Joining The Dots

I made a presentation to The Futures Company this morning called 'Joining The Dots'. It was about how some of that very powerful trend and insight work - whether it be desk or primary research - often gets lost in translation to the creative agency domain. It is a particular bugbear of mine as my career has crossed this divide. It was difficult for me to make the switch from enthusisatic and brainstorming researcher who thought he was being creative to being able to make a meaningful contribution to creative strategy and output. I have seen other people frustrated by the transition. It isn't easy and there is no manual to help you do it - perhaps that is a good idea for one - and my sense is that, inspite of my manuel idea, there is no substitute for the experience of doing it. It is a shame, as the very best ideas I have been involved with have been generated by looking 'outside', for insight or research or trends or some combination thereof. The trick is in bringing them to bear in a meaningful way that creative people can do something with.

It doesn't help that so much of this potentially good stuff gets handed across disciplines in the form of powerpoint and almost inevitably, it gets lost in translation. There is no substitute for talking rather than handing power point decks over. Because the recepient needs to internalise the nuggets of insight and somehow make it there own, in order to create from it, it is no wonder that a powerpoint slide just doesn't do it.

We have also become so specialist that in our process it has become rare for one person to champion insight all the way through the process. Back in the early days of account planning, planners did lots of groups on their own ideas. They were able to understand any creative work that was going into the groups and fed back to the creators in a language they understood. With more and more creative development work being put in the hands of research specialists the passage of good, clean, inspiring information is hampered.

I have more to say on this subject, but that will be for another day. The presentation seemed to go well. Whether the group take me up on the offer to have a further working session is another matter altogether.

Are You Happy?

Was the last question asked of Gerry Moira, snr advertising creative, in a Campaign questionnaire. I thought this was a moment of profundity in what is usually a trade magazine full of banality. Here is his answer:

"When Nigella Lawson lost her sister and then husband to cancer, she spoke of having to "choose happiness". I had the same ineluctable decision when my wife died tragically young from the same condition. Blissful happiness is reserved for the idiots and the innocents of this world. The rest of us have to work very hard at it, every minute, every day." 

DEMOS

DEMOS is a think tank. It was launched in 1993 by Geoff Mulgan and Martin Jacques as an independent and fresh thinking anditidote to short-term, aligned, dull and Whitehall-centric think tank culture prevelant at the time. At the time, I read an article about DEMOS' intentions , got excited, got myself invited to the launch, and became a paid up member, receiving articles and going to meetings but staying perpherial and anonymous.

My involvement changed in 2002/3 when I saw colleague at RKCR/Y&R involved in DEMOS work. It transpired that my boss at the time, MT Rainey, was one of DEMOS' trustees. I waded in and took the work on. Work that culminated in presenting a strategy document to DEMOS at their annual weekend offsite.

I have tried to retain links with the organisation, offering insight where I can and providing a base in the US for visitors from the UK.

Yesterday evening DEMOS held a meeting for its Assoicates. I am lucky enough to be included as one, I presume for my work five years ago, and I am keen to contribute to such an excellent and inspirational organisation.

DEMOS have a new director, Richard Reeves, his website is here. He was excellent yesterday evening; thoughtful, authoritative, and eloquent. After a couple of difficult years including changing management and financial concerns, DEMOS seems rejuvenated and back on track. I look forward to being a playing a part.

Don't Be A Snippy Chimp

I had the good fortune of going to a brilliant 'inspiration' talk from Dave Brailsford, the Performance Director of British Cycling. It was anything but the charicature motivational speaker thing event. Brailsford established his credentials by comparing the 1 Gold medal won in the 76 years to 2004 by British cyclists with the haul gained in 2008, that would have put British Cycling, if it were a country, ahead of France in the medals table; 8 golds and 14 medals in total.

He put his success down to three key points (plus a huge increase in lottery funding).

1. Focus. Taking only cyclists with podium potential. Brailsford was offered 46 places by the British Olympic authorities, but they took only 23. The rest weren't good enough. They set goals; not goals of beating others, but of being the best they could be, identifying a time as the goal. The times were audacious but were not unrealistic. They had been carefully worked out.

2. People. Brailsford got in the right people. The one he talked about most is Steve Peters, the only psychiatrist working in the top echleons of sports apparently (mostly, it is sports psychologists). In essence Peters talks about the emotional 'chimp mode' that if left uncontrolled, can take over, just when you don't need it. You can't change your chimp, but you can learn how to manage it so it doesn't impair performance.

Brailsford also doesn't believe in 'fear' coaching. Only positive coaching. It was part of a value system that on the team had to buy into. One very senior coach was fired for not buying into the vlaues, and others didn't last. Podium potential riders needed podium coaching.

3. Aggregated Marginal Gains. When the prepartion for the 2008 games began Brailsford gave everyone on the pursuit team, including all backroom staff, a short film for inspiration. It essentially showed their 2004 Athens defeat by the Australian team with a dramatic voice over from a movie, by Al Pacino I think, about winning one inch at a time. This laid out the philosophy to the team. They were ruthless and ingenious about breaking down every tiny element of performance. For example, McClaren F1 team did modelling on aerodynamics (helmets, body position) and race strategy. One resulting change, that defied conventional wisdom, was the start 0ff man switching from 3/4 lap to 1 and 1/4 first leg. They also got the team to 'feel' the right speed so that riders could change when they wanted to keep the speed up, rather than everything being pre-set (ie one lap per rider). In the final this resulted in one of the riders riding an unheard of 2 and 1/4 laps without a change. But it also took in learning how to wash hands properly, so avoiding the main source of passing bugs. They went to such lengths that team members were employed in Bejing to keep door handles clean. Brailsford even 'joked' about taking an inch out of riders collar bones to lessen the wind resistance. It was a joke, but I bet he had the figures!

One other comment Brailsford made was the importance of removing all stresses from the race itself which meant the performers were then freed up, as far as possible, to perform to their best. In essence it was all about preparation and leaving as little to chance.

There are some good implications for individuals and for organisations alike:

Focus

Audacious but realistic goals carefully worked out

Best people

Best people on side

Don't focus on the competition, focus on your own performance

There are improvements to be made in many many areas.

There are improvements to be made in many areas you don't even know about.

Every area should be looked at from scratch - conventional wisdom needs to be challenged.

Get rid of as much stress before the event so you can focus on performance during the event (not the stress of it).

Understand the chimp inside and work on it.

A Different Perspective On An Orc

This is an Orc. It is from Warhammer, a fantasty strategy game that George has got into. The Orc is only about an inch in height but this picture makes it look bigger. And angry.

It minds me of some really good work we did for LEGO company a few years ago. Initially, we couldn't find an interesting way to present the LEGO models. Then Phil and Graham got involved. They started thinking about the models from a kids perspective, namely lying down with head on the floor, playing at the same level as the toys themselves. It was brilliant insight. Whilst adults are looking from a vantage point five or six feet up in air, the kids who play with the things see them much more eye to eye level. Everything flowed from that.

The ads we did, and I don't know if I can find them a few years on, had a sense of dynamism and scale that just couldn't have been achieved it we had looked the issue from our adult vantage point. It was one of the best examples I know of, literally, understanding the perspective of your target.

Genius or Graft

Great article in yesterday's Guardian, an edited extract from Malcolm Gladwell's new book 'The Outliers', that questions the notion that genuis is born and not the result of other factors.

Gladwell suggests that hard graft is vital. That there seems to be a magic number of around 10,000 hours 'practice' to obtain expertise. He quotes Daniel Levitin, a neurologist, who contends that this holds true across sport, music, programming and many other subjects.

He argues that timing is also vital. For example Gladwell demonstrates that the richest Americans ever were all born between 1831 and 1840, just the right time to take advantage of the industrial transformation of America that happened in the 1860s and 1870s. He also suggests the best time to be born to take advantage of the personal computer revolution that started in Jan 1975 with the announcement of the first assemble-it-yourself at home PC, the Altair 8800, was between 1952 and 1958. He shows that a whole raft of computer legends were in fact born in this period.

It is a beguiling argument. But many people were born at the right time, and many of those people worked hard, though not all of them are "geniuses", so I suspect there are still other variables that distinguish the "geniuses" from the rest of us. Nevertheless, the theory gives us hope that we can, with hard graft and good timing, make it big. It is nothing if not democratic.

Extracts from the book are here.

One last thought, the hard graft and timing theory, as a prerequisite for success is not totally new, as here suggests!

I Wish I Had The Confidence to Say Less

The Battle of Big Thinking

Graham Fink receives the Mexican wrestling belt as winner of the 2008 Battle of Big Thinking from Malcolm White yesterday afternoon. Graham's idea was big and brilliant. Driven by the belief that we need to put different, or opposite, thinking in the same place to create ideas, he proposed a way to put people in touch with their 'opposite brains' by meeting people from a different walk of life. These people would meet for an hour and see what happens. Any ideas would be submitted to a website. He called it the bigthinkingclub.

His master strokes were twofold. Firstly, that he was going to make it happen, not just talk about it. And by pledging to launch the club if he won, he pulled that one off. Secondly, he seduced us by recognising us as founder members! How flattering is that.

The other outstanding piece was Nigel Newton, CEO of Bloomsbury publishing, who spoke about trusting our instincts rather than the analysis whilst we watched a seemingly random series of data slides about the minutia of Lloyd's life pass by.

Microslicing and Insight

I don't think marketing folk spend enought time thinking about the small things; by which I mean the really small, the nano, the granular, miniscule and the tiny. In amongst all the talk about big ideas, perhaps we should flip the telescope and look through it the other way around. In other fields we are seeing the world very differently through new detail, such as the example below, perhaps we can as well.

The world of insight gathering might benefit from some miniscule thinking. Though research may be getting faster, easier and cheaper - primarily due to the internet - I don't know if it is getting any better. In fact, I suspect the opposite. I also see lots of research being commissioned that is a triumph of process over thought and is probably a re-run of some previous research project that has already given us enough information to save us the cost of doing it again. I should confess at this point, I am thinking more about 'exploratory' research or insight development work. As a side point, and the subject of another post in the future, I suspect there is a business to be had in delving through back archives of research for answers before any more research is commissioned.

Anyway, back to the subject of getting more insight by microthinking. I am convinced there are insights to be found, hidden in the small nooks and cranies of the mind and behaviour that conventional research, especially internet research, will never find. They may be things that people are never able to articulate, and therefore can't tell us about, without some skillful input from the researcher, but they exist.

I love the idea of breaking down processes, psychology, and behaviour into tiny little units and investigating each little unit in turn. In those tiny moments there is some real, and new, insight.

Cliff Stoll

This is Cliff Stoll given a TED Talk. It is fabulous stuff.

TED Talks

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It is a conference that started in 1984. TED's mission is "Ideas Worth Spreading". TED invites speakers to speak for 18 minutes and has posted over 200 of the speeches online at TED Talks . It is a treasure trove of wonderful stuff.

Think about it

I have been trying to position a brand around the notion of taking time to actively reflect. I like the idea that a brand can be about taking time to think. I like it in part as most brands are NOT about taking time to reflect. In fact, there seems some resistance to thinking or taking time out to think in general. I know I am in culture that prides itself on its anti-intellectualism and 'can-do' attitude, but I still have this idea that people everywhere could benefit by having some time to think. I would even go so far as to say that thinking is neglected; it gets a bad press.

I think I shall spend some time thinking about this.