Giving Feedback - Lessons you never stop learning.
Last week I watched 13 teams of Brandcenter students give presentations to their clients. And I watched those clients provide feedback to the students. It got me thinking on “best practices” for feedback and so I offer these ideas. One humongous caveat: I’m no expert. Despite the fact that my heart is in the right place, in giving feedback I’ve been inconsistent, not clear enough, talked too much, frowned way too much.
1. If we get the feedback we deserve, what do we do if the assignment we’re given is flawed from the start? If you want a team to stay high-level, look to see if your assignment is too tactical. If you were hoping to see a new point-of-view on the target audience, build that into the assignment and maybe avoid sharing too much of what you already know. Contradictions can slow a team down. Just like pros, they will have to take their best educated guess on what the right problem is and then solve for it. And the right problem might not have been laid out in the assignment.
2. Your assignment should provide momentum. When you brief the team of students working on your project – or the agency working with you “for real” – be enthusiastic. Sell your assignment. Make a real presentation. Present it like it matters. That you’re excited about where the project might lead. That’s the kind of vibe that keeps teams pushing forward.
3. I think every client has been told to start with something positive. In a room full of clients, that can be 10-15 minutes of ego boosting. In the case of student work, clients sometimes come across as overly amazed at the caliber of the work. Comments like that are a double-edged sword. While positive at face value, they can also indicate that the clients had extremely low expectations for what they would see. Our students are aiming high for the careers they hope to have. You should expect great work. You expect it from your agency, right?
4. The opening ego boost doesn’t do anyone any favors if you next systematically destroy the work. Nobody likes that emotional whiplash. If you didn’t expect a campaign with a comedic approach, say that. That elevates the discussion to a strategic one versus something more tactical. If the work crosses more channels than you anticipated seeing, don’t start with “we can’t afford all this”. There may be ways to have it all. Or most of it. That’s the next problem to tackle. If everyone believes in the work, a solution can be found.
5. Students need to know when things are poorly thought through, off the strategy they presented or just plain lousy. They run out of time just like agency pros. They come up with an 11th hour idea that just has to be shown but just might be ½ baked. The lessons of screwing up are some of the best lessons you’ll ever have. Sure they might be embarrassed. After all, you’re not just telling them the cold hard truth. You’re telling them in front of their peers. But my hunch is that they’ll now know how to improve the work to make it worthy of their portfolio. And they’ll never – almost never – make those mistakes again. Be specific. That’s the kind of information that can really help them to reformulate their ideas.
The Perfect Marriage of Business & Popular Culture
The Brandcenter Friday Forum kicked off this semester with a great talk from Grant McCracken. If you haven’t read his book Chief Culture Officer (http://www.amazon.com/Chief-Culture-Officer-Breathing-Corporation/dp/B003TO6E4A/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317000827&sr=1-1) you should. Brands and culture are so intertwined that companies have to get better at paying attention to what matters in popular culture. In fact, Grant espouses the idea that just as Wall Street has a “big board” that follows the ups and downs of corporate stocks, there should be a “big board” that spots and tracks the ups and downs of what and who matters in culture. By using data analytics to track the progress of celebrities, political figures, and emerging artists, brands can be smarter about who or what they attach themselves to.
I love the “Big Board” idea. Another possible way of demonstrating this is by borrowing from the Boston Consulting Group and their product matrix based on market penetration and market growth.
Take the world of music: Has Madonna become a “dog” in terms of music with her focus shifting to sponsorships and clothing lines? Is Katy Perry nearing the point of becoming a Cash Cow? She has a very high share of market right now, but will her candy-coated pop cease to appeal? Does she need to explore new styles in her music? Or is Beyonce more in danger of this, since her latest album seems to be struggling to find traction? I might say Rihanna is a star and Nicki Minaj is the question mark to watch.
Clearly this model is less sophisticated and less empirical than what Grant McCracken has envisioned. Either way, it’s hard to argue with the success that comes from more closely aligning and then staying ahead of culture.
“What kind of planner do you think I am?” Que Sera Sera!
It’s natural for students to ask “what kind of planner do you think I am?” They usually ask it when they are getting ready to assemble their portfolios and head out on job interviews. My hunch is that planners are like snowflakes - no two are exactly alike. Having said that, here are some things to consider:
Are you business-centric or consumer centric? An assumption might be that all planners care about is what people (aka “the consumer”) are thinking, feeling and doing. Many great planners I’ve worked with got just as much learning, as many Ahas!, and inspiration from diving into how a business and categoy work. So if the spectrum seems to be left brain-business planner and right-brain people planner — aim for being more whole brain.
Curiosity is typically considered a given. Add a dose of empathy to that. Many a planner enjoys people-watching and eavesdropping on conversations in airports or at Starbucks. It’s fun to go out and do expert interviews, troll blogs, do in-depth one-on-ones and learn new things about culture and how people live. What enhances that curiosity is the ability to empathize with how folks are managing the day-to-day and relate it back to your work. Respect what they teach you.
Once upon a time … It doesn’t hurt to be a great storyteller. To paint vivid narratives for your team and your clients. But be open to the possibility that when you’re telling your story a minor fact or description, that you thought was fairly innocuous, might end up being a surprisingly rich creative vein.
Don’t confuse the way you tell the story with the way the end communication should be. Sometimes you might hit the brand tone or character pitch perfect. Other times, you might not. Be humble.
Always be inspired and even jealous of really interesting and engaging ideas that other folks have. Let them stoke the fire in your belly.
Get comfortable with uncertainty. When given a lovely problem to solve, a strategist heads off in a few directions of possibility, armed with hypotheses to prove or disprove. Just when he or she thinks the pieces are fitting together nicely, the problem changes, the competition shifts, the stars no longer align and Square One reappears. And off you go again.
So Que Sera Sera! What will be will be. Let me know how you turn out.
What's for dinner, Marie Callender?
This story about a PR/Social Media event gone wrong has so much good grist for learning. 1. Just because a tactic like hidden-camera footage showing pleasantly surprised people has worked before and is “a staple in commercials”, doesn’t mean it always works. Maybe there is something new “under the sun”. 2. Obviously, not all bloggers are created equal. This group of “truth-seeking journalists” was the wrong audience to pursue. 3. “I’m NOT their target consumer”. That might mean your readers won’t be either. See point #2
Taking a moment …
The Brink is so named because I have a front row seat with which to watch talented folks learn and grow on the way to interesting careers. But I find myself at another kind of Brink right now. I’m on the brink of watching my mother disappear from Alzheimer’s.
My mom has been handicapped my whole life. She contracted polio at 25 and had to do a whole lot of recovery before having me 8 years later. As a young child no one sat me down and said “Listen kid, your mom has a wicked limp. She can’t run or jump. Play tennis, ice skate, roller skate, jump rope, shoot baskets, ski, etc. etc. However, if you do something bad, you can probably get out of arm’s reach faster than she can catch you.” I think somehow I inherently figured this out. I got teased a lot at school because my mom walked funny. I also got in trouble a lot for beating the crap out of those kids.
No one sits you down and tells you about the life your parents had before you existed. You find out from old stories or photographs. My mom went to an Ivy League school. She was pre-Med. She loved to dance and wear silk shantung dresses. While polio took away the dancing and marrying someone in the military made med school problematic back then, she has always been well-read, well-traveled and well-dressed.
As a child, for some reason, I thought my job was to protect my mom. That’s why I fought those battles on the playground. And why the only recurring dream I have ever had in my life was when I was in elementary school. The dream was always the same. Our house was burning down and I had to find my mom because I knew she couldn’t out run the flames.
This week, I went on-line to a website that sells products to baby proof your home. My dad had asked me to get the gadgets you put on the stove to prevent a child from turning the knobs. My mom had already started a small fire in their apartment.
The irony is crazy. And if this disease was a person, I’d push him the hell off the top of the monkey bars.
Three things to consider about accomplishment.
As I tried desperately to stitch together a schedule of babysitters for my child while attending a conference several hundred miles away, one of said sitters commented that she was going to wait to have kids until she had accomplished what she wanted to in her career.
My first thought was “Jeez, I’m not scoring role model points here.” But the exchange kept me thinking about accomplishments. I think I am wired to accomplish things, but I’ve never really thought about it in the abstract.
1. Which comes first - your values or your accomplishments? In the end the values are going to be what matter and ideally they are the engine that drive what you accomplish.
2. Our culture often sets the yardstick for how we measure accomplishment. In the Gordon Gecko greedy ’80s it might have been the “Beemer”. In the 1st dotcom explosion, it was your IPO. Today, it might be the business you’re supposed to build in your dorm room. Or the number of places where “you’re the mayor”. With culture being fickle, I refer you to point #1. Your values will get you beyond whatever the flavor of the month is.
3. Downsize your accomplishment wish list. Take the Big Hairy Audacious Goals that can seem hard to attain and break ‘em down into manageable chunks. Yes, I’ve stolen this point from legions of diet to-do lists. You could be thinking “What a downer. I have big dreams and I’m gonna go for it.” Of course you are. But sometimes a lot of smaller victories add up to something ENORMOUS.
4. Oops! I said there were three things to consider. Then a fourth dawned on me. Tend your own garden. It is some sort of human nature to look at what other folks are doing and compare. The chances they get seem so shiny and yours are all matte finish, blunt not sharp. Look at what you’re growing. Make that garden truly beautiful. Trust me, folks will notice. You will accomplish!
Agencies Need to Embrace Design Thinking NOW!
I really appreciated Roger Martin’s book The Design of Business. And I flashed on it today while I was chatting with one of our “about to” graduates. Suddenly I realized that a practice of design thinking is not only good for business, but it’s good for the next generation of folks we are sending out into the advertising industry. Or maybe all industries.
Martin suggests that the old model of “on-going tasks and permanent assignments” should shift to the project-based orientation of designers. That rather than “managing big budgets and large staffs”, we should be more motivated by solving “wicked problems”.
We like to think that this new wave in the workforce is fickle. They have no patience or desire to “stick it out” and pay their dues. But if you flip those seemingly negative traits to a more positive design thinking frame … well, then these new folks are building the heuristics of design faster, they are moving because they are more motivated by new and different projects and they are on the hunt for really cool problems to solve or things to make.
For an agency, the old way of thinking, the one that says “The client really loves Sally, so we have to keep Sally on the account” won’t necessarily save the business and almost certainly could cause the agency to lose Sally. Rotating Sally on to her next “wicked problem” will be good for her and her new client. The client that thinks they “lost” Sally, should be eager to embrace the fresh take that Bill will bring to the table. And in theory, the agency will be growing their own T-Shaped Thinkers faster and more cheaply than paying for all those trips to Innovation conferences.
Why you gotta try to be “all in”.
Today, a faculty colleague asked me “why I was so invested in Brandcenter”. I didn’t quite know how to answer that. Maybe it’s because I really enjoy being in marketing and advertising and I get a kick out of passing what I’ve learned along to our students.
The idea behind the Adcenter, now the Brandcenter, is a great model for what graduate education and training can be - who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?
My dad always says “leave a place better than you found it”. I guess I could be trying to make a mark in some way.
Seems like if you’re going to preach work ethic, you’ve got to demonstrate work ethic. So I’ll layer in a dose of that.
But at the end of the day, when your head hits the pillow, don’t you want to be able to say “I gave it all I had.”?
Maybe that means I’m just being selfish to get a good night’s sleep.
Where do you get your inspiration?
Strategists are called upon to inspire teams. Which means that strategists must in turn, be inspired. So where do you get your inspiration?
Time Sensitive Inspiration - Personal experience has shown me that in crunch times, say a new business pitch, strategists may fall back on the inspiration sources and routines that have worked well for them in the past. Their “tried and true”, if you will. My tried and true, at various times, have included Forrester, Iconoculture, The New York Times, McKinsey, The Harvard Business Review, friends and family, Visual Thesaurus, various blogs, “expert interviews”, fast turn quant surveys, “3 Bold Questions” e-mails, scanning the TOC and Index of tried and true resource books, a psych text book, academic experts, a room,white board and razor sharp account director, and going for drinks with the creative team.
Leisure Time Inspiration - I mean the time when a project isn’t hanging like a boulder suspended over your head. Now I can jump through all my bookmarks, read blog posts AND dissect the comments from said posts, sit on the floor of the Children’s section at Barnes & Noble and enjoy some great art direction and design, read Dwell and wonder who really lives in these houses, eavesdrop while shopping at Kroger, Target, Wal-Mart, The Dollar Store. Waste time in the drive way listening until the last story on All Things Considered concludes.
Things I need to investigate - I think all strategists need to cycle in new sources to their tried and true. Recently, as part of the annual Cultural Standpoints assignment at Brandcenter, a student presented a piece on Bio-Mimicry. I can’t help coming back to it and thinking about how I’m dying to use “clues from nature” in my next investigation. She referenced, in her presentation, another project we did at school having to do with expanding the membership base of the MOMA. She talked about applying Bio-Mimicry to that problem. That got my mind thinking about my dogs - two pack animals.
