Flight Story

Are BRANDS STARTING TO BREAK-FREE from their ALGORITHMIC chains? Companies are increasingly split between two camps: those meticulously playing the algorithm game and those boldly rejecting them, embracing an anti-algorithm stance. For many, the algorithm is a deity that dictates content strategy. Tweak, optimise, and conform to every update, to get those gains. Then enter the rebels. These brands are turning their backs on algorithmic appeasement. Calvin Klein are a fantastic example of this. If you look at their Instagram feed, it’s like something from 90s vogue. It goes against every social media playbook of the past 5 years. Where content is following the same formula. In a strange irony the old rules of posting product pictures with pretty models and celebs in them, is performing well. I respect it, and here for more ANTI ALGO BRANDS!

If you want to be more creative, you need to learn how to be bored, according to Flight Story co-founder Oliver Yonchev. "In a world of endless consumption, stimulus and task switching, we limit our creative ability," he writes. He argues that your best ideas won't come when you force them or when you're overstimulated. You need to make space for them, Yonchev adds. How do you get your creative juices flowing? Share your thoughts in the comments below. https://lnkd.in/gG98jstU 

Here’s my favourite AI tool that not enough people know about 🥁 … Leap AI 🤖 Think Zapier but with more inventive templates and a slicker UX. Why I like it? Today AI applications are great at singular narrow tasks: transcription, writing, reviewing data, image generation, voice synthesis, language translation, the list goes on. They are not great (yet) at doing multiple tasks at once to produce a multilayered outcomes. This is where automation comes into play. Platforms like Leap, allow you to simply and easily integrate different tools, to create new ways to solve problems. I shared an example of how I would think about building a stack to make content work harder for brands/startups👇

“Where will AI take us in the next 10 years?” 👀 Being candid, with the pace of development, it’s difficult to say with any conviction how exactly jobs will be affected, what will change, what companies will look like, and where opportunities will be? That said, with what we can see/know today, I’ve been able to form a strong POV on what the next 3 years could have in store for us. 1. A New Productivity Paradigm AI is levelling the playing field, enabling individuals and small teams to achieve what only large, resource-heavy organisations could before. Advanced AI tools are now accessible at low costs, empowering small teams, freelancers, and solo entrepreneurs to operate without the traditional disadvantages of scale. This is a wonderful thing for the startups and individuals. 2. Infinite Perspectives and Creativity AI isn’t inherently creative, but it can change how we approach creative process. Everyone now has a data scientist, a creative strategist, an artificial sounding board in their pocket. We are moving into an era where much more of the guess work can be removed from our decisions. Beyond insight, AI has the potential to provide an infinite number of perspectives. If you consider one the limiting factors to creativity, is being in one’s own mind. Now you can ask an AI to be whatever you want, and that’s certainly an opportunity. 3. Technical Barriers Are Removed Multimodal signifies the end of friction between our thoughts and digital execution. Text can be effortlessly transformed into images, video and other formats. This goes beyond media formats, because everything is a form of language— Code, DNA, etc. Imagine a world where great thinkers are now not bound by any technical limitations. The world starts to get a little more interesting! What would you predict will happen with your crystal ball? 🔮

Wide? Square? Vertical?... Diamond? That's right, we're talking about RATIOS ✨ Most of us are consuming content on our phone, so is vertical the new normal, or does wide have a place? Our studio team's advice? Think about who you're talking to. No ratio should be an afterthought, think about where your audience are and fill that space.

Are KOLs still worth your Web3 budget? Do they deliver results today? Our Flight3 CMO Ariane Murphy discusses why KOL marketing matters, and what you should think about when planning your campaign 👇

LinkedIn is SFB! That's 'Safe For Brands' and we just made this acronym up after reading the latest eMarketer report that LinkedIn is considered to drive a more positive return than Instagram for B2C marketers. There are a few consumer brands out there already who have capitalised on LinkedIn's platform for earning attention: SURREAL, innocent drinks, Monzo Bank to name a few. But is there room for more on a network so closely associated with 'professional networking'? If we consider how this has played out in the past, there's usually the early adopters who deliver strong gains because they're the first on a platform. Then the platform responds with more features to entice more brands to join the party. Finally, it becomes a pay to play space. Oliver Yonchev shares his key takeaways on the news below 👇

What do our creative team think about BTS 👀 Behind the scenes content is starting to take up more space on feeds than ads themselves. BUT... the golden rule? People have to care 🗣️ Don't make the age old mistake of assuming people care regardless 🙅 What's the purpose of your BTS content? Have you achieved something impressive that's going to grab eyeballs?

LAZY measurement = LAZY MARKETING! You may have heard the saying: “you move what you measure”. This is true, but it leaves a big problem for brands… Most teams measure what’s easy (clicks sales, impressions), not what’s necessary. At YMS New York I shared why I believe performance marketing has created a dependancy on digital media, that’s leading to misguided budget allocations, unsustainable growth models and ultimately lazy marketing. Too many marketers obsess over attributing every action with a last click, sale, etc, and this really under values all the many influences that go into delivering results. It’s like saying the only person in a football team is the person who takes the penalty. My top tip for 2024: brands needs to put more effort into measuring the most useful metrics, not just what’s easy!

STOP SEPARATING BRAND AND PERFORMANCE ADS 🙅♀️ There are far more benefits to planning your advertising campaigns holistically based on your overarching objectives. Briefing one department with one goal, and another department with a separate goal, leads to disjointed thinking and media planning. Wouldn't it be far better to have one clear brief: make my brand memorable and sell lots of my products profitably? Our industry needs a healthy dose of bothism (to use Mark Ritson's phrase!), because we need to be able to pull on short AND long term levers to drive growth. We don't need to give it a new name either: Brandperformance, Brandperformance, Performbrand...It's advertising. We're in the business of being customer-first, so a good place to start is to think about the customer experience with your ads wherever they are in the customer journey. This requires us to think about the total experience of our ads, so this is our call to break down the siloes between brand and performance departments 🚀