Don’t try to change what people think.
Try to change what they do.
Photo courtesy of Julian Hanford
Sir John Hegarty must be sick of me. I met up with him last week to interview him for the podcast (and a forthcoming book I’ll give you more details about soon!) And then last night we did an event together at the BBH office. As you can tell from the little halo above my head in the photo, I was on my best behaviour.
The evening was the first of a number of discussions organised by the School of Communication Arts focussed on the future of the advertising industry. Which, as you may know, is something I’m pretty interested in.
We were also lucky enough to be joined by the always-entertaining Robin Wight, founder of The Ideas Foundation and president of The Engine Group. And the room was filled with lots of other great advertising people, a representative from the Sector Skills Council and a number of star students from the school.
I wanted a record of the night, so I popped my digital recorder on the table for the duration of the event. So if you’ve got an hour and a half to spare, you can have a listen to what was discussed right here:
UPDATE: You can also see a film of it on the School of Communication Arts site right here
As well as running Additive, doing the Future of Advertising podcast, writing books, working on TV programmes and lots of other crap – I occasionally keep my hand in as a creative. Because I can’t think of anything worse than being the guy who teaches but doesn’t do. Ugh!
So here’s something I was involved in a few months ago with The Viral Factory. It’s a new charity I came up with for a VH1 show. It’s called ‘Give A Shit’ and it simply asks you to spend your time thinking about something worthwhile when you drop the kids off at the pool/rake out your cage/crimp a length/chop a log/lay some cable.
The video – starring some foxy bint from Twilight – tells you more. Or see the website here.
A couple of weeks back I sent an email I didn’t expect to get a response to. It was to the legendary Art Director, George Lois. And much to my surprise he responded and invited me around to his New York apartment to interview him for the podcast.
Wow! What a scoop!
George was right there at the creative revolution, working alongside Bill Bernbach. He is the hero of many of my heros. And his influence has been so great it’s spread well outside of the advertising industry.
There are so many things I want to ask him. But I don’t want to keep it all to myself.
What questions do you have for the great man?
Next up on my forthcoming interviews we have Sir John Hegarty.
Few people have had such an impact on British advertising as this man. And I’m over the moon that I’ve managed to grab some of his time.
I’ll be talking to him about his book. And asking him about the future of the industry.
But what would you like to ask him?
Fire away in the comments area.
I’ve got a bunch of incredible interviews coming up in the next few weeks. Truly incredible. I’m prodding some of my heros in the face with a microphone. And I want to make sure that I ask them the questions my listeners want answered.
So I’m asking for your help.
Please, use the comments section to tell me what you’d like to ask these advertising heros.
First off – Mr Steve Henry.
He’s responsible for so many campaigns I wish I had in my portfolio. And he’s one of the very loveliest people I know.
So what do you want to ask him? How he judges creative work? His opinions on the role of research? Who he thinks is producing the most amazing work at the moment?
Just add your questions below.
And stay tuned.
I was chatting to Steve on the phone the other night, telling him all about the exciting stuff I’m doing.
And I neglected to ask him what exciting stuff he was doing.
How rude of me!
The next morning he was up bright and early to be interviewed by Evan Davis on Radio4.
His life is clearly far more exciting than mine!
I’m not sure how long Radio4 keep their programmes online – so I cheekily snaffled it and put it here for your listening pleasure.
Enjoy!
Yesterday Marc Lewis and I received some stats on the online viewing figures for our 140 Characters pilot show.
It was considerably higher than we were expecting.
By a couple of thousand!
For all those who missed the show – and would like to see it again – we’re hoping to get it back up on 140characters.tv some time this week.
For those who tuned in on the night – thank you. We’re blown away by your support.
On Tuesday I announced that the podcast was now being sponsored by the School of Communication Arts. I may have mentioned that I’m really excited about it. If not, please understand that I am REALLY exited about it. And to celebrate the new tie-up, the students split into two teams and hit the streets with the guys from buymyface.com to drum up a few more listeners.
And here’s what happened.
Team 1 took Soho (accompanied by the amazing photographer Julian Hanford)
And team 2 took Shoreditch.
As you can see, they blagged their way into agencies. And this is how many each team succeeded in gaining access to:
Each team also tried a bit of tweeting. This is a record of their activity:
Both teams also tried a bit of underhand bullshitting. This is how I think they fared at that game:
And, from tracking the hits on the addresses I gave them, this is how many downloads each team succeeded in getting:
Can you tell who won?
We’ll, in this visual team 1 is ever so slightly ahead with 170 hits to 167.
But then I remembered that I had to adjust the figures. We had tested the URLs before the day to make sure they worked. And I needed to subtract the test hits to get the true figures. And that changed things ever so slightly to:
Team 1 >>> 161 hits
Team 2 >>> 162 hits
Yup! It couldn’t have been closer. There’s just one hit difference.
The most impressive thing is that their work has contributed to a whopping 804 podcast downloads in a day and a half. Which is considerably higher than the usual level.
Well done to all the students who took part. In particular I’d like to think the winning team of Sophie, Charlie, Elen, Thirza, Helen and Rasmus. Especially because they also succeeded in getting the podcast featured on It’s Nice That too.
There’s more podcast fun coming from the SCA2 students soon. They’ve also come up with a bunch of amazing ideas to promote the podcast to the industry. I’ll be telling you more about that stuff very soon.
This morning I launched Episode 8 of the Future of Advertising Podcast. And to celebrate the fact that it’s now sponsored by the School of Communication Arts, the students went out on the streets of London to drum up more listeners – accompanied by the guys from BuyMyFace.com
They split into two teams – with a unique web address and QR code each – and went in search of unsuspecting advertising people.
I won’t know how they’ve fared until my stats update at the witching hour. So, come the stroke of midnight, I’ll be checking to see which team won.
I’ll let you know on Thursday when I go into the school to announce the winners.
In the meantime, if you want to boost the stats for one of the teams, click on one of these two links to visit the download page:
getadditive.com/team1
getadditive.com/team2
It’s taken forever.
But I can now announce our new sponsor for the podcast:
The School of Communication Arts
I hope you’re running around whooping and hollering and high-fiving complete strangers – because that’s exactly what I want to do. It’s a perfect match. This podcast is all about the Future of Advertising and the school is educating the talented individuals who *are* the future of advertising. If you want to find out more about it, there’s some blurb right here.
So here’s what we’ve got in store for you this episode:
An interview with Marc Lewis, Dean of the School of Communication Arts
I just love hanging out with Marc. He’s one of those people that inspires and energises me. So I was delighted to interview him. He talks about:
- Why he started up the school in the first place
- The first batch of graduates from the school
- The learnings and mistakes from the first batch of students
- The breadth of expertise that the mentors bring
- Who the best mentor is (guess!)
- How the school is funded
- The difference between heroes and legends
- Why you should sponsor the school
- Why you should become a mentor
- The unusual sponsorship deal we’ve come to
An interview with Paul Brazier, ECD of AMV BBDO
Paul looks after more creatives than anyone else in the UK. And manages to motivate them to win a startling amount of awards. His office is packed with them. I was tempted to pinch a couple of pencils or lions on my way out – he’d never have noticed.
Paul talks about:
- His 20 year anniversary at AMV
- His involvement in the School of Communication Arts
- What they get out of it
- How he got into the industry
- How AMV has evolved over the years
- That digital isn’t about digital
- The stuff that still gives him a thrill
- His time as president of D&AD
- His tips for creatives
And then we throw it over to you to get your employer involved.
We need you to convince your company to sponsor the School of Communication Arts. It doesn’t cost much. It’s tax deductible. It’s massively rewarding. And you’re investing in the future of our industry.
And if none of you do it, this may be the last podcast for a while.
And if any of you do, you’ll get a podcast dedicated to you.
And a rosy glow inside.
It’s in your hands.
A wee story for you here.
Nearly 20 years ago I started in the ad industry in Scotland. And – because Campaign talked about nothing but London – we had our very own advertising magazine – The Drum.
That was where you’d find all of Scotland’s advertising news. As you can imagine, there wasn’t loads of it. So you’d think it might be quite easy to get written about.
I was a junior. I wasn’t very good. And The Drum wasn’t very interested in writing about me.
So you could imagine I’d be delighted if I ever got a mention.
I wasn’t.
They could never spell my name.
In one article I was disappointed to be credit as ‘David Briss’.
In another I was underwhelmed to be mentioned as ‘David Birse’.
And – most peculiarly – the one time they got the ‘Birss’ bit right, they spelled my first name ‘Davis’.
How the f%^& did that happen?!
So today I see an article that mentions me in The Drum.
And my name is in the headline.
And – for the first time ever – it’s spelled correctly.
This is a big moment for me people.
Please go and read their article about what the SCA students are doing for me tomorrow:
School of Communication Arts looks for sponsor with Dave Birss
I always like to say yes to things that scare the living crap out of me. And this latest venture is no exception to that rule.
This coming Monday I’m going to be hosting a digital comedy night as part of Internet Week Europe. And you can watch it live, wherever you are in the world.
The main draw of the night is the filming of a pilot for a TV show, starring Neil Mullarkey, Niall Ashdown and Andy Smart.
The show is an improv comedy extravaganza where the action on stage is dictated by the viewers on the web. And the lucky 140 people who manage to get tickets to the event.
I’ve been arranging it alongside the wonderful Marc Lewis, Dean of the School of Communication Arts. And we’ve hed the incredibly generous support of Nice Agency who are programming the system, Edelman who are providing the venue, Kinura who are doing the streaming and Ravensbourne who are doing the filming.
We’re also supported by Twitter – which is the platform we’re using to get the audience suggestions.
If you fancy getting tickets, you can find them here - http://140chars.eventbrite.co.uk/
And, if you can’t be there, you can join us live on the web at - http://140characters.tv/
And I also need you to get involved before we start. It would be great if you could send me:
- an audio file of you yelling, coughing, farting, sneezing, growling – or any other fun noises we can include in our buzzer sounds.
- a link to a YouTube video that we can create a voiceover to
- photos we can use to feed the onstage mayhem.
This is your chance to be part of TV history!
I hope you’ll join us.
I often find myself talking to agencies and clients about making sure they’re solving the right problem.
And this is a perfect example of what can happen when you take a step back and work out what the problem really is.
For years the printer industry thought the public wanted more features and faster printing.
But what actually needs addressed is not what the printer does – but how the printer does it.
This is beautiful. I really, really want one.
This is the image that greeted me this morning when I visited the School of Communication Arts. I’d never seen it before. So I wanted to know where it came from.
Apparently it was done for the ICAD Annual last year by an illustrator called Steve Doogan. There’s some lovely stuff on his site, if you fancy a gander.
Nice. Thanks Steve!
Over the last couple of months I’ve had quite a few enquiries from people interested in workshops and talks through Additive. That’s great news! I’m always delighted to hear from companies who are interested in education and training. I’m pretty passionate about it, you see.
But many of these enquiries had one thing in common. The enquirers were expecting us to provide our services for free. And that’s not a price I’m very fond of.
So here’s a letter to those tight-arsed companies:
Dear Freeloader,
Thank you for your interest in using Additive to provide training for your organisation. Like you, we believe that education is absolutely vital if our industry is to remain relevant and effective in the world of business. However, it seems that we disagree over the actual value of it.
You see, the training we provide is designed to make an impact across your entire business. It gives you the skills to do more relevant work that will benefit your clients. It gives you the opportunity to pick up briefs beyond your current skillset. It helps you retain clients who are starting to look elsewhere for fresh approaches. It helps you hold on to restless but talented employees. So the idea of doing it for ‘free’ is not something we’re entirely comfortable with.
“It’s only a couple of hours of your time”, I hear you say. “We’ll even provide free coffee and biscuits for you while you’re here.”
Nope.
“Well then, let us try you out first and we’ll pay you for any other sessions we book you for.”
Uh-uh.
“How about a few of us pop along to a talk you’re doing elsewhere?”
I’m sorry, but if you don’t put any value in training up front, the training won’t have any value. Education isn’t a dip-your-toe-in-the-water kinda thing. You either go for it or you don’t. Us teaching you stuff is just half the game – you acting on it is the other half. And if you lack this much commitment right now, I don’t see you having the commitment to put anything into practice.
May I suggest you start your own education with ‘Management for Dummies’.
Many thanks,
Dave
I brought out this podcast a couple of days ago – and I’m only just getting around to mentioning it on the blog. This is the last of the ‘independent’ series. As from the next episode, they’ll be sponsored by one of my favourite organisations in the whole blinkin’ world.
So here’s what have in store for you in this episode:
An interview with Spencer Osborn, one of Ogilvy’s Global MDs:
He quickly makes it clear that he’s not THE MD of Ogilvy, he’s AN MD of Ogilvy. And he had lots of clever and insightful stuff to say.
As a taster, he covers:
- how he became a global MD of Ogilvy
- why he doesn’t think of himself as being in the advertising business
- why he finds just doing TV and posters a bit dull
- the importance of creating dialogues with people rather than just telling and selling
- why targeting has always been the most important thing
- what he means by ‘pervasive creativity’
- why he’s stunned at how slow some agencies have been to adopt digital
- some potential problems with crowd-sourcing
- the big changes between the UK and US advertising industries
- about Ogilvy’s ‘Big IdeaL’
- his thoughts on the big agency model of buying-in skills in comparison to the smaller agency model of outsourcing everything
- how true it is that an idea can come from anywhere
My daughter’s regular advertising review
We look at:
- McDonald’s Time to Spy interactive YouTube video.
- Allstate’s Racoon TV ad
- A YouTube banner experimental thing from Lean Mean Fighting Machine.
It looked a bit like this:
What comes next
You’ll already be sick of me talking about the sponsorship. But it’ll all be unveiled in the next episode. I’ve got everything I need to put together the announcement episode (which is what I’ll be working on this weekend).
Then we need to get you involved. Yes, YOU. But more about that shortly.
In the meantime, send me a blinkin’ email would you? You didn’t do it last time I asked. Click here to just say hello and tell me who you’d like me to interview.
—
If you’ve not subscribed yet, find us on iTunes here.
Or if you’ve got commitment issues, download the episode directly here.
In the course of my training, I often get asked if I can present some ’digital best practice’. And my response is always ‘no’. I’m happy to show case studies, share principals that usually work and tell people about my own experiences. But you’ll never hear me saying that something is ‘best practice’. And after reading a ‘best practice’ document that has just raised my blood pressure a few notches, I wanted to share why I never want to hear the term again.
Bullshit bingo
The term is so overused that it doesn’t mean anything any more. It’s become a box-ticking exercise to show clients that you’re being responsible and safeguarding their money. However, the contents of ’best practice’ can at best be ‘things that have worked for us in the past’ or ‘some numbers that indicate that something worked in a specific scenario’.
Static world delusion
‘Best practice’ can only be believed if the world is a static place where you can replicate the laboratory conditions every time. Clearly it’s not. We’re talking about different audiences who are influenced by the ever-changing world around them. A rational black-and-white approach isn’t the best way to understand emotional decisions. It’s the equivalent of dissecting a corpse on a mortuary slab to try to understand how people fall in love.
A total misnomer
The phrase ‘best practice’ leads people to believe that following the rules will lead to the best option. It doesn’t. It leads to standard results. To predictable results. To ordinary results. I’ll aim for extraordinary, thanks.
Lazy bastards
The people who ask for ‘best practice’ are people who don’t understand something and are looking for a shortcut to knowledge. Nothing beats learning by doing. I could read all about ballet moves and hear tips from the best ballet dancers in the world but I’d still dance like an uncoordinated, rhythmless oaf. There’s no shortcut to expertise. If you want to be good at something you need to put in the work.
Creativity killer
I’ve seen good ideas gored by the bull of ‘best practice’ (and if they survive that ordeal they then have to make it across the piranha tank of research). It all leads to ideas that are so insipid and predictable that they don’t get noticed by anybody. And that’s a waste of everyone’s time and money.
So am I anti-knowledge? Do I disagree with learning from past experiences? Hell no! I run an education company for goodness sake! I just don’t think this is the kind of knowledge to propagate. It’s rules-based. And following rules discourages people from engaging their brains. There’s a difference between tools and rules.
Let’s kill off this term ‘best practice’ and make a return to intelligence and applied thought. Who’s with me?
A wee while ago the Shark Awards asked me if I’d write some blog posts. Preferably a bit controversial. Something that might provoke a bit of debate.
I’ve just posted my first in a little series. You can find it here:
So is it time to ditch the word ‘advertising’?
It’s based on this lovely little tweet from Sir John Hegarty:
And it explores what agencies can do if they’re not in the advertising trade any more.
Please go and have a read and leave your own comment.
It seems as if I’ve only just released a podcast and here’s another one. You really are a lucky sod, y’know.
This episode is the second of our New York specials. It’s got:
An interview with PSFK’s Piers Fawkes
Where he tells us:
- How PSFK managed to become one of the top 200 blogs
- Why there are less Brits in the US advertising scene now
- The difference between the UK and US advertising industries
- The hot topics to watch
- How technology is helping us to live better lives
- Where real innovation comes from
- How people don’t want brands to get in the way of experiences
- That most brands can see beyond using digital for marketing
- Why smaller brands find it easier to take advantage of technology
- Whether the dash to ‘earned media’ is a good thing
- The importance of being culturally relevant to your audience
Top 5 tips from Ryan Hall, MD of Nice Agency.
(They do brilliant apps for all kinds of device. Most notably they did Channel 4′s 4OD app for the iPad. Lovely!) Here’s a quick summary of his advice:
- Know your competition
- Know your audience
- Define the vision
- Define your roadmap
- Be collaborative
And back to me!
I announce that we’ve got a sponsor. But I don’t tell you who it is. However, I’ll be telling you very soon. It’s great news. And hopefully it means more regular episodes. And access to lots of amazing people. And … and .. and … I’m excited!
Please, please, please give me your feedback. Or just send me an email to say hello. I’d love to hear from you. The address is podcast (at) getadditive (dot) com
More non-podcast-related writings coming very soon. Just sit there and keep hitting refresh for a few days.
If you’ve not subscribed yet, find us on iTunes here.
Or, if you’re not Appled-up, download the episode directly here.
