Hoad’s Thoughts on a Thursday Series Episode 3: The Golden Campaign The Workshop That Never Was. Part 1/2...
"You did it! Well, you think you did. It's hard to say. The room is deadly silent. Shouldn't something be happening by now?
You and your Warrior allies stand and stare into the blue hologrammatic fire. It lights up the majestic room you're standing in, one of the many majestic rooms onboard the huge Star Sailor, the Axel Springer. One of the finest ships in the known galaxy.
Everyone looks at each other in overwhelming confusion. You did everything the Queen requested. Your ideas were clearly the best. Direct messages are always the most effective form of advertising. Not like the do-gooder Priests or the sneaky Thieves with their child-like memes and games.
Then you see a flash of light outside the window as bright as dragon's breath! Running over to the viewing port and looking out into the sea of stars, you see a beam of light flowing out the bottom of the ship. It's the Enchanters! They were the ones that won! They are the ones being saved!
Now you and the others will probably be stuck on this ship forever, floating aimlessly in space..."
Well met, fellow Linkedin travellers!
Well, I did it. Three articles in a row, within three weeks! Pretty impressed with myself, if I can toot my own horn for a moment. A nice little victory during these strange days. You just got to make 2020 work for you somehow. By the way, TV really does steal a lot of time away from us. Glad I channelled my time better these last few weekends. And with this article being a part one of two, I have to now make one more! Could it be next week too?
And on the subject of victories, I want to use this TOT (Thoughts on a Thursday, trademark pending) to talk about playing to win. About using your given skills to face a challenge and to overcome it. To get that little buzz when your idea works out and you pull something off just right.
Some of you may be wondering where the heck this article is going. And what was with that strange opening. Well, rather than another pretentiously esoteric article about what crystals are best for cleaning hard drives, I thought I'd get some unfinished work off my google drive and out into the world.
The "Golden Campaign" was going to be a workshop for employees of my fellow Mothership, Axel Springer. My first in fact (for Axel Springer). And along with the standard activities of a workshop (interviewing your buddy, small tasks in groups etc), I wanted to offer people something very different. A full day of Larping.
Was I crazy to try this? Would it even work? Well, we will never know. The workshop was a victim of Covid-19. Cruelly cut down before she even had a chance to get her sword bloody. It was going to be one of the greatest things I had ever made, my crowning glory (in my mind at least). It was 2020 in a PowerPoint. New, brave and avant-garde.
However, it did seem a little fitting that something so out there was cancelled by a global pandemic.
The Quest for the Golden Campaign
So what was the Golden Campaign? And what was the quest for it going to look like? Twelve people wanted to know. The workshop was fully booked within twenty-four hours from the moment it was published. I only had a rough plan and some concept art (great logo by Christopher Maletzky) and twelve weeks to make it work.
At this point in time, I'm more than happy to share this all now as I don't think I'll ever perform this workshop. Not the way I first planned it anyhow.
First, it wouldn't work remotely. You need to be close with your group to capture the feel of old eighties roleplaying games, to which the concept takes a huge amount of inspiration (if you haven't noticed that already). The fun comes from running around in groups, being dynamic. This would all be lost online. I was even going to try and encourage people to dress up a little, to get in the mood for adventure. Again this idea would just crash and burn if we were all sat at home, dressed as wizards.
Secondly, a huge part of it talks about influencer marketing and that's something I don't think is going to continue in the way it currently is, so no point teaching people a dying art. The often dead-eyed look of a pretty lady holding a product, smiling with all the conviction of a smile you give your drunker neighbour as not to upset him, seems irrelevant now in this more adult world. It's an area of marketing I don't feel passionately enough about to share in a workshop anymore. Yes, it's changing and evolving as everything does, but I'd have to re-familiarize myself with it and its new direction and I'm not sailing those particular seas at idealo anymore. For now at least.
And before we move into the workshop itself, keep in mind this is all unfinished work and ideas. Whilst it's no use just sitting on my hard drive forever, never to see the light of day, this in no way reflects the final product. Whatever that would have looked like.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, this will also be in two parts. When I started this, I hit two thousand words after around two hours. As not to make this a short novel, I've had to break it in half.
This first part will talk about the history and concept and introduce two of the "Clans" you could play and the second will introduce two more and the products these Clans had to market in order to win the "Golden Campaign" and ultimately win the day.
Was I overthinking it? More than likely. Was it a little over-ambitious? Probably. But I'll leave you to decide.
History
Now in my long career, I have been to many, many workshops, in many, many different environments. I have mostly enjoyed them (Shoutout to Alexander Kerkow and his Presentations That Make an Impact, the best workshop ever) but after a while, you start to see formulas and patterns. Like if you watch so many horror or action movies, you can start to guess where things are going halfway through the first act. I really wanted to disrupt that flow and subvert expectations. Get peoples attention right away with a really over-the-top title. Keep the description vague and intriguing. Make the whole day a game in some way. "Come on people! This is marketing at its finest!" I told myself. And it was also fail-proof. It the whole thing turned into a cringefest, then at least people would remember it!
A Cold, Wet, Drunken Friday the 13th
It was Friday the 13th in December when the idea was really born. Axel Springer is a pretty fast-paced mistress, and I only had a week to submit my idea for a workshop so they could advertise it. I didn't need the completed workshop, as it wasn't going to take place till April, but I needed a description and theme and I more or less had the weekend to come up with it.
This very rainy Friday night, I found myself in Two Fellas Brewery, in Berlin (great pizzas) with my good friend Bartosz. We were knocking back pints with some others and talking about my first workshop for Axel Springer. The two of us were huge fans of classic roleplay games like Dungeons & Dragons and had even run some small sessions at idealo after work with some colleagues. The basic idea for this kind of game is each person plays a character with a different skill set and one plays the Dungeon Master (DM), basically a storyteller and referee. The groups of players work together, combining their abilities and play the story as laid out by the DM. This is a super simple description, but it's the bare bones of the game.
As the pints turned into scotches, we were getting deeper into the idea of mixing roleplay games with work-based training. The more drinks the more we drew parallels. Why couldn't this be adapted for a workshop? I would play the DM and the attendees would be the players. Everyone has a unique angle in the workplace. Some are creative, some logical. Some good with figures and some speak a number of languages. Work is kind of like one huge roleplay game. Each one of us is playing our part, using special skills in a collective group to achieve a goal to ultimately win an OKR.
Maybe it was the fact that this pub looked like something out of Skyrim and the atmosphere of a cold rainy night in a tavern was making my imagination run wild. Or maybe it was the fact that I was wasted, now walking home in the rain with this playing on my headphones. But my drunken vision made sense as I thought more and more about it. Fantasy Roleplay Corporate Training (F.R.C.T)
"Maybe a distant queen needs help? That could be the driving mechanic for the story. The attendees would all choose a character based on the classic Dungeons & Dragons options of Warrior, Priest, Theif and Wizard. And let's have the "Big Bad" a dragon that the players fight. Maybe the dragon has a small orc army or something similar they must defeat too. Then we need a dice or a way to determine random events."
I had a lot of thinking to do. I stumbled home with concepts racing around my head, before falling asleep fully clothed, with all the house lights on.
Refinding the Drunken Idea
The next day, after I sobered up, I started to develop the idea further. In the cold light of day, I still could see an idea in there but I had to streamline a lot of it to both make it fit into a day and also to be easy to understand. In the world of video game arcades, they have a saying, "Easy to pick up, difficult to put down." The idea of a group of people, each choosing to play a different character, rolling dice to make events happen, stopping to randomly fight bad guys, all whilst trying to learn something sounded like a nightmare and a disaster waiting to happen. It had to be easy to pick up and play.
So rather than everyone choosing a different character, I would do it by teams. First split everyone up into four parties, after the ice breaker and first coffee break. Then either by choice or by random, the parties would be assigned the "Clan" (Warrior, Priest, Theif or Enchanter) they were now part of.
Each Clan would represent a field of Marketing, as I had to keep pulling this back to work-based training to justify taking a full day out of someone's workweek. It had to still have business value as well as being fun.
The way they would win would be by marketing three magical items that a queen sends them to prove their marketing style is the best. If they impressed her then they would become the "Golden Ones" and be saved from their ship, floating in space, and go work for her developing something called "The Golden Campaign". Similar to the TV show The Apprentice. The ideal was still very rough and probably would have changed before the final product but below is an unfinished intro I would have either sent ahead of time to build hype or show at the start as a welcome.
Also, I dropped the idea of having an end boss to defeat and also dice to trigger events. It was more of a team event now, based on classic fantasy and sci-fi films, which I found was a very happy compromise. I wrestled with the concept of having dice and monsters to slay to win points, but I just couldn't see them working in a simplified manner. I'd save that for my own Dungeons and Dragon games.
So now the small teams of four would be assigned their Clan. The Warriors, the Priests, the Thieves and the Enchanters (sounded better for influencing marketing than Wizards.) Each Clan now represented an area of modern marketing and keeping this in mind, they would market the three items mentioned in the intro video, a soft drink, a very expensive pair of sunglasses and a state of the art laptop, according to their Clams special field of marketing.
In the morning, after the icebreaker, we would split and teams as I said above. As each team were assigned their Clan, we would stop and I'd play another video introducing them. I only made two of these videos, which we will come to in a moment. After the video, I'd show three real-world examples of the type of marketing campaigns that used the Clan's special field of marketing on a PowerPoint and invite for an open discussion. Lots of questions like "what examples can you give me for this kind of marketing etc." Once all four Clans were assigned and talked about, we would break for lunch. Afterwards, the teams would plan three campaigns to sell the three products. Ideally on a flip chart since we'd only have a couple of hours.
Finally, during the last break, I would send photos of the campaigns on the flip charts to my own Teamlead back at idealo, who was happy to Judge them. After the last break, I would wrap up the day and announce the winners of "The Golden Campaign", giving out some wine or chocolates.
The Clans
So, do you want to meet the Clans? Below are the first two and the only ones with videos. And regarding the videos, as well as obviously not being finished, they have the "Ships Computer" at the start, who I would talk too. Hense the gaps during the speech. It's an old fashion trick, but one that I thought would be very funny if I remembered my lines!
So here are the first two Clans:
Warriors
"Somewhat brash and to the point, the Warriors use directness to get their points across. Not afraid to piss people off if it gets the name of their brands out there. Not quite as sneaky or as clever as the Thieves but like them, they see the benefits of trolling to get a reaction and throw the enemy off guard. Tact is not a word they use often and they delight in upsetting people. They really do believe that there isn't such a thing as bad press!"
Special Area:
Outrage marketing
Behind the scenes:
The idea of the warrior is to use outrage and trolling to get clicks and visits. So I would imagine clickbait type ideas and maybe spicy Instagram posts etc (maybe a male or female model telling how "hot" it makes them feel since it's made with Dragonfire). Also, I'd be looking for something direct, even if it was super controversial. Strike first, ask questions later is the warrior's way.
Examples shown on PowerPoint for discussion the in morning:
Gillette: We Believe, The Best a Man Can Be
Call out your consumers for not being better men, knowing it will upset people and cause a huge amount of backlash news stories (very risky!)
White Moose Cafe vs Blogger (my personal favourite)
Start a childish fight with a twenty-something blogger. Like fighting a pig in mud, the White Moose Cafe were not afraid to get very dirty. The masters of Outrage Marketing. Just check out their Instagram!
Benetton's Most Controversial Ads
I've long been a fan of Oliviero Toscani photography after having to copy out huge texts about Benetton during a detention at school. I remember seeing his ads and how much they upset my parents, which I always found really cool. He turned ads for simple jumpers into political art pieces.
Priest
The good guys in the story. Honest and good of heart. They stand for something and look to the goodness in their messages. The opposite of the Warrior, they use tact and understanding, but they're still not afraid to push peoples buttons if needed. They highlight global and social issues and use their platform for teaching and preaching.
Special Area:
Empathic marketing
Behind the scenes.
The priests I imagine focusing on environmental or social issues, like how green or sustainable the product is (the soda, for example, would be made with bio sugar and in a new biodegradable glass bottle). Also, it would be interesting if people came up with Social Justice type messages which are very on-trend right now but very polarizing (the elf glasses would be designed by a male hating, female-only company etc)
Examples shown on PowerPoint for discussion the in morning:
Promoting a controversial figure like Colin Kaepernick who famously knelt to the US national anthem to highlight police brutality to blacks (sadly still super important).
Our own idealo, deliberately losing money to make a point about the climate crisis.
MacDonald's continuing quest for greener packaging and a cleaner image.
So there we have the first part of my tale!
Tune in next week (hopefully) to meet the Thiefs and the Enchanters and learn more about the magic products and some more thoughts about the project as a whole. So thanks for joining me again on this Thursday and I'll see you all next week!
Let's connect:
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John xxx