Finally, after a rather prolonged judging period, iseewhatyoumean is declared the winner of the APSotW Assignment 7 - the cruise task set by Grant McCracken. Congrats to iSee, the whole blog is worth a look, a fantastic perspective on planning, brands and China.
You can link to all the entries here, and I recommend you have a look, there's some really great work. Grant and I have added our own tiresome comments which may be interesting to someone. Big thanks again to Grant, what a gentleman.
Telling the story in this post requires a bit of backstory which is this; I'm going to start a global small business with Jeffre Jackson, Emily Reed and David Nottoli (blog arriving any day). We'll be doing the expected things; brands, globalness, creative industries, managing the tension between art and commerce, agency 3.1, you know, that stuff. (London, Amsterdam, Sydney, New York). I expect I'll be boring you all with it a lot over the next few millennia. It's actually very exciting. But it's very like when you start a band, the most exciting bits are the bits around the edges, logos, names, what you're going to call your first four albums, all that.
We've been getting Stefan of 344 design to do logos and things for us and I just wanted to tell you what a star he's been, and give you a perfect example of everyday, lovely service, and what it takes to be a great person to work with in this new Marketing Ronin world.
So, we gave Stefan a horribly vague brief (we must be terrible clients, four planners? can you imagine?) and he came back with a bunch of great stuff. So good that we decided we wanted all of them, we wouldn't have just one logo, we'll have a family of them, a family of logos and type-treatments and all that. So obviously, doing business cards (the really exciting bit) becomes a logistical nightmare. Stefan sorted it all out for us. Found us a printer. (David Hockney's printer apparently). Advised on paper selection, all that. Then today he sent us this email, these photos and a quicktime movie: "How are you? I'm just home from the business card press check. Everything is looking vibrant. I documented the event for you."
And here's the little movie
(about 3MB).
Now, I don't know if this is normal in the designer/business cards world, but I don't imagine so. And we're planners, we never see this stuff happen and so it's fascinating for us. And it's a huge symbol of love and care that he went down to check everything and sent us pictures and video.
So, this is just to say hurrah and thanks to Stefan and shyly reveal that we're up to something new.
(David, Emily, Jeffre, Stefan - is this OK?)
I've been playing with the preview of vox which is a rather marvelous blogging/myspace-y product from six apart (makers of typepad etc). I think I got an invite because I've been using typepad forever. Anyway I've got two invites to give away if anyone wants them, but please don't take them unless you're actually going to do something with them - start a blog or something.
Anyway, if you want one, write a comment below (including your email) and I'll send you one. First two of course.
I love the generosity of the bloglands. Here are two great examples of great thinking available to you for free:
1. Mr Colman has done a brilliant interview with John Grant. I'm really liking Paul's uncompromising approach to interviewing. He's not editing much, he's letting you hear the whole interview and I find that incredibly useful. And John is very smart, scarily articulate and comes complete with great examples. He also has that certainty and coherence about his own ideas that I suspect comes from writing a book. (Maybe I have that certainty about cafes). Two interesting people in conversation. There's nothing better.
(Not sure it's Paul's best illustration though. Sorry. Don't hit me.)
2. Iain points to this fantastic flickr set full of great webby, onliney, whatsgoingonintheworldy facts. What a top thing to do. As Iain says, thanks Lynette.
(The picture is from that set. I've never really worked out how to do that linking from pictures thing.)
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philippe starck
As I venture further out into the world, away from the 10-year comfort zone (discomfort zone?) of w+k and Nike I realise that so many of my assumptions about the way that brands and communications and people work were formed there. And that many of these assumptions are horrifying and original to many of the people I bump into. So I thought I'd list some here. These are not anything that anyone tried to persuade me of, they're not 'the wieden way', they're conclusions I've drawn, assumptions I've made. So don't blame them if I'm an idiot. (If you want to explore some of what Dan actually thinks you could try this little speech w+k london found on a hard drive.)
1. Hire advertising people, you get advertising
As Dan will admit (claim?), when they started they found it very hard to hire conventional advertising talent. No-one would move to Portland. So they got people who'd failed elsewhere or kids straight out of school. These people didn't know how to make advertising. Or not in the way it was supposed to be made. They worked out for themselves how to communicate, seduce, persuade, engage, how to make a stunning piece of film or a compelling couple of pages but if often didn't look much like advertising. Even now, thousands of years later, when some of the habits have ossified and they really, clearly, do know how to make advertising there's an inclination to push it further, to not make advertising. I think this a lesson for everyone who wants to be the w+k of the future; hire just advertising people, you'll get just advertising.
2. The key to creative genius; work harder
I know it's boring but this became so incredibly clear to me. The most exciting, inspirational, talented thinkers and doers just work harder than everyone else. Often they also work more effectively, so it doesn't necessarily look like hard work, but basically they put in more hours, pay more attention and care more than the regular folk.
3. You can't divorce the medium from the message
W+K never gave up on its own media people. Media thinkers and media doers were always integral. And often the smartest people in the place. This led to innovative and informed thinking about not just what we'd say and how we'd say it, but also where we'd say it. So w+k didn't get stuck in that trap of shoveling creativity into a pre-bought schdule. We didn't fill 30 second boxes with stuff. You've got to have media people in the building, it makes life better.
4. Do good work, the money will follow
When I moved from Portland to London I was one of only two people in the London office who'd also worked in Portland. And I think the rest of London management couldn't quite believe Dan when he'd say this to them. They wanted to believe it, but they'd grown up in big London agencies where the bottom line is all. There's not a lot to say about this, it's just true.
5. Hold everyone to the same standard
I moved to Portland to work on Microsoft. It was clear in about 5 minutes that we were the pariah half of the agency. Everyone was either Nike or Microsoft. It was like high school. Jocks and geeks. They did fantastic work every 5 minutes, won all kinds of awards, got to meet celebrity athletes. We struggled to get any decent work through, won nothing, attended three day product briefings on Exchange Server.
And we all knew it would have been so easy to just roll over, give Microsoft exactly what they wanted (which was obvious and do-able) and rake in gobbets of cash. We could have funded a dozen pro-bono accounts which would have made us feel better and won us some awards and life would have been almost sweet. Except we weren't allowed. Peer and management pressure made it clear that everyone was held to the same standard, however hard our client and our task we were expected to do extraordinary and thrilling work. This seemed divisive and wrong at the time but looking back I realise it was genius. Because if you have multiple standards you have multiple agencies. If you treat some clients as creative opportunities and some as cash cows that's just what you'll get. And sooner or later the cash cows will leave the field. Everyone's seem what it's like to be the Account Director on the regional retail account that'll never do good work. It sucks. And it sucks even more when you have to sit and present your work to all the guys who work on the cool accounts. Kudos to Dan, he always expected us to make the work better. And, sometimes, before we got fired, we did some pretty decent work.
6. You can tell from the work if people enjoyed making it
This seems more true to me every time I walk in another agency. The places that are miserable make lack-lustre work (is it chicken or is it egg?). The places with energy make energetic, fulsome, toothsome work, bursting with ideas. If the process is depressing, the work will be flat, if the process has life, the work will connect.
7. Brands that influence culture sell more
This feeling was always in the air. People were trying to build popular culture not piggy-back on it, trying to create new culture, not just repeat old ones. About the worst thing you could say about an idea was that it had 'borrowed interest'. And it was palpably clear that this instinct led to more effective, more profitable brands. So I remember writing 'brands that influence culture sell more' in a creds deck and getting the highly prized Wieden nod of approval. That was a good moment. (Or at least I think I remember writing that, it seems to have turned up in other places too, so maybe I heard it somewhere first, perhaps through some sort of strange wormhole into the future.)
So the presentation at w+k is on Thursday, 5pm, Neil says you're all welcome to come if you like. To those who offered to present/chat themselves, thanks for that and we'll set that up for a future occasion.
I thought I'd start with the above chart, because it tells a story on its own. And then refer to all the comments here, from all you lovely people.
Then, thinking about the audience, I'm not going to bang on about any clever theories, I'm just going to show stuff, stuff that's real, interesting, quick and visual. (One of the reasons TV advertising is still so central to corporate communications is that you can press a button and 30 or 60 seconds later you're done. Presenting webstuff is always such a nightmare. Even if you're good at demo-ing.)
In no particular order I thought I'd try and get through We Feel Fine, Zootube, Ze Frank, One Thousand Paintings, American Apparel and Radio One in Second Life, Birds Eye Peas, SwarmSketch, Sheepmarket/Mechanical Turk, Learning To Love You More, Lost (leaking out into the world), Interact10ways (if I can do it quickly) and end with the YouTube of Spore if they look awake enough for it (but I suspect it won't work well on a big screen). If that takes less time than I thought then we'll just start clicking through the comments on that post.
Thanks again for all the help. When/if I think of an elegant wrapping for all this randomness I'll post it here.
I've just been listening to a great podcast - Lisa Haneberg having a 'fireside chat' with Johnnie Moore. There's a lot of good stuff in there but I was especially strucken by the observation that often in a discussion it's the 'difficult people' who have the most to contribute. (I'm probably precising horribly there.)
I think this is as true with the creation of work as it is with discussion and debate. A key thing for planners who want to work with great creative people is to realise that their irritating, unreasonable behaviour is often exactly what you need to make remarkable stuff. At a human level it can be deeply irritating (and the infantilisation of creative people is one of the least attractive of advertising's crimes agaisnt decency) but the difficult buggers, the ones who demand to be heard, are often the ones with something to say. You need to find a way to stay in the room with them and to turn that irritation into work.
Blimey.
I've been getting very deep recently. Must take more pictures of things on the telly.