How to think and make small

So the final ramble about the presentation I did last week at Future Flash.  It's the most navel gazing one of the lot as it's about what I think agencies, and particularly planners, need to do if they want to make small ideas happen.  Here goes:

1.  Build brands from the bottom up rather than the top down

Brands aren't how we define them but are things formed in people’s minds.  As Jeremy Bullmore said many years ago, "Consumers build an image [of a brand] as birds build nests. From the scraps and straws they chance upon." So wouldn't it make more sense to perhaps, for once, build our brands from the bottom up rather than the top down; from actions rather than brand vegetables or mission statements.  It's again about being action, rather than word, driven.  Making real things and see how they do in the world rather than spend 3 months thinking about whether your brand is amusing or funny.

2.  Be useful,interesting, entertaining and playful in the service of people

Preferably all four of the above, at least three.

3.  Think about what communication strategy can learn from UX design

Whether we try to sweeten it or not, communication strategy tends to be built on the assumption that interruption is best.  Maybe we can learn from UX design and think about communicating in a way that removes friction in a near invisible way and get credit for that, rather than shouting more cleverly.  At the very least let's focus on the right 3 degress not 360 degrees.  I still think we have a tendency as an industry to deploy the 'Dr Seuss Communication Strategy' - to put it on mats, on hats and on cats.  (Thanks Mr Robson for the inspiration for Seuss).

4.  Do something and interesting things will happen

Again be action oriented.  Make communication products, not PowerPoint.  Be biased towards actions, not meetings

5.  Build a culture of experimentation not planning

Do stuff and learn from it rather than learning and doing.  It's more realistic and the cost of trying stuff is getting lower and lower.  Place lots of bets and think about your Communication R&D strategy and budget - or join the 5% Club as Contagious likes to put it.

6.  Realize perfection is the enemy

We spend far too long trying to make things perfect - the words on a brief, the layout - rather than getting ideas out there in to the real world.  As Lorne Michaels says of Saturday Night Live, "the show doesn't go on because it's ready; it goes on because it's 1130."  We need to realize that good enough is more often than not good enough.

7.  Be rewarded for good behavior

Finally this controversial one as it's about money and how we get paid.  The way agencies by and large are compensated - time plus - encourages bad behavior: get as many people as you can to work really slowly.  On one thing.  Repeat.

What if we got rewarded in a way that encouraged better behavior.  What if we got paid for outcomes rather than outputs or inputs?  What if we got paid for business results driven by our portfolio management?  What if we got paid for being more efficient in the way we work and prodigious in our output?  What if we learned from builders and contractors, of all people, and got bonused for finishing stuff ahead of time?

This talk was all about need to break the tyranny of big and embrace small.  I genuinely believe it's what we have to do in order to remain relevant.  We have to stop conflating the outcome with the means.

As I've said before I think the agencies of the future will combine the storytelling skills of Madison Avenue with the inventive, purposeful experimentation and speed of Silicon Valley.  Small ideas, and big success, will live here.

Comments

[Jim Thornton]

Bravo Gareth.
Couldn't agree more.
Not enough people understand that an idea is neither a good idea nor a bad idea until it is executed.
I once had a client who spent 18 months working on a positioning for the brand & then gave us 6 weeks to come up with and make the work. My response was to film the brief for 30 seconds because he obviously thought that was the most compelling bit for the consumer.
I love the Jeremy Bullmore comment - it reminds me of a friend who said the great thing about developing programmes on radio before taking them to TV was being able to make all your mistakes without anyone really noticing before going properly public. Rarely are we given the chance to develop from small to large having learned along the way by just doing stuff.

[William charnock]

I love it. Everything we are doing at R/GA is captured here. It's not either or. I believe we have to offer clients both top down and bottom up. One of the main reasons I left the top down world of traditional agencies is that they don't make anything. They outsource making to directors, producers, pgotogtaphers, studios and digital production houses. It's Really hard to act on your advice above from inside a traditional agency. What exactly do I go out and make? I can't rush out and put an experimental tv spot or print ad out there and see what happens. Additionally, what you can make in digital for a brand is now so rich and varied and takes so many different skills and capabilities than before. We can make practically anything in digital as an experiment from new products, services, utilities, content, events, commerce venues, experiences, even new behaviors etc. We can also connect all the non digital brand interaction to make them more effective (an ecosystem). Each and every one of these digital things requires totally different skill sets and abilities, different developers, different technical skills, different engineering and building capabilities and few if these skill sets live in advertising agencies. So I'm left wondering what you are asking planners to make since very few have the tools or people to build the same way silicon valley does. Planners at R/GA have over 300 differently skilled digital makers of many different varieties and capabilities but I don't know another agency that has that. We are lucky as we can make almost anything digital and experiment and learn in the making process alongside our technical partners. What you describe is what we do daily but I don't know I could possibly do that from inside the agencies of my past. They may be able to make the things that every teenager makes, content, social but that's a very small piece of the pie and a hyper competitive space because everyone can do it.

[Agnes]

People are applauding this article in the halls of Organic. Love points 3 and 5. Nice piece Gareth. A

[Jonathan Cohen]

Thoughtful piece. Good for agencies, but also for clients.

[Adey]

A couple of years ago, I decided that if a company communicates something they honestly believe in and has fantastic products, everything else is about interesting and useful 'small ideas'. Ideas that get people to be more familiar with your products, buy them and recommend them to their friends… I struggle to beleave in agency's unwavering belief in 'big idea' was not only never really a 'big' idea (or 'ideal'). It is fundamentally a patch for weak brand beliefs and commoditized products.

[Marvin]

Hello Adey

"Brands aren't how we define them but are things formed in people’s minds."

This seems to be a concept foreign to most of the smaller companies I have been involved in.
Thanks for the great ideas.

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