Filed under: Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Complicity, Context, Corporate Evil, Creativity, Culture, Innovation, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Teamwork, Technology
I always laughed when people blamed Microsoft Powerpoint for bad presentations.
The idea that this program was purely responsible for you choosing to write 15,000 pointless words on a page in small font.
Sure, it had limitations … sure, it could encourage a certain ‘look’ for what you wanted to present … but fundamentally, that was on you, not it.
Don’t get me wrong, for a tech company … I’m shocked at how bad their user experience is.
If you think their classic platforms are bad, you should see the utter shit show that is a parents account on X-Box.
Or Microsoft Teams.
Oh my god, how can a company that can so carefully and considerately design an X-Box controller for those with disability make such a shit show of everything else.
I literally don’t understand it. Honestly.
Teams is the most user un-intutitive experience I’ve ever had.
Things don’t make sense. Things are unnecessarily complex. Things are hidden.
And yet, instead of fixing this – it seems their focus is to land-grab the video collaboration market, regardless if people like working with it or not.
You can’t go a week without being told Teams now offers a new feature.
Some – as you can see from the photo above – are relatively big things.
Most, aren’t.
A range of tools/functions that seem to only cater to the most niche or nerdy of Teams users.
It all feels like Samsung phones.
When you start one up, you see a bunch of apps that seem to serve no purpose whatsoever other than to be able to say you can do something with it that no one will ever want to do something with.
Ego rather than value.
And here lies the problem with Microsoft …
They claim all they do is about aiding collaboration, but in practice, it appears they have no understanding of how teams – or humans for that matter – actually work together.
For all the efficiency they claim they want us to be able to operate at, they are – arguably – making us more inefficient, either by making things more difficult than it should – or needs – to be, or trying to push us to answers without any capacity for giving the situation some thought to make things better.
And maybe that’s the next gen of their business model.
A desire to make efficiency about quantity than quality … a way to help their corporate clients keep their staff costs lower by not allowing any one individual to rise while also giving them more opportunities to sell tools, like their new AI model which will be incorporated in many of their products.
Yeah … I know, I sound like a conspiracy nutcase and I don’t really believe this is the reason, which means it’s something far worse.
They make for what they wish we did rather than who we actually are.
Or said another way, innovators of control, rather than efficiency.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand Suicide, Business, Comment, Complicity, Confidence, Consultants, Context, Corporate Evil, Corporate Gaslighting, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Fake Attitude, Imposter Syndrome, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Mediocrity, Prejudice, Professionalism, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance, Respect, Succession, Toxic Positivity, Trust, Truth
I appreciate that at my age, the title of this post may suggest I’m going to whine about companies overlooking people of a certain age for younger, cheaper, hungrier individuals.
I’m not. I get it.
Not only that, while age and knowledge have some level of interconnectedness … I’ve met countless young people who are bloody brilliant [not relative to their age, just bloody brilliant] as well as plenty of people with ‘experience’ who, frankly, aren’t.
What I’m talking about is the blinkered confidence some companies place in their people simply because they’re their people.
On one hand I suppose I should celebrate it, given its not that long ago that companies overlooked internal capability for the external shiny and new.
And while this post does not reflect any of the clients I specifically work with directly, I am seeing and hearing more and more companies go to this other extreme and worse … enabling a level of arrogance in their people that results in any objectivity they face – regardless of the knowledge and expertise of the person delivering it, let alone the desire to help make things more successful – as a threat.
Complicity is the name of the game these days.
Blind acceptance that whatever the person ‘in charge’ says, is right.
A belief internal employees are better informed about every topic than people who are experts in specific topics … so companies can feel great about themselves.
Of course, the issue with this approach is that when things go wrong – or don’t go right enough – everyone else gets the blame. Not just by the person in charge [which you almost expect] but by the company they work for, despite the fact the only reason they gave this employee the project is because they knew a bit more about a subject than senior management, so they saw them as [1] an expert in the field and [2] a cheaper option that bringing in external expertise.
Now you’d think the fear of this outcome would ensure people would stand up for what they believe is right.
Not because they’re arrogant, but because they know their experience and knowledge can disproportionally benefit the end result.
And some do. At least the really good ones …
But even they are under increasing pressure to go along with the whims and wants of certain people/companies … because the whole industry is seeing more and more work being handed to people and companies who simply say yes to whatever is wanted.
Or said another way, convenience and fawning is more valued then expertise, knowledge and standards.
Now of course, it’s human nature to believe we can do more than we actually can.
We all like to think we are ‘special’.
We all like to be acknowledged as important.
We’ve all heard the ‘fake it till you make it’ philosophy.
But the truly special are the ones who know that however good they are, having people around them who are better than them – in different fields – can make them even more effective.
It’s why the World’s best athletes have coaches.
It’s why the World’s best musicians have producers.
It’s why my brilliant ex-NIKE/FFI client, Simon Pestridge, said: “middle management want to be told they’re right. Senior management want to know how they can be better”.
The reason I say all this is that I recently reached out to one of the best organisational psychologists in the World. They work with the CEO’s of some of the most respected and successful companies in the World including Apple, NIKE, Ferrari and Electronic Arts to name a few.
This is what they said when I talked to them about what I was seeing:
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“I call them professional imposters and the reason so many succeed in corporations is because they target other imposters. It becomes a co-dependent relationship where they ensure their ego, status or promotion opportunities won’t be challenged.”
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To be honest, I was not shocked by their view, I was more shocked by the acknowledgment.
Of course, I probably shouldn’t be. It’s hardly a new phenomenon and we also had one of the most successful shows in TV history shine a light on it …
Succession was a celebration of the role of co-dependence and complicity within organisations.
As I wrote recently, Tom was the epitome of it.
But this post is about Tom before he ‘won’ [even though he is still a pawn to the real power] … this is about Tom when he just wanted to please to win favour. Where he thought nothing of being vicious and vindictive to those beneath him because he knew that didn’t just please the people above him, it let him feel he was above everyone around him.
And so Tom eventually gets promoted beyond his capability …
Where the illusion of power and external fawning is more important to him than pay checks.
Where his belief is he is superior to all, regardless of knowledge or experience.
Where his understanding of situations is the only understanding of a situation.
Yeah, it’s bleak. It’s fucking bleak. Because while Tom was fiction, Trump got to be President of America. And what makes it worse is we all see it. Hell, we’ve probably all been exposed to it. And yet it goes on.
If companies truly want to be great, then they’ve got to kill and stop rewarding toxic positivity … because value will be revealed when they allow more people to say no to them and they say yes to more people.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Consultants, Context, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Marketing, Marketing Fail
Once upon a time, there was an ad for John West – a canned food company – that said:
“It’s the fish that John West rejects that makes John West the best”.
And at our recent talk at Cannes, I quoted this from the brilliant Janis Joplin.
And yet, when I look at my industry – an industry that is quick to call out the failings of clients – we’re not really living up to that.
Now of course I appreciate we are in economically challenging times.
And I also appreciate money makes the World go round.
But the decline of our industries power and influence was going on long before this and one of the reasons was because we chased money more than standards.
Or said another way, we sold the value of creativity and cultural understanding for the illusion of importance and association.
On one hand I get it …
As an industry, we have always been paid a fraction of what some others have got, despite – arguably – doing a lot more, or at the very least, the same amount.
But our desire to be seen as a ‘corporate insider’ has destroyed our value as a ‘corporate outsider’.
Where we have the clarity to see where society is going and what they’re valuing. Where we have the objectivity to understand what are the real issues, not what companies wish them to be. Where we have the creativity to know how to connect to people in ways they may actually give a shit about.
But more and more, we are walking away from this.
Complicity is valued more than questions.
Acquiescence is valued more than a point of view.
Toxic positivity is valued more than honesty and transparency.
Now don’t get me wrong, there’s a reason for all this …
Some of our own making, some of clients making.
But for all our talk of believing in creativity … how many really are demonstrating it?
What makes it worse is the creative talent out there is arguably better than at any point in our history.
And that’s why this is not some ‘rose-tinted-looking-backwards’ bullshit – especially as there was a whole host of shit that went on back then – this is a ‘what the hell do we value’ rant.
Once upon a time I was having a bit of a hard time at work.
A lot of it was because of the issues I’ve just written.
I went home and told Jill what was going on and what I was being told when I asked questions … to which she said something that has stuck with me.
“There’s always a reason why they’re not going to do something”.
She was right.
She still is.
Despite being in the incredibly fortunate position to work with highly successful creative people who reside outside of this industry, I still love this industry.
More than that, I still believe in what this industry can do and create.
Hell, it has given me a life that is beyond anything I could have ever imagined for myself.
In fact, almost everything that is in my life is because of what
But right now it seems we’re better at talking good things than doing good things.
And so when things get worse – not just for us, but those who use/dictate to us – we better not complain about who is eating our lunch, because quite frankly, we are doing it, and have been doing it, to ourselves.
Making decisions of convenience not of standards and excitement.
A circle jerk of blinkered and blind complicity.
The good news not everyone is like this.
The even better news is it’s not too late for us all to change.
But the muscle memory may be too old for some to remember. Or worse, care.
Don’t let the financial crisis be another excuse for apathy. That didn’t get us in this mess.
We did.
We all did.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Business, Comment, Communication Strategy, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Effectiveness, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail
A few weeks ago, I saw this …
… and I have to be honest, it’s had me thinking a lot.
Because while I acknowledge you can’t take things for granted, when you get lost in the weeds, you lose sight of what you’re working towards and how you do it.
And a lot of people are doing both of those things.
Nothing sums this up more to me than the issue of attribution.
The quest to minimise risk – or ‘optimise value’ – has resulted in brands forgetting that the easiest way to get attribution is to do something interesting.
But instead – reinforced by industry ‘guru’s – we have ended up with a continual production line of commercially responsible alternatives.
Be a one colour brand.
Place brand assets higher than a brand idea.
And – worse of all – have watermarks in your ads.
While colour and brand assets have a role – albeit not a primary role as so many people seem to suggest – if you feel the only way your brand will be remembered in your commercial is to place your logo all the way through it, then you either don’t know how people work or how advertising does.
Or said another way, you’re admitting your brand and your product are forgettable.
Seriously … why would you do that?
Why would you spend millions on something that positions you as uninteresting.
Worse, why would you spend millions on something that positions you as uninteresting and make sure people know it’s you by ramming your logo down their throat?
But somewhere, someone is measuring the ‘impact’ of this approach and finding a way to demonstrate its effectiveness to clients. Letting everyone feel pleased with themselves. Their choices. Their actions. Creating a precedent others will follow in the blind belief they’re being smarter … more optimised … more effective than all their competitors. All the time consciously and deliberately ignoring the critical fact that it’s undermining them rather than liberating them.
Which leads back to that tweet at the top of the page.
Because while knowing how things are going is important, nothing reveals how lost you are than measuring everything but valuing nothing.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Context, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Experience, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail
A few weeks ago, I posted this on Twitter …
Quite a lot of people liked it for one reason …
It’s kinda true.
For all the shit people throw at the younger generation for chasing the next shiny thing, the same can be said for business.
Worse. In my experience, the younger generations are far more committed to what they think is the right thing and stick with it, even in the face of other things coming up.
OK, so there may be some subjects where they are quick to switch, but it’s not the stuff that costs tens of thousands of people their livelihood just because someone at the top wants to look like they have their finger on the pulse.
Seriously, the way some companies behave is like watching a massive game of Hot Or Not … just with billions of dollars riding on every decision.
Once upon a time, a planning colleague – Rodi – once said the biggest problem with business is they remain interested but never want to commit.
He was – as usual – bang on.
And while there are many schools-of-thought that suggest that because of the speed of change ‘those who commit, lose’ … they’re really missing the point.
Because while you have to know what is happening and shifting, it’s only those who commit to what they believe in who can create something that leads culture to them … rather than continually chasing where they’re going.
It doesn’t mean it will always work out, but we know the alternative achieves that even less.