180 LA believes in 180 degree thinking. Started in Amsterdam, the small agency has only two offices - one in Amsterdam and one in the heart of LA.
"Whenever you get into trouble keep going - Do a 180 degree turn. Turn the situation halfway around. Don't look for the secure solution. Don't Pull Back from the Passion. Turn it on Full force."
This is the essence of the brand. Something I admire about the agency is how creative they are. From their "Still I Rise" Campaign to their Adidas ads, every single ad is routed in this belief. My favorite work is their Expedia series where the company become more than just a travel website. The Expedia ads touch upon adventure, passion, love, even politics.
During our session, we were challenged with writing a strategic brief - with a twist. Each group had seven minutes to rotate through different sections to write parts of a brief. The challenge was to come up with innovative ideas that helped the final groups create a cohesive presentation. I noticed that my group in particular had a really hard time coming up with clear enough ideas for the brief. While we thought our ideas were unique, they were not concise and clear to the other groups working on it. Therefore, the executions of some groups lacked cohesion due to our work in the beginning.
Two of the groups - the Condom group and the Banana group got really great feedback regarding our execution. The condom group targeted young professional women who were sexually active. They wanted to create a preference over "pulling out". This group created three different snapchat ads and filters - such as a Rosie the Riveter filter and a "bun in the oven" game. The reason why their execution was so successful was because the groups that wrote the brief before them did a great job at making the points cohesive. The target was unique and the insight was a clever yet somewhat obvious solution.
Other groups struggled in their execution because each part of the brief didn't match up to the previous point. For example, the paper bag group was hurt because of the target that our group created. The solution was to create a preference over using plastic bags. The target group was hikers who could use the paper bags as kindling. While this target is unique, it didn't really make sense because hikers don't really use paper or plastic bags anyway. Therefore, the execution was good, but could've been improved with a fix of the brief.
It was interesting to see how easy groups could either succeed or fail due to the work of others. Duco talked about the importance of cohesion and how sometimes you may have numerous people working on one brief. Clients and agencies can have different vision which may affect the overall outcome. As we go on into our Marketing For Good projects, it will be interesting to see how my group can think of a cohesive brief that will help us excel.