Russell Davies is a creative director at Government Digital Services
RUSSELL DAVIES
Some skills will always be needed, no matter how much the world changes
The first agency I worked in, there were no computers. And now there are planning directors who don't remember a working life without iPhones.
The easy way to judge a creative agency: look at what's on its walls
If this sentence doesn t grab you, then I m wasting my time. That seems to be the general rule with articles we use the first sentence to determine whether the whole thing s worth reading. I ve been thinking about this recently because I ve been ...
A billion-dollar mistake is just around the corner for electronic adland
One of my first jobs was as the regional account manager on the Fiat dealer account. I made sure the dealers ran ads that Fiat HQ was happy with and one of my first tasks was managing the announcement that the fabulous Fiat Tipo had been awarded the ...
They're big and clever, but televisions just need to have an 'iPhone' moment
I've always thought of myself as a top TV geek, always on the latest trend, a voracious absorber of new channels, programmes and technologies. I realised the other week that the reality is a little different. We'd wandered into our enormous but incom...
Journalism is changing from how we're reading to how much we're reading
Whenever I m tempted to slag off some Big Dumb Agency move, I think of something Clay Shirky wrote, comparing our era to the advent of publishing: "We re collectively living through the 1500s, when it s easier to see what s broken than what will repl...
Sometimes problems aren't complicated, they just take time and effort
Sometimes the most useful thing is a phrase or story that crystallises a thought or idea. Here are three that work for me. I once worked for a media director who d been well-trained to never talk about problems, only opportunities. Talking about ho...
There is nothing weird about questioning your marketing assumptions
You ve probably seen the M ller-Lyer illusion. There are two vertical lines next to each other. Each has lines making an arrowhead at the top and bottom. The arrowheads on the left-hand line point inwards; the ones on the right-hand line point outwar...
Taking a shortcut is no way to get ahead in the advertising business
The ad business loves business process novelty. New management techniques very quickly get sucked into the advertising maw and regurgitated as thin slices of PowerPoint manifesto. Differentiation, new news and a shiny new press release all off the ba...
Beware the pitfalls of allowing computers to do your advertising for you
Remember the kerfuffle about the company selling deeply offensive T-shirts on Amazon? They had horrible slogans such as "Keep calm and rape a lot" and "Keep calm and choke her". People were rightly upset that Amazon was selling these things and deman...
All the big data crunching that brands love turns out to be irrelevant in China
My favourite conference is one I never go to. It s called Strata and it s about, basically, the intersection of business and "big data". I like it because it seems to be the moment when a lot of very clever data people realise they need to communic...
Netflix has become the envy of TV with so much data on our viewing habits
Sometimes you see a quote you know you're going to be seeing in presentations for the rest of your life. Reed Hasting, the chief executive of Netflix, uttered such a quote in an interview with GQ. "The goal," he said, "is to become HBO faster than HB...
Imagine lots of real people improving your copy in an anonymous, virtual world
How do you know I'm a human? Or how do you know a human is writing this? Maybe this is all being generated by an algorithm.
Just be careful next time you write technobabble about experiencability
Going forward, content-wise, in terms of delivery, this week's column is going to focus around the jargon space. I apologise for that sentence, but we should listen to ourselves sometimes, really.
If you see someone talking to a lamppost, they're not crazy, just from the future
Warning! I'm going to bang on about the Internet of Things again. I'm sorry, but there it is. I'll tell you why at the end. But, for now, I want you to say Hello and Goodnight to a lamppost and a lamp.
There will always be ads. After all, they pad out mags a treat
I learned long ago not to predict the death of anything. Especially not advertising. Something like advertising will only actually die in about 10100 years with the final heat death of the universe when everything reaches a state of maximal entropy a...
Why brands need to start making New Year's resolutions
Welcome back! Here we are. 2013. Don t worry, we re halfway through January already. Only about 300 shopping days until Christmas. Half-term shortly, then Easter, then we re all off for our summer holidays. Though it s an odd year, 2013. It feature...
Maybe technology can solve adland's financial problems
I write a lot about journalism here, which isn t really part of my brief. Reading a fascinating new report on the Tow Center for Digital Journalism website, I realised why. It s because although advertising and journalism have only really been connec...
Look at the future of news. On any medium you fancy
It s become something of a social media clich there s a "future of news" conference somewhere, there s a lot of Twittering about it, probably with a slightly ungainly hashtag, and then, before long, someone will say something like: "It s very well...
Obama's campaign won as it grew out of a web culture
You're probably fed up with stories about big data and the Obama election victory by now. It's a shame - it's a story I'd loved to have written.
Superstorm Sandy engulfed brands as well as New Yorkers
I imagine you ve done your 2013 planning by now. I hope so. But here s a thought why don t you pop open that spreadsheet and insert a new line and a new budget item and call them both Weather Disaster Response. It s bound to come in handy. Me and...
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The console is dead: The Socialisation of Gaming
The games console as we know it is dead. When Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One earlier this week, it was clear that this was more than a device that would enable you to play Call of Duty or FIFA – this was, in Microsoft’s own words, “an all-in-one home entertainment system”.
