So one of football’s managerial greats has gone.  Ferguson’s era is finally over. 

The BBC’s chief football writer Phil McNulty sums him up in three words here “Charismatic, explosive, contrary”.   It is the latter that explains his brilliance for me.  Sir Alex has never acted as he was “supposed to”.  When Wayne Rooney first threatened to quit, back in 2010, Ferguson created a reality-changing “Truth Turning Point” (a pivotal moment in communications that “defies every convention .. and gets the audience to the truth quickly and easily”), which I examined in detail in my book.  McNulty goes on: “Love him or hate him, football in general and Man United in particular will be poorer for his departure.”  Of course he is hated as well as loved.  Which is characteristic for non-conformists and explains why there isn’t a richer pool of non-conformists out there. 

This matters.

According to Professor Costis Markides, speaking at a Deloitte breakfast in early May, non-conformity is the key ingredient to innovation and creativity.  Yet learning to conform is almost unavoidable.  Markides cited the landmark survey developed by George Land as a test of creativity.  Land ran his test with a set of kids over their childhood and adolescence.  Aged five 98% of the kids qualified as “creative geniuses”.  When those same kids were tested at age ten 30% were at genius level.  Aged fifteen : 12%.  That longitudinal test then ended (Land quips “because everyone got depressed..”).  But when over 1m adults were given the same test the result was 2%.

Land concluded that “non-creative behaviour is learned”.  Or, put it another way, we learn to conform.  Most of us like to conform.  Resisting conformity can be a lonely road.  Most people don’t manage it – even when conforming clearly doesn’t make any sense, as this famous Candid Camera  sketch clip shows clearly.

So here’s to the non-conformists.  To those who reject conformity, because they don’t think it’s right for them.  (Not the ones who are outside the law, that’s not what this is about). To the people who zig when everyone else zags.  Who stay mute when everyone else is singing along.  Who won’t take part in communal games and who absent themselves just as the drinking is gaining momentum. The owners of the banged up Citroen in a carpark full of BMWs.  The ones with the unusual dress sense and unpopular tastes in music.   Who don’t automatically do as they are told, and yet have a good reason.  They should be cherished and they should be encouraged.  If you can make room for them within your organisation – and research shows that they’re few and far between – they may be the ones that make the real difference in sustained innovation, creativity and competitive advantage.

In a meeting with our digital heads last week speculation was rife on this issue.  It boils down I think ultimately to functionality, though fashion clearly has a role in establishing who wins this next zeitgeist battle.

As far as Google Glasses are concerned the media is torn between fear of a loss of privacy and excitement about the possibilities of augmented reality.  The first images are circulating from users tests (though the pictures are underwhelming so far).  The first user guide shows how to operate the head set, which features a clock, the weather, a camera, video calls, maps and Google Translate.  You can see the possibilities. 

Much of the writing online about Apple’s iWatch is rumour so far.  Wall Street is said to be questioning whether CEO Tim Cook can match Steve Jobs’s ability to “think different”.  But a computer on the wrist.  Sounds cooler than wearing specs.

There will be challenges for brands from computers on wrists or in glasses.  Will GG distract from outdoor advertising, or could it enhance it as second screens will enhance the effectiveness of advertising on TV?  The role advertising might have in GG is not clear yet, though having a brand that’s strong enough and consistent enough to navigate the challenges will be paramount. 

If I look round MediaCom I see more people wearing watches than wear glasses, even though nobody needs a watch to tell the time anymore.  So unless Google can quickly come up with the similar but more discreet Google Contact Lenses, Apple might win the fashion war.

Fashion perhaps but also nostalgia.  The GG vs iWatch adoption curve might have a lot to do with your childhood TV viewing affinities.  GG vs iWatch = Joe Ninety vs Captain Kirk.  Here’s hoping neither is the new ponytail.

Spring seems finally to have arrived.  There’s blossom everywhere as I write (I am aware it could be snowing again by the time you read this!) and there is smile on the face of Londoners who have been braced against the cold for too long so far this year.

Some things do take a little longer to get here than you expect. But that doesn’t mean they’re not coming eventually.It’s a year since my book (co-authored with Jonathan Salem Baskin) Tell the Truth, Honesty is your most powerful marketing tool, was published.  In the epilogue to the book we said “More and more marketers are turning away from easily constructed spin and digging deep into the truth of their brands.  We believe that in 5 years we’ll look back on the art of spin as an anachronism”. One year on, where are we ?

My American co-author can, like many a genuine iconoclast, be hard on what progress there has been.  In his recent new publication which tackles the very definition of brands : “Branding still only works on cattle” he writes, “It’s 2013 now, and the crisis I thought I saw has proven to be a chronic affliction.”

I’m more optimistic. I’ve just been judging some international awards so have had a window on what the industry considers worth shortlisting.  I can’t disclose brands as the judging is in progress but from the 17 strong shortlist most campaigns contained a core of truth telling, although one outlier entry actually did the very opposite. Good work is always based on truthful consumer insights.  Truth is a key criteria that distinguishes good from bad.  The question is whether the truth agenda is present in every marketing conversation? 

My personal experience is that it is but sometimes still as a route that must be discounted for one reason or another.  Some voices still urge caution in meeting rooms around town, as if representing the consumer truth in communications should be played down, or even is a slippery slope that is to be avoided at all costs.  So there is mixed progress. I think more and more people are joining the ranks of truth tellers in communications, but the speed of the progress is unquestionably nowhere near as fast as the change in consumer behaviour. 

The reason that truth has risen up the agenda is that digital innovation and social media make this an imperative.  As Jon and I wrote in Tell the Truth : “Half a century ago, advertising pioneer David Ogilvy said, “The consumer is not a moron, she’s your wife.”  Now, the consumer is the expert who knows everything about your brand.  What’s missing can be uncovered on a smartphone from a variety of sources”.  More and more sources, in fact. The latest Deloitte Media Consumer Survey : Love in a cold climate points out that device proliferation continues to grow.   The average UK citizen now owns 11.4 types of media devices (up from 9.7 in 2011).   Deloitte conclude that, despite the recessionary times, “UK consumers’ love of technology seems undiminished… and with new products such as wearable devices on the verge of commercial launch, consumers will become even more connected ”. 

More connected.  More knowledgeable about your brand.  More exacting of the truth.

Media research may be improving in accuracy in silos but overall we are building the Tower of Babel.

According to the book of Genesis, the whole world once had a single language.  And because they had a single language they really began to get somewhere.  The people of the the city of Babel said: “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.  Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves”.  Now unfortunately for the people of the world the Lord didn’t like what was going on.  He is reported in Genesis as remarking : “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.  Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

Since then the world has been pulled apart by language.  There are over 7,000 in existence, (although most people speak one of the 11 main languages.)  Translation has been big business for centuries because there has been international trade for centuries, but especially since the demise of Latin as the main language of the educated in the West.  Although mechanical translation has existed for some time, it has always been regarded as second best by a long way.

Not now.  Google Translate is making as sweeping a change to mass market and democratic international communications as Google Search did to libraries and e-commerce.  It works in a completely different way to previous computer systems for translation, in that it doesn’t just give you the literal translation for a phrase, it gives you the most likely translation given every other translated expression that sits anywhere on the world wide web. 

In September 2009 the new White House administration issued the “Strategy for American Innovation” policy roadmap to address “The Grand Challenges of the 21^st Century”.  One of those challenges was the development of “automatic, highly accurate and real-time translation between the major languages of the world – greatly lowering the barriers to international commerce and collaboration”.  Google Translate is a revolutionary step forward in this challenge. 

Meanwhile what’s the state of our own media research translation ?  Our head of Business Science Jane Christian said recently that media measurement is still in silos and that this “is hampering its usefulness. Stakeholders for each comms channel are concentrating on how best to measure the effectiveness of their respective channels, given the techniques that big data and technology allow. The problem here is that each technique is different and not comparable with the others, so when marketers ask the question ‘how should I allocate my budget across channels?’, there isn’t a clear answer. What we need is joined up media measurement across all channels. Without it, all these big data driven measurement solutions aren’t as useful as they claim to be. Joined up media measurement will ensure we deploy our budget across channels most effectively. “

As far as this is concerned we must ask ourselves whether we are sitting in the Tower of Babel, with little idea of how much exactly better things would be in terms of budget allocation and effectiveness if we had a lingua franca of media measurement.

It is impossible not to warm instantly to Katie Kempner.  She is head of global communications for ad agency CP+B but also the creator and host of an online show called “Perspectives with Katie Kempner” (www.katiekempner-perspectives.com). The show’s mission is to inspire and empower working women.  She asked me to be one of a series of interviews from AdWeek Europe last month.

I was at AdWeek to participate in the Economist Global Commerce Round Table, where we debated the role of technology as a force for change in the industry chaired by Global Digital Publisher Nick Blunden.  Simon Dalglish from ITV, Dale Gall, Profero, Libby Hills, Credit Suisse, Marc Mendoza Havas and I had a lively conversation where we admitted that useful and essential as technology is, it doesn’t of course replace creativity and consumer insight. 

Katie Kempner is perched in the gallery, with a full film crew, nestling above the main business of the conference.  She describes her show as “a series of inspiring conversations with incredible working women balancing busy lives.”

Immediately after the Economist session I was whisked up to the Gallery where Katie asked me, as she asks all her guests, how I balanced work and life.  There was instant recognition and the relief of shared experience.  I may have been a bit too honest in my answers – I’m not sure that it is possible for working professional mums to do everything.  Something has to give, and it’s better for you to choose that something (in my case a limit on business travel) rather than to try and do everything and then find that the thing that gives is something you weren’t anticipating and can’t compensate for.   We agreed that most working mothers have at least two full time jobs, and in my experience many have several part time ones as well – working on pro-bono boards, chairing industry committees and of course running the parent teacher associations at their kids schools because they can’t bear to see it done by someone less experienced at managing difficult stakeholders than they are.

I had a busy day that day (it kicked off at 530am and involved being on the panel at the conference, being in a run through, 3 “what shall we do next meetings”, 1 client inspiration session including speed dating with start ups, networking at a club that I belong to and then celebrating a family birthday (lunch is for wimps)).  My ten minute chat with Katie felt like a refreshing shower on a hot day, or how I feel when I drop into a Starbucks for an Americano (cold milk on the side) and they’re playing one of my favourite tunes.  Katie has created a club and a channel for women like her, and I’m delighted to have been a participant.  The interviews with a series of working women amount to a snapshot of our time.  They build up to a fascinating insight into what they (we) have in common, and how we differ.  It would be brilliant to have something like it in London.  Katie, can you start us up please ?