tagged: industry

March 20, 2012

Everything’s a platform (sort of)

Nick Farnhill made a point the other week (during a teary SXSW comedown) about there being too much focus on the usual, obvious online channels and platforms.

Platforms with large communities, of course, come with obvious advantages. ‘Emerging’ platforms (Pinterest, anyone?) excite us but get us wondering when the tipping point will make it ‘worthwhile’.

But let’s park numbers for just a minute and look at two examples of alternative ‘platform usage’. First up is this recent promo for the movie, Prometheus:

It’s smart: a character from the movie gives a Ted talk in the year 2023. Of course, the concept of this character talking at a conference could have existed without the TED reference, but it wouldn’t have resonated so much. This TED partnership blurred the lines between the movie’s world and our own, the placement of the video within Ted’s own ecosystem completing the picture. (personally, I would have liked the production to match the feel of a real Ted talk and be less slick/acted, but still)

Next up is Umbro’s launch of the England football kit a couple of years ago:

Yes, Kasabian is a ‘platform’ of sorts too; its own ecosystem, connecting fans to Kasabian content and experiences on various platforms, including this stage. England’s football kit was seen for the first time on the torso of an Englishman (that many young football fans look up to) as he provocatively accepted the boos of a French crowd (England’s next opponents were to be France).

When you consider ‘platforms’, how often do you think about a band, or a brand like Ted? You might think of them in terms of ‘partnerships’, but that’s a subtly different thing.

They both feel closed off as platforms: ‘Ted wouldn’t let us do a fictional Ted video’; ‘Kasabian isn’t going to take our product on-stage’. But the right idea, which also benefits them (Ted cemented as thought leader; Kasabian as an English export in the limelight) opens up unlikely opportunities. And it can also generate huge amounts of noise, first via the passionate communities of those brands, and subsequently because of the novelty of the concept. No platform, of course, need be isolated from others.

Like most conversations, this is a semantic one. You’re probably rolling up your sleeves and getting your comment ready. What is a platform? What is media? Yada yada. We could argue it all day. But how we think about things affects how we consider them. And I’m saying that there are millions of opportunities out there that we won’t see unless we learn to see things differently.

I’ve always liked Made by Many’s line “We make new stuff out of the Internet”.  We make culture out of culture. Or we should. Question is, how much of it are you considering as ingredients?

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March 13, 2012

Homeless Hotspots and blunt tools

If you’re the sort of person that reads this blog (just a wild guess) then you’re probably also the sort of person that couldn’t fail to hear about BBH’s Homeless Hotspots initiative in Austin. It’s been covered by, well, everyone.

It’s been fascinating to read all the articles and comments around it but if you have to pick one read this, as it gives a good balanced account.

When you read all this stuff it becomes clear that it is in the details where things go wrong. No one has a problem with the concept of homeless people being given the opportunity to ‘run a business’. It’s how it’s pulled off that makes people uncomfortable. In fact, it can symbolically be whittled down to this:

“the shirt doesn’t say, ‘I have a 4G hotspot,’” ReadWriteWeb’s Jon Mitchell points out. “It says, ‘I am a 4G hotspot.’”

I came to the same conclusion, within a couple of milliseconds of hearing the idea. (I also think the name doesn’t help — it places more value on catchiness than on tone)

To aptly adopt the language of the ad industry, you could say: well, that’s just the execution – the intention was good. The problem is that words like ‘execution’ don’t exist in the real world. Everything communicates. And the smallest gesture can convey the values of a deeper-rooted intention. Those small details become bigger than the ‘big idea’ itself, because they congeal in the hive brain of thousands of people, who duly amplify their message.

I’m not going to debate whether this was an altruistic or cynical stunt, but it’s a good reminder that the nuances of execution are more than mere details. We make marketing out of cultural building blocks and they must be handled with extreme care. Use blunt tools and you’ll make a blunt mark.

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September 26, 2011

An insight about insights

‘Insight’; another tricky bastard in our frustratingly word-reliant industry. The nice chaps from YCC were in Poke the other night talking about insights. Sadly I arrived only to hear the closing applause, but I’ve been thinking about insights and have something hopefully worthy of a post:

What I don’t like about ‘insights’ is the sensationalist expectation that they have to appear in a flash of light and make everyone’s trousers fall down. Some people question whether they even exist. And they have a point.

For me, insights (let’s assume they do exist for a moment) are ‘true, but new’. They are based on observations, but observations that provide a fresh (sometimes trouser-removing) perspective on something. Importantly, not all situations require a dramatic change of perspective. Sometimes the smart thing to do is already apparent. When it is, doing a more exciting but less valuable thing is just a bit silly.

But we love the Eureka insights don’t we. Here are a couple of my favourites:

When Nintendo launched the Wii, they had to contend with Playstation and its vastly superior graphics and processing speed. Their insight was “the action happens off the screen”. Nice.

When Dixons.co.uk attempted to take on the big boys, they (M&C Saatchi) realised that they didn’t need to compete on everything. People tended to shop around before buying, so John Lewis’ helpful assistants could also help Dixon customers, so long as they came to Dixons to buy afterwards. This insight led to this famous work and the line “Dixons, The last place you should go.”

In Campaign this week, Russell Davies shared a lovely ‘insight’ from Mark Sorrell. As liberating as it is simple, he proposes that people are wrongly referring to mobiles, laptops and tablets as the ‘second screen’ to television. He observes that these devices absorb more of our attention on the sofa and that it is the TVs that barks on ‘in the background’. I.e. It is television that is our second screen. True, but new. A simple observation that completely rewires how you might think about a dual-screen strategy.

Something occurred to me when I read this last insight. 1. Insights are most exciting/dramatic when we’ve previously been looking at the wrong thing. 2. So caught up are we in sensationalising our industry and our accomplishments, we have completely failed to realise that we’re looking at insights wrongly as well. So here’s an insight about insights:

Insights do not elevate us to a higher plane. They fix our stupidity.

It’s well-documented that our brains are pattern-defining tools. We think we understand the world because we repeatedly reaffirm our misconceptions until they’re thoroughly hard-wired. When people arrive with ‘insights’, what they’re really doing is unpicking our ignorant misunderstandings and giving us a proper look at things.

Does any of this really matter? It’s just semantics, isn’t it? Yes. But semantics define how we see the world. And the more time you spend convincing yourself that you’ve just solved the secrets to the Universe, the less you will think to scrutinise your existing understanding, which is something we should all do constantly. Less sexy, but far more useful.

Update:
Jez kindly tweeted this post and queried about where/how insight informs creativity.  The answer is somewhat buried in the above, so I’ll clarify my pov: The brain is built to define patterns of understanding. It is these patterns that prevent creativity, because our brains tell us everything is as it seems. By Edward De Bono’s definition, ‘creativity’ is literally the act of breaking from these patterns (and in the process our cognitive lethargy). An insight that rewires the way we see something becomes the first creative act; the catalyst that leads to new patterns of thought. I agree with Michael, below, that it doesn’t really matter what you call it, or when ‘strategy’ turns into ‘creative’. I would break it all down as follows:

1. Acknowledge that our current understanding of anything is based on patterns of thought defined in the past
2. Fix this ignorance by scrutinising what we think we know (literally escape from uninspiring, established patterns of thought)
3. Use these new thought patterns to fuel creative alternative ideas

This is all getting a bit heavy. I’m going to have a cup of tea.

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July 29, 2011

Rigidly defined areas of doubt

“I mean what’s the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?”

I’m quoting from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Won’t be a moment.

“That’s right!” shouted Vroomfondel, “we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!”

These are the words of two (fictional) philosophers rejecting computer, Deep Thought‘s role in resolving the answer to life, the Universe and everything. They are torn. They sort of want the answer, but they also desire perpetual complexity and uncertainty, so they can carry on wondering about what it might be. Such is humans’ complicated relationship with ‘knowing’.

I haven’t blogged much recently. Sometimes I wonder how I can think intensely about so many things and then not have anything to say about them. Part of the reason is that they are usually very complex things and the conclusions I take from them aren’t simple, certain ones. They don’t feel concise and clear enough to become a post. And that’s what people like, right? Clarity of thought.

I realised that the thing I really want to blog about is exactly that: the role of clarity in complex processes.

I’m a ‘strategist’, for want of a better word – and strategy is often seen as reductionism: the process of distilling complexity into a nice, singular statement of purpose. That’s never really worked for me, because too much distillation removes richness. Simplicity and clarity still play a huge role, just a more unstable, temporary one than in the past.

We’re drawn to clarity and certainty, because, to quote this article (ht Uwe):

“Certainty is the feeling of confidence we have when we’ve figured things out. Our physiology is geared to move us quickly to eliminate the uncomfortable tension of not knowing”

It’s often the role of a strategist to ease this tension. But as the article continues:

“Many complex problems can only be tackled with experimentation because they do not converge to definitive solutions.”

And in case you hadn’t noticed, the world gets more complex every day, which puts conflicting pressures on strategy. On one hand, it means the need is greater to shield people from overwhelming possibilities and offer clarity of thought. On the other hand, it reduces the integrity and stability of simplicity and certainty.

To complete my trilogy of quotes from Mr Cadsby, he goes on to recommend the adoption of what he calls ‘provisional truth’:

“Provisional truth requires that we think of our explanations as hypotheses — always subject to replacement based on new information or alternative ways of structuring existing information.”

This reminded me of something I read on Noah’s blog about ‘semantic placeholders’. Basically: terms that aren’t right, but do a better job of moving us forward than waiting for impossible linguistic perfection. Which feels bang on.

This is the ultimate truth; irreversible, protean complexity requires that we accept simplicity and certainty as a temporary vice only; a cognitive stepping stone that shifts the moment we move from it. Bit of a bastard isn’t it. It threatens the very core of what a strategist often stands for. It means that simplicity can never be the end of the process. It is merely a temporary expression of clarity in a complex on-going process.

A good strategist needs to battle with contradictory mindsets. She must match her confidence and intellect with humility and doubt. Because the frameworks we create are only temporary scaffolding that require reassembling as we go.

Like the scatty philosophers, Vroomfondel and Majikthise, we need to create ‘rigidly defined areas of doubt’. Enough structure for clarity and decision, but enough flex for constant adaptation. Although I can’t be certain.

‘We,’ said Majikthise, ‘are Philosophers.’
‘Though we may not be,’ said Vroomfondel waving a warning finger.

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June 8, 2011

Dead or Alive – Thoughts on zombies, ecosystems and meaningful connections

There’s lots of ecosystem talk at the moment. And for good reason: everything is interconnected. I remember last year, Nik Roope coming back from SXSW and telling me about a talk he saw from someone (name escapes me, sorry) from IDEO on systems thinking. He was quite drunk, so it was a bit slurry and loud, but it sounded interesting. Then I realised that I had also been talking about systems. I just hadn’t framed it that way yet. This year, Bud Caddell created a brilliant presentation on complex systems and a couple of weeks ago, I found out that Leigh Himel was at it four years earlier.

Systems thinking is a vital part of everything we do and it’s good so many people are batting ideas around. The danger is that the complexity of the subject matter acts as a barrier to action. Ironically, even complexity needs simple entry points in order to get people to embrace it. Luckily, I’m much better at simple than complex ;)

I put together a new deck for the APG in Barcelona, which I presented in April. I finally got round to tweaking it (it was a bit of a ramble) and I’ve stuck it on Slideshare. What it lacks in technological rigour, it makes up for in zombies:

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December 16, 2010

10 hopes for 2011

Rather than make predictions about 2011 I’m going to share ten things I hope will happen:

1. Someone somewhere will explode in a sticky mess for exceeding their lifetime quota for saying the words ‘social media’ without having a point

2. Agency folk will develop the ability to appreciate the work of their competitors instead of slating it because they didn’t do it

3. Campaign magazine’s photography will feature only smiling, happy people – no frowning or steely looks anywhere

4. The acronyms, FML and FTW will drop out of usage and be erased from living memory – except for being mumbled incomprehensibly by an elderly, autistic savant in Utah

5. People will come to terms with the fact that not everything and not everybody is AWESOME – some things and some people are just alright (thus making announcements of truly awesome things more credible)

6. An award will be given to a sensible, well thought-through piece of work that just did its job for a modest budget and using familiar technology

7. The industry’s smartest folk will catch the blogging bug again

8. The ‘advertising vs digital’ debate will be sealed inside a sandwich bag and fired into space

9. People will spend less time talking about doing and more time doing*

10. *I will stop being a massive wanker

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November 11, 2010

Social media panel at #clickldn

I’m sitting at LBi an hour or so after being on this panel with Stuart Eccles and Maciek Gorzkowski. It was enjoyable but in twenty minutes we barely scratched the surface.

Things we talked about that interest me:

It’s not helpful lumping infinite new opportunities into two words: ‘social media’. This simply perpetuates the faux-mystery of it all. In my mind, the saturation of ‘social’ technologies simply renders the technology invisible. What is left is the thing; the idea; the conversation; the motivation. Of course, being too much of a purist in this way can also be unhelpful sometimes ;)

The language we now associate with social media – things like Awesome, :) , Yay! etc – is also starting to grate on me. I think this type of language and punctuation is a lazy attempt to masquerade as ‘getting social media’. What really matters is what value you’re offering. Although there’s a time and a place for friendly gentle language, it should never be used as a veneer. And it often is.

What we didn’t get to talk about:

It is now really, really, really easy to share stuff and connect with people. But this ease has implications. The less effort required to do something, the less significant it is. The trick is to make your ideas slippy so they are easily understood and passed on, but ensure they are still meaningful and motivating.

One good example of actions becoming less meaningful is the evolution of the Facebook ‘fan’ function. You can no longer be a ‘fan’ of a brand page. You can simply ‘like’ it. That simple, semantic change is very important. It turns a lifestyle statement (I’m into this kind of thing) into a momentary vote (I thought this was fun).

One of the most powerful things about the technology we have access to is that we can bring the best of all worlds together. Things can be epic as well as be intimate; broadcast as well as social. Personal messages from the Old Spice Guy is the perfect example. Also worth adding that ‘Big on the outside, small on the inside’ was one of the guiding principals in the development of Balloonacy.

I think it’s also interesting that social media is helping to reinvigorate television. People love the idea of there being one answer. What one thing is ‘all about’? Is it going left or right? Is it Twitter or Facebook? Technology means the answer can be several things at once. Or something that didn’t previously exist. That kind of openness brings with it fear. We like certainty and singularity.

There is of course no formula to make something ‘go viral’. The returns on campaigns designed to be socially propagated have elastic returns. Media agencies can say, I’ll give you X-thousand eyeballs for X-thousand pounds. That’s nice and safe. It’s a harder conversation to say: you might get a mediocre response or this *could* become a phenomenon. Again, the smart thing is to balance both: to use media money to light a few fires and use creativity and brainpower to make the thing ‘flammable’.

Lastly, for me, all good marketing ensures that the reward (economic, emotional or social) is greater than the effort required to get it. And that’s the bottom line: value. Not value just in the sense of a 2-4-1 in Tesco (although that, too) but something human beings will benefit from.

OK I’m a little burned out now. Hope I didn’t ramble too much there. I find this topic interesting, important and completely boring at the same time. Thought I’d get these thoughts down while it’s still fresh in my head. Blah.

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November 10, 2010

Metaphwoar! by Poke

Last night, was Metaphwoar! – an event I put on for Internet Week Europe. It was a playful format, inviting speakers to share one metaphor that would change the way people looked at something. As you can see, it was a lighthearted affair:

To be honest though, it’s very easy – and self-interested – to say that it was ‘me’ that put it on. I might have come up with the idea, but Nik Roope got behind it, Poke then funded it and gave me an entire team of talented, generous people to make it happen. By my books that makes it a Poke event. I feel I need to say that here, because I failed to explain this on the night (I was a bit nervous and not thinking entirely clearly).

I also want to thank the ten brilliant speakers that were brave and willing enough to put their name to an event called Metaphwoar! and deliver a compressed talk to a bunch of people with access to alcohol ;)

The full line-up was Hannah Donovan (above), Darren Savage, Andy Cameron (below), Nathan Cooper, Mathew Wilson, Ramzi Yakob, Jess Greenwood, Katy Lindemann, Dave Bedwood and John V Willshire.

I think it was a real success. At least that’s what Twitter said. Thank you everyone who came and who said nice things. We hope to do it again.

‘Official’ photos and videos of all the talks will be online next week. Thanks to Dogg for the pictures in this post.

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October 21, 2010

How to explore

This is what you should do when you’re asked to explore a brief for a client. Except the dribbling and possible pooping.

Seen over at Adcentred

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October 13, 2010

Metaphwoar! lineup confirmed

And it’s a stonking one. Emails are flooding in with people wanting to come. It’s going to be a brilliant night. Or if not brilliant, then at least terrible, but full ;)

Go see the final speaker list here. Hope you can make it.

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