How an ad agency evolves in the digital age

The good folks of Cleveland’s advertising community recently invited me to keynote at an AAF event there. Cleveland is a pretty nice city and to my surprise is a foodie town — it’s the home of Eric Williams – and even the some of the suburban restaurants are pretty darn good.

Anyway, they wanted to hear a little bit of my story, the culture and transformation of Mullen and some thoughts on how we think about the business today and where it might be going.

Here’s the deck I shared. As is typical for me, the slides don’t say much without a voice over, but here’s the story in a nutshell

Slide 1: You don’t survive in this business, from the past to the present, or from the present to the future, without constantly evolving and embracing change. You have to live in beta.

Slide 2: In 1983 we launched the computer shoe for Puma. There are two points to the story of this ill-fated product launch.

The first:  the sneaker maker asked the question, “Can we build it?”  Instead they should have asked, “Should we build it?” They may have learned what was wrong with it before they put it in market. This story becomes more relevant later on when we talk about innovation and thinking like a start-up.

The second point: we made ads. We told people about our clients’ products, bought their attention, and made a product that was finished, polished, varnished and re-printed. A small group of us – pirates, renegades and outsiders even back then – were determined to do good work, win awards, establish a reputation and build an agency.

(Slide 3 — 14) We did well, but over time the world changed — digital, social, consumer engagement, etc.

(Slide 15–16) Once ideas were crafted out of words, pictures and stories. Suddenly they were created using applications, utility and technology. Media changed, too. Can you spell proliferation?

(Slide 14 – 24) Next came numerous predictions of the industry’s demise. From within and without. Also new competitors and models: Gary Vaynerchuk-like do-it-yourselfers. Crowdsourcing platforms. Scalable software services that strive to replace traditional service models.

Meanwhile lots of businesses in related or parallel industries did die, fueling the naysayers.

(Slide 25) So where do you look for ideas and inspiration? Certainly not to other ad agencies. How about Steve Jobs?

(Slide 26 –34) We changed — or at least evolved — a few things.

Our philosophy: Unbound

We reduced it to one word. Unbound was intended to free us from solving problems with advertising only and to become way more diverse in our thinking. It changed everything from what we made, to how we pitched business, the teams we put in the room and the space in which we worked.

Our influences: Steven Johnson

Good ideas come from collisions. That word became the blueprint for our new space and how we organized people. The idea was that the more collisions we could create — crashing people, ideas and disciplines into each other — the more creative (and effective) our solutions might be.

Our behavior and mindset:  Social

One of our smarter moves was getting (or allowing) everyone in the company – and many of our clients — to embrace social media early on. We did everything from create experiences that introduced people to Twitter, started blogs, encouraged writing for the agency blog, designed conversation strategies for clients, even developed full-blown social media training and management guides. We started this in 2007. It may have been late for the early adopter but it was early for the ad industry. As a result, today we have a pretty good social media business.

Our culture: Curiosity

Some agencies and advertisers wait for new ideas and platforms to approach mainstream use before jumping in. We started trying everything new right away and encouraged clients to do the same. We introduced clients to Ning when it first launched so they could learn a little about community management. Today we have them playing around with Instagram, trying out Google+ (as individuals) and, of course, incorporating mobile functionality into more of what they do. Teaching, sharing, learning together has become a big part of our digital and social offering.

Our focus: Experimentation

We started experimenting more for ourselves. We incubated TNGG, a crowdsourced Gen-Y online magazine, which now provides content to Boston.com. To build our Twitter portfolio and generate coverage for the agency we created BrandBowl. And more recently, we launched the beta for a new integrated media platform The Pulse. If nothing else, our lab mindset has spurred a greater interest in experimentation of all kinds, with better work and creations likely to follow.

Talent: Digital

Not much needs to be said here. Every agency is doing this. But we’ve made it a priority and area of investment, recruiting talent in design, UX, front-end and back-end development, creative technology, production, project management, mobile, social media and digital media.

(Slides 35 – 72)  I personally learned some new stuff, as did the agency. Got better at collaboration, both internally and across external alliances and partnerships. Became comfortable living in beta. Embraced the Google-y concept of giving credit to the idea rather than the person who “thinks” he came up with it. Re-thought where ideas comes from. Hint: everywhere. Validated the inter-connected circle of momentum and the four forces that accelerate it: culture, space, briefs, and teams.

The agency won some cool clients, realized that culturally relevant brands that reflect what the agency wants to do are great clients to have since they inspire you forward, and attracted some attention and even better talent.

In some cases we got better at practicing problem solving rather than message crafting.

But, note that change is hard. There’s plenty of resistance and no clear set of directions.

(Slide 73) Agencies and individuals tell me this is what they struggle with. That is comforting.

(Slide 74) Some agencies are being even more innovative. That is motivating.

(Slides 75 – 103)  Five things every agency has to do. Why they have to do it. Some suggestions for how they can do it. Wrote about this a little bit in a previous post.

I think it went over pretty well. A sincere thanks to my new friends at AAF Cleveland and at Marcus Thomas for their warm hospitality.

Boulder Digital Works instructors in innovation, software companies, social media and more

I got plenty of questions here and on Twitter for the 10 folks who spoke at the last Boulder Digital Work Making Digital Work sessions, which just ended this past Thursday.

Here’s where we netted out. Thanks to the willing Nick Todd, who shoots and helps edit the videos we do at these sessions, we got eight of the 10 speakers on film answering all five of the questions below. Believe it or not, while many of the answers were consistent, few if any were overly redundant.

It might take a few weeks to get a finished video together, but my instinct tells me you’ll find it both interesting and insightful to hear answers from Matt Howell, Gareth Kay, Tim Malbon, Ben Malbon, John Winsor, Kim Laama, Sheena Matheiken and Scott Prindle when we do.

In the meantime, below are the final questions and a few of the answers.

How can agencies inspire clients to do more innovative work?

Answers ranged from setting up internal labs to experimenting more ourselves. That way we can vet new technologies and platforms and develop ideas that we know will work before taking them to clients. Scott Prindle suggested taking on the role of teacher, educating clients more frequently in what’s possible with all the software, social networks and digital toys coming at us. Others talked about the need to bring inexpensive ideas to the table in hopes of inspiring more experimentation. In short, spread excitement.

What lessons can agencies learn from software companies and start-ups?

As an industry, we no longer look to each other for ideas and inspiration. We draw on Silicon Valley, new social platforms, as well as companies like Google and Apple. If any answers stood out, they were these.  Speed is your best friend. Stop perfecting the design of something and get to a Minimum Viable Product quickly by prototyping.  Another equally compelling suggestion – stop organizing people around disciplines and put people together by team.  It accelerates solving problems.

How can agencies stop the drain of talent to young startups and tech giants?

As we hire more creative technologists and developers, we’re competing with a much broader range of companies. Want to attract and retain people whose goals are to make things that matter? Give them more responsibility sooner. Consider a program like Google’s 20 percent time. Eliminate organizational hierarchy.

Do agencies have a role in executing a brand’s social media when authenticity, transparency and access are the key attributes for good social engagement?

This was the most controversial question. Some participants insisted outright that agencies should have no role. Social media and all the new platforms simply emphasize the diminished need for the middleman. Others vehemently disagreed, suggesting that if agencies master the art of conversation strategy and engagement that they should take the lead. Creativity matters even in the new space and agencies are better prepared to be inventive there than clients might be themselves.

What are the core talents you look for when hiring people who’ll drive change and implement contemporary digital work?

This might be the only real throwaway question, but the answers were still pretty good. Kim Laama wants familiarity with the entire digital landscape. I suggested curiosity and a T-shape. Tim Malbon wouldn’t consider anyone who didn’t have a real social presence. (If you haven’t already connected, interacted, shared and contributed on Twitter forget about working at Made by Many.) Ben Malbon, director of strategy at Google’s Creative Lab had my favorite answer. “I’m less interested in people who use technology and more interested in people who want to create it.”

Eventually we’ll have more thorough answers on film.  In the meantime, thanks for joining in.

Crowdsourcing questions for BDW’s Making Digital Work instructors?

I’m taking questions. Starting tomorrow I spend three days with some of the smartest people I know at Boulder Digital Works where we’re conducting another Making Digital Work workshop.

This time around we have the usual suspects –Matt Howell of Arnold; Gareth Kay from Goodby; Tim Malbon who hails from Made by Many in the UK; Scott Prindle of Crispin; and Kim Laama  who joins us from AKQA– but we have some newcomers, too, including Ben Malbon, BDW board member and director of strategy at Google Creative Lab; Sheena Matheiken, who founded the Uniform Project; and Will McGiness, creative chief at Venables Bells and Partners. Plus, back for his second visit, Daniel Stein, founder of EVB.

Virtually everyone of the presenters is either a company founder or c-level executive.  And all of them have been creating, leading, or initiating digital work for a long time.

I thought it might be fun to crowdsource a set of questions we can ask everyone. For example:

What do you see as the next emerging digital or social trend?

What’s broken about the way your company does business?

Will Mesh-type businesses pose a challenge to traditional marketers?

Can ad agencies really learn how to build stuff?

What changes to you plan on making inside your organization over the next year?

What holds your company back from evolving as quickly as it should?

How do you inspire innovation?

If you have anything you’d like to ask us as a group leave your comments here. It might be fun to see if the answers we get back are consistent, different or even contradictory.

I’ll take the five or 10 most provocative or original questions posted here, on Twitter or on Google+ and try and solicit answers from all 10 individuals above.  Who knows, you might learn something, or simply conclude that no one knows what’s going on.

Connect Google + and Instagram in six easy steps

Use Picasa 3 app, not Google.com

It’s only a matter of time before Instagram has a button that lets you post Instagram images to Google + in addition to Twitter, Flickr, Posterous and Facebook.  Or before Google makes it easier somehow. In fact, for all I know there’s already a turnkey solution that I haven’t seen.

In the meantime I came upon these directions yesterday. They worked for me, but could use a little clarity. So if you’re among the active Instagram users base who would like your photos to appear in your Google + albums, here’s a more thorough explanation on how to to automatically link your Instagram images to your new Google + account. Note that the images will not appear as a status update or “share” in your stream, but they will end up in your photos, accessible to anyone you want, depending on your permission settings.  Here you go.

1. Make sure you have downloaded and installed Picasa. That is not simply picasaweb.google.com, but the downloadable app, version 3.8 for Mac, in my case, which has features that make it easier for you to upload images to your Picasa account.
2. Download and install Dropbox. Dropbox is a free service that lets you store, access and share photos, docs and videos from any computer.
3. Authorize Instagram to automatically post photos to your dropbox via Instadrop, a simple little app that makes this possible. Then take a photo and post to Instagram.  A new folder should appear in your Dropbox.  Note that only new photos, post installation, will appear.
4. Next, go to your Picasa 3 app, not your Google account. Under “file” click on “add folder to Picasa.” (There is no “add folder” when you are accessing Picasa via Google.) The folder manager window will appear.  You have to find your actual dropbox folder and click on scan always.  If you can’t find your dropbox folder, try this:  harddrive/users/yourname/dropbox. That’s the location of the folder. Don’t move the folder. Instead, in your folder manager, click on hard drive, then users, then your name, then dropbox. There should be an Instagram folder there, presuming you have posted to Instagram since linking Instadrop and Dropbox.
   

   When the folder manager window appears find your actual dropbox folder and click on scan always. If you can’t find your dropbox folder, try this: harddrive/users/yourname/dropbox.

5. Next check your Picasa 3 app. You will see the same Instagram folder – mine showed up under “other stuff.” Over on the top right of the window there is a button option Sync to Web: On (or off).  Turn it on.  This should link your dropbox images, which are automatically updated by Instagram, to Picasa.
6. Lastly, go to your google.com account, click on photos (your Picasa photos) and the album will be there. You can set your privacy settings either there, under “actions” then “album properties,” or on Picasa 3 under “share.”

You are all set. Next time you post to Instagram it will appear in your dropbox, then in your Google photos and simultaneously in your Google Plus album

Should take you only a few minutes to set up if you already use Picasa.  If you don’t you should.  Chances are that if Google + takes off, this cloud-based photo storing/sharing service will become an even more essential part of your social footprint than it already is.

The most important job in advertising

From Scott Prindle's BDW talk on creative technologists and their role inside ad agencies

Some would say it’s the creative director. Others might argue the mantle belongs to the lead strategist. A few might even proffer we should give the label to the head of business development. No doubt those are all incredibly valuable roles, making the work, shaping the idea, attracting new clients.

I’m going out on a limb and suggesting we consider anointing a different role as the most important job in advertising. My nominee? The creative technologist.

A creative technologist can teach people about digital tools and platforms and how to create with them. Good ones can inspire writers, designers and even creative directors with possibilities they may never have imagined.  A few of the best might even be able to transform a company, affecting the work, the teams, and the processes necessary to keep up with all the change and the opportunities that technology constantly presents.

According to Scott Prindle of CP&B, considered among the best, here are the eight key contributions a creative technologist makes.

Creative technologists:

• write code and make functional software
• lead strategic thinking for utilities and platforms
• bring new technology into the creative process
• manage complexity and change
• build prototypes
• enable an agile workflow
• manage relationships with client IT
• spark experimentation

Go back a few years and few, if any, traditional advertising agencies would have this role front and center. But with the continued convergence of story telling, technology, APIs and new mobile platforms it’s now essential. In fact this month the 4A’s conducts a full day conference on the role and how to incorporate it. Some of the top creative technologists will be there, including Scott Prindle and Andy Hood. If you can’t make it, here’s a cheaper, less time consuming introduction to the role.

Scott Prindle’s recent talk, given at Boulder Digital Works Making Digital Work, in deck form, and an interview that we did together after his session a couple of weeks ago.

Enjoy