Northern Planner

50 small bits of advice forged by failure

It's common for people turning 50 to share the fruits of their experience.

I've just reached that milestone but I won't.

Because I know I'm nothing special.

Because most of these kind of posts are edited versions of the truth.

(Like the case studies that help no one)

Because failure is the greatest teacher.

Because it's useful to know that no matter how old or experienced you get, we all make it up as we go along. 

So I'm going to share 50 hard lessons, forged in the furnace of failure and fuck up.

 

Never crash into a the client CEO's car

Never be more than two drinks behind a client in any situation

Never click reply instead of forward to a client email

Never ignore someone who says you'll never make it to account director  because your grasp of detail is shocking

Never agree to lead the agency rebrand or positioning

Never work in an agency where you are judged by how many hours you put in

Never do an all nighter in a converted Church unless you have nerves of steel 

Never join an agency with a bad reputation that tells you it's changing

Never criticise someone else's work in an all agency

Never use pretentious words to look clever, it makes you look dumb 

Never write propositions like headlines, unless you want your brief to be ignored

Never get cross in creative reviews

Never get cross with people in LinkedIn

In fact never get cross, store the energy to do something about it - change what what you can, endure what you can't

Never speak first in a creative review - let others talk crap while you work our what you think

Never speak first in any meeting if you can help it

Never talk about a client on train, you never know who's listening (it lost someone I know a pitch)

In fact don't talk about work on a train full stop

Never stay in a job the moment you think you don't trust your boss

Never write a strategy with an ad in mind

Never write a great proposition, creative will automatically do the opposite - frame a problem instead

Never fail to serve good tea or coffee to visitors - little things say it the loudest

Never turn up to the wrong venue for a key client meeting

Never work with your client's offspring

Never question the research in the research presentation (kill it later)

Never assume a few people liking your blog or LinkedIn content makes you any good at the actual job

Never sell work with 'according to how brands grow'

Never believe case studies, they are the Instagram version of what happens

Never fail to actually try whatever you're being asked to sell

Never fail to actually shop for what you're selling

Never fail to meet your audience in real life (don't go to the zoo, go the jungle)

Never defend a strategy because it's cool

But never fail to persuade if you know when you believe in your work

But then again, never fight a losing battle

Never forget an idea that never made it, ideas are connections make it fit something else

Never refuse to post rationalise creative if you like it, good work is hard to come by

Never forget to be kind to junior suits,  they could end up as you boss, or a client

Never allow people in your team who clearly don't care about the work

Never do a job interview in lycra

Never tolerate a bully (they are still around)

Never fail to defend someone against a bully - one day it could be you

Never criticise another agency's work on LinkedIn

Never tell the client their pitch brief is wrong (let them discover how it inspired you)

Never bother stressing over a pitch until you have wasted half the time (some things never change)

Never write powerpoint without knowing what you want to say

Never lend books to colleagues, yoy never get them back

Never try and look smart - everyone hates smart arses

Never reject the obvious, everyone else does too

Never play contact sport with a client

Never take anything we do seriously, it really isn't life or death 

 

If you want better answers, ask less questions

If I was any good as maths, I would have been a physicist instead of planner. Such is life.

That said, I've always kept a passing fascination for the subject, especially particle physics.

There's a weird phenomenon when things get very, very small, which blows my mind.

You have to assume tiny particles are in multiple places at once, yet if you actually observe them, you affect their behaviour and they appear in one place.

In other words, the more direct questions you ask a tiny particle like an electron, the less reliable the answers you get back.

Researching real people is like that. 

Make them feel watched in a focus group and they'll tell you what they think the rest of the group wants to hear (or agree with the loudest mouth).

Even when you talk to then one to one, without knowing it, they'll won't tell you how they really feel or what they'll do.

Partly because they can't help telling you what they think you'll want to hear.

Partly because the mind plays tricks, the further away they are from the experience they're talking about, the less they'll remember or predict it right.

You could ask them questions in the wild, where the experience happens, this is much better. 

You'll still get a bum steer though, because the problem isn't just where and how you ask the questions.

It's asking the questions in the first place.

Asking questions about brands, new behaviours and most categories, like it is with electrons, changes their natural state.

Which is to not to give a flying fuck.

By asking questions, you're getting then artificially interested in things they usually just don't care about.

You're asking them to think about things that normally happen on autopilot, or not at all.

Even worse when we test creative and ask them what they think.

No one wants to think about advertising apart from the people who make it.

The first task of advertising is getting noticed in a busy world, yet most research forgets this.

Asking questions in research creates false interest and consideration.

Which leads to false answers.

So most research is a waste of time. Sorry.

If you want to know, don't ask. 

Why a good strategist needs ideas, not just logic - and how to generate them (it's perspiration, not inspiration sorry)

I was ten when Purple Rain came out, so it's fairly natural I've always loved Prince. 

Between 1983 and '88 he created a body of work that was unlike anything that had come before, bursting with new ideas. However, that was only around 10% of his total output - it's just that we got to hear the very best. In fact, some was years old, honed, refined and in some cases, just ready for its time. 

Ideas just poured out of him, he never stopped making music, it's just that his strike rate of greatness as opposed to OK, or even simply forgettable was around one in ten. 

There's a lesson there for all of us when it comes to great ideas. They don't come from sudden flashes of brilliance, it's constant hard work, relentless improvement and the acceptance you have go through guff to get to great. 

This matters to strategy and planning types, especially in a world of in-housing and the way basically everybody thinks they can your job. 

Yes, logic and evidence are essential - otherwise you're just a bundle of opinions. However anyone can follow a process and spend lots of time and money justifying the obvious (it's how consultancies make profit yes?). Our work requires a leap of imagination, a new way of looking something.....an idea. It's creative act those without the right kind of brain or years of learning their craft, or the right attitude, simply can't do. What divides a real planner from those that just carry the title is the ability to have ideas. Not just follow a process.

'A previously unsuspected connection between concepts that leads to non-obvious consequences' - Josh Bernoff.

That's the opportunity in strategy world spending too much recourse overcomplicating the obvious. 

It's obvious to say that lots of men like football. It's less obvious to say that without football, many people would be insufferable to the people around them. 

Ideas are not limited to strategy, creative, tactics or whatever though.

A company is actually an idea, not a real thing. An intangible thing bringing together people. things and thoughts.

Money is an idea, is doesn't exist, it represents a shared value of what something is worth.

A nation state is an idea, an arbitrary border and shares culture, systems and traditions.

Very few things are concrete, we all swim in a sea of ideas everyday.

They are not some flouncy luxury, they are fundamental. 

So it doesn't help having things like concepts, thought starters, territories- they are all over complex names for ideas.

When it comes to strategy, there are really three species of idea: 

Why Ideas

How Ideas

What Ideas

 

Why ideas are leaps that electrify what the opportunity is, what the real problem is. I tend to think this is most important, now only does great strategy get to the crux of an issue, great problems unleash creativity. They frame a challenge in a way that also an opportunity. They show what a business problem looks like in the real world. Strategy is about change in the real world, Why ideas illuminates what that change could be. 

Make the reliability of Honda Desirable instead of dull.

The problem isn't what Skoda buyers think, it's the people around them. 

The beauty industry should make women feel great, but instead it makes them feel inadequate

 

How Ideas clearly solve the problem - closest to a classic 'proposition' or simple task that, if executed properly, they will unlock gold. 

Polaroid is social lubrication

Make Lurpak the Champion of good food

With ghd, beauty can be made, not born

The Times is history's first draft

Make beards uncool (for a shaving brand)

Make Axe part of the morning routine

Kindness is a strength not weakness (for a natural deodorant)

 

What Ideas are more around tactics and execution. Some would tell you to stay away from these, I say let them pour out of you and challenge others to so better. So many ideas these days need to be around media or PR, they are not the sole remit of a 'creative'. 

Ad funded documentary of real Christmas moments

One off TV ad celebrating Commonwealth Games supporters

Use programatic digital to weave Ikea products into the moments they matter the most

What if we got Snoop Dog to change his name for Smooth Dog for Klarna?

Staff as Stars

 

Getting involved in 'what' is essential, just as IDEAS about how and why are so important. The data fluctuates, but the IPA data bank shows that great creative ideas boost payback by a factor of, as much as, 11. Econometrics from a media group (can't share who) show that innovation destroys 'precision' when it comes to ROI. 

That said, don't let creative types tell you that an execution by itself is an idea, be that a line, a visual or even a 60 second film. Sadly,  they many just have tactics, or something that just looks or sounds nice.

There are few lines like 'Just Do It' that just transcend. 

This Cadbury Gorilla was really a big fat stunt that worked to drive impulse. The case study will try and tell you it's about conveying 'joy' - but in truth, it's a one trick pony delivering the element of surprise. When they try to do more 'joy' ads, they mostly failed, because the idea wasn't really about that.

In a creative review, sometimes the best thing you can do is ask 'what is the idea in a sentence'? You'd be amazed how many times they don't kn0w.

 

When it comes to your ideas, like Prince, there isn't a flash of insight, I'm afraid it's all hard work.

James Dyson didn't invent the bagless vacuum, he worked harder than everyone else to get it to market.

A sculpture is the removal of rock to reveal the beauty inside. 

In other words, make a start, get something down, then continually improve it.

Great ideas do not appear, they emerge. 

Ideas are re-combinations of what is already out there.

So fill your brain with as much raw material as you can.

Read more non-marketing books.

Don't just sit there waiting for inspiration that won't come.

When it comes to a project, read stuff that isn't totally about the product or service - but has a tenuous link.  If you're selling coffee, read about commuting, the original coffee salons, how people get together socially these days (let's go for coffee), which leads to stuff about shyness, public speaking, making time for non-screen stuff, the new rhythms of hybrid work, for example. 

It also means injecting newness into your process. Get a change of scenery, take purposeful breaks, do the process in a different way, talk to a stranger.

As long as you've done lots of hard work already, this is where a lightbulb moment actually happens, Stimulating change in the brain and letting the subconscious work while you do something else creates moments of revelation - but not without those first hard yards. 

Most importantly, find your flow. Diarise time without distractions - phone, email, Slack, Teams -wrench free from the web of brain fog -  focus.

Now, of course, it's also your job to help others have ideas.

To be even clearer, I think it's your job to help EVERYONE have a voice. The more experienced people are, the more their ego and fear of losing authority, mean they won't listen to other thoughts, they are more slavish to the process and in general, ideas get less input.

They feel they have they have more to lose by being open. 

It's the challenge in creative reviews where the CD's word is law.

Yet Pixar has daily crit sessions. Their best films are the result of a tortuous process of incremental gains - their films are a result of continuous improvement and collaboration. It doesn't sound very romantic, yet it's what works.

Coming back to Prince, he needed editors - his worse output came when he didn't have a recording contract and put out what the hell he liked.

So, with your own work, forget your ego and talk to as many people as you can about your thinking. Try and get to a First Pass and invite the world and his wife to crit it. Think of every interaction as a chisel getting to the sculpture within.

Listen to what others say, spot the idea in it. 

We all know workshops are trojan horses for bad ideas mostly. However, you should embrace them as ways to blunt the auth0rity of senior people and bring in new thinking. Just don't look for NEW ideas, look for input on thinking already in play - including your own. 

If you really need to do an ideas workshop though- make it so concepts and unrelated areas collide. A quick foolproof agenda:

Lay out the task

Clear out the closet - flush out first ideas

Do a brain game to get the subconscious going

More ideas

What would your target audience do - a day quick day in the life and then GO!

Opposites - what is the very opposite of what everyone else is doing?

Wrongness - what is the wrong thing to do, how do you make it right?

Objects - what's the connection between, say, some animals - what ideas come?

Simple.

 

So yes, ideas. Your lifeblood, not logic.

Be more Energizer Bunny, it's actually about quantity before quality.

Don't be an island, get as much input as you can.

Challenge experience and authority - bigger egos lead to worse ideas.

Be fast, be prolific, embrace imperfection and wrongness - you want others trying to slow you down, not the other way around.

In other words, be a radiator, not a drain. 

 

What a painful ritual the week before the Christmas holiday taught me about planning and life

When I was a teenager I used to both dread and relish the week we're in now. I used to race at swimming and, the week before we had time off for Christmas, there was an evil tradition called 'Hell Week". 

It was exactly that, seven days of the hardest training our coaches thought we could endure, except even tougher. 

The reasoning behind it was sound. Firstly, it only takes two weeks for the bodies of trained athletes to lose a significant amount of the conditioning they may have built up, so it made some sense to put some pain in the bank before the Christmas break. 

More than that though, most of high level sport is won in the mind, your brain tells you the body is incapable of carrying on before you really have reached your limit. A week of going beyond what you thought you could do, while not sustainable for long, trained the mind to deal with more.

We all used to fear this week. Before, or since, I have never been that tired, never willingly gone through that much physical pain. A killer session before school, another one after. The ache in my arms and shoulders, always a constant companion, genuine hurt that would only go away with more training.

I also used to love it though. I liked to win of course, but I was much more interested in finding out what I was capable of. 'Hell Week' was the week of truth, nowhere to hide. You learned what how far you could go without giving in.

Those weeks didn't just put short term fitness in the bank, they taught me some things that help today.

If you're like me, not the most talented planner, the capacity for hard work doesn't half help. I've seen those for whom great thinking comes easily ultimately fail because when things gets tough, they're not used to having to fight. When you're used to having to battle for everything, you end up doing better work, because you leave no stone unturned. 

That annual ritual also taught valuable lessons for dealing with crisis. Let's be honest, there is lots of pressure in agency life, lots of setbacks and lots moments when you're really up against it. Those weeks taught me that as long as you endure, things will get better eventually, nothing is forever.

Yet, the real learning is that self-reliance can only get you so far. I would never have got through those weeks without the team around me. 

My swim team was incredibly close, yet these shared weeks of real hardship knit us together even more. We encouraged each other, never judged anyone who caved in, we just helped them pick themselves up and go again next time. 

None of us could have done it without each other.

So today, I'm not afraid to ask for help, not afraid to show weakness and only too willing to help others when they day job has some challenges. I also use a crisis to bond teams closer together, so they get through the moment, yet also emerge stronger for it. 

Bollocks to the stupid British stiff upper lip, real strength is admitting you're vulnerable. 

These lessons have helped in life too.

It's been an interesting year.

It would be easy to say that those weeks of learning resilience has made me capable of dealing with anything.

That would be untrue.

There is more than one kind of strength and the macho bollocks, or the British Reserve are probably the weakest.

I've learned that even the toughest times end eventually if you can just find a way to hold on.

More importantly, I know there is no shame in asking for help, that failing isn't failure, giving up is failure. 

Eventually, not now, but at some point, I"ll know the feeling of pride and self-worth from having survived. Able to smile fondly, standing on the edge of the whole you crawled out of, smiling fondly at the bloody claw prints that marked the journey up the walls. Yet profoundly grateful for the footprints next to you, of the people who reached out to pull you up, and the fact you could swallow your stupid pride to let them. 

 

 

Are you feeling it?

You can measure your life in many ways.

How much you money you made.

What your legacy might be.

How many friends you made.

But what about how much fun you had? How much you did things that made you feel alive rather than simply existing. 

What about the things that scared you to death, but you did them anyway?

As you get older, you get out the red pen and start to cross out the things that just don't cut it.

What if you only tried to focus on the things that excite you or even scare you a bit?

Things don't get easier when you're older, you just get a little better at hiding how confused you are.

What if you re-embraced the chaos in your work and life again? 

Because if you do only things that make you feel alive, you'll put more into them. 

The chances are, that means you'll do more things you're genuinely proud of.

Which may well mean you get noticed more in work.

In life you'll meet more people who love what you love. 

In work you'll be sought after for more of the things that mean more than a salary, which probably will get you paid more anyway. 

In life, you'll be the same person, but you'll have the thrill of moving forward and feeling less numb in a jaded world. 

In work, because it feels less like work and more like being genuinely alive, you'll always find ways to do it better.

Enthusiasm and passion show in your work, and your life, when you show up with enthusiasm and passion first. 

And I don't care how shy or anxious you say you might be, take it from a shy person, enthusiasm is infectious and breeds confidence. 

We remember how we feel about people things much longer than anything practical about them.

So you should want people to feel something about you and what you do.

Which means doing what makes you feel something in the first place. 

In other words, don't be lukewarm. 

 

Laws of powerpoint by Russell Davies

Russell has written his laws of powerpoint, you should read it. 

If you're newish to the job of planning, strategy or whatever it's called these days, you'd do well to go back in the archives of his blog and start reading from post one.

Back before blogging was a thing, years before Facebook, Russell was kind enough to share thoughts on how to do the job. They are not out of date.

We are what we repeatedly do

Long time readers of this corner of the internet may be aware I have a passion for tea. Not just any tea mind, it must be made in a warmed pot, with Yorkshire Tea Gold. Also, please put the milk in first. George Orwell was wrong on this, trust me. 

I could not, in all honesty, prove to you if this makes any actual difference to the quality of the beverage (with the exception of Yorkshire Tea obviously) but this is beside the point.

Because I believe it will taste infinitely better, it does. When I was little, this is how my Grandmother taught me to make it. My mother always made it this way, waiting for me when I got home from school. Since then, years and years of repeating the ritual have made it part of who I am. 

We all have these little habits and quirks burned into our brains. They've become instinctive and so hard to change hard to change it takes, on average, sixty six days to change them. It doesn't matter if it's a habit you wish to lose, or something you feel you need to begin, you're looking at over two months of doing it every single day before it really becomes something you'll stick with.

People fail at New Year's Resolutions, diets or so called 'fresh starts', not because they're short on willpower, but because willpower is a bit crap. It's a useful short-term resource, it can get you through a rubbish day, or having to listen to a Stereophonics song, it's just that it runs out of steam fairly quickly. Then you're back to square one, only this time scarred by failure, feeling you've wasted your time.

Real, lasting change happens because we have no choice,  or we've found a way to hack our own operating system.

Why am I telling you this? Because lockdown will have achieved the 'change without choice' thing. After one hundred and twenty days of lockdown, give or take, we've had double the time to break or pick up new habits.

So when we go back to normal, don't expect anything of the sort. 

Because we are what we repeatedly do, the new habits formed in lockdown will be hard to break. So I'd forget much of the rhetoric around seismic changes in attitudes, although, of course, there are bound to be some. What's maybe more interesting, but less talked about, is the sheer weight of all these new daily habits, so hard now to undo. 

We've got used to no rush hour, spending more time with the kids, not having to make the effort to dress for work. I was talking to someone else the other day who was surprised to have relished not having to socialise with people too much and has loved the time alone.  

Me? On the plus side, I don't think about daily meditation, I wanted to stay sane when all this hit and just did it, now it's just something I do. On the debit side, I'd been going to bed later and getting up later, not so good.  I'd got too attached to WhatsApp rather than calling people and really need to do something about getting distracted by phones. Also, I may have kept up with cycling, but I neglected pilates. 

Thankfully there are ways to hack my system. You can too. Forget willpower, use your own nature in your favour.

First, start with loss aversion, we naturally hate to part with things we have got used to. So build a streak. Just make a 66 day planner and tick every day you did, or didn't do, what you set out to. It will be hard at first, but soon you'll decide you haven't come this far to only come this far. You won't want to lose what you've already achieved. Those ticks will feel good and get you through.

Second, make it as easy to do it as you can. Whatever routine you now have, try and go with that flow as much as possible.

For example, every time I make a hot drink, I do a few core pilates exercises. My body doesn't care when I do them, just that I do them. I sleep with the blinds open and the natural light in the morning has woken me up - all I needed to remember for a while was to not shut the blinds before bed. I may have been groggy on a few mornings, but I've built up the habit of having a cold shower, which jolts me into feeling alive. 

So if you're a planner type and want to get to grips with how people might be behaving differently around whatever you're selling, you might want to look at their habits before their attitudes. You could be on to something.

If you want to change a few habits of your own, think about little changes that add up over time rather than relying on willpower. If you improve my 1% every day for a year, that's 365% by the time your done.

Change a little, change a lot. 

Simple ways to do strategy

Let's face it, advertising or whatever you want to call it these days is hilariously over complicated. 

So many comms planning models, brand planning tools, brand frameworks.

Here's a fool-proof approach to cut-through it all.

1. Where are you now?
2. Where do you need to be?
3. What's stopping you?
4. What could change this?

That's it. It's amazing how just asking those three questions relentlessly can slice through lazy thinking or flabby ideas. Especially in workshops.

Just as three simple questions to unlock a brand idea. The sweet-spot between:

1. What is your motivation?
2. What would be missed if you disappeared?
3. What have you seen that people care about that everyone else has missed?

Try it!!

Two crashes, same groups

I'll be honest with you, when the crash happened in 2008 I was bloody terrified.

I was working for a global creative network, my office had just lost its biggest client. 

We were expecting our first child, like most people our savings wouldn't last us forever.

As usual with the big networks, the Eye of Sauron., brooding in it's tower in New York turned its baleful gaze towards Manchester, it saw numbers that needed to shrink and the consultations began.

I was one of the lucky ones. The sense of relief was overwhelming and yet.....

One the most talented juniors I ever worked with was cut. His boss, my boss, never actually said goodbye to him, he was cast out within an hour by HR. 

It's been shown that laying people off in their first job or so, has lasting damage (believe me I know). My team (not the boss) did everything we could for him. He didn't need help with his career, he's now at one the best and one the best there.

He needed emotional support. Kindness. 

I can only remember feeling the conflict of relief at being one of the lucky ones, at war with over guilt of thinking thank God it's them not me. 

My life is very different now, eldest child is nearly 11, I'm the strategy director, not the minion. It's a very different feeling to worry about your own life, but feel so responsible for all the people who depend upon you at work. 

It makes me judge that boss even more. It's not excusable not to say goodbye to someone who's life you've just turned upside down, its just not.

Two months later, the same boss broke down in a meeting because her dog was ill. 

Her dog.

She was also caught saying she liked recessions because you cab squeeze more out of your people. 

Lots of folks in adland are spouting the usual predictions about how the world will change. At least I guess, unlike the annual January  crystal ball attempts to tell us how this is the year of this and that, it's safe to say that the world is changing profoundly. But no one really knows what will happen.

One theme though is that when this all end, people will judge companies who didn't do their bit.

Yet we're seeing the usual global groups cutting deep as we speak. I don't know their numbers, but I suspect they'll be judged too when they need talent for the upturn and their isn't any.

I hope it might be a time for independent agencies to flourish, by being good AND doing good work. But it's only a hope, I don't know what will happen any more than anyone else. So don't judge me.

Challenging the idea of being a challenger

If anyone asks me what strategy books to read, one of the top three is always Eating the Big Fish. I still think it's a great way of looking at how a minnow can out think the big boys. 

(Or just read a book on Judo)

But at face value, it's still about single minded repetition of the same position, vision or whatever the brand babblers like to call it these days.

This is good, this is important. Being consistent, in a way that stands out, that helps people not to think too hard about you (they don't want to), that makes them instinctively believe you're better pays back in spades. That's great. 

But it's not the only way. 

And perversely, when you can't move for 'Challenger' or, God help us, 'Disruption' strategies, adopting challenger strategies is pretty, erm, conventional. 

Especially when big companies take a challenger approach to stay ahead. 

 

In other words, it may well be that it's time to challenge being a challenger. 

The other book I'm getting folks to read is the actually a chapter. The bit on 'Winning' in Messy. 

Basically, the quicker you can understand what's REALLY going on and act on it, against slow and ponderous organisations, the better.

If you can keep them guessing while you're at it, disorient them over and over again, you're on to a winner.

It's really why Trump won.

It's how Amazon destroyed Barnes and Noble - and Toys R Us.

All this depends on having the will.

Being up for a different way of thinking about brands and stuff. In fact, scratch that. 

Being up for jettisoning models that approximate real life (that's what brand theory is, come on, be honest) and actually engage in real life.

Because real people don't live life in campaigns or quarters, they live in moments.

They value genuine surprise and delight above predictability.

Just look at the plot twists and rug-pulls in any successful modern drama. Compare that with the formulas of the massive hits of yesterday, like Columbo or even Bond movies. You were watching the same thing over and over again.

We don't want that now.

The trick is to make lots of little acts add up to one big picture.

Some of that is Byron Sharpe's 'distinctive assets'. MdDonalds can do what the hell they like as long as there is lots of red, a golden arch and that sonic 'I'm lovin it thing'. 

Much of it is sticking to the same point of view, the same backstory, no matter what you're doing. 

The quicker you can get into what is really happening in life, removing the layers of research that doesn't tell you anything and needless process, the more successful you'll be.

Because many organisations won't move until the research picture matches the picture they want, not the picture it is.

So if you can remove layers of 'strategy' to justify what they already want to do, and provide clarity on what they SHOULD do, you'll do well.  

I just don't buy the IPA data on the gap the payback for being creative with between long term campaigns v short term campaigns. We all live lives where lots of todays add up to a year, or a decade. The more brilliant today's you create, the more brilliant year you have. 

Anyway

 

It's February, back to normal.

So we've all had the massive exhale as February begins. Back to normal. 

As you know, most New Year Resolutions die in January week 3, leaving us with a few days of no money and self loathing before we go back to the routine, whatever that might be. 

Because human willpower is weak, it needs a rest. It's why dieting is doomed to failure.

We all know this deep down, that's real life, the one that happens outside of focus groups and segmentations.

Yet, last month we had all the usual New Year Resolution rubbish. None of it embraced the crapness of real life people failing.

Perhaps the brand owners belief it's more commercially viable to help people lie to themselves. 

Which it is of course in many cases.  

Just as this famous campaign actually knows that Economist readers take in a few articles, ignore most of the writing, but feel a lot cleverer about it (the weekly equivalent to the unread pile of books on the bedside table, or the unwatched content in the Netflix playlist). 

Yet you  will have read the same data as I have. That claims people are but tired of being pressured to look perfect, and actually like brands to look fallible.

In fact, making an idiot of yourself makes you more likeable if you take it with good grace. It's called the pratfall effect (incidentally I've been known to spill coffee on purpose in workshops I'm running).

Imagine if someone actually set out to reach people failing in January Week 3 with a more sustainable alternative (like a 66 day guide to working within your routine) rather than against it. Imagine a campaign celebrating our collective, glorious annual failure. 

Imagine someone saying wait until February, January is hard enough?

Maybe next year, or the year after that. 

Anyway. 

What Avis can teach you about your first client meetings and why you should avoid looking smart.

Most people have the good sense to not read this blog much anymore. They're all on LinkedIn now.

However, I still get the odd question from folk who believe I know what I'm talking about. Let's be honest folks, experienced people in this industry are as clueless as you are, they have just got better at hiding it.

That said, along the way, I've picked some stuff up that may be of use from time to time, so I thought I'd sometimes share what people have asked and how I responded.

Step forward, let's call him, Steve. He asked what to do when you've started at a new agency and you are in your very first meeting with a new client. How do you impress them and leave them thinking you're a smart guy they'll want to have around?

We'll Steve, I'm sorry to disappoint you but I can't help you because I'm not a smart guy, like I said at the beginning, I'm pretty clueless.

However, I'm kind of OK with this.

It's actually a great place to be. You remember those famous Avis ads where they tried harder because they were number 2? That's me, never the cleverest person in the room, but the person so afraid of being found out, I'm rarely complacent.

Because I'm not smart, I make sure I'm well informed.

That won't be the case in your first client meeting Steve, you just won't have been given chance to know what's going in with their business.

Having worked on a similar client won't help either. If there is one thing that drives clients and agency people alike up the wall, it's the 'When I was working on (insert brand here)" all the time. 

So the best way to impress then is to hide your lack of knowledge and keep your trap shut. As they say, best to have people think you're stupid, rather than open your mouth and confirm it beyond all reasonable doubt.

Anyway, you're not there to impress clients, your not their to make them inferior, you;re there to add value.

Now clients, deep down, know that the suits only pretend to be interested in their business, when they really care about maximising the fee income.

They know creatives really want to do work that will get them hired by the agency they really want to be at.

They know the media folks want them to spend more on media than execution, or want to to execute themselves. 

They know the PR folks haven't a clue, but can get them tickets for whatever they're into. 

Think about most meetings, especially all agency ones. How many people are really listening? How many people are asking genuine questions? Or are they posing leading questions that push the discourse into their agenda? 

Clients know all this is going on, you don't get to be head of marketing and secure a decent budget without being able to play the game to a certain degree.

So if you want to impress clients, admit you don't know anything and shut up. When you open your mouth, ask lots of questions that show you want to really understand what drives their business. Without agenda. 

You'd be amazed how much clients love someone who is really interested in them. 

So many strategists stride in, intent on proving their intellectual superiority. No one likes a smart arse. No one.

Steve, you'll stand out by simply wanting to understand. It worries me that you're just intent on looking clever, I hope I'm wrong. 

 

What my son's broken arm tells us about working with other people in agencies - and why the best strategists are forgotten

So my son broke his arm in October. Badly, really badly. It's mostly okay now, but took a fair amount of rehab. We were at the hospital the other day for a check up and, like always, he didn't complain at the endless waiting, the pain of getting his (still tender) arm bent all over the place, or anything. 

This is nothing though, next to what he went through during the initial break. Pins put in, genuine pain. Then pins pulled directly out of his arm without anaesthetic. I've never been prouder.

And yet. 

And yet.

Like all parents, it's easy to get frustrated in the hurly burly of the day to day. When he argues over time on the Xbox. Forgetting what you told him two minutes ago.

Normal human stuff. 

Just as it's easy to not appreciate the brilliance of everyday. Playing football in the street together. Arguing over who's better at FIFA. Seeing the latest Star Wars movie (which we both loved). Swimming lessons. Gently winding up his mother. 

Whenever I lose patience, thinking about how brave he was (and is) with his arm always pulls me back.

Just as I always try (and sometimes fail) to stop, to just take in the moments we're having fun just messung around. 

Being a parent isn't the same with people you work with of course.

However, I bet they wind you up frequently and I'm sure there is an everyday flow of great stuff you're so used to you don't even notice. 

I'm also confident there have been moments when you've been incredibly grateful for them. Maybe they've got you out of a tight corner, maybe they've blown you away with something amazing. Maybe they've gone out of their way to help you when they didn't need to.

Just as with my boy, it's easy to focus on the little frustrations and not the daily flow of perfectly ordinary brilliance. Sometimes the here and now can also cloud those big moments you were so thankful they were there.

People are doomed to only notice either the very good or the very bad. The perfectly brilliant of the everyday passes us by. 

And past greatness is soon forgotten, the last experience is always the most vivid (which is why film studies focus group the ending more than any other part of a film. It's always why a really good campaign should end on a high note, not simply stop when the spend does). 

We just don't appreciate a kettle until it breaks. Just as we don't miss people until they're gone. Just as you don't need insurance until something goes wrong. 

Why am I telling you this?

Because it matters more to a strategist than most people.

Your work quickly gets forgotten when the creative work gets done and everybody loves it the executions. 

Unless the creative work is bad. Then the strategy, or the brief, is of course wrong. Then everyone remembers it. 

Yet the moment you try and wow folks, let your ego take over, you're buggered. When you try and do a strategic set up in a pitch like Ted Talk and forget people are waiting for the creative work. When you try and write a wow brief that is a really a thinly disguised creative idea. 

In other words, when you get in the way, rather than liberate others. 

It's not fair, but if you want to wow a crowd, join a band or do stand-up. 

 

 

Do what you're best at

A few years ago I was working in a creative agency and found myself in the odd position of working to the lead agency strategy, set by the media folks. 

The same media folks had just appointed a creative director. Now it was, of course, a little difficult to compete over the creative work, but at least they were taking the creative work seriously. They had spent enough time working with good partners to know what to look for. 

It's not like that now. I've found that media agencies don't worry too much about doing creative work, because they don't believe it's really relevant. It's about precision targeting or maximum relevance. There's plenty of innovation, but it tends to be based on tech or partnerships. 

That said, when I was working in a media agency, it used to send me into orbit when the creative folks tried to recommend the core channels (usually TV, or at least AV, they still love making telly).

Then there's loads of creative agencies trying to do best in class digital and digital folks trying to make great above the line.

Then we come to PR.

Much of core PR got taken in house a while back, so PR folks carved out a fee for managing social. Then Facebook changed the algorithm and they finally had to admit organic social is really brands talking to themselves. So they're attempting the lead agency creative thing. Now it's fair to say that creative folks think PR is easy, just make great creative that will get talked about - when of course, you need a PR instinct to know what will get picked up.

But great creative work isn't easy either, any more than media is easy, digital marketing is easy or even getting a journalist to publish your story.

It takes years to learn the craft to develop that instinct for what will really work. You can't just start 'doing TV ads' just as you can't start writing press releases. It's not good by the way getting great people who have the skills into organisations of a different flavour, they'll end up frustrated when no one else really gets their work. 

The job has never been harder, as people get better at ignoring brands, the work we do has to be BETTER than ever.  Everyone has their part to play and they need to be right at the top of their game. 

Understanding what you're good at and focusing on that would be a start, and respecting people who can do what you can't. 

 

Happy New Year, I haven't a clue what will happen and neither have you

Happy New Year etc.

By now you'll bebored of predictions for the next decade.  I know I am. It's virtually impossible to predict the future, you can only create it yourself. Try new stuff and keep doing what sticks. 

We all know the Byron Sharpe consistently built distinctive assets stuff, but the problem with consistency if your not careful is that others copy you, or with the low attention span folks have these days, you'll get noticed less. 

So the the only safe strategy is to consistent surprise. By all means, make sure what you do looks and feels the same, but don't let what you do become predictable.

Look at the best books. Every page and chapter is different, there are twists, turns and revelations. Every single word is building towards the same narrative though. 

That's how I think you need to consider brands today. A series of surprising experiences that add up to a consistent picture, not the same thing over and over again.

Anyway

No one can copy you if they don't know what you'll do next - why short term can pay back if you do it a lot, and well

Continuing the long term/short term theme. 

In case you can't be bothered to read it, I'm suggesting there is less tension between short term and long term than many folks like to think.

Define barriers to more people buying you, solve it with plan that addresses what that looks like in real life, do in a way that can't be missed, that only your brand could do.

Now as it happens I've been reading Messy by Tim Harford (another book that isn't really business or marketing, but is bloody useful).

He identifies the power in keeping on doing lots of stuff the competition can respond, don't know how to respond to or wouldn't dare to do. 

It's really how Amazon succeeded. They started out creating chaos, getting into the toy market by buying all of Toys R US stock and selling it direct themselves, by committing 100% to online sales, while Barnes and Noble were still basing their infrastructure on servicing stores while not really committing to online- and spending far too long planning, evaluating and triangulating rather than doing stuff. 

It's how Trump won the Presidency. While they calculated evert move, he just said what the hell he liked. While they calculated worked out how to respond, he was onto the next move.

It's how Paddy Power originally built fame. They had a very clear strategy of being the brand that listened to sports fans in a world where the money men were taking over. However they executed by one tactic after another. No one knew what to expect, they just kept on picking the things everyone thought, that real fans thought and talked about, but what other brands wouldn't get involved in. 

I think it's a different way of looking at Nike at their best. Consistently digging into one cultural flashpoint after another, while Adidas sat on their hands, Nike Just Did It.

You might think this only works for challenger brands or those who are big on disruption and innovation. 

The thing is, markets are so complex, no one REALLY knows what will happen. The only proven way to survive is to innovate as much as you can, some of it won't work, hopefully much of it will.

So, planners and strategy types. There is a tension here. Folks love process, but layers of research, testing and evaluation can get in the way.

Maybe the planning cycle itself can get in the way- you know, the BIG changes to where we are now and where we want to be. 

Maybe the trick is the same as it's always been. Own the consumer, make sure the 'advertising' works for the people it's intended. 

But now maybe, thanks to the tools, the data and all that, it's about getting a handle on what's really going in their lives, so can continually weave the brand and product into their lives, endlessly doing lots of tactics that work in the short term, adding up to a brilliant long term. 

It's what the best retail brands tend to do really well by the way. 

The trick is to use your brand guidelines as a platform to generate new stuff. Do what the hell you like as long as it builds your story.

Sadly most brand guardians stop you from doing stuff based on a collection of words that rarely relate to what people really think of the brand, and almost never unlock ways to capture their imagination. 

Churchill said 'My best off the cuff remarks were all planned'. What's the strategy version of that?

Some books worth reading

I've never been too keen on marketing or business books. They can be great for frameworks and beginnings of best practice of course.

However, everyone else will be reading the same books and, therefore doing the same kind of work.

I like the ones that give you a totally fresh perspective on things, or a unique insight.

Here's a couple worth looking at.

When, by Daniel Pink. Unique human insight into how timing is everything and how to time things right. From why reaching people at different times of the day requires different messaging mood and context, to the importance in any situation where you want to be remembered, of being first, last or totally memorable. Also, why being 40ish is the most miserable time of your life. Great. 

Watching the English by Kate Fox. Only useful to a UK person, but real life insight to the hidden rules that govern culture here. Who know that the chip could have so much meaning.

 Why Most Things Fail by Paul Ormerod, a brilliant pop at the crapness of most economic theory. Evidence based thinking on why most markets are impossible to predict because they're just too complex - the only way to really help survival for any organisation is constant innovation. Make stuff happen, because you don't know what will happen to you. 

The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr. I know, I know, bloody brand stories. I don't want you to read this for that. Rather, it shows how plot lines, inciting incidents and all the matter, but people ultimately relate to people. Characterisation, a target audience with real flaws and a gaps between how they see the world or themselves v  how it really is/they are, can drive properly inspiring creative world that touches us all. In the book it's book and films, but advertising and stuff is competing with real culture, so you may as well learn from real creatives. It's a different way to think about insights but also, a great way to think about client problems because, in many cases, what is driving many problems is the difference between how they they think people see them/who buys them and the truth.

 

Black Box Thinking By Matthew Syed. A tour de force against great leaps of insight that rarely happen and the reliability of incremental gains. Brilliance comes from hard work and looking for little ways to improve. Even Darwinism came from lots of work and ideas by countless individuals, if Darwin hadn't put it in the back of the net, someone else would. in fact they did, Wallace.

Oh, and it's sobering reading for leaders with big egos who have forgotten to listen, stifling potential greatness by putting themselves under pressure to be the one that always saves the day. It's so liberating to be a strategy type who doesn't have amazing insights, but is able to spot insight from others. That starts with being able to listen.

Anyway. 

The tension between long and short-term. Why dieting and basketballs helps resolve the conflict.

There's a lot of talk right now about the trend for marketing folk to focus their efforts on short term 'activation' projects, taking their eye off the ball of longer term 'brand building' stuff. 

Now, in the first instance, it's probably best to look past the IPA Data, one which many are making the case for creativity and long term thinking.

It's made of Effectiveness Case Studies, meaning it's mostly made of case studies where clients are happy to share the data, where there is an econometric model and the writer feels they have something new to tell the industry. In other words, outliers.

It's kind of the same with stuff like WARC reports, made of their own awards, with entries from folks with especially good work (or at least they think so) and something new to say. 

Of course it's worrying if the trend in these cases is towards less creative payback and more short term thinking, but it's still not the entire world. 

Even more robust studies from the likes of Ebiquity are less than bullet proof, as they come from brands big enough, or with the kind of culture, that requires an auditor. Take the much quoted study Ebiquity did for Thinkbox...

Its hugely valuable to the difference, by channel, for long and short term, really useful as an argument for long term thinking. But it's an average that doesn't take into account creative impact (according to Neilsen 50% of payback depends on creative, while Omnicom's own bank of case studies shows that innovation can double payback by as much as 100%) - when I saw the study presented, the Ebiquity guy actually said you should prioritise, "Fucking good creative". 

But the study doesn't take into account social media, as the incidence of case studies wasn't big enough. In other words, a study of TV centric clients tends to say put most if your money into TV and forget the channel so many are beginning to prioritise!!! The IPA work is better, but as we've discussed, the sample is VERY biased. 

Furthermore, like Brexit in the UK, or most debates in the world we're in right now, I find it strange folks seem to on one side or the other, or believe you need to make some sort of choice.

Obviously, just focusing on short term payback is dumb. No wonder Adidas are looking to go back to more brand building for example, as Fred says, I'm sure there will be more. Fred is far cleverer that I ever will be, so take his view seriously. 

The thing is, I get a little impatient with brand babblers too. Maybe I've spend too much time with organisations who give their all to moving a target from awareness to familiarity, or making sure people take out a specific personality trait in a tracking study. 

My own view is that it's really simple. At all costs, don't follow rules based on averages that don't exist in real life. 

It's a little like dieting. The science is unlocking new understanding, where the average guidelines on what to eat are a complete waste of time. The same two people can eat the same stuff and the weight on one can ballon while the other can lose it. Soon, we'll all be able to have personalised guides to what we eat that will transform our lives.

Just as its fair to generalise that women are biologically different to men, but it's also unhelpful as the difference within each groups are greater.

It's the same for organisations doing marketing. There is little point following rules derived derived from an average of companies who are actually from a pretty low base anyway. 

What I'm saying is that input and rules of thumb are fine, but you can't beat in my opinion the words of David Abbot.

'Tell people something about the product that shouldn't be missed". You need great creativity to stand out, you always did. You need great creativity because people can't be bothered to think about brands and most of communication isn't about what is said, it how it is said.

But without relevance to what you are selling, or at least to specific problems you need to solve, the best creative in the world won't do the job you need. Because the brand won't be remembered when it's time to buy. 

So what to do?

Basically, to mis-quote good old Byron Sharpe, reasons not to buy, in a way that reaches as many people as possible, in a way that captures the imagination, in a way only your brand could credibly do. 

1. Agree what the commercial task is. You know, grow share, reduce price sensitivity.
2. Understand what the barrier is to that. Sometimes it is brand image, usually it's not. 
3. Define who this is among, and what they are doing, or not doing that's driving the problem.
4. Define the right plan to change this, including where and when this should happen. 
5. But do it in a way people will thank you for, that no one else could credibly do. 

Don't think of of campaigns, real people don't live in campaigns, they live in moments. Most of which they forget. It's simple and really bloody hard, but the more you find a moment in real life that is driving the issue and deal with that you're on to something. The trick is to deal with the moment in way that isn't forgotten, that deals with the short term but adds to the how people feel about the brand.

I'm saying think of your brand as a series of moments that will have different roles and jobs. Make each moment add up to one powerful whole.

Think of a basketball. From a distance, it's just a ball. But it's made up of little dimples that allow you to grip it. Think every little dimple as a change to deal with a short term issue, but if each dimple doesn't help people grip the whole thing, they (and you will drop the ball). 

That's how I do it, but because I'm different to you, do it your way. 

Final point. Load of strategy types like to talk about long term and brand building because it gets them out of solving real problems hampering business performance. In my view, if your thinking isn't going to actually drive a commercial outcome you can define, it's not strategy, it's sophistry. 

People to watch out for - a small and not exhaustive list

One of the best things about working in agencies, should be the sheer mix of people you get to work with.

I say should be, because many agencies think they're full of openness and colour, when the reality is startling sameness.

We like to say it's clients who are conservative, while agencies are different. However, in many agencies, while the dress code and etiquette are less formal, there is plenty of expectation to behave a certain way and 'fit in'.

It's no accident then, that agency land tends to have some consistent archetypes that become clear, if you work in them long enough. I wouldn't be surprised if you've met one or two of them. 

Here are some to watch out for. By no means a comprehensive list, these are perhaps the most dangerous...

The Meddling CEO: Despite the fact they haven't done anything good themselves in years, nothing gets out the agency without their blessing. They may have been amazing when they were working on the day to day, but those days are long gone. They will try and tinker with the strategy, they will get very close to taking a layout pad in a creative review and when it comes to the deck, they'll try and rewrite every slide. All this would be amazing if they added much value, but their days of glory are long gone, so they don't quite know what they want, but will make you change stuff and change again until they see it. 

The Creative Turd Polisher: You know when you're working with a great creative because their thinking will work on a layout pad, or an a few sentences that inspire you as to how they've turned the brief into gold. Then there are those who's ideas are less impressive, or at least they are when you strip the layers of Mac work, or amazing writing, they've undertaken to cover this up. There are many variations of this kind of creative.

One consistent theme is their ideas are usually very average, but they've blown the budget trying to make them look better than they are. 

There is the Video Star, who blows you away with the wonderful little film they've made - until an hour later when you realise all you have is a film, rather than an idea.

There is the Headline Act who, no matter what the brief - an event, it might be an installation -  they will write an amazing headline. It might be the next Just Do It or Appliance of Science, but that doesn't help you when the brief was nothing to do with this. Variations on this are the Prose Writer who writes amazing copy that says nothing at all, or the Persistent Punner who can't answer a brief without creating a line that's a pun, or in many cases, endless bastardisation of the client name. 

The Bookworm: There is a very special kind of person usually in leadership, who can't think for themselves anymore. They slavishly follow the pearls of wisdom from the latest book they've read. Don't get me wrong, some leaders have been inspired by a piece of thinking, it's influenced them deeply and they consistently follow through on what they have learned. These people are great, its the ones who change their minds four times a year with every new book they've ordered. Those are the ones you have to watch out for. You'll find yourself following a philosophy that has no resemblance to how things really work, but just as you manage to work around it (as you must with all proprietary agency processes), they'll be on to something next. The equivalent of the Creative Turd Polisher, they'll say fuck all of use, but it will sound bloody impressive, until you take another look and realise there is nothing there but smoke and mirrors. 

The Pro-Amateur: A newer species, but no less challenging. They have evolved as the model for agencies has changed. Once things were relatively simple. Ad agencies did ads, brand consultancies did over complicated brand positioning for everyone else to make sense of it, media folks did media, PR folks did PR and designers did design. As the market got tougher, media fragmented and lines blurred, you started to get media folks with creative directors, ad agencies getting back into media, digital folks trying to do lead creative. Even PR agencies trying to be lead agency. The thing is, every bit of the marketing mix is hard, but people who have grown up doing one bit naturally think what everyone else does is billy basic - so they try and do it themselves and like most mediocrity, just can't see how average (at best) their attempts at work outside their own specialism is. If you are from one background and have been asked to join a new organisation who wants to branch our into what you do now, be very careful, or, to be honest, run for your life.

There are more archetypes of course, this small collection is perhaps the one to be most careful of. What are yours?

Humanity is your superpower

These trainers have been re-released and I got them in a flash.

To you they look like a pair of 90s tennis shoes with too much pink.

To me, they are being 15 and rebelling against the ridiculous rules, complacency and 'does your face fit' mentality if British tennis clubs in the 1990s. 

 

This is my favourite ad ever. Not because it's good or bad. It simply spoke to me at a critical point in my life.

(out of interest, this is what gets missed when we debate the commercial sense in targeting young people. If you can become part of them working out who they are, you have a chance of staying with them for life. Unless you can find moments of transition and change - I venture Porsche should relentlessly target men and women who have the year 9 in their birthday - we re-evaluate EVERYTHING at the start of each new decade. I'd love someone like Porsche to target the partner of a car enthusiast and tell them a sports car is better than an affair!)

Nike didn't just build amazing ads and stuff back in the day, they built layers and layers of meaning, getting to the real of truth of sport for most people.

In tennis, globally, the establishment ruled and players like Agassi and McEnroe were anything but that - and teenagers like me bloody loved it.

Now Nike has moved on to build new meaning by tapping into the new young belief in equality -another cultural flashpoint in the deep truth that sport is the ultimate leveller. 

Most sport is really pretending to something your not - or letting a part of you out that is usually buried come out.

When I was a pretty good swimmer, racing all over the world, I may have been a clumsy, shy awkward teenager, but in the pool, I could feel my strength and power and the sheer joy of doing something most people couldn't do. I gave me confidence that began to carry over into my real life. 

When I played tennis, I competed in local matches, but it was all fantasy, I lived for the few moments I could make a running passing shot and feel like Agassi - and the feeling of being a rebel in a world of constriction. I didn't matter if I lost matches, I lived for few moments when the fantasy became real. 

When I cycle now, I ride very, very fast and put myself through all sorts if pain, because I want the feeling I used to get from swimming. To escape and feel something in a jaded world - it still brings confidence in the real world for a person who is still shy and doesn't really know what he's doing. 

Of course there is tension in this, I feel something far more profound when I allow myself to forget the world and spend time with my children - but most parents won't admit that being able to love your kids to the fullest, means being able to express other parts of who you are too. 

Nike got stuff like this in the 80s and 90s, while Adidas just made ads. 

In other words, they found their very human voice and found a way to move people.

This is what gets lost in How Brands Grow. It's fair to say that most people can't describe the brands they buy - but I can't describe why I love Joni Mitchell, and I hate Queen. Not really. It's how they make me feel, and we remember how we feel a lot longer that what we are told.

Nike's work cut deep. Adidas doesn't feel right. Never will. 

Because emotion and body language evolved millions of years earlier than speech - and always wins.

That's why culture always beats marketing. Culture is life. Marketing is commerce. 

I'm saying that Nike simply managed to be more human and got the HUMAN truth of the role of sport in our lives. 

It's that easy and that hard. 

What the difference between McEnroe and Federer can teach people in agencies

I watched a BBC documentary on John McEnroe. I quite liked it, since I love tennis and I grew in a time when tennis players were as big as rock stars. Connors, Borg, Becker, Agassi and so on.

It has quite a lot to say about agencies and people in them to be honest. About the supposed truth that you can't have brilliant people who are easy to work with. 

Because at the heart of the story was the tension between McEnroe's outrageous talent and his unpredictable temperament.

When he was great, he was stellar, when he was bad be was awful - and sometimes he destroyed himself in games he was winning.

Agassi and Becker are other examples of this. Players who, when on song, their tennis was like poetry.

But their talent was such, they should have won far more than they did.

Some say without waywardness let loose, they would never have won at all, and certainly not in the magical way they did.

And let's be honest, we remember these players, while mostly never talking about Lendl or Sampras.

But I don't accept accept it has to be one or the other.

Step forward Federer, Nadal, Borg. Legends, who let their racket do the talking. It's just that when their rackets spoke, it was Proust or Hemingway (or in Nadal's case, something more brutal)

And you may not know that Federer and Borg were badly behaved, temperamental young players who learned to channel, focus, their emotions into playing.

It was at this moment they started winning. 

There's a deep truth in psychology that rarely gets discussed. Anger is a good thing, it delivers energy to help you fix what's creating the problem. Not by venting on someone, or throwing yourself into a furious run or whatever, because the problem will only come back. 

Anger is great to fuel you dealing with a problem, changing things. Using the rage for positive action. 

You can see where I'm going with this can't you?

Letting 'characters' in agencies rule the roost.

Making it OK for outrageous talent to treat others like dirt.

Excusing agencies who are sporadically amazing for their duds. 

By all means, celebrate the bonkers brilliance of the agencies that tend to make the headlines.

Or the kind if work that get's into Campaign.

But you know you just did really well at Cannes this year? AMV. An agency who manage to be big, solid and totally brilliant. Founded by nice men who believed a company could be great at it's work while being great to work there.

They will dealt with the same stuff the rest of us do. Bad briefs, budgets getting cut, client's not buying great work. The fact your in service industry and your fate is the whim of others.

It's no use being brilliant some of the time.

No amount of talent excuses anyone being a dick.

Put another way, the problem with supernovas is that they burn out very quickly - and when they explode, destroy all around them.

 

 

 

The best planners are invisible - but indispensable

You know that quote from The Usual Suspects? The greatest trick the devil pulled off was convincing the world he didn't exist?

It's also one of the greatest skills of strategy types. Few creatives will work with your thinking, certainly not your ideas, if you're going to take credit for them. 

It's the same with clients to a certain degree. They love having planners around, for extra advice, stimulus and stuff. But they then need to pass your thinking off as your own. 

It takes a genuine removal of ego on your part and years of practise, to the point where people struggle to work out what you do, they just know that when you're around everything works better.

In other words, great strategy types are like waiters, or kettles. You only notice then when they're not doing their job well.

I'm convinced it's why we have the conversation over and over again, about the role for planners and strategy types in agencies and client relationships.

We've done too good a job at getting our thinking through by making people believe it was their idea.

Of course, this presents a problem that goes to the heart of good FMCG brands too. If you become too good at getting people to use you without thinking too hard about it, that habit is easy for shiny new folks to disrupt.

For a great shampoo brand, it's easy to lose share to someone else with a new sciency promise, or maybe in this day and age, an aromatherapy wellbeing fragrance thing (I do think that Herbal Essences are missing a trick building on their 'orgasm in a shower' base to more, wholesome, experiences that go deeper than hair). 

For a strategist, there is the threat of management consultancies, brand consultancies or some big data whiz. Or even the account directors actually thinking they can do the job, rather than looking like they can thanks to your generosity. 

Which means, like brands, you have to tread a fine line between helping people not to think too hard.

While constantly, well, refreshing memory structures (to quote good old Byron Sharpe). Getting folks excited about what you do, showing some leg now and again.

ANNNNNND 'removing reasons not to buy'. Doing data better than the data folks, but with intelligence rather than cleverness for example. Simplifying the guff around Alexa into an actionable pros and cons for clients. 

I'm saying that while you need resolve the tension between the need to be invisible and not taken for granted. The greatest trick you can pull is being modestly indispensable in the areas worrying your agency and client the most.

Prepare and present an e-commerce strategy to your FMCG client before Amazon does.

Help agency build expertise in marketing to people over 40, while the market chases Gen Z who don't have any money.

You get the idea. 

 

 

 

Another post about storytelling, but this time about brand plots are nothing without decent characters

Yes another bloody planner going on about storytelling. But hopefully, with a newer angle.

So before you bugger off, it's because I read this book , The Science of Stortytelling

It goes way beyond the usual stuff about 7 basic plots etc, good as it is, and looks at the science behind how and why stories resonate with us. Lot's of good stuff about human and tribal psychology -and why real conflict is between the view of the word we construct for ourselves, irrespective of facts, and someone else's. Worth thinking about next time you have a debate over a brief.

Anyway.

To cut to the chase, while plots are good, it's the characterisation that really makes things fly. The people.

Recognisable tensions and flaws in their lives, usually the gap between their current view of the world and the reality they haven't quite grasped. 

Han Solo as the cocky devil may care pirate who actually had a caring moral core he couldn't come to terms with.

Citizen Kane who saw himself as the great man of the people, but was really asserting his power over the little people in a different way.

Father Ted (yes really!!) who saw himself as a better than all his Irish Priest mates and thought he was really made for greater thinks. When really he was as hopeless as one of them.

Delboy who thought he was a yuppie waiting to happen when really he was a failing market trader.

Or, if you've read Remains of the Day, the butler who was trained to show no emotion and follow correct etiquette at all times, it's how he built his whole life, therefore struggled to cope with a new master who was less formal and a world of emotion and feeling.

Even the usual hero's journey is a conflict between a protagonist used to being normal and liking it, and the long and sometimes painful discovery they were meant for other things, like it or not. From Bilbo Baggins to Luke Skywalker it;s there. It's why Thor has become so interesting, because it's this conflict in reverse,  in recent Marvel films. He might have the powers and expectations of being a great leader and hero. But inside he's really a normal confused man who wants a normal existence. 

(this is why, by the way, DC films don't work, with the possible exception of Aquaman. The plots are fine, the effects etc are stunning, but the characters are just two dimensional. The characters are just dull. We don't relate to them as we should, there is little real conflict. I think this is why Bond films have done so well recently, the Daniel Craig character wants to be  cold blooded killer, but feelings and even love keep on revealing a better human inside fighting to get out). 

This dead interesting for me thinking about the day job. Instead of focusing on the brand story stuff, which you of course need, maybe we should focus more on the role of the protagonists in them, the real people we're trying to influence. 

Not the dull pen portraits, getting into their flaws, the gaps between how the they want to see themselves and how they actually are, or could be. 

In other words, as we should know by now, great brands get into tensions in real culture. I'm suggesting we forget real insight about people at our peril. I don't mean the usual category dynamics stuff, but how what we're selling fits into unresolved flaws and contradictions between how they want to be and how things really are.

Like middle aged men who are not as successful as they th0ught they would be, and work out their frustrations by doing triathlons.

Like many parents who want everything to be easy and perfect in the family, but can't admit (the search data proves this) they sometimes regret losing the life they had before.

Like older people who are living longer and get annoyed when culture focuses on the young folks, But hate brands singling them out as being old.

 

 

 

Diversity in agencies and the value of listening properly

Saw an old friend last night, always good to catch up, he's like the more sensible and wise big brother.

Miss working with him too, as I'm one the those strategy types who has so many thoughts tumbling around I need to talk it through at length with someone to understand what I really think.

Then write it down quick. 

We all have different ways of working, we all have people who can help in different ways. Increasingly, I'm beginning to think that diversity is, of course important in agencies - not just colour and gender stuff, but the fact I'm convinced agency folks are more likely to hire physically attractive people than other industries.

Even worse, the generalisation is hiring people who 'fit the brand' -be that quirky, cool or in some cases, down right arrogant.

But I've found that I get far more out of working with people vastly different to me, especially in terms of world view (unless you like Queen, we all have line not to cross), but also how you work. 

Who accept my deep flaws and many flaws in order to help focus on my very few strengths. 

Building on that, isn't it dumb how many agencies like to hire 'characters' and then do as much as they can to make them all work the same way?

Now this will probably put you off ever working with me (I make amazing tea and coffee, even thorn has it's rose so it's not all bad) but thanks to people like my friend, I've learned that the most generous gift you can give to people you work with (and live with) is to actually listen. Really listen. So I give as well as take. 

Because really good work tends to be spark between very different people kicking things around, not a process and certainly not working alone waiting for a flash of insight that never comes. 

Anyway.

Why brands shouldn't forget to be likeable

I once worked on a big UK sofa retailer. It wasn't always fun to be honest.

They were well known and kind of the default choice.

But they were always in sale. Few buy a sofa because they really want to, they're not cheap, they buy it because they have to.

And they put it off because they don't expect a nice shopping experience.

I told them they might be doing well now, but there would come a time when they should try and make people actually like them, and put the experience at the heart of the communication, not just the product (it was a lot better than people thought).

They didn't then, but eventually they did and apparently the commercial success is off the charts.

Tesco made a mistake when they were seen as the titans of grocery shopping,. There was an under current in culture of people thinking they weren't using their powers for good. If Tesco was down the road, folks would shop there because there were few alternatives, but few really liked them.

Dictators always end up suffering revolutions. 

So when they were hit by nimbler discounters on one side and scandals about provenance on the other (horsemeat etc) few shed a tear.

I  also worked with one of the best creative agencies in London. They were really good, no they were amazing. But even the best make mistakes and have dud campaigns. This is fine if clients and partners like you, but part of their 'brand' seemed to be about being rude to everyone. The client we shared loved their work but hated them. 

Of course, as soon as they messed up, their was no love to get them through it and they were fired.

This is why tech companies all end up investing in emotional brand campaigns. They eventually realise that disrupting the market only gets you so far. Eventually you'll mess up, and someone will disrupt you.

Put another way, it's not enough to get people to buy you, eventually they have to like to buy you.

This is missing from much of what Byron discusses about the fallacy of differentiation. It's true that most people don't know that much about the brand they buy or why it's different. But we buy stuff not just because we remember it (distinctive) the brand and they have 'removed reasons not to buy.

It feels right, and that's something that rarely shows up in quant surveys. 

This is what is missing from those who believe the future is about precision targeting and conversion. There will always be someone else with better data. 

Everyone thought Microsoft was invincible, like they do about Google now...

What a KFC ad tells us about simplicity v compression and getting into real life

I have no evidence why but I suspect this will work

Which shows you should ignore a creative who wants to make the logo really small

It's based on a truth in real life about local lookalike shops. We like familiarity, this reminds us that KFC is so established in culture others are copying it. It's real life, we all recognise it, it's not made up. Which means it goes into the busy consumer mind so much quicker...and builds cut through. 

It's based on a truth about KFC - it's about really great chicken

It's based (I imagine) on a proper commercial objective - we're losing our specialness and therefore share to inferior competitors

And subtly, it's mental availability - the whole ad is about the brand name and logo

And I know that's four things, but the problem with the quest for single minded simplicity is that simple is boring. 

It's a simple ad, with lots of interesting compressed into it

Anyway

The things they never teach you number one- be more like waiter and less like a rockstar

There are some things you are formally educated on when you join an agency.  Like most clients expecting a clear role for communications, or the framework of issue/insight/thought.

Then there are more informal and craft rules you mostly get taught. For example, make the creative briefing as inspirational and focused as you can, because creatives always have briefs they'll put everything into... and briefs they'll just get out off their desks.

But there are things few really tell you, that you have to learn yourself, usually the hard way.

Much of that is about the work you do, even more is about how you do it.

Let's start with a 'how you do it' one. The best strategy types are like waiters, or like Satan.

We do our best work when people forget we exist.

It's a hard lesson to learn, but we rarely make anything. We create the framework for others to. The launchpad and the little nudges for the best, most effective work.

There's nothing more annoying than a waiter, or shop assistant who marks your every move, or asks if you need any help when you clearly don't.

Just as them not being there when you DO want them is equally frustrating.

The best feedback I ever got from a client was when they said, "We're not quite sure what he does, but when he's involved it's all easier and the things we get are just better". 

The worst feedback when I was a lot younger was, "Stop trying to do my job". 

Which means a big part of how you go about your day to day is losing the ego and being really kind and generous with your thinking. 

Because suits. creatives, media planners and whatever all get judged on the quality of their work and naturally need kudos for stuff that does well. If they get a sniff that you'll steal some credit (even if an idea is yours) they'll do everything they can to do the opposite.

Strategy types ultimately get judged on the quality of other people's work, the creative output, the media plan, if the work get bought without too much pain and suffering.

For example, the dark art of the imperfect creative brief (more on that another time)

The trick is strike the balance between appearing invisible and the people who matter knowing what you contribute. 

Of course, there are moments to own and shine. The trends presentation, the comm planning day, but still, it's amazing what happens when you approach it as time to energise others, rather than a chance to look good. 

This also applies to clients. Don't let anyone tell you you're the 'brains of the operation'. Especially clients - clients are the brains of the operation. Our natural response to smart arses is either to ignore them, or compete with them. Another time we'll go into the sneaky ways of making people feel it was their thinking all along.

How you see the world is irrelevant. How your target sees the world is critical

I did some research with British young folks a while back.

I went in wanting to find out how miserable they all were with older generations messing things up, leaving them with zero hours contracts, university fees, uncertainty and whatnot.

Of course they obliterated my misconceptions, by communicating how sorry they felt for people my age. How rubbish it all must have been with no internet, four TV channels, nothing on demand and Thatcher (they didn't mention Thatcher but in my head they did). 

Reminds of a pretty universal truth that every generation (since the 1950s anyway) thinks it's special and rejects whatever came before.

And people look at their heyday with rose tinted spectacles. 

You know, everything was brilliant in the 1970s when Star Wars came out and we played out on rally choppers. Despite the fact there was nothing on TV on Sunday, everything was beige and The Smiths hadn't formed yet.

Or everything was better before the internet in agencies when it was simple and clients loved creativity and had big budgets. Except 12 hour days were the norm, everyone had to wear suits and bullying was tolerated - or in some creative quarters encouraged. 

I was reminded by this campaign, I really like it ..

 

..because it embraces life as it looks for THEM, not old grumpy folks like me. 

Yep, one of the tricks when thinking about a 'target audience' is not to look at their lives from your frame of reference.

Look at it from their point of view. 

It's rarely the same. 

 

Nobody is perfect, so why try and make marketing flawless?

So I was given a Golden Bungle for stealing a client's phone.

Accidentally of course, hers looked exactly like mine.

She saw the funny side (I think). 

This proves I'm not perfect, but this is mostly a good thing.

Recent data shows people like brands to embrace imperfection a little bit more these days.

I'd argue they always did, it's why Jennifer Lawrence falling over and then being so human in her speech and interviews was so powerful.

 

 

The pratfall effect is really powerful. Tests have shown that you're more likeable if you spill coffee over yourself. I can't say if I'm likeable or not, but I can say a workshop that started with very blank  faces when I kicked off the day, instantly transformed when I spilled a whole cup of coffee on myself. By accident.

I really does work when you put a little error into your presentation for folks to correct. 

Of course, feckless as I am, you'd expect me to be the most popular person in the world. This clearly is not the case.

But perfection is boring and exhausting. 

Emotion trumps perfection

 

 

Humanity beats logic

 

I really love in meetings with other London of global based agencies how easy it is to stand out by  talking like a real person. Or translating their jargon into normal language. 

Obviously the typos etc in my posts are all intentional..........

Here's to the Colonel

 

I really like all this new KFC stuff.

Obviously it's great to watch and funny. But it's also an idea that means you talk about as much product as you like, rather than getting all sniffy about product features and benefits.

It's an idea that works as a 2 second GIF, as ideas have to these days.

I think the real lesson is looking at how people relate to you already. Let's be honest, everyone knows the Colonel. What they've done brilliantly, is found new ways to use him (refresh memory structures as some would say).

Sometimes the obvious is great, as long as you use it in a way that maybe isn't. 

Compare this to the way the Meerkat in the UK is looking so, so tired. 

 

This book should be interesting. Or why smartphone are sexist

I haven't read this yet, I've got it on pre-order but it looks interesting. 

You can't move for female empowerment focused campaigns right now. 

From a cultural perspective, this has to be a good thing.

From a brand perspective, you don't want your brand to look like it's jumping on the bandwagon, however good your intentions (let's be honest, the intentions are rarely altruistic). 

So it's essential to find a new angle. I love how this book might show how inequality is deeply hidden in the fabric of life and culture. Because it has mostly been designed by men. 

Apparently, Google's speech recognition software is 70% more likely to respond to men.

Smartphones are designed for the hands of a man, not the smaller hands of a woman.

There's anecdotal evidence that fitness monitors miss steps made when pushing a pram. 

Also, most of it is built from data, that a reviewer describes as 'being used as like a laser'.

Why should you care? Data doesn't have to be a pain in the arse, or a barrier. If used intelligently, if you know how and where to look, it can build a new perspective even on subjects that are getting a bit crowded. 

 

 

What Planes and Coca Cola tell us about the dangers of data without wisdom,

Someone reminded me today of the Abraham Wald story. 

If you can't be bothered to click the link, he was a World War 2 statistician who helped improve the armour on planes to protect against enemy bullets. 

His major contribution was to tell everyone they were looking at it the wrong way.

They were putting more armour on the spots where planes, that made it home from battle, had the most bullet holes.

The right answer was to put more armour where there were NO bullet holes - because you had to assume the planes that didn't make it home got shot somewhere else.

There's some obvious learnings here when it comes to research about researching the whole sample.

But it also shows us that data is a waste of time if you don't have the skill to analyse it properly, and sometimes work out what it isn't telling you.

Sometimes we forget that planners were invented to make sense of research, because research can sometimes be very dangerous in the hands of researchers.

Step forward New Coke. Where, decades ago, they changed the Coke recipe to be sweeter, more like Pepsi. But they tested the new recipe on one sip, when many sips, which is how people actually drink, made the sweetness too cloying.

Or that's one side of the story. The other is that even getting the 'functional' research methodology right can be flawed, as the real reason everyone kicked off about New Coke, forcing Coca Cola to change the recipe back, costing millions, is that most of our relationship with brands isn't built on function.

It's built on belief and not having to think about it. 

They kicked off about New Coke because we don't like change.

But then sometimes we do, we just don't know we do. 

There's the cliche that Henry Ford telling us that if he asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse.

There's the way Apple made the Ipod when MP3 players weren't getting much traction, because he realised it just needed to be simple and nice to use one.

There's the fact that the data from social media tends to contradict the data from search.

 

Why Should you Care?

It's easy to ignore data, or leave it to the data scientists. But there's gold in this stuff if you know how to look.

Just as it's unfashionable to see any use in focus groups, but loads of clients still use them, and believe what people tell them, or even worse, believe the analysis of their moderators. 

Research doesn't make intelligent decisions for you, it helps you make more intelligent decisions. 

Planners, strategists or detectives? Maybe a bit of both. 

The power of context

The media folks will tell you that planning media to show up in context can be up to 30% more effective.

As with most insight shared my media agencies, this shouldn't come as a surprise. 

Ice cream sales go up when it's hot.

Match making sites get more traffic closer to the weekend.

Fitness brands do well to focus spend around New Years Resolutions. 

But this only goes so far.

Because there are much richer deeper patterns to uncover.

And you get loads of them from this book. 

So much rich insight.

Different ways to gain relevance with different lifestages. For example, older people are mentally running out of time and getting out a mental red pen and crossing out anything in life that is a waste of their time. 

Then there's the  fact most of what we really like culturally is decided in our twenties.

Don't drink your first caffeine drink until an hour and a half after you've woken up (it messes with cortisol production, the body's way of waking us up naturally). 

Talking a five minute break every hour boosts productivity, it's even better if you move.

It takes 66 days on average to break, or build a new habit, yet most abstinence crazes like Dry January are one month, precisely half of the time it takes for lasting change.

We remember the end of things more powerfully than any other point. Apart from the beginning. How much do you make sure an new employee has a perfect first day? It will influence so much of how the rest of their time with you will go. 

Conversely, the chocolate we enjoy the most is the last one in the box, or the packet. 

 

Plan for shifts in the calendar or the day. Connecting people on the way home from work is really effective, but so is the transition from Winter to Spring. 

Coming to 'transitions' matchmaking sites get disproportionate sign ups from people with '9' in their age. 29, 29, 46 etc. Because the move from one decade to another makes us evaluate our lives and, I guess, our love lives. 

And on it goes. 

Once upon a time, it was TV, print, press, outdoor or PR. Now you can reach people anytime anywhere, any place.

Most folks squander this by bludgeoning them with crap messaging not caring what they're really interested in. Even worse, they re-target them as if once wasn't enough. Sometimes, a sale isn't enough, they'll re-target you with what you've just bought.

When we can now add value to what people are caring about by the ad synching what folks are doing and what they care about at that moment.

But it can be so much better, synching with what they care about, the ebbs and flows of the year and even the ebbs and flows or age, new beginnings and even endings.

 

 

 

Solve real problems

So I had a bit if a cold recently and saw my work on the back of the tissue packet.

This is from a few years back. You may remember Keep Britain Tidy, who still exist to stop lazy Brits littering everywhere. 

They wanted to criticise litterers and make them aware of the scale of the problem.

I told them that would only reinforce behaviour, and a mere 're-brand' wouldn't work.

The thinking was a simple re-framing of the problem. UK folks are increasingly proud of their community (especially young folks, who are still growing in this area today would you believe) but don't connect litter to community spirit.

So the idea was to change the logo from 'Britain' which is too big and impersonal and show that every decision not to litter is little act of community building - my proposition was 'love where you live', which was buried in the client's literature already. 

And it really worked.

Nice to see they are still using it.

Oh, and the moral of the story is, define the real problem in the behaviour of real people driving the issue.

And, sometimes the client has the answer, they just don't know it yet. 

And yes, it's behavioural science in action, but really, it's simply thinking of people as people, not a 'target'. 

Do without things if you want to learn about them

I saw a film where a bunch of brand loyalists were made to do without their favourite packaged brand for a couple of weeks.

They were given and unbranded replacement and moaned for the whole two weeks about how it wasn't as good.

Only to find they had actually been using their favourite brand without the packaging.

That's the power of brands. It's the belief in them as much as the actual quality.

So if you want to really understand the role of anything in people's lives, do some research where you take it away from them and get them to talk about what it's like.

Like when a office goes mad because the milk isn't delivered - it's the tea and coffee they go mental about missing.

When a car breaks down, it's having to suffer other people on public transport they hate (very British disease this one).

Take Heinz ketchup away and bacon sandwich becomes a waste of calories.

Etc

Anyway

Culture and stuff. Two ways to think about it

So I'm working in a new place with a heritage in PR. I know what you're thinking, probably this:

 

That's mostly my experience too. But not all PR folk are like that, and they're not here. 

It's funny really, you can't move for all sorts of integrated agencies banging on about influencing culture, mind you, it is fair to say that some of them are pretty good at it. 

But the good PR spend their entire career understanding what people are really talking about and what people will give a monkeys about. They instinctively get what's going in the lives of normal people. 

That's a great starting point for any client who gets that the biggest challenge for any client is that people don't care that much about brands and understands the best way to overcome that is by looking popular and tapping into something actually do care about.

Not parroting stuff people are talking about, adding to it. 

So I'm quite liking this. 

By the way, if you want to do the influencing culture thing thing, there are two ways:

1. Tap into something that's in popular culture to make the execution better. Which is fine, it build cut through if you've done your core competence and not done anything dumb.

This for example taps this Australian beer brand taps into a deep memory we all have of movie police chases

 

This shamelessly mashes up provenance credentials with the X Factor

 

1. Something more potent, but harder. Getting into issues, tensions, passions and challenges in actual life. 

While this from Axe taps into the very current confusion young men have on what they're supposed to be in modern society. It's not made up, and you could have got this from messing around in Google trends, where men are asking the internet if it's OK to cry. You just need the instincts to look for the right things

 

 

The 10 things they never tell you about when you start out as a strategist

1. It's nothing like in the text books or the case studies. Most ideas and projects are dragged kicking and screaming into the world through hard work, trial and error and coming back from rejection with something better. 
2. No one really cares about the creative brief. At its worse, it's first stage thinking from one person (the planner) that everyone then enjoys ripping to shreds. At its worse, its the client brief written down in order to get to the first review when the real strategy will hopefully emerge. At its best, its summary of first stage conversations everyone has had and direction towards something even better
3. You'll have to do lots of workshops because the suits are scared of selling ideas to the client, so want them to get involved in having them. Or you'll have to do them because no one in your agency will listen to a word you say, so you need to get them to discover what you already know for themselves. The suits will judge the success of the client workshop by the quality of the stimulation, not the quality of the ideas, so you'll be working late night creating pen portraits and competitor slides that look amazing even though they tell folks nothing new.
4. You'll spend entire meetings where the account director will answer strategy based questions the client has asked before you can respond, then ask you what you think. 
5. You'll learn at least half of what you need to know from great creative types who could do your job if they weren't doing something more interesting, rather than your boss who's main job is getting you to follow the process.
6. If you do the same TGI run for any client audience and interpret it compelling enough, no one will be able to tell the difference.

You'll come up against strategists in other agencies who can fill whole hours saying nothing of value, you'll be quietly chortling with glee and how daft they're making themselves look, only for the client to say it's brilliant, makes total sense and give then a standing ovation. A little like this: 

Hopefully, you can spend most if your time being brilliantly simple. Every now and again, you'll need to make the simple look brilliant. Live with it. 
8. No one knows what they're doing. When I started, it was hard enough when everyone pretended they knew how advertising works. Now, with social, native, programmatic, content, dark social, partnerships and Big Data no one even knows what advertising is. The trick is look like you do, without believing you do.

9. This industry is tiny. People will always show up again sometime. You can't afford to alienate any one. Even the people who really deserve it. And if you start in the wrong kind of agency, that could be everyone.

10. Not everything Byron Sharpe is automatically right. As it was for Seth Godin. As it was for Rosser Reeves. As with most brands, people buy what they think everyone else does, not what it best. If you want to make a client think, don't quote How Brands Grow (they have either read it or discarded it because it opposed their cherished world view too much), challenge it. 

11. No one buys facts, they buy what they want to buy. Don't believe any kind of evidence will persuade a client (or a target audience) your job is to make them want to believe your evidence. Emotional advertising sells harder (although try telling that to certain retail clients) so does emotional presentations. Move them. 

Man about town

So decided to actually take a lunch break and stroll around town for an hour.

I find it funny that certain London strategy departments believe this is actually 'a thing'. Going out and mixing with people rather than sitting at your desk.

It's not that you notice anything ground-breakingly new, it's just that when you loiter around people going through their day more, you develop a sixth sense for how they feel about stuff. 

I totally believe in reading and experiencing as much diverse stimulus as you can, when you connect two unrelated things together, amazing ideas can happen. It's true.

But I great skill of planner types is to admire their audience, get to grips with what matters in their lives. 

Today I saw that most of the people coming out of Harvey Nichols has massive logos on their t-shirts, I bet most of their buyers are not half as well to do as they would like them to believe. Just as most luxury brands make most of their money from lots of people that save up (or run up credit) for one or two of their products, rather than the people who can actually afford it whenever they want.

I saw a bunch of cyclists outside a cafe drinking espresso and wondered why, with cycling generally on the rise, with coffee so ingrained in that sub-culture why coffee brands don't make more of it. 

I saw children going shopping with parents (it's the summer holidays) and missed my own kids. I also wondered if retailers and food retailers make enough of the magic of going on a trip with your parents getting to touch and choose for yourself, rather than the lack of emotion you get from a few clicks. I remembered going shopping with my Mum in the same streets over 30 years ago and meeting my Dad on his lunch break, how special it was to have both of them to myself. Not to mention the pride and wonder of him letting me go into his office and sitting at his desk. 

I saw a 20 something daughter out in town with her Mum and wondered what my kids will be like in 15 years or so, will they want to go shopping with us?

And I bought a pasty from Greggs. 

People who have studied such things have discovered that cities make us more creative and drive innovation and ideas. 

Fair enough.

For agency types, I wonder if really exploring a city, rather than floating around Clerkenwell, The Meat Packing District or The Northern Quarter keeps us human. 

Man about town

So decided to actually take a lunch break and stroll around town for an hour.

I find it funny that certain London strategy departments believe this is actually 'a thing'. Going out and mixing with people rather than sitting at your desk.

It's not that you notice anything ground-breakingly new, it's just that when you loiter around people going through their day more, you develop a sixth sense for how they feel about stuff. 

I totally believe in reading and experiencing as much diverse stimulus as you can, when you connect two unrelated things together, amazing ideas can happen. It's true.

But I great skill of planner types is to admire their audience, get to grips with what matters in their lives. 

Today I saw that most of the people coming out of Harvey Nichols has massive logos on their t-shirts, I bet most of their buyers are not half as well to do as they would like them to believe. Just as most luxury brands make most of their money from lots of people that save up (or run up credit) for one or two of their products, rather than the people who can actually afford it whenever they want.

I saw a bunch of cyclists outside a cafe drinking espresso and wondered why, with cycling generally on the rise, with coffee so ingrained in that sub-culture why coffee brands don't make more of it. 

I saw children going shopping with parents (it's the summer holidays) and missed my own kids. I also wondered if retailers and food retailers make enough of the magic of going on a trip with your parents getting to touch and choose for yourself, rather than the lack of emotion you get from a few clicks. I remembered going shopping with my Mum in the same streets over 30 years ago and meeting my Dad on his lunch break, how special it was to have both of them to myself. Not to mention the pride and wonder of him letting me go into his office and sitting at his desk. 

I saw a 20 something daughter out in town with her Mum and wondered what my kids will be like in 15 years or so, will they want to go shopping with us?

And I bought a pasty from Greggs. 

People who have studied such things have discovered that cities make us more creative and drive innovation and ideas. 

Fair enough.

For agency types, I wonder if really exploring a city, rather than floating around Clerkenwell, The Meat Packing District or The Northern Quarter keeps us human. 

The first day is always the same

So I start a new job today.

You'd think my first day as a strategy director at a new place would be vastly different to the first time I walked into work as an account exec, but not that much.

It's fair to say that back then I was excited as it was the first time I had work emails, while everyone was  talking about the new website department.

Oh and we checked films and chromalins back then.

But to be honest the first day is always the same, for me at least.

The fear of the unknown, not to mention lots of people you don't know yet.

Getting the IT to work (which was fine this time by the way).

Believing you'll never remember everyone's names.

Wondering how you'll get you head around client business.

Seeing a culture emerging, but not the undercurrents that slowly reveal themselves.

The slow but unwavering mission to get everyone to drink proper tea and coffee. 

Remembering to say little and listen loads.

Every loser can win eventually, if they're ready to fail

If you have time, it's worth listening to the Revisionist History podcast. Every episode re-interprets a historic event and finds new evidence or focuses on something previously overlooked. 

Now, look at that keyboard on your computer or phone, the one with the QWERTY structure. It's like that because it's not the best structure for fast typing, it's pretty much the least effective option. Because when they designed the original mechanical typewriters, if folks typed too fast, they wold break the machine's mechanism. So they designed the keyboard to SLOW them down. It's simply survived because no one questioned it and eventually, we all became so used to it changing it would be simply too difficult.

History is written by the winners, who always want to put the best spin on why they are there, and create even more success. Or sometimes gloss over the uncomfortable truth about where success came from.

Which is why you should never believe most of the case studies in advertising and marketing. No one really knows if anything is going to be a wild success, it's fair to say that there's some solid performances that do the job but are not the be and end all....and most of these follow some sort of pattern. But then then there is the 95% of campaigns that achieve nothing (which is why tracking studies are so important, even if they have little commercial impact, one can fall back on claimed brand impact). Created by the same organisations sometimes.

Losing the opportunity to learn from failure. Pretending we know what will create incredible success. When we don't really. 

Just as most new brands fail, yet all sorts of organisations have tried and tested rules to 'guarantee success'. 

Based on the stuff that worked, rather than being honest and learning from what brands failed.

Which flies in the face of how most great leaps forward in any discipline really happen. One step forward, two steps back, failure after failure showing what works by what doesn't work. Dyson wasn't the only one who thought of the bagless vacume cleaner, he was just the only one who stuck with developing prototype after prototype until he found one that worked.

Darwin's theory of evolution was only published when he realised Wallace had the same idea. They both had the same 'insight' because they were building on the success and failure of many, many great minds that came before them. 

So next time you want to hire an agency if you're a CMO, ask them what their worst work was and what they learned from it.

Which is a good policy for hiring people come to think of it.

And don't bother with most case studies and certainly don't copy them, as any new formula for success, even if there was such a thing, won't be a formula for long, as everyone will be copying it too. 

Or if you wan to flip it, Fox were so sure Star Wars would flop, they let George Lucas have the merchandising rights. We all all know what happened next. 

Why the fact my kids love Led Zeppelin and ELO demonstrates that going shopping isn't just for shopper strategists.

You can't  beat going out an meeting the people who you want your advertising stuff to influence.

I don't know if mirror neurons actually exist, but you must be aware of playing a song you love to someone and hearing it through their ears.

It's why I have a renewed love for Star Wars now I watch the films through my children's eyes, not to mention a fresh perspective on music as some of their favourite music come from ELO, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac and The Jacksons (thanks to the Marvel Universe, God help me if the Guardians of the Galaxy 3 soundtrack has Queen in it). I love Led Zeppelin and have always has a soft spot for ELO, it's amazing to listen to them without the historical and cultural baggage that comes with both. 

So two pieces of advice to stop yourself getting carried away with some trend or semiotic study when you're working on a project - not to mention a piece of content everyone thinks is funny, touching or thought provoking.

The first and most important is this. Before you start a project, go shopping for the thing you're selling (yes selling, all advertising is selling, it's the brand babbler that pretend otherwise, if a 'brand ad' isn't crafted to removing a barrier to sales, long or short term, it's an act of vanity and commercial vandalism), I mean go out into the real world, make the journey to the shops or wherever people can make a purchase in the real world and through the entire journey and experience, put down your bloody smartphone and soak up what's happening around you. Look at the people on the way, the folks in the actual store, listen to what they're talking about, take in what they are wearing and imagine what they're thinking and how they're feeling. 

Then go to wherever people use the product of service. Go into Pizza Hut and decide for yourself how much people are 'Tasting Freedom'.

 

Go into the bar of an exclusive five star hotel (if they'll let you in) watch the people with more money than sense displaying the labels and decide for yourself how discrete modern luxury really is (that's what the trend spotters will try and tell you), imagine this target audience for a Bentley reacting to this...

 

Consider how much anyone really cares about a 'brand purpose'.

I guarantee you when you start building audience insight and helping shape some sort of communications, you'll have a better feel for what to do as you remember seeing the world through their eyes. Even better, take some creatives or whoever makes your agency's output with you.

Second piece of advice....do it again when you're a good way into development. Trust me, a campaign that will 're-cast the man of action archetype for young males' might seem as capable of re-writing the advertising lexicon when you leave a creative review and go straight to a gym, or watch a football match in the pub. You see the ideas through the eyes of your audience and automatically feel if it's any good.

If you get the chance, talk it through with someone roughly in the audience, it will be more beneficial than 'creative development research'.

If you want the science bit, the biggest brands get thought of in the most category entry points, be that around when the brand is used or when the brand is bought. The more you get a feel for what is really happening in both, the better. 

Oh, and if you're clever and work on a brand that sells stuff you quite like, you claim your shopping or visit to a restaurant on expenses. Of course, if you're selling luxury cars or a lapdancing chain you might have some explaining to do, not just to your FD, but your partner. 

The point of strategy types

Let's be honest, not everyone thinks there is a point to planners, strategists or whatever the job titles is these days.

Even in 'good' organisations, client or agency, there are suits, clients and creatives, media buyers and so on, all thinking they don't anyone else to so own the strategy bit.

Sometimes they have a point. The best creatives are brilliant planners, are the best suits and even clients.

Of course, in less good organisations, some don't see the point of strategy full stop but we'll agree to let that one go shall we.

Now some would say that strategy types are the ones who 'own the consumer' or 'target audience'. That was never true and still isn't, the research guys would claim this, the client head of insight would claim this.

Others would say it's about helping agencies doe their best work, which usually means post rationalising creative work or some sort of media plan, or content idea. It means helping the agency get award winning work through.

That isn't doing your job either. Of course, there is the data from the IPA that award winning work is more effective, but that's from a small base of case studies with the right econometrics, with a provable ROI effect that the client was happy to share. Agencies don't enter IPA awards unless it's effective work that is also coming with a story that will impress the judges.

Some might say it's keeping the client interested with new things to think about while making the agency output easy to buy. New things are unfamiliar, they're hard to sign off confidently, but this really harks back to the last point. And strategists can be trojan horses for novelty and fadism getting into client meetings if you're not careful. 

So what's the point?

I think it's about cutting through the bullshit and provoking everyone to do the right thing for the client business, rather than what their biases tell them to do.

There is no one else with the scope, or the skill, to look at consumer research, cultural trends, the creative process, the client business culture, the agency culture, the actual task for communications, the dogma of best practise.........and chip away through all the extraneous rubbish to what the actual problem is, the best approach that solves is and then help shape the solution.

And no one else who can do it quicker....because you read and absorb more stuff than anyone else and constantly train yourself to be objective and practice challenging the subjectivity and bias of other while leaving them smiling.

No one else who doesn't get swept away by a brilliant creative idea that isn't actually relevant to the problem. In case you wonder what I mean, loads of folks use the Byron Sharpe assertion, that brands needs to be distinctive not differentiated, as an excuse for rampant shock and awe advertising, while conveniently forgetting that every piece of work needs to remove reasons not to buy and ensure that the brand is remembered in buying situations. They build awareness (maybe and usually prompted) rather than SALIENCE. That's why so many people talk about 'that great ad' but forget what brand it was for. 

Or takes a tracking study seriously.

Or allows data to be the answer to everything.

The marriage if logic. emotion, common sense and humility you might say.

Everyone else has a specific job and to quote Mark Twain, give someone a hammer and all he sees is a nail. Your job is to help everyone see beyond what they do and make them all bigger than the sum of their parts.

Less a planner and more of a shaper, but shaper is a worse job title than planner I guess.

Anyway.

What Nike and Agassi can teach strategists -and why I'm leaving my current job

This is my favourite ad, or content if you will.

 

I was 13 or 14 when it came out, playing team tennis. I loved playing, I viscerally hated the culture in British tennis.Wear white, follow the rules, juniors always make way for seniors on the court and, worst of all, in lessons and team coaching, play like they did 40 years ago.

This ad represented everything I felt, and to be honest, everything I felt as a teenager. It was just the right time. 

It helped sell a hell of a lot of overpriced tennis gear for Nike, but also made loads of young tennis players feel like they could take on the establishment. It didn't matter how you played, how you showed up, as long as performed and had a bloody good time doing it.

I think strategy folks could do with a hefty dose of ignoring 'the rules' in service of actually getting results too.

The dull arguments over brand models, including the latest fashion over 'purpose'.

TV is dead, TV is brilliant.

Outspend your market share, build fame.

And the new, equally constricting rules over big data.

It's really easy to hide behind the models and received wisdom and a lot harder to put your neck on the line, tear up the rules and try and do stuff that works .

But not only is that more stimulating and more satisfying, it will also create disproportionate success for you and your clients.

It's also more fun.

I'm leaving my job to have more fun. 

The real rules still apply of course. 

By the way, the fact that Agassi is now bald and so am I is nothing to do with it. (and yes I bought those pink shorts)

 

How to Fail at advertising continued

 

 

 

Fall for the latest thing. I know I’ve said don’t read advertising books, but I would say it’s worth reading Paul Feldwick’s ‘The Anatomy of Humbug’. Mostly because he doesn’t really tell you how advertising works, rather it depends on the brief and the client. But also because he shows that most, so called, leaps forward in advertising thinking, are really different riffs on the same stuff that came before. So don’t think that ‘rational product messaging’ is wrong, nor subliminal communications, or even brand led advertising, all are right, all are wrong. I like his analysis of Byron Sharpe’s thinking as ‘do lots of publicity’ which I guess means put PR at the heart of you thinking, but I think he misses the point. He ably argues that ‘showmanship’ that bit of magic is possibly the best way to give yourself a good chance of advertising in all its forms to work, but that’s kind of Byron Sharpe too – don’t bother to differentiate, just be distinctive and get noticed.

Even stuff like native is just an ‘advertorial’ which is kind of how advertising began. Just as ad funded programmes and content are not new, the reason soap operas got their names was that soap brands funded programming that lots of people would watch weekly.

Quote books or respected sources all the time at clients. They’re either read How Brands Grow by now or they don’t want to, you don’t look clever by reading a book, you add value by applying good thinking to client’s specific problems, then claiming it for your own. Take ‘reach the whole market’. Any idiot can reach the whole market, even with moderate budgets, it’s just it will be on really bad TV programme, display ads everyone ignores on awful platforms and other stuff that delivers big numbers but has the same impact as trying to knock out a heavy weight boxer with a feather.

Quote industry research as gospel. This goes for the IPA databank as well. The data is generalised and from a ludicrously biased and small sample. It’s funny how the same strategy folks who like to dismiss research love to quote the IPA, mostly because it fits with what they want the client to buy, while research involving real people tends to spoil the argument.

WARC are at it, with analysis of their prize entries. An even smaller sample of people who entered and post rationalised their work to try and win.

Look, I’ve written award winning papers, I’ve delivered case studies to clients. I can’t remember one I’ve done that didn’t either bend the truth, leave out data that didn’t support the argument or at least pretend the process was simple and linear. When mostly, myself and the team stumbled upon the core thinking after lots of false starts, the first presentation was in-conclusive and the final approved plan wasn’t a very different version of what was originally intended.

Expect anyone to work to a brief. Creatives, media planners, content strategists, media owners. All want to put their stamp on the work. In almost every case, a good brief should major on a great objective or task, rocket fuel for the people you are briefing to get to a great solution. It should rarely be the solution itself, especially slaving over a proposition that’s a brand line in disguise. The first instinct of any creative team will be to ignore it at all costs.

I suggest an exception might be media owners here, they have a habit of trying to ‘do the strategy’ and create work that’s nothing to do with the brief, perhaps here, you should get them to follow a constricting brief exactly. My own view is that you need them to buy into what you need, which means the usual trick for them (and indeed everyone) of making think it’s all their idea. The amount of value they will throw if they believe in the project can be staggering.

You are surrounded by experts, you should hope and, to be honest, expect, the final output will make your brief look very ‘first page’ and shaky. Which it will be.

Think Powerpoint is the point. Now, I’m not saying don’t do slides, unfortunately clients expect it in many cases. But do try and avoid them unless you really are making a presentation. But don’t do slides until you have a story with a maximum of three key points. If it’s all building into three key things you want people to remember, you’re on track. It’s worth approaching from the standpoint that for every slide you create a kitten gets shot (unless you hate cats, a fairy then). That said, ignore people who simply count the number of slides and tell you it’s too many, when they haven’t seen you actually present – it’s how they support what you SAY that should be how they’re judged, the deck is not what matters, it’s what YOU deliver as a whole.

I’ve written 200 page decks for a half hour presentation where every slide was a picture. I’ve delivered two -page decks for a three hour meeting.

And if you have a boss who just looks at the slide headlines, run away from your organisation fast. If that individual writes them forward, run even faster.

How to fail at advertising 2

Don't forget, we're all in advertising unless we're on the client side, it's just cool to call it something else these days.

 

1. Only read marketing and brand stuff. If you only look at industry stuff, which is what everyone else tends to do, you’ll make the same kind of work as everyone else, which, again is what everyone else tends to do. It’s good to know this, but read as much about EVERYTHING as you can, great thinking tends to connect two things in a way no one else, re-combination if you like.

2. Not get to grips about the boring bits of your client’s business. In fact, let me correct that, there is no boring stuff. The more naïve folks on the twitterweb might go on here about solving business problems rather than marketing problems.

They are right, but the reality is that most clients don’t want you to solve business problems, that is there job – the good ones would rather talk    about business objectives, but they are few and far between. I don’t mean the majority are bad clients, but there’s too much experience and baggage from years of media agencies only wanting to talk about media, creative agencies fetishizing the ‘brand’, PR folks talking about fluff and so on. If you want clients to talk to you about their business, talk to them about it first.

Read the annual reports, build relationships with the non-marketing folks, and in general, respond to marketing led briefs with marketing led solutions, on the face of it, but evidence your work with business reasons, not just consumer and brand reasons.

3. Blame clients for your, and the industry’s shortcomings. It’s not entirely the fault of clients they are all going for short term digital stuff they can tick, when ad and media agencies were perfectly happy for so long to join in with the tracking conspiracy….if the activity shifts tracking scores it has worked, no matter how people have actually behaved.

Or even worse, pretends IPA Awards really showcase effective campaigns and provide a bank of data to help others do better – rather than a vault of case studies that happened to use econometrics, that the client would sign off on and that would provide a ‘story’ to the industry.

There are three ways to deliver additional payback for a marketing budget – innovation, deals to get the media for less and then the stuff between…basically knowing what you’re doing, working to the right objective, finding the right audience, creative assets that build on what people already recognise about the brand, Fame strategy etc etc.

4. Take research and data at face value. Most research is done badly and analysed even worse. Sometimes it’s not of course, but the good stuff, even focus groups can useful if conducted in the right context – for example doing football research at a football ground – and with the right objectives. Just as big data can be good if you know what you’re looking for and you know how it was collected – for example, even a sample size of million from social media is usually hopeless for understanding what most people really do, because no one shows what they’re really like on social, unless you have male friends who post how much porn they’re watching.

Listen to your boss. Seriously, it’s a flaw of human nature that we only see and appreciate facts and experiences that fit with our world view and our opinions.

In other words, we all hate being wrong and miss out on amazing feedback and ideas that challenge what already think or know. In a work situation, the higher the stakes, the more stress and more likely views and ‘knowledge’ is unshakeable. There is nothing higher stakes in an agency than running it, you are seen be their because of your experience and judgement, therefore, most bosses will be keen to give advice, asked for or not and usually it will be wrong, based on their experience and inferior knowledge of the project…and it’s harder to change their mind.

So avoid sharing work with very senior bosses and if you have no choice, involve them early, be sneaky and ‘help’ them have the ideas you want and when you shoe them something different later on, if it is, help them believe it was their ideas all along. Same with senior clients, tissue sessions are great if you do them early enough. It’s not their fault though, if you manage not to get fired for disagreeing with your boss and eventually get their job, or move to client side, you’ll do just the same, because you’re human.

5. Not listen to your boss or the people around you. Perversely, you need listen to feedback and advice as much as possible, even your boss. Your boss might just be on to something now and again, although it’s more likely that your wider team and agency partners will (if they’re the kind of people who want to be nice and good rather than ‘win).

The best ideas are rarely the flashes of insight, and even great ideas end very different to how they started out. Dyson wasn’t the only one to think of the bagless vacuum cleaner, it’s just that he was the only one to keep working on it to make it fit for the market. So don’t sit waiting for ideas to come, start working and open if your work to as much feedback as possible (apart from your boss) and kicking and screaming, the good stuff will emerge, phoenix like from the ashes of your very bad start.

Which also means don’t be precious about good ideas when they arrive, open them up to feedback, it’s the constant ‘tested to perfection’ mentality that creates standout ideas and work. It’s also why agencies that fetishise the brief, creative, media or otherwise, or clients who reject responses that are not on-brief are like runners cutting off one leg, they’re missing the chance for truly standout work -and as for dinosaur organisations that still bow and scrape to the creatives, or the TV department, or clients who never question the sophistry of brand consultancies..well you know what happened to the dinosaurs.

How to fail at advertising 1

1. Assume you are not in advertising. It doesn't matter if you work in PR, digital marketing, content (ha ha), sponsorship or even 'native' you are in advertising, you are making every effort to get someone's product or service in front of people, to change their relationship with that product. You may be a goalkeeper, centre forward, midfield, sweeper or even manager, but you are still in football.
2. Assume you are an artist, a philosopher, anthropologist, comedian, behavioural psychologist or Stephen Speilberg. Depending on your job title, you might be a little of some of these, but the difference is, your job is to use these practices to sell things. it d
3. It doesn't matter if your five minute slow motion film of dancing mermaids recalls Fellini at his finest moment, if it doesn't get your client closer to a commercial result, you've wasted your client's money.
4. Rely on a process. There is a conspiracy among most large agencies of a variety of specialisms that a proprietary process will reliably produce outstanding work. All processes are variations on what everyone else does and only serve to make all the work variations on the theme too. It's about hard work, having an open mind and chipping away.
5. Believe you're better than the competition. Most agencies go to clients with the same sort of strategy and idea (see above). The trick is to make them want to buy yours because it feels different, or because they like you more.
6. Believe clients like you behaving like a dick. Some of the very best agencies still believe clients like them to be cool. Which is mostly true, since clients work in  proper offices doing a proper job, without pink cows in receptions and concrete tables. But, some of those agencies , who create brilliant work, believe being cool means being objectionable. Some clients will accept hateful treatment if the work delivers results, but will fire you as soon as you mess up  -and eventually you will. Lasting relationships are built on great work, but also mutual respect and even affection, even in these procurement led days, when you mess up, clients liking you means you get forgiven, for a while at least. It's the same working with other agencies, as soon as you make a mistake, if you've been horrific, they'll be happy to stab you in the back.
7. Not being nice. See point 6, but this applies to you personally and the people you work with and the people you work for. We've all worked with and for people who can work the system without being any good, or people who are good but treat the people around them like dirt. We've all worked in places where bullying, sexism and presenteeism are rife. These people eventually get found out. Once again, the job is too hard not to make a mistake, that's when you need people who have got your back, if not, expect a sharp knife between the shoulder blades. It's a small business, people talk, makes sure they say nice things. 

What Stranger Things and Sex Robots tell us about planners and research

 

Someone asked me recently if I know anything about how to do research. Which was funny, because when I started out learning to be a planner (I still call myself that) one of the first things I learned was how to get to grips with the research tools we had back then.

Datasets like TGI (no touchpoints then), the specifics of quant research and how to manage, pre-testing (know thine enemy) but also conduct your own qual research. I could still get away with moderating focus groups now, although I hope you, like me, would rather carry out primary research that’s a little more useful.

A little while back, experienced planning folks use to bemoan new young turks joining agencies and getting to grips with idea creation and executional tweaking rather than understanding how to manage research. It’s fair to say we had loads of folks with brilliant opinions with little to back them up.

Of course, then came digital strategists, media folks doing content strategy and now, in our present day, an ocean teaming with Big Data. To the point where I’m seeing, perversely, a huge bunch of planning and strategy folks with lots of evidence and no opinion.

Sorry, opinion is a dreadful word, I mean instinct. In fact instinct is wrong too, thanks to our behavioural bias our instincts have shit for brains. I mean judgement.

Let’s think about this. What is research these days?

We still have plenty of organisations using traditional qual and quant, with planning types staying well away. Planners were invented to not just defend agencies from the tyranny of bad research, but to use research to make better work. It seems that we’ve gone back to letting research dictate again.

Even more challenging, we’re mobilising against Big Data, trying to own that, but also being totally subservient to it also. And not questioning nearly enough.

It’s fair to say that people now leave digital trails suggesting what they do, what they like and what they think. But people are not reliable digitally, not just in focus groups.

Take social mentions, sentiment and generally platform behaviour. No one is communicating what they really think, they’re communicating what they think is the version of themselves people want to hear.

There are few pictures of Mums about to have a nervous breakdown because their baby won’t stop crying, but millions of shots of little Mummy with her angelic little angel having the time of their life.

The most common words wives post about their husbands tend to overwhelmingly positive. But google data shows the most common words associated with searched around husbands are words like ‘mean’.

But even google searches, one of the few places where people don’t fib, are not reliable. They are short term behavioural signals and they don’t capture totally what influences people.

In other words, relying just on big data might well tell you what people do, it might tell you what influences them, but it rarely tells you  both at the same time and it’s mostly short term. Just like a decent planning knows how to question and shape more traditional research, the best approach to big data is to ask what it’s not telling you.

Imagination, originality and, well magic is what still builds brands, even the digital ones- Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google? They’re all investing in emotional brand advertising.

Imagination beings me to Netflix, data led entertainment. Take the wildly successful House of Cards – built from data that lots of people like political drama and Kevin Spacey. I enjoyed Stranger Things, but you can see the calculating data behind it, the love of content from the 80’s, Speilberg tropes, Goonies, ET et al plus Twin Peaks. Like a really good covers band, familiar, much loved riffs put together into something that doesn’t fire the imagination like any of the originals did – that 20% of magic.

Programmed entertainment can be really good, like to scarily life like sex robots they’re developing, will never quite match the real thing.

So what does modern research look like?

Like it always has. You can’t beat going out to meet real people in the actual environment you are trying to influence.

It’s just we have more tools. 

Sometimes, that can mean ‘meeting them’ online too.

But sometimes SatNAv gets you lost and without a decent sense of direction or ability to read maps, you're pretty fucked. 

It means being clear if you want to find out what they do or what influences them – how you find these things out will be different.

It means getting to grips with a world of more tools and people using and delivering them that are not planners.

Basically, like when planners were first invented, it’s about using research to inform your judgement and great better, evidence- based solutions.

Not media and creative you can tick.

Young lives are not one dimensional, lives never are.

 

I read something in the Observer at the weekend about young British people. I can’t find it and I guess you won’t bother following the link anyway

It was about a real tension and contradiction on their lives and how they go about culture, as we all know, or I hope we do, really great brands try and resolve tensions in culture.

That’s the problem with pen portraits and segmentations, or God forbid, focus groups, they try and reduce things down to simple, one dimensional observations.

Real life just isn’t like that.

If it was, I wouldn’t crave being by myself on my bike after a great holiday with the kids…..and yet miss them so much I can’t think straight if I’m away with work for more than three days.

Anyway, this article persuasively set out that the ‘hard work, growing up young, neo puritans’ side you will have heard about is live and kicking, but so is the instant gratification, show my life on Instagram, ‘Everything Now’ ‘Infinite Content’ without being content (I like Arcade Fire) side of their lives too. At once down to earth and tremendously floaty.

Who, buy the way, pity my generation for having such a boring up bringing without Wi Fi.

These two polar- opposites are real life. There’s power in contradiction, play in it.

 

Agencies are all trying to do the same stuff, it's not sustainable

 

I’m sure you’ve heard the children playing football metaphor, the one about how everyone just chases the same ball

It’s usually used by creative folks to show clients the need for distinctive creative strategy, my media agencies to show the need for thinking harder about media channels where no one else is playing…..well you get the picture.

The thing is, it’s happening more and more to agencies themselves. Creative agencies finding it hard to sell ads, so moving into the world of content, digital strategy and even media planning, while the media folks continue to move into content, pretending that data is the only answer to everything, tech and all sorts of special services, from creative designed for programmatic to the kind of partnership planning previously owned by the PR folks. Meanwhile PR folks are coming up behind with all of the above, with the advantage of knowing about influence.

And digital agencies continue to pretend that digital media is still a ‘thing’.

And the pace will only increase.

Now, you’ll be used to agencies squabbling over territory, with the familiar land grabs over core communications strategy, earned digital and the like. In the past, that was because most people in agencies never learned how to play nice. Creative agencies are possibly the biggest culprits, but I’ve worked with some very aggressive media agencies too.

But now, the battle isn’t about egos or landgrabs, it’s going to be about survival. Clients can’t be bothered to manage lots of agencies who don’t get on or try and do the same thing, it’s all a bit too complex these days and what we all do was only ever 10% of clients’ world in any case.

So we’ll winners from the organisations who can deliver great, neutral advice and ideas, nimble enough to be expert in a number of, what to be used to be known a disciplines. Planning, media and creative specialists, the consultancy folks if you like, who can’t think across the whole marketing piece will be seen like a football manager who is only any good at managing the midfielders.

There will be a small but robust group of specialists in implementation, probably the stuff that can’t be done by robots…great video production and imagery for example.

Hopefully researchers who can work across data science and ethnography, surely despite the need for arse saving in clients companies and agencies alike, we’ll see the death rattle of artificial qual like focus groups…or claimed quant survey only analysed on a short term basis (not to mention social sentiment being seen as anything but a picture of how people want to be seen, rather than what they do), I bet there’s some next generation insight gatherers who could make a lot of money.

This should be great news if you want to be stimulated, challenged and be prepared to be flexible, if you’re good or want to be. If you prepared to build value rather than follow the latest trends.

Because the thing about chasing the ball is that eventually it’s no fun and very few actually get to kick it, let alone score.