@markcridge \ muck and brass

When is enough, enough?

(Image by Chris Jordan)

How do you sell the idea of enough?

I don’t mean more, but enough. Just enough. Enough to be happy with, enough to be getting on with. Enough to build a business around, that might be still be here in say 40 or 50 years from now.

Advertising is used to talking about if not the best, then certainly better. We’re used to demanding the best, expecting the best, not settling for less. Enough doesn’t usually feel enough. It’s not quite the full article, not everything we might need, not everything we could possibly want.

In their book The Spirit Level Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett pose a challenge, “Having come to the end of what higher material living standards can offer us, we are the first generation to have to find other ways of improving real quality of life.”

More isn’t making us anymore happy. Unlimited choice doesn’t make us feel any more individual. At some point we have to ask when is enough actually enough?

This is a tough question for a business that is more comfortable playing on the positive and accentuating the superior.

Umair Haque in his new book, The New Capitalist Manifesto, suggests ”In a world where anyone can make, market, and retail 10 billion kinds of jeans, socks, and T-shirts almost instantaneously, the question becomes: what is most worth producing in the first place?”

Rather than wasting our talents on getting one product chosen over another, we might be better off using these skills to better decide which products actually get made in the first place.

Right for me, feels like it should be enough for anyone, especially for any marketer coming to terms with margin pressures, resource scarcity and competition from all sides. So why aren’t more companies taking this approach?

Enough is fine for MUJI who don’t want to lure customers into believing that ‘this is best’ or ‘I must have this’. Patagonia will happily turn you away from the till by asking ‘do you really need this?’

Up until recently for most it wasn’t really possible to know how much was enough. They had no idea who was buying what, when or where.  But with all kinds of data from all kinds of behaviour, matching up just the right goods to just the right needs should mean just enough for everybody.

Being so tightly woven into the fabric of our clients businesses should be pretty attractive for agencies of all sorts.

Flexing creative muscle to shift exactly what’s wanted rather than what we need to shift should be less wasteful and create more satisfaction all round, and hopefully be more lucrative as well.

Or at the very least just lucrative enough.

(A version of this post first appeared in Campaign Magazine.)

Go Slow

 

I came across a blog the other day entitled the Slow Media Manifesto and after an appropriate period of contemplation it left me with a warm glow.

This modest fourteen point agenda from a group of German academics, argues that after a decade of intense consumption of ever speedier and impressive new technologies, we’ve reached a point of maturity where just being ‘fast’ is no longer enough. Rather the craft involved in production and the experience of use are far more important.

“Slow Media are not about fast consumption but about choosing the ingredients mindfully and preparing them in a concentrated manner. Slow Media are welcoming and hospitable. They like to share. Behind Slow Media are real people.”

This puts the focus back on the enjoyment and indulgence rather than just the new, for new’s sake. Think ‘Slow’, as in ‘Slow Food’ and not as in ‘Slow Down’. Innovation and change are still at the heart of the digital revolution, but iterative change that gets better with time should be a more sought after goal. Always in Beta is great, but getting better over time is best.

Being slow strikes at the heart of the dilemma we face, as we attempt to move from an agenda of short-term campaigns to 365 days of continuous engagement. It’s easy to talk about being continuous as a concept, but more difficult to actually sustain this level of intensity in practice.

“Slow Media are not a contradiction to the speed and simultaneousness of Twitter, Blogs or Social Networks but are an attitude and a way of making use of them.”

The problem with being continuous is that very few brands can afford to be ‘on-air’ every day of the year. As our planning director Martin Buckley remarked the other day, “Once you’re in, you're in. You’re not taking your campaign on to Facebook, you’re taking your business.”

What I’d urge is that we become comfortable taking our time. It’s far better to try ten things and have a modest impact with each, than it is to bet everything on a one-hit wonder with a higher risk of failure. Being slow allows us to learn from and improve as we go along, better able to find out what works for us and most importantly put media money behind the stuff that works.

Different attitudes are required. Sustaining engagement over time, takes time. As we learn to better layer-up overlapping activity into deeper relationships there will always be a place for the big set-piece bursts of creativity, but in a richer context more likely to succeed.

If you’re still not convinced by any of this, just remember the sage words of Ferris Bueller; “Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

(A version of this post first appeared in Campaign Magazine.)

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Up Close and Personal

You may have noticed that there is a General Election on.

One of the benefits of our increasing consumption of news digitally in theory is the ability to filter out the stuff we don’t want to see; in practice with such saturation coverage that is unfortunately much easier said than done. More interestingly the flip side of filtering out is the ability to zoom in to just what we do want to see in much greater detail.

The much-lauded Obama campaign is held up as a shining example of digital at its best. The combination of tools and platforms to enable participation, with millions of emails to solicit small donations that were then spent of traditional media has become a much-copied model.

The scale, financial requirement and length of the US campaign is of a magnitude greater than that which is taking place in the UK, yet parties of all shapes and sizes have rushed to wrap themselves in the cloak of change, with varying degrees of success.

This is particularly important in the UK with our Parliamentary system. Even as the media tries to cast this election as a titanic struggle between two ‘presidential’ figures in the shape of the Cameroon versus the Broon; the reality is the really interesting battles are more often to be found in individual constituencies. All politics is ultimately local after all.

The ability to zoom in and filter out should allow an unprecedented opportunity to follow your own completely personal, unique and particular view of the General Election campaign.

It is this that we are relying on for work we have been doing for the Green Party, with their ‘Personal Election Broadcast’ as we try to help Caroline Lucas become the first Green MP in Brighton Pavilion, and support the efforts of Adrian Ramsay in the four-way marginal that is Norwich South as he attempts to unseat Charles Clarke. This is especially important as we are unable to rely on a steady flow of millions from rich donors, and therefore have to be somewhat more inventive.

But perhaps you’d prefer to delve deep into the fight against the BNP in Barking, where they’ve taken advantage of the collapse in support for the local Labour party. Or choose to listen to the noise being generated as UKIP try to unseat the Speaker John Bercow, or indeed any one of the 100 other marginal seats around the country each with their own particular story.

By amplifying that which is already interesting and relevant rather than simply settling for what the three old parties seem fit to push our way, it’s a small step towards increasing participation and involvement.

With a combination of follows, friends, sign-ups, subscriptions and a little bit of effort you can easily uncover captivating and lively debates and campaigns that actually affect real peoples lives, rather than the manufactured set-pieces of the more traditional national campaigns.

That’s the real power of digital campaigning. Capable of driving massive national efforts with multi-million dollar budgets, just as comfortable getting up-close and personal with the day-to-day issues of real life.

(A version of this post first appeared in Campaign Magazine.)

Changing Gears

With the needs of clients changing from month to month the demands they put upon their agencies equally change at an ever-increasing clip. So much of the discourse around how agencies should today respond to this has focused around two alternative methods.

The big idea approach which flows down through all media, ensuring tight integration, leading the way, setting the agenda for others to second-guess and follow. The social approach, more bottom-up and holistic, listen, learn, interpret and respond, get involved in the action, take part in the discussion.

Both have their merits, both lend themselves to particular situations we’ll encounter today, and in addition they’re also exist a myriad of variations on the above as well as everything in-between.

Rather than worry about which direction is the right way forward, instead I’d argue that a modern agency should be adept at some combination of all of these approaches, capable of course of understanding how to choose the right tool for the right job.

This in itself is hardly controversial; indeed it’s a common refrain that we’ll hear from all corners of the agency world. Being capable of executing across a broad range of media is particular grail that many agencies seek. It’s a compelling argument to clients to be able to act as a one-stop-shop, or at the very least to remain the gate-keeper to their creative needs.

As we all head to the muddled middle what I believe will be one of the defining characteristics of any successful modern communications agency will be the ability to change gear quickly.

By this I don’t mean agencies must become jack-of-all-trades, especially as being master of none is hardly a compelling future for any creative agency. Rather, just as clients demands change from month to month or even week to week, so to should an agency be able to respond and react to these changes just as quickly.

As campaigns shift from periods of vocal broadcast frenzy, to calmer periods of sustenance and extension different facets of an agencies personality will be called upon.

Frankly at times agencies will more often need to show a degree of humility that few possess, able to step back when required and let others take the lead; but they’ll remain aware, ready and willing to promptly step back up to get behind an idea as it begins to gain traction and take off.

So being responsive, agile and multi-talented must be matched with an awareness for and openness to genuine collaboration. Get this right and we’ll be well placed for whatever comes at us in the future, able to play best to our particular strengths, unafraid of leading when the opportunity demands it.

(A version of this post originally appeared in Campaign Magazine)

Irresistible ideas from a model modern agency

Over at glue towers we’ve just sailed through our tenth birthday, which as you might expect was celebrated with suitable vim and vigor. It’s an especially poignant anniversary as it neatly slots into the wider introspection that inevitably goes on as we come to the end of the decade.

A decade of course which has seen immense change not least in our own little industry but across all areas of culture, politics, science, art and every aspect of real life. If anything the next decade promises to be even more disruptive, challenging and hopefully more interesting.

With that in mind we’ve used this opportunity to take stock and put a little bit of thought into what it might take to become a thoroughly ‘modern’ agency over the next few years.

From our own point of view we’ve worked hard to maneuver ourselves into the most promising currents, to try to be in the best place possible to scoop up the most interesting work, and to build on our digital heritage and see it take its rightful place at the centre of clients marketing endeavors. In doing so hopefully we’ve come some way to breaking out of our digital-only heartland.

We chose this path because we believe it’s almost impossible to deliver really fundamental change and true innovation without considering a clients marketing budget as a whole.

It’s not the 20% of marketing budgets that digital currently commands that is important, rather we’re interested in the other 80% as well.

To do this justice it will demand of the modern agency a unique and accomplished grasp of the widest range of creative skills applied across all bought, owned and earned media together; matched of course with an unparalleled strategic knowledge and understanding, all with client relationship skills a magnitude above those normally employed at a digital agency. No easy task.

This is exactly the argument that most traditional (or orthodox) agencies have used to argue why they might be best placed to take on the mantle of a modern agency. And to be fair up until now most digitally focused agencies have simply not had sufficient ability, scale or ambition to operate in this way, effectively excluding them from the top-table of client relationships.

Yet to be a truly modern agency requires not only a more intimate knowledge of the customer than anyone else, but to be closer to the conversation itself, and do all of this without losing sight of what makes digital interesting and different in the first place, the ability to conjure up magical combinations of creative and technology in impossible timescales. Not a bad set of skills to build on.

In this way, by starting from the right place the modern agency should be able to ensure it creates ideas that are ‘irresistible’, rather than simply ‘big’.

Big ideas made sense in a broadcast, scarce and controlled media world, where reach and frequency where the main requirements to get your message across. In a social, fragmented and consumer mediated world, impact and involvement are far more important skills for an agency to master.

Irresistible ideas are those that demand a response, that invite a next step, that make it inevitable fans will choose to get more involved, ideas that take on a life of their own, that can become self-financing and self-perpetuating. Which should lead to creative work that is more interesting, more valuable, more effective, more exciting, sexier; work that is remarkable, that gets talked about.

Where you start from has a huge bearing on how you’ll define modern, but whichever path you choose just be sure you’re clear on how you’ll help make it all work together.

(A version of this post originally appeared in New Media Age.)