Get Shouty

The satisfaction we get from buying vacations, bikes for exercise and other experiences starts high and keeps growing. The initial high we feel from acquiring a flashy car or megascreen TV, on the other hand, trails off rather quickly, reports a new Cornell study, “that  shows experiences are better than possessions.”

I’m not really on board with having these two on opposite ends of a scale cause I think that I see people champion the handmade- a manifestation that comes as the result of experience.

Loving this piece by Mark Pollard on Why strategists should make stuff. The experience of making something, of creating something that didn’t exist except in your imagination is good for you and makes you a better person in all kinds of ways.

I’m in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico right now, so creating art is a big part of my day. I’m hanging out with my Dad (see him talking about his work here) and a whole bunch of  artist types who have spent their life making stuff, and  more than stuff, fine art: sculpture.

It brings to mind a bunch of fairly shouty conversations I’ve had with mates over recent creative award wins.*

The conversation started to turn a little with:

When will the industry realise we’re in the [at best] commercial art industry, not just art?!

I’m a big fan of creative, don’t get me wrong. But no-one gets to say ‘just art’ on my watch, or separate out the commercial drive of artists either.

Let’s get this straight: artists eat. Artists make money at what they do, because they make things that people want. I know the stories of Van Gogh and him not selling a painting and all, but widely known artists have patrons, take commissions, sell stuff and make a their living out of their work- or they’re just dabbling. Part of the process is learning how to ‘speak’ to people- how to create desire for the work, for the story.

Art is a  commercial industry.

If the output of advertising delivers neither results nor inspiration- it’s not art. It’s wank.

* (and to be fair, the company I work for Jack Morton Worldwide won a Silver Lion in the Film Craft category at Cannes Lions. Very Proud.  Click here to watch. Love this Fooseball one too ).

 ensconced in a blunt, jet-lagged haze I wound my way through Manhattan’s Central Park to the Museum of Modern Art on 53^rd. , where  I queued for five hours to sit opposite performance artist Marina Abramović. And stare at her.

In total, 1500 New Yorkers have queued – most of them from 4am – for this peculiar experience.  Stacks of people cried, by the way. It was a big, beautiful experience to be in the room.

But this is the thing: in spite of all the mind-boggling options, Manhattanites mostly derive pleasure from brazenly not attending to them.

There are emu eggs out there to buy, but the best stories happen over a pastrami sandwich in a daggy diner. Or on the subway. Or on your stoop. In essence, there’s a focused appreciation for the minutiae of life, for the real moments that happen between people. Options are narrowed (mostly because you have to, to survive the onslaught of choice) and intimate neighbourhoods form (mostly because everyone lives on top of each other, not spread out over suburbs).This intimacy plays out in the press daily. Big news stories can be happening out there. But the most popular New York Times story of the day will be a 3000-word treatise on the dude who changes the light bulbs at Grand Central – what he eats for breakfast, how he spends weekends. In today’s paper there’s a feature story on two misfits who play ping-pong together. No exciting news angle. Just a quaint friendship dissected over 747 words.

But back to the queuing. Manhattanites are notorious for loving a queue. There are 18,696 eateries across the island, but locals queued for hours at the infamous Magnolia Bakery in West Village when it first opened. In the snow. For a damn cupcake. The queue for Shakespeare in the Park tickets each summer have become their own little subculture. People sit in a line all day, making friends and sharing their picnic with strangers, even though there are countless ways you can see live theatre in this city.

Sitting in the staring queue this week I realized this is how New York makes life better.  Why do New Yorkers queue when there are countless other options to be experienced? Because queuing is about being a part of a something. Which is a reminder to us all that beyond the frenzy and excitement of life, mostly we all yearn for realness and intimacy and simplicity.

We all yearn to belong. I tend to find this comforting and exhilarating all at once.

There’s a lot of talk about the kind of skill sets and team structures that are needed T Shaped and Sun Shaped People, and from BBH NY  Voltron:

‘T-shaped people’ – awesome in (at least) one area, plus highly collaborative and at least literate in many other things. So blending both the right skills and the right attitude.

In addition to sketching out why these hybrid people are so important in creating new forms of creative product, I briefly touch upon the importance of the agency implementing the right kind of ’operating system’ (the processes, values and culture within a company) if the fancy new ’software’ is going to run smoothly. If the operating system is outdated, even the most impressive software is redundant. I show, in one slide, an overview of how BBH in New York is approaching the re-engineering of it’s OS.

I can’t help but think that the name ‘t-shaped’ is not something that people might identify themselves with. It doesn’t feel inspirational or aspiration or like a personal goal. And it being a hard angled space it, to me feels like a term that fights against the flow, organic and fluid nature of innovation.

And it’s just another made up word. It needs to be explained. With out the supporting deck it’s obscure and it can’t defend itself with out a chart. Must try harder.

I wonder if we can come up with a naming convention that works a little harder for us- but makes our audience fell like they know what the hell we’re talking about.

Something like this:

“What you need to learn is that being creative is not enough in this business. You have to become technical. Creative people are born creative – you’re lucky. Technical people however can never be creative. Its something they’ll never get. You can’t buy it, find it, study it – you’re born with it. Too many creative people don’t want to learn how to be technical, so what happens? they become dependent on technical people. Become technical, you can learn that. If you’re creative and technical, you’re unstoppable.”

– Robert Rodriguez (via feltron :: roomthily :: ronenreblogs)

I really like that notion of unstoppable. I like that there’s a personal goal there: what you need to do to be unstoppable. I like the promise that this idea might give a team.

I can’t believe that I’m going to argue against the following:

Mr. Ping: The secret ingredient is… nothing!
Po: Huh?
Mr. Ping: You heard me. Nothing! There is no secret ingredient.
Po: Wait, wait… it’s just plain old noodle soup? You don’t add some kind of special sauce or something?
Mr. Ping: Don’t have to. To make something special you just have to believe it’s special.

Because deep down we also know that this just isn’t true:

There is no charge for awesomeness… or attractiveness

That’s where the big bucks are made my friend. Skadoosh.

Presented at the Retail Financial Lending Summit 14th May 2010

If everyone from supermarkets and search engines to phone companies and airlines offer banking services where does this leave banks?

• And what happens when we use less cash, if by 2018 less than half of all transactions will be paid that way?
• And this virtual currency thing- how does that change what a bank is- and what people might want from a bank?
• Australia’s big banks are failing to make the grade according to consumer ratings released by Mozo.com.au
• Yet innovation is coming from direct banks and credit unions.
• And players who have good retail understanding are encroaching on traditional territory.

Might focusing on your brand experience and your customers change the game?

• Zappos is powered by service
• The power of Repeat Customers & Word of Mouth
• Explicit core values that get translated into brand behaviors
• Recruitment is indoctrination into company culture- everyone gets a $2000 offer to leave. 1% take it.
• It sold for $1 billion

Why can’t complex organizations provide great brand experiences?

• Mike’s Hard Lemonade-Barry Schwartz call to defeat process over practical wisdom
• Best Buy’s Geek Squad turns the ordinary business of technology troubleshooting into a customer adventure
• Zip Car innovating the experience of car rental

What’s going on in the branch?

• That customers want to be served face-to-face. If banks are to move beyond acquisition – to retention and to wallet penetration – then they must reinvent the branch from a glorified transaction centre to a product sales and advisory service center.
  • Up to 90% of customer relationships are formed –  and lost – in branches.
  • Banks will not succeed at maintaining and growing customer relationships unless they provide customers with quality sales and service in branches.
• The conundrum of customer centricity, however, is that most customers don’t see banks as providers of advice-based services. This is not surprising given the extent to which branches have been deskilled over the last decade. The perception map shows that banks deliver only on broad knowledge and bright smiles—not what is needed to deepen client relationships.

The reinvented bank

• There has been a lot of excitement recently around the “Gap-ification” of branches—making them look more like retail stores than like stodgy old branches. But a mere face-lift is not enough.
• The Umpqua Bank retail design strategy translated the culture of a small community bank into an integrated brand experience and helped Umpqua grow from $120M to $8B.
  • “It’s all contrary to what you might find in a bank,” says Lani Hayward, executive vice-president for creative strategies at Umpqua. But deposits at the branches Umpqua has converted are up an average of 30% since the changeovers, and the average number of products sold to each household is double that at the traditional branches”
  • ING Direct is an online bank, but management realized the bank needed some physical presence to reassure the public the bank was more than a billboard. So execs devised the ING café, which look like Starbucks; people can go have coffee, smoothies, use a free-wireless connection, and learn about ING if they choose. But the eight “branches” have no transactional ability whatsoever; people still must sign up and do transactions online. For example, the ING café in Chicago had “Bike to Work Week Specials” in mid-June. “Every bicyclist that rides to the ING DIRECT Café during Bike to Work Week will be treated to a free bike valet, beverage and tune up. While you’re there, ask a Café Associate about other simple ways to save your money.”
  • WaMu rolled out its retail branch design with great fanfare in 2000, and used the new model as they moved into new markets such as Las Vegas and Atlanta. Later they remodeled existing branches to incorporate the new retail features. Before WaMu collapsed last September, they had spent roughly $1 billion on a branch-building binge.
• Some bankers are thinking along these lines, and they repeat a similar mantra: innovative branch design and technology must encourage engagement with employees, not to discourage human interaction. Executives at Barclays, Umpqua, Key Bank and TD Bank, to name a few, view the branch as the channel of choice to build customer relationships. “The biggest thing in banking is the relationship, and you can’t do that online,” says Lani Hayward, evp of creative strategies at Umpqua Bank. “You can make mistake after mistake after mistake, and the customer will stay with you if they believe you’ll take care of them.”

Aligning brand promises into brand behavior

• You can understand where you’re NOT delivering
• In order to work out where you can make improvements
• But you need to inspire your team’s BEHAVIOUR
• And understand that your team is made of different types of people
• Who have different engagement needs
• Warmth and Wisdom
• There are no miracles

Research compiled for this presentation can be found here: http://delicious.com/katiechatfield/banking

It’s Autumn and the golden light seems to have tinted everyone and everything. I still seem to be navel gazing around nostalgia – perhaps the weather is my excuse.

I’m intrigued by a string of sepia-toned, passage of time-y, wasn’t it better and isn’t life fleeting confections being used to hock pretty much any product or service you care to think about. I’m sure you can pull a few to mind but have a look at  John Lewis’ Never Knowingly Undersold and Sunbeam.

The Sunbeam TVC had this comment on Youtube:

SugarBeeDee Not another freaking whimsical, faux happy moment ad!
The summery pastely hipster thing has been whored to death and rather than make me feel all shinyfuckinghappy, I want to bash my head on a wall or kick the TV.
The song is so tacky too.
Argh, take it off and make something that doesn’t rot out teeth from our skulls, please!

If you do a shallow dive into the meaning of nostalgia you get this:

The term nostalgia describes a yearning for the past, often in idealized form.

Idealization is dangerous it seems powerful but really what it delivers is propoganda. You can’t own it. You can’t prove it and you can’t deliver it.

I can’t help but think that a lot of this ‘past that never happened’ stuff seems to create an emotional connection, with Mumbrella and others calling the John Lewis ad The Most Powerful of the Year. I wonder how useful this construct is in creating an imperative to take action. Is the argument of this notion not more than : We’ve been there in the past? Is there a strong enough ladder to the plea: You should be with us in the future?

Pretty bland stuff.

In “The Wheel” the writers of Mad Men use that emotional ladder to create a need for a new product  and tie it to a universal human need :

Don Draper: Nostalgia – it’s delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It let’s us travel the way a child travels – around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved.

Bud Caddell’s presentation There’s More Time Than The Present examins how we experience ‘time’ to help craft more effective opportunities for calls to action. I’m liking the tension in between nostalgia and ‘time machine’. And what I’m thinking about is don’t forget to find that pain. It’s where  the moment of truth lies. These moments are ‘around and around’, in the past and the future and they bind us together. So instead of using a mirror to reflect something that never happened it might be more useful to become that centre of gravity- a carousel that will give you an experience, show you the future and the past and deliver you home.

I’ve been quite challenged to draw an opinion about the question  In 2050 what will we be nostalgic about?

It’s hard to be a futurist. As Matt Linderman at 37signals noted in expert opinions

the problem with experts: They’re experts on the past. No one is an expert on the future.

We can only draw on our experiences, see the signals of now and attempt to extrapolate….

I am very glad that when I was in my teens and 20s most people didn’t have a camera on them at all times and that there was no place to publish and share those photos.

I was young, I loved music, I managed bands and worked for record labels and I made very very bad decisions. I was not terribly kind to myself or others.

Thankfully I don’t remember to much of any of it. I have very few reminders. It’s a blessing.

A song from that time, Deb Conway’s “She Prefers Fire” is introduced in concert with the comment ‘do you ever have the kind of days when you wish your house would burn down?

Everything that we have reminds us of what we have lost
Everything that we have echoes what we desire
Possessions, letters now just fuel for history

It’s important to not keep too much history fuel around. We all know that controlled burning can help prevent forest fires.

I can’t help but think that people going through that time of their life now and getting scars and breaking hearts and making infamous, funny prat falls can’t pick themselves up and burn the photos.

Or hide the blog posts, or box up the Facebook comments…

In 2050 being photographed and captured might well be ubiquitous.

Imagine all those bad hair days, terrible outfits, drunken behavior, spats with partners and nose picking moments being able to be tagged and shared and tracked back to you….

Or the happier moments that you’d prefer to keep in the past.

I think I’ll be nostalgic about being able to create my own ‘digital me’ and having some portion of control over it. And of having the luxury of being able to forget.

I love this. We don’t have the Tropicana Juice brand here in Australia and so all I can read is just the pure intention of creating an experience around the difference that starting your day with sunshine makes….

Nice one.

The contrast between that and this :

I can’t help but think that ‘designed to help’ is something that could be so much more powerful if were experienced, if it were actually delivered, rather than promised….