Media is complicated.

More and more complicated.

The more complicated things are the greater the need for simplification.

Here’s 3 simple rules to help to deal with the complications.

There are more and more lines on a block plan.  The media channels used don’t have easily comparable metrics.

Even the media that have been around since the middle of the last century don’t, for instance audiences for newspaper readership and radio listenership.  Those that might seem similar don’t of course either.   A view of an advert on the TV in your sitting room is not measured comparably with a view of perhaps the same ad on your mobile.   Add in experiential or the headline sponsorship of a sporting event and you are completely in the territory of chalk versus cheese.

Every plan should be judged by how it delivers growth for the client’s ambitions.  Yet judging by outcomes can be complicated too.  First, if you only judge by short term results you are in danger of ruling out media that contribute in a medium to longterm way.  Without this you are liable to end up with a brand without a medium to longterm future.  Secondly there is once again the chalk and cheese problem.  Experiential won’t deliver the scale of broadcast advertising.  But a great experience is hard to forget (as is a poor one of course).  The impact that a good personal experience can deliver is difficult to isolate and to calibrate against other marketing.

So things are complicated.

How can we simplify?

There are only two good forms of comms.  Comms which help to convert to a sale (or recruit to a new behaviour or cause).  Comms which help to drive desire for the brand (or behaviour or cause).

Every line of the plan needs to clearly deliver against one or both of these criteria with a clear key performance metric.

If it’s about conversion its essential to have a brilliant discipline of test, learn and reapply.  The best possible machine learning for execution and tactic.  Avoid the trap of too many metrics that Jim Kelly, VP R+D at Quantcast, talked about at MediaCom’s transformation session at Adweek Europe.  It’s important to prioritise the metrics to deliver the best outcomes for the business, and not to prioritise the metrics against which your current processes perform most powerfully.  This is essential because optimising against a metric that you can influence most successfully today is not necessarily as important as experimenting with what will leverage your business outcomes across the next twelve months.

If the comms are about building brand saliency and warmth then its crucial to remember the 2 second rule.  Much is made of the supposed “fact” that our attention spans are shrinking.  The truth is that there is so much more content trying to attract consumer attention that any commercial message needs to be brilliant at capturing and retaining that attention over and above the chaos.

The point is not that average attention spans have shrunk from 12 to 8 seconds.  The point is that you’ve really only got a couple of seconds to interest anyone.  Thanks to mobiles to which we are joined at the fist there is nearly always something else to look at or listen to instead.

Make yourself useful, interesting, funny, entertaining, emotive or personal in a couple of seconds or don’t expect to keep any consumer’s focus.

Simple then (but not easy): Be accountable, Innovate, Cut through.

Image: Black Victorian by Stephanie Nnamani Getty Images

Some called 2017 the “year of women”.  Time Magazine’s person of the year was “The silence breakers”, the thousands of people who blew the whistle on sexual harassment.   They didn’t put thousands on the cover however.  Five women were represented in the cover photo, together with an arm, an anonymous arm.  (The sixth image of an elbow, belongs to an anonymous young hospital worker from Texas — a sexual harassment victim who fears that disclosing her identity would negatively impact her family. And the five on the cover are Taylor Swift, Ashley Judd, former Uber engineer Susan Fowler, lobbyist Adama Iwu, and Isabel Pascual, who is a strawberry picker and an immigrant from Mexico whose name was changed to protect her identity.)

In this so called “year of women” who took the cover photograph?  A team of two called Billy and Hells who are one man, one woman.  A good balance then.  Unlike many professional pictures.

A piece of research by Anna Fox, Professor of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, was published in 2016 said that under 5% of published and collected photographs are taken by women, and many commercial agencies’ employees comprising around 2% women.  As we know 51% of the population is women and they make in the region of 80% of shopping decisions.  They’re not missing from advertising imagery to that extent of course.  But those images will be taken largely by men.  It’s a mismatch that surely no-one would expect these days.

Does it matter who takes the photo?  A panel that I participated in at Getty Images discussed this issue.  They recently ran a gorgeous exhibition at their London gallery called “The Female Gaze”, of seventy images taken by women, mainly of women.

The inspiring Stephanie Nnamani, visual artist, points out that diversity of the people taking photographs is crucial to empowerment.  Even the selfie culture is “empowering, worth celebrating.”  As she first came to photography she realised just how prominent the “objectification of women” was in a very celebrated photographer’s work, and this inspired her in her career choice.

Why would the proportion of women behind the camera be so out of kilter, not just with the target audiences for most brands, but also with the numbers of women in photography classes in colleges?

It makes no sense at all. It is of course something that we can all try to influence if we are involved in the commissioning of work.  Does your process allow for a gender split of 50:50 when the photographer or director is being selected?  If the audience for the brand’s marketing or advertising is at least 50% women, can this be ignored as a factor?

The panel believe (although perhaps you would expect them to) that it should not be ignored, and that the images taken by women of women are different, perhaps more authentic.

Given the ASA’s conclusions about the depiction of women in advertising and the need for new guidelines, having more women behind the camera should help redress the balance to a new and more normal normal.

Which is the most important factor for transformation?

At the beginning of 2018 we asked our clients a big question.  Of all of the multiple issues facing our industry, (including GAFAM, Brexit, Millennials, Voice, Purpose etc etc), all of which are on marketers’ minds, which is the most important?

I can reveal here that the top four issues are:

Creativity, Artificial Intelligence, Data and Agility.

At our opening session at AdWeek Europe we invited four speakers to each champion one of the topics and let the audience vote on which was most crucial.

That transformation is essential for business is unarguable.  Most businesses have path dependence baked into their ways of working.  Keeping up with the pace of change in the world is essential but it isn’t enough simply to buy in a new head of digital or data.  If you staple on a new product to the edge of the business but don’t change how the organisation operates then it won’t deliver.

As one great thinker of this century Stephen Hawking said “intelligence is the ability to adapt to change”.

As another great (but in this case a fictional great) Optimus Prime said: “there’s a thin line between being a hero and being a memory.”

Without transformation, without change, there’s no chance of being a hero.

Without the right kind of transformation there’s just the Gartner “Trough of disillusionment.

What did our speakers say and who won?

Victoria White, editorial director of Hearst Made, championed creativity.  She talked about the importance of human editorial judgement: “If we only went with what the data said then would not have created such amazing products such as Esquire Town House and House Beautiful Sofas.”  She pointed to the need for bravery in knowing what the audience want before they know they want it and acting on that insight, calling her editors “walking algorithms”.  She concluded by saying: “without a passionate human being with an idea there is no creativity”.

Jim Kelly, VP R+D at Quantcast was up next, championing the supremacy of data.  He pointed out the step change in media from making a few decisions every quarter in the last century to making a few million media decisions every second now.  So he said it is crucial to get “comfortable with machines digesting data on your behalf”.  Culturally this is a big change too.  Kelly believes that many organisations are focussed on too many so called key performance indicators because too many metrics are measurable.  In a reference to Coleridge he challenged that many are “drowning in data, like the ancient mariner surrounded by water, but dying of thirst”.  (Remember the lines: “water water everywhere but not a drop to drink”).  The solution, sort out your metrics and data will drive business success.

Hannah Mirza, global head of partnerships at MediaCom talked about AI being crucial.  She said: “When humans think of problem solving we follow decision making trees to arrive at answers.  AI has the ability to comprehend many more decision trees than a human can by contrast.”  Hannah pointed out that we are reaching a point where AI and reality matching is as close as 95% and improving to the extent that we are not able to discernibly differentiate between humans and machine  and showed how you can benefit at every stage of the consumer decision journey with best practice AI.

Finally, Tony Foggett, ceo and owner of Code, computer love championed Agility.  Agile processes differ from traditional ways of working by valuing Individuals and interactions over processes and tools, Working software over comprehensive documentation, Customer collaboration over contract negotiation and Responding to change over slavishly following a plan.  His business is built on Agile practices and he eloquently argued that his philosophy of “Point, Fire, Aim” led to better decisions and more empowered staff.  In a world where change will never be this slow again, agility is essential for transformation.

Transformation is crucial.  That’s why we’ve set up Theobalds Road Consultancy at MediaCom to deliver a change path for clients.

After all the speakers had argued their point we had a vote.  The Adweek Europe 2018 audience said, conclusively, that Creativity was key.  What do you think?

In today’s business world, doing the same thing you always did is not an option. If you don’t innovate, you die.  It could be a slow demise, might be fast, but thriving isn’t on the cards if you don’t change.

One of the fastest and most effective ways to drive digital innovation is to go directly to the source – to the start-ups that are reinventing your market right now (whether you know it, or not), and Start Up Europe Week in early March 2018 created a fine opportunity to consider the role of a start up in your business and your career.

Yet consider with care, with caution.  This century might be relatively young but we’ve already seen waves of over-investment in what felt like pivot points but frequently were simply money-pits.

One discussion at Blink’s (MediaCom’s division which matches client needs with start ups) event for the week focussed on the big question of whether innovation by big corporates in this space really delivers business value or is essentially an effective way of driving public relations and image.

The panel concluded that there’s sweet spot where you can get both, but the panel urged caution in having too high an expectation from this work stream.

Dora Michail, md, digital at The Telegraph, reckoned that if 1% of the meetings with start-ups converted into something powerful, something that would drive real change, you were doing well.

Jon Bradford, early stage investor and founder of Motive Partners, characterised corporates’ meetings with start ups as a “petting zoo.”

Does that leave you wondering if it’s worth your valuable time?

Whether you should leave the disrupting to someone else and hope for the best?

What if despite your best efforts it fails?

What motivation is there for corporate innovation in fact if it’s so hard to execute and business as usual pays this week’s bills?

Dave Knox, one of the Blink panel, has written a guide for businesses seeking to navigate this.  In it he quotes Jeff Bezos “Most large organisations embrace the idea of invention but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there….. in business, every once in a while, when you step up to the plate, you can score 1000 runs… it’s important to be bold.”  Knox is passionate about the value of start ups: “the canary in the coal mine”, and points out that it’s easy to dismiss them, warning: “The leaders of yesterday have to learn the rule of an entirely new game of business in order to maintain their position as the leaders of tomorrow”

Businesses need to think through how they innovate.  Anyone can create experiments or buy in some new tech.  The real question to be asked and answered is where is the new business model?

There’s a danger in using an accelerator that is incentivised on introductions to start ups.  The business must ask the right question first and be prepared to experiment in an agile way to find the answers.

The team at Blink focus on defining the business opportunity or problem first.  With this clarified the odds of finding the right start up solution to make sure that your business has competitive advantage are hugely improved, and operating this way can lead to step changes in performance.

Two ways to succeed at networking.

Some of us are naturals at networking.  Given a luke warm glass of indifferent white wine and some limp crisps those lucky people circulate at room like honey bees in search of nectar.

Two hours later they are the last to leave (undoubtedly to go on to their next fixture) and they have talked to at least a dozen people that they barely know.

Some of us are not naturals.  Some of us need help.

My very first abject failure at networking happened when I was put forward for an exclusive club where the candidates were vetted at a cocktail party.  My sponsor invited me along, introduced me to a series of very influential people, and then left me alone with them.  To a woman they each looked at me, raised their eyebrows, waited expectantly for me to say something impressive, and then swiftly moved on, in disappointment, to the next candidate.  I did not make the cut.

Don’t get me wrong, I was aware that I was meant to make impressive small talk, with at least half a dozen different people.  I just had absolutely no idea what that consisted of.

I still don’t know.

I don’t think you need to make small talk anymore though in order to impress.

Here’s 2 things you need to do.

1. Do some research.

That cocktail party was in the dim mists of time before linkedin, before Twitter, before facebook, before the Campaign A List.

Now, faced with any prospective encounter with people you don’t know you can easily look them up and find something to talk to the about.

It may seem obvious but it’s something that people who ask to meet you rarely do do.  This is not stalking.  This is not intrusive.  This is professional preparation.

If people have shared aspects of their careers, personalities, interests, and humour on social media or in Campaign, they are in the public domain and it is just polite to find out something about them in order to make conversation.

5 minutes preparation about who you think will be at a gathering so that you have something to connect with them about will make a difference.

So if you want to connect with Tess Alps (and who wouldn’t), listen to some Bach.  Brushing up against WPP UK country manager Karen Blackett, perhaps show an interest in athletics.

2. Make your network wide and weird.

It’s great to be in with the in crowd.  To know the latest gossip, and to feel at the centre of a large group of familiar faces.  They will be warm to you and useful in your career.  But don’t spend all your time with them.  Make sure that you make contact with people outside the “usual suspects”.  Especially people who have only a very random connection to your current day job.  In the first place they might be really intriguing, going outside the norm is fun.  In the second place, with the pace of change in our industry you don’t know where your career will take you and building connections outside of the current status is a really beneficial thing.  Finally, once you have established a relationship with them you’ll be able to ask them about work issues that it is difficult to speak to your current inner circle about because everyone knows everyone.  They will give you great, unbiased advice from a remote perspective.  That’s very valuable in any situation.

Doing some homework and going wide and weird.  The two essentials of effective networking.