4 Positive Trends from MAD//FEST 2022

 
 

Sara Templeman

Client Services Director

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Women in sport

What a way to kick off a UK heatwave with an actual IN PERSON event where the conversations, panellists, speakers, demos and DRINKS were flowing. Well done MAD//FEST. 

People’s approach and take out to all these events can differ but for us at distillery everything we do is to create content that makes a positive impact, so Jonah, Emily, Gracie and I headed down on a mission to get inspiration on new ways to help us stand true to our ethos for our clients and our people. For me while everyone is tapping into the women's sport, I think Diageo showed us how well it can be done with their #HerHomeAdvantage Going beyond football with Guinness Cameroun campaign as well as investing in female soccer players’ Wikipedia pages to raise their profiles and combat the startling stat that 94% of sports journalism is about male events.

Even more interesting was hearing from Jodie Cunningham herself encouraging agencies to get on the forefront and make a positive change and find ways to help existing clients on new forms of content to help tap into Women in Sport. When was the last time we had the actual players themselves reaching out for our help to grow their portfolio?

 
 

Jonah Werth

Business Development Account Lead

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Doing our bit to decarbonize the advertising industry.

Sustainability was one of the key themes covered at this year's MADFest posing some salient questions on how we can all do our bit to decarbonize the advertising industry. Inspired by talks from Anne Coghlan (Scope3), Rosalind Holley (BLabsUK) and Laura Wade (Essence), here are some key thought starters posited to help our industry become more sustainable:

  • Production: through the likes of AdGreen, production should do all it can to reduce its emissions on set and consider where possible is a shoot even necessary? Repurposing footage and UGC (user generated content content) can also be seen as a more sustainable option without compromising the creative and always worth considering before committing to shoot.  

  • Publisher: did you know that 28% of an average consumers’ Co2 emissions come from digital advertising? Innovators such as Scope3 are doing their bit to address data waste and helping establish industry benchmarks that media publishers can all adhere to, to track and monitor their digital emissions from publishing online.

  • Creative Agencies: #ChangeTheBrief Alliance is a not-for-profit partnership between agencies of every size and their clients, learning and acting together to directly address the challenge of the climate crisis by promoting sustainability via every channel available to them. If we are to change behaviours, it’s vital that briefs are held more accountable to their emissions, encouraging us to consider all options/ outputs available. 

Remember decarbonisation is the start of the journey and together if we all do our bit we can help the advertising and marketing industry take the bold step to be net zero, which with the right mindset and behaviours is more than possible!

At distillery, we help brands with purpose-led marketing campaigns so brands can be their best selves with content that has substance. Check out our band purpose whitepaper here.

 
 

Gracie Ford

Project Manager

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Cybersecurity

It was great to hear cybersecurity as a main theme in Madfest last week, in particular Jerry Daykin’s speech on ‘Privacy Matters: Building a Better Internet’ stood out to me as it is so key to our clients. At Okta’s Forum22 last month, they explored how privacy and trust are at the heart of their projects, whilst also balancing how identity is central for a personalised experience. Brands need to incorporate fresh ideas of how they can use data for accurate targeting whilst allowing consumers to feel protected. We can all do our part to build a better internet, and it’s great to be working with companies like Okta and Wix who care about building a safer internet for us all!

 
 

Emily Goodson

Marketing Assistant

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D&I

This was an underlying theme throughout. Thank you Pete Markey, Debbie Tembo and Efrain Ayala for the great panel on the importance of measuring your DEI efforts. I also enjoyed hearing from Munnawar Chishty about how No.7 Beauty Company were going beyond the tick box through their comms, product portfolio as well as their choice of people and partnerships. From this, they now have 400 shades of foundation and have significantly increased the diversity in their product testing panels, which in turn has contributed to their commercial results. 

Zoe Chowney highlighted in her talk that 62% of people go back in the closet when they take their first job and that Cognitive diverse teams solve problems 6% faster, this shows the importance of a supportive work culture and a diverse team. Businesses can work with organisations such as Pride in Business to help them become more welcoming and supportive towards the LGBTQ+ community.

At distillery, Our Proud To Be podcast is an essential part of our commitment to Diversity and Inclusion (D&I), where we share our insights, learnings and best practice in the D&I space. You can listen to it here.

Last year, we also released “Diversity” font as part of the Diversity Type Project. This involved working with a globally diverse group of incredible lettering artists who created one letter each, to produce the world’s most diverse typeface. Every download means a donation to support the DEC, The Diversity Trust, and UN Women - organisations championing diversity around the world to create a more inclusive, safer, and fairer society for all.

… This year we have an exciting project coming up in the DEI space that we can’t wait to share, so keep an eye out. 



You can learn more about Diversity type here, brand purpose here, listen to our podcast here and get a coffee on us here.

Making our mark at the MARKies

 
 

We’re so excited to have been shortlisted for the MARKies Awards Singapore 2022 in three categories for our work with Milieu Insight, an award-winning consumer research and analytics company based in Singapore. 

  • Most Effective Use – Consumer Insight and Market Research

  • Most Effective Use – Loyalty & CRM

  • Most Effective Use – Mobile

Milieu’s app, Milieu Surveys, lets people redeem rewards by taking quick surveys, pop quizzes, and polls. The app currently has 2.5 million users across six countries. 


The company wanted to find a fun, engaging way to let its app users revisit the opinions and views they shared in the past. So we used our innovative video personalisation engine, voundry, to create a short personalised video for Milieu Survey’s users, showing them how they voted on a range of topics and how this compared to the broader population.

This campaign was extremely successful, creating high engagement and high open and click rates. Read the full results from the case study.


Get in touch to see how voundry can help you.

"Diversity" In Action

Last year, we released “Diversity” font as part of the Diversity Type Project. This involved working with a globally diverse group of incredible lettering artists who created one letter each, to produce the world’s most diverse typeface.

The aim of this project was to celebrate diversity and engage the creative industries in the diversity conversation.

Recently, we discovered Ashley Starace on Instagram when she tagged us in her collection. Ashley is a Maryland, USA-based ceramics artist, she used our Diversity Type font on her recent mug collection. Each mug has a different message that commemorates women, which we think is awesome! We spoke to Ashley to find out more about her collection…

What was your inspiration behind the collection?

This collection of mugs was inspired by recently discovering the #diversitytype project and the celebration of Women’s History Month. To honour the closing of this month, I have made ten mugs decorated with the diversity font displaying a bold statement commemorating women.

15% of the profits from the mugs will go to the UN Women organization, which is now focussing its efforts on providing aid to women in Ukraine who are seeking refuge and are experiencing “ever-growing protection risks, including gender-based violence and sexual exploitation and abuse.”



What sparked your interest in pottery?

Pottery sparked my interest 20 years ago in middle school and high school, but I only recently returned to it in college. I received my BA in Ceramics and a minor in Classical Studies last spring. Among many things, I learned that a ceramic artefact has many stories to tell. A professor asked, “if your pottery were to be discovered in the future, what do you want it to say?” and I aim to answer this every time I create.


What do you want your work to portray?

As I decipher my own purpose and personal growth in this field, I find at the foundation the multicultural and universal language of ceramics. My goal is to acknowledge and celebrate my culture, other BIPOC artists, and especially women, who, even in the ceramic art world are under or misrepresented. So, if I’m to intentionally say something with my art it will be to uplift the underserved in our society.


distillery has just purchased one of Ashley’s mugs, if you want to buy one too you can visit Ashley’s Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/aStaraceCeramics


We’re so proud to have so many people using our Diversity Type font and promoting the message behind it. We love to see it being used creatively as Ashley has done in this collection.


If you want to see the process of how the mugs were created, check out Ashley’s Instagram: @ashleystarace_ceramics


You can learn more about the project here: www.diversitytype.com

The Female Agenda

We celebrated International Women’s Day earlier this month and the theme for this year was #breakthebias, which called for a more gender-equal world that is free from bias, stereotypes and discrimination. It was a moment when the world came together to celebrate the achievements of women.

In this issue, we take a look at the initiatives some brands are practicing year-round, and how you can answer the call to #breakthebias.


What bias?

As the world slowly makes its way into the new ‘normal’ out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s reported that some of the norms we wanted to leave behind have resurfaced, threatening to reverse decades of progress made towards gender equality. Global studies have shown that the pandemic has hit women harder than men, particularly with regard to work, where 26% of women reported a loss of work last year, compared with 20% of men. Working from home arrangements have also been found to reduce the chances of promotion for women too.

It should be a “Woman’s Day” everyday.

Everyday should be a good day for everyone. And some brands have the right idea with organisation-wide practices that become part of the DNA of its people.

Vodafone, for example, is on a mission to reach 45% senior female representation by 2030, and having already exceeded its initial 30% target before 2020, it’s well on the way to achieving this.

It’s Women in Business Network, is one initiative designed to help women progress their careers at the company.

Helping brands #breakthebias

We’ve been lucky enough to speak to and work with strong female leaders to help further the conversation around gender equality and D&I as a whole. Our founder Steve Wheen caught up with Dr. Anubha Upadhyay, Brand & Audience Growth Lead for Think with Google, where she discussed best practices at Google, and shared personal insights on her DEI journey as part of distillery’s Proud To Be: podcast series. Take a listen, we hope you find it insightful.


If you want your brand to be part of the #breakthebias conversation and are looking to create a fab piece of content, we’d love to help. Drop us a line at Hello@wearedistillery.co for a chat.

 

We can’t all be women, but we can all be an ally,"

Grow with distillery in 2022

In 2022, we’ll be continuing our giving back efforts, driving the diversity conversation and celebrating customer success.

Here’s a quick recap of some of our achievements in 2021, thanks to you.

Our top 5 insights from 2021

We wanted to share our top 5 insights from our experience winning new fans for brands across APAC.

You can learn more about our diversity type project here, read our brand purpose guide here and video personalisation here.

Get in touch to learn more.

Giving Back This Christmas

This holiday season, we wanted to give back to the causes that we, and you, care about.


As a business we have so much to celebrate this year - a new San Francisco office, an overflowing awards cabinet, client wins, new work, and new team members… but now, more than ever, we’re aware that together we can make a lasting impact on our local communities.


When you select from the list of charities below, we’ll make a donation on your behalf.


Wishing you a wonderful season of giving.