Did you write a successful novel the first time you picked up a pen?
Did you achieve a World Record time the first time you went for a run?
Did you win an Oscar the first time you took a video with your phone?
Without wishing to be presumptuous, I’m guessing the answer is a big fat no … and yet it seems that is what clients expect to buy any new idea.
To make matters more complicated, you have to be able to prove it BEFORE they do it … because if there’s any element of doubt, then they’ll say it’s all off.
Now I understand marketing is important and also very, very expensive – so you can’t take the piss – but I tell you what else costs a lot of money: doing the same bland stuff you – and your competition – have always done and expecting to achieve something special.
But this is where we increasingly find ourselves …
The dismissal of anything unknown or that has the potential of a flaw or holds the potential of alienating anyone – even if they’re people who would never consider you in the first place – while all the time talking in soundbites of ‘wanting to be great’, wanting to ‘disrupt the market’, wanting to ‘make something iconic’.
Forget great is achieved through the lessons of failure.
Forget great is decided as much by the audience as the creators.
Forget great is about taking a leap rather than a small step forward.
Forget great is more cost effective than spending millions on blanket media.
We’re now in a world where the industry is trying to redefine the rules for success through a process that is designed to create average … in the middle … to fit in, rather than stand out.
And that would be OK if we were honest about it, but no one is.
We have gurus selling their processes as if they’re rockets rather than insurance policies.
We have companies pushing optimization as a liberator rather than an efficiency generator.
We have people claiming marketing practice is an MBA when it’s very good ‘Marketing-101’.
We have brands thinking process complicity is a differentiator when it’s a duplicator.
We have strategists believing popularity is a sign of their smarts rather than superficiality.
We’re literally proving the Emperor’s New Clothes is more documentary than children’s story … and yet we continue to favour those who talk about their systems, models, processes regardless of the fact many of them have never, ever made anything good. I don’t mean that from a subjective perspective, I mean it in terms of many of the people with the loudest voice and opinions have literally not made a single thing.
Zilch.
Nada.
Zero.
But that’s where we’re at these days … the land of bonkers beliefs.
Where companies talk about the importance of ‘strategy’, then do the absolute opposite when there’s a chance to make more – or quick – profit. Where organisations talk about the importance of employees and loyalty, then treat them like disposable commodities when it suits their needs. Where marketing departments talk about forward planning, then keep briefing ‘sprints’ to lots of agencies to cover their lack of forward planning. Where research agencies talk about understanding customers, then invest in bots to ‘replicate’ human responses so they don’t not have to incur the cost of actually going out to ‘understand people’. Where media agencies talk about their expertise in reaching people, then sign contracts with big media companies that guarantee how much they will spend with them. Where ad agencies talk about valuing the creative product, then undermine the process to reach a figure the procurement department likes. Where brand consultants talk about brand experience, then sell processes designed to deliver ‘low-level consistency’ rather than seminal interactions. Where everyone goes on about valuing craft, then act like they know how to do the job better than a professional despite literally never having done that job in their life. Where CEO’s talk about responsibilities, then outsource their decisions to Management Consultancies. Where HR Departments talk about employee protection, then get rid of anyone who has the slightest difference of opinion. Where this list could literally go on for years because hypocrisy is continually being packaged to claim professional consistency.
Am I being extreme?
Yeah. But I’m also not being unrealistic.
We all know that. And yet so many keep doing it. Embracing an attitude of ‘deliberate ignorance’ to fulfill whatever it is they need or want. Be it job security, managing up or maintaining the illusion of power so you can keep reaping the rewards of the job that pays you more than you deserve or would ever get from somewhere else.
And while I understand why some have to do it, many others choose to … gaslighting others to hide their selfish complicity.
Which is why I love both images in this post.
A reminder that while systems, processes and practices have their place and role – they’re tools, not weapons – and anyone who blindly uses them for the latter … regardless of situation or circumstance, especially if they have nothing to show for it, other than arrogant egotistical behaviour … then maybe that highlights that rather than be the bastion of solution, they’re the fucking problem.
Or said another way …
