Week Notes w/c14th October
There is a difference between complicated things and complex things, but this picture is too good not to use.
Last week I was fortunate enough to visit the factory of one of my clients. I love working with clients who make things themselves. The types of conversations you have with clients who design, manufacturer and sell products is often very different to the ones you have with clients who might just ‘assemble’ or distribute products they have ordered from their suppliers.
For three hours I was exposed to some of the most technically sophisticated, precise and highly automated processes I’ve ever seen. It was hard not to feel a little overwhelmed and overstimulated by the experience - the noises, the movement, the scale, but above all - the sheer slickness involved. At the end of the tour, not only did I have a better idea of what my client’s clients are buying, but also the amazingly complex system the client organisation has created in order to bring their products to market. It is a system that runs 24 hours a day across three shifts. It involves components from over 5000 global suppliers and is capable of producing over 1.5million different variants of the product they make. A new product leaves the factory every 90 seconds before being subjected to 175 quality assurance checks that products must pass before being shipped to the end customer.
I guess one of the reasons that this experience resonated with me so much is that in our own industry, we love to talk to all of our clients about complexity. We point to the rise of new technology and applications within marketing. We point to the fragmentation of the media landscape and the growing competition for consumer attention. We talk about the non-linearity of the consumer journey from category entry to purchase. And quite often we talk as if only we - with our unique capability and insight - are able to reconcile this complexity. This makes for good pitchware and powerpoint, but is it true? Is it fair even? And how must it sound to clients who are, if my experience last week is anything to go by, all too capable of both creating and managing incredibly complex systems themselves in service of building and marketing the products they sell to their customers? It strikes me that we might, as an industry, be a little bit deluded where complexity is concerned.
Complexity and complex systems are a cost of doing business in a global, networked and digital world. At least if you’re going to be successful or profitable, anyway. The more agencies try to move upstream in wider business discussions, the more troublesome the complexity delusion will be. After all, do we submit our work to the same rigorous checks and quality assurance processes that our clients apply to their products before they allow them to be shipped?
As Russell Davies said once when talking about his work at GDS - if you’re a bridge building organisation, you treat everything like a bridge. A ‘manufacturing mindset’ - whilst good for some things (like the product in question) is probably less useful when building communication plans, for instance. The real challenge facing the client in question is not complexity, but culture. The real value of agencies is not in their ability to manage complexity, but in their ability to lend perspective - to challenge the status quo - and to imagine new futures where communication capability is concerned.
Doing
Met Phil for coffee. Was lovely to chat and chat about a wide range of things; from our experience at Interesting this year, to the work we’re doing and to the books we’re reading.
Took P to the Anthony McCall exhibit at Tate Modern. It’s well worth a visit.
A number of new projects starting at work. I’m three and a bit months into the new job. Feet are under the table. Things make more sense every day and looking forward to getting stuck into some big questions that have been posed to the team. A change really is as good as a rest sometimes.
Met Andrew for a quick drink. We were meant to eat Pizza together, but both went to the wrong branch of a pizza chain. Strangely satisfying that there is still room for this kind of mistake in our heavily-connected lives.
The newsletter I write with Matt has hit a significant milestone in terms of subscribers. Growth slowed a bit during the summer but the reaction to the last two or three issues has been encouraging. 31 issues under our belt. In terms of achievements for the year, this ranks up there as one of the things I’m most proud of.
Reading
Am slowly getting through The Trial by Franz Kafka. If truth be told, I’ve been too tired and a bit too scrolly recently. Making a concerted effort to get the reps back in ahead of the new year. This is a short read that I’m hoping will tee me up for the stuff that is a bit more challenging waiting for me on the bedside table.
Really enjoyed Willy Staley’s How Everyone Got Lost in Netflix’s Endless Library. A neat summary of the challenges of modern media and what it means for both consumers and brands and advertisers trying to communicate with them. This line in particular stood out: “What we’re paying for, in the end, is not any one show, or any three or 10 or 50 shows, but rather this fathomless sense of abundance. Which in turn means that any given show just doesn’t matter quite as much as it could in the era of broadcast TV. In this context, even an undeniable hit can wind up feeling like a sort of failure”. I remain utterly pre-occupied with how entertainment brands will be built in the new on-demand world. I have no idea what Netflix stands for - at least not in the way that I do channels such as Channel 4 or even more pointedly, Comedy Central - but as Staley says, people don’t buy it for a type of show rather access to all the shows.
Watching
Four episodes into Alfonso Cuarón’s Disclaimer on AppleTV. It is thoroughly dislikeable. Alltogether too serious and conscious of how it looks, rather than what it has to say. Apple’s strategy - as discussed by Staley as well - couldn’t be further away from Netflix’s. The TV business is a supporter to the core of Apple’s offering, after all. Netflix cancel shows at the drop of a hat. Apple appears willing to be altogether more patient with it’s talent, giving them the budget, bandwidth (Disclaimer is a seven hour movie, rather than a TV show) and creative license to do what it pleases.
