Getting to invention
I spent last week at Advertising Week in New York. It got me to thinking. There's little doubt that agencies and brands need to act more like start-ups (though Tim O'Reilly would probably say more like "crackpots"). You hear it from just about every corner of the industry. It's not a new insight. But still, few ad agencies have made the transition. I don't have all of the answers, but below are some things I'd recommend to any agency looking to move further in this direction.
1. Put it at top and center of your company: Agency cultural change needs to start at the top. It's the best way to kick-start meaningful change. Make sure that you install digital and invention leadership at the very top of your organization. Additionally, make sure the CEO believes in the mission. I've been lucky to have great support from people at the top. It doesn't matter how much smart stuff you've got to say, if the CEO isn't echoing the sentiments and ideas, the ship just won't turn. You also should avoid trying to create groups that sit off to the side of the main flow of your agency. Put invention at center. Appoint some key change agents, specialists, but invite everyone to the party. I was on a mobile panel last week. The notion of creating a separate innovation groups came up. It's not a good idea. If your entire agency is not thinking about mobile now, you're in trouble. Put technology close to the ideas and make digital and invention everybody's job. 2. Hire inventors: Get creative about where you're looking for and finding talent. Portfolio reviews at advertising and design schools are important but look outside of traditional recruiting channels. You need people who make stuff, have modern ideas, know how to sell and code them. People who would instinctively rather be at a start-up, software, or gaming company. Look at those types of companies and places like Boulder Digital Works at CU and VCU Brandcenter, where integrated creative skills are taught. Go to tech conferences. The 4A's CreateTech, led by CP+B's Scott Prindle and Deutsch LA's Trevor O'Brien, is a good new one. Check out what TechStars is up to. While advertising is not always the easiest sell to someone from the start-up world, it's not as hard as you may think. In advertising you get to work on hundreds of products not just one. You get to put ideas out into culture, work with cool brands, invent things, and make a good living in the process. I believe that advertising has a lot to offer the young entrepreneur, and our industry needs more of them if we want to stay relevant. 3. Build it yourself: If you want to create powerful and innovative apps, you need people on staff to make them. Having a strong technology capability enables you to move fast, ensures your ideas are at the forefront of technology, are feasible, and compliant with client IT standards. It doesn't mean that you should never partner with external developers. Many times the best solution comes from beyond agency walls, but I've found it critical to have a strong tech core, internally. Making stuff and tinkering with things is essential to establishing a true culture of invention. If you have to pick up the phone every time you want to make something, its going to be pretty hard to make the transition. Start by hiring a great creative technology director with experience ideally in both ad and start-up worlds (it helps that they understand both ad and tech culture). Then quickly start building things. You need proof points. Many agencies are pretty attached to the idea of doing things with partners. You'll need to prove to your teams that you can match or beat the quality outside. But it needs to be a full agency commitment. You don't get to great tech overnight. Like anything, you get better the more you do it. 4. Create an invention-friendly process: It's pretty easy for people to get a handle on what invention looks like. What's obviously harder is how you get there. We recently did an internal workshop with some of my colleagues, Kip Voytek, Robert Reich, Will Aldrich, where we dived into brand ecosystems and service-based marketing thinking. What became evident is that we needed new tools for both evaluating and getting to good platform ideas. So we decided to make our creative brief more platform-friendly and also develop an idea filtering device that we're calling the Invention Charter. This is a document that gets filled out during the creative development process, and it's focused on getting teams to ask some important questions about the work. What is it in 140 characters? What problem does it solve? Who is it for? How do we find people? Why would someone participate? Why would they share it? Simple stuff but critical things to ask if you want someone to use or watch what you make repeatedly. 5. Make it easy to say yes: Don't present your digital or invention ideas like TV spots. The evaluation criteria is different. If you want to give them a fighting chance, you need to root them in strategy, show how they work, or better yet, prototype them. You also need to explain their role in solving the business objectives. They need to be easy to say yes to. Part of that is making sure that they are technically feasible, but the other part is making sure that green-lighting them is a decision that people are both excited about and can easily justify. They have to make brand and business sense. Be hyper critical of your own creative decisions. Ask yourself some of the questions I've highlighted above before you sell something. 6. Bring your clients along: If you want to sell innovative solutions, it's also vital that you help your clients understand how to evaluate and position them in their marketing plans. We talk a lot about the notion of being idea venture-capitlists. It's not about doing one big idea. It's about doing a lot things, and getting comfortable with the fact that you're going to have some failures. Rovio made fifty-one games before they got to Angry Birds. As good as any development process is or no matter how smart you, you just don't know what exactly is going to resound and connect with people. This is big shift for marketing, and brands need help understanding why its an approach that makes sense for them. You've got to create conditions for invention and a big part of that is having ongoing conversations with your clients about what is and isn't working out there and how marketing invention can best work for their business. 7. De-couple invention from campaign cycles: Ad timelines are notoriously short. And there are generally fundamental needs that have to be met. TV, OOH, display, retail, print, and etc. The innovations are often the first thing to get cut. They don't always fit in the box. They may feel too risky. You should strive to create innovative marketing at each bat. It's what gets talked about and shared. But you also need to think above and beyond campaign cycles. Many true or lasting brand innovations make sense with or without a campaign. They are things that should be done regardless of what's happening on air, particularly if they're solving business challenges. De-coupling invention from campaigns gives you the time to do it right, removes campaign pressures from the process, and ultimately, leads to better and more effective innovation work. 8. Don't leave your inventions at home: You may get an assignment brief that asks for certain media deliverables. You need to meet the initial ask but don't stop there. If a mobile application, a new site or service, is going to answer the business problem, bring it forward. Be an expert. An unbiased problem solver. You do the brand a disservice when you withhold smart thinking. Help people understand why its important to consider options other than the ones they've asked for. If you can do it smartly, respectfully, and on strategy, it generally works out. Many of the digital successes I've been a part of started this way. 9. Make stuff for yourself: Most of us in this business get paid a fee to think and make things for clients. We're in the service business. And to be successful, you've got to provide a high level of service and create work that gets brand and business results. That's job number one. And its a great business to be in. But if you want to get better at invention, you've also got to make things for yourself. It's how you learn, get to bigger thinking, get people excited about making things, as well as open incremental revenue streams. Take a page from Facebook and Google's book. Operationalize and support daily experimentation. 10. Know how the business works: It's not enough to know the brand's marketing challenges. You need to understand the customer experience and how the business and technology works. Lean into infrastructure. Learn all about their POS and CRM systems, how they make money, and get familiar with every single digital and real world customer touchpoint. Then mine for customer needs and problems. You'll find some ideas in there every time. 11. Make invention part of the vision: I watched a great video of Steve Jobs this weekend from his NeXT era. He talked about the importance of "reiterating the vision." If you want to get better at making things, you need to make invention part of your cultural DNA. It needs to be embedded in your agency vision. And it needs to be repeated often. People need to come in to work every day and know what their chasing. The message needs to be clear and simple. But make invention a big part of the vision.