Filed under: America, Attitude & Aptitude, Australia, Black Lives Matter, Comment, Culture, Diversity, Education, Empathy, Loyalty, Peace, Police, Prejudice, Racism, Relevance, Resonance, Social Commentary, Social Divide
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a police officer.
I was OBSESSED with becoming a police officer.
I read books. I talked to the coppers on the street. I looked up to them literally and metaphorically.
And while I absolutely believe the Police do an important job that is often undervalued, I also think the system they are made to operate in encourages behaviour that is not representative of the values and standards we have all been told they follow.
That is not a justification for wrongdoing – if they do the crime, then they should experience the full force of the law with absolutely no leniency whatsoever – however as police wrongdoing is happening on such a consistent basis all around the World, it does suggest the environment they are being asked to work within, is contributing to the situation in some way.
Which is why I found this comment on twitter interesting …
Now, I would imagine it was said with mischief in the eye … but there is truth in it.
Because where the Police are supposed to protect us, they have evolved into something that often feels more about controlling us … often for the good of the wealthy or the powerful.
I can’t imagine how difficult the job is … it must be a thankless task, especially with government leaders encouraging them to execute aggressive action rather than community integration … but something is obviously broken deep within.
Are all Police bad?
Of course not, just like criminals don’t follow the cultural or economic stereotypes the media, government and white people like to present us with.
And while blaming individuals or entire groups of people may make us feel better … safer … superior … more in control … the reality is so much of what goes on is because of the systemic and institutionalised systems so many people have to live and work within. Until that is accepted, investigated and fundamentally changed – rather than brushed aside as some sort of ‘liberal nonsense’ – we’re going to continue experiencing this pain, and quite frankly too many people have needlessly died and too many families have been needlessly destroyed to not accept there is a problem.
However much that puts the people in control in fear.
However much that shines a light on what we’ve all been complicit in creating.
However much that means governments become scared of the people rather than vice versa.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand, Brand Suicide, Business, China, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Content, Context, Corporate Evil, Crap Campaigns In History, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Design, Differentiation, Emotion, Empathy, England, Fake Attitude, Fulfillment, Hope, Imagination, Innocence, Innovation, Insight, Loyalty, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Only In Adland, Perspective, Planners, Planning, Point Of View, Positioning, Premium, Professionalism, Relevance, Research, Resonance, Supermarkets
Above is a point of sale sign from a local supermarket.
Look at it.
LOOK AT IT!!!
What a pile of utter shite.
Noticeable for it’s stupidity rather than it’s inspiration.
The sort of stuff you would expect from a 5 year old writing jokes for a Christmas Cracker, than a company with well paid staff, responsible for the commercial growth of an organisation.
So who is to blame?
Well there are many who should feel a sense of shame – from ad agencies to research companies to clients – however when I think of who started this horribleness to begin, I can’t help but feel it was at the hands of the marketing department.
Of course even they are not totally to blame.
The C-Suite, with their demands and expectations have a lot to answer for … almost as much as the investors, who say they want the companies they invest in to be good companies but they better make increasing profits every quarter.
But what I found fascinating coming back to Western markets from Asian – specifically China – was how little ambition there really was.
Oh companies would talk about it – wax lyrical about it – but when you delved a little deeper, you saw there wasn’t much there.
Instead the focus was far more about defending rather than growing, corporate convenience rather than customer understanding, explaining rather than communicating and short-term conformity rather than long term change.
But of course, ad agencies need to take their blame for this situation as well.
Too many doing whatever clients want rather than what they need.
Profiting from process over creativity.
Celebrating speed over substance.
What makes it worse is some think this leads to good work.
Effective work. Using ‘proof’ that ignores the myriad of small, separate elements that combine to drive success so they can place themselves on a self-appointed pedestal.
But there are some who have a bit more self-awareness.
Who know what they’re doing is not as good as it could be.
Or should be.
But rather than face their responsibility in all of this, they blame others for how this came about … turning to questionable research that is based on a few tweets, a couple of chats around the agency or claims every single person on the planet can have their attitudes and behaviours characterised by a singular colour or some other bollocks.
And from this, they will claim the public don’t care about smart stuff.
That they ‘don’t understand’ good ideas and writing.
They they’re simply not interested in creativity and ideas.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
I’ve got to tell you, I’m absolutely over it.
I’m over the focus on the lowest common denominator.
Let’s face it, life would be pretty horrible and boring if that is how we really operated … and contrary to popular belief, we don’t.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t elements of predictability in what we do, but to ignore the nuance … to suggest everything we aspire to is exactly the same, delivered via an identical approach … is just plain bullshit.
But here’s the kicker, because more clients and agencies seems to be adopting this approach.
White labelling, phoned-in solutions with a cool sounding names that actively destroys any sense of differentiation and distinctiveness of their brand from countless competitors while also directly insulting the intelligence of the customers they rely on to survive.
I get it’s less hassle to just agree with clients.
I get that having income coming in right now is very important.
I get that a single point-of-sale sign is not going to change the world.
But when we are willing to allow our standards to be determined by how quick we can make money, then all we’re doing is ensuring the long-term value of our industry – and the talented people in it or wanting to be in it – dies even more quickly.
And that’s why I am also over people being quick to piss on anyone trying to do something different.
Claiming it’s self indulgent.
Labelling it a failure before it’s even run.
Saying it won’t appeal to the audience … despite not knowing the brand, the brief, the audience or how people actually think or act outside of some hypothetical customer journey / strategic framework of convenience.
And yet, when you look at the brands, the work and the agencies who consistently resonate deeply and authentically with culture and drive long-term loyalty, growth and profit – it’s the usual suspects and a few newbies, like Nils and the fabulous folks at Uncommon.
Yes our job is to help our clients achieve more than they hoped. Yes our job is to attract rather than repel. But our job is also to help build the future for our clients … influencing, shaping and – sometimes – forcing dramatic change even before the masses are quite ready for it, which means doing work that challenges and provokes for all the right reasons … sometimes asking questions of the audience rather than boring them into beige submission.
And while I acknowledge there are risks in all of that, I personally believe it is far riskier to dumb everything down to it’s lowest common denominator, because every single thing we love, respect and covet has come from someone or something doing something different.
Whether that’s an idea, a product, a story or a new way of looking at the World … it has come from people who understood who we are but take us further than we imagined, pushing the journey and the story with every new chapter of what they create.
They could have taken the easy route.
They could have focused on optimising the rewards.
They could have spent their time ‘removing friction from the transactional process’.
But they didn’t. Or at least, they didn’t just focus on that.
They embraced the risk to create something bigger and more unexpectedly resonant.
Or should I say unexpectedly resonant by those judging them, because they knew exactly where they were going.
And this is why the people who are so quick to dismiss anyone trying to do something new need to understand their actions say far more about who they are and what they value than anything else. And in an industry that is fighting for its life, I put my faith in those using creativity to change the game rather than those who just talk about violation of some old rules.
Filed under: Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Cannes, Chaos, Comment, Creativity, Culture, Data, Emotion, Empathy, Experience, Honesty, Insight, Martin Weigel, Planning, Point Of View, R/GA, Relevance, Resonance, WeigelCampbell, Wieden+Kennedy
I saw an article [the one above] recently that reinforced the importance of creativity and culture in building brands and business.
Of course I’m preaching to the choir, but I get very frustrated hearing companies – and even people who claim they’re in the business of creativity – act as if they’re ‘lesser’ tools to data.
Now don’t get me wrong, data is important and can be used very creatively – and I’m very fortunate to have worked with a few people who have proved this day after day after day – but so few companies talk about it in these terms, instead celebrating data in terms of its rational certainty which, as we all know, is total bollocks because it’s dependent on where the data has come from, who is interpreting it and whether they see it as giving solutions or understanding.
In the context of the article above, data would have probably have said Americans won’t eat sushi.
There would be a huge amount of evidence to reinforce that and many companies would have simply walked away.
But where you would think big business has the brains and tools to find ways around obstacles, the reality is often they’re paralysed by structure, politics and blinkers – not to mention, have the scale to mean they can just move on to the next thing without really having to think about it.
Until someone else does it.
And often, that someone else is someone smaller.
Someone without the structure, politics, blinkers or scale to just accept impossible.
Someone who embraces culture and creativity because they need to survive.
Someone open enough to create rules rather than just follow tradition.
Data didn’t create NIKE.
Data didn’t create Tesla.
Data didn’t create the California roll.
Somewhere along the line they played an important part, but that’s all they did – a part.
Yes, it’s important.
Yes, it can make a huge difference.
But thinking it can do it all on its own is the biggest lie being sold in the industry right now.
Culture and creativity are incredibly powerful forces.
They’re not just checkboxes of a process.
They’re not just a process.
They are living, breathing entities with the ability to change expected outcomes and create new ways of looking at the world.
In these speed-obsessed times, too many view understanding culture and exploring creativity as commercially ineffective because they require nurturing, love and space … however when done right, they can combine in such a way to redefine the rules everyone plays by and make the big players – who think they have all the answers – desperately trying to play catch up.
More than that, it can create the foundation where your business attracts audiences rather than has to continually chase them because you’re building a brand of distinction rather than another commoditised company of alleged disruption.
Again, none of this is meant to be anti-data just a reminder culture and creativity are – at the very least – equal forces of commercial power and should be respected that way, because a year on from the talk Martin and I gave at Cannes for WARC, it is obvious there is still an inherent need to remember chaos creates what order can’t.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Communication Strategy, Culture, Emotion, Empathy, Experience, Management, Politics, Prejudice, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance
Yesterday I wrote a post about the 4 mistakes we make when evaluating new ideas.
As you can see from the photo above, I am doubling down on that … except instead of talking about new ideas, I’m talking about leadership.
Well, I say talking about it … but what with Bill Gates quote and the post I wrote a few weeks ago that details what I think Bill is talking about, I think it says all I need to say.
But I will leave you with this.
There are some incredible leaders out there.
I’ve been lucky to work for and with a bunch of them.
But I guarantee you the ones who think they are, generally aren’t.
Not because they’re not clever.
Not because they’re not successful.
But because they place greater importance on how they look than those around them.
They believe only they have the answers.
They believe only they know how to write the deck.
They believe only they have the client relationship and trust.
And while that be true in the short term, that approach rarely lasts the distance.
Not just because clients change and business changes … but because you simply can’t keep moving forward if you don’t let new ideas come to the fore.
To push you. To challenge you. To excite you.
But generally these leaders won’t and don’t allow that.
In fact, they will actively reject and eject other views.
Because they think they know it all.
And know it better.
And did it first.
And while many may interpret this as the behaviour of someone fearful of their future – desperately trying to prove some sort of relevance to those around them – they’re wrong.
Because the leader Bill Gates describes in his quote is someone who thinks they’re a master of the Universe. Someone who is always right. Someone who is better than those around them. Someone who is the only one who can make things happen. Someone who holds the keys to everyone’s success.
And maybe for a time they are.
Until that stops.
And that’s when things get really scary.
Which reminds me of something my Dad use to say about how he chose which lawyers to hire:
“The people who need to show how intelligent they are, aren’t.”
Or said another way, the moment you think you can’t lose. You’ve lost.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Authenticity, Comment, Confidence, Content, Context, Creative Brief, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Empathy, Home, Honesty, Insight, Mischief, Planners, Point Of View, Pretentious Rubbish, R/GA, Relevance, Research, Resonance
When I was at R/GA, I hired this brilliant planner called Joel.
It was weird how we met because it all started at a Google Firestarter meeting I was talking at.
At the end of my presentation, it was opened up to the audience for questions.
I couldn’t see who was asking anything as the lights from the stage were shining straight into my eyes. Anyway, there was one question that shone out from the rest of the questions of the night – basically challenging the London bubble of planning – and while I didn’t know who asked it, I wanted to find who did to say I liked it.
Alas I never found out who did.
A few days later, I got a message on LinkedIn from the person who asked the question.
His name was Joel.
I invited him for a coffee later that week and suddenly the person who asked the best question of the night was asking the best questions of the day.
But what made them extra good was he wasn’t doing it to show off or stand out, he was doing it because he was interested in the topics and interested to hear my perspective.
We talked about his background, his ambitions and then he did the one thing that almost guaranteed I wanted to hire him.
He called comprehensive school, ‘big school’.
BIG SCHOOL.
I hadn’t heard that since I was a kid in Nottingham and immediately I loved Joel for it. Because for all the time he had spent in London, he had not lost his Bradford realness … and then it became clear why he asked the question about the London bubble, why he was asking questions why culture rarely reflected how marketing department express it and why was the ad industry more interested in convenience than authenticity.
How could I not hire someone like that?
So I did.
And he never disappointed because apart from being culturally, creatively and strategically talented – with an obsessive focus on what life is really like for people, especially outside of London rather than the cliched, London bullshit a lot of marketing likes to portray – his greatest trait was he always wanted to learn.
Always.
Now don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t always the model student … he would push back, he would challenge, he would question … but what he doesn’t know is that was when I was the happiest working with him, because it meant he was believing his words rather than just following others.
And while we always have to be careful we don’t blindly think whatever we believe is the right answer, having confidence and conviction in your gut and your talent is an often underplayed, undervalued, under-encouraged skill in a strategist … which is why I was so happy to see when I left R/GA, Joel had a mug made with my face and my words on it.
Not because he missed my ugly face and lack of vocabulary, but to remind him to trust his smarts, his instincts and his authenticity … but never to be a prick about it.
If I was proud of him before. I am even prouder of him now.