A Time For True Radicals
Gareth Kay Chief Strategy Officer, Associate Partner Goodby, 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

1 Let’s think about what
we can create, not just what our muscle memory tells us to make

“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

2 Stop thinking our work
exists in a vacuum

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

3 No more
narcissism

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

4 Get out of the
messaging business

Ideas that do

Stop communicating a product and
start making communication products

5 Break the tyranny of
big

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?

Google Books Blogspot Youtube Google
Google Google Scholar 411 Search Google Docs Organize the world’s information Google and make it Shopping universally accessible and Google useful. labs Chrome Browser Google Maps Google.org Google sketch Fossil fuel Challenge 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

6
Let’s start
learning again

‘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