The Girl Who Gave A "Fork Lift Truck" (and almost got fired for it).
We know a podcast isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, so here’s some bite-size nuggets from a recent, entertaining Call to Action episode (with the wonderfully effervescent Amy Kean) that we’ve put in a handy-to-read format, because we’re nice like that.
Amy Kean is a published author, poet, public speaker and Starcom’s Head of Strategic Innovation. She’s led media and marketing strategies for some of the world’s biggest brands, including the BBC, Unilever, and Nando’s.
Her very first job saw her on the Tannoy at Ikea, where the very public mispronunciation of the phrase ‘Fork lift truck’, nearly got her sacked, and had a somewhat prophetic echo of her future book title.
She’s had some interesting job titles in her career, but thankfully ‘change agent’ (sounds wanky) isn’t one of them. She considers herself an ‘innovator’, which potentially may also sound wanky, but if it is used correctly there’s nowt wrong with that. It all started with a role as PA for the CEO of the Internet Advertising Bureau, so not the usual route of a grad scheme or an internship.
Her first foray into writing, with the modern-day fairy tale, The Little Girl Who Gave Zero Fucks, has been a stonking success; storming to the top of the charts on Amazon. In essence it’s a self-help book for adults, to be brave and to worry less.
The true, honest reason and motivation behind writing The Little Girl Who Gave Zero Fuckswas to help ‘cure herself’ with writing; her time in Singapore was great, but also saw her confidence hit a low. She was the girl who gave ‘all the fucks’.
It is currently being turned into a musical that will fuse Les Misérables with UK Garage. What more could you want? Curiously, men have given the nicest feedback so far; often buying it for their daughters, which is a very emotive thing.
Amy is also a poet, and a recent poem called; ‘I put make up on for the Deliveroo driver’ won her an award and helped to elevate her new voice in what can be the very pretentious, inaccessible world of poetry.
Amy first appeared on Gasp’s radar when she wrote a blog on the idea of ‘Dreamvertising’; where the sleeper would wear an advanced neuro-scientific electroencephalogram (EEG) while sleeping that identifies when they’re entering REM and launches stimulus such as lights and sounds to enhance or even create new dreams.
With 33% of 18-25 year olds wanting to be cyborgs, Amy thought placing advertising in dreams could be a goer, but no one ever got back to her on it. Futurology is usually the preserve of old men in the U.S, making grandiose claims that can never happen (flying Uber cars, anyone?), but when done properly it is simply a form of scenario planning.
It’s becoming a common theme, but our industry evolves and changes a lot more slowly than the latest fad purveyor may tell you. Augmented Reality (AR) is typical of this. In Amy’s opinion, no one is doing this well yet, and it is developing slowly. The AR company Blippar went under at the end of 2018. There is an arrogance in the industry that assumes people will care about what they offer, and they do not need educating on how something works.
Strategy for Amy is establishing a way of thinking that is unique to you and your brand. You cannot re-purpose what’s been done. There’s a lot more to marketing, and life, than reading/pretending you have read Byron Sharp. There is too much distance between strategy and implementation, something Amy has been in prime position to see first-hand, both in Europe and Asia.
Need a social media strategy in Vietnam? They love a social competition there, apparently. Asia has less bullshit, less strategy, and a hell of a lot more innovation and useful tech than Europe. They’ve nailed mobile innovation, something that the UK is still trying to work out. Everyone mentions WeChat when talking mobile tech in Asia, but it is omnipresent, and solves a lot of problems.
She recommends reading the mind management programme book The Chimp Paradoxby by Prof Steve Peters (her own chimp is called Margaret), and Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge - links below.
If she could banish one thing from the industry it would be LinkedIn, so best follow her on Twitter, or catch her regular column for Shots magazine.
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Episode Links:
Twitter: @Keano81
The Little Girl Who Gave Zero Fucks Website
The Little Girl Who Gave Zero Fucks (Amazon)
The Chimp Parodox by Prof Steve Peters
Amy's Shots Column
Selling to the Subconscious: Should more markers use 'Dreamvertising'? The Drum article
Dreams. The Final Advertising Frontier?
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Content taken from episode 4 of Gasp's Call to Action; the go-to podcast for anyone trying to make sense of the world of Marketing and Advertising. In an industry that is a minefield of utter bollocks, we aim to capture our heroes and allies from the front line to have a chin-wag with, extracting cracking insight so you don’t end up being industry cannon fodder.
It’s like Pokemon Go, with the single but vital exception that it’s not a short-term bandwagon of shite.
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