Memories light the corners of my mind
Misty,water colored memories
Of the way we were.
~ Barbra Streisand, The Way We Were

Barbara Streisland, image: barbarastreislandpictures.com

I attended the Damien Hirst show at the Tate Modern. Flies and fags, butterflies and bling, spin and spots, drugs and death… There. You don’t need to see it now.

I walked away somewhat hollow. I felt a pang of guilt and recognition. Guilt because Hirst was in many ways the adman’s artist. Art that came with a nudge, a wink and a knowing punchline. Art as quick hit, shiny bright, paper thin. Recognition because, yes, that was Britain in the ’90s. Spin doctors and Spice Girls, boy bands and man bags, heroin chic and Shabba Ranks, lads and Loaded, puffas and Prozac, Wonderbra and Wonderwall, alcopops and Posh & Becks. Fool Britannia…. There was no god, no beauty, no other. Just money and death and irony. Things could only get worse…

I’m not sure I blame Damien Hirst. I suspect he’s a very good artist. He was very effectively holding a mirror up to us and our values. Or lack of them. And I suspect each generation gets the art it deserves. Flies and fags was maybe all we were good for in the ’90s.

Don’t you also think that we get the advertising we deserve? As an Agency, as a Client, as a culture ? When we hark back to a golden hued, bygone age of celestial communication, are we not condemning our own failure to create greatness now? When the disappointed Client fires the disappointing Agency, isn’t he or she shirking personal responsibility? When we rail against cruel fate and happenstance, when we bemoan the recession, or reach for the blame gun, shouldn’t we be looking in the mirror first?

I believe in commercial karma. That, broadly speaking, in advertising as in life, we reap what we sow. That what goes around comes around. Not for some spiritual, counter cultural, gaia-type reason. But because, though it seems trite to say it, in the long run, smart, open minded Clients, working with intelligent, lateral Agencies, for honest, worthwhile brands, will make better, more effective work. And vice versa.

I guess I have witnessed exceptions to this. The craven creative, the malevolent marketing director, the bullying business director have on occasion won the day. But overall in my experience fakes are found out, charlatans are shopped. Good prevails.

Instant karma’s gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head
You better get yourself together
Pretty soon you’re gonna be dead
~ John Lennon, Instant Karma

John Lennon, image: backstageol.com

Of course in the past one had to wait for hubris to be followed by inevitable nemesis. Nowadays the social web has created a kind of instant karma. Because the courtroom of public opinion is so immediate and all seeing. It shines an unforgiving,instantaneous light on the ill conceived and poorly executed. It likewise rewards the virtuous with currency and value.

I had always believed that Corporate Social Responsibility was exactly that: a responsibility that a business owed to the communities it served. I wasn’t so enamoured of more fashionable phrases like social investment because I didn’t feel ethics needed commercial justification.  And I wasn’t convinced CSR had a role in marketing or brand.

Now I have been persuaded that ethics are more than a responsibility. They are fundamental to a brand’s sustainability in a transparent, socialised world. Because increasingly consumers are unwilling to buy good products from bad people. Because in a world of commercial karma only the good Clients, good admen and good brands can win.

Our first ad for The Guardian broke on Wednesday night. It’s basically a product demo taken to epic proportions, re-telling and shedding new light on the classic story of the 3 Little Pigs. If you haven’t seen it already check it out and see what you think. Then below I’ve shared the thinking behind the work for anyone interested in hearing a little more.

Readers of this blog need little convincing of the merits of citizen journalism, crowd-sourcing and open platform collaboration. Nowadays eye witness accounts are shared instantly with the world through Twitter, whilst Google Alerts or new destinations like Gawker and Huffpo offer an alternative to traditional news brands. What’s more, we all know the broader Newspaper industry is struggling. Print circulations and revenues keep falling, and for most the business model simply isn’t working.  Add to that mass criminality and corruption, and the long-term diagnosis looks terminal.

All this starts to beg the question, where does that leave a newspaper like The Guardian? It has to continue to be far more than simply an aggregator of opinion and comment. It’s an innovation business almost two centuries old, one looking to lead the global news agenda and set an example for how modern brands should behave.

Our brief was to help cut through preconceptions, engage new readers by bringing to life The Guardian’s remarkable transformation over the last 10 years from a left-wing, British newspaper to a global digital news hub.

This change has been driven by Alan Rusbridger, The Guardian’s editor and is built on a belief that in the modern world no single organisation can possibly claim to be sole arbiter of truth, with experts journalists working in isolation to pass down the day’s news to the masses. Instead, for The Guardian, modern news is a dynamic, participative and open dialogue in which the public and other news sources enrich and expand stories, inviting response and opinion. It’s open and mutual rather than closed and didactic. It’s iterative and alive rather than final and definitive. It’s multi-platform and digital first.

• Whilst most newspapers jealously guard the stories they are planning to cover, The Guardian now publish their news lists online daily, encouraging both public and experts to get in touch with their journalists if they feel the have something to contribute, advise on or just to have their say.
• When the MPs Expenses Scandal exploded, The Guardian swiftly built an app that enabled the public to get involved, sift through receipts and flag anything they decided was worthy of investigation.
• During Arab Spring, in addition to providing content from its journalists in the field, The Guardian invited Arab commentators to share their views and blog, in Arabic, on the Guardian’s platform.
• The Guardian’s open platform enables anyone to access data collected by the Guardian as well as providing a search tool so that users can search for government information from around the world. It also encourages readers to upload their own data visualisations or share their favourites.

Whilst The Guardian represents open news, it remains a brand with a point of view, with a role and purpose that is more, not less, important in today’s world.  Rather than benefiting shareholders or a proprietor, the Guardian is owned by the Scott Trust which ensures that  profits are reinvested to sustain journalism that is free from commercial or political interference. The trust, which was formed in 1936, and is named after CP Scott (Editor between 1872 and 1929) protects the Guardian’s commitment to a set of values that can be summarised as honesty, cleanness (today interpreted as integrity) courage, fairness and a sense of duty to reader and the community.  Scott’s famous words  “Comment is free, but facts are sacred” remind us of the importance of accuracy and truth in a world where information and opinion is ubiquitous. Relentless inquiry is the responsibility of organisations that want to set the news agenda, they must stop at nothing to get the bottom of the stories that matter. Nick Davies did just this – he was the Guardian journalist who spent 5 years finding and checking evidence and withstanding threats to uncover the truth behind the  ’phone hacking at the News of the World.

If you couldn’t tell already, I’ll admit personally to being a huge fan. But I believe as digital innovators, creative pioneers, and champions of civil liberty and reform The Guardian is a rare and precious thing that deserves support. The story of the newspaper industry as we know is unlikely to conclude with a fairy-tale ending, but the Guardian is definitely painting an exciting vision of things to come.

Client Credits – The Guardian

David Pemsel, Marketing Consultant
Richard Furness, Head of Sales and Marketing, The Guardian
Anna Hayman, Marketing Manager, The Guardian

Media Buying Agency – PHD

Toby Nettle, Media Planner

Creative Agency – BBH

TV Credits
BBH Creative Director: David Kolbusz
BBH Creative Team: Matt Fitch & Mark Lewis
BBH Producer: Davud Karbassioun
BBH Production Assistant: Genevieve Sheppard
BBH Head of Strategy: Jason Gonsalves
BBH Team Director: Ngaio Pardon
BBH Team Manager: Alex Monger
BBH Team Assistant: Katie Burkes

Print credits
BBH Creative Team (Print): Carl Broadhurst and Peter Reid
BBH Head of Art: Mark Reddy
BBH Designer: James Townsend
BBH Print Producer: Sally Green
BBH Creative Director: David Kolbusz
BBH Head of Strategy: Jason Gonsalves
BBH Team Director: Ngaio Pardon
BBH Team Manager: Alex Monger
BBH Team Assistant: Katie Burkes

Production credits
Production Company – Rattling Stick
Director: Ringan Ledwidge
Producer: Chris Harrison
DoP: Franz Lustig
Editor/Editing House: Richard Orrick (Work post)
Post Production (Graphics + CGI effects):  The Mill London
Sound Design: Will Cohen & Sam Brock
Music: Phil Kay (Woodwork Music)

Images via superiorpics.com and brandrepublic.com

I spent the first half of my adult life to date, playing in bands and the second half planning brands, most recently at Zag, the brand ventures division of BBH.

After an awkward adjustment period where I tried to deny all existence of my previous life and its accompanying streaked mullet jpegs, I’ve recently been finding that I actually learned a lot of useful things in those years in the Highbury Garage. Here they are:

# 1 Develop your dynamics

Listen to any AC/DC, song, especially Back in Black and you are listening to a lesson in dynamics. The space, the drums, the shifts, the CRUNCH – you can’t help but be moved by it. Loads of massive rock tracks owe a lot to soft/loud dynamics from Babe I’m gonna leave you to Teenage Dirtbag. Boys in particular like this sort of thing. The laws of rock dynamics are directly applicable to any presentation.  It’s a good discipline to think “where’s the bit where the chords come crashing in?” and “how can I make this section feel more like ACDC?”

# 2  Your brain is a divining rod

Captain Beefheart (RIP) instructed us to “Think of your guitar is a divining rod. Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over”, Keith Richards said he used to think of himself as an antenna. This is a useful way to think about getting to good insights and ideas. It’s less about thinking hard and more about pointing your divining rod in the right direction…..

# 3 Creativity loves constraints

If you want to get to interesting places pretty quickly then it really helps if you can limit your options. Rather than using PC/Mac based synthesizers with infinite sound banks, my band employed ‘dated’ synths like the Roland 505 which had 2 brilliant sounds and loads of unusable ones. Limited resources often produce better end results too. Just compare the White Stripes’ two piece original of “Fell in love with a girl” with Joss Stone’s 16 piece funk/rock version.

At Zag we’ve found that setting ourselves ‘constrained’ brand invention briefs has lead to better results. One thing we do from time to time is to set “piggy back briefs” along the lines of “Invent a brand that attaches itself to a popular behaviour, has an element of utility/style and is uncomplex to create”. The results have included Bo Peep boot cuffs which went on to be a UK high street phenomenon last year.

#4  Hangovers help (at times)

Hangovers, in my experience, obliterate a lot of the brain’s cognitive reasoning functionality, we can’t reason our way through things in the same linear fashion. This is good if you want really want to know whether you truly believe something is any good or not whether that’s a song, a proposition or a business idea. They are also really good for thinking up brand names.

Images via drummerworld.com and cocainebrain.tumblr.com

# 5 Your Charlie Watts are as important as your Mick Jaggers

The Stones would have been half the band without Charlie Watts, same goes for the Beatles and Ringo, Oasis went downhill after Tony McCarroll left. None of these guys are virtuosos or ‘stars’ but they give the songs and the stars the space they need to breathe properly. Every agency team needs at least one Charlie Watts to make beautiful music together.

# 6 A little ownership goes a long way

Planners often like taking problems off by themselves, pondering deeply and then coming back with ‘the answer’. A lot of songwriters are the same, particularly since sequencers mean you can kind of write all the parts yourself. But the tunes with the most energy in my bands were always the ones where I didn’t present them finished and everyone really put a little bit of themselves into it. Those are the ones which really lift off on stage. Luckily on Zag the planners don’t have much choice here being seated next to talented, interfering types like @stephenwake & @schnuffs…..

And if all else fails:

# 7 Start a beef

Starting ‘beefs’ with higher profile peers is a well-established career strategy in hip hop. 50 Cent has probably done this more effectively than anyone.  In one of his early tracks ‘How to rob’ he raps about robbing a variety of stars including Jay Z, Wu Tang Clan, P Diddy, Busta Rhymes and also Mike Tyson. A lot of them then responded in their own tunes and his profile started to build. You even see this in indie with Eddie Argos from Art Brut bitching about Bloc Party’s more famous Kele Okereke and benefiting from extra publicity. Planners are not generally the most aggressive types so this is a real opportunity to differentiate with minimal risk of actual violence. Pick someone higher profile than you and have a go…

If you made it through this post you may also want to take a look at Dan Hauck’s excellent post here in February on what agencies can learn from labels.

Girl Sleeping, by Tamara de Lempicka

‘O sleep,why dost thou leave me?
Why thy visionary joys remove?
O sleep again deceive me,
To my arms restore my wand’ring love’

I recently attended a concert in which these words of Congreve were sung in a beautiful Handel aria. I’m sure we can all relate to the sentiment: sleep is a place of joyful deceptions and re-found loves; it’s a place for escaping, forgetting, recovering, refocusing. However harsh the work environment, however stressful the unrelenting day, I have always been sustained by the promise of sleep, its welcoming embrace, its warm repose. In fact I have a singular talent for napping at will and I have inherited from my mother the habit of the Sunday afternoon kip. I like to drift off on the sofa, newspaper on my lap, to the sound of children’s chatter and roller bags from the pavement outside.

I have long felt that sleep is an area of untapped opportunity for brands. We spend a third of our lives sleeping, but we’re increasingly concerned by our ability to get enough of it, at the right quality. One can’t help but be underwhelmed by the plethora of scented candles, quack remedies and orthopaedic pillows that currently constitute the ‘sleep sector’. Can’t we do better than this? Surely space is not the final frontier; it’s sleep.

When, many years ago, BBH first embarked on our efforts to develop brand ideas that could cross borders, we had to overcome the argument that cultural difference abhorred generalisation. We observed that, whilst all markets are indeed diverse and varied, there are often strong consistencies around aspiration, belief and hope: we are united in dreams, but divided by reality. It’s a creative tension that I continue to find useful.

This is not to say that my relationship with sleep and dreams has always been positive. As a child I was cursed by the recurrent nightmare of my father, padded up, in cricket whites, being chased down the stairs by a crocodile. Not pleasant perhaps,but at least it was interesting.

When I was a young researcher there were guys who put respondents to sleep, hypnotised them in order to probe the deeper,darker unspoken truths of brands. I confess I felt at the time that this was all somewhat daft. Nonetheless I can’t help but admire the intent.

I sometimes wonder if the ‘always on’ digital age is depriving brands of the opportunity to pause and ponder, recover and refocus. I’m concerned that nowadays we fail to find the time and space for our brands to sleep and dream. As we reduce everything to rational reckoners, KPIs and capabilities, are we cultivating brands without conflict or contradiction, brands without personality or human frailty? Are we creating an Age of the Anodyne? Pity the insomniac brand, cursed to roam the earth in the endless waking sunshine of unforgiving rationality.

It seems reasonable to suggest that, whilst brands today should naturally seek to deliver immediacy and reciprocity, utility and individuality, they should also find room to rest, relax and restore; to dream the illogical and impossible; to yearn for lost loves and found hopes.

I’m about to embark on a three month sabbatical. Perhaps the thought of sleep has an extra resonance. In the words of Morrissey…

‘Sing me to sleep
Sing me to sleep
I’m tired and I
I want to go to bed…’

‘Is that all there is, is that all there is?
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing.
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is.’

Peggy Lee, image via peggylee.com

I remember the first time I heard Peggy Lee singing the classic Leiber and Stoller number, ‘Is That All There Is?’. The heroine relates how, through the course of her life, experiences that may initially have been exciting, had in fact turned out rather tiresome. From her home burning down, to going to the circus, to falling in love. It’s a hymn to disappointment and apathy. Like most teenagers I had spent large chunks of my short time on the planet lying in my room being incredibly bored. In amongst the bubble gum pop and dinosaur rock of Radio 1, a song that celebrated ennui was a rare and precious thing.

I remember the first time I heard the Clash sing ‘I’m So Bored with the USA’. I was simultaneously shocked and excited. Could one really so publicly proclaim disappointment with the home of rock’n'roll, the land of the free, the country that had given us Barry Manilow, Boz Scaggs and The Sound Of Bread? Was that acceptable? Was that legal?

I remember the first time I saw the painting Ennui by Walter Sickert. The bored couple cannot be bothered to look at each other. One stares into space and the other at the wall. The blank generation. Tedium in oils. And yet so utterly compelling.

Ennui, by Walter Sickert

It’s a curious thing. Apathy, boredom and tedium seem such dull, passive, inert qualities. Yet they can be exciting, inspiring, disruptive.

And I wonder whether this particular truth is lost on us and our world. We claim to be consumer experts. But are we not in denial of the fact that most consumers, most of the time are just not that into our brand or category? They just don’t care. We sustain a myth that the primary communication challenge is lack of attention, when really, more often than not, it’s lack of interest.

I started my career as a Market Researcher and occasionally I had to conduct focus groups to establish names and positioning concepts for industrial paints. I well recall the blank stares, the listless body language, the echoing silence. ‘Just call it paint’, one chap suggested.

I have often felt that a wholehearted recognition of the true level of consumer disinterest might conversely be the platform to build transformative engagement. Surely we can turn apathy, ennui and boredom into a positive force, a force for good. Would not an honest acceptance of the diminished role a brand or category plays in consumers’ lives encourage us to think harder about utility, experience and reward?

Whilst I am keen to embrace and celebrate the apathy at the heart of many markets, I’m conscious that within our own business failing to care can be corrosive. John Bartle in his closing address to BBH some years ago warned that ‘the opposite of creativity is cynicism.’ And I’m sure he was right.

As I have aged I’ve noticed, regrettably, an increasing inclination to dismiss the new and original as familiar and derivative. We veterans are cursed by the ability to see antecedents, to cite failed precedent. ‘We tried that and it didn’t work’. Far from the wisdom of age, we suffer the scepticism of age. It’s a cancer. And we must cut it out if we are to sustain our careers.

When I first joined the business I fell in love with the bright eyed enthusiasm that characterised ad people. They seemed to share a particular genetic strain, high on hope and positive thinking, resilient to any disappointment. Like Weebles they wobbled, but they wouldn’t fall down.

I once read about a West Coast experiment where half of the sample took a test fortified by free hamburgers and the other half tackled the same test without sustenance. It transpired that the burgered sample significantly outperformed the unburgered and the researchers concluded that happier people work more effectively.

Being an enthusiastic adman, I’ll not pause to address the obvious shortcomings of this experiment. But I do agree with the key finding. The longer I have worked in this business, the more I have come to believe that  enthusiasm is the critical factor that drives success.

We have a saying here that ‘positive people have bigger,better ideas’. I believe it’s true.

‘Is that all there is?’ You may well ask. Well,yes it is.

So it’s official, “Applications are the white goods of the 21st century” and sales of virtual goods have crossed the $2bn threshold in the US and iTunes has over a billion downloads.

But, as we all know, not everyone is enjoying the party – Thom Yorke has told young bands not to tie themselves to the sinking ship of music companies, Murdoch is trying out pay walls for his newspapers, and a US court has caused outcry by ruling that people who have bought discs of software don’t actually “own” them – they cannot sell them second hand on eBay.

I think the difference is a lot to do with packaging and branding.  Or, to be precise, virtual packaging and branding. People who are getting it right are getting paid more than those who aren’t.

What packaging and branding do is to create a sense of property and ownership.  And property and ownership are norms that tell us to value and pay for things.  Which are big problems in the virtual economy.

So my provocation is this: “Virtual packaging” is one way to create that sense of ownership and property. Just as the pioneers of branding created commercial value when they put trade-marks onto commodities in the tangible world – branded them as “theirs” – we have to reinvent packaging and branding for the virtual world.

The most obvious examples of this are Apps (packaged, single-purpose, branded on the button, tangible with a finger, made unique to you through use) and, at the other extreme, music (downloaded via anonymous browser, no presence other than a line of text in a database, totally generic).  And who is persuading people to pay more successfully?

I think that one day we will look back at the App v.2010 and laugh at its crudity.  One day we will have virtual packaging as iconic as this:

But let’s go back to the beginning.

My first wake up call was overhearing the oft-debated morality of downloading music.  Free file sharing?  Fine.  Normal.  That’s how you get music.  Why the question?  But walking out of a store with a cd without paying for it?  Shoplifting.  Stealing.  Wrong.  Equally obvious.

So what’s the difference between download and CD?  To the artist, none.  But to the user, one was packaged – physical, shiny, found in a shop – the other, just a piece of anonymous data accessed through a browser.

Look at Murdoch vs. the App.  No detailed data are available yet, but anecdotal reports say that iPad apps are performing disproportionately well vs. subscriptions accessed via browser.  And Ben Hughes, global commercial director and deputy CEO of the Financial Times, says the iPad is a “game-changer” for the newspaper industry.  It’s the app vs the generic packaging of the browser.

And then the success of iTunes or Amazon?  These are also “packaged” environments – clearly understood as “shops” where you pay for stuff.  Unlike Limewire or Piratebay.

Which leaves our last example – the action against someone selling software discs on eBay.  The Software and Information Industry Association (USA) is breaking our norms of ownership and property when it says “I own that physical thing you bought”.  We all feel that physical things belong to the person who buys them.

So the App is really just a virtual box.  iTunes or Amazon just a virtual shop (no shit).  Things that have cleverly used the norms of ownership and property in the virtual space, to make us more likely to pay for them.  Right now the virtual retailers seem to be way more sophisticated than the products they sell – but hopefully that will change.

So here are some starters on creating virtual packaging (some of these may seem uncannily obvious or familiar to the real world, but maybe that’s the point):

-       visual identity which differentiates the object
-       tangible, touchable
-       a differentiated experience (sounds, colours, even haptic “textures”)
-       adaptive to the owner – evolving into something distinctively personal to the owner
-       hard to copy and transfer; the sense of a physical transfer, not a lossless virtual one

Perhaps it’s time music came in Apps. As we said earlier: branded on the button, tangible, with a memory of what I did last time, with an experience unique to each app or band.  Perhaps it would even be like a gatefold of old, but on steroids.  Now that’s something I’d pay for.

We’d like to know what you think.  Who’s doing this well? Do you know anyone who works in the world of packaging who’d want to comment?

ZAG, a wholly owned subsidiary of BBH, is focused on brand invention.  We invent brands by exploiting brand lags – where consumer activity outpaces brand activity.  The trick of course is not only scouring technology, media, breaking trends, and cultural & consumer insights for what consumers want and need, but then uniquely satisfying those needs in a delightful and profitable way.

ZAG is fortunate because via BBH we have a unique network of collaborators who provide expertise in areas fertile for brand invention.  Now, ZAG NY is looking to extend that network beyond the BBH walls and tap an even larger bevy of creators, innovators, entrepreneurs, and anyone else with a brilliant idea.

This slideshare serves as an official call for ideas which will be formally evaluated this November to feed the 2011 pipeline.  While we’ll entertain ideas throughout the year, this marks one of three annual formal reviews that will garner the most focused attention from the ZAG team.  Pitches will be heard live or by phone/skype/virtual meeting starting week of November 8th.

To stay up to date on ZAG news and thought starters follow our Blog.

(Presentation is best viewed by clicking MENU and FULL SCREEN)

Following our series of Labs posts tackling the issue of “Wind Tunnel” marketing, the natural next step was to put the thinking out into the wild and see what we could learn… I recently ran a workshop at the SPIKES creative festival in Singapore, where solutions were brainstormed by the 100 + attendees.

I began with a run-through of the issue as we see it:

And the workshop attendees responded. Below are just some of the ideas that came out, we’d love to hear any you have to add.

Some of the most popular practical solutions to the key areas discussed (measured by that highly accurate methodology of level of cheers and clapping at the end of the session) were as follows :

The Overall Strategic Process

- Twin team it on major projects – one that the client sees that follows the set process, the other that just has a blank canvas and no set rules

- Follow your gut irrespective of set process – and get more skilled at post rationalisation

Consumer Research

- Scrap it ! – well, it was a predominantly creative audience

- Aim off – always ensure you also  talk to people intentionally outside of the core target that everyone else is talking to. There maybe unearthed gems there

- Ask ‘why’ more often than ‘what’ – reportage is useless, the reasons behind the actions are what people a looking for

Client Management

- Creatives more involved in client management – clearly there’s a lot of folk who want to come out of the back room

- Stop hiring ourselves again and again – how can we build difference into our hiring policies?

- Forced job swaps – agency people should work as clients for a while and vice – versa

- Earlier and deeper – agencies arrive too late too often. What can they do to swim upstream in the client briefing process?

Creative Inspiration

- Creative speed dating – too much time working opposite the same person. Time for some new inspiration from different people in the building. Quickly. And ones with different skill sets – eg tech.

- Stop looking at advertising – too much cannibalism. If our only influence is advertising…..then our output will be more…er…….advertising.

- Move the office to the beach – well, that’s the audience again for you  (when they get there they’ll probably discover management has been there for a while).

Again, these are just a starter for ten. We’d love to know your thoughts.

****

Also check out Jim Carroll’s Manifesto here.

This is the second of a two-parter by Jim. For the introduction to Wind Tunnel Marketing, check out his earlier post here or read both pieces in today’s Campaign magazine (available on campaignlive.co.uk next week). As always, we’d like to know what you think – please share any thoughts in the comments.

***

1. Seek Difference In Everything We Do

“Is it different?” has been relegated to the last question, the afterthought, the bonus ball.  But the last should be first.

We should tirelessly seek difference in the people we talk to, the questions we ask, the processes we follow. “Is it different?” should be the first question we ask when we look at work  – both in terms of content and form.

2. Kick Out the Norms

We’ve become addicted to backward looking averages. But norms create a magnetic pull towards the conventional. Norms produce normal.  The new frontier doesn’t have norms, but it does have endless supplies of data, and a rich diversity of tools with which to mine it.

We should create a data-inspired future, not a norm-constrained past.

3. Only Talk to Consumers who are Predisposed to Change

Where there is change, there are people that lead and people that follow.  In research we mostly talk to followers, because there are more of them and they’re cheaper. But ultimately they are less valuable.

If we’re seeking to change markets, shouldn’t we talk exclusively to change makers?

4. Embrace Insights From Anywhere

We’ve lived for too long under the tyranny of consumer insight. Of course consumer insight can be engaging, but it can also be familiar.

Surely insights can come from anywhere and we’re just as likely to find different insights from an analysis of the brand, the category, the competition, the channel, and, above all, the task.

5. Don’t Iron Out All the Creases

The Wind Tunnel abhors rough edges.  It likes to smooth over, iron out, edit away.  But people are drawn to the irregular and eccentric.

Let’s treasure, protect and nurture the happy accident, the illogical flaw.

6. Test in the Market, Not in the Test Tube

We have known for years that the optimal way to deal with complex communication needs in a fast moving, volatile market is to test in beta.  The gamers know it and the retailers knew it before them. Now all markets are fast moving and volatile.

Let’s learn from and with the market.

7. Practice Foresight

We’ve become too accustomed to considering the world as it is now.  We need more often to be considering the possible worlds of the future.

Let’s lift our eyes to the horizon.

8. Learn to Love Risk

The Wind Tunnel is risk averse.  We have come to consider risk as something to be feared, minimised, eradicated. But risk is integral to innovation and change.  It’s integral in fact to success.

We need to learn to feel comfortable with risk again, to calibrate it, to embrace it.

9. Value Expertise, Value Inexperience

Our risk aversion has led us to overvaluing category experience and undervaluing communication expertise. But an excess of experience predisposes to the tried and tested.  Relevant difference occurs at the intersection between expert judgement and naïve enthusiasm.

Let’s listen again to the experts, whilst opening the process up to the inexperienced.

10. Hurry Up

For many years Agencies have argued that they need more time to protect quality.  But too much time compromises quality because it creates room for caveats, committees and complacency. And we’re often late before we’ve arrived.

Speed can be liberating, exciting, invigorating. Come on. Let’s go……

Jim wrote a post here a few months back which we’re happy to say Campaign magazine (campaignlive.co.uk) asked him to expand on further for today’s issue. We’re sharing the article in full here now, so anyone outside the UK can see it simultaneously. This is one of two posts – we particularly like his solution to the issue: Raging Against the Machine: A Manifesto for Challenging Wind Tunnel Marketing, which you can read here.

***

Have you noticed that all the ads are looking the same?

Perfectly pleasant, mildly amusing, gently aspirational.

The insightful reflection of real life, the pivotal role of the product, the celebration of branded benefit.

Advertising seems so very reasonable now.  Categories that were once adorned with sublime creativity are now characterised by joyless mundanity.

Some of you will recall the day in 1983 when we woke up and noticed that the cars all looked the same.  There was a simple explanation.  They’d all been through the same wind tunnel.  We nodded assent at the evident improvement in fuel efficiency, but we could not escape a weary sigh of disappointment.  Modern life is rubbish…

Are we not subjecting our communications to something equivalent: Wind Tunnel Marketing?

Have we not so formularised the process that we’re eradicating some of the elements that made advertising so effective in the first place?  And has the Recession made us more dependent still on this Wind Tunnel Marketing?

The Origins of Wind Tunnel Marketing

I guess it all began with the best intentions:  businesses taking Marketing more seriously.

Some years ago, with increasing globalisation, there was a drive to identify best demonstrated practice, to codify it and coach it. We developed acronyms, characterful shapes and ring-bound folders. We attended conferences, bunjee jumped together and went home with wittily sloganned T-shirts.

With the pressure at Board Room to demonstrate ROI, we became obsessed with proof and measurement, with norms and traffic light systems. What gets measured gets done and what gets green gets made.

Now of course the development of a common Marketing language and a culture of effectiveness has to be a good thing.  But few noticed,  as the industry professionalized, that the Cavaliers were being marginalised.  A steady stream of mavericks made their way to the exit door, their hitherto precious gut instinct no longer deemed valuable.

Few noticed, as we learned to lean more heavily on our norms and pre-tests, that expertise and judgement were a devaluing currency.

And few noticed, at least at first, that the measures designed to raise the floor of communication output were at the same time lowering the ceiling.

The researchers had taken over the asylum.

When Relevance Trumped Difference

When I was young I was taught that behavioural change could be achieved through communication that was relevant, motivating and different. Somewhere along the way we’ve lost our faith in the power of difference.

There was an Age of Innocence.  An era when brand owners were driven by an obsession for product and functionality.  They had foresight, a passion for the positive impact a brand might have on consumers’ lives in the future.  And they were steeled by the competition to believe that difference was critical to commercial success.

In the face of imitation and commoditisation, it became harder to sustain rational product differentiation. Increasingly we sought difference through communicating “emotional selling propositions”. And over time we learned to excuse the absence of difference if we could at least achieve some kind of emotional resonance with consumers. In our headlong pursuit of relevance, we commissioned endless focus groups and we worshiped at the altar of consumer insight. Gradually we have arrived at an industry consensus around what makes effective communication. But it is a very narrow definition, one that emphasises consumer insight and relevance, and one that minimises or excludes  the once critical role of difference in the selling process.

Relevance has trumped difference. We now inhabit a world in which most brands in most categories approach most problems by asking the same people, the same questions, in the same way.

Is it any wonder that we keep coming up with the same answers?

Does Any of This Matter?

Perhaps it matters little that Wind Tunnel Marketing diminishes difference.  So what if it makes for a less creative, less interesting industry? So what if the ads all look the same? Surely none of this matters if the Wind Tunnel produces more effective communication.

My own conviction is that Wind Tunnel Marketing is turning communication into a numbers game, a game where scale of resource wins every time – whether that be media budget, distribution network or sales team. The cost  efficiencies of brand differentiation are notable largely by their absence. Surely in a fragile economic environment this represents an oversight.  And in an environment where increasingly we need to earn rather than buy attention, it’s lunacy.

Of course, out of a crisis comes opportunity.  And a number of Clients have already concluded that the rewards for bravery, subversion and calculated risk have never been greater.

Excepting these noble attempts to rage against the machine however, I’m concerned that at a macro level Wind Tunnel Marketing is gradually eroding the very foundations of  consumers’ affection for communication and brands. The pop combo Groove Armada memorably remarked “If everybody looked the same, we’d get tired of looking at each other”. I suspect we’re creating consumer fatigue through our homogenisation of our own product. Conventionally, when we see long term declining scores for brand trust and advertising enjoyment, we blame Own Label or the internet or Sky or the banks or BP or Naomi Klein.  But maybe we as a Marketing and Advertising community should look in the mirror.

***

To read Jim’s solutions to the issue, check out his next post: Raging Against the Machine: A Manifesto for Challenging Wind Tunnel Marketing.

Also check out Chaz Wigley’s great post looking at the same topic earlier this year here.