Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Consultants, Crap Campaigns In History, Creative Brief, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Empathy, Honesty, Imposter Syndrome, Innovation, Insight, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Money, Perspective, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning, Point Of View, Positioning, Pretentious Rubbish, Purpose, Relevance, Resonance, Social Media, Stubborness, Unfair Life
Of all the blog posts I’ve written over the years – and let’s face it. there’s been loads – there’s been a few I have constantly referred to.
One is Harrison Ford’s the value of value.
The other is Michael Keaton’s if you’re an employee, you’re still a business owner.
If you hadn’t worked it out by now, both are about ensuring you are not just paid for your creativity, but paid fairly.
You’d think that was obvious, but so many people seem to have forgotten that … including the creative industry, who have decided their value is better placed on the process of what they do rather than what they actually create and change.
Insanity.
But underpinning this is the creative person’s insecurity.
Somewhere in our psyche is the belief that if we charge money for what we create, we’re not being truly creative.
That we’ve sold out.
That we are imposters … capitalists in creative clothing.
Now there is an element of truth in all of this – because the moment you are working for someone else’s dollar, that someone has some influence over what you create. But that’s not unique to the creative industry. Nor does it mean you are selling out on your creative integrity by accepting payment for what you do.
Please note I said ‘payment for what you do’.
That does not mean we should be ignoring the needs, ambitions and goals that our clients want us to help them achieve, but it is acknowledging we should also be paid well for the creativity, craft, experience – and unique way of looking at the World – that goes into creating the work that allows us to achieve their needs in ways others can’t.
The reality is as much as many – especially in the creative industry – like to suggest money is the enemy of creativity, it’s not.
It can allow us to do amazing things.
Break new ground.
Explore new possibilities.
But more than that, while it may be differing amounts, we all need money.
And – to a certain extent – we all want money.
There is nothing wrong with that, just like there’s nothing wrong with being paid for what we do.
The real question should be how did we earn it and what did we do with it when we got it.
That’s how you can judge a persons integrity, not the fact you got paid for what you did and the talent you invested in it.
Sure, struggling may sound romantic in a Hollywood movie, but few of us want a lifetime of that and who can blame them!?
I still remember when Lars Ulrich of Metallica copped all manner of shit because he was the face for recording artists fighting against the role of Napster on the recording industry.
The insults he copped.
The distain he was thrown.
And all he was doing was trying to protect the value of his – and millions of other bands – creativity.
Why was that wrong?
Was it because, at that stage, he was already wealthy?
Is there some sort of rule to say that there is only so much you’re allowed to make before creative people need to shut up and be grateful for what they’ve got?
And what is that amount? No doubt, somewhere between ‘enough to live but not more than the rest of us’.
However somewhere along the line, society has decided to reposition creatively minded people as idealists … naive or even weak. Ignoring reality so they can wank-off on some self indulgent project that only interests them.
Which is total bollocks.
Apart from the fact I’ve never met a creative who isn’t insanely focused on the challenge they’ve been given – even if they have a very different opinion on how to get there to the client or the rest of the agency – the fact is we’ve now surrounded them with 10,000 different types of ‘strategist’, with 10,000 different opinions and agendas … which forces the conversations to be more about the importance of a discipline than the actual potential of the work.
And don’t get me even started on the fact a lot of these new forms of strategy are either [1] not really new or [2] not doing actual strategy, but executional management!
However all that aside, the reality is in all this, creative people have to take a responsibility for the situation they find themselves in.
Or, potentially even more specifically, the people who are training and developing them.
Because they are complicit in maintaining the belief your creative value and integrity is somehow linked to not being ‘diluted’ by payment. Which, when you think of it, is utterly ridiculous given value is created by what others will pay for it.
Schools … universities … agencies … everyone has an obligation to change this.
Not just for the future of their students or employees, but also for their own value.
Appreciating the economic value of what you create and what that creates is not dirty … it is the opposite of that.
It’s purity.
It means you have power in the conversation.
A right to fight for what you believe rather than what is convenient.
Creativity comes in many forms but right now, the form of ‘engineering’ is winning.
Where it’s less about what could be created and more about how you create something that has already been defined. Worse, something that has already been done.
So if you’re in the creative industry or thinking about it or know someone already in it.
Or, alternately, if you’re a teacher involved in the arts – or any subject for that matter – or careers advisor or a parent of someone who is in, or wanting to be in, the creative industry … then please read this article by Alec Dudson [the founder of Intern] because in it, he explains why ‘the economic value of creativity’ skill still remains largely absent from creative education … the impacts of that omission and, most usefully, how you can change it.
Creativity can change outcomes, possibilities and culture.
It has played a pivotal role in every great brand, product, idea and invention.
But not as insane as the people capable of creating it, also being complicit in it.
Know your worth. Charge your worth. Build your worth.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Audio Visual, Authenticity, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Content, Context, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Differentiation, Emotion, Empathy, Experience, Honesty, Insight, Management, Marketing, Perspective, Planners, Planning, Point Of View, Presenting, Relevance, Resonance, Stubborness
For reasons I am unsure of, I have been asked to do a lot of presentations over the last few weeks.
From the board of directors of the World’s most notorious video game company to Silicon Valley VC’s to the social platform Trump is petrified of and a whole host in-between … I’ve been asked for my POV on all manner of things.
The role of technology in sexual education.
How technology can evolve how we tell stories.
Why the best way to be wanted is to be banned.
How experience design is increasingly built on efficiency not emotion.
How to create the environment where the best creative is allowed to be born.
It’s been so much fun …
Not just because it made me think about things or that I got to meet a bunch of amazing people, but because I could do the presentation entirely as I felt I wanted to.
It’s not that I have felt I couldn’t do what I believe was right, but over the last few years, there’s been a few people who have tried to convey a ‘this is how you should say things’ attitude.
Now don’t get me wrong, it takes an army to make an argument and you should always be open to other people’s thoughts and suggestions … but if you’re made responsible for giving the presentation, then you should get the final call on how you express it.
Having people more obsessed with how you’re saying things rather than what is being said is pretty depressing, but not as depressing when you realise colleagues can be more of an obstacle to great work than your clients.
When that starts happening, you start questioning things.
Often yourself.
Are you good enough?
Are you worthy enough?
And then, before you know it, you’re chipped into complicity by the constant stream of criticism … leaving you with no confidence, no self-belief and not much hope for where you’re heading.
I wrote about this a short while ago which is why I want to just reiterate, when you do the presentation you want, the feeling is infectious.
Not just to you, but to who the audience is.
Here’s some examples of the pages I’ve presented in the last few weeks …
And here’s the thing, they all went down very well.
Sure, some of them made the audience gulp.
But they also loved it because they knew I was saying was to try and help them win better rather than just kick them in the head.
And that’s the key.
Show you really give a shit about them.
However, while some seem to think you do this by pandering to the audience, I believe it is by giving them utter transparency and honesty.
Let’s face it, if you’re willing to do that to a client at a formal presentation – albeit doing it in a way where they understand why you’re doing it – then most of the time they’re going to respect you, even if they don’t agree with you.
I’ve had so many clients come to me/us who initially didn’t.
Because as my old, brilliant head of NIKE marketing said to me once,
“Middle management want to be told they’re right. But senior management want to know how to be better”.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Audio Visual, Brand, Brand Suicide, Communication Strategy, Creativity, Culture, Egovertising, Imagination, Innovation, Marketing, Perspective, Relevance, Research, Resonance, Stubborness
So recently I saw the above scoreline posted by a sports platform.
8-0 is a pretty emphatic win.
But then I saw the sports platform in question had stated FCB had won.
No shit sherlock, even the amazing Stevie Wonder could see that!
And it’s this sort of state-the-obvious statement that reveals so much about the state of research, clients and agencies.
Because somewhere along the line, a bad research company has told a bad client that they need to order their poor agency to put a state-the-obvious fact within their carefully crafted piece of communication because there’s a 0.000001% chance the message they want to convey is not quite clear enough.
That, or because the client wants to ‘own’ a particular word in their category – and it will be evaluated by post campaign research – they want to make sure they say it as many times as possible to increase the odds … regardless of the fact that in the real world. no one ever uses the words ‘vitality’ or ‘efficacy’.
ARGHHHHHH!
Years ago I watched a documentary called Z-Channel about the early days of cable television.
One of the networks, Z-Channel, was very avant-garde … playing programs featuring all manner of obscure content.
When asked why, they said this:
“Too many play to the lowest common denominator. We want to play to the highest”.
If only more research, clients and agencies remembered that, then maybe we would make more work that respected the audience and aimed to enthral, inform and entertain them rather than bore them into submission via work that treats them like village idiots.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Business, Communication Strategy, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Customer Service, Insight, Management, Marketing Fail, Standards, Stubborness, Tourism
So a few weeks ago, I was in Amsterdam and about to fly to London.
I was quite excited because apart from going ‘home’ for the first time in well over a year – even if it was just for 18 hours – I was going to fly into London City airport for the first time and I was interested to see it.
OK, that’s not why I had chosen to pay the higher fair – I had to be in the city at a specific time – and so that airport made things super convenient for me.
About 30 minutes before we were going to board, a member of British Airways came up to me and asked …
“Mr Campbell, would you be interested in catching a later flight that lands at Heathrow. We will provide you with a €25 voucher if you do.”
Now for those of you who don’t know, Heathrow Airport is not in the middle of London and while it is obviously well served with transport links, it’s a much longer journey and probably costs more than the €25 they were offering.
Because of this, I asked …
“Does anyone ever accept that offer?”
The representative looked at me rather sarcastically and said …
“Yes, lots of people actually”.
Now maybe I was a bit jet-lagged.
Or maybe I just didn’t choose the right words.
But I found myself replying with …
“That must explain why you’re no longer the World’s favourite airline”.
OK, that was a majorly dick move, but I still can’t work out how an airline thinks it’s OK to offer an alternative flight that goes to a completely different airport and a voucher that doesn’t come close to covering the higher price I’d paid for my ticket [so I could fly to that specific airport], let alone the probable cost of getting into the city from this new destination.
I get things change and alternative plans have to be made, but brands need to remember that the best way to deal with screwing up is to offer a genuine level of compensation, not something that literally rubs salt into the wounds.
Have they learnt nothing from their war with Virgin?
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, China, Comment, Communication Strategy, Creativity, Cunning, Fake Attitude, Fulfillment, Hong Kong, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Nike, Relevance, Stubborness, Wieden+Kennedy
Otis LOVES McDonald’s, so before we left the UK, we decided we’d have some for dinner.
He’s a bit particular about how he likes his Happy Meal, so with that – and the social distancing rules – we used their app to order.
As I was customising his burger [no sauce, no pickles] I discovered the option of having no sauce was unavailable.
THat’s right, you couldn’t, couldn’t have sauce.
Of course it was just a glitch in their system but it did remind me of the time I was in Xiamen in China on a NIKE get-together.
It had been a long and challenging day.
Not with work, but because we had stupidly left our bags, computers and passports in the back of the cab and needed all our powers of deduction and negotiation to get them back.
Trust me, in a city of nearly 4 million people and no details of the cab that had our stuff, that was a pretty big task, but thanks to the brilliance of Charinee and Jenny, we achieved it … so after that drama and then running a workshop for the NIKE Running team … we went back to our hotel tired and hungry.
We decided to have a drink in the bar and order some food.
After looking at the menu, we quickly ordered 2 cheese and tomato pizzas.
“Sorry …” they said, “… we only have pepperoni pizza available”.
By that point, we had set our heart on pizza so I looked at the waited and replied,
“Could we order the pepperoni pizza but without the pepperoni?”
They nodded yes and soon we were munching on our pepperoni pizza … without the pepperoni … with smug smiles on our faces.
And now I’ve told that story, it’s reminded me of the time I used the same logic to get one over on IKEA Hong Kong, who were trying to fuck me over with a new sofa we bought.
Which all goes to show, the best way to beat a process is to use the process against itself, because for all the ‘experience design’ processes that is all the range right now, most of them are built to protect the company rather than satisfy the audience.