Most businesses have a strategy for transformation, and if they don’t probably need one.

When so much is changing and so fast it’s easy to assume that the old guard need clearing out.

However it’s a mistake to assume that everything must change. If you lose perspective and all the experience from the team you are more likely to throw the baby out with the bath water.

At recent judging of effectiveness awards several people commented that there was a great richness of material proving the value of old school branding practices.

Transformation these days may well include restoring well worn paths to excellence that have made way to trendy tactics that still require rigorous proof of concept.

In our industry we may be at risk of losing that perspective.

Take your own team for example, does your team come close to matching the population profile by age?

Most of us think the ad industry is ageist.

1 in 4 respondents to an industry survey last year said that they’d been told that they were too old for a new job.

Age is another face of diversity. Some businesses don’t allow people to contribute if they don’t fit and don’t look the part, and age, like gender, class, sexuality, mental health, disability, and ethnicity is another aspect of exclusion.

This is the real point. The problem is that some businesses are too homogeneous. A good culture allows for diversity.

If everyone in the office is required to be laddish (and some of the team are not) then some people feel excluded and the result can be overall bad team dynamics.

If everyone is required to be suited booted and formal, then that quells the fun and experimental spirit essential to a growth mentality.

Management shouldn’t dictate. You can only create the environment that allows everyone to be themselves.

Of course there’s a contract here between team members. You need everyone to deliver as required, to respect differences, to acknowledge each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and to partner for the strongest outcome.

Earlier this summer The Marketing Society held a debate about ageism.

The Marketing Society chief exec Gemma Greaves finished by saying: “I am not a fan of any isms”. Gemma is right. Ageism is yet another ugly face of forced conformity which stifles difference and limits potential.

In today’s business world no one can afford to waste time on reinventing the wheel or energy on pretending to be anything other than themselves. True value is created when team members complement each other. In my blogs about gender I have pointed out the overwhelming disparity between the proportion of women making decisions, directing adverts or taking commercial photos and the proportion of women in the population and shopping decisions made by women. Disposable income sits disproportionately in the wallets of the over 50s, and this is growing. There is plenty of evidence that older people feel misrepresented in advertising comms. Is an equivalent disparity to blame?

The debate about ageism in advertising is alive and well, although maybe a bit tired. It would perhaps like to have a cup of tea on the sofa and a nice afternoon nap. Whoops, there I go being ageist.

Never mind the baby, let’s not throw experience out with the bath water.

5 days

24 presentations

21 partners‎

35 presenters

1,400 attendees

Our first transformation week at MediaCom happened as our English summer transformed into baking heat.

Charles Darwin said “it’s not the strongest or the most intelligent that survive, but those most responsive to change”.  Stephen Hawking said: “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”

Change is unavoidable, changes are accelerating, but we need to make sure that the pace of change is appropriate and focussed.

Our transformation week agenda was focussed around our clients’ priorities from the turn of year questionnaire.  We invited the nation’s best media owners to partner with us in addressing them.

From the rich territory of these priorities one week’s transformation festival was created.  (The topics are: Agility; AI; Voice; Creativity; Data; Diversity; GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft); Millennials/GenZ; Purpose/Meaning; Ecommerce).

5 key trends for 2018/19 were clear.

Trend 1: If you stand still, you go backwards.

85% business leaders state that innovation is crucial, but delivering effective innovation is tough.  11 years ago there was a step change year for tech.  2007 was a year of real traction for fb, iphone, Amazon Web Services, big data and open source coding.  Pundits predict that a similar year of step change is imminent in terms of frictionless tech development adoption.  The disruptors are coming in every market.  No-one can think that they’re exempt.  Standing still is not an option.

The customer is in charge.

I know you’ve heard that the customer is king, and queen, (and the grand of duke of York for that matter!) before.  This time it’s different.  This time the customer isn’t standing for sub-standard service, unsubstantiated spin, or shoddy standards.  User Experience is inextricable from the Brand.  Businesses must take care to swerve the traps of path dependence and dabbling.  Ruthless focus about what to trial will separate the winners from the also ran.  Those brands that offer the customer what they want, when they want it and how they want it will triumph over the rest of the category.  They’ll almost inevitably create more data for their business in the process.  Which leads me to the third trend.

Trend 3: Be data informed not a data junkie.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.  Our speakers emphasised that whilst there are lots of data sources that can be vital intelligence to progress, and that algorithms can help to build better relationships with customers, there’s a danger that once you start looking at data feeds you mistake them for knowledge.  Data might be the new oil, to quote CDDO Ben Rickard, but only in the sense that its toxic unless you refine it.

Trend 4: Agile ways of working drive results.

A shift to more adaptive ways of working can reap impressive rewards in terms of productivity.  A shift in mindset from planning for perfect to planning to deliver a minimum viable product in the least amount of time that you can then beta test and learn from can take days or even weeks of people hours costs out of projects. An approach of build, measure, learn, adapt, measure, learn means brilliant never stops.

Our final trend is about the surprising truth about creativity. Exclusivity gives way to empowerment.  An open access approach to working with all kinds of people and partners creates power and energy for brands.

With enormous thanks to all our speakers, partners and delegates.  The transformation continues.

To boldly go, where no brand has gone before.

Brands are facing an existential threat like no other.  Exactly how it will play out and how soon the question.  As Twitter’s Bruce Daisley said on MediaCom’s Connected Podcast recently (and out soon here), it’s impossible to predict the next twenty years, just as twenty years ago we had no idea about what life and work would be like today.  Yet we can be clear about one thing.  There’s change to come that will make navigating the challenges of today look easy.

You can point the finger at Star Trek for some of this disruption. It’s Captain Kirk who inspired one of the great changes that will challenge current orthodoxies about brands.  William Tunstall-Pedoe is the engineer and tech start up founder who taught Amazon’s Alexa how to talk.  He acknowledges that his inspiration was the talking computer on the Star Ship Enterprise.  His definition of his job as an engineer is to close the gap between science fiction and reality.  Of course Captain Kirk’s relationship with the computer running the star ship was largely benign.  (There was the episode with the evil computer Nomad, but Kirk talked it down, luckily for the galaxy).

Tunstall-Pedoe is optimistic about the future of voice.  In future everything that you do via tech you will do simply by asking.  Already millions of households worldwide have voice tech products.  Many people have already made them part of the family, anthropomorphically telling them good night.  What this means is more change.  Tunstall-Pedoe notes that all change means risk, but urges keeping risk in perspective and believes that voice tech will change people’s lives for the better.

We must all hope that the risks will be managed, that malware will stay under control and that change will be for the good.  At the same time we must plan for the worst.

In the world of media and marketing one of the worst outcomes may be the disappearance of some brands.

We have been through several eras of advertising.  In the 1950s we were in the age of interruption, when consumers were happy to pay attention to ads because they sought the reassurance of brand names and trusted what businesses said to them.  From the 1960s to the 1980s we were in the age of entertainment.  People would still pay attention to ads but only if they were entertaining.  For the last couple of decades of the 20^th century we were in the age of engagement.  The rise in media channels meant that reaching people at the right time in the right place with the right message was key to successful comms.  The early 21^st century was the dawn of the age of dialogue where millions of dialogues between consumers shapes their opinions of brands.  Where what a brand says about itself is just one factor in brand salience together with every other aspect of the customer journey from search, social, influencers, reviews, sourcing, authenticity, employee brand, service and experience to repeat purchase and loyalty.

Most purchase journeys are still predominantly visual.  Brands are designed with those visual cues in mind.  If voice dominates things change.  Maybe only the strongest brands will survive.  There will be categories where consumers defer to the voice tech assistant.  The question to ask is what is it about the brand that will ensure that it continues to cut through.  To be one of the brands that stick in the consumer’s brain so that they don’t just buy the category they buy the brand.

Voice will shift the balance of power and techniques to thrive will be essential.  As Mr Spock pointed out “Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them.” 

Brand strategy now must plan for the worst to ensure that the brand survives.

Serious about business.

The best of the work this year curated in the MediaCom suite had business success running right through it. Sure the collection of work had plenty of stunts littering it still, but the cream of work that rose to the top included fabulous strategic thinking.

This is of course true of the winner of the Media Grand Prix, MediaCom and BBH’s work for Tesco Food Love Stories. A campaign that drove sales for Tesco at an unprecedented rate.

There was lots discussion about best practice for the future of our business. The impact of voice on marketing came up in a number of sessions. Whilst it’s a long way from taking over, the role of a voice personal assistant is already changing some consumers lives. There’s lots to learn about what needs to be done, but every brand should begin to think now about whether their memory structures are sufficient for stand out without visuals and where a purchase decision will be based on just a couple of options spoken by Alexa rather than on scanning a shelf full of product.

Serious about meaning.

I watched the full Glass Lion shortlist with my co-curator (and co-author of The Glass Wall, success strategies for women at work and businesses that mean business) Kathryn Jacob OBE. The vast majority of entries this year were about gender equality. As we showed the work to our guests, clients and worldwide colleagues in advance of the jury’s final decision we asked our audience to vote for their winner. They chose an entry from the Miss Peru competition where the finalists subverted the normal recitation of so called “vital statistics” bust ie waist and hip measurements and instead substituted truly vital stats about domestic violence in Peru. Standout and impactful.  As was the worthy Grand Prix winner: Blood Normal

Serious about audience insight.

There was plenty to hear about how to reach audiences with real impact.  For one audience Viacom have developed some interesting insights about the new marketing imperatives for reaching under 35s. They point out that there’s been a step change in culture which every marketing plan needs to consider. Their point of view on the “Culture of Proximity” dissects the developments and mandates a new approach. As Maya Peterson, Viacom’s director of culture and creative insights, says of her audience: “People are acting like brands and they expect brands to act like people.”

Serious about partnership.

It was clear throughout Cannes week that success isn’t achievable on your own anymore. Even the disrupters are subject to disruption now, and no-one knows the path forward in isolation. Leaders today will share best practice with generosity and make strategic alliances to win. So the news of the alliance between News UK, Guardian News & Media and The Telegraph about The Ozone Project – a jointly-owned audience platform to combat industry-wide digital advertising concerns, including brand safety, data governance and ad fraud is to be welcomed. It mirrors one of the standout Titanium Lion shortlists: The Quality Journalism campaign where UNESCO created an alliance of quality news channels to recommend reading their traditional rivals rather than fighting for market share.

As the future continues to challenge everything at a speed that takes the breath away its important to build teams that can work together to support the growth of brands, business and meaning.

Don’t do everything

Don’t shape shift

1. Don’t do everything

JK Rowling has been responsible for a generation of children learning to love literature.  In 2013 she was named a national literacy hero by the National Literacy Trust.  In her books and her films she defined femininity for a generation of girls who are now grown up.

Her heroine Hermione Grainger is cleverer than the boys.  She is also so hard working that she leaps at the magic technology of the Time Turner which allows her to go to two different classes simultaneously.  This seems very similar to the trope that working women hear about needing to work twice as hard as any man in order to succeed.  As I wrote in The Glass Wall: “existing material tends to advise women that to get on they need to work harder, be more ‘superwoman’…. This is more of what they have been doing. Meanwhile men are getting further and doing less.”  Don’t do everything, work smarter not harder.

2. Don’t shape shift

“The veela had started to dance, and Harry’s mind had gone completely and blissfully blank. All that mattered in the world was that he kept watching the veela, because if they stopped dancing, terrible things would happen… .
And as the veela danced faster and faster, wild, half-formed thoughts started chasing through Harry’s dazed mind. He wanted to do something very impressive, right now. Jumping from the box into
the stadium seemed a good idea…” Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Another example of femininity in Harry Potter are the Veela.  Veela are a race of semi-magical beings who are able to seduce men and boys at will.  For those interested they seem to be based on Slavic folklaw.  They’re shape-shifters.  Capable of charming men with their dance and their beauty, if they get annoyed they can kill with a glance.  Whilst they appear to be beautiful if they’re angry they change into harpies, vicious and ugly and terrifying.  Shape-shifting is something many women at work often feel obliged to do.  They must maintain the appearance of beauty whilst getting everything done.

It takes a huge amount of effort.  Effort spent on making sure that they look good and are approved of in every situation at the same time as working hard on the project in hand.  Going out of their way to complete tasks perfectly at the same time as looking flawless.  Smiling charmingly through whatever stress they’re under.  As Kimberley Harrington wrote in her satirical article for the New Yorker:

• “I have two kids andthe unspoken pressure to act like they don’t exist when I’m on a conference call.”
• “I have male colleagues who tell me I’m not aggressive enough and that I will never get what I want out of my team andfemale colleagues who tell me I’m too aggressive and that I make them sad.”
• “I have the confidence to speak my mind, asking hard-hitting questions about the project I’m working on, andthe ability to keep my ears from bleeding when a roomful of male clients explains to me what I don’t understand about the female target audience.”

Is it too much effort to seek perfection and approval in every instance?  Of course it is.  The bar is set too high, the need for perfection is unrealistic.  We need to make it clear to women at work that shape shifting isn’t a requirement.