Predicting the future is hard

Background

Many businesses were looking to future-proof themselves via cloud computing. Microsoft’s Private Cloud solutions were more cost-efficient and more flexible than their competitors, meaning businesses could be more prepared for whatever the future held.

The brief to the agency was to create a visually striking cover wrap (four executions) for a selection of IT magazines. This was to intrigue IT managers to read an article inside to discover why they should choose Private Cloud.

Idea

The creative executions were based on the insight ‘Predicting the future is hard. Being ready for it isn’t.’ Nothing demonstrated the difficulty in predicting the future better than classic science fiction novels such as George Orwell’s ‘1984’ and ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. None got it spot on.

The idea, then, was to choose poignant quotes about strange predictions like Face Crime, Martians and nutrimatic machines to create typographic illustrations to bring them to life.

Results

The cover wraps of most IT publications were uniformly nondescript and instantly forgettable - but these were completely different. As well as being intriguing they appealed to the intellect of IT managers with literary references that dramatised the need for future proofing.

Our Thoughts

Isn’t the cover-wrap ingenious? It forces the reader to engage with it to get at the contents of the magazine. So why is it, then, that this is the first cover-wrap I have ever seen that has had time and trouble spent on it? It’s as if for a lot of marketers buying the cover wrap is the idea.

I’m not sure why being a client has become so hard. Maybe it’s because there are so many of them. One campaign in this issue of Directory had to be approved by seven people. Getting seven people to agree on anything is close to impossible so I guess Wunderman were fortunate enough to be dealing with just one or maybe two approvers, and one of them was able to form an opinion.