Me. We

In 1975 Muhammad Ali was invited to talk to a group of Harvard students. Someone in the crowd shouted, 'Give us a poem, Muhammad'. He paused for a moment, looked up and said: 'Me. We'. This couplet competes for the title of the shortest poem ever written in the English language (with 'Fleas. Adam had 'em' and 'I - Why?').

I particularly like Ali's poem because it suggests two fundamental questions: Who am I? Who are we? Sometimes I suspect that these may be the two most important questions of all.

Inevitably one's career is a voyage of self discovery. What are my strengths and weaknesses, my values, my tastes and beliefs? How do I perform, with encouragement and under stress, on my own and in a team? 

But 'who am I?' may be the easier of the two questions to answer. We're nowadays all taught self awareness, self realisation, self expression. We've got 360 degree, two-way appraisals. We've got mindfulness and feedback sandwiches. We live in the Age of Me.

How often do we properly consider 'we'?

In the past 'we' was defined by notions of class, race, region and religion. But it's obviously more complex now. My own answer to 'who are we?' has changed with time and perspective.

We were the swotty kids, the musos. We were Essex and the NME. We were Catholic guilt and post modern irony. We were  suburban soul boys, Prosecco socialists. We were second hand clothes and third XI football. We were pubs with carpet, pies with mash, dancing with feet. We were London. We were the arts people, The Guardian, we were Radio 4.

And similarly my professional 'we' has evolved too. We were John, John and Nigel's team. We were restless spirited and serious minded. We were brand centric, forward facing, creative. We were Bass Weejuns, 501s, MA1. We were Soho, black and steel, MTV in Reception. We were broad and shallow planning. We were work that was funny, clever, beautiful. We were Gwyn & Jim. We were a singing Agency, an Agency that cared. We hung on, we rolled with the punches. We were positive, optimistic, collegiate. We laughed.

On reflection it seems that the happiest times for me were when I had an intense sense of 'we' ; when I felt part of a strong culture with a serious purpose. Peter Drucker reputedly said 'culture eats strategy for breakfast'. I'm sure he was right. Indeed for me culture is strategy.

Perhaps it is a question you should try asking  yourself. Not just 'who am I?', but 'who are we?' Who are my group, gang, team or cohort? Who are my generation? What do we believe in ? What defines us? As an Agency, as a discipline, as a team? What makes us different from previous generations, from everyone else? How will we make an impact? What will our legacy be?

I suspect it may be harder to cultivate 'we' in the modern era, in an age of individuality and empowerment, when our careers are flexible, our loyalties fluid. However, I think there is a point at which the individual and collective intersect. Increasingly any business's commercial and social success will be determined by its ability to realise the full potential of the individuals within it. Realising human capital, creating sustainability in human terms, these are the present priorities. Traditional top-down leadership styles are obviously less suited to this networked age. Modern businesses need to inspire a broad based, integrated culture of diverse leadership styles. Because a leadership culture creates a leadership brand.

Or as Ali would have put it, a little more succinctly, 'Me. We.'

First published in Campaign 02/04/2015

No. 33

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The Man With The Child In His Eyes

In the course of my career I've been dressed as a superhero and a metrosexual. I've reenacted Bohemian Rhapsody and Pharrell's video for Happy. I've rewritten the lyrics to The Twelve Days of Christmas around the global category objectives. I've built balsa bridges and done stretch exercises in my suit. I've told complete strangers curious secrets about myself. I've been thrown creme eggs at conferences. I've done energisers and ice breakers. I've worn hats.

I've done all these things in the name of team building, in the promotion of lateral thought. I've done all these things a little reluctantly, because my Client asked me to.

I confess it's not really my gig. I don't need a warm up exercise to be engaged. I don't need an energy drink to be animated. I don't need a crayon to express myself. I don't need a bean bag to have an idea. I don't have to take my clothes off to have a good time.

More than this, I'm concerned that it's all got a bit out of hand. In seeking to lose our inhibitions, do we sometimes lose our dignity? Can behaviours intended as a catalyst to creativity and collaboration become a constraint on our credibility? Are brands themselves, as a consequence of all this, beginning to speak like a child? 

In short, I'm concerned that modern marketing is being infantilized.

I first heard Kate performing The Man With the Child in His Eyes in the late '70s. I loved that song. Back then the thought of an adult retaining his childlike innocence was hugely attractive. Society was constrained, conventional, conservative. Masculinity was muscular, macho, two dimensional. But now Peter Pan is ever present. We live in an age of deferred maturity and kidulthood, of the eternal mid-life crisis and the oldest clubbers in town. We live in the era of Game of Thrones, Guardians of the Galaxy and Glasto Podpads. The childlike increasingly seems childish.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.'

1 Corinthians 13.11

I believe brand building and communication are serious enterprises. They require more than kindergarten architecture, a few beards and a bike rack. More than an ideation session with Post-It notes, a kooky illustrator and Gummy Bears. They require special combinations of expertise, analysis, deep thought and inspiration. They require method and process, heavy heavy discipline. I believe that grown up brands should engage consumers as grown ups. That talking in chatty tones, Californian patter, primary colours and VAG Rounded can sometimes diminish the integrity of the conversation. I believe that if we want to be taken seriously we should be a little more serious.

Perhaps now is the time for marketing to 'put away childish things'.

I confess that I didn't actually dress as a superhero at the category conference in LA. I hid in the toilets instead...

First published: September 2014 Marketing

No. 32

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Murder On The Dance Floor

                        Photograph: Manchester Mirror/mirrorpix

I was a bad DJ. I couldn't mix; I couldn't sample; I couldn't scratch. But above all, I couldn't make people dance - or at least, make them dance to my tunes.

The withering glances, the paralysing fear, the creeping self-doubt; it all comes flooding back. Staring out at an empty dancefloor, the only movement the geometric reflections from the mirror ball, the crowds clinging to the walls as if pushed by some centrifugal force.

I’d play one top track after another: D-Train, Fatback, Archie Bell & the Drells… Nothing.

‘It’s a shame,
Sometimes I feel like I’m going insane,
But still I want to stay’
Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King - Shame

Gradually the pressure built. They wanted to dance, but they didn’t want to dance to anything I was playing. The occasional Goth would approach, demanding Southern Death Cult.

Eventually I cracked and reached for The Jackson 5. No sooner had a few bars of ABC chimed out than the floor was filled with jiving students, a mass of ecstatic rhythm and moves.

But no time to enjoy my achievement. I faced another challenge. Once they were on their feet for The Jackson 5, I couldn’t very well give them Melba Moore. So I’d unsheath Earth, Wind & Fire. And then Shalamar. And Chic. ‘And the beat goes on...’

Yes, the floor was packed and pulsating now. A joyous Bacchanalian throng. But at the height of my seeming success, I was filled with self-loathing, because I had, in effect, created a Wedding Disco. I knew the revellers would not go home sated that night. They’d had a bop, but it was the same old stuff they’d always danced to. Nothing to be remembered, respected, revisited. Nothing original, authentic, inspired. Last night a DJ ruined my life…

So why am I telling you this?

Well, as a bad DJ I learned that it’s quite easy to generate a bit of fizz, a quick thrill or momentary buzz. But it’s much more difficult to get people dancing to your own tune, to be credited with it and thanked for it. And once you’ve got people dancing to a populist rhythm, it’s nigh-on impossible to get them off it. I learned that, if I ever wanted to be a good DJ, I’d need a thicker skin.

‘Here’s my chance to dance my way out of my constrictions,
(Feet don’t fail me now),
One nation under a groove, Gettin’ down just for the funk of it’
Funkadelic - One Nation under a Groove

I’d been to enough clubs to recognise a proper DJ. I’d seen them seamlessly blend the familiar with the exotic. I’d seen them coax their public onto the floor, change the tempo, manipulate the mood. I’d seen them insinuate a rhythm that took dancers deep into the heart of darkness. And I’d seen the joy unconfined of a real dancehall crowd moving as one.

I think marketers can learn from dance. Dance is about individual fulfilment found through collective action, private passions explored together – not unlike brands. Marketers could learn from DJs, too – the experts who create, catalyse and control the dancefloor, the magicians who manufacture social success. What advice would a good DJ give a brand manager? Well perhaps...

1. Read the crowd. Feel the mood of the masses. It’s about your own, instinctive judgement, not someone else’s.
2. Live in the moment. Be spontaneous, intuitive, impromptu. Don’t plan for a future you can’t predict.
3. Mix sugar and spice, the familiar with the unknown. It may be counterintuitive, but no one will thank you if you play only what they want, know or expect.
4. Surprise them with the arcane, the forgotten and absurd when they least expect it. Don’t let consistency become predictability.
5. Create one seamless journey, contoured with its own highs and lows. Take the whole dancefloor on that journey and don’t get lost in segmentation, tailoring and targeting.

Great brands set a rhythm that unites consumers, propels them onto the dancefloor of life and inspires them to express their truest feelings, together. In the age of the empowered, atomised consumer, we should never forget that, fundamentally, brands are shared beliefs. I have always believed in a brand that seeks to lead opinion rather than follow it. I guess I believe in the Brand as DJ.

Or as Soul II Soul might put it: ‘A happy face, a thumpin’ bass, for a lovin’ race’…

First published: Marketing 06/09/2013

No. 31

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Creative Enemy Number One

John Dillinger arrest photo courtesy of FBI

Ask yourself this: Who is Creative Enemy Number One? Is it short-termism? Is it quantitative pretesting? Is it globalisation? Or the algorithm? Is it ‘matching luggage’ integration? Or the commoditising effect of procurement? Is it category conventions, client conservatism, consensus driven committees? Is it marketing manuals or professional processes? Is it norms, traffic lights and benchmarks? Is it the decline of expertise or the rise of empowerment? Is it old school hierarchies or new school anarchy? Is it VI? Or UGC? Is it having too little time? Or too much?

Well all of these have a case to answer. But I would argue there's another more sinister villain stalking the corridors of any creative business.

When I reflect back on some of BBH's past successes, its golden greats so to speak, I can't help noticing that they are all in some way or another flawed or imperfect. The Levi's campaign that ran through the late '80s and '90s was a huge creative and commercial success. And yet, with the benefit of hindsight, I can't ignore how quite a few of the films focus on a product, Shrink-to-Fit 501 jeans, that represented less than 1% of sales (poor commercial judgement surely); in one key film the hero abandons the product at the end of the drama (we really shouldn't have let that go); in others we feature heroes that were probably unaspirational to the core male target (elementary error). With the benefit of hindsight, in a more disciplined, logical world, one has to conclude that many of these films should not have been made. Indeed, that whole Levi's campaign traded on heritage, which we know is the last thing to interest young people. Maybe it was all a terrible mistake.

In those distant days we also created a very successful campaign for Olivio, a healthy olive-oil based spread. It featured the adventures of a group of happy elderly Italians, but as I look at it now I'm more than conscious that a health brand should really be identifying itself with youthful vitality. So maybe that should have been a non-starter too. We developed a campaign for a beer brand, Boddingtons, that associated its taste with things like shaving cream and sun cream. If you have ever worked in the food sector you'll know you shouldn't compare the edible with the inedible. And then there's the longstanding Audi endline,‘Vorsprung durch Technik’. It was written in German, a language the vast majority of the audience couldn't understand. A more intelligent recommendation would surely have been something that conveyed the same meaning in English. ‘Progress Through Technology’ perhaps.

More recently we've told British Airways customers not to fly during the Olympics and we've launched a female variant of a deodorant brand that is wholeheartedly male. Neither of these seems a smart commercial move.

The more I look back on our proudest moments of the near and distant past, the more I see campaigns that do not stand up to scrutiny of strategy and execution. There appear to be very sound, robust reasons why much of this work should never have seen the light of day. And yet, it was all highly creative, award winning communication that delivered significant returns on investment. This is not the narrative we generally encounter in case studies or marketing text books.

You can try this exercise yourselves at home. Think of the most creative and successful campaigns that you've worked on or that you personally admire. Then apply your left brain: Identify the critical flaw that means that execution or campaign should never have been made. Don't worry. I can assure you there will be one there.

The more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to conclude that all the best communication is flawed; that being strategically or executionally flawed is a prerequisite for great work.

So what's going on here? I suspect Creative Enemy Number One is our own intelligence. It's our own ability to identify shortcomings in ideas. Because smart, intelligent people can always find a reason not to proceed; and the smarter you are, the greater will be your capacity to see problems, to cause complexity. Creative Enemy Number One may be looking at you in the mirror every morning.

When you think about it, ordinary work is actually the intelligent choice. Because ordinary work tends to translate the brief directly, it observes sector conventions, it uses familiar reference points. And, critically, it achieves low levels of misunderstanding or rejection in research. By contrast extraordinary work often correlates less directly with the brief, it breaks sector conventions and it uses unfamiliar reference points. Consequently, it often precipitates a certain amount of misunderstanding and rejection in research. Extraordinary work is ordinarily very easy to reject.

Inevitably, behind every great piece of communication you'll find clients who were brave enough to see beyond the flaws; clients who could control the whispering voice of reason telling them “it's good, but it's flawed”, clients who were happy to stop making sense.

In nearly all aspects of business, intelligence represents a blessing, a competitive advantage. But in the judgement of creativity it can represent a curse, a competitive disadvantage. We must be mindful that there are always very sound reasons to reject great communications ideas. But the existence of a good reason to reject something doesn't mean that you should.

There is indeed a fine line between stupid and clever.

First published in YCN Magazine 24/01/2014

No. 30

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Chips & The Barking Creek Crisis

It was a long, long time ago. My brother Martin and I would accompany our ageing grandfather and his tortoise-shell bull terrier Chips, for walks by Barking Creek. This was a windswept, desolate place. We could play freely in the derelict gun emplacements, throw sticks for Chips to fetch, and cast messages-in-bottles out into the brackish water.

Chips was our widowed grandfather's soulmate. They went everywhere together.

One day by the Creek, Chips began scampering off into the distance and we chased after him. He kept running and we kept following. Soon our grandfather was left far behind, unable to keep up, and Chips kept running, and we kept following.

It seemed that Chips was on a break for freedom. Our grandfather would soon be bereft of his fondest companion. Martin and I began to panic.

I turned around and shouted to grandfather, now way back in the distance. "Grandpa, Chips is running away. What do we do?" ''Stop running," he cried. And we did. And Chips stopped too.

I guess the Barking Creek Crisis taught my brother and me a lesson about cause and effect. We thought Chips' running was the cause of our running. In fact the reverse was true.

It was a useful lesson. In life we often unwittingly confuse cause and effect. When we look at the world around us, we rage against what we imagine to be the causes of our problems, but frequently they are just the effects of them. And when we look at ourselves, we imagine we are at the centre of our own universes, influencing events, determining our futures. We tend to see ourselves as causes, when in fact we are effects. Because for most of us, most of the time, our behaviours, and even our beliefs, are the effects of other people's habits, tastes and preferences, of extraneous events, of conditioning, custom and convention.

It's a melancholy truth, but perhaps inertia is the driving force in much of our personal and work lives: the endless repetition of patterns that were laid down by others years before; theme and variation played out with infinite variety.

Working in a creative business we may think we are different; that we are the ultimate paradigms of free expression, that we are causing change on a daily basis. It's in the job title. But often much of a creative agency's activity entails translating, transplanting, adopting and adapting. Responding to events, to competitive action, to the predispositions of clients and customers, to the conventions established by our seniors and forebears. Executing the strategy, extending the campaign, evolving the idea. Much of the time we're just keeping the train on the tracks.

You might imagine our clients would wish for more than this. But often their primary focus is the management of consistent delivery and performance across time, geography, platform and outlet. They don't want to change the world. They're not looking for a New England. They’re just looking for another year of steady, incremental growth.

Now you may find these observations a little depressing. But I don't. For me they serve to illuminate the fact that genuine, original, creative thought is a rare and precious thing. Pure creativity, the kind that rewrites rules, reinvents language, changes minds and precipitates new behaviours, is not called into play very often, even in a creative industry. But when it is, there are few people and few businesses that can deliver it. Creativity's value is enhanced, not diminished, by its rarity.

Indeed, although much of commercial life is driven by conformity and consistency, systems and processes, creativity is becoming more, not less, important. Because, in a more confident economy, CEOs and shareholders are less and less satisfied with modest, incremental growth rates. They are setting more ambitious plans for the future. They are asking for step change innovation. Inevitably the strategies and behaviours that deliver steady, incremental growth are not fit for dramatic step change. And the people who are suited to keeping a train on the tracks are rarely capable of laying new lines.

As one of our founders, Nigel Bogle, has expressed it, 'growth needs space'. And to discover new space you need a pioneering spirit, a very particular combination of original thought, persuasive skill and mental stamina. Pure creativity is not just the best answer; it is the only answer.

If you're pursuing a creative career, you may be intimidated by the scale and congestion of the creative industry. But fear not. If you genuinely have the ability to ignore convention, to set aside case studies and best demonstrated practice; if you can find a way of changing the behaviour and belief of individuals, and thereby communities and cultures, you'll go far. Because there aren't many people like you around: People who dare to be different; to be a cause, not just an effect.

First Published: YCN Magazine 10/07/2014

No. 29

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She Knew She Was Right

               Cassandra by Anthony Frederick Sandys

I once shared an office with a young planner who was fiercely intelligent, but a little socially awkward. I would overhear her conversations with assorted colleagues, discussing strategies, briefs and work. I noticed that she consistently held the more insightful, interesting, authoritative opinions. But, equally consistently, she failed to persuade her partners of the rightness of those opinions.

She was like Cassandra who, according to Greek myth, was gifted with prophetic skills but cursed never to be believed. Poor Cassandra. Her entirely accurate predictions were endlessly rebuffed by her fellow Trojans and, ultimately, she failed to convince them that there were Greeks hiding in the Trojan Horse. It’s a failure that led to the fall of Troy. It must all have been very irritating for her.

I became aware that the young planner was getting a little frustrated herself. She knew she was right. And she couldn’t understand why her colleagues didn’t see what was just so very obvious to her. I had to take her to one side and explain: it’s not enough to be right; you need to persuade others that you are right.

This is not an uncommon problem. On any given working day, one encounters many intelligent people equipped with their own right answers. Being intelligent, or even being right, does not guarantee any kind of success.

We work in the persuasion business. And before we can begin to persuade consumers, we need to persuade each other. Often the people that thrive in our industry are just very good at getting people on board with an idea, building a shared argument, evolving its articulation, accommodating other points of view. They mould a plan until they have built consensus and momentum. Persuasion is an art which is every bit as precious as the analysis and creativity that we so often celebrate.

Persuasion begins, of course, with a distinctive personal gift: charisma. Most people are persuaded because they are charmed by the persuader.

Persuasion is also a two-way process. You’ll never persuade anyone if you don’t listen to them: listen to their ideas, to their responses, to what they don’t say as well as to what they do. As Robert Mitchum says in the definitive film noir, Out of the Past, “I never found out much listening to myself.”

And persuasion is much more difficult when it seeks to establish absolute, definitive truth. In John’s Gospel, Jesus is brought before Pontius Pilate and interrogated. He tells Pilate that: “Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” Pilate simply replies: “What is truth?” It’s a fabulously elusive response. Is Pilate genuinely inquisitive, sceptical, cynical or just world-weary?

Perhaps part of the young planner’s problem was that she believed there was only one answer, that there was only one truth. In fact, in communications at least, there are many answers, many truths. The challenge is to find an answer that everyone, colleagues, clients and consumers alike, can agree on.

Inevitably, Cassandra suffered a wretched end. Hauled off to Mycenae as a spoil of war by the victorious Greek King Agamemnon, she was murdered by Agamemnon’s resentful wife and her lover. I’m happy to report that things turned out a little more favourably for the young planner. Many years after she left BBH, I discovered that she had settled in the States and established herself on a very successful career in strategy. She knew she’d been right all along.

First published: YCN Magazine 08/12/2014  

No. 28

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Watching You Watching Me

Photo: Marina Coric

'I've been watching you watching me.
I've been liking you baby liking me.'
David Grant, Watching You, Watching Me

Have you seen Gogglebox on Channel 4? The TV show where you can watch people watching TV. It's a kind of real life Royle Family and further proof that pop culture will eat itself. It's also my guilty pleasure. 

In Gogglebox we observe the British public commentating on random encounters with the previous week's TV schedule. We see them at their most relaxed, in the comfort of their own homes, in their own Eziglide recliners, eating their own favourite takeaways, with their own infuriating families. It's reassuring, exasperating, entertaining. People are funny, stupid, clever, eccentric, absurd. All at the same time.

'He's lost weight hasn't he? Or has he put it on?'

Many years ago Weiden's brilliant creative leaders, Kim and Tony, worked at BBH. Tony had a habit of rejecting ideas because they were 'too ad-y'. 'But Tony', we cried, 'we are planning to make an advertisement.' Of course we knew what he meant.  So much commercial communication inhabits an unreal world of staged conversation and telegraphed gags. Speech patterns are pedestrian, contexts are cliched. Sometimes it feels like we're creating an industrial strength tribute to Terry and June.

It takes considerable observational skill to capture people as they truly are, rather than how they should or could be. Harold Pinter was often mocked for his pauses, but real speech, like real people, is often hesitant and flawed. And authenticity is worth working at. Because when it comes to ad effectiveness I've consistently found that truth is stronger than fiction. 

I went to the Frieze Art Fair last week. An opportunity to survey the cool, moneyed mavens of the global cultural elite. The opposite end of the social spectrum to the stars of Gogglebox perhaps, but if you like looking at people all demographics offer interest. And, whisper it quietly, there may be more pleasure to be had examining the people than the art.

Of course it's rude to stare and more difficult than you might think properly to observe the culture that surrounds us. One of the reasons I enjoy going to the theatre is the chance if affords  to regard other people directly without fear of causing offence. Sometimes when the lights are down I like to turn from the stage and stare at the rapt expressions of the audience around me. It's curiously intimate...

This week we launched the BBH School of Ideas, a one year apprenticeship leading to a full-time job in Strategy or Team Management. Inevitably we'll be seeking people with a flair for ideas, that can solve problems, that can bring diverse experiences and skills to our business. But we'll also be looking for candidates who are observant, who delight in the quirks and inconsistencies of ordinary folk.

I guess we'll be looking for people who like people. It's a shame to have to say it, but this is not a business for misanthropes.

No. 27

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Leadership and the Amplified Self

         Alexander Rodchenko photomontage, 1924

In the twilight of my Agency career I was asked to articulate my personal understanding of leadership. When I applied myself to the task I realized that, although I’d worked with many compelling CEOs, ECDs, Directors and so forth - and I had myself held some positions of responsibility - I didn’t really have a theory of leadership.

I determined to consider the characteristics of the leaders I’d worked with that I most admired. Surely if I gave due thought to their particular skills and personalities, some consistent themes and patterns would emerge.

First there was the Visionary. He was ardent, emotional and instinctive. He could see the future, and colleagues wanted to join him there. Then there was the Competitor. He was pugnacious, robust and strong. He created a culture of constant improvement and success. Then there was the Motivator, who made all her teams feel special and want to belong. Then there was the Puppet Master, who avoided the spotlight, and elegantly managed her critical relationships behind the scenes. There was the Problem Solver, who had an indifference to rhetoric and a passion for practicality. And finally the Philosopher King. He simply thought more profoundly about Clients, markets and brands than anyone else.

As I pondered my models of great leadership, I was quite struck by the fact that they had so little in common with one another. I considered creating a compendium of leadership skills: Vision, Competitiveness, Motivation, Relationship Management, Practicality and Wisdom. I could perhaps suggest that any aspirant leader exhibits all of these qualities.

But then I realized that none of my real life leaders had all of these skills. None was in any way a perfect paradigm. Indeed each of them was flawed, often in very engaging ways.

As I considered this conundrum, I understood that there was one thing that all my model leaders had in common. Their leadership style was consistently an extension of their own strong, distinctive personalities. The Visionary was indeed a passionate person; the Competitor was a sportsman to the core; the Puppet Master just couldn’t help but be charming. And so forth.

These leaders were authentic. But, critically, they were also larger than life. Their very real virtues had found a louder voice, a larger stage. They were hyperboles of themselves if you like.

This analysis has led me to some relatively straightforward advice for the aspirant leader. Don’t seek to be someone else, or indeed everyone else. As Oscar Wilde observed: ‘Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.’

Rather, you need to establish what you’re good at, and do it in a bigger, bolder way. Because leadership, in my opinion, is The Amplified Self.

And yet this is easier said than done. ‘Know thyself’ was inscribed above the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. It was a resonant maxim precisely because self-knowledge is so difficult to attain.

So some soul searching is in order. And you may find it worth enlisting the help of your dearest friends and closest colleagues. What are you like at your best? What sets you apart? What makes you you? Look in the mirror. Isolate your truest strengths. And turn those strengths up to eleven.

If you think you have the charisma, stamina, vision and appetite to lead, don’t spend your time reading the textbooks, mimicking your predecessor, emulating your hero. Don’t be someone else’s shadow, their pale imitation. Don’t try to be someone you’re not.

If you want to be a leader, be your own Amplified Self.

A version of this piece was first published in: BBH LABS 28 /07/2014

No. 26

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The Man That Didn’t Blink

Albert Paris von Gutersloh by Egon Schiele

I knew a man who never blinked. It was quite discomfiting. I’d not considered blinking that important until confronted with its absence. This chap just seemed a bit odd, a little lacking in emotion. Was he perhaps an android? When talking to him I couldn’t avoid the impression that he was unnaturally certain of his own opinions. And that that blind certainty was what I was finding unattractive. I realised that, whilst I like the self-assured, absolute certainty can be troubling, alienating, disturbing.

I guess that’s why I’ve always responded better to leaders who, though boundlessly confident, exhibit a sensitivity to risk and doubt, a consciousness of paths not taken. I’m rarely convinced by absolute conviction.

For similar reasons I feel certainty in advertising has always been fool’s gold. Claude Hopkins wrote Advertising Science back in the 1920s. And science has given us analytical tools and techniques that have dramatically enhanced our understanding of consumers and our ability to communicate effectively. But, however much we may wish it, science has never given us certainty.

I recently attended a stage adaptation of the great Henry Fonda movie, 12 Angry Men. At its heart it’s a celebration of reasonable doubt, and an indictment of the unreasonable certainty that so many people carry around with them. I was struck by the idea that reasonable doubt is a force for good in society. Because life is an ongoing navigation of trade-offs, dilemmas and contrary preferences. Life isn’t about certainty.

In our business I’ve seen how, many a time and oft’, the quest for unreasonable certainty has actually fostered doubt and indecision. The pursuit of total proof can close windows of opportunity and analysis paralysis can inhibit bold leaps forward.

Recently we have all been redesigning the marketing model. We have embraced the vision of a customer engagement system that is more connected, more targeted, more knowing and less wasteful. Something that learns, creates, adapts and distributes in real time. But we should not imagine that any new model will deliver unreasonable certainty. All models need ideas to animate them. And the best ideas occur at the intersection of logic and magic, at the meeting point of rationality and emotion.

What is exciting about the modern age of marketing is the opportunity it affords us to explore this happy interaction between art and science. At BBH we’ve been talking a lot about High Performance Creativity. We believe that technology enables a more intimate relationship between creativity and performance, and that that intimacy will generate better, more effective work. We believe that data should not just be big; it should be strategically insightful and creatively inspiring. We believe that performance measures should not be backward looking proofs, but live, forward-facing guides. We believe that, while High Performance Creativity cannot promise certainty, it can deliver incredible potency.

I’m reasonably certain about this.

First published: BBH LABS 30/05/2014

No. 25

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When Everyone Talks and No-One Listens

It’s often said of the characters in Anton Chekhov’s plays that ‘everyone talks, but no one listens.’ The cast of feckless aristocrats inhabit a troubled world of melancholy, loss and ennui. They speak endlessly at each other of their dreams and disappointments, but they rarely pause to listen. Their relationships seem compromised by their own emotional deafness, their solipsism. They live lives of empty chat and listless languor, punctuated only by another trip to the samovar.

I wonder has the world of brand marketing something in common with Chekhov’s? Could modern brands be accused of speaking without listening? Talking loud, but saying nothing? Always on project, never on receive? Do they sometimes come across as egocentric and emotionally needy?

Sign up, sign in, sign on. Check in, check out. Like me, friend me, share me. Blipp me, bookmark me. Rate me, recommend me. QR code me. Upload me, download me. Facebook me, fan me. Tweet me, re-tweet me. Hashtag why?

There’s a tremendous assumption in much current marketing that consumers have infinite time and attention to dedicate to brands, regardless of the category they represent or the content they serve up for them. With a wealth of new media channels available to us, it’s often easy to confuse talking with conversation, to mistake interaction for a relationship. And as long ago as the nineteenth century the writer HD Thoreau was observing,’We have more and more ways to communicate, but less and less to say.’

In my experience strong relationships tend to start with a little humility and self knowledge. The best advice for brands seeking a relationship might be: don’t talk too much and only talk when you have something to say.
 
But can contemporary brands really be accused of not listening? Surely all serious players nowadays manage substantial research and insight programmes. Surely we’re endlessly soliciting feedback, measurement and learning?

Well, yes, but are brands engaged in the right kind of listening?

To my mind much of modern research practice could be deemed ‘submissive listening’. ’Hello. What do you think of me? What do you think of how I look and what I do?  How would you like me to behave? Do you like what I’m planning to say to you? What would you like me to say?’

Is this the stuff of a healthy relationship? Surely brands’ engagement with consumers should begin from a position of equality and mutual respect, not submission and deference.

You’re equal but different. 
You’re equal but different
It’s obvious.
So obvious.

Au Pairs, It’s Obvious.

We could also categorise much of our research  as ‘reflective listening’: recording what people say, wear, like and do, so that brands can play it back later to them in communication. There’s an underlying assumption that consumers empathise with brands that share their values and outlook on life. I’m sure they do. But one man’s insight is another man’s cliche. And reflective listening, interpreted literally, often produces communication that is curiously unrewarding. Because dialogue is more than elegant repetition and relationships are more than an exercise in mimicry.

Surely listening and talking should exist in close proximity and dynamic relation to each other. It’s called a conversation. And you’ll find spontaneous, instinctive, organic conversations at the heart of any healthy, happy relationship.

Of course, the hyper-connected, real time world of the social web affords us an opportunity. It’s the opportunity to demolish the distance between listening and talking; to inspire conversations between brands and consumers; and thereby to create vibrant, enduring, sustainable relationships. It’s now possible for listening to drive brands’ thought and action, tempo and timing and we we should all be striving to put it back at the centre of our communication models.

There is, nonetheless, a nightmare scenario. What if brands continue to propel their mindless chatter through the infinite arteries of the electronic age, without respecting our audience’s limited time and attention? What if our attempts to listen continue to betray a submissive and reflective orientation towards consumers?

At the end of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, twenty year old Irina decides to give up on love before love gives up on her.

'I’ve never loved anyone. I dreamed about it for a very long time – day and night – but my heart is like a piano that’s been locked up and the key is lost.'

It’s one of the saddest lines in theatre. I worry that if we don’t start listening properly to consumers, then consumers will stop listening to us.

First Published in Hall & Partners magazine, Matters.

No. 24

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