You can’t lean back if you want to get ahead
My week began by attending the premiere of Lemonade with a bunch of people who’d been spit out by the business of advertising. Fired because their clients cut budgets, because they worked for “traditional” agencies rather than digital shops, because their old skills were less relevant in a new consumer-controlled world where word of mouth, social media, one-to-one, and analytics are becoming as important as “the big idea” once was.
The movie that was good enough to play in a real movie house, attract a few hundred people, and earn the attention of Katie Couric whose CBS crew showed up to document the entire evening was made possible by the power of social media. Blogs and Twitter introduced the idea, identified subjects, connected volunteers, recruited resources and gathered a tribe that would never have come together in any other way.
Yet when I asked a number of the unemployed in attendance if they had embraced the new platforms and technologies, learned new tactics, mastered the art of personal brand building and started creating and generating content using the new vernacular, many answered with a tentative “not really,” or even a definitive “not yet.”
Amazing when you think about it. They’d lost their jobs because of all the change. The movie about losing jobs could only be made because it of the change. Yet many people still hadn’t embraced the change.
Today I spoke at Boston University’s College of Communication. The subject was (what else) The Future of Advertising. Seems that’s all anyone wants to talk about, from the 4As to CA to Forrester.
In putting a presentation together that might be of use to students, it struck me that the changes we’re seeing affect everything. Consumers are no longer spectators, they’re creators. Individuals whose total resources consist of video cameras and folding tables can create brands. Content distribution that relies on videographers and bloggers is often as effective as media plans that write fat checks to networks and magazines. Creative might be an old-fashioned message, but it’s just as likely to be an experience, an interaction or an application. And finally, agencies themselves no longer resemble their ancestors. They’re as like to be entirely digital, totally social, or completely crowd-sourced.
There’s an assumption that these students — supposedly native to the land of blogs, Twitter, social media and all things digital — will be more prepared for what’s about to come than those who’ve struggled to survive recent changes. Yet what’s happened in the last few years will appear to be slow motion once mobile really takes off, once applications like Red Laser are in the hands of every consumer, once we’re all walking around with Coolpix and Flip cams and whatever comes next year.
In Googled, the insightful and thorough new book by Ken Auletta, the author reminds us of all the now dying businesses and models that put their energy into defending the status quo rather than embracing the new. “Defensiveness mixed with fear fueled resistance to change.” As Auletta says, “They believed that consumers would always prefer to lean back rather than lean forward when it came to entertainment.”
I don’t think anyone can afford to lean back anymore; not the jobless creatives sitting in the Brattle Theatre watching a movie, not yet to be employed students slouching in their classroom chairs. If you do, you’ll just get blown away.
It’s time to lean in. Embrace what’s coming. Before it even gets here.
Comments
we can't lean back, but we can look back when we get ahead. don't you think so? just like technology. nowadays tech develop veryfast. many new products come into the market. such as
Change is exhilarating. I think that a lot of people hesitate to jump into new sharing/expressive/social technologies because they don't want to invest a lot of time learning an interface that might not make it big. Instead of looking at possibility, they look at its limitations. But most of us don't realize that these technologies are created with ease of use being a primary objective! People adopted Gmail not for its advanced features and storage, but for its ease of use.
Another big reason, I think, is kind of related to Brad Noble's comment. We're easily satisfied with the adequate. A by-product of that is the fact that we look for big, quantifiable achievements. Simply put, a glossy full-page magazine ad looks more impressive than a Twitter feed.
A third problem is that almost every month, there's some technological push that makes communication more accessible and more effective. But the technology/communication industries don't spend as much time thinking about how to properly harness these media. Or if they do, I don't know of it, and I read a _lot_ of tech blogs.
One of the things I'm really interested in seeing is the first marketing application of Google Wave. We've already used it for crowdsourcing (including a manhunt), but no web-tech is legit until someone uses it to sell something. I think it's going to be awesome, whenever it comes, because it has the power to combine the best of media sharing with real-time collaboration (i.e., the crowd in the cloud, if you feel poetic). Hell, I'd make a Google Wave marketing plan for twenty bucks and a case of Unibroue!
Lastly, thank you for sharing the slideshow. I sent it to my fellow BU ad grads as well as my ad pals in Bangladesh. It's a very succinct encapsulation of things as they are. Also, it was really good meeting you.
I'm not surprised by the revelations in this post. I mean, it is revealing. But it's not surprising.
So many of us in this business are used to getting by on our wits. Fast and loose. In the moment. We are the procrastinators who in one late night cram pushed through and got the B+/A-.
And then celebrated.
Many of us aren't students of this business. Of the product.
Many of us aren't really entrepreneurs.
Many of us are, in fact, avoiding itu00e2u0080u0094the commitmentu00e2u0080u0094but would happily take a paycheck for the gems we would surely produce under the gun.
But that is the way it is here and elsewhere: many of us aren't cut out to be leaders.
.-= Brad Nobleu00c2u00b4s last blog ..bradnoble: all this talk of food and toilets reminds me of the time my mom tried to flush a hoagie and instead flooded the ladies' room at her office. =-.
Brad:
I'm reading Ken Auletta's Googled. In hindsight the resistance of the media companies represents some of the worst decision making in the history of business. It was only nine years ago. Yet many are still reluctant to "lean in" to change, to anticipate its ramifications, to believe that it will really arrive with its unforgiving fierceness. But it will. I'm rooting for it to show up with all its disruption as soon as possible. Way more fun that way.
It will arrive because it always has arrived. As I'm sure Googled is articulating, it's already here.
It always was.
Change is the constant.
So, none of should be amazed by it. What's amazing is our ignorance of it. Or is it denial? Ignorance seems too forgiving.
I think it's called "the illusion of comfort." My quote. Waddaya think?
I like it.
No one has made it. There are only those who are making it, and those who are not.
The illusion of comfort is the state in which someone thinks he has made it, and decides it's high time to stop making it.
Change overtakes those of us who go this way.
Keep making it.
.-= Brad Nobleu00c2u00b4s last blog ..bradnoble: all this talk of food and toilets reminds me of the time my mom tried to flush a hoagie and instead flooded the ladies' room at her office. =-.
It's like being in a cross country race during a rainstorm. You put your head down and you power through. It's just a necessity.
You have to take your hits (both good and bad) and learn as you move forward. You can't try and hold onto anything too long though...otherwise it will just end up dragging you down.
Awesome piece.
.-= Stuart Fosteru00c2u00b4s last blog ..Don Draper Shouldn't Be Running Your Creative Department =-.
The hardest part of social media personal branding is ... it's totally new. There is no training, resume format, work experience or party banter that prepares you to slowly build an online human network. And the tools are hard -- Facebook has gimmicks, Twitter needs an instruction manual, blogs require writing to no one at first. And it takes time -- at least a year before you really begin to connect, and build awareness and excitement about how you can help others.
Entering social media is like going to college in Japan at age 16, and seeing a crowded but lonely new world where at first you know nothing and can't speak the language.
For adults who pride themselves on knowing things, it's hard to start by being stupid.
It takes a leap of faith to enter the fray and overcome the initial apparent silliness of these tools -- and to reveal our ignorance. But leap one must if you're going to make it, because extending your human network is the greatest competitive advantage of all.
.-= Ben Kunzu00c2u00b4s last blog ..Square Up: Now, credit cards on your cell phone =-.
It's funny, but ad people who are too cool and pride themselves on having all the answers are sometimes reticent to be the newbie. But it ain't that hard. And I know of some people who have made the leap. One person getting $30,000 a year for just one free-lance gig tweeting on behalf of a company. Probably takes up 15 percent of her time. Good, smart ad folks who know how to think, write, engage, operate a video camera, edit and learn can turn this stuff into opportunities. Plus as problem solvers they should be able to get by without an instruction manual.
[...] I found most compelling in one of Edward’s blog posts is his idea that we can’t “afford to lean back anymore.” This is the notion that denying the growth and presence of social media is absurd and it can [...]
[...] Great quotation by Edward Boches about why social media matters today: “Consumers are no longer spectators, they’re creators. Individuals whose total resources consist of video cameras and folding tables can create brands. Content distribution that relies on videographers and bloggers is often as effective as media plans that write fat checks to networks and magazines. Creative might be an old-fashioned message, but it’s just as likely to be an experience, an interaction or an application.” [...]