Life used to be simpler, didn’t it? We could fix our own cars and milkshakes really had milk in them and content providers could generate revenues from content that people were interested in.
A good writer could publish a book that people would pay for. A band could write a hit song and make money without going on tour. Newspapers could break news (even if it was a day or a week or a month later than the event) and the public would snap it up on a daily basis to remain informed about their community, country and world.
Yes, there were issues of content control and distribution and there was a lack of choice for consumers… but good content seemed to “work” because people paid for information and services and entertainment, and that helped ensure that the pipeline for those things would remain full.
The Internet has brought many changes in our lives and how things work, and it has, essentially, broken this “pay for value” system. Users now log onto the Web with their computer and their browser and they expect to get everything. For free. Google can find it, right? And if it’s behind one of the few bastions of “premium content” (think: ESPN Insider or the Wall Street Journal Professional Edition) a user only needs to know where to look to find the content she wants copied-and-pasted into a free form.
Content providers—from newspapers to music studios to television networks—know that once something is online, it’s everywhere. If Google doesn’t distribute it, something (or someone) else will. Rupert Murdoch has said, “free is too expensive” and reportedly plans to bring News Corporation content behind paywalls, and although I enjoy free stuff as much as the next guy, I can’t say I blame him. Banner ads don’t generate enough revenue to support the infrastructure of major organizations, and without that infrastructure, News Corp can’t make content.
A paywall won’t fix everything, even if it does cut Google off at the knees in terms of piggybacking on the content others provide. The content will still be out there, and content providers will be in a running battle with aggregators to capture the eyes (and wallets) of users. Users who expect to get on their browser and get stuff for free.
News Corp and other content providers technically have another option: create applications that act like browsers but are more locked-down. Take the Wall Street Journal off of the “Web” and only stream information to those who subscribe to it using a special News Corp app. I say it’s “technically” possible because it is unlikely to work since goes against the grain of current personal computer use and trends.
The whole personal computer has gravitated towards browsers as the hub. The traditional World Wide Web is the clearest example, but Microsoft and Google and Facebook and a host of other companies are all about creating applications that supplant conventional desktop applications.
So… are content providers toast? Are users doomed to a universe of state-subsidized and/or user generate content?
Not necessarily.
Look at the iPhone and other app-based smartphones. Users’ expectations there are markedly different than on laptops or desktop computers. Sure, they want to be able to hit up the Web, but they also are willing to purchase and use applications that are alternate data clients… ways to get content outside of a conventional browser.
The iPhone is limited, of course. Not many people are going to want to read the Wall Street Journal from front to back on a 3.5 inch screen.
But what about an Apple Tablet? Or Microsoft Courier? More pixels. Easier for those of us with fat fingers or particularly bad manual dexterity.
It also, even if it has a browser, will not have the “baggage” (from the perspective of content providers) associated with personal computers: that everything is free in a browser if you look hard enough.
Imagine Time, Inc. making a Sports Illustrated app, where a user pays for a year’s worth of content up front, or authorizes a weekly or monthly payment. Without knowing its exact strategy, it seems clear based on this demo that SI is already thinking this way.
For users it might seem a step back. It might seem like the Web except not for free (like the bad ol’ days of AOL). But it might turn out to be a great thing. Content providers that can provide content in a more controlled environment should be more willing to generate and distribute superior content because they will generate revenue from its consumption.
Yes, it might be a great thing. It might be the salvation of media as we know it without disrupting the social media/conversational Web that we have come to know and expect.
Everyone likes their privacy, right? None of us want people peeking in our windows at home, watching us. Orwell gave us nightmares of the government watching us through our televisions.
As technology has advanced and so many of us have given more and more information (from names and addresses to credit card information), technology has also started to gather information about us that we don’t explicitly offer. Safeway knows when I buy bread but not milk, and they know how much more likely I am to purchase milk when they put bread on sale. Amazon knows enough about my preferences to make recommendations in music and books based on purchases and what I’ve viewed. Google knows what I search for and where I’ve been online.
Of course, I know they know. But do I know how much they know? And does it matter to me if I do?
Google has become not just dominant (in that it’s the search engine used almost 70% of the time) but pervasive. Google ads, powered by Google AdWords, are on seemingly every site. Google Analytics ties into Google AdSense, letting Web sites optimize and monetize. And the visitor sees ads that she actually is interested in, ideally, because of the use of data collected by Google about the user.
If we ignore privacy as a concern, it’s a pretty good deal. A win-win-win for users, content providers and advertisers.
But we like our privacy, right? Are we afraid of what they know, or afraid of not knowing what they know?
Google has to make sure that there’s no huge backlash against its market share, and it has come out with the Google Dashboard, which allows users to monitor settings and see what Google knows about them across its myriad of services (including YouTube, Google Docs, and others).
Is it enough? Is it too much? Will we even care enough to use Google Dashboard?
I’m often accused of seeing patterns in things that other people think are insignificant. I’m a collector and an organizer, I guess my brain just groups things. So naturally, I’m a little timid in presenting another pattern, but I think this time you might agree that there is something going on here. Maybe this is a national trend, or maybe just local to Seattle… I’m seeing an awful lot of retro-ish crests out there - specifically hexagons even. I’m not criticizing - just observing - for whatever it’s worth.
All of these businesses are in the greater Seattle Area, the farthest away being Custom Garage Interiors, which is just outside Issaquah. Two of them are within a block of each other in Ballard. Two are within a block of each other on Capitol Hill, two of them have “Garage” in the name, and two of them are just about gosh-dang nearly identical to each other. That’s OK. I doubt any of these people are claiming to have invented the hexagon. And I actually like the aesthetic quite a bit. Please don’t misunderstand. That old-fashioned made-in-America, brass-plate-bolted-to-a-cast-iron-stamping-machine-or-whatever look is pretty cool. Strong. Classic. Timeless. Great. But maybe could we just spread ‘em out a little bit?
In an effort to protect the official sponsors of the Olympic Games from competition by non-sponsored brands, Beijing is taking the International Olympic Committee (IOC) sponsorship-protection practices to new extremes. According to this WSJ.com article, it’s consistent with IOC rules to hide prominent logos belonging to a sponsor’s major competitor. But enforcers in Beijing have gone so far as to apply tape across virtually any logo in any place, whether it belongs to a sponsor competitor or not. Wandering through the Olympic grounds you’ll see pieces of white tape on elevator button plates, fire alarms and even toilets. There’s even an official tape replacement squad to ensure that any piece of tape gone astray is quickly replaced. Which points to the fact that these pieces of tape do tend to “go astray”.
There may be no better way to draw attention to an inconspicuous graphic than to cover it with an out-of-place bit of masking tape. Would a similar campaign actually be an effective guerilla-marketing tactic to promote your brand?
A short history of revelation
“Eureka!” This is the exclamation Archimedes shouted while running through the streets naked. He’d just invented a method for measuring the volume of an object through water displacement. A new gold crown had been made for King Hiero II, and Archimedes was tasked with determining if the crown was solid gold. Archimedes had to measure the crown’s density without damaging it in the process. While taking a bath, Archimedes noticed that the water level rose as he got in. He then realized submerging an object in water displaces an amount of water equal to its own volume. Dividing the weight of the crown by the volume of water displaced would yield its density—which would be lower if silver or other lighter alloys were present. Archimedes was so excited by this inspiration that he didn’t bother getting dressed for his celebration.
Another popular story claims that an apple falling from a tree inspired Sir Isaac Newton’s theory of universal gravitation. Seeing the apple fall, Newton contemplated that gravity extended so far from Earth that it was also responsible for holding the moon in its orbit. That’s a big idea. These famous anecdotes have become symbols of inspiration, and reminders that big thinking is hard to schedule. That is, the best ideas don’t always occur when we ask them to occur. Bathtub revelations and fruit-inspired contemplations show us that a relaxed and receptive mind is more likely to generate the best ideas. For the modern thinker, thoughts in the shower and bar-napkin sketches testify to this truth. But what if Archimedes or Newton had been on a deadline?
This is the problem facing creative firms. The best creative firms are essentially in the business of ideas. They’re primarily hired to develop concepts that move their clients’ businesses forward, and how those concepts are realized—advertising, marketing collateral, branded events, etc.—is secondary. So a creative firm is really only as good as its ideas. Put this reality into the context of modern industry, where the pace is faster and faster, and schedules for getting products to market or launching a new marketing campaign don’t include a lot of time for walks in the orchard or taking leisurely baths. This means a creative firm is only as good as its ideas—and thus only as good as its ability to generate those ideas on a deadline. Outside of installing showers in every office (which, actually, is not a terrible idea), what’s a firm to do?
Better ways to brainstorm
Archimedes and Newton showed us that the best ideas happen when you 1) put yourself in a position to receive new information that helps you think about something in a different way or 2) create a different way of brainstorming so you come up with something new. And yet here’s a dirty industry secret I’ve said before: most brainstorms don’t work. Why? There’s still a tendency to put “brainstorm” on the calendar, show up with pen and paper and hope for the best. This rarely works. Coming up with breakthrough ideas—especially on the clock—requires a more thoughtful approach to how we brainstorm. Put another way, you get out what you put in. Sitting in a conference room with blank whiteboards and blank pads of paper isn’t really putting much in, so it’s no surprise not much comes out. No matter what industry you’re in, here are three easy ways to get more out of brainstorms by being more thoughtful in how you approach them.
1) Structure the brainstorm. Kicking off the meeting with “Okay, tell me your good ideas” puts too much pressure on thinkers and not enough faith in process. Liberate participants from having to generate concepts on the fly by creating exercises that encourage unexpected ways of thinking about the challenge. For a project last year, we built a brainstorm around an unusual question: what are the bad ideas? This sounds counterproductive, but it worked. One of those “bad” ideas eventually inspired the big idea. And we never would have arrived there without approaching the brainstorm in a different way. Email me and I’d be happy to provide a playbook of these kinds of exercises that we continually evolve.
2) Invite different people. Ever notice how one guest can take a dinner party conversation in a whole new direction? The same holds true for brainstorms. When the premium is on new ideas and unique perspectives, adding new participants with unique perspectives is a sure-fire way to put everyone in contact with unexpected information. If you’re a creative firm, invite your clients. If you’re a client, invite your creative firm. Look up an academic luminary on the subject at a nearby university and invite them (even if it means paying them an honorarium). Or, recruit a member of the target audience and invite them. New people = new ideas.
3) Go somewhere. Archimedes went to the bath. Newton went to the orchard. Franklin flew a kite in a lightning storm. Albert Einstein said, “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” And how many times have you heard someone say something akin to “Think outside the box” when they’re in one (read: building). This is all to say: go somewhere other than that beige, windowless room with those smelly whiteboard markers. Go outside. Go where you can see the target audience. Go to a museum. Rent an inspirational space, perhaps an artist’s studio. Take your brainstorm on the road. Take it on the ferry, with a quick stop for lunch on the other side. The simple act of moving the brainstorm beyond the same-old conference room sends an important signal to participants that the status quo has got to go. And a new setting stimulates thinking. Remember how energized you felt when your college professor took the discussion to the lawn on spring days? Remember how much you loved field trips in grade school. Those feelings still apply and they do wonders for your brain.
From setting the stage for unexpected thinking to simply changing the setting, you can create better ideas by developing better ways of getting to those ideas.
A short history of transparency
The restaurants George Orwell described in his 1933 novel Down and Out in Paris and London were not places you’d want diners to see. A wall separated the dining room’s calm ambience from the chaotic grime of the “cold, filthy kitchen.” Architecturally, the wall between these two interconnected worlds was a good thing, and important for both sides. For the restaurant, it concealed the ugly frenzy behind the scenes. For the diners, it preserved a shinier belief in what they were buying.
The model that Orwell experienced persisted for six more decades before restaurateurs and their architects in the early 1990s—mostly in the Bay Area—did something unexpected: they brought the “back of house” front and center, putting chefs and line cooks on display to diners. This was done primarily as a means of demonstrating spotless kitchens and the use of fresh ingredients. Arguably, this design decision also set the table for the celebrity chef craze that began shortly thereafter. With open kitchens, chefs and their staffs were transformed from obsessed, cantankerous artisans to obsessed, cantankerous, celebrity artisans. But more importantly, making kitchens and patrons visible to one another created a transparency that enriched the experience on both sides of the now-non-existent wall. Chefs got better visibility into the dining room, providing an instant feedback loop. Diners got better visibility into the kitchen, seeing firsthand the collaboration, technical skill and artistic inspiration responsible for their gastronomic experience. The “culinary arts” were finally on display to its patrons. Seeing the kitchen enriched the eating experience in the same way seeing a symphony orchestra enriches the listening experience.
It’s important to distinguish the kind of transparency at play in restaurants with the transparency between corporations and shareholders legislated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act after the Enron, WorldCom and other accounting scandals. Transparency that is inspired by the idea of mutually enriching an experience is different than transparency focused on proving integrity. Sarbanes-Oxley dictates how and what public companies communicate to shareholders. Similarly, many car dealers love to tout customer access to “dealer invoices” as a measure of their transparency. This is totally different than the kind of transparency open kitchens deliver. As an example, one equivalent of Sarbanes-Oxley for restaurants would be to disclose department of health inspection reports in the back of the menu. Whether or not that’s a good idea, open kitchens are inspired by a desire to enrich the experience, not prove their adherence to the most basic disclosure requirements.
At the same time, while transparency for the sake of disclosure and compliance is different than transparency that enriches the experience, they do have something in common. For each, a lack of transparency has a cost. Enron shareholders were kept in the dark and ended up losing their money. Restaurant diners were missing out on the joys of seeing chefs at work creatively. They are different kinds of costs, but costs all the same.
A more transparent creative process
Within the client-agency relationship, a creative process that isn’t transparent also has costs. Put in the simplest terms, these costs are:
- Time and Productivity: Without a transparent creative process, agencies can head down the wrong path. This happens frequently. Ultimately, this lost time makes for longer project durations—time that could’ve been spent doing something else.
- Expense: More time equals more money. Plus, late deliverables can make clients late to market, a direct hit to revenue.
- What Could’ve Been: Is a great idea a great idea if no one knows about it? For clients and agencies alike, a lack of transparency means they will never know what could’ve been. If the client had shared that key perspective before an agency brainstorm, what inspiration would’ve followed? And what would’ve happened if the client had seen the idea that the agency eventually abandoned? Neither of them will ever know, and that’s a painful cost.
So how can clients avoid paying these costs? There are three easy steps clients can take with their agencies to inspire a more transparent creative process.
1) Invite yourself to brainstorms. The traditional model for the client-agency relationship calls for the client to brief the agency, the agency to retreat to their headquarters for several weeks, and then the agency to return to the client with brilliant new ideas. But why wouldn’t the client be involved in the brainstorms where those ideas are born? They know their business best. Plus, they’re thinkers, too, and have plenty of good ideas and bad ideas—just like the agency team. All the reasons for having the client in the brainstorms are about enriching the creative process. And all the reasons for not having the client in the brainstorms are about an agency’s insecurities. So invite yourself.
2) Eliminate all the big reveals. Agencies are addicted to the big reveal—the rush that comes from unveiling new ideas the client has never seen before. A big part of this rush comes from how dangerous it feels. Clients will be thrilled, or clients will be unhappy. But the risk of unhappy clients isn’t the biggest danger in a big-reveal approach. It’s time and expense. Why would either the client or the agency invest so much of a project’s schedule and scope in a leap of faith that the agency has it right? Instead, clients should insert more frequent “small reveals” by the agency throughout the process. It may steal thunder from the big ta-da, but it will ensure a more successful outcome for everyone.
3) Join the critique early. After initial brainstorms, most agencies set out to sketching lots and lots of ideas in rough form. This is true across all sorts of deliverables, from brand positioning statements and taglines to logos and advertising concepts. Most clients end up seeing a fraction of the initial output and, instead, are presented with the magical “3-5 directions” outlined in the scope of work. Why? What if the agency leaves behind a really good idea in favor of investing too much time refining an idea a client would have killed from the start? Clients should join the earliest critiques, offering their guidance when it arguably matters the most. Agencies will feel vulnerable about showing ideas without their normal client-facing polish and drama, but joining the critique early on will save clients and agencies time and further the best ideas.
This post first appeared in Think About This, our quarterly email dispatch focused on new thinking. Subscribe to Think About This.
