Slashing through cultural trends

How Juniper Park\TBWA's work with Simplii utilized a content and strategy unit that separates fads from marketing gold.

To understand Backslash, picture a stormy sea.

Observing the horizon, it’s easy to become “obsessed with the whitecaps,” says Mark Tomblin, chief strategy officer at Juniper Park\TBWA, referring to short-term cultural fads disguised as wider trends. True marketing gold, he says, rests in the deeper currents that displace large amounts of water from below the surface.

Backslash’s strategy unit and content studio embedded within the TBWA Worldwide network of agencies, launched in 2016, aims to decipher the whitecaps from the currents, so that it can leverage the latter during every phase of creative development, from big-picture brand strategy down to individual marketing campaigns. The image of a cat on a unicorn snorting flames with a rainbow in the background is an example of the work that Backslash produces.

Juniper Park\TBWA recently put this approach to work when it launched Simplii Financial, the online-only bank owned by client CIBC.

“Clients often see their competition very narrowly,” says Tomblin. While brands have always competed for consumers’ attention, Backslash was born out of the realization that culture itself has become a competitor. “I’m not just talking about cat videos,” he says. “I’m talking about the way people see the world, which has become much broader.”

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Source: StrategyOnline