planners

Social Winter, Oslo, 2011

Over time, the advertising industry became very, very good at making people want things.  It didn’t matter if those things weren’t all that good, because nobody could tell each other with any meaningful scale at a meaningful volume.  Advertising was louder than bombs, to inappropriately hijack The Smiths (hey, if it’s good enough for John Lewis…).

Obviously we don’t need to go into the details here of how the internet has changed how companies can connect with people, but the advertising instinct is to use social connectivity to make people want things.  That’s why I think the majority of social activity we see is poor.

As time passes, companies and agencies will work harder and think better about how to use social connectivity to make things people want, whether that’s changing established goods and services, or creating new ones.

So I founded Smithery to help do that; whether it’s working together in better ways, making better things, or helping telling better stories about those things.BBH Labs: We know why you chose the name, but what is it about Smithery that’s valuable and different, do you think?

JW: All the excellent BBH Labs posts on t-shaped people and teams over the last eighteen months kept setting off this little voice in my head… “so what IS my deep rooted skill?”.

Being honest, for years I’ve been forcibly resistant to idea of specialising in anything, and just doing what needed to be done, like the rocks & water idea – fit in all the gaps where nobody’s doing what needs to be done…

I found that the Creative Generalist guidelines (read “what specifically do generalists do”) served as a decent compass.

And I was lucky, really, to be at PHD where it wasn’t just tolerated, but encouraged.  My job description was “the creation and cultivation of ideas through the study of technological, social and cultural trends”.  Which, when you pick it apart, means absolutely anything is fair game.

I thought of generalism itself as my specialism.  Which in hindsight wasn’t true.

Lately I’ve been thinking that if I do have a core, a long leg of the T, it’s economics.  I accidentally did economics at university (a long story), but I ran swiftly away from being an economist after going on a two day graduate course at the Bank of England.

But economics has proved really, really useful in and around advertising and marketing.  Simplifying it, microeconomics is thinking about how individuals react to changes, macroeconomics is thinking about how groups, companies and organisations react to changes.  It teaches you how to quickly model and explain these changes, and design and define a strategy.

What’s caught me attention lately on that economics angle this paper by Gilboa, Postlewaite, Samuelson & Schiedler.

It proposes that economists develop and use economic models not as strict definitions of how the world is (“rule based”), but as analogies to help us understand the relationship between different real-world cases and the models themselves (“case based”).

Which I think plays out in an analogy like Bonfires & Fireworks – it’s not the creation of a rule-based structure, but a helpful way to think about what you’re setting out to do.

BBH Labs: are co-creation and social production viable economic models yet?

I was thinking recently about revisting the Social Production stuff, in relation to coffee service eightpointnine.com.  I wrote some thoughts on it here, but the long on the short of it is that economic models aren’t as fit for purpose as they might be.

For a hundred or so years, there was no point supposing that your product could be infinitely variable by each customer who came along.  Production methods might have allowed it, but there was no way to connect to people quickly enough to manage the process.

So, instead, economics focused on things you could change, like price.  ‘Price discrimination’, for instance, is where you set different prices discretely to different groups in order to maximise revenue for a constant product.

But with a coffee service that lets you blend their own perfect brew, and share it with whomever, all at a constant price… that’s not something that’s been factored into standard economic or business thinking.

Technology helps you organise precise, personalised orders from your customers, and technology will increasingly be used to help fulfil – the 3D printed chocolate cupcake could be personalised for every order, the drink you create and design on uFlavour can be bought by the crate for a party you’re having.

But is it viable to be looking at this now?

Well, viable and profitable are two very different things.  It’s definitely viable.  And in the short term, it’ll give you more interesting stories to tell around your people and your business.  There’s value created on the journey.  You’ll learn new things too.  And take turns you never expected to into new territories.

But you’d be kidding yourself if you thought it’s going to be a short three month journey into profit.

I think what we may well see is a lot of interesting startups around personalised food and products, but in the same way interesting tech startups get rolled up and disappear into existing companies, the same will happen in the product space; except, of course, you can replace Nokia or Google with Unilever or Kraft.

BBH Labs: Is there a danger all this audience involvement actually asks too much of people?

JW: Yes, of course.  Perhaps the real trick will be making product personalisation passive for the things you don’t care enough about.  For instance; I love coffee, so I will spend five minutes a week tweaking the blend.

However, say I don’t care nearly as much about tea.  But my supermarket and other shopping habits can be used to create a ‘tasting’ profile (always buys: rich, dark, liquoricey tasting things), which is used to guess what I’d like in a tea, I’d probably pay more for it.

For the things you buy that aren’t important enough to micromanage, that type of customisation becomes important.

Of course, you have to also consider what is it that’s actually interesting for people here?  Is it that the product is clever and passive, and you can show off to your friends?  Or was it the fact that you actually made a selection and judgement on things the story, so the passive model isn’t important?

It becomes important for clients and agencies to think about the story space created around products, so people can tell their own version.  To some extent, the stories of products and services are becoming about the buyers, not the sellers.

John is @willsh on twitter, and blogs at http://smithery.co/blog. Look out for part 2 of this interview on Monday, when we’ll come back closer to home with a perspective on modern marketing: where it’s going wrong and some thoughts on what to do about it.

One theory of technology marketing and acceptance goes like this: A technology causes a media hypestorm and rising expectations. Then it crashes to Earth as the popular press and the public discovers that it's not all the hypesters said it would be--through no fault of the technologists who brought it to the world in the first place. Then, gradually, the truth about the technology seeps out until finally it reaches its use case--and then becomes that status quo, just waiting to be disrupted as it previously disrupted what came before.

While the violent vicissitudes of this chart make for good TV movies, in reality very few innovations follow this path. That's because it ignores 'being ignored.'

90% of the time, new technology triggers are widely and aggressively ignored. While we're more eager than ever for a savior that will change everything, the number of technologies, pundits, prophets and entrepreneurs is so large that there's now a line out the door. As a result, most of the things we now take for granted (cell phones, tweeting, insulated windows, email) didn't follow this curve at all.

In fact, just about every innovation I know of has to make it through the wilderness before it gets anywhere close to a hype cycle. The wilderness is the term for the years (or decades) that a founder/entrepreneur/artist/technology must spend being ignored and unfunded before the breakthrough of overnight success occurs.

Unless someone does, things start to fray around the edges.

Often it's the CEO or the manager who sets a standard of caring about the details. Even better is a culture where everyone cares, and where each person reinforces that horizontally throughout the team.

You've probably been to the hotel that serves refrigerated tomatoes in January at their $20 breakfast, that doesn't answer the phone when you call the front desk, that has a shower curtain that is falling off the rack and a slightly snarky concierge. This is in sharp relief to that hotel down the street, the one that costs just the same, but gets the details right.

It's obviously not about access to capital (doing it right doesn't cost more). It's about caring enough to make an effort.

If we define good enough sufficiently low, we'll probably meet our standards. Caring involves raising that bar to the point where the team has to stretch.

Of course, the manager of the mediocre hotel that's reading this, the staff member of the mediocre restaurant that just got forwarded this note--they have a great excuse. Time's are tough, money is tight, the team wasn't hired by me, nobody else cares, I'm only going to be doing this gig for a year, our customers are jerks... who cares?

Caring, it turns out, is a competitive advantage, and one that takes effort, not money.

Like most things that are worth doing, it's not easy at first and the one who cares isn't going to get a standing ovation from those that are merely phoning it in. I think it's this lack of early positive feedback that makes caring in service businesses so rare.

Which is precisely what makes it valuable.

Often, we're hesitant to identify a problem out of fear we can't solve it. Knowing that we have to live with something that we're unable to alter gives us a good reason to avoid verbalizing it--highlighting it just makes it worse.

While this sort of denial might be okay for individuals (emphasis on might), it's a lousy approach for organizations of any size. That's because there are almost certainly resources available that can solve a problem if you decide it's truly worth solving.

Put yourself and your people on a path to finding problems without regard for whether or not they are capable of solving them. Queue them up, prioritize them and then go find the help your organization needs to solve them.

Just because you don't know what to do about it doesn't make it less of a problem.

Image: Seattle Space Needle, by Patricia Kranenberg (via Flickr under a Creative Commons licence)

... and that's the problem.

I was picking out the mat for a framed photo and there were a thousand colors to choose from. The framer uttered the scary invocation, putting the choice back to me.

So many things are now completely up to us, more than ever before. Where and how and when we work and invest and interact and instruct and learn...

If you think you have no choice but to do what you do now, you've already made a serious error.

It seems to me that passing the buck on this merely because it's easier than choosing is precisely the wrong strategy. It enables an abdication of power that will be very hard to reverse. It's up to you, and that's part of the power that you've got.

Back to the framer: I picked, because that's my job.

Years ago, my bosses and I needed to finalize the pricing for a new line of software I was launching. In the room we had MBAs from Harvard (2), Stanford, Tuck and, I think, Wharton. We had three prices in mind, and the five of us couldn't agree. So we did the only scientific thing: we flipped a coin (two out of three, just to be sure).

Pricing your product is actually simple, as long as you consider it from the buyer's point of view. How much it costs you to make something is irrelevant. They don't care (of course, you can't price something at a loss and hope to stay in business for long). The two keys to the analysis:

Substitutes: Every purchase is a choice, and that means the buyer can choose to do nothing or buy something else instead. If there are easy and obvious substitutes to what you sell, that has to be built into your pricing. If you make something rare and unique, you still might not be able to charge a lot--because people can always choose to buy nothing. A 42 carat diamond, for example, might be hard to replace, but it's not worth $100 million unless someone actually chooses to buy it.

Part of the work of design and marketing is to help people understand that there are no good substitutes for what you have to offer, meaning, of course, that you can happily charge more.

Story: The other half of the pricing formula is the story the price itself tells. A Prius at $40,000 or a Prius at $10,000 is the same car, but the price becomes a dominant part of the story. You can tell a story of value/cheapness/affordability, or a story of luxury. If you price your product or service near the median, you're telling no story at all with the price, giving you the chance to tell a story about some other element of what you sell.

If you're not happy with your pricing options, focusing on your costs might not be the right path. Instead, focus on how the design or delivery change the availability of substitutes, and how the price becomes part of the story of your product.

Now that everyone has a media platform, look for even more of the mutual back scratching that comes from tracking favors.

The most corrosive sort of this network amplification goes like this: I do something for you unasked. Then I do something again. Perhaps I even tout you or your work a third time. Then I come to you, point out how generous I've been and ask for you to do something for me. Or I network my way to one person and then use that platform to reach three more, and repeat until I've worked the entire digital room.

Humans have a natural openness to reciprocity. It's a time-honored survival technique, one that allowed us to live together in villages for millenia. Someone who doesn't reciprocate is less likely to be protected by his peers, right? Not only have we been taught reciprocation since birth, but it feels right. It's baked in.

The problem occurs when the trading of favors become mercenary, when alert individuals start manipulating the system for personal gain. Suddenly, every favor is suspect, measured and not at all generous. Suddenly all the likes and links and blurbs become nothing but currency, not the honest appraisals of people we can trust. It means that bystanders have trouble telling the difference between honest approval and the mere mutual shilling of traded favors.

Yes, you can trade your way up, but at some point, the very people who were influenced by all your trades start to realize that you can't be trusted.

Mutual funds deserve to be rigorously measured and relentlessly traded. Favors and taste and allegiances, though, not so much. Like is too important to be something you do because you have to.

Long-lasting systems can't survive if they remain insatiable.

An insatiable thirst for food, power, energy, reassurance, clicks, funding or other raw material will eventually lead to failure. That's because there's never enough to satisfy someone or something that's insatiable. The organization amps up because its need is unmet. It gets out of balance, changing what had previously worked to get more of what it craves. Sooner or later, a crash.

More fame! More money! More investment! Push too hard and you lose what you came with and don't get what you came for.

An insatiable appetite is a symptom: There's a hole in the bucket. Something's leaking out. When a system (or a person) continues to demand more and more but doesn't produce in response, that's because the resources aren't being used properly, something is leaking.

If your organization demands ever more attention or effort or cash to produce the same output, it makes more sense to focus on the leak than it does to work ever harder to feed the beast.

Last week was the Consumer Electronics Show, an event more widely attended by brand marketers than ever before. Although the show resembled last year’s a bit too closely for our liking, we’ve resisted simply republishing our 2011 recap. What was unique however, is the sense of relief we feel upon our return. Instead of feeling intimidated by the speed of innovation, or anxious from the ever-fragmenting tech landscape, we’ve come home with our industry angst alleviated. Let us elaborate on the trends keeping us relaxed.

No one actually knows how to design for “laplets” As the world of consumer electronics bounces between convergence and divergence, we were a bit surprised to walk through booths full of laptop + tablet hybrids that seem to be a unique device offering in and of themselves. Then there were phone + tablet hybrids like the Samsung Note. There was even a tablet + gaming rig hybrid. On top of those converging devices, we were struck by the number of input peripherals accompanying them. Peripherals are nothing new, but this onslaught of converged devices with inputs beyond touchscreens is really interesting. It seems touch interface isn’t the panacea we all wanted it to be.  When the iPhone and iPad changed the way we did stuff, we figured that was it.

However, one look at how game developers and electronics manufacturers are interacting demonstrates just how difficult it is for content creators to stick immersive content into a touch environment. Ever played a mobile game with dual-virtual-stick control? It sucks. But game developers are still designing games that require it. As anyone that works at an agency has seen, designing irrespective of context happens daily. Sure, we all have our different remedies for this (see BBH’s media design practice), but almost no marketers truly craft ideas from environments. The best simply craft to them, closing the gap as best they can, but not truly letting the context or medium play as fundamental a role as it deserves.

Seeing some of the world’s best content creators struggle with familiar issues, we couldn’t help but let guilty smiles cross our faces. We can take solace it isn’t just us marketers.

TVs being “smart” means we may not have to be Last year, virtually every booth had the word “smart” displayed on it, obliquely referencing the fact that their TVs were internet-enabled. Although the idea of apps on TVs isn’t going away (especially with gesture-based engagement on the horizon), we saw a more conservative- dare we say even practical- approach to TV apps this year. Instead of highlighting obscure developers they had worked with to make apps, this year the manufacturers were presenting the familiar logos of Netflix, Hulu and Fios. We’d argue such familiarity is welcome to both consumers and marketers. It means less subscriptions for people, and a less fragmented media landscape for marketers.

As TV manufacturers came to the welcome realization that the revenue from app sales simply wasn’t going to change the face of their business, content providers with app-driven models like Netflix have been emboldened (it’s no coincidence Hulu announced its first unique scripted series on the heels of CES). This media-agency-friendly revenue model will make it easier for brands to get onto TV screens without having to partner with developers. Instead, they’ll work through content and distribution companies they already know how to engage. If we had to guess, that means subscription-services like HBO and FiOS will experiment with ad presence of varying levels, depending on the platform (e.g., Xbox 360 vs Panasonic Viera Connect). It’s certainly a lot easier as a brand to think about how to work with Hulu than it is to sort out unique offerings across Sony and LG devices. No one should be more relieved about this consolidation than marketers,  a group notoriously bad at partnering with developers and quantifying value in new ways.

Perhaps most importantly, media deal-making lunches have been preserved. Phew.

We put a big bet on Apple and we seem to be winning Apple is famously absent from every CES, yet it’s clear to any attendee that they are present, if not formally as an exhibitor. Last year was a show of iPad alternatives. The year before was an exhibition of iPhone derivatives. This year was the “hey we have a MacBook Air too” show. Apple certainly didn’t invent the ultra-thin laptop, but any analysis of the design and feature-set selected across various manufacturer’s devices (see Samsung’s new Series 9, Dell’s XPS 13 or any device featured by Intel as an Ultrabook) reveals a very Apple-like device.

Once again, a comforting thought donned on us as we walked the Convention Center floor. Few industries have adopted Apple products as early and as deeply than the ad industry. As creative teams relentlessly pitch tech ideas born from an Apple-centric view of the universe, they may just start to see more nodding heads and fewer rolling eyes. Agencies are notorious for their dogmatic approach to ideas. In this case, Apple’s vast grip on consumer electronics may justify our utterly biased view of tech experiences.

It seems creatives have yet another thing to thank Steve for.

The home is connecting to retail (and we had nothing to do with it) We’ve all been hearing about the refrigerator that tells you when you’re low on milk since before there were computers (fine, not quite that long, but still). This year’s CES brought all of the “smart” into context for the truly connected home. An LG refrigerator not only speaks to your phone or tablet to tell you all about its contents or encourage you to fill it up again– it also helps you manage a diet via personal profiles and nutritional information. Smart vacuums and ovens do their duties when you’re not even home, and some appliances talk to each other to save on power usage.  We’re used to hearing about appliances that talk to retail (or an online grocer), but this year, the retail environment talks back. Walking through the stores of the near future, we’ll get notifications about relevant offers, loyalty plus-ups and even recipe analysis based on what’s at home in your fridge. We’ll no longer have 58 heads of garlic at home or 9 jars of cayenne pepper. What a pleasant surprise– we’ve been trying to solve for the gap between home/planning and shopping/buying forever in marketing.  Promotions, brand extensions and partnerships will have much more clarity, because they’ll be based on consumer need rather than marketing guesswork. LG, Alcatel-Lucent and others have given us a palette from which to create truly integrated designs for the makers, sellers and buyers of everyday products. In other words, marketers’ inability to close the gap between retail and brand experiences may soon be a non-issue. The tech industry is sorting it out for us.

Now maybe we can help them figure out how to make their biggest event fresh again.

*Saneel & Tim were two of the co-founders of Denuo, and this was the 10th CES they’ve attended together.  They’ve come home broke, and in a fight, after each.

The taxi's waiting, it's honking its horn, time to go to the airport.

Yes, the passport is in my pocket. I checked five minutes ago.

Of course, the cost of checking again, just one more time, is tiny. Hardly worth discussing with myself. And compared to the cost of being wrong, of missing the flight... go ahead, check again.

And like giving into a toddler every time he whines for ice cream, this is the problem.

The lizard brain seeks constant reassurance. It will wheedle and argue and debate with the rest of your head, pushing for one tiny bit of evidence, some sort of proof that everything will be okay.

Don't do it.

When you indulge the lizard, it gains power. It doesn't walk away ashamed, humiliated at its anxiety. Instead, it merely sidesteps and looks for the next thing to worry about, because, ready for this? It's nice to be reassured.

Developing the reassurance habit is easy to do and hard to kick. The problem is this: there are some ventures where no reassurance is possible. There is important work for you to do where no proof is available.

If you've trained the lizard brain that reassurance is forthcoming, it will scream even louder when those projects that don't come with proof are at hand.

My colleague Amit Gupta found a 10/10 marrow match. There's still a long and treacherous road ahead, but thanks to you, and to people like you, and the ability to spread the word among the tribe, a match was found, something that was impossible just a few years ago.

Thank you.

The most frustrating thing for me in the SOPA/PIPA debate now winding down is how unnecessary the whole thing should have been. It occurred to me that we learned a lot about what sort of behaviors make for great leaders and careers. The short version: do the opposite.

When did we lose Congress? Not just in terms of losing our respect for just about everyone there (one of the least respected careers in the USA) but in the sense that they no longer even pretend to represent our interests or act as we would act if given the chance?

I'm not so much angry as saddened that it has come to this.

When planning your career, avoid these pitfalls, behaviors evidenced by many elected officials:

• In all things, look for money first. Listen to people with money, respond to people with money, justify your actions around money. Worth noting that 47% of those in Congress (House and Senate) are millionaires--an even greater percentage than those that are lawyers.
• Embrace the fact that you don't know what you're talking about. Aspire to run systems you don't understand.
• Compromise over the important issues, but dig in and fight forever over trivia.
• Along those lines: focus obsessively on the short run. Even though you are virtually assured of re-election, define the long term as "before the next election."
• Take months off from your day job (with pay) to actively campaign for a better job.
• Blame the system, the other side and your predecessors for the fact that you are not taking brave, independent action.
• Avoid developing independent thought and analysis. Focus on parroting the work of lobbyists and the party line.
• When given the choice between being on television or doing hard work, pick television.
• When a difficult problem shows up, duck.
• Try mightily to outlast passionate resistance by quietly ignoring it and waiting for it to go away.

I'm thrilled that reality has intruded and SOPA is derailed (for now). You probably know more about how the internet works than your senator does. Has he or she called you or asked your insight?

I'm disheartened that even when a linchpin shows up in Washington, she is quickly beaten into submission. Where are the lions, the Mr. Smith's and the statesmen who would rather do the people's business than business as usual? Sure, Congress has a marketing problem--largely because they have a problem with the decisions they make and the way that they make them.

At least they've left us a useful career guide about what not to do in the real world.

It's painful, expensive, time-consuming, stressful and ultimately pointless to work overtime to preserve your dying business model.

All the lobbying, the lawsuits, the ad campaigns and most of all, the hand-wringing, aren't going to change anything at all. In fact, instead of postponing the outcome you fear, they probably accelerate it.

The history of media and technology is an endless series of failed rearguard actions as industry leaders attempt to solidify their positions on a bed of quicksand.

Again and again the winners are individuals and organizations that spot opportunities in the next thing, as opposed to those that would demonize, marginalize or illegalize (is that a word?) it. Breaking systems that benefit your customers is dumb. Taking money from lobbyists to break those systems is dumber still.

What's standing in your way? What would help you start and ship and create something of value?

Access to ideas is easier than ever before. You can see over the shoulders of the great leaders in every industry, instantly and for free.

Access to tools is easier too. Every digital tool in the world is easily available, often for free.

Access to markets? The internet brings every market segment into clear view and lowers the cost of reaching it.

Access to capital? It's never been easier to find funding for an idea that's enabled by the efficiencies the web creates.

Alas, the only access that's harder than ever is access to the part of your brain that's willing to take advantage of all of this. Precisely because it's easier and faster than ever before, it's easy to be afraid to reach out, to connect and to commit. No one can help you with that but you.

"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

And a few more thoughts, from one of the greatest men of my lifetime:

“On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.”

. . .

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

. . .

“The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.”