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Byronic Creativity, Dances with Data & the primacy of customer-centricity.

24 Wednesday Jun 2015

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big data, Byron, Client Budgets, Communications, Creative Industries, creative purity, data sets, dead Poet's Society, Direct Report P&L Businesses, Direct Response, Dr J Evans Pritchard, Higher Consciousness, Longue Carabine, Meerkats, old school advertising, Predictive Algorithms, Qualitative Insight, Quantitative Assertion, Risk Mitigation & Carry, ROI, Sales Promotion, Shamen, Sioux Nation, Social Networks & Platforms, The Internet Of Things, Warriors

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There seems to be a reoccurring and escalating schizoid condition warping the minds of Communications agencies and clients across the capital.

And it seems to be rooted in a clash that can be particularly philosophical, practical or financial in nature (or a compound of all three) at any given time.

The conflict centres on who leads the conversation in marketing and communications land – and in turn who gets to command the greatest fees for the precious lead outputs and services and the commercial kudos attached.

Should marketing and marcomms be focused on the burgeoning socially-networked and data-rich science of customer centricity?

Or should it be fuelled by a powerful fusion of intimate qualitative insight and the white heat of creative integrity?

The creative industries have long railed against the intrusion of anyone with a slide rule and a bar chart as killers of pure creativity.

Sales Promotion & its BOGOF culture. Direct response and its channel as an idea delusions. And now the Little Big Horn of Data. As far as the average big thinking creative guru and the agency culture that serves them is concerned, all of them should take their place further down the strategic Value Chain and wait to be summoned.

This view is predicated on a belief that pure creativity is some sort of higher and immutable power unanswerable to any kind of measure and the bean counting serfs and operational barrow boys who champion them.

The creative purist quietly dismisses these metric minded jobsworths in much the same way that Dr J Evans Pritchard’s belief that one can assess the greatness of a poem by compounding horizontal and vertical measures was dismissed as ‘excrement’ by Robin William’s ‘Captain’ in the film, Dead Poets Society.

At the very centre of this belief sits the Byronic myth. That of the turbulent volatile creative tempest, stumbling through boudoir bar and ballroom in search of the ‘moment’ – the thought and the prize. The one moment of brilliance that subjugates all others.

All very good. Highly commendable. And very amusing to watch (and partake in). And respectfully, regardless of the nay sayers, this model has created some of the finest commercial creative talents of the last 40 years.

The idea of a data rich, highly measurable influencer and advocate matrix of highly connected modern living – what I like to call Data-Day living – just doesn’t cut it in the world of old school creative purity and integrity seeking to rub the raw nerve of our human condition. Fire us up, provoke us, seduce us, invoke and inspire us to buy some thing or other. A world led, coded and read by people who think that ‘there is no such thing as emotion, just sentimental data’ is to most people an abomination and none more so than the average old school creative.

I just can’t picture the towering genii of Paul Arden and Dave Trott sitting in a room thumbing their graphite pencil and chewed biro while seeking illumination in the junction points between two or more sets of data tracking the correlations between broadband renewal trends in Huddersfield and the escalating retail shopping patterns of the average 35 year old on a wet Tuesday in Tyne Tees.

Real people don’t live in a powerpoint deck or a data slide!

They live through the wholly unreasonable filter or desire and emotion.

Visceral. Vital.

Agreed.

And there seems to be something so much more powerful and connective in getting out there, pulling your sleeves up and rummaging around in the ordure of the human condition to pull out a plum.

Qualitative; attractive and highly subjective and interpretive. Finding out what people care about and feel in varying contexts of need want and desire under particular influences creates a compelling and highly intimate and personable narrative.

Emotion rules this roost.

More importantly for the creative purist, in those interwoven threads of everyday humanity brilliant creative inspiration lies: the human grist to their creative mill.

The small problem comes with the advent of the Data Insurgents and their new and far more accountable model of communications propped up by some very, very disruptive creative communities out there.

On line living, mobile technology and increasingly The Internet of Things is creating a cosmic fizz of data – live: in flow, vibrant, atomic and measurable.

A sort of a ‘socio-geo-eco-tempo-political’ Matrix capable of offering up all sorts of goodies to the miners and the excavators of the data that shape it.

Suddenly amongst this mass of code and data, the algorithms and the predictive software; and in the face of the relentless austerities and under the hammer of ROI a new sensibility rises and its not slowing anytime yet.

Quantitative. Seductive. Particular. Objective and interrogative. Finding out what people actually do and react to, in multiple modes and states of action in varying contexts over varying timeframes and multiple platforms creates a financially measurable and strategically accountable narrative that is hard to ignore.

Reason rules this roost.

So the question this new sensibility raises in the face of the old and highly revered world of pure creativity is a contentious (and financially onerous) one:

Who has primacy in regards to the Brand relationship and the client budget?

The Byronic Shamen with their incendiary creative vision?

Or the Data Warriors with their fluid numerate pointillism?

To be fair, in regards to selling in the room, it’s a hell of a lot easier to hold your hand out and ask for quite a few million Great British Pounds when you’re asking for it on the data-written and statistical evidence of delivering a projected ROI of ‘bloody hell:1’.

It’s a lot harder to justify the Ask when you’re operating on a purely qualitative ‘we’re so brilliant’ ‘done it before so we can do it again’ basis which the purveyors of pure creativity tend to rely upon all too often.

By its very nature Creativity is volatile and imperfect – lacking in the more measured artisan skills of a repetitive ability to turn out exquisite and identical things’ from a fixed or varied set of materials with a clear set of costs attached to sourcing, resourcing and processing them.

Let’s be fair here, hold up our hand and admit that the ads that followed Cadbury Gorilla and Sony Balls did not do a very good job of convincing anyone other than the agency, creative, planner and client in question that you can cookie cut incendiary creative brilliance; and equally charge the same stellar rates for very unlike outputs other than the logo on the end frame.

The first pieces? Jaw dropping, audacious, mould breaking and sublime. Problem is they made the bits that followed feel like an underwhelming Christmas special from a much loved sitcom. A little bit Almost.

Pure Creativity in the commercial cut throat world of Marcomms also seems to have lost the punchy audacious attitude to shouldering and absorbing Risk as part of the process of generating moments of creative brilliance.

Many leading exponents of creativity – artists, musicians, comedians – carry the burden of risk completely.

They commit to pour out masses of material; a lot of it utter shite to be frank, before they stumble upon or reveal the creative human diamonds they then present to the world. But that is part of the joy of it.

Risk is part of the process and they are happy to carry the risk – of failure, indifference, dismissal, ridicule and ultimately ‘just not cutting it’ – and the absence of earnings or reward until brilliance is struck.

This is the cost of generating pure creativity – massive risk. But it is personally shouldered.

Whereas creative agencies seem to be highly risk averse. They wish the risk to be carried elsewhere. They want the applause, accolades and the fame of course. Oh and Saatchi (Charles Not Maurice) scale rewards.

This is not to say that the data junkies are all good and wondrous and brilliant. Some of them confect any kind of algorithmic twaddle and stick it in a room.

Ooohh. There are numbers. And look they have patterns in them. And they get bigger.

There is as much sophistry at work in the data driven side of customer centric marketing as there is in the creative communications world.

(I am allowed to say this as I have spent 30 years in one condition and spend increasing amounts of time embracing the other.)

Yes, they can (and do) try to lose or disguise real risk in impenetrable matrices of data and assumption: BUT it’s hard to spoof it when confronted with a greater reasoning mind or in the face of data comprehension which many clients do possess

So regardless of the pros and cons and a lot of wriggling, the condition of conflict between the two firmly exists.

But when I look at the two types I am confused as to why in an increasingly enlightened communications world they are still clashing – it can only be rooted in the basic human condition of primacy and filthy lucre.

Because to slip into my Sioux Nation meets Longue Carabine* metaphor – the data warriors and the creative shamen may be very different creatures doing very different jobs but stitched together with insight and vision their fusion represents the greatest point of resilience in any brand and business marketer’s armoury.

For me, the data warriors are the hunting parties – the scouts and the trackers.

A dust swirl. Three blades crushed. One twig broken. Small pile of lightly steamed stool. Two disturbed rocks in the stream. They went that-a-way: One a shuffling Septuagenarian carrying a limp and a predilection for 4pm snacking and the other a Millennial with a fetish for on-line pharmaceuticals.

Lithe, agile, resilient – valve open – the data warriors are connected to the very essence – the very particular material and atomic nature – of the world they travel through. Precious information bleeds from every direction – out of the earth wind and fire beneath, before and around them.

They are living inside the fabric of their world – stitched into its living breathing self.

The Creative Shamen on the other hand can be found floating merrily a few miles above it. Squatting in an animal-hide hut filled with peyote fumes curling thickly around them, smoking rocks, and waiting for the arrival of the Great White Buffalo.

They are seeking and yearning a higher consciousness – a moment of divine revelation; a connection so real and of such jaw-dropping intensity and clarity that it compels everyone and everything in its presence to turn to it and drop to their knees in subjugation.

(Not quite sure how this gets us to a Meerkat script with Arnie in it but bear with me.)

Now, both groups I am sure could claim Primacy in the tribe and with fair reason.

The White Buffalo seeking Shamen educates the scouts, trackers and warriors in the ways of divine connection – seeing the higher power of things as the unifying and immutable truth – the great creative spirit at work in the world. Without them and this higher order perspective operating as a compass and north star, wise people know that civilisations and cultures lose their way, flounder, decay and diminish; they become weaker disconnected and vulnerable. They lose the ability to survive and prevail.The shamen are the highest Order and therefore could claim Primacy.

The evidentially and materially driven Warrior and tracker conversely give living authenticity, meaning and substance to the abstract notions of the shamen and the Great Spirit. Utilizing these spiritual and material tools of navigation and connectedness they seek out new lands of potential and plenty; they hunt the food that sustains the tribe; they outwit insurgent and hostile tribes that would otherwise destroy the culture and very existence of their own tribe. They are the front-line source of exceptional resilience and therefore could claim Primacy.

BUT

Basically, once the spear throwing and name calling is over, and whether these two groups like it or not, they need each other.

Squabble – fine. Fight. Probably. Bitch about the size of the pickings each deserves and should get? Of course.

Ultimately though, neither group should be so foolish, singular, arrogant and self interested as to think that either of them could survive without the other.

In a world of conflicted interest, the only piece of illumination we need should be focused on is the simple fact that their particular best relies solely on finely calibrated interdependencies existing between both parties.

A global network agency that I used to be part of defined itself by the mantra of ‘the unreasonable power of creativity’: predicated on the higher order belief that

Reason leads to conclusions but Emotion leads to action. And therefore Creativity that makes people disproportionately feel something that a data set cannot is the way to go.

Love it. Couldn’t agree more.

BUT. Proof also has it that what people respond to emotionally at a higher order level is not necessarily the greatest definer or indicator of how people will act in the moment in the everyday in a transactional need and demand context – as the data-day junkies are all to quick to point out.

There are graveyards of astonishing creativity – pieces of creativity so compelling and shareable they are capable of raising 26 million views on youtube – but sadly incapable of driving up swap out and retention rates to drive the numbers to build the volume margins and increased revenue to produce the uplifted budget investment to pay for more genius.

But if the creative shamen and the data warriors can figure out how to nurture enough respect for each other to not subsequently waste 40% of their client’s time trying to decide who gets to run the meeting and steal wooden dollars from each other, that would be good (and believe you me the clients really do notice how much of this is going on).

Is this an issue of incentive and performance criteria and measurement? Of course.

Too many Communications groups carry both types in their client service suite without resetting their rules of engagement.

The logic of maintaining Customer centric data-driven companies and Pure creative idea generation businesses rewarded inside a fiercely competitive direct report silo P&L structure makes no sense in the long term. It certainly does not best serve the client.

They waste time, energy and resource on internal market battles and jostling for pre-eminence that could be better served in the clients interest to build some real life-time value in the relationship.

The networks that own both kinds of business would better served elevating Customer (Client) satisfaction, not agency ego and return as their point of Primacy.

Apart from that who’s up for some peyote and long weekend in a buffalo hide hut?

*Longue Carabine is the character in the book and film Last Of The Mohecans also known as Hawkeye. An astonishing, inspirational and resilient warrior with some pretty awesome ethics to boot.

#voom, voices & the murmurations of the twitterati

31 Tuesday Mar 2015

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#voom, A.I., beauty, Communications, desire, dynamic data, ecosystems, entrepreneurship, flocking, geolocation, mobile, murmurations, nature, Old Street, ornithology, phenomena, pitch to rich, recognition, Social, social brand, social mapping, Social Purpose, starlings, Twitterati, Virgin Media Business, voice

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There’s something rather magical about the fluid shape shifting phenomena of social media.

And it has reached far beyond the slangy codified data dynamics and scale numbers thrown around Old Street hot desks of doing.

Dependent on the context and the lens through which you view them, there is something truly phenomenal in the surges swoops and sweeps of the numbers and the geophysics of how where and when they occur

Having just launched the Virgin #voom/Pitch to Rich campaign (not personally of course but as one of a very large team) I have started to view social phenomena through this lens and things are looking quite beautiful. And revelatory.

The staggering social reach and the dynamics of flocking in the social media networks around the campaign and some of the numbers being achieved (45.2 Million social media reach in 6 days-ish) has for me stretched far beyond the need for collective nouns.

(How the #voom/pitchtorich campaign reached this scale of impact is a much larger thing to consider. But the finger points to the spirit, mood, exceptional impact and revelatory nature of the Branson films Bruce Goodison of Sundog Pictures created from the various pieces of paper and email chains – supported by some leading media thinking and doing across a substantial number of interrelated and interdependent media channels, partners and audiences)

The wave of furious activity #voom/pitchtorich has inspired in the social networks bears a closer look. The irony is that the further back you stand the closer you can observe the ‘nature’ – the physical virtual dynamics – of its social phenomena.

Originating in a clumsy joke of mine about twitter and birds flocking – I slowly came to the quieter joke of murmurations of twitterati. I am always astonished and in awe of murmurations of starlings. There is an ‘otherness’ to them – as if they are in thrall to a different dimension of existence – to the magnetic turbulences and older forces at work in the world that remain otherwise unseen.

It is also incredible to think that we as humans get to observe them in ways they will never know from the white heat heart of their furious purpose.

Perhaps the same is true of ourselves in relation to our virtual otherness and the collective behaviours and actions in which our virtual selves participate.

I have always sensed that the shape shifting mass of a murmuration carries its own ‘voice’ within it; a relentlessly changing imprint of cadences, inflections; sharp punctuations and sublime emphasis – an ornithological oratory written across the sky.

It then occurred to me that if we mapped our social murmurations – by numbers and actions across time and space we could perhaps visualise our own greater voice carried within them.

For example if there was a social campaign that could be plotted not only by number of participants (flock) but by intensity (altitude) geolocation (topography) and time (horizon) – perhaps we could create animated murmurations of social phenomena.

If we could do that we could then perhaps study the patterns and nature of them in much the same way that we study sound waves and voice recognition patterns.

And perhaps with the wider ambition of attribution, we could begin to recognize traits and characteristics in each pattern that helps us to define the real voice at work and its source and integrity.

Just a thought that I would love to explore a little more.

Tech, Social networks and & the rise of Inconvenient Desire

19 Sunday Oct 2014

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21st Century Consumer, Adaptive Governance, Apple, Caring about what people care about, Communications, Consumer Activist, desire, ecosystems, Foxconn, Human Rights, Identity, Incandescent Identity, Institutional Investors, Labour Conflicts, NPS, reputation Studies, resilience, social networks, Supply Chains, technology, Value Chains

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You’d be hard pushed to find a more powerful source of human incandescence than that of Desire.

Most humans once seized upon by a fierce Desire, (quenchable, drenchable or otherwise) would struggle to not glow like embers or light up like a Christmas Tree.

But equally, incandescence is a volatile and unstable thing in its base form. It is as likely to illuminate a life as it is to burn down a house, so must always be treated with the greatest caution and respect.

A powerful and singular Desire, initially so exquisitely turned out: seductive, rich, complex and compelling, can quickly lose its form, focus and potency, becoming fleeting, deceptive, destabilising, and in some ways almost manipulative – one moment all consuming, profound substantial and irresistible: a twisted echo or hollow memory the next, whispering in our ear.

It is one of the cruel polarities of life that Desire, especially when ignored, demeaned, spoiled or thwarted, can become a very destructive force –  one of the most turbulent, psyche-ripping, heart-trouncing, confidence-destroying, life-diminishing experiences in our human condition.

We do not take it well! And it makes us act in irrational, random and unexpected ways.

So Desire. Powerful, yes; BUT its got form. Tricky. Volatile. Fluid. Uncontrollable. Fragile.

A singular Desire is of course not the only model. Desire has many forms, natures and universes. Not all Desire is so singular, egocentric, unfettered and prone to flip-flopping and flailing all over the place, at the drop of a rather existential hat. Some Desires are quiet; considered; evolving over expansive periods of time and frames of context. Others are a dynamic shifting mass: loose ecosystems of smaller desires, likes, preferences, needs and wants; splintered, fractured, fractual. A brilliant constellation with fluid and adaptive qualities.

But for now let’s concentrate on one very particular nature of Desire and the context in which it exists: that of human consumption and the systems and organisations that meet its rapacious and accelerating demands.

Desire in its 20th Century Consumer form was well served by multiple businesses and the brands they created. Most importantly the Desire was one dimensional: of a linear and modal kind. A singular Desire, in the form of an unmet consumer demand for a particular product or service, was either revealed or identified through intuition, experience, market research or in the absence of anything else, confected out of thin air in a marketing consumer insight department and then seeded in the mind of the unsuspecting consumer.

Once identified, every atom of the business was put in service to meet the needs of that one Desire. The whole operational infrastructure and systemic nature and capability of the brand and business was set into motion to against it. The sentiment and sensibility of every other person in the chain other than that of the Consumer – the font of all revenue opportunity – was set aside, ignored, or suppressed; viewed as at best, secondary, or at worst, irrelevant.

The Desires (and disappointments) of any individual or group dwelling in the Supply Chain that provided the material, resource, operational systems and manufacturing tools were also secondary – and someone else’s problem.

The Value Chains that developed around the Supply Chain to extract clear measures of additional value in every link in the chain, were focused wholly on controlling and securing in absolute terms the direct cost of resources (human and material), the executive overhead, operational running costs, the logistics of distribution and the indirect fixed contracting of supplier partners, especially when operating across multiple sites and geographies across myriad countries and cultures.

The ability to secure the base cost of delivering increasing value in every link of the chain was the way by which a company both improved its productivity and profitability. And it did it by controlling everything. Even the desires and the voices of those that worked within it.

The insular unconnected and disparate nature of the old world was highly convenient for those who wished to quash any form of desire that might destabilise that link in the chain’s ability to deliver itself at a projected and secured cost amenable to the larger commercial target and deliverable margin.

The very fact that these various sites and sources of production were localised, isolated and unconnected to every other stakeholder in the chain by anything other than their place in that chain meant that the desires of the workforce and the local communities in which they lived could be considered incidental. They remained for the most part invisible, unheard and often unmet. It is fairly telling that the managerial department allocated solely to ensuring and upholding the wellbeing of people required to populate and sustain any Value Chain were identified as a Support Activity in Value Chain models.

But those Desires cannot be ignored anymore. In the 21st century, the consumer’s Desire is not the only one that must be respected, elevated and pored over.

Technology and the social networks have unchained the value chain, giving voice and a podium to every Desire of every person (or stakeholder if you prefer) along the chain, Supply, Value or Otherwise. And they cannot be simply ignored anymore.

Now, Desire has got a smart phone, 6 email accounts, a facebook page, a twitter, instagram and youtube account. And Desire is getting busy.

Desires, individual and collective, in every corner of the globe are now connected. They’ve got access. They’ve got volume. And they are using the social networks to act with fierce purpose against brands and businesses they feel demonstrate an arrogant lack of respect for the human rights and dignities of their customers, employees, suppliers or partners. Once fired up, these consumer activists will harry and pursue the perpetrators regardless of emollient PR releases and promises – as the likes of Apple and Foxconn found out in no uncertain terms. These massed, noisy and high profile actions are now proven to have a direct impact on the measures of integrity held in high esteem by brands and businesses – NPS, The Reputation Study – and more importantly by the investors who fund their ambitions.

So the volatility, flux and turbulence of kaleidoscopic Desire is now at work in the world along very link of the Chain. And they are testing the resilience of those chains, and buffeting the previously tightly controlled and secured value and margin each link in the chain delivers. Adaptive governance must now include the ability to absorb the turbulence these points of social flux and volatility present.

In this way, the 21st Century world of accessible, affordable tech and the social networks they fuel are giving rise to a new chain – the Desire Chain – a value chain populated by individuals with dreams, expectations and rights as important and potent and ultimately as capable of creating value and growth as the old singular desire of the Consumer in the 20th Century.

So here’s to brands embracing a new chain model – the Desire Chain – one that is made incandescent and more resilient by respecting and elevating the desires of every stakeholder in its chain, to mutual benefit and a more secure future for all.

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The essay upon which this blog is based, ‘The Value Chained Unchained‘, explores the nature and impact of technology and the social networks on the old Value Chain models and sets out the need for a new model based upon ever-evolving highly adaptive points of Mutual Desire and Shared Resilience.

The Value Chain Unchained by J Borra is to be published by Shared Value Chain Consultancy as part of a compendium of essays on Sustainable Value Chains. Editor: Michael D’heur

www.sharedvaluechain.com

Creativity, Troubled Spirits & The Art of the Commercial Creative Tantrum

04 Tuesday Feb 2014

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Advertising, Cannes Lions, Commercial Artists, Communications, Creative Excellence, Creativity, Mad Men, Seymour Hoffman

Image Part 1 (of 3)

Creativity. What a cursed word this is. Its stain and shadow seems to riddle anyone truly touched by it with a silent screaming see-saw yaw of insecurity and brilliance so profound it staggers them to a deathly stop, sooner or later.

And when I say truly touched by creativity, I am talking not of the noisy swaggerdaccio of  commercial creatives who you’ll find buzzing around the ad agency, digital content and brand consultancy hives of most major and supposedly civilised cities.

That kind, my kind, are simply echoes, re-percussions in its truest sense of the dark, glittering, brilliant bangs and crashes of those truly blessed and cursed with creativity.

When I speak of creativity I speak of those people who carry their creativity deeply within themselves, not worn as a badge of entry to the latest and so, so self consciously flagged eatery as metered out on any latest given social network living or virtual.

Perhaps it was the news that Seymour Hoffman was found with the needle sticking out of his arm still, dead of an overdose that enraged me enough to wish to write this piece.

Seymour Hoffman to me was simply a reason to think that there was a god.

An actor whom I found to be so audacious in his characterisations, so breathtaking in his personification of characters whom, until he lit a torch inside them, lay across the page, inert and inhuman. His rendering of legendary and well-documented Characters like Truman Capote, surely an impossible task, simply allowed Seymour Hoffman the opportunity to be more Capote than the man himself. He has utterly delivered on the concept of a performer and performances that transcend every possible preexisting point of reference or comparison.

And for that I feel he deserves a prize as great as any our druid forebears could give to any man or woman who could encapsulate the human condition under the gaze of he gods in such a way as to enable every observer to learn something profound, however small and in such a way as to improve their own.

His bravery in putting out there what he felt to be the prima version of what was expected of him reaches so far beyond the cowardice of the average commercial creative it is hard to even begin to measure the distance between them

The renaissance nature of him – his ability to reach into corners – his breadth depth and well of influence was simply staggering.

The depth of his creativity – of observation, on human nature, the tics and flinches of human behavior, its emotional eddies and whip-pools, its penchant for small tragedies played out in the inane and banal – and the wealth of invention required to conjure all of that into a moment under the cruel and unforgiving gaze of the camera. That is what I call creativity. It is naked and raw, and spiritually incapable of being repaid.

But perhaps in the cruelty of the lens lay a black truth. Maybe that was the masochist at work in him. Throwing himself relentlessly at the feet of an unforgiving master – one whom he knew would ultimately never let him go.

It is when I look at creativity at work in people like him that I wonder at what seems to pass so often otherwise as creativity.

I am bored with the wannabees and the almosts. There are times when the crippling truth of the real deal should make us draw breath and admit for perhaps even the most fleeting second that the pure genius of those that truly have it make those of us who simply exist in their slipstream, small and recondite in nature.

And then I view creativity through the eyes of the scientists, the poets, the architects and the mathematicians and then look through the rear view mirror at the communications jonnies and wonder where their arrogance came from.

No Cloths of Heaven. No Suspension bridge. No Higgs Bosen. No Rubik. No 3D printers.

What in god’s name have the commercial creatives given us that illuminates our life in such exceptional and poetic manner that they deserve one passing second of attention beyond some Cannes obsessed self gratifying accolade?

That we, the Ad kids think that creativity demands eating the last 10 D&AD annuals and spewing forensic facts about who won what for typography or platinum content really matters: that both being difficult and using the comedic sums of money that we’re paid to buy some more toys to throw out of our pram.

Like we really do exist in some rarified existence with the answer to anything bar selling 100 more txts and minutes packages and 2 million more 7 blade razors with pointless emollient strips.

Have we ever considered the beauty and commitment that it requires to deliver a Caravaggio into the world? That we might consider for even a moment what the exceptional requires of us beggars belief.

That I have seen the most average of creative thinkers claim some primary space in the world based upon the mediocrity of what spews from them troubles me to my core.

Their only reason for existence is that they feed the creatively inert business ambitions of the corporate gristle that pays their bills. That it should succor their self-belief is a weak and ultimately nihilistic pursuit and an exercise in self obsessions.

The creative people that I value in my life are indeed the butcher the baker the candlestick maker. The real creators in this world we live in.

And I add to them the performance artists that make me stop, heart racing, befuddled and illuminated by their capture of the human condition.

I also add those that disassemble the scientific condition of our existence. Creating new intellects and formulae for understanding.

And I feel it is time to call it on the idiots and the fakes. Lets hear it for the true creators and let the rest go to overpaid hell.

If you ever walk into a room with a budget in your pocket for creativity and purchase some distant echo of what purports to be it, please call it as so.

How many more times do we need to sit in a room and listen to a commercial creative play a youtube clip, show an artists work, stream a song, or catwalk the work of a designer far, far greater than they and be told ‘it’ll be something like that’ and asked to pay top dollar for it?

I say go to the source and buy it pure.

If you need this fix to drive your business or your ambition forwards, die on the needle of purity or stop pretending.

And if you are some Byron obsessed creative with your self-destructive, insecure (but strangely enough never ultimately critical) tooting and gacking crutch, or your strategic side kick who believes that you have a god given right to be heard in your creative mewling, be true and be real and die on the commercial sword of what you suggest.

Never expect someone to expend hundreds of thousands of pounds on something you barely believe in yourself beyond what It might bring to your own personal glory.

If glory and recognition is what you seek there are a myriad collection of garrets and studios in lost forsaken places populated by people earning nothing fighting for their art.

If that is what you seek stand up and next to them and take what comes.

But if you are the person who endeavours to commercialise the creative process, remember, just prior to your next tantrum, that in greater footsteps than yours you travel, be respectful, and endeavour to be as close to the pure genius of them as your pay check allows.

Remember greater creative spirits than you die with a needle in their arm. God help them and god thank them for the price they pay for what you imitate in a room somewhere and for which you will never ultimately pay the price.

If this makes me a Wyndham Lewis, damning my own ‘creative’ class, I’m OK with that. Why? Because they’re fine. They are Ok in their tower, never really having as their only option a mine shaft, a production manufacturing line that steals their life, a trawler boat that goads their nerve and heart, or the banality and drudge of Till 3 on the check out at 4pm on a wet wednesday. 

The Needle and The Damage Is Done. 

 

Resilient Storytelling© & the pursuit of a smarter more secure communications train-set

03 Monday Feb 2014

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Adaptive Governance, Advocacy, Communications, HR, leadership, Mutual Desire, resilience, Social Dynamics, storytelling, Value Chain Modelling & management

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Having recently been on the receiving end of the questions – “what exactly do you believe?” and ‘what do you do all day?” I thought that I should set out my Thin Air Factory stall a little more clearly.
A Storyteller’s Manifesto
AKA what I get to do and love to do when someone asks:
I believe that one of the greatest factors in securing the exceptional resilience of a company lies in identifying and creating the most resilient nature and model of its storytelling.
I call this Resilient Storytelling©
Resilient Storytelling© is storytelling that can inspire every stakeholder to more resilient actions that are beneficial to the nature and performance of the company without danger of that storytelling being set aside, dismissed as an excuse for inaction or evasion or seen as excluding: storytelling that cannot be called ‘thin’, inappropriate, inauthentic, irrelevant; dismissed as gloss or icing, or simply seen as faddy, fluffy, short-term and short-sighted.
By its very nature Resilient Storytelling© must:
  • be resilient in itself – able to take the knocks, whether they come from an investigative or riled NGO on the one hand or a disgruntled consumer activist agitating in the social networks on the other.
  • inspire greater resilience in others: every audience being moving by even the slightest degree towards greater advocacy and engagement with every telling 
To do that it must be fit for purpose, forged from a whole picture of the company – not just its individual functions and layers.  To create storytelling that can absorb the turbulence and flux of the ever-changing, ever-evolving world a company seeks to thrive in, that storytelling must embrace the 4 corners of the company; from the top of its brand to the bottom of its business supply chain, and from one end of its value chain and stakeholder group to the other.
Resilient Storytelling© creates a clear sense of unified purpose beyond profit, a clear central tenet of adaptive governance to shape, manage and distribute the mutual endeavour that purpose demands, and the shared benefits it offers: it engenders greater and more cogent social collectivism and engagement across every stakeholder group.
Resilient Storytelling© is inclusive, inspiring and as adaptive as the company. It frames the integrity of every relationship the company generates and engages in, and shapes every piece of communication the company produces in undertaking and maintaining those relationships. Resilient Storytelling is storytelling that can relentlessly inspire and drive advocacy in every stakeholder.
Resilient Storytelling© is one that reconciles and reframes the most compelling, differentiated and most valuable points of systemic, operational and material resilience (the sustainability and CSR aspects and traits in the company) to the greatest number of shareholders with meaning and effect – allowing these truths of shared resilience to be drawn up into the storytelling in a way that is accessible to all (not just the brilliant scientists, engineers and strategists who define, design and deploy the drivers of those sustainability truths).
Resilient Storytelling© must be founded on exploring, understanding and respecting the relationship between the different shades of desire enshrined in every stakeholder across its Value Chain, including which points of resilience are most compelling and authentic to every one of them.
(There is little point focusing on points of resilience, and then storytelling around them in isolation – they are and must be seen as just one evidential part of a wider and more coherent value system at work and have been reconciled inside it.)
Resilient Storytelling© is both the VOICE of MUTUAL DESIRE in the company: and the reflection of the strongest and most compelling points of SHARED RESILIENCE, and a primary source of increasing resilience in itself.
A slightly weird diagram to prove a point:
Image

Most storytelling operates in very distinct vertical or horizontal blocks – for example, broadcast and bought media delivering desire generating materials with little reference to points of systemic material or social resilience of the company – a bit too much y and not enough x.

Equally, most resilience-focused storytelling focuses too much on its detail and integrity with little sense of how that might fit into the desire model of the audience it’s aimed at or resonate across the broader stakeholder group. A lot of x but y bother?

To truly engineer Top Of The Brand to Bottom of the Supply Chain storytelling that resonates across the whole Value Chain stakeholder group, you need to have generated the most mutual desire around the most compelling points of shared resilience across the greatest percentage of your communications touch-points. (Get to the top right corner and you will feel the love!)

To do this, Resilient Storytelling© must not only be completely representative and respectful of every dimension of the company but also be authenticated by being true to the everyday language and vernaculars of the everyday people who drive the company, its partners and suppliers. Too much Consultant and Business School speak becomes impenetrable and impossible for everyday people to act upon; too much slang and brand puffery lacks the substance to sustain engagement or fend off every detractor that might turn up.
The simplest and most human storytelling is what will take the smartest, most enduring and most innovative ideas from thinking to doing.
The human nature and openness of the storytelling is in itself a large part of what creates a state of shared resilience. The focus, scale and application of actions a Value Chain needs to both embrace and inspire to maintain its integrity and endure demands storytelling that can communicate the financial, commercial, operational and social benefits of doing so to best effect.
A resistor to Resilience?
Clients at the moment are enjoying the queue of agencies, consultants and advisors clamouring at their door. Myriad thinking and IP is being poured in one side and zero hours and zero waste relationships pouring out the other. It is simply not in any one agency or consultant’s interests, business model (or skills & capabilities to be fair) to create a singular and cohesive narrative that truly delivers Resilient Storytelling©. Their differentiated interests usually direct a client towards the most lucrative end point and outcome which they can reasonably protect.
Clients in their rush to seem smart, shrewd and masters of integrated thinking court these clashing and conflicting agendas to best results for themselves. This is only partly to be true to their own commercial needs and ambitions and the budgetary and structural limitations that come with them.
There is also a top note of presenting oneself as ‘nobody’s fool’ – especially when every other C Suite heavy hitter sees the (quote unquote Cost Plus Cowboy) Marcomms ‘professionals’ as worthy of a strategy of ‘Approach With Extreme Caution’. The legendary mickey-taking profiteering Ad Agencies of old, the overblown promises and myopia of the Marketing Emperor’s New Clothes – from Sales Promotion, to Direct Marketing and now the new nirvana of Digital – and their accompanying (and often spurious) fees and mark ups has left a very bad taste in mouths old and new.
So my plea is this – view Resilient Storytelling© not as a Communications Upgrade but as an Act of Adaptive Governance.
Its value stretches far beyond the remit of Sales & Marketing. It is as likely to optimise more enduring HR strategies and more focused innovation and R&D funnels as it is to create greater social advocacy across the stakeholder group, engage peripheral partners and suppliers and generate the ground work for qualitative growth.
But there needs to be an owner: and perhaps Brand should or could be that Stakeholder.
WHY? because it will undoubtedly take collaboration between agencies, consultants and advisors to deliver this kind of Storytelling. Only the Brand owner can enable this – only you can set the terms of Play Nice.
If you do, your advisors and touchstones will then see the commercial benefit of not rug pulling, dissing and discarding each other or treading on each other’s commercial toes and perhaps seek a better model of engagement and collaboration to a more efficient and economical effect. And please don’t say that the likes of the existing Loop Meeting models are an example of this in practice.They are fundamentally an exercise in leadership and agenda grab taking up torturous hours of politicking and pre prepping and post controlling.
Create and compel a truly collaborative, holistic and complimentary structure that uses opposing dynamics and forces to their best effect and you have the beginnings of a value centre in the company: one of greater use across the C Suite need set – and not just a continuation of a cost centre.
But that means that Brand needs to be fit for purpose: with an innate understanding of the previously impenetrable concepts of supply chain and value chain modelling and management, CSR strategies and impacts, R&D dynamics and the complexities of decent HR frameworks, communities, behaviours and rewards. To upgrade these traits and reflexes in the Brand function of a company is to make the first move towards a more resilient company and set the stage for a more inclusive innately collaborative and open leadership model. Then the landscape becomes rich with possibility.
Imagine if you put Resilient Storytelling© at the centre of your stakeholder constellations informed by every function and then mapped every communications touchpoint against it, with a weather eye on managing the overlap and the duplication: that would be exhilarating.
As Jack Nicholson’s Joker quips as he enters the art museum “Gentlemen!..let’s broaden our minds”
Resilient Storytelling©ThinAirFactoryLtd2014

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