Lucy Weldon, Digital Strategy Director, Burrows

My muse best comes when:  Watching how my friends, family and I behave as consumers.  It’s often something we don’t see or apply to our thinking, but it’s such a simple and important point.  Studying Psychology has certainly helped to bring human interaction and behavior to the forefront of my thinking, but putting that into real life contexts certainly leads to some clear strategic direction.  The creative geniuses at Burrows are also brilliant muses – when we start a new project our ideas can range from the sublime to the ridiculous and amongst all of those thoughts is generally a brilliant idea!  Bringing that to life is then a natural progression, whatever the media channel.

Your idea about the perfect working day:  Well, waking up at 9am would be a good start!  Followed by a brilliant brief to get sucked into (on the beach obviously) with a budget as big as the idea can be.  Lots of open minded, great thinkers from our team and a client who is really switched on to the potential that digital channels holds for them.

Your favorite interactive campaign and why:  It has to be the recent Volvo XC90 campaign we ran.  We’ve seen some good click-through rates, and importantly, high interaction rates and durations.  We realize that the online audience are often time scarce and as such don’t particularly want to click through to another website at that time.  Producing highly interactive ads allows us to immerse the user in the brand, give them the information they want and that will help them on to the next stage of the purchase process, and leave them with a positive impression.  It’s far more important to do that, than play a TV ad to someone who has probably already seen it.  Luckily Volvo is a great client who always encourages fantastic ideas and is really focused on exploiting digital channels. Again, simple interaction with a simple idea allows the power of the product to show through, rather than being lost in technology.

Changes that need to take place in the industry:  I think industry leaders need to realise that the idea is king, and not always the channel.  I hate to see a piece of digital work which wastes the technology, or lets the technology rule the idea.  Good digital strategy should not sit in isolation, but should be part of the communications planning from the start.  We are certainly starting to see that more, with FMCG brands in particular not leaving their online creative to the end of the process, but it needs to be a shift in the advertising industry as a whole.  Digital is really the front line, the place where consumers can actually interact with the brand and start a relationship with it.