Tag: AnalogFolk

Hong Kong — Digital creative agency AnalogFolk has announced the appointment of Dixi Song, former senior strategist of Publicis Groupe, to be its new strategy director for Asia. Song will be responsible for bolstering the agency’s full-service offering for the market. 

At Publicis Groupe, Song was tasked with handling and leading the strategy for leading the company’s top-tier clients like Cathay Pacific and Under Armour. Song also holds extensive experience and expertise in the financial service business where she supported HSBC in its Asian wealth business.

Chris Ryan, managing director and partner at AnalogFolk Asia, commented, “360 customer experience planning is in increasing demand from our clients and Dixi brings that expertise to our team in Asia. She is fanatical about using data to help brands to become customer-first. She is an exciting new talent for us, not only adding another dimension to our team but also bringing a lot of energy to our culture.”

Meanwhile, Song shared her thoughts on her appointment, saying that as the world is looking forward to life beyond the pandemic, the company understands clients placing increasing emphasis on digital transformation and positive societal impact.

“AnalogFolk’s strong digital pedigree and its global ambition to be an agency of change was a key reason for my interest in working with them. I’m really excited to use my experience to build on our capability in Asia and to guide client strategy in this era of rapid change,” Song said.

This January, AnalogFolk also launched their new behavioural transformation consultancy ‘Mindworks Consulting’ to deliver augmented business outcomes to both marketing strategy and organisational design through applied behavioural economics.

London, United Kingdom – Independent digital creative agency AnalogFolk has announced the launch of ‘Mindworks Consulting’, a behavioural transformation consultancy which aims to deliver improved business outcomes through applying behavioural economics to both marketing strategy and organisational design. 

The new consultancy aims to help its clients achieve their business transformation ambitions by embedding behavioural science methodologies at the heart of the business to allow it to be nimble and reactive to changing business and customer needs. 

According to Bill Brock, co-founder and chief client officer at AnalogFolk Group, the founding team of Mindworks has been proving out their methodologies across a number of AFG’s leading clients over the past few years.

“This work has been pivotal for clients such as Dyson, Bayer and HSBC, allowing them to quickly identify business opportunities and help them change direction based on a real-time understanding of customer behaviour. It’s that success that has led to us making it a formal offering by launching MindWorks,” Brock said.

The new Mindworks Consultancy is led by Brad Herholdt as CEO; Michelle Watson, principal behavioural partner, and Mark Barry, principal consulting partner, all who previously worked together as business leaders at AnalogFolk. Bill Brock, AFG’s Founder will work closely with the team in his role as chief client officer, ensuring that MindWorks’ global clients benefit from the services across AFG’s portfolio of brands. 

As part of AFG, MindWorks becomes a partner brand to full-service digital creative agency AnalogFolk, content production company Untold Fable, and automation and tech engineering company With Robots, the latter two of which the group launched last year. 

Operating out of London, the consultancy is leveraging AFG‘s network presence in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia, providing a service to global clients whose briefs seek to deliver new value across the world. 

Herholdt commented, “Speaking to our clients, we know that every day, companies are struggling to keep up with the pace of change and how it influences their business. They are tired of 5-year vision decks that don’t make it further than the slides they are written on. MindWorks is impact focused, creating actionable roadmaps that we launch quickly so that our visions are built on real customer behaviours and organisational dynamics.”

Meanwhile, Chris Ryan, managing director and partner at AnalogFolk, commented, “We often talk about the need to operate at ‘Asian speed’ in this region, driven by the rapidly evolving and unrelenting expectations of Asian consumers in an increasingly digitised and automated world. Brands who continue to take a business-out approach cannot expect to thrive here. The MindWorks team is already changing how our clients operate in this region and we are excited to build on our early success in partnership with them.”

Netherlands – Parental products brand Bugaboo has launched a global brand campaign ‘Adventure Awaits’, to build on its new brand platform – ‘Designed for Discovery’.

Done in collaboration with digital creative agency AnalogFolk, the campaign connects Bugaboo with modern, vibrant parents, and parents-to-be, to celebrate the diverse, authentic, and joyful world of parenthood.

‘Adventure Awaits’ aims to drive brand awareness through a 30-second anthem film, 15-second product-focused films, and lifestyle, as well as product photography. Each film brings the seemingly mundane and expected into a new light where parent, baby, and Bugaboo are the protagonists of making key product benefits to enhance the storytelling and personality of the campaign.

The campaign involved the collaboration of two production houses, namely Amsterdam-based Mr.Frank and Lisbon’s own More Maria, while its soundtrack was provided by creative music agency MassiveMusic.

Bugaboo’s Global Brand Director Bridget O’Lone commented that they believe families can come in all shapes and sizes but what unites Bugaboo families is a sense of fun and adventure. 

She further shared that their products are designed for discovery and now, through the partnership with AnalogFolk, the brand communications are also uniquely placed to connect with a new generation of parents. 

“At lightning speed, and in the face of a global pandemic, the team at AnalogFolk were incredible partners in bringing our brand positioning to life through bold, vibrant communication and we look forward to continuing our partnership as we announce new, exciting products to help parents and children discover and enjoy the world together,” said O’Lone.

Meanwhile, Carren O’Keefe, the executive creative director at AnalogFolk Amsterdam, said “Partnering with brave clients like Bugaboo who want to make serious strides forward in their category combined with the evolution of what parenting means to younger generations was the perfect combination to rethink the historical pastel parenting market and imagine a more vibrant, inclusive world.”

The campaign will be running across paid and organic social, YouTube, and retail locations, as well as the brand’s website.

Singapore – Global creative agency AnalogFolk has announced its recent investment to Untold Fable, a newly-launched global content production company founded by entrepreneur Kate Tancred, who also serves as Untold Fable’s CEO.

AnalogFolk Group will become a majority shareholder of Untold Fable, and it will be running its specialist brands – AnalogFolk, Untold Fable and Serum (UK) – as stand-alone businesses.

Through the investment, Untold Fable will offer clients the added value of tapping into on-demand digital agency services from AnalogFolk. This joint offering is designed to provide one entry point for clients into the creativity and efficiencies of a tech-powered production offering and the strategic precision of on demand creative digital agency services.

Untold Fable was founded on a greater need for video and audio content across entertainment and advertising, to which the company aims to cater to by creating a platform that houses studios, sound designers, sound engineers, composers and voice talent from around the world, assisting brands with their audio identity while communicating with consumers via one of the fastest-growing ad formats in the world.

Furthermore, Untold Fable allows brands, publishers and agencies to also have the option to measure their diversity and inclusion (D&I) statistics across their productions throughout the year, empowering them to put the issue front and center by giving them the data when it comes time to commission talent. 

According to data from branding and design company IMPACT, 70% of consumers have shared a brand’s video, with 52% saying watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions. About 72% of businesses, meanwhile, stated video has improved their conversion rate. 

“It is the first community-based production model to be built with diversity at its heart, promising to ensure the makeup of the network reflects the world we live in as well as launching technology features that make connecting with traditionally underrepresented talent from the creative industry much more accessible to clients,” the company said in a press statement.

With the existing footprint of AnalogFolk globally, Untold Fable will offer clients on-the-ground teams in London, New York, Sydney, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and Singapore from day one. 

“I spent the last 10 years driving the efficiencies and creativity of a tech powered production offering. Untold Fable expands on that model by connecting clients with a curated network of diverse, award-winning talent and layering over digital creative services from one of the most celebrated independent digital agencies in the world. Combining these offerings enables us to produce audio and video content in a way that the industry is yet to experience,” Tancred said.

Meanwhile, for AnalogFolk founder and chief client officer Bill Brock, their recent investment in Untold Fable speaks to the agency’s mission of using “digital to make the analog world better.”

“With the launch of Untold Fable, we not only diversify the group’s offering, we break exciting new ground on this enduring mission. We’re leveraging the power of technology to make it easier than ever before for brands and publishers to work with a more diverse talent pool,” Brock stated.

Hong Kong – Digital creative agency AnalogFolk announced the launch of Bigup.Ai 2.0, an AI tool that aids to empower women, especially about societal issues and influence-related success. 

Having launched a beta version in the past eight months, the agency said the AI tool features a much bolder and visually-appealing interphase.. Concept questions such as “Tell us about a strength?” act as motivation starters, and can be improved or “bigged up” by using more confident and assertive language. The AI tool also features a quote suite, updated by the AnalogFolk team. Topics such as job rejection and COVID-19 burnout are covered, all with a positive note. The quote suite can be accessed through Analogfolk’s social media pages and their own Pinterest board.

The tool, which is developed by  Microsoft LUIS Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning technology, ‘reads’ skills found on the user’s uploaded CV and analyzes it to deliver a more expressive and assertive personal brand for the user.

Anna-Louise Gladwell, managing director at AnalogFolk and leader of the Bigup.Ai 2.0 development, commented that tool’s development is a response to many women in their leadership and work roles feeling ‘small’ due to failures of getting a new job, and hopes that the tool will aid such women to boost their professional image and their overall persona.

“COVID-19 has exacerbated a systemic social issue of female confidence, self-promotion and career advancement. So BigUp.AI is here to remind women of their value and help them find the words to express it,” Gladwell stated.

For Chris Ryan, managing partner at AnalogFolk Asia, the recent tool launch speaks about gender gap issues such as pay gap across Asia, and should be improved in every way possible.

“We feel that with more confidence and assertiveness, that picture can change in the months and years to come, starting with how women talk about themselves. AI is a powerful tool which can help to support this,” Ryan commented.

Created by an all-women team in the course of eight months, AnalogFolk’s newest AI tool launch coincides with the International Women’s Day 2020, and hopes to create more tools in the near future for women empowerment.

Sydney, Australia – Global digital creative agency AnalogFolk has created a new campaign via its Sydney arm, to launch Hyundai’s new N-Line sports package for the i30Sedan in Australia.

The 90-second launch film ‘After Dark’ takes an edgy and dark theme. The video features dream-like sequences with deconstructed nursery rhymes and rap performed by Australian talent.

The agency calls its latest creative endeavor as “taking a non-traditional approach to a traditional car.” The spot stars real people who are pursuing side hustles and passions outside of their day jobs.

AnalogFolk Executive Creative Director Richard Morgan said the campaign aims to capture the attention of people who have a quiet, innate sense of competitiveness and love the thrill of driving.

“Early on, we resolved that if you’re the sort of person who likes to curl up with a light Adam Sandler comedy on Netflix and an early night, then this isn’t the car, nor the spot for you,” said Morgan.

The agency said the car’s all-new virtual cockpit helped inspire the idea to set the campaign at night, when the car, like the characters who drive it, “light up and come alive.”

“The need to step outside of our comfort zone and overcome barriers – real or imagined – is something that our audience intuitively understands,” Morgan said.

“Setting the spot at night, when the senses are heightened and our hero characters are hard at work while most people are safely tucked up in bed, allowed us to interweave surprising, nocturnal elements in playful, non-
linear ways, using the urban landscape as a backdrop,” he added.

The campaign of 90-, 30-, and 15-second cutdowns are currently running, supported by online and out-of-home.