In the agency world, its a word you hear a lot. In a consumer centric world it's what you NEED to be relevant to a collaborative audience. For me it's a word I hear misused a lot.
The dictionary defines it as: penetrating mental vision or discernment; faculty of seeinginto inner character or underlying truth.
In psychological terms it is: an understanding of relationships that sheds light on orhelps solve a problem.
For those of us who create innovations, conversations and stories for on behalf of brands for people it means:
A single human truth that motivates behavior.
In a big data world creating impact starts with synthesizing down to a single insight that inspires an idea and provokes an action.
The next time you sell an idea remember you only need truth to create an audacious provocation that could change the world.
I love spring! Not just because it symbolizes a re-birth each year, but because it's a run up to the best internet & mobile shows. First up, Internet Week which runs from May 14 to May 21. I will be there from the opening party to the closing ceremonies.
As many of your know, over the years, I have demonstrated that all media is social with the right idea. Now it's time to discuss the greater ramifications of this to the brand world and the agency business.
Given that all customers are digital & social -- now the day of the Digital & Social AOR is quickly dying and all agencies are expected to be digital. From media planning to creative the game has completely changed new agency models are winning big business with Transmedia story telling and hard core business results. When the old ways begin to give way to something yet to be imagined, we have a choice. Live in the past or get down to the business of imaging the future. What will you do and how will you organize around your the brands you represent in this new post digital age??
Then if your really a cool cat you will get others to vote too. Help us spread the word by dropping a line (preferably this one: Help us #MakeTheStage at this years @InternetWeek. Vote thumbs up for The Post-Digital Age at http://shar.es/rbWQY ) to your subscribers, friends and followers to vote for The Post-Digital Age at http://shar.es/rbWQY on facebook, twitter, tumblr or what ever platform fits your fancy.
I look forward to seeing you all there - I'll be the one wearing sunglasses inside.
"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." - Harold R. McAlindon
Over the last few days, I have sat in a number of business meetings with fortune 500 marketers who all seem to have the same problem. There is a huge data conundrum. Everyone of them spoke of the large agency partners having either too little of an understanding of their data across all channels or that their digital & direct agencies who were in analysis paralysis and could not produce assets that met the data and technology demands of the new mediums. (Often referred to as perishable assets.) Now that we are in post-digital era where people and our customers leave digital finger prints behind on everything they touch, why have the people who are supposed to be experts at the customers not figured out how to deliver new value to the Post-Digital client?
One of my early mentors, Marc Beeching once said, "The best stories are like a great piece of music. They have a beginning, middle and an end. Sometimes you have to decide which pieces go where" I think that analogy holds true for the data conundrum brands are in.
Much of the Industrial Age and the Information Ages required focus and specialization. But as white collar work has gotten routed to Asia and reduced to software, there is a new premium on the opposite aptitude: putting the pieces together, or what I call a Symphony. What is in greatest demand today isn't more analysis, but synthesis-- seeing the big picture, crossing boundaries and being able to combine disparate pieces in to an arresting new whole.
For marketing & brand leaders and digital & traditional agencies alike who do not wish to follow their competitors down a path to a commoditized value exchange -- which is the typical path that many continue to travel -- They have a choice. Live in the past or get down to imagining and forging a new trail to the profitable future.
I have quickly found that you must marry your creative skill sets to a vastly uncomfortable place to survive. Dare I say "Data Synthesis". As a creative leader you must act like a composer or a great conductor (my favorite is Gustavo Dudamel) . Ask yourselves which symphony will you write for your brand or clients? Will it tell a story? Will it have empathy? What meaning will it carry? How will it be designed?
Next time your clients or potential clients ask you to show them your value -- create a symphony.
Your audience will listen and remember you.
Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
The notion of taking action without conviction defies the conventional wisdom to think before you act. The truth is, creativity isn't about wild talent as much is it is about getting things done. To find a few ideas that work you need to try a lot that don't. I have found that waiting builds apathy and increases the likelihood that another idea will capture you clients’ energy.
Additionally, I have also found that if you build lots of conviction after much analysis, it might leave you too deeply committed to a single plan of action and unable to change course when necessary. Taking action helps expose whether we are on the right or wrong path more quickly and more definitely than pure contemplation ever could.
Whether you work with a team or alone I implore you to make a commitment to early action—with conviction -- that will help your ideas materialize.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken was the inpiration behind my Making Ideas Work session. What is the road you have taken? While the tendency to generate ideas is rather natural, the path to making them happen is tumultous. When was the last time you fought to create your ideas or work?
Have you taken a calcutaed risk lately? Success comes from taking calculated risks and either achieving your goals or learning from setbacks. Risk-taking indicates that you have confidence in your ability to succeed but also accept the possibility of failure because mistakes are a fact of life. Even if you fail, risks can often be considered a “success” if you learn from the experience and resolve to do better the next time.
Coming up with an idea is not a risk -- actually making an idea it happen is. In the end, the only people who fail are those who do not try. I challenge you to try!
I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
With every passing day, the benefit of social listening and data becomes more engrained in how we determine where we reach and market to people.
If you use social listening to identify marketing insights and innovations, you know the power of the outputs. More than conversations, the data provides us knowledge of where those conversations are taking place. We can also determine the volume of conversations as well as the influence of the people having those conversations at a particular URL. That data combined with public traffic records now gives media planners the ability to pinpoint where their customers are engaged with content.
The power of this data and knowledge can guide higher performing media plans.
Surprisingly, most media planners and buyers use antiquated methods to plan and purchase media. Today, media buying companies rely on publishers to supply them with traffic stats and standard demographic data. These are typically combined with third party reporting tools from firms like ComScore.
Given the power of data @substancenyc is extrapolating out of our social listening exercises we decided to test a new way of building media plans. Instead of using traditional methods of media planning we used our social listening tools to identify high volume conversations & influencer data to create a media plan that allowed our branded content to reach our target.
First we used social data to identify the right kind of customer. Then we created a keyword list for our social listening tools to listen for. After that, we created an algorithm to extrapolate relevant conversations. Once we identified the relevant conversations, we wrapped a volume metric around the URLs & places those conversations were talking place. Once that was achieved we used a tools to identify the number of social influencers having the conversations. Using the outputs of these simple exercises we created transmedia plan that effectively told our brand story.
How did we know this was going to outperform a traditional plan?
We tested it. We tested a traditionally built plan against a social data guided plan. The result, the social data plan out performed the traditional plan by 19%. The social data plan had more reach and conversion than the traditional plan.
This test has transformed the way we are going to market for our clients.
What are you doing today that could change the way we do business tomorrow? Let us know @substancenyc.
Sheryl Sandberg, the COO at Facebook gave this talk at Ted Women called “Why we have too few women leaders.” She refers to women in all industries and it made me think specifically about the advertising industry. But, the good news is that there are people in advertising who are working on changing the ratio and I’d like to help them spread the word.
Sandberg points out that women aren’t making it to the top of any profession anywhere in the world. In the corporate world, 15-18% are female leaders.
So, how do we fix this? Sandberg makes 3 suggestions:
1. Sit at the table – women tend to underestimate their own abilities and don’t negotiate well for themselves in the workplace. She cites a study where 57% of the male college graduates, entering the workforce negotiated their first salary, while only 7% of women did. Women also tend not to promote themselves well. (More on this later)
2. Make your partner a real partner — In our culture, women are still expected to carry more of the childrearing duties. When a woman and man both work full time, the woman does twice the amount of housework and three times the amount of childcare. We have to work on changing this. Studies show that couples that split the duties have half the divorce rate.
3. Don’t leave before you leave — Actions that women take to help them stay in the workforce, end up making them leave. From the moment a woman starts thinking about having a child, she starts to hold back. She doesn’t raise her hand to be put on that big pitch or even for a promotion. We all have to start paying attention to these things or nothing will change.
What can we do? Farrah Bostic, a VP, Group Planning Director at Digitas is doing something about it. She has started alist of women leaders in advertisingon her site, Pretty Little Head. The idea stemmed from a conversation that she and Edward Boches, the Chief Innovation Officer at Mullenhad onTwitter about the lack of women leaders in advertising. She then wrote a post called Time to #changetheratio in Adland, too. Once you get to her site there’s plenty to read about this topic and be sure to check out the list of female leaders. If you see someone missing, including yourself, just email her. It’s pretty amazing to watch the list grow by the day.
There are a lot of women leaders out there! But why don’t we already know this? Why, in 2011, does it require a list? Farrah talks about how women are not great self-promoters and that’s a very large part of this. Farrah talks about this here and refers to a Clay Shirkey post called A Rant About Women. His “rant” is about his concern that women don’t have what it takes to be the self-aggrandizing jerks, that men are capable of being, to get ahead. If this gets a rise out of you, read the article. It’s interesting.
Lists like the following (that I also got from Farrah’s site) will be very helpful to those who want to hire more female leaders. Not just for the sake of hiring a female, but to broaden the pool of who you’re considering. These women are doing great work. They should be on your short list.
If you want to get more people talking about this, and find this information helpful, please share the link on Facebook or Twitter and reblog this (share links below this post).
Do you work in an office environment where many of your co-workers still haven’t grasped the concept of Twitter? These Paper Tweet Pads might be the easiest way to communicate with them, while slowly drilling the site’s purpose into their head—one condescending page at a time.
An agency that uses twitter as it's site. It's an interesting experiment. Only time will tell if this can will sustain the agency core communications. If it does it could be a game changer.
