HolyCow

Big Data - the comedic empty vessel and Animal Spirits

Follow me men...

So, I had a piece in the Guardian published this week talking about the rather ridiculous nature of 'rearview thinking' masquerading as insight that is starting to penetrate the marketing fratenity and its inability to use common sense. It got edited (rightly) so that it upset less people than it informed or entertained. I promised I would publish the un-edited version but edifyingly it has been picked up by a few journalists who want to use bits and pieces so I am somewhat hamstrung in giving the 'full monty' here until those have run.

It is a watered down version of the original rant but a bit more Charlie Brooker perhaps - abeit a bit longer than necessary but bear with me:

Big data can't single-handedly deliver all it promises to marketers

There is a rather disturbing meme doing the rounds, which concerns the value (or not) of "big data". Its impact has been likened to the renaissance, the enlightenment and postmodernism rolled into one.

Unfortunately, many marketers are bombarded these days with similar dispatches from the purported outer reaches of cutting-edge science about how they should be using big data to deliver more value for their customers fueled by those with something to sell or devoid of something useful to say.

What they're really selling is the use of historic data to sell more stuff, more cheaply, while not falling foul of data privacy rules masquerading as actionable future facing 'insight'

I am no longer surprised by the misuse of the word 'insight' btw - hardly anone I know in marketing genuinely knows what an insight is Vs information - but that's another post altogether.

I think it's time someone told the Emperor "excuse me but you're not wearing any clothes" before these floppy, ill-conceived notions become so ingrained they are almost entirely unchallengeable and the digiterati among others start claiming another non-event for their own.

What's the problem?

Some of the world's finest mathematical minds – including those at NASA – are swimming in big data and yet something as seemingly simple as predicting catastrophic weather events is still way beyond our reach. The earth and its weather patterns occur within a closed system with hundreds of years of data points and yet we still get it badly wrong. Ever thought about that?

Those analysing raw data within the marketing sphere can't possibly believe that they have an advantage over scientists and statisticians struggling with future predictability across frontiers such as global finance, medicine and government. So why are we fuelling the belief that we can now predict future human behaviour?

To be fair most have a vice/voice but not a POV about it. Journalists desperate for a soundbite from those that pay their wages are endlessly spouting nonsense without doing any THINKING. Another 'empty vessel' to pour column-inches into without anyone having to use their brains. Column inches without a POV is lazy - how many real stories are there in the marketing press every week? Count 'em....

My point is not to denigrate such work of course, far from it. Rather, I think it's time someone pointed out the audacity and sheer conceit of marketers and agencies and planners who are trying to claim that they can use big data better than anyone has done in the past. Sound familiar?

The fallibility of human beings

Ostensibly clever folk in marketing departments across the corporate sphere are falling foul of two pernicious cognitive biases. Firstly, observational selection bias – the effect of suddenly noticing things we didn't notice that much before and therefore believing them to be statistically significant. Secondly, the illusion of control – the tendency to overestimate our ability to control events, particularly those that we have demonstrably no influence over. In terms of filling space in industry mags its a godsend surely?

While cognitive bias has formed the basis of some of our most treasured comedy moments, it can be hugely problematical when applied to human beings and their behaviour in a commercial context.

Comical behaviour

Most comedians understand that replaying our unconcious cognitive biases through our behaviourial heuristics is the most potent shortcut to a laugh. Do a bit of discourse analysis behind all of Micheal McIntyre's entire repertoire and you see what I mean. Clever tho...

Lending increasing credibility to big data as a silver bullet for personalising and targeting products and services is dangerous. Those with data services to sell (Google for example) and those in a position to buy them are vowing to deliver insight that can predict future behaviour when all they really have is information about what people did previously. This could all end badly. Except for Nate Silver who rightly enjoys his moment in the spotlight and has some interesting things for us to learn.

But if we've learned anything about human behaviour as marketers, it is that people want to be entertained, surprised and delighted – which means we want the opposite of predictability. You might like beans on toast when you're in the mood, but you don't want to be served it every day.

This is seemingly how big data works, though – it focuses on historic behaviour (with some future propensity to purchase thrown in) – and as a consequence can only deliver ever-diminishing returns because it cannot factor in human serendipity and frailty.

"Why hasn't this person been using up their available headroom on their average basket value with us in the past two weeks following our amazing 2-for-1 offer?" our hypothetical marketer asks her big data consultant. Probably because the big data on the computer can't know if a person has inadvertently locked themselves in the loo by accident, gone on a surprise holiday or just thrown off their mortal coil. There are simply millions of unpredictable paths in the infinite, unknowable array of options.

Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist, once noted that "prediction is very difficult, especially about the future". The burnt out wrecks of numeric-based prediction still litter our cultural highways: the dozens of dotcom startups that sprung up at the start of the noughties, the multitude of ex-music industry executives, enterprising artists and others who rushed to set up cash-generating music streaming sites based on "verified user-data".

Notable start-ups that survived that era, and notable successors, have shifted to a social networking model, which relies on real human beings to recommend and share, rather than a computer generated algorithm because it is more reliable commercially.

Sure, there are patterns in the data, but you wouldn't bet the farm on them. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the big financial institutions did when they used their sophisticated data analysis tools to put us globally into recession. You think we have more insight into patterns of behaviour? Animal spirits have brought down the biggest of houses as we have learnt to our cost.

In many ways, the social networking explosion neatly demonstrates my argument: people-driven networks invariably work better than data-driven formulae, which can't replicate or predict in the same way. And don't fall into the trap of thinking that social networks are predictive – they simply are not. They ebb and flow and are full of anomalies. Just like human beings.

If you want to use data to understand why people do what they do, then you need to accept that predicting human nature can never be solely a left-brained, rational exercise. In simple terms, you have to include emotional, right-brained input to provide a more accurate lens to look at this hazy-at-best picture. Know any Nate Silvers in your data department? I rest my case.

Let's be honest

Generally speaking we buy stuff because of product efficacy, its suits our version of our self constructed reality and offends the least amount of our friends and relatives. There are no 'relationships' with brands that in any way mirror human beings, there are no brand conversations in truth - but there are people behind them that we pay to offend the least amount of people.

Agency folk and brand folks - be brave and accept it's just an outsourced facsimile of 'customer service' and stop thinking its a valuable agency resource with a future - its just a money maker until everyone finally takes it in-house as they should. And on that point - no-one should ever have a brand as a 'friend' - media guys and PR agencies take note and please strip that bit of self-conceit from your presentations. Real people are a lot more unsantitised and fun. The language is all distorted and unhelpful IMHO.

So...

Systems using rational algorithms fed on a diet of historic information will just rearrange historic information and tell us what has already happened in a new way. I strongly believe we should not rely upon it to design marketing campaigns. Use data to segment and target, but leave out the creative, instinctive process that goes into any successful campaign at your peril.

Six Provocations for Planners in 2013

Just before Xmas I was asked if I could possibly help out by writing a super quick piece for Brand Republic on their 'Think BR' section - you know the one that no-one ever reads coz its full of folks you have never heard of and would probably gently sidle away from if you met them at a 'function'....

Anyway - within an hour I wrote this. It's not cleverly crafted or particularly thoughtful but it is interesting as it was written spontaneously with only one small ammendment. On reflection it must have been stuff that was going round my head for a while with no outlet.

I rather enjoyed it. I found myself writing again about things I care about. And its about the power of planning which is something I believe in. I also might do more of it. That's not a new years resolution btw - but it is a distinct possibility.

Anyway, here it is (apologies for the overuse of Mr. Spock - really not sure why):

2012 was a difficult year for brands. Finances were scrutinized, reputations suffered, and trust was called into question. Mostly this was a mixture of incompetence and a belief that size can be a buffer against accountability. How wrong they were.

Accountability is most likely to be the watchword in 2013 on both sides of the fence with the worlds of advertising and marketing having had their fair share of wobbly moments. I believe that planning can play a far more significant role in helping bring back some much needed confidence by simple ‘unitasking’ - the relentless pursuit of excellence in creating effective creative work and not getting sidetracked by the latest thing:

 

Swim against the tide

Stop believing the hype that the advertising industry needs to fundamentally change or it will become obsolete (usually written by digital folk with no deep background in marketing to speak of).  Well run advertising businesses are in good health and we would do well to share more of our affection and respect for an industry that can deliver extraordinary competitive business advantage through ideas. If we show we have faith in it because of its measurable potency then others will inevitably follow.  

Be more schizophrenic

Planners need to be more at ease with the demands of balancing the magic and the logic. We must be increasingly numerically fluent and less theoretical and therefore more relevant at board level, yet be playful enough to see how serendipitous connections can create powerful new combinations in the creative department. Of course, we then need to brilliantly articulate it. But the magic and the logic have got to be equal partners. 

 

 Put down the soldering iron

Stop banging on about innovation. Our job is to create wealth through ideas for our clients’ businesses - not to invent the next Instagram. So planners - please put down your soldering irons, metaphorical or otherwise, and study the reasons why you picked it up in the first place. Your job is to ask 'why?' and to understand the drivers of human behavior - then apply that to answer the business, marketing and brand objective. And when it comes to technology remember ‘Just because you can doesn’t mean you should’. 

 

Collaborate less (but more with better people)

It is better to assemble a group of hugely talented people and get things right more often than collaborating with a lot of enthusiastic, but badly organized planning types who have been led to believe it’s OK to ‘fail and fail fast’ lots of times.

That was a conceit of Silicon Valley - a nice phrase, but a luxury we don’t have in these austere times. Planning should facilitate this and be more brutal in the choice of who gets to play. That way wannabees can study how really good people do it and aspire to greater things rather than blog about how failure is ‘really cool’. In and of itself it’s not.

Yes, taking risks can pay off, but being rubbish isn’t a virtue.   

 

Beware 'Big Data’ snake oil salesmen

Nowhere has the Emperor’s New Clothes been more exposed than this. We have more data than ever before yet there hasn’t been a dramatic increase in sales uplifts without there being some form of personal data issue being raised. Remember that data is created by human beings - and, so far no-one has ever accurately predicted future patterns of human behavior.   

 

People don’t ‘need’ your brand in their conversation

Understand that ‘likes’ on Facebook are a lazy way of measuring success and brands have no place in social spaces unless they are both useful and interesting. And that means creating socially relevant content which takes just as long as any great piece of advertising. 

Some brands are sociable and some just aren’t - learn the difference and don’t be afraid to tell your client that not everyone wants to either ‘like’, ‘love’ or ‘be friends’ with their brand - they might just want to buy it. And your job is to help create the conditions where they do just that.

 

Planners: We don’t need no ‘T-boys’ – we need the X-Men!

For some time I have been aware of the notion of the inimitable T-shaped person being the holy grail of agency and creative company HR departments. A person capable of extraordinary feats of specialist endeavour matched only by their ability to assimilate and collaborate across multi-disciplinary teams – particularly in digital agencies.

 

A lot has been written on the supposition that the best people to lead us into the new frontier should be ‘T-shaped’ econsultancy article by Neil Perkin and McKinsey and Fast Company and wiki to name a few with McKinsey probably claiming the right to use this as a proxy to hire the perfect consultant although Tim Brown at IDEO probably has the IP on this one.

 

I was talking about this with the rather excellent Mr. Thwaites of Crayon - and soon to be Karmarama - about the necessity of having the right people to create cultural capital that can be leveraged as an agency’s best way to protect its price premium.

 

We spoke about planners (natch) and talked about the creation of a company full of these types of people and how in previous lives we had tried to ensure we always had a department of excellently odd shaped people – no offence guys!

 

BTW - in my head a ‘T-shaped’ person unfortunately resembles the Honey Monster – forgive me it’s just a wholly inappropriate image I am finding hard to kill as I write this.

 

What about T-shaped planners an’ that?

 

In Tim Brown’s excellent book Change by Design the `gardening' skills of senior leadership should be used to tend, prune, and harvest ideas – which is the role both of a great head of planning but also of a great planner on the ground. It is about knowing when to back up and when to press on, when to tweak and when to leave alone. That is about patience and leaving things to arrive at their natural conclusion - even when you think you know the answer. This can’t be taught – it can be learned however – usually by trial and error – and it comes with experience. As does allowing other people to have the ideas which is something that Jon Steel eloquently says on this film - it’s a bit long but worth it for that bit of advice alone:

Way back in the mists of time I wrote a piece about Convergence Planning - the need to rethink the DNA of a planner for the Velocity Age which got a bit of attention but since having been hacked a few times only exists now on a few other people's decks. I shall have to try and rescue some of the old stuff when I can find my way through the mire of domain registrations. Ho hum!

 

I still feel that there was something too simplistic about the term ‘T-shaped’. It feels lazy – someone else’s shorthand and because really great planning isn’t like other disciplines where you have a central skill but are empathetic to all. It’s about understanding human beings first and foremost - not just the technology. The human drivers haven’t changed for centuries – but the technology has. Get the first bit right and the technology will serve the purpose not define it.

 

 

So I say bring on the X-men - defined as those that have the pre-requisite skills to do all the things that ‘T-boys’ do, but – with an undying curiosity to understand and explain human behaviour in all its guises. Everything flows from that – whether it’s advertising or acting as the active brand guardian to provide the energy for a brand to create the context within which people can experience it.

 

And if you get a few of those in your agencies – you’ll have an endless supply of insights that the people paying your bills will be able to feel comfortable about paying that bit extra for.

 

Happy to provide a deeper explanation of each of the points on the X  to explain the depth of the talents that make up IMHO the best planner for the Velocity Age if your interested - get in touch :)

 

 

Kings & Hyenas

 Steve Henry started a debate carried by Campaignlive last week about who should run agencies – creatives or account people.
And that there is a disturbing trend towards banal unexciting work being produced in the UK.
And creatives should be the right people to lead us out of our problems.
And we need more creative leadership according to Claire Beale.

 

Which reminds me of the Lion King, where the character Scar tries to gain control of Pride Rock by killing his brother Mufasa the rightful king - and nephew Simba – the heir to the throne.

 

He enlists some hyenas to do his bidding for him in return for favours and the promise they will never go hungry again.

 

I am not saying all creatives are ‘Scar-like’.
Far from it.
There have been plenty of account people that fit that profile.

 

But I am saying that there are a lot of ‘hyenas’ around.
Folks devoid of the ability or inspiration to do anything but moan.
Going with the latest thought and squealing about the current situation.

 

Of course in the film things in the valley start to go wrong.
Droughts hit, food and water becomes scarce, and many animals die while others try to move on away from the Pride Lands, causing the kingdom to become a barren wasteland.

The Herd simply moved on. Familiar?

 

Scar becomes paranoid. Blaming everyone else but himself.
We’ve all seen that in our time in agencies I’m sure.

 

These are tough times.
Who knows – it could get tougher right?

 

And most people that are decrying the end of the agency – or the end of creativity haven’t grasped the meaning of what it is like to run an agency in these sorts of times.

 

Scarcity makes you hungry.
But clever hunters find new ways to snare prey.

 

And really good leaders inspire people to do things they wouldn’t normally do.
To survive.
By selling client’s products & services through communication.
And creating lasting intangible value.
And if you win a few awards – that’s a bonus.

 

But, you have to inspire your staff to endure hardship and go the extra mile.
To do whatever is necessary.
Not to sit back and moan.

 

But most people running agencies don’t do that.
And if you only have one type of trap and method of hunting - you and your ‘pride’ will starve.

 

So, it really doesn’t matter who runs the agency – just as long as they can inspire and lead by having a vision and then finding ways to deliver it.
That is a human trait not a job title.
Sometimes you have to change the model.
Or try things you haven’t tried before.

 

It doesn’t matter whether that is a creative or an account person.
And when this is over and the Herd comes back to the Pride Lands we will judge who had the nuts to do the right thing.

 

Right now - it’s time for Kings not hyenas.

Planning = Getting started + peripheral vision + instincts + facts

I met a grad recently who asked me how I approach planning. I hadn’t really thought about it much as I do lots of types of planning – from user-experience to data to brand to strategy to business planning and all things in-between.

 

But I promised her I would write up something. Here it is.

 

Sometimes when I am working on a problem I need to stay focused. On the big picture. Not the details.

 

I am unable to make sense of the relative importance of what I am trying to understand in the detail. It won’t make sense without the bigger picture to contextualize it.

 

Mostly I make a leap of imagination and trust my instincts - and then commission the truth back to the problem. Tweaking and binning stuff as I go. Changing tack completely if the details tell me I am wrong.

 

The art is to start. And it doesn’t matter where really – as long as you start.

 

Remember, there is no absolute truth merely information shaped by the context in which it is delivered. You have get good at knowing which truth fits the details best. This comes with practice. And instinct. And humility. I base my target audience mostly on myself and my friends. Because they cover most of the audiences I am asked to think about. And their behaviour doesnt lie. Mostly.

When I am sure that my one version of an infinite number of truths works - only then do I focus on the details. I trace them all the way back to the business problem. But I still have the bigger picture in my head.

 

Good planning starts with an instinctive hypothesis and uses research to back it up. You can wade through tranches of information then try to make sense of it afterwards if you prefer. Either works. The first works better though. And quicker.

 

The best planners are those that instinctively know the sweet spot before they start. So they can get to work fast. The worst ask their research department to do it for them. Then agonize over what it means.

 

Develop peripheral vision, trust your instincts then use only the details you need to be convincing. The rest might be interesting – but it won’t be useful.

 

Not sure if that helps – just what I know works for me.

For planners only.

 

I met someone yesterday who was interested in what I am doing at work.

 

He wants to get into the industry.

 

I asked what he read. He didn’t mention any blogs written by planners. I asked why. He said there aren’t really any that he could name.

 

We went through his list. Mostly they were just stuff. Written to feed an insatiable desire for ratings and views. Which is why newspapers are failing now. There was no clues – no insight – no nothing really. There are exceptions. And I pointed him to them. He was grateful.

 

And newspapers are failing because its just ‘stuff’. Which people interested in planning don’t really need. They have better things to do. Other than crosswords or horoscopes.  

 

It takes time to write something useful and interesting from a planners POV. And we are not feeding a machine. Unless you are selling yourself to get work. And we are all culpable of that.

 

But I choose to read those that inspire or challenge me. But I struggled to find anyone who is doing that. Regularly. Truthfully. There are exceptions but who do you know that writes about stuff that inspires you or helps you day to day?

 

Most bloggers in the plannersphere wrote their best stuff 4/5 years ago. Before anyone cottoned on to what blogging could become. Now everyone is a blogger. And mostly – I am not interested. Anyone with ‘ad’ in the title gets props.

 

There are a few that intrigue me. I could count them on one hand. They were there in 2006/7. Before it was used as a channel to broadcast rather than to share.

 

Those that are really good appear in Campaign – occassionaly - badly curated often - but written  as if it was the holy grail – the transference of pixel to print. Russell – your not included.

 

But the need to feed the machine (or the puppy – s’cuse me sir) seem to have missed the point. How may people have something genuine to share in the plannersphere. Really?

 

Mostly it’s a critique of what’s wrong – not a solution to what’s better. I want a blogosphere that challenges the status quo –like Richard. Or if not – adds value through insight.

 

Planners – I implore you - write what you think  and what you have found out works – not what will get published.

 

Write about what you know will help others.

 

Tell us what works and why.

 

Be Useful and Interesting - not what you read recently.

 

You might not get written about - but you will get shared.

 

And thats more useful than you could possibly imagine to those that want to be a planner.

 

 

Doing 'bad' things

As a kid I did something ‘bad’. Or really stupid. Depends on how you look at it.

 

There was a large black shiny electricity cable running up the side of our house. It was the telephone cable. Before mobiles obviously. It fascinated me. Could I climb up it? Nope – tried that. Could I rig up an elaborate abseiling rig for my Action Man. Not entirely unsuccessful – but rather unsatisfying nonetheless.

 

But there were some blue metal secateurs in the shed. And some big leather gardening gloves. And me and my imagination.

 

I would cut the wire and then mend it with some black tape – to see if I could fix it. Like a real electrician would.

 

The first part was easy. The second not so much. The explanation to my mother was that I had tried to climb up but it had come apart. She demonstrated the powers of intellect that only an adult can. Which was humbling.

 

But I learned some important lessons. That electricity is extremely dangerous and I was lucky to be alive. And telephones are more important than I ever knew. Especially to grown-ups.

 

We still laugh about it today. I wear it like a badge of pride at family gatherings. I did something stupid. And lived. I have taken lots of risks over time – with my own business, my own life occasionally and with strategy and insights.

 

To see if they worked. Despite sort of knowing they might be wrong.

They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. If the Brits did badly at Cannes perhaps its a good time to try taking a few risks. After all this is only advertising and no-one is going to die.

 

The dangers of being liked

 

We tend to forgive things when we like them.

We will forgive bad behaviour, bad news, bad clothes, bad decisions, bad time keeping. Because we like someone.

 

But an agency is there to diagnose a client’s problem and prescribe strategically sound creative solutions like a doctor does with a patient. Whether the client ‘likes’ them should be irrelevant. Logic should prevail.

 

But part of the job of an account person is to get the client to like the agency. To build sufficient props to allow some leeway when we do things badly. Like spelling mistakes and missed deadlines.

Really good ones get the client to like them personally too. And can build life long friendships with senior people. Like Frank Lowe used to do.

 

But the problem with being liked – is that we mentally take sides with our clients. We begin to anticipate what they will like to buy and what they won’t. Not necessarily what is right.

 

We become complicit in the way they think and act. We entrain ourselves with them and collude in their way of seeing the world.

 

Life is easier when lots of people like you. It’s a Herd thing – just ask Mark. Most importantly we feel safer – which helps in troubled times.

 

And perhaps during these times of recession we worked harder to retain our clients. To work on the emotional side - to get them to ‘like’ us a bit more.

 

But we should have built more ‘trust’ rather than more love because when we see the world exactly as our clients do – we become more like them. We should have worked on how different we are. How capable we are to recommend the right thing to do because we are not them.

 

They want us to do things right. We want them to do the right thing.

 

Ultimately the danger is the work suffers because we don’t challenge as hard as we should. We avoid selling the tricky stuff.

 

And at Cannes the tricky stuff is usually the stuff that wins.

Context is everything

It appears that there is some despair in the industry currently about the value of the Brits contribution to creative culture at Cannes.

 

If not despair - a lot of head scratching. Claire Beale summed it up nicely recently:

1)   Lack of creative leadership due to churn (this also raises another question)

2)   Client leadership

 

The outake is that we have become too 'safe' to do really creative work – both agencies and clients.

Safe is a euphemism for ‘poor’.

And ‘poor’ feels a long way below ‘good’.

 

The excuse of ‘recession’ has been bandied around as justification.

But human beings are resourceful. Creativity thrives not on abundance but on scarcity.

 

The noughties taught us that. Flaccid lazy thinking. No ideas – just executions. The era of image over substance. The prog rock era of advertising until HHCL came along and re-wrote the rules. The cultural context supported that type of work.

 

But the recession has changed the cultural context again.

 

Scarcity forces us to think about things in a different way. It stops us being lazy. We should have used this to our advantage.

 

But then in a different context - perhaps we did. Perhaps we will have a record number of entries and awards at the IPA Effectiveness and Marketing Excellence awards.

 

And then we will have the debate about the type of creativity that works. And we will be happy again that our prime directive – to sell stuff – has been vindicated.

 

Because the context of those awards supports what advertising does – not what it looks like.

Let's hope so.

Oiling the wheels of inspiration

Inspiration is important for everyone who works in the creative industries - this much we know.

 

We collect stuff from everywhere and reuse it/mash it/hack it when we are solving strategic issues. We never know which bits are going to come in handy. Which is why John Webster had a desk with drawers full of stuff and a room that was covered in bits of paper. Which interestingly was the thing people remembered most about him. Apart from the work obviously.

 

These days I do the same thing by using my Delicious account. But it’s not the same. If I tag something, or post it on Twitter – I don’t really take the time to digest it. To play with it in my mind to seek out its meaning.

 

So I am going to spend a bit more time thinking about the things that I find and what they mean. And I have to get these things down on here as they are acting as a block before I can get to other stuff I want to share.

 

One of the things that has been rattling around my head recently is this piece of typography from a very interesting design company called Antrepo.

 

It’s called Public Gothic. And they have used these beautifully crafted oil cans to show it off.

 

Just wanted to share them. And provide myself (and maybe you) with some inspiration.

 

 

 

 

 

Gimme some air...

Air Vs Music

 

It struck me recently that there was something quite interesting about the music I like having a sonic quality that has little to do with melody or lyric. In fact isn’t technically ‘music’.

 

Generally I listen to an eclectic blend of music during the day – mostly ambient stuff as it helps me work. For example I quite like listening to white noise following a revelation about how clear my thinking became on long haul flights.

 

Anyway, there is something about music that has been recorded in a certain way that pulls me in. I used to talk to the sound engineers from Olympic Studios when I had a business down there. They used to enthuse about these big reverb chambers (with big plates?) they used before sound processing became the norm and how Abbey Road had a certain sound Vs Studio 1 Vs Studio 2 and how Phil Spector used ensemble playing to multi-layer the guitars like an orchestra: “little symphonies for the kids".

 

So I thought about the thing that stood out most. And bizarrely it transpires it is the atmosphere created by the way the drums are recorded.

 

The best illustration I know of is Honky Tonk Woman (which also has best use of cowbell ever IMHO). It was engineered by Vic Smith (later to become Vic Coppersmith-Heaven – don’t ask…) who claimed that Studio 1 was a big cavernous room – 80ft high ceiling with mics in it and the drums on a riser in the middle with open mics everywhere.

 

What I notice most is the sound of the air around the kit. And the sound of the air being pushed out of the drum itself. Have a listen. Other examples include ‘If you Can’t Beat Them’ by Queen off the Jazz album. The air lives and breathes. Which is why I struggled with most of the processed stuff in the 90s. Phil Collins included.

 

I also like the sound on ‘When the Levee Breaks’ recorded at Headley Grange – funnily enough on the Rolling Stones Mobile unit – just 2 M160 Beyers at the top of the stairwell. It isn’t the sound of the drums – it’s the atmosphere created by the air after the skins are hit. I think anyway.

 

So when people ask me in future what sort of music I like – I shall tell them it’s not the music – it’s the way the air sounds around the drum kit.

Crisis Planning.

 
 

It is not often that planning really gets talked about or debated in the press, so it was rather heartening to see that there was some column inches devoted to a discipline that I love more than my own mother (not really Mum – just kidding there).

 

And so, with steaming hot burrito in one hand and a copy of Campaign in the other I settled in for what I thought was going to be a satisfying lunchtime read about planning in crisis but which actually turned out to be the opposite and actually about something else entirely.

 

Campaigns esteemed editor Claire Beale did a nice little intro about meeting an unnamed CEO who treated his agency in exactly the same way as the other FTSE Top 249 CEO’s do i.e. if his marketing department is happy then the agency must be doing an OK job. Fair point.

 

She goes on to say that perhaps planning is the key to unlocking a greater level of engagement in the boardroom but, so far agencies and planners themselves have failed to convince senior clients that they can add value by unlocking fresh insights into their target consumers and how best to serve them. Fair point.

And…?

Oh yes, and we all want to be treated as business partners rather than commodities once more. Ok – but haven’t we been saying this for years though? And aren’t we conflating a discussion about planning with a general malaise within our own industry?

 

Simply put:

1) We haven’t been any good at convincing clients about our value.
2) We don’t deliver the same kind of business value that McKinsey’s and the boys in management consultancy do because we aren’t engaged to spend their money understanding their numbers and making suggestions about how to run their business better.

 

Where we do add value:
We are engaged to make products more appealing than the competition by creating intangible value through advertising. Really good planners are really good at making advertising that touches the emotional nerve endings of human beings so that they have a higher propensity to choose one brand over another. Not much value-chain analysis or forward facing oil price hedging strategies required there but something McKinsey simply cannot do.

 

Moving on:

And so, I eagerly turn to Richard’s piece. Always love a bit of Mr. H’s wisdom and razor sharp contrarian attitude. But instead of creating a nice bit of intellectual tension to aid my post burrito indigestion – he and the additional writers Bridget, Sarah and Andy end up with a floppy strategic solution: add more planners – some specialists and some generalists. Really?

 

So, if I have got this correct the solution to an agency model raped by procurement and in need of getting greater access to the boardroom is to add headcount in the planning department. Genius. And all because clients are crying out for more planning allegedly. So where’s the crisis? And I thought this was going to be insightful and interesting. Burp.

 

I agree we are not seen as business partners – but that’s because we don’t sell business solutions – we sell advertising ideas – some of which solve business issues – but very rarely.

 

So, planning isn’t in crisis but perhaps the industries perception of itself certainly is.

 

So what would I do from a planning perspective to be able to charge more and get access to the boardroom?

Well 3 things actually:

1)   Make account management great again:

Heads of planning departments should help train senior account management to be more strategic by asking better questions around business – not advertising – issues and to understand how a client makes and loses money. If they don’t know the share price on any given day – or how it’s calculated – teach them or fire them.

 

2)   Walk the walk:

Opportunistically write a 3 year brand plan for your biggest client for the Marketing Director to give to the CEO in McKinsey style (including the use of Calibri and smart chart graphics) weaving macro and micro economic forecasts in together with communications opportunities. Demonstrate how leveraging creative thinking will deliver tangible shareholder value. If you can’t then that’s the reason your not invited to take tea in the oak paneled room. Remember to leave out the brand onion but do put in growth figures based on financial forecasts. Buffett = good – Draper = bad.

 

3)   Get involved

Insist on quarterly strategic brand planning sessions with clients based purely around the numbers. Avoid talking about creativity or ads. Talk about opportunities and business growth. Have separate brand clinics weekly to talk about the work.

 

Up for it?

If your top planners can’t do any of the above – or don’t like doing it – then don’t complain about being kept waiting in reception while the big decisions are being made upstairs. Every planner (digital/comms/connections/account/brand) worth his/her money should be able to do these things with varying degrees of experience. If they only want to talk to consumers and write creative briefs that's fine – just ensure that they are able to demonstrate the effectiveness of that insight applied creatively in monetary terms. If they can’t – teach them or fire them.

 

Finally, this isn’t about planning (sadly) it’s about being relevant. And there is nothing more acutely painful than not being relevant. Hopefully one day we will have a proper debate about planning. Until then...

 

Black Swan Craft

Aronofsky’s latest (master)piece Black Swan (preferred Pi – another story altogether) uses all the classic Hollywood film poster codes and norms to tell us what we can expect from the film without actually telling us anything. We know it is going to be slightly mysterious (check out the eyes) and well shot - and it has some good actors/actresses in it. Oh, and that we can expect a very glossy production:

But then I came across these 'teaser' posters released for the Toronto Film Festival. Absolutely beautiful A/W - but it made me wonder if I would want to see the film as much if these were the only clues as to what the film might be about? Probably not. Such is the power of visual communication!

 

 

 

 

Having said that I know which one/s I would want on my wall.

The execution of advertising Pt. 1

Nice day for it...

I have been thinking about the effects of realtime technology on advertising and how it could be the thing that changes everything from here on in. I didn’t see much of it openly debated around the Future of Advertising Agency discussions recently so I thought I might introduce the notion.

Realtime could fundamentally change the mechanics of what success will look like in future – namely the ‘execution’. And I mean execution rather than ‘idea’ because executions are channel specific and have a modicum of predictability. They can now be measured in terms of interactions and social significance – those with a high ‘interest’ or ‘memetic quality’ will be more successful than those that rely on messaging at the right time to the right audience.

The death of the big idea?
I am not saying ideas are less important – they are fundamental - but the quality of the execution is now even more important - rather than merely a component to be worked through later.

The over-focus on the big idea as a single entity rather than a sum of its component parts could be a mistake going forward. And therefore the assessment of the initial idea would have to take into account its technological component as a driver of reach and engagement.

The ECD? Oh yes, we used to have one of those…
In fact I am imagining a world where the skills and breadth of your creative technologist is going to be more revered than your ECD. And that means restructuring the agency. I suggest this is not only possible – but it is highly likely.

The map is not the terrain:
The map is the idea and the terrain is the execution. The terrain is more important in realtime than the map as it is the bit where the light reflects on the retina and the flesh touches the plastic.

The new and shiny might actually prove to be more successful than merely the clever interplay of picture and headline. Those interactions that are culturally relevant played out in realtime will be judged to be more successful than those designed to act as a statement of brand intent at any single point in time.

‘artful craft + process simultaneously experienced’

beats

‘idea + execution’

Old Spice and Converse bear this out.

What does success look like?
In future therefore, I believe the most important qualities that will be measured will be driven by cultural relevance in realtime against:

1)   Velocity - speed and quality of memetic attraction
2)   Return on Involvement - number and reach of diverse human interactions

Think not? Name any awarded ad you have seen (recently?) where the execution wasn’t 90% of its appeal. What will make it successful in future is the craft brought to the execution in each channel – not just the idea itself.

Final thought:
Oh yes, and the agency of the future will be indistinguishable from Pixar.

Client Vs Agency or Client + Agency?

Here is the original version of a piece on the role of procurement I wrote for the Media Guardian last week:

Throughout history the ad business has been almost schizophrenic in its ability to build meaningful and respectful customer relations with its clients. Admittedly there have been some long lasting and mutually beneficial strategic relationships – but mostly it is a rather unedifying spectacle of mistrust and mismatched agendas played out over time.

Logic Vs Magic:

Most of this can be traced back to a simple fact: clients tend to measure success in entirely rational ways – usually quarterly and financial, whereas agencies tend to measure success in more emotive ways - once a year at a creative awards ceremony. We simply celebrate and invest in our differences rather than our similarities. Ok, perhaps that is a little harsh, but the dichotomy of rational Vs emotional – logic Vs the magic - lies at the very heart of the issue.

Stick to what you do best:

The need to have some degree of certainty in uncertain times has led to an over-reliance on the numbers which has propelled procurement to the top table and beyond. Procurement is great where you have predictable outcomes – like the lifetime of a paperclip – or the efficacy of a certain floor polish, but the business of creating highly emotive and engaging marketing that delivers substantial brand value isn’t quite so simple to evaluate. If it were the case then clients would be doing it themselves - but of course they can’t - (we can all spot the ones that do though right?) - which is why they need marketing agencies.

So what can be done to restore the client/agency balance to move it from client Vs agency to client + agency?

Well procurement is here to stay so we may as well get used to it. But what I propose is proper regulation of procurement for marketing services. I don’t want the person who has negotiated a discount on loo rolls for the year to be negotiating on behalf of the CFO for his marketing. No, I want someone with a track record in marketing who knows that it is not about saving money – it is about making the right investment in creative resources.

The Way Forward:

I propose agencies have a right to establish the credibility and value of the person operating in the procurement position by asking them to present the following in a chemistry meeting for agency evaluation:

1)    A CV showing aptitude and ability to assess creative value
2)    A transparent case study demonstrating the value brought to a previous client/agency procurement process by showing both financial benefit for the client and also the agency
3)    Procurement to present the creative work and the results
4)    Verbatims and recommendations from at least 2 other marketing led clients they have procured on behalf of, and more importantly from the previous agency/incumbent themselves

And finally – surely the best way for finance to control the amount of money invested in marketing is simply to set a budget – not to tell an agency how to spend it?

Thoughts...

 

 

Coming Back

It has been a while since my experience and again want to thank all the amazing people - some who I know and have met and some that I have never met - who have been so kind, patient and helpful. Bless you all - every little interaction helps.

Are there good things to come out it? Well I have learned a few things about myself and my friends that perhaps I would not have had the opportunity to do, and so in some ways this has been a positive experience - and that is how I am going to view it from now on in.

And to that point I re-read some old blog posts from way back over the 'break' when blogging was fun, the world seemed new and interesting and we all felt part of something a little bit special. In fact there were only 12 or so people blogging in and around London and a few abroad - but it felt like an exclusive little club and the things that were shared were brilliant and fun.

Things like a podcast Russell and Richard did talking about planning yet laughing more than talking and a podcast of @Colman getting pissed outside a pub on G&Ts and attempting to talk about planning which still makes me smile.

Which brings me back. To writing. Again. It seems that I was happiest when I had stuff to talk about and share which interested me. I lost interest because of the tidal wave of badly written nonsense and sheer innaccuracy which had the effect of making me more cynical than I had a right to be. And I got caught up in stuff that really wasn't important.

So, I shall start writing again. Even if it is rehashed old stuff - maybe even a short story or two - I'm going to put it up here. Plus some of the small things that I forgot to mention how much pleasure they give me.

So, good bye 2010 you wretched, putrid little boil on the arse of an otherwise OK decade and hello 2011.

Watch this space.