Week Notes // 13th November
The Google building that is under construction in Kings Cross. It seems to have taken a very long time. Will they even want it by the time it’s finished?
Sunday seems to come round quicker and quicker each week.
I have spent a little bit of time this week thinking about the categories I might use for these notes. Whilst the old system might not have been perfect, it was at least suited to my needs. I’ve netted out on a bit of a hybrid approach , blending the way I was categorising my week with some of the more specific prompts I’d encountered in other people’s week notes during my research. I have also been given cause to think about what kind of value a system such as Week Notes could provide the business I work within. As Giles Turnbull says in a recent blog post, the benefit of integrating Week Notes into an organisation are various:
Every team has a broadcast mechanism. This is weeknote superpower number 1. Every team now has a means of sharing its thoughts, ideas, troubles and successes with every other team. And with stakeholders and bosses. And with newcomers who’ve just joined. Teams can learn about the things that other teams are doing, without having to book a meeting….
Everyone can now see through the silos.I wish I could say that writing weeknotes would destroy silos forever, but that’s not the case. In my experience, silos are inevitable and unavoidable. They’re a consequence of team-based working. They exist in almost every organisation. But I can say that weeknotes can help you live with your inevitable silos: because weeknotes are a way of making windows in the sides of them. There’s now a way for people who are outside a team to peer inside it. The silos are still there, but now they’re see-through.
I imagine though, rather than being seen as an opportunity to ‘think aloud’ a programme like this might devolve into a ‘public’ status document. The last thing agencies need need is another status document. Maybe I’m beng cynical.
Elsewhere, I finally managed to publish the blog post on questions. Reaction has been largely positive and prompted some good conversation. Whilst I predominantly write for my own benefit (as a means of thinking aloud), it’s always gratifying to get positive feedback.
Reading, watching, listening (the things I’ve found interesting this week)
Picked up Klara and The Sun again. Ishiguro’s technical prowess is insane. No other author I know of manages to create such economy from the words he uses, creating huge amounts of meaning from what might appear to be a very rudimentary vocabulary. Frankly, it’s remarkable and places him in stark opposition to other authors of his generation like McEwan and Amis. Originally conceived of as a children’s book the story asks us to think about the relationship humans enjoy with technology from the perspective of the machine
Enjoyed this edition of the Vergecast podcast about design at Spotify (thanks Nick). I’ve done a lot of work recently on what I’ve described as ‘an emerging playbook’ for brands dealing with media fragmentation. A key pillar of this playbook is a move from thinking about channels to thinking about ‘layers’ instead. I’ve written about that here. The interview with Gustav Söderström, who leads design at Spotify, opens up a couple of interesting questions. Firstly, about the different types of ‘discovery’ that they consider when thinking about their product. Secondly, about how they think about the needs of consumers interacting with the three principle type of content on their platform (music, podcasts and audio book). The Spotify model, he says, is to treat the consumer as a single entity with different needs across these categories. He says other brands might approach this in a more product-led way: instead seeing the choices between these different types of content as three, seperate and distinct journeys.
Watched some bubble-gum telly on the case to bring down Mafia boss John Gotti. One of the closing remarks has stuck with me though. Of Gotti’s celebrity status, a journalist says “we were more interested in the $2000 Brioni suits than where the money to buy them had come from”. A useful prompt - are you addressing the symptoms or root cause of a problem?
Thinking and Doing (what have I been thinking about, who did I meet, where have I been)
Mulling a follow up to last blog post called Really Good Questions. This would be a collection of the questions that people use when thinking about a brief; the ones they routinely rely on to help them reframe an issue, that push them into interesting or more challenging spaces, that allow them to get to brilliant work. If you’ve got any you’d like to share (you will of course be credited) then please share them here. Ideally i’ll get inputs from a wide range of people from different disciplines. We’ll see. One for the drawing board.
Post Oppenheimer started sketching out a thought around ‘high density metaphors’. The IPA Excellence Diploma presentations last year gave me cause to remark that there are some metaphors with an ‘inescapable gravity’ - nature, science, religion, celebrity. Have also been enjoying making Oppenheimer memes far more than I should. These revolve largely around his statement that “theory will only get you so far”, the works of Binet and Field and pictures of Murphy’s Oppenheimer looking unhappy.
Got to spend some time with David Wilding on a client project. It’s good when you get to work with nice clients and nice people.
Signed myself up to the Faber&Faber’s Start to Write course. At worst, it’ll help the blogging. At best, might be the shove into fiction that I’ve been looking for.
Working (new projects, reflections on work this week, look ahead to next week)
A new pitch with a relatively tight turnaround has started. It means the next three weeks will be busy. Christmas will arrive quickly. Pitches always a good opportunity to think about things differently, to work with different people: to challenge the assumptions we make every day.
The monthly Strategy team meeting happened on Thursday. The theme of this month’s session was the ‘language of luxury’ and the hosts provided useful insight into the demands of clients in this space, a view on HNWI/UNHWI shopping within the category and some of the work which stands out. I learnt about Gstaad Guy.
Wrapping up the year from an Insight and Measurement standpoint and starting to look ahead to next year; pipeline of projects, resourcing plan, target setting etc.
JD sports seems to be having a moment. The new brand ad, by Uncommon, is really nice - and builds from a brilliantly observed insight about one of their distinctive assets: their shopping bag. Also in ‘the news’ for a Generative AI ad they’ve made where they’ve wrapped Big Ben in a North Face Puffa jacket. Intrigued by the way we react to these. No-one stopped to question if the meerkats were real, or if Ronald McDonald actually worked in McDonalds. Something about the reality bending nature of these ads and the way they are presented (often on social media, like ‘real news’) makes people feel uncomfortable in a way which many other ‘fictitious’ media (and films, movies etc) does not. Probably something to do with the uncanny valley.
