Apidays New York 2024 - Scaling API-first by Ian Reasor and Radu Cotescu, Adobe
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Google Firestarters 8 / Agencies are like the KLF
1. Innovation = Uncertainty
So why are we all so f**king sure
everybody else is doing it wrong?
Glyn Britton
Managing Partner, Strategy & Innovation
@glyndot
ALBION
3. MUSIC, MONEY, CULTURE, DR WHO, GIANT
RABBITS, NUMBER 23, SYNCHRONICITY,
CHAOS, ORDER, MAGICAL THINKING,
DISORDER, THE ILLUMINATUS! TRILOGY,
DISCHORDIANISM, CONSPIRACY THEORIES,
IDEASPACE, COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS,
LIMINAL GAPS, EBBINGHAUS FORGETTING
CURVE, SELF-REFERENTIAL REALITY TUNNELS
Get the book: http://alb.io/YPy3Lq ALBION
4. âTHE KLF, IT WAS UNDERSTOOD, WERE PEOPLE WHO
DEFINITELY KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING, FOR HOW ELSE
COULD YOU EXPLAIN THEIR SUCCESS?â
Get the book: http://alb.io/YPy3Lq ALBION
20. PLANNING ADVERTISING PERSPECTIVE
WRITING DIGITAL IMAGINATION
ART DIRECTION BRANDING FLEXIBILITY
DESIGNING STRATEGY COMMERCIALITY
DEVELOPMENT PRODUCTS COLLABORATION
ALBION
21. AD AGENCY
DIGITAL AGENCY
BRANDING AGENCY
STRATEGY AGENCY
UX AGENCY
CREATIVE BUSINESS PARTNER FOR ENTREPRENURS
ALBION
I want to make the case that the reason agencies are obsessed about innovation is because our future is uncertain.And so I find it funny that the debate between us is often conducted in the most certain, combative and tribal way.
I just finished a great book about the KLF. Itâs called âKLF: Chaos Magic Music Moneyâ byJMR Higgs.
Well actually it isnât really about the KLF. As one Amazon reviewer saysâIt's about the ideas that led to the KLF doing the things they did, and the ideas that led to those ideas.â
Part of the premise is about how everybody was certain that the KLF were master media manipulators.And that makes sense if you take their story at face value.
They first came to prominence when they made the best ever novelty record, Doctorinâ The Tardis, and got it to No. 1.
Then they wrote a book about how to have a No. 1, which many, including the Klaxons, have used successfully since.
Then they helped invent Trance music with the original âWhat Time Is Loveâ and â3am Eternalâ.
Then they re-made those tunes as âStadium Houseâ pop music, and had No. 1âs right around the world.
Then they âretiredâ from the music business, firing a machine gun at music execs at the Brit Awards, before dumping a dead sheep on the steps of the after party.
And finally they burnt their last million quid on the island of Jura â all the money that was left over from their pop career.Surely a carefully planned art prank? Surely they didnât really do it? And, if they did, surely that makes them arseholes?
But the bookâs conclusion is that, actually, they didnât know what they were doing. They just looked like they did.I havenât got time today to explain why this stacks up, but I recommend you read it and find out for yourself.
Which is why I think that agencies are like the KLF.Welook like we know what weâre doing. We have to because, in our industry, to quote from the KLF book (about the art indutry actually, but it applies equally to advertising) âthe importance of the strange magical glamours of context and reputation are paramountâWe even convince ourselves that we know what weâre doing sometimes, with hokum theories.The truth is that maybe once we did even know what weâre doing. Because things used to be simple. But theyâre not anymore.
Why? Because the simple things that clients used to give us agency for have gone away.Putting posters on poster sites. Putting banner ads on the web. They couldnât do it. Now they can.Now clients have in-house planners, creatives, production, even media.All the practical stuff they used to have to outsource to us, they can now do themselves.And it gets worse. Now adtechstartups are busy automating what we used to do, and clients are busy acquiring them, accelerating our demise.
So how do we react to this uncertainty? By attacking each other in the most certain, ideological, dogmatic terms.#CantUnderstandNewTechnology is a new newspaper, from @camillastore and @planbstudio, which Design Week described as âa new gossip rag for the Silicon Roundabout set⊠riddled with swearing, childish humour and insider knowledge.âI wrote an article in Issue 1 in which I attempted to satirise the debate going on between agencies facing this disruption.
This is how I characterised the debate from the ad agenciesâ side:âDespite the advertising business growing rapidly and going through a period of tremendously exciting change, weâre going to distract ourselves by talking endlessly about how the ânew frontierâ is designing products.Weâre doing this because everybody who works in advertising pretty much hates advertising. And because we sense thereâs money to be made, fast, by lowering standards.â
And this is how I characterised the debate from the product design studios side. In a word: Angry:âIâm so fucking angry. I was into product design years ago when hardly anybody else knew about it. 17 years Iâve been in this game - 17 years of enduring endless, circular, whining debates about the difference between UX and UI. And Mr Jonny Fucking Adman thinks he can just steam in and take that all away from me. You havenât paid your dues ponytail boy â now fuck off.â
While itâs more fun to debate if you take intractable extreme positions, the right answer is invariably in the sensible middle ground. In a good compromise.I think ad agencies can and should learn from product design studios' User Centred Design methodologies, to make their advertising more effective and more human.I think product design studios should learn from (the best) ad agencies, to make their products more imaginative and entertaining to use.I think that, if they could collaborate or join forces, the result might be very powerful. (Which is why, at Albion, we hired 12 product and service designers last year.)
But what strikes me more is that all this anger and energy is being expended on something that, for the most part, is no more than an ad agency making its own app.So small and inconsequential. Surely weâre missing the point? Weâre not understanding how fundamentally the marketing services business is being disrupted and needs to change to survive.Chief Innovation Officer hirings and SXSW stunt products arenât enough.
In fact theyâre our version of Metallica suing their fans, desperately clinging on to how the music business used to work, wanting to believe nothing has really changed.The people on the other side, the AdTechstartups, are laughing at us. âHow feeble.â âHow quaint.â We have a desperate need to experiment, to try all sorts of new business models, services, products, ways of working. To make giant leaps, not token gestures.
I think we need to go back to first principles. Strip away 50 years of accumulated assumptions about what agencies are for, and go back to the basics of what companies want to give agency for, and why â TODAY - and build back up from there.At Albion, no-oneâs coming to us and asking for Planning or Art Direction. These days very few are asking us for Advertising or Branding. They donât want to have to navigate the agency worldâs arcane divisions.What they are asking is for us to help them start and grow businesses. And the reason theyâre asking us is because theyâve heard that weâre good at Collaboration, Flexibility and Imagination. Weâre good business partners for entrepreneurs.
Thatâs what weâre building our business around.Weâre focusing on an audience â entrepreneurs â and taking the time to understand what they want, and working hard to give it to them. Itâs taken us 10 years so far, and I think weâre really getting somewhere now.Now, in a world of bullshit agency straplines this can sound platitudinous, but weâre trying to really live by it.Our service isnât advertising. Our service is helping to start and grow businesses. And one of the levers we use to do that is advertising.Itâs this is the kind of reinvention process, and the level of commitment, that we think itâs necessary to start to find your place in the disrupted marketing services landscape.
My final point it this. Itâs tempting to think that one neat ânew agency modelâ will become clear in the next 2 or 3 years, and then we can all relax. But I think this level of disruption will be a fact of life for the rest of my working life. In 1995 the KLF announced a 23 year moratorium on all projects, and further indicated that they would not speak about the burning of the million pounds during this period. They understood that neither they nor anybody else could understand why they did what they did until they had the benefit of some historical perspective. So letâs stop all this talk about agency innovation and just get on with stuff. Then letâs all meet up then for a Firestarters Reunion in 2036. Iâll be 63 and, hopefully, about to retire, and we can then look back with some perspective and see what actually happened.