Are you uncomfortable enough?

I read this wonderful article yesterday on the idea behind the designs of India’s iconic monuments. The article starts off with Chandigarh, a beautiful city designed by Le Corbusier.

When the city of Chandigarh and its legislative assembly buildings were built, the architecture cast in concrete was very different from the Parliament and other legislative houses built before in India. It looked neither like a palace nor a temple, the two traditional archetypes that served as a model to represent power or ‘culture'. Chandigarh's lexicon of forms was new. Not everyone liked it.

Dismissing the scepticism, Nehru, who ardently supported it, said, “Some like it, and some dislike it… You may squirm at the impact, but it has made you think.”

Nehru, being the Prime Minister, fortunately had the final say and it resulted in one of the finest cities of the world being created. It is another thing that in the ensuing decades we have done our damndest best to reduce it to the chaotic depths of other Indian cities.

More importantly, great ideas will always generate extreme views (and buzz). It will make a lot of people uncomfortable.  Therefore, one’s got to be ballsy enough to take a decision in its favor.

(Image courtesy:Ben+_+)

Knowing where your client is coming from

Why is marketing increasingly resembling project management? Why are marketers more interested in ticking-off the boxes in their ‘to-do-list’ rather than exploring new ideas?

The above diagram gives the answer to these questions plaguing the minds of many agency folks and surprisingly marketers too. It clearly explains the complexity or challenges facing today’s marketers. Add softer issues like office politics and personal ambition to this and you get one insecure human being.

Not being in a position to handle this ‘kaleidoscope, marketers seek answers from their agencies. Agencies on their part do not want to admit their inability to provide solutions beyond their area of expertise. The outcome is almost always disastrous. This prompts them to lean heavily on consultants and researchers who almost always lead them up the garden path like this case of a great brand like Bud Light.

Alas, there are very few marketers (experts say less than 3%) who are adept at managing this kaleidoscope. The rest, sadly, are glorified project managers busy making life hell for others. Little wonder that the blog ‘Clients from hell’ draws a heavy traffic and a good laugh :-)

(Image courtesy: Bud Caddell)

Ad Agencies! Bring back fun, audacity and dreams to the business

Below are two awesome speeches from the Ad Agency Association of America (4A’s) Conference on transforming the ad business. The speeches are raw, short and punchy.

Sean Boyle, Planner JWT NY (Courtesy and via @gapingvoid)

Boy, he does not mince words. More importantly, he not only rants but also gives valuable suggestions. He brutally dismisses all things shallow that is pulling the industry down and wants the fun back in business. 

Rishad Tobaccowala (courtesy Tim Malbon) 

This is an inspiring speech doing the rounds of blogosphere. Taking a leaf out of Silicon Valley companies, he says that only talent matters and that the ad business needs now is ‘builders’. He signs off beautifully by saying, “You came in with dreams, and now you stand with spreadsheets. Let’s get back to the audacity and the dreams, and the spreadsheets will fill up beautifully.”

Putting your money where your mouth is

The woman was silent for some time. Then she again took his hands and studied them carefully.
 

“I’m not going to charge you anything now,” she said. “But I want one-tenth of the treasure, if you find it.”

The boy laughed – out of happiness. He was going to be able to save the little money he had because of a dream about hidden treasure!

“Well, interpret the dream,” he said.

“First, swear to me. Swear that you will give me one-tenth of your treasure in exchange for what I am going to tell you.”

The shepherd swore that he would.

“It’s a dream in the language of the world,” she said. “I can interpret it, but the interpretation is very difficult. That’s why I feel that I deserve a part of what you find.”

This is a dialogue from Paulo Coelho’s amazing book ‘The Alchemist’.

The above dialogue can also be allegorical with the shepherd boy representative of a client and the fortune-teller, an agency. Bingo, you get an interesting remuneration model for the agency.

Like the fortune-teller, agencies actions impact the future. These actions are ideas for which agencies expect clients to cough up the dough. And great ideas are not easy to sell. They defy norms and as far as the client is concerned, fraught with uncertainty. Under such circumstances, clients normally tend to play it safe leading to disappointing results and frustration within the agency team.

What if the agency, like the fortune-teller, decides to work for free with a clear understanding that their idea sees the light of day and that they get a share of future profits? This is about putting their money where their mouth is. This display of confidence on the idea can be infectious and hopefully sway the client in favour of the idea.

I am not saying anything new. In an earlier post I had mentioned the famous case of Anomaly and Lauren Luke. In India, my good friend Ramesh has experienced success with a similar approach. It is a workable model for the growing number of independent creative shops across the world.  They have nothing to lose and everything to gain - from releasing ‘cutting edge’ work to hopefully making inroads into large agencies businesses.

Large agencies will not be able to do this. They are under the strangle-hold of the bean counters and have a lot to lose. In any case they have already lost something precious .Their guts.

(Image courtesy:kayveeinc)

Tesla

Nikola Tesla, famous inventor and genius, won the ‘War of currents’ against Edison by backing Alternating Current (AC). We owe to him for electrifying our homes, towns and our lives.

I was reminded of this lesson from my high school Physics when I read this piece in WSJ on how Tesla was increasingly becoming popular amongst geeks and teenagers. The author goes on to say that Tesla is ‘cool’ while Edison is not. Edison according to the author stands for the ‘boringly rich’ and monopolistic corporate power.  Tesla was the one who dared and eventually lost. In fact, he died in relative obscurity and penury.

Had he been alive now, this ‘romantic failure figure’ will be surprised to see his name adorning myriad products ranging from the high-performance electric cars as in the picture below to video games and electronic chips. It is an irony of sorts that in his lifetime he did not get credit for a lot of his work. For example, radio transmission that is credited to Marconi.

The story of Tesla’s life (and work) has enough fuel to turbo-charge our imagination. There is a sense of mystery surrounding his work that always raises the question ‘what if’. Movies like ‘The Prestige’ have only added to this aura of intrigue.

Tesla’s time has come. He is one of the original mavericks of the technology world. There is no doubt in my mind that his popularity will grow exponentially during our times and beyond. Little wonder that the scholar, the curious and the outliers are all clamouring to own Tesla, all in their own way.

Edison is great. Tesla is a cult.                                                                                                                

(Image courtesy: Portrait & Car)

Interesting mutations of the digital world

We are all experiencing and enjoying two interesting mutations or developments of the digital world. I decided to share my views on the two in the notes below.

Rise of the micro-curator

Brainpicker, Kottke and many like them are awesome in the range of interesting content they gather and share. They are master curators and little wonder that they have a large number of followers like me.

With the arrival of Posterous and Tumblr, blogging has become easy and curating infinitely easier. This has resulted in the rise of the micro-curator. One can argue that micro-curators were always there. True. It is just that their growth has been fuelled with the entry of Posterous and Tumblr.

Using these tools, regular bloggers have created Lifestream for satiating their appetites to stock and share items of interest. I must admit I too have created one and I am thoroughly enjoying the process. More importantly, it has enabled new entrants in the blogging world to curate based on amazing themes, like this one.

Micro-curators enable information to reach the extremities of the digital world. I liken them to evangelists who spread ‘the message’ to remote corners of the globe. Micro-curators also simplify the presentation of information (signals vs. noise) and provide readers with meaningful information in manageable doses. And as with the example above, many of them cater to special interests by taking on a specific theme. The growing success of Posterous and Tumblr is testimony to this fact. I would urge readers to explore these tools and have fun.

The world is getting local

The digital world has expanded our horizons with tons of information from around the world available at the click of a mouse. It is often used as an example to describe us as ‘global citizens’. That may be so. But increasingly, the same digital world is working strongly in the other direction. It has strengthened all things local. I am talking about conversations I see happening in Facebook and Twitter. I see the actions and connections that these conversations are bringing about. Be it jobs, tweetups, events or replicating actions that have been successful elsewhere. Information may be global in nature, but actions are very definitely local. 

So, what do you think?

(Image courtesy:aldoaldoz)

The Agency is a business

I read this provocative post about the reasons for the decline and fall of the newspaper business in the US. The comments below made by two prominent personalities will strike a chord with anyone who is from the agency business.

Sean Paul Kelley says, “The primary culprit is the same as it is all over the country, in every industry and in government: equity extraction.

Let me explain, in short: when executives expect unrealistic profits of 20% and higher per annum on businesses, something has got to give. It's an unnatural and unsustainable growth rate. For the first ten or so years of a small to medium size company's life? Sure. But when you are 3M, or GE? Unrealistic and ultimately impossible.

That is what has happened to the news industry in America. The excessive obsession with unnaturally high profits has led to a vicious circle of cutting budgets, providing less services, which is then followed by even more drastic cuts.”

Michael Moore puts it across bluntly, “It’s their own greed, their own stupidity,”

Isn’t this true of the agency business, especially in the developed markets?

The unfortunate outcome of all this was that agency operations in booming markets like India were not spared. They were choked to ‘make up’ for the numbers lost in the developed markets. Pay cuts, hiring freeze and mad scramble for all kinds of business were symptoms of this malaise. Managers in the Indian operations of international agency networks were stressed (and stretched) beyond limits, with some of the offices were almost on the verge of a flameout. Now, this is a myopic way to operate.

India, China and other developing countries will continue to be a traditional media market for a long time to come. Read this case of Baidu vs Google if you want to know what I mean. To large corporations that run agency networks, these markets must be to them what California must have been to prospectors during the Gold Rush. However, instead of stripping it bare, they can reap far greater rewards (and bonuses) by nurturing it. Hire more people, train them well and pay good salaries. This is not wishful thinking but an inevitability that agencies will have to follow if they want to survive.

Newspapers in the US might die. Agencies will not, more so in countries like India. The Agency is a business, a thriving one at that. This is because the growth story in markets like India has just begun.  Hey, you never know. In the process of making tons of money, they might even produce some decent work!

(Image courtesy)