If there is one place to get creative, social media is the platform of choice for many people. And that is exactly where Nick Entwistle, creative director and founder of One Minute Briefs, empowers a brilliantly engaging, and growing, community. We catch-up with Nick about how he encourages a digital network to get creative with advertising – in less time than it takes to boil the kettle – and why content is king.
Summarise your role and what One Minute Briefs does
I am the creative director and founder of One Minute Briefs (OMB), which is part of creative agency The Bank of Creativity. For us, it’s simple:
One Rule. One Minute. Create an Ad.
We promote brands and causes via social media by challenging our creative community on Twitter to respond with instinctive ideas to daily advertising briefs – and reward the best entries. All submissions are retweeted to our 25,000-plus followers, which generates millions in potential reach every single day, enabling brands to interact with huge audiences in an engaging, cost-effective way whilst creating quality content.
OMB serves as a popular, diverse and inclusive social network for the creative industry across the world. We also host regular workshops, talks and events for our followers – otherwise known as the OMBLES.
How do you best utilise social media as a brand?
We use Twitter primarily to post a fun, creative brief every weekday.
Our followers then respond, and we retweet each entry. This creates mass reach as they are tweeting to their own followers before it even hits our feed, so when we receive hundreds of tweets a day the impressions are huge. OMB’s model has always been to create content to promote brands or causes so we are able to create bigger partnerships as we grow.
We then use Facebook to post albums – covering all the collated entries – where our followers can like/vote for their favourites. We also post shortlist and winners on this channel and share certain winning ideas of Instagram.
Linkedin is the only place where I have a personal profile, but we do have an OMB group and page on this channel. Here, I often share the story from my own perspective and encourage people to get involved with what we do.
We use all the platforms to drive traffic to Twitter, giving us a focal point. We have found that this is the best platform to drive engaged, mass-shared campaigns for us.
What do you like/dislike the most about social media?
Negativity can be overwhelming. If you get into the habit of scrolling randomly, you are filling your head with bad things.
As a prolific user of Twitter, I have used it sparingly recently and kept a focus on OMB as it is a place where we can inspire fun, creativity and inclusivity every day.
On the other hand, collective creativity can be harnessed through social media for the power of good. We are able to do lots of campaigns for great causes and have recently featured live on ITV following our public messaging campaigns in support of the UN, WHO and the NHS. I wrote about how we grew by around 4,000 followers during lockdown, and gave people a creative outlet across the world, here.
How important is content – particularly on social – for generating sales and awareness of product?
I feel it is about being at the front of people’s minds. If we have seen something on TV or on social, and remember the content, we are more likely to go with that brand at the point of purchase. Even if that is months down the line, I believe that good content sticks with you and builds a brand affinity.
And, if the content is about selling things quickly, it needs to be straight to the point, informative, as well as making the product or service desirable to the potential customer. It must not be bland, or your competitor will take up that space.
Are you a fan of employee advocacy? If so, how do you encourage sharing across teams/colleagues?
Your employees are hugely important. Bigging them up – and vice versa – fosters a creative spirit where all ideas can be shared without fear. The one-minute nature of what we do allows this. No suggestion is wrong (within reason) and the collective idea generation has huge power socially to push everyone to improve.
I try and make sure I support people personally, sometimes publicly and sometimes privately. We also have an OMBoard to resolve issues quickly and the members help with maintaining a positive community spirit that can be seen online too.
The fact that people even call themselves an OMBLE – and wear the t-shirt with pride – is very powerful and together we achieve great things. There is no ego or hierarchy here.
Who are you a big fan of on social media? And why do you like what they post?
All the OMBLES – they inspire me every day. Not just when they post to OMB either, but with their passion for creativity and support of others.
Very British Problems is brilliant too. It holds up a mirror to society and moments we all relate to. This account always makes me laugh.
And I also run @AgencyQuotes which does something similar for the creative industry.
How do you think social media has evolved – and what do you expect for 2021?
It has become much more visual with images and GIFs and I think this will continue with Instagram implementing GIPHY.
I feel the way society uses the platforms can sometimes make them harmful, so I would expect big changes in the way content is filtered.
Twitter, despite it being our main channel, has become very political and can be quite divisive as a result. This is possibly through no fault of its own as it has always been the best way to share opinions quickly.
I would prefer to see it being used for the power of good. We are constantly looking at other platforms to utilise and who knows, perhaps we will see a new social network emerge.
From a personal point of view, I expect OMB to continue to grow and create even bigger and better campaigns as we head out of lockdown and into a, hopefully better, 2021.
Find out more about One Minute Briefs and Bank of Creativity HERE.
Want to be a guest on our upcoming ‘SoAmpli Meets’ features? Get in touch with Hayley Paterson at: hayley@scribapr.com
