yes, yes, yes – phil “no jacket required” collins (see inspiration can come from anywhere)
a lot of you are going to find this un-nerving
i’m publicly stitch myself up about groovy love – whenever i have a meaningful work related interaction with you i will be giving groovy love back – data / interpretation / feeling . . .
love out for more cultish behaviour when my other co-horts get back from lyme vegas
in the meantime have a scrabulous weekend
I’ve got to say it was lovely that @jembojembo noticed my new year’s resolution . . . what was even more gratifying was, when having admitted it to everyone he then held me accountable to it in front of everyone
so, this is a simple one . . . if you want to change something, achieve something, go over here
then one of the strongest driving forces is to
PUBLICLY ADMIT IT
the wonderful folk on umusic in ted are about to do this very thing in a very public manner with the client through their “annual” – a review of the year’s amazing work and a coda that tees up what the clients can expect to see this year . . . now there is a thought (props to mike deane, john beardsworth and christian west on that score)
Make it public. live it
one of my favourite freeland tracks is called “we want your soul” – for those of you who run to music his fabric live mix is old but tempo wise bang on –
now i suppose we want your soul would be a little bit much to ask, but i think mostly people do want your humanity. they want to see you as a person, not a machine, not a cog, but a person who tries things out, makes mistakes, deviates
there are two inter-related things here
1) this is a good post from Seth Godin about humanity in speech (will take 30 seconds to read)
2) we will be committing to trying lots of things out this year and to helping your to try things out . . . not all of them will work but that is fine, so long as we learn from those that dont
so, spin by, ask us for help, and when we give you a slightly surprising answer, roll with it, see where it goes, it may go nowhere, but then we’re very definitely human . . . what we need in this situations is the self-awareness to understand what has gone on
We tried something yesterday, we’ll get feedback soon enough on how it went, but it went a little like this
“Thank you for your very interesting and thorough brief. We’d like if possible for you to take 5 minutes talking to us about it”
The reason for doing this was effectively a “Talk it Out” style piece – you get infinitely more from vocalisation of the brief than you can from paper . . . intonation, state changes, and the chance to ask the Columbo question (“One more thing . . . for those of you too young to know who he”)
So here is a challenge for you all. Take no brief this year without the opportunity for a talk it out style engagement. This is inherently different to two v prevalent briefing modus operandi:
1) the i will read out my word brief approach to the brief
2) the i will brief 10 agencies at once approach to the brief
both have their places (kinda) but will never allow you to get to the absolute crux, the core the apex, the edifice that is in someone’s head
and in a “act unto others as you would others unto yourself” style thing, don’t write someone a brief without talking it out. i guarantee you better work, more suited to the challenge, more quickly if you do this.
over at the ad contrarian there is an excellent post about the difference between solving puzzles and solving mysteries
I’m not going to go into detail here, read the post, it is (as ever) an excellent use of 4 minutes
Suffice to say, it really really isnt always about commissioning new research for new insights, the answer is probably there already, you just need to look hard with your columbo hat on at the evidence you have already amassed over years and years
(with thank to @MediaCom_murray)
(and teeing up the next post . . . )