A Time For True Radicals

Gareth KayChief Strategy Officer, Associate PartnerGoodby, Silverstein and Partners, San Francisco

Why radical?

Professional Radicals

radical (adj.)

thoroughgoing or extreme, especially as regards change from accepted or traditional forms: a radical change in the policy of a company.

favoring drastic political, economic, or social reforms: radical ideas; radical and anarchistic ideologues.

Source: Merriam-Webster

radical (adj.)

of or going to the root or origin; fundamental: a radical difference

Source: Merriam-Webster

Let us be in no doubt, it’s time to be radical

What we’re doing isn’t working

“In most cateogries, a brand’s market share is stationary”

Brands in 4 out of 5 categories seen as increasingly homogenous

Less than 1 in 10 ads seen as different

3 x $ spent on price cutting compared to brand building in CPG

Source: Andrew Ehrenberg; Copernicus Consulting; McKinsey

We’re less valued by clients

1 out of 4 clients don’t believe what we do boosts corporate profitability

3 out of 5 clients think we don’t offer good value for money

2 out of 5 think we don’t work well in a team

1 in 10 think we are doing a good job in evolving our services for the digital age

Source: IPA/ISBA; CMO Council 2010

We’re finding it hard to find and retain the best talent

Not just low starting salaries but ‘low degree of difficulty’

Spend less on training and development per person than Starbucks spend on their baristas

Less than 1 in 2 employees believe their agency is committed to continuous development

Source: AAAA

Yet, our response seems to be this

6(hopefully helpful) thoughts

TODAY

“Being realistic is the most commonly

traveled road to mediocrity.”

- Will Smith

Let’s think about what we can create, not just what our muscle memorytells us to make1

“Here’s the TV ad, now what’s the problem?”

“The task of any imaginative agency, any creative company, is to understand and serve its client’s business problem. Too often, our business has sliced and diced its tasks in the style of a sub-

prime mortgage bundler. A corporate task set by the chief executive, reframed as a comms task by

the marketing director, refined by the brand consultancy and reduced by the ad agency to the stuff advertising can do: grow awareness, nurture

engagement. Too many links, too indirect and weak a connection between commercial

possibilities and creative resolution.”

- Laurence Green, Founding Partner of 101

“The further backward you can look, the farther

forward you can see.”

- Winston Churchill

Let’s stop defining ourself by output and start defining

ourself by outcome

Let’s be rewarded for good behavior

hack (n.)

the most ingenious and effective solution to a problem

Source: Merriam-Webster

Stop thinking our work exists in a vacuum2

Why is our reference almost exclusively

other ads?

The reality is what we make exists in culture

“Creative firms of all kinds (including ours) know that they must evolve at LEAST

as fast as the world is changing around them”

- Tom Kelley, IDEO

While culture has changed massively in the last 60 years, we’ve been massively dumb

Digital ideas or ideas for a digital world?

“Advertising can’t have a future if it continues

living in the past.”

- Steve Henry

Effective ideas demand we create our own culture of

continual re-invention

No more narcissism3

We are narcissists.

We create fake ‘movements’ for things people don’t care about

“Often our biggest mistake is believing that, in general, customers care a lot about your brand. They do not.”

- Patrick Barwise

“Nobody reads advertising. People read what they

want to read and sometimes it’s an ad.”

- Howard Luck Gossage

We need to understand what people are interested

in and work back from there

Build bridges

“We’ve moved from a downloading culture to an uploading culture.”

- Charles Vallance

We need to get better at designing for gaps

Put people at the heart of everything we do

Get out of the messaging business4

Ideas that do

Stop communicating a product and start making communication products

Break the tyranny of big5

The bigger, the better

The biggest ideas disappear

"Square is elegant. The user's flow through payment or application has been reduced to the fewest possible steps; the app has minimal features. He espouses a tremendously attractive belief that good industrial design wins customers' trust by disappearing."

What if we thought smaller about the things we make?

What if we stitched smaller ideas togther to create a

long idea?

Organize the world’s information

and make it universally

accessible and useful.

Google Search

Google 411

Google Docs

Googlelabs

GoogleShopping

Google Scholar

Google Books

GoogleMaps

Google sketch

Google.org

Fossil fuel Challenge

Youtube

Chrome Browser

Blogspot

Source: John Grant, ‘The Brand Innovation Manifesto’

“Like any company we require a profit to stay in business. But it is not

the reason we are in business. The thing that has not changed from day

one is the desire to make people think about the world we live in. This is, and always will be, why

we are in business.”

Dave Hieatt

Photo:  Andrew  Hovells  (aka  Northern  Planner)

Photo:  Andrew  Hovells  (aka  Northern  Planner)

Think small

Let’s start learning again6

‘From suck to non-suck’

Pixar

Eradicate the pointless quest for perfection

“The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes

on because it’s 11.30”

Lorne Michaels

Minimum viable product

Source: Albion London

Source: Albion London

Communications R&D

70/20/10

Build a culture of experimentation

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like

irrelevance even less”- Gen. Eric Shinseki

Thank you for listening

@garethk

gplus.to/garethk