
the Core’ will be our future…at least until we recognize
that digital has changed everything again.
—George Gallate, Global Chairman, Euro RSCG 4D

53. Get There First
A passion for innovation and how we
build and drive it into organizations has
served us and our clients well. Some of
the most profitable Creative Business
Lesson
Ideas involve an element of the
Learned
unknown—a leap of faith and the courage
to do something that has never been tried
before. It’s how we make good on our
promise to get clients to the Future First.

54. www.creativebusinessidea.com
Lesson
Learned