Digital Immigrants

There is a phrase now: Digital Native. It's a funny one. It implies that you can somehow gain citizenry of the magical land called Internet. But think about it - the youngest person in the biz will be, what, 18 now, and if they're lucky they might have been introduced to the internet in 2000-ish, at about the age of 9.

That is not native. Childrens' dialect, accent etc. are often fully developed by then so that if they move countries, they will speak in much the same way. Neuroses, habits, tics and so on - it's very likely that they are set in stone by then. Jean Piaget thought so. To go back to media, most of us were introduced to books and TV by about 2. That is native. To be so fully acclimatised with the modes, methods, manners of speech in a space that you instantly understand what it's trying to tell you (and even then, I'd say it's not always true).

But we have all learned to use the net. We're still not in an age where working people are born into it, that's a fact. Yes, we soon will be - but that's the other thing, isn't it? Do you really think that a 2000 child, hidden away from computers for 15 years, would recognise the 2015 internet? I'm not even confident I would right now - assuming it's even on computers... Is it possible to be a native of a country that reinvents itself ever 5 years?

Oh yeah, and that is this big:


I am, while not native, I am well acquainted with corners of it. And in those corners, I don't always speak the language as well as I'd like. But this is all good news! What it means is that becoming a digital native or whatever the hell it is, is far, far easier than getting a Green Card. Because there's no one population, all it really entails is two things:
-a willingness to try/learn evershifting forms of communication, BUT,
-always, always keeping one and a half eyes on human nature. Talk changes, what they talk about, why and how to get them to talk about your thing will stay the same. Seems to me that the big booby trap for digital agencies is thinking that digital is any more than a means to an end. Trust me, it's not the end.

It's the beginning ;)

Too Much Information: a big thought in three short minutes

What a day. The APG's Battle of Big Thinking had joy, tears, insight, and that fizzy water that nobody likes but still shows up all the time at these kinds of things. And what a joy to see big brains (and hearts too) running free and happy. Every slot had a different appeal, but the true standouts seemed to be (with a couple of examples but there are many, many more)

• people who gave us a new view on things (Peter Sells / @sellsy)
• people who got nice and angry (@RobinWightUK, @katylindemann)
• people with a story to tell (@amelia_torode)
• people who scared us shitless with really very impressive thinking (@guymurphy - a prize well won)

And oh yes! I had a great time too. Even with the now-worse-for-wear yellow sheets. 

I present to you, Too Much Information:

What? Illegible? Oh, alright then:

Hello everyone.

Are we all having an informative time? I'm loving it. I couldn't feel more clever right now! It's just after lunch, so so far we're up to about...9 month's of our "year's thinking in a day". A YEAR. In a DAY. Gosh. Is anyone a little bit exhausted? My big thought is more of a big question: of what you've heard today... how much will you remember? And of what you remember, how much can you really learn and make use of in the next week, month, year?

You see, the current state of communications - especially in our little universe here - is self-destructive in thinking that we can absorb so much as we experience it. That is a fantasy. Here's the reality: we have built for ourselves a world of Too Much Information.

And the Battle of Big Thinking is the very worst offender. As I said before I'm having a great time, and my thanks go to everyone speaking today individually but what we're being sold is this [single lightbulb of APG logo] when in fact it's more like this [photo of loads of lightbulbs, the only slide]. Ask yourselves: would you subject your child to a year's school in a day? For those of you that don't have one, would you eat a year's supply of pies in a day?

Of course you wouldn't. All our biological systems have limits and adult learning is no exception. You can hear what I'm saying to you as fast I say it, but - as anyone who has learned to ride a bike, drive a car, or operate TGI knows - learning anything takes time, repetition, and reflection.

And yet, the very fabric of our culture is set up to deny and discourage these things. Conventional media, new media, blogs, aggegators, the very way we talk to each other and structure our days ALL reinforce the idea that you can sail across the surface of knowledge and still pick something up. I was talking to this guy in the break; I said, "pretty good, isn't it?" and he said "yeah, but I think you could rattle through each one in about two minutes". What kind of life is that?? That's a pretty dangerous dogma to live by. And if anyone thinks that perhaps their memory is more robust than all that, I ask you: can you remember what you ate for dinner on Tuesday? Most people can't. I can, but only because I was eating it when I wrote this bit.

Now, we have a choice. 2010 will be the year when the elastic band of human concentration either relaxes a little, or snaps. If we want it to be the former, we will have to discipline ourselves to channel our curiosity in productive, focused ways. And we'll have to build the tools to help us: Google is so popular because it is the first of such tools, designed to give you what you want and nothing else. It unravels information rather than multiplying it.

Changing behaviour, changing technology: these are two massive challenges for us as a society but for us as marketers, it's more like an inspiring brief. Our brief, if we're brave, is to help people through the noise of their lives - NOT by shouting them down, but by drawing them into our worlds, providing them with places of respite from the plethora of ideas. Or, for those of us who are even braver, it could be to create things with little-to-no involvement at all that still change behaviour. Some people call this stuff 'behavioural economics'.

Whatever we do, my point is this: we are about to transcend the information epoch to a post-information age of focus. And, as the busiest communicators in society, we have the duty, and the opportunity to do this in the best possible way.

Thanks a lot.

And that was it. The whole day was awesome, and hopefully there'll be videos of all the fantastic speeches before long. Give me a week or so, and I'll put up the special behind the scenes deck I threw out on Saturday. Way too long for 3 minutes but it gives you a good idea how all the stuff above came about.

Hooray for big thinking. Here's to the next one!

PLANNING PLUS ONE IS THINKING BIG

I am in the APG's Battle Of Big Thinking on Thursday - in the open section, the one where you get three minutes to, I don't know, invent the next internet on stage or something. I sent in a submission that I thought was pretty gutsy and clever at the time but it's getting hard to substantiate and illustrate without looking really contrived. But then, is that not the pitch process in a nutshell? Or any presentation? Working out what you want to say, then working out what people could usefully hear, and disciplining yourself to only stick to that. And not getting bogged down in overillustration.

All I know is that it will involve the thing that made me have the idea:

Full presentation after I've given it. Wish me luck for Thursday...

That's Listening Post. It's still going, at the Science Museum. Go see.

One of the best campaigns I know.

Author’s Note: I actually really really love the following things: Freedom. Bravery. Charity. The idea that people can feel so strongly about their ideals that they’ll die for them, and for each other. I also happen to love good ideas. So I hope you’ll take the following thoughts in the spirit in which they’re written.

Once a year, this country becomes reacquainted with one of the most powerful marketing movements there’s ever been. And I love love love that it’s for a charity. So with that in mind, let’s talk about:

The Poppy Appeal

View more presentations from Vituperative.

The Day Long Copy Died :(

So the Campbell Lace Beta competition vote (that's it, there) is well underway - but for me, the term 'well' is misleading:

oh :( and I was totally optimistic, too.

Well, it looks like that's most probably that then. Who knows what went wrong: entered too late, incredibly long to the point of being unreadable, just plain bad. The point is that I enjoyed it, a lot. II found myself typing and writing til I lost track of time, and I got a few looks for giggling on the bus when I started with:

Well Garry, this is it. I meant what I said when New Year’s came, as I held your cravat out of the way with you crouched over that toilet in Soho. Us Life On Mars D.C.I Tyler-style admen have to stick together in this new world of retweeting and Sky Plus. And that Web Twenty thing I keep reading about.

It was great. And whatever happens, it was awesome to see the boys try something new and fun and get such a positive response from everyone in an industry that sometimes seems to self-important for its own good. 

I liked it, I'd do it again. I've already won, I think :)

NB: Please, please go see all the entries. They're great!

My Entry To Campbell Lace Beta's Blog Competition...

By now, you might have seen this.

Here's the backstory as to how such craziness came about:

The Campbell Lace Beta blog (via Campaign Live) are running a competition this month:

to get things going again and to celebrate our good fortune so far we're going to give a prize of £1000 to the most interesting, amusing, useful, useless, outrageous comment posted on our blog during the month of October.

It took me weeks to work out a response - and all the time, the cool entries started piling up - make sure you hit the threads from October and check them out, especially Lolly & Nat's and the Downfall parody. In fact, I only settled on my idea last night, and a bit of a rush it's been getting it executed. Strangely enough, it all stemmed from Garry and Robert themselves - they're figures of mystery; and despite it's transparency, the agency is to. How did it come about? What was it like, before Campbell Lace Beta. This alternate history is obvious not the answer, and it's a bit rough round the edges, but it's good for a laugh.

And if you liked it, maybe it's good for a vote too :)

***BONUS EASTER EGG*** - Now you too can colour in your very own poorly-drawn Garry Lace!

Full printable A4 here :D

TMWTB: How To Think

Congratulations, Will! Winner of the first "Tell Me What To Blog", Will (curator of Confessions Of A Wannabe Advertising Man and the formidable Adgrads) asked a real doozy:

James, how do you think laterally? I want you to describe your thought process, and the feeling you have when you think you've cracked it. What does it feel like? 

Well yeah, how can I not fall for a bait question like "How does you mind work"? But also, it's a question the industry wrestles with like no other. Creativity and cracking things cause all manner of hand-wringing and sweating to occur. How can we justify our ideas when we don’t necessarily know where they come from? Here are a few thoughts on the subject.

1.       1. Thought is ruled by the dogma of linearity. We talk about thought processes and a train of thought, both of which imply one start point, one end point, and definite path between the two. Enlightened people dismiss this as hogwash, of course – one can and must have many thoughts because casting the net wide will catch the odd-looking fish.

2.      2. Here’s the danger – these same enlightened people can get caught in linearity, simply by assuming they’re ‘aware’. Knowing about the dangers of linear thought doesn’t inherently keep you away from it; it just helps you think linearly in more directions. The brain is fundamentally a machine, and if we live in a mechanistic universe (as we might) then we’re no better than this:

A member of the House of Lords once famously asked Charles Babbage, inventor of the Difference Engine,

"Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine the wrong figures, will the right answers come out?"

Clue: the answer is no. Modern computer programmers refer to this concept as “Garbage In, Garbage Out”. The brain, if left to its own devices, will do what it logically can with whatever its given, processed via experience. You know the old saying: If you have a hammer, every problem looks like a walnut. Or something.

3.     3. So it’s utterly impossible to have thoughts outside the obvious – unless you employ outside intervention. This means one of two things:

a.       Restructure your brain to think along lines so different from others that it is misinterpreted as original. This is how creative teams often work, exposing themselves to so much mess and creativity that they cannot help but try to think along subversive lines. However, these are still lines, and the power of the lines is in evidence whenever we see a slew of similarly wacky ads. What’s more, these processes can still lead you down familiar paths – particularly such greats as, “hmm. I wonder what visual pun we could make out of this one?”

b.      Trick your mind into going in another direction. This is where you encounter a problem and all your standard modes of thought and experience begin to work, then – BAM! – something comes along to interrupt that pattern. Appropriately enough, in neuro-linguistic programming it’s called a pattern interrupt. People use such interrupts all the time, and everyone’s got their own set. There are many ‘professional’ ones that can be found in, say, De Bono. Six Hats stuff is just a way of ‘forcing’ you into a mode of thought you wouldn’t logically consider. So is a decent creative brief – for that matter, a good creative brief template can be just as powerful at guiding you to the heart of a problem.

4.    4. Let’s extend this idea. Deliberate interruption is everywhere. Brainstorms are at their best when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Why do we not just ask each person to send in their ideas? It’s not for the free biscuits. It’s because brainstorms constitute collaborative interruption. The ideas that win the day are not formed in isolation, they’re caused by “what visual pun could we use?” man colliding with Mrs. “I want to use inflatables” via the “what’s the most offensive thing we could do?” guy. Voila, Birds’ Eye is sponsored by a giant floating willy, and a great idea is born.

5.      Above this, the very existence of ad agencies owes itself in part to clients realising that if they only used their own thought processes, their communications would be very predictable indeed. So they realise it.

5.  In the final analysis, lateral thinking is all about outsourcing – it’s about arranging to have leaves on the line of the train of thought, ready to derail you into unfamiliar territory where the problem might just unravel. Maybe comms isn’t the answer – blasphemy in a comms agency. But the fact that arriving at a solution can feel as terrifying as it does uplifting, means you’re probably on the right track.

Well, one of them.

fin.

There you go, Will! Hope that’s satisfied you – though I’ve no doubt that there are many, many different answers out there. Has anyone else got any tricks for deliberately throwing themselves of the linear-thought path? I’d love to share them.

Look out for info on when to submit your new “Tell me what to Blog” questions. The stranger the better, please...