Most read: Monk departs Grey for Publicis ECD role
Publicis London has poached Grey’s deputy executive creative director .
Monk replaces .
±±¾©Èü³µpk10's Kate Magee reports that Monk will lead and build Publicis London's 50-strong creative department and will work closely with Karen Buchanan, the chief executive of Publicis London, to help evolve the agency’s creative output.
Monk will also be part of Publicis UK’s new creative leadership team, consisting of the creative heads of the group’s five agencies, which includes the executive creative director of Poke, Nik Roope.
The team's aim is to create more joined-up work for the group’s clients, which include Procter & Gamble, UBS, Nestlé, Renault, Tourism Ireland and Canada Goose.
And there's plenty more news today:
Pitches: Honda calls review of global media account
Following , the car manufacturer has kicked off , ±±¾©Èü³µpk10's Gurjit Degun reports.
Starcom Mediavest Group handles Honda’s European media. , when it was estimated to be worth €150 million. Starcom Mediavest Group previously handled the £20 million UK account.
In other , and St Luke's is on alert as .
Meetings: The art of inaction
This week's edition of ±±¾©Èü³µpk10 features a glimpse into . Amid the coffee, meals and meetings, an entry by Dylan Williams, global chief strategy and innovation officer at Publicis Worldwide, caught our attention.
Four meetings that all play to a familiar pantomime. An initial energy burst as everyone bids to control the dialogue. Followed by a rapid tail-off as the need for an idea emerges. I’m learning to resist the early melee.
Instead, like the third-century chef in the Taoist fable, or the Brazilian goal-poacher Romário, or Ali against Foreman, I try to practise 'the act of inaction'. To consciously do nothing until spaces appear where real impact can be made.
This kind of intervention will become the new language of strategy. Being mindful of the moment and acting appropriately in the instant will replace sequential planning and execution as the gap between marketing and commerce blurs to a singular point.
Wise words.
On the ±±¾©Èü³µpk10 couch: Should I positively discriminate and hire more women?
, who's been asked by their boss to hire more women for the creative department. "I just want the best people I can get, whatever type of genitals they have", the reader writes.
Amid a nuanced response, Bullmore ultimately points to "the shadow of the past", where creative posts were jobs for the boys, and that "colours the way we think, even though we think it doesn’t."
So I suggest you do discriminate. Not in the jobs you offer but in the extra time and thought you give to each female contender. This bonus of attention is not so much to favour them as to compensate for the unconscious bias that you’re pretty certain you didn’t harbour in the first place.
Read on for more by Bullmore on this question, and .
Nostalgia: McLaren-Honda's 8-bit adventure
Okay, we are indulging ourselves here (and showing our age), but we're big fans of McLaren-Honda's new video, which turns their F1 drivers into characters in a delightful 8-bit video game.
McLaren gets a retro lick of . Introducing , feat. , & evil .
— McLaren (@McLarenF1)
Conceived by the McLaren marketing team and produced by a "third party specialist in 8-bit animation", a McLaren spokesperson told us that they were responding to an "’80s retro computer-theme nostalgia that was beginning to surface across popular culture."
McLaren media manager Steve Cooper said: "The notion of retro gaming also chimed nicely with McLaren-Honda’s roots in the late 1980s and early ’90s, the era when iconic console games really took hold.
"This was the first-generation of a gaming culture that, after the home computer boom of the early ’80s, kickstarted the current gaming revolution."
McLaren's group head of digital Rob Bloom said: "From our initial brief, we slimmed down the concept to incorporate a number of truly iconic videogame tropes – the arcade racer, the beat-’em-up, and the horizontal scroller. Then we wrote a script that gave us a suitably memorable videogame villain – Exhaustus – and a McGuffin – a Hollywood term for the artifact or device that drives the plot forward – which, in this case, was the fabled jade dragon of Suzuka, which doesn’t really exist, by the way."
Apparently, a blooper real is forthcoming, and McLaren and Honda's social media followings will be able to vote for an alternative ending to be released.
Most importantly, though, we asked if they were going to build a playable game of Turbo Heroes. The spokesperson replied: "We are always keen to listen to the audience feedback, and a reactive content strategy is important to our content philosophy, so watch this space." The campaign starts here.
Compiled by Jonathan Shannon
Is there something you’d like us to share in 18:05? Email jonathan.shannon@haymarket.com with the details.
We’d love your feedback. Tell us what you think of the 18:05 digest, what you want to see more or less of, and if you have any content suggestions. Comment below or tweet us #1805