Don't Let Smart Be Dumb: my talk at 99U

Here's a video of my speech at the Denver 99U Local event a couple months ago. We already had a lot of creatives on stage that night. So I spent my time talking about big data and how it can help you craft a better brief.

Thanks to Studio C3 for the video production, Chip Kalback for the headshot, and Jen for bringing 99u to the Mile High City.

#99uLocal #Denver #IMMDataCreate

Just a few months ago I was sitting in the audience at 99u. In a week, I'll be speaking at it, as part of the first 99u Local worldwide event. I'm all sorts of nervous. And excited. And grateful to Jen for selecting my presentation, the writeup of which goes like so:

The Internet gives marketers access to an infinite amount of data. But used incorrectly, all those numbers lead to false conclusions, off-target creative, and the wrong sorts of consumer actions. In this talk, Matt will outline the common mistakes we make when we tap into Big Data. And he'll share a strategic process for getting from an unwieldy set of numbers to a tight brief that will set your creative team - and client - up for success.

It's a great talk. But at this moment, I'm just nervous. Fortunately I'll be sandwiched in between some pretty inspiring speakers. And I have another week to nail my schtick. Sign up here.

Why is it so hard to let emotion rule?

The formula for great advertising is simple. Emotion = results. Every book and speaker concur. Research proves it. Any proof point or fact you include in a print ad subverts its impact, inviting a rational debate that you are almost sure to lose. So why is it so hard to do in practice?

Every brief you get has three problems hidden inside it

The client has a problem. He has to show results. Now. The average tenure for a CMO is 23 months. If the campaign doesn't work, your client will have hell to pay.

If you consistently fail to solve this problem, your agency will be pitched under the nearest bus. You will be let go. A few of your friends will lose their jobs.

The agency has a problem. It needs to do work that makes it famous. That gets on the blogs. That wins awards. Because great work is an agency's main tool for bringing in new projects, new clients and new talent.

If you consistently fail to solve this problem, you will be fired before you drag your whole agency into a self-defeating downward spiral of boring work that attracts timid clients.

The consumer has a problem. He's numb. He looks for inspiration, joy and meaning. And finds Charlie Sheen and Jersey Shore. He is assaulted by so many ads and logos that they've become nothing but the paper that covers the walls of his world.

If you consistently fail to solve this problem, nothing much will happen to you. You will go on winning awards and your clients will shake your hand heartily. But at the very deepest level, you'll be a failure. You were handed the chance to talk to thousands, maybe millions of people. And you passed the opportunity by. In your soul, you'll know. You're part of the problem. You're making this world worse. Not better. You're putting up wallpaper instead of kicking open windows.

Every brief you get has three problems hidden inside it. Average ads solve one. Good ads solve two. Great ads solve three.

You don't need a flashlight if you're a lighthouse

Social media analysts like to buzz about how important it is to join the conversation. To search it for verbatims. To monitor and measure and react to it. All that is not unimportant. But I don't think it's the main thing, either.

Our job is not to control consumers' conversations, but to capture their imaginations. And the best way to do that isn't by spinning in the comments or linking on the forums. It is to create content worthy of being passed around.

I had a personal experience with viral content recently. On Aug. 24, 2010 I published this post named "Patton Must Have Worked in Advertising." It was subsequently picked up by The Denver Egotist. Then by The Orlando Egotist, The Des Moines Egotist, The San Francisco Egotist, The St. Louis Egotist and Design Taxi. It was named post of the month on Only Dead Fish. Quoted on waxmuseum. And linked on Twitter here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And then my eyes glazed over and I broke Google.

I'm not saying my little essay was the equal of Arcade Fire's devastating multiscreen music video. (Linked at PSFK, The Denver Egotist and Contagious Magazine. Go watch it now.) I'm just sharing it because it is a personal story. And the lesson I have learned is this. "Join the conversation if you must. Create it if you can."

To the shores of Tripoli

My Aug. 24 post "Patton Must Have Worked in Advertising" was picked up by The Denver Egotist, where it sparked a good amount of conversation. From there, it went on to The Orlando Egotist, The Des Moines Egotist, The San Francisco Egotist and The St. Louis Egotist. Then it was published in Design Taxi, along with some photography from Christopher Clor.

UPDATE: I was just informed that someone named Jeff nominated "Patton Must Have Worked in Advertising" for post of the month at Only Dead Fish. If you're so inclined, please go vote for it now.

UPDATE: "Patton Must Have Worked in Advertising" wins. What do you know?

[Ed. note - Title reference, just in case.]

Patton must have worked in advertising

General George S. Patton must have worked in advertising, because he said, “Good tactics can save even the worst strategy. Bad tactics will destroy even the best strategy.” And it's true. People never see your strategy. They see an ad. Or experience a website. Or hear a radio spot. And if it's clever or exciting or emotional, they'll connect with it. Maybe Patton was having lattes with Mike Lescarbeau and Luke Sullivan and overheard them say that big ideas are like nuclear bombs, in that neither has to land precisely on target to work.

Joseph Stalin must have worked in advertising, because he said, "Quantity has a quality all of its own." And it's true. If try to come up with one big idea, it'll probably take you two weeks to do it. And it'll be terrible. But if you dare yourself to have 50 ideas, they effortlessly pour from your brain onto paper and at least a couple are always, always brilliant.

Robert Kaplan must have worked in advertising, because he wrote that the battlefield is more intellectually stimulating than the Potomac, because "ideas can only be tested through application." And it's true. There are people working in the advertising industry who position themselves as "strategic thinkers" purely because they don't have any actual skills. Fuck 'em and their ability to work phrases like "30,000 foot view" into everyday conversations. Nobody lives at 30,000 feet. Spend all your time up there and the lack of oxygen will fry your brain. If an insight doesn't lead to a great execution, get a new insight.

Napoleon Bonaparte must have worked in advertising, because he said, "The most important qualification of a soldier is fortitude under fatigue and privation." And it's true. Lots of people have good ideas. Unfortunately, there are a lot of ways for those ideas to die. A great creative knows that coming up with an idea is only the first step. Then you have to sell it and watch it die and be willing to go back to the well over and over again until you find an idea that lives. And then you have to tirelessly pursue your idea through revisions and updates and productions and post-productions. Napoleon must have traded text messages with Paul Arden just after he wrote, "Energy is 99% of the job. If you haven't got it, be nice."

Or maybe none of them worked in advertising. Maybe advertising just feels a lot like war.

Students inspire, amaze and scare the hell out of me

For more than a month, I have had Autumn Wallace's resume on my desk. She handed it to me at the NDAC's student job fair in March and I got the chance to talk with her briefly. Our conversation began like this:

Her: I want to use human-centered design to address the flaws in complex systems that have been overlooked by the modern world.

Me: Huh?

She took me through her book. It was unlike any book I've ever seen. And I've seen a kazillion. Autumn redesigned an ambulance ride from the patient's point of view. She redesigned shopping technology from a blind person's point of view. She redesigned a fruit brand from a community's point of view. By the end of our talk, two facts were blindingly obviously to me:

1. Autumn was doing what agencies in America ought to be doing. She was finding places where brands and consumers intersect and making them beautiful and efficient.

2. It would be a gamble to hire Autumn based on her book, because after looking at it I wasn't sure she was passionate about doing the tasks that junior designers are expected to do - logos, packaging, websites, and, frequently, shelf talkers and counter cards.

My usual gripe about junior designers and art directors is that their books lack ideas and inspiration. But Autumn's book had the opposite situation. (I can't bring myself to call it a problem.) It was nothing but vision. So at some point in the conversation, I said something like this:

Me: I don't want to kill the dream here. You are doing something wonderful at a high level. But at most agencies, your first assignment will probably be something like, "Design a website." If you're lucky. It might be, "Design a mirror cling." Are you sure you're ready for that, both skill-wise and emotionally?

She assured me she was raring to get going in the real world. And if I had an open job, I would like to think I'd have the courage to hire her. But I keep looking at her resume and feeling confused. And then inspired. And then sad. And then just sort of confused again.

Advice to Next Creatives

[Ed. - I wrote this post several months ago, halfway through the first semester of Next. After I was finished with the post, I saw the brief for the third project. It specifically asked for print and poster executions, which rendered most of what I'd written irrelevant. Blog post, meet drafts file. Since we're about to begin another semester, I decided to dig up my post and publish it today. Enjoy.]

We're through two cycles of Next. I've showed up at both presentations, although both times I've been late and angry when I walked through the door. Gregg and Norm are two of Denver's best, most insightful, most ethical creative directors. And I should probably keep my mouth shut and let them do the critiquing. But, meh.

At your presentations, I've seen kazillions of good ideas. New business ideas. Marketing ideas. Technology ideas. What I haven't seen much of is good advertising.

Understand that I mean advertising in the broadest possible sense. I'm not boring enough to demand you all come to your presentations armed with print campaigns. But street teams, websites, guerrilla demonstrations, branded content, posters, short films, stickers. Anything.

As junior creatives, your first brief is unlikely to read, "Come up with some cool new technologies our client could develop." If you are lucky, it'll read, "Our client has decided to launch Initiative A. How do we publicize it to Target B?" (More likely, it'll read, "Please write a mirror cling that families with the existing brand campaign.")

Maybe you want jobs on the client side, in the marketing department. Or maybe you want to be planners. But assuming you want to be creatives, you need to anchor every campaign with at least one tangible piece of communication. Something that shows you can concept, write and design. (In addition to coming up with iPhone apps.)

For instance, Fallon London's Tate Modern work hinged on a marketing idea. But that didn't stop the agency from creating posters like the one that illustrates this post, which I hijacked from Creative Review.

To get a job, you're going to need more than ideas for new marketing initiatives. You're going to need communication skills. You're also going to need books that can ride by themselves, without explanation.

I would love to see some work that doesn't require a long commentary. And that's my unasked-for advice. Create a thing, and make that thing awesome. So awesome you can tack it to the wall. And walk away.

"The most effective advertisements of all are those with little or no rational content..."

Wrap your head around this, via BBH Labs:

"The most effective advertisements of all are those with little or no rational content..." This is probably contentious, but it suggests that if you attempt to employ any rational messaging in brand building communication, you might well be shooting your brand in the foot..." [T]his piece of research, if we hold it to be valid and that, alongside Feldwick's paper, requires those who still hold on to things like Reasons to Believe and USPs to have a good hard think.

Faris Yakob's post pulls from a couple studies, and I only grabbed some of the most startling quotes. You should read it for yourself, because it makes sense. If you offer a rational message in an ad, you've invited a debate. And as a brand with a vested interest in the outcome of that debate, everything you say will be suspect. Why would you waste your money like that?

Furthermore, Alan Wolk writes that the "transition of the consumer decision cycle from Ad -> Purchase into Ad -> Google -> Purchase" has eliminated the need for RTBs and USPs, but increased the need for positioning and branding.

This is where advertising can make a real difference, by creating a memorable brand image. It’s going to have to be a broader swath than what we’re used to carving out: the cool one, the safe one, the fun one—but we need to take into account how little consumers care to hear from advertisers about me-too specifics and copy points they can research and learn about themselves.

Advertising isn't dying. It's getting better. You can't rely on a bulleted list of advantages to build your brand. You'll need to be funnier, cooler, smarter, more relevant and more emotional than ever before. Fewer features and benefits. More content, utility and image. It's going to be so, so fun to be a part of it.

Staying receptive to wow

In the last few days, I have read some great articles. Some, like "The Value of Beauty" and "How Local Businesses Can Benefit from Mobile Social Networks" opened my eyes to ideas I can pursue for my clients. Some, like "The Answer Factory" and "Does the Vaccine Matter" blew me away with the audacity of their concept. (Did you know that Demand Media publishes 4,000 articles and videos online every single day? Or that the healthy-user effect accounts for 100% of the flu vaccine's alleged ability to prevent death?)

When I look at my delicious page, I notice that I bookmark in spurts. Nothing for a week or two. Then five or six things in the course of a day. I can imagine two explanations.

1. Streaks are statistically inevitable.

2. Some days, I'm more open to ideas.

Either is viable. But let's assume the second hypothesis for a moment. What could I do to make sure I remain more receptive to big ideas a higher percentage of the time? I think the answer is found in a book called The Inner Game of Tennis:

In short, "getting it together" requires slowing the mind. Quieting the mind means less thinking, calculating, judging, worrying, fearing, hoping, trying, regretting, controlling, jittering or distracting. The mind is still when it is totally here and now in perfect oneness with the action and the actor. It is the purpose of the Inner Game to to increase the frequency and duration of these moments, quieting the mind by degrees and realizing thereby a continual expansion of our capacity to learn and perform.

I've never played tennis. But reading The Inner Game of Tennis changed the way I approach sports and work. Half of the game is staying out of your own way.

[Ed. - Crossposted at Ingwalson and Karsh Connect.]

Create ads that are brave and wonderful

Here are two print campaigns I love. Canadian Club Whiskey from Energy BBDO. And Havaianas ads like this one from AlmapBBDO. On the surface they couldn't be more different. The former campaign is insightful and cool. While the latter is all unmetered joy. But they share one important trait. Courage. I am not sure how Energy BBDO convinced Canadian Club that the key to reaching a new generation was to create an homage to an old one. And I'm not sure how AlmapBBDO sold Havaianas on the idea that cynicism and edge are inferior to happiness and beauty. But they did. Our world, and our industry, is better for it.

Experiences are your creative equity

Is creativity anything more than taking a given and matching it with something unexpected? Watch this:



It's another example of a Z that can't easily be traced back to a known A. Of thinking that inspires joy, not just because of the content, but because of its unpredictability. I love it. And I was thinking about it when I read Noah Brier's comments on some interesting findings:

"What do artists, poets, and novelists have in common?" Ramachandran asked me. "The propensity to link seemingly unrelated things."

Michael Gruen writes this:

This is also not to say humans are incapable of complex thought, quantum leaps, or extraordinary thinking - I’m only suggesting that those leaps and complexities are based on systems that we know or that we happened upon: our imaginations are limited to our experiences and the patterns we innately understand on circumstance of being human.

Which means that creativity depends - almost to the exclusion of all else - on finding a lot of cool, random, beautiful stuff to put in your brain, so that when someone hands you a problem, you have a deep well to draw from. You take their A and add a Z that no one but you could've possibly seen coming.

The secret to being inspired is to have pancakes. A lot.

The daily news seems oppressively crappy. And my life hasn't been any better. So at least once a week, I've been eating breakfast (or the occasional lunch) with someone who gets me excited to head into the office. Here's a public thank you to people like Peter, Gregg, Geoff, Lauren, Jaxon, Steve and Greg. Not to mention a few college students who were naive enough to think I was doing them a favor when we met, when in fact they were the ones inspiring me. Thank you all. If anybody else has something awesome or interesting - and hopefully both - to say to me over eggs and coffee, write me an email.

Is experience a good thing?

The Egotist is running a series of posts from jobseekers. In one, a designer named Kammerer included his 21 years of experience without citing any brands he'd worked on or awards he'd won. I posted a comment that read, in part:

Is citing how many years of experience you have really a plus? At a certain point, people look at your resume and say, “If you have that many years of experience, you should have won a certain number of awards, made creative director, worked at some great shops, and so on.” Your experience starts to work against you.

For instance, Anomaly ECD and 2007 Denver 50 judge Mike Byrne starts his bio this way:

Mike Byrne is a former Creative Director at Wieden+Kennedy Portland, where he served as the co-creative chief for the agency's cornerstone Nike account from 2000 - 2006. During his tenure, W+K Portland amassed more awards than any other agency in the United States including two 'Agency of the Year' honors.

I'm not trying to call anyone out, especially not the designer in question. I'm just wondering how many years of experience you can have before people start to raise their eyebrows and wonder why you haven't been promoted.

Recall not always the best measure of advertising effectiveness

Consider the "he went to Jared" campaign. Holy crap do I hate these advertisements. They tell us we’re scum if we don’t spend our hard-earned dough in that chain. And they work to reinforce every sexist patriarchial stereotype. They're the most annoying, poorly conceived commercials I’ve seen. Obviously they are trying to create one of those campaigns where, by pretending something and repeating it often enough, it eventually becomes true. Each ad is an egregiously terrible, stinking mess of advertising bullshit. Bullshit that someone actually wrote, storyboarded, directed, shot, edited, and most horrifically - approved. If I come face to face with the person who created that ad campaign, it won't be pretty. And if I find out you're the guy who actually went to Jared, I'm straight up punching you in the neck. For the love of all that's holy in the universe, come up with another ad campaign for your fucking store.

Marketing takes intelligence. Advertising takes guts.

These are words I have written before:

[Blogging] immortalizes everyday language, holding it to an impossibly lofty standard.

And I am thinking about those words now after reading a post by Noah Brier named "When Too Much Listening Is A Bad Thing."

It's precisely those emotional comments that [the Microsoft/Jerry Seinfeld ad campaign] should have been aimed for and seemed to have succeeded at. So why did they drop it? Well, my theory is that it's because a bunch of people with blogs and such started talking about how they didn't like/didn't get the ads. Lots of people were saying that Microsoft needed to respond and listen to what the consumer was saying, but I call bullshit. In a quote for PRWeek I explained, "Other than the Super Bowl, how often do people talk about ads? Microsoft should let this play out. I think there are times to listen to everyone and there are times not to listen to everyone... The people talking about this may not be the audience for this ad. They may not be talking to early adopters." And I stand by that.

In the end I guess my point is that there are times to listen and act upon what you've heard and times to listen and respectfully ignore the feedback.

Brier is right. More than once I've prepared a marketing director for the idea that an ad (this radio spot, for example) might offend someone. But these days, a client might get more than a cranky phone call. He or she might get an angry blog post that an antsy junior marketing executive sends to an unpredictable CEO who forwards it to the whole senior management team, which immediately convenes a committee to seriously consider the matter. The next day the agency phone rings, a junior account coordinator picks up the call, and an effective, wonderful ad dies.

In Hey Whipple, Squeeze This Luke Sullivan wrote that we marketers get so tied up measuring public opinion, we forget that we have the power to shape it. The Internet appears to give us the ability to measure opinion more accurately than ever before. But it gives disproportionate weight and unprecedented permanence to isolated, impulsive rantings.

For the most part, I've been blessed with courageous, focused clients. But the weight of the written word makes even stout hearts wobbly. Sometimes the best course is to just sack up and plow on.

I'm a guest on Scott Goodson's lunchtime chat

A week or so ago Scott Goodson, the founder and CEO of StrawberryFrog, asked me to do one of his lunchtime chats. I asked him to repeat the question. Goodson's guests are almost always global advertising powerhouses and I wasn't sure if I really fit in. But he confirmed that he wanted the interview, so I went for it. How many times do you get a chance like that?

The intro identifies me as the "founder of the Colorado 50," which isn't quite the whole story. Many people from the New Denver Ad Club worked on the show, like Gregg, Bob and Brian. As I wrote in the chat, "I helped develop a new award show named The Denver 50."

Obviously I talked about Karsh\Hagan, and I mentioned the Cactus OwnYourC campaign, which is a cool example of the work being done in Denver.

You can read the whole interview on scottgoodson.typepad.com.

UPDATE: The interview has been cross-posted at Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog.

UPDATE: Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog has been nominated for a Webby. Vote for it.

UPDATE: The Denver Egotist also discusses the interview.

Disruption as a car crash

The other day, I was the only witness to a car crash. Car A veered this way, Car B spun that way. I pulled over and tried to help. The cops got there and asked me what happened.

I drew a blank.

Everything after the crash, I remember with perfect clarity. But I couldn't tell you what car was where at the actual moment of contact.

I'm sure the cops thought I was a jackass. But it wasn't that I wasn't paying attention. I was. My eyes were scanning from the road to my mirrors to my gauges. My ears were open for a knock in my engine or a siren behind me. It wasn't until something disrupted this pattern that I moved my focus from the general to the specific.

Karsh\Hagan is in the TBWA\ network, which means we spend a lot of time talking about "disruption." People typically use language like this:

Disruption is a tool for change and an agent of growth: a working methodology and a life view philosophy.

The word is difficult, uncomfortable but "Disruption" is not destructive. It is creation. Disruption is a means of creating something dynamic to replace something that has become static.

OK. But since my non-witnessing, I've been thinking of disruptive ideas as crashes for the mind. It doesn't matter how good or bad an idea is if it doesn't also disrupt everyday input patterns enough to compel focus.

There are a million ways to accomplish this trick. In some places, great design or an engaging headline may be enough. In others, a new technology or an improved utility might be necessary.

But disruption comes first. Without it, you've got nothing.

Cross-posted on the agency blog.

Youth rules in advertising

A few days ago, I had to sit in front of a group of Johnson & Wales students and say something about what it's like to be a creative. For an hour, it was process this and flexibility that. Make sure to choose the right director or you're completely screwed.

Whatever.

If I could have that hour back, I'd say this:

You haven't the slightest idea how powerful you are. The ad game worships youth. You bring energy and passion. You can afford to make less and work more. You're creating the very trends that agencies are scrambling to understand and exploit.

Armano quoted Campbell saying, "ad agencies are fundamentally broken and ripe for innovation." And you already have all the tools you need to make that innovation happen. Now go hang a shingle outside the nearest shack and use your advantages, instead of sitting in a room listening to me blah about how to cast radio.