The Art of Perfection Versus the Science of Immediacy

Phyllis Schaeffler Dealy’s post for iMedia gets at the art versus science debate playing out in the advertising industry.

Dealy makes the case that marketing today is about speed, “Do it, watch it, fix it, and then do it again.” She makes the argument it’s better to get the creative idea out there then spending time making it precise. This is an experimentation mindset toward creativity. The science of experimentation flies in the face of the art of taste-making. If experimentation is about speed and finding your way to the answer, then taste-making is about accuracy and having the answer in the first place. Experimentation lives in the realm of digital creatives and taste-making in the off-line creatives.

If time is the variable, then experimentation is the winner. Wall Street, the C-suite, even the marketplace do not allow for 20-week strategy to production cycles. Taste-makers don;t have the luxury of time. Which means it’s time for all of us to re-think how we work.

National Ideology: Hope to Hopeless?

Political scientist Larry Sabato attributed the shift of Ted Kennedy’s seat to Republican Scott Brown in part to national trends and voter discontent. It’s ironic that the national mood shifted from one of hope and happiness around the 2009 Presidential Inauguration, to that of determination and grit as the recession took grip in 2009, finally, to anger and ire just one year later. That’s the effect of accelerated culture, joblessness and  recession.

One question is where does the national ideology go from here? From hope to determination to discontent back to optimism? Or into a yet unknown sentiment? The worst case situation is hopelessness sets in. The December 2009 numbers show unemployment is actually over 17% when we include the underemployed and those who stop looking. There’s no way to spin this positively. The psychological impact is profound. Hundreds of thousands of college graduates are struggling to start their lives, while millions more are struggling to go on with theirs. They’ve not just accepted a pay cut or a blow to their spending.They are emotionally dealing with an ego cut and a blow to their self-worth. Whether we like it or not, hopelessness is a very real possibility for the next National Ideology.

Another  important question is how quickly will the shift occur? Hope to hopeless in 400 or so days? The staggering pace of that kind of shift is explain. Those who follow trends understand that culture is like the tides. The potent cultural ideas are build momentum way out from shore. The dominant ideology is strongest as it crashes  on to shore and the lapsed ideas retract back to the sea. This would suggest that hope was building well before the realization of  Obama’s Presidency. And that discontent and hopelessness were building even as he was giving his inauguration speech.

If hopelessness does set in the only consolation is that the next National ideology wont be far behind. In fact, it’s likely building momentum right now.

Think Infinitely: Branding in the 21st Century

When I think about the automotive industry these days, I can’t help but think that Seoul is the new Tokyo. Tokyo is the new Detroit. And Detroit is the new horse and buggy. Hyundai and Kia are increasing market share with their quality and reliability story. Toyota and Honda are in the process of major recalls and the auto industry in Detroit is tenuous at best. The image and business of the global automotive industry resembles the product maturation curve, with the Koreans, Indians, and (soon) Chinese in growth phases, Munich and Stuttgart having reached maturity, Tokyo and Detroit in various states of decline. Maybe we should call it the brand extinction curve? Some would argue that death of the old is nature’s way of making room for the new. But how can putting major brands out to pasture be acceptable?

Image Credit: http://www.12manage.com

The problem of looking at business and branding in a linear way is that it that it assumes everything that has a beginning has an ending. This may be true of people, but not of ideas. Ideas live on. They endure. They are infinite. What if we think about our business and brand ideas in an infinite way? Infinity is a never-ending, constantly recalibrating journey. Infinite branding means once the business reaches a given point (say, a lull), it immediately changes course to another point. It means we operate our business and our brands in a state of constant change – which, by the way, is pretty characteristic of how things are in The Great Recession. Corporations have beaten agencies to the punch on this. The Wall Street Journal reported that many business are accelerating their strategic planning processes, now looking at the numbers monthly, if not more frequently. In so doing, companies like Office Depot and Whirlpool are adapting and course correcting. They are thinking infinitely.

Image credit: http://www.typophile.com

Not everyone else is thinking infinitely. Now it’s time for the advertising, marketing and branding industry to catch up. It means we can’t continue to work the same way. The “marketing” portion of this is easier to solve. Tactically, we need to be able to take a temperature read and make adjustments. Interactive marketing is pretty good at this, particularly when it comes to direct or transactional marketing roles. You can watch results in real-time and quickly make curse corrections. The “branding” piece is more difficult because there is a belief in the agency world that branding takes time. It takes time to develop positioning, it takes lots of time to develop creative work and it take even more time for the creative work to work. It is the long lead times of brand that needs to change.

Positioning, creative and its impact need to be happen in weeks, not months. The only way to compress this is for it to happen simultaneously. Agencies shouldn’t work in departments or silos – this guys talks to the client, this person writes the brief, this person creates the work and this person produces it. Just as Bloomberg revolutionized television business reporting, we need to revolutionize our industry with teams of multi-disciplined, collaborators that work together, creating brands, ideas and new ways to communicate them. No one of us is as smart or talented as all of us.

Unfortunately, this is not a Bernbachian view of the world in which ideas can only come from virtuosos. That’s the world 50 year ago under the advertising creative revolution. We’re in the full brunt of the media/ technology revolution that’s changing some, not all, of the rules. One rule that’s changed is how ideas are created and deployed. One rule that hasn’t is that ideas still come of the brand. We need to course correct the agency business accordingly.

I get that this is difficult for an industry full of egos. I’m not the first to make this plea. But the marketing, advertising and branding industry is reaching its decline phase. If you consider the alternative is “being put out to pasture,” you may find the idea of thinking infinitely and collaboration a bit more appealing.

Influx Curated: The Perils of Different.

One of the speakers at Influx Curated 2009, Doris Mitsch, told the understandable story of giving up an art project after reading a review of another artist’s show that was similar to her own. It’s a classic story of a creative block, Mitsch went on to explain. Her frustration and disappointment is understandable. She felt her own project was no longer valid because someone else had the same idea. It’s also the perfect illustration of how the marketing and advertising industry places way too much emphasis on originality.

So I ask the questio, why is it so important that “the idea” be different? Why is differentiation the most covetted marketing strategy?

I think the answer lies in several factors.

1. Disruption. Jean Marie Drew’s book and TBWA’s branding process is pretty much the standard for modern marketing. When others zig, you zag. Embedded within this approach is defining what the brand is, but demonstrating what it is not.”Think Different,” and “Drivers Wanted” are good examples.

But how powerful IS being different in modern marketing? Many would argue that Barack Obama’s campaign (heralded as the best example of marketing moving forward) was more about appealing to similarities than differences? “Yes We Can” not “Yes I Can.”

2. Demographics. The virtues of being different and uniqueness are Late Boomer and Gen X values. These groups have been the drivers of consumption and creativity for the last 30 years or so. They find identity and meaning from standing out.

But the consumers of tomorrow, the Y Generation, define their identity by stnading together. Another presented from Influx demonstrated this describing how it was the Web 2.0 generation and the power of the participatory web that helped vote Barack Obama President. This happened because people came together based upon what they have in common. Not what makes them stand apart.

3. Myth. The most commonly thought of creative architype is the lone genius  and it is a stereotype. We celebrate the notion of a young, vibrant renegade who follow his or her own path and blazes new trails with their art and creativity

Yet, several books and research studies have shown this to be a stereotype. Mark Earls gave a presentation at a recent APG conference and pointed this out with Einstein and Edison as examples of creatives that accomplished their best work late in life with a disciplined approach.

Maybe a better way to value ideas is not on their originality, but on their form and style. The Elizabethan playwrites, including Shakespeare and Marlowe did just this. When they were comissioned to write a play and put on a production the Queen commanded they write THEIR version of Faust or THEIR version of Twelfth Night. They were judged not on the originality of the concept, rather the style and execution of it.

I wonder how many great ideas have been tossed out because we unreasonably emphasized originality? Perhaps there is create value is being the same? And perhaps we only hurt our ideas, brands and businesses by constantly trying to be different?

What do you think?

First Post (at this address)

I’ve been posting at Apple’s web.mac.com. But someone in Cupertino thought it a good idea to remove the server space. So, this will be my new personal space.

I’ll be at Influx Curated conference on 6/11 posting here and at Twitter. Follow me: @jaypattisall.