Never get out of the boat: new agency model

Showing posts with label new agency model. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

theory of value

A bit more on Japanese educator and philosopher Tsunesaburo Makiguchi mentioned in the previous post, and whom I’ve been reading up on lately.

Makiguchi reckoned that the ‘lifelong happiness’ of students to be the goal of education, rather than simply churning out ‘knowledgable’ citizens.

His philosophy toward developing the value-creation potential of students can be summed up as being that each individual has the inherent ability to significantly influence the world (should they decide to) based on the notion of interdependence - between humans and the environment and also humans in their ‘social relations’.

Makiguchi said that the creation of value as the ultimate purpose of human existence, ie a happy and fulfilled life is one in which the ability to discover and create value has been fully realised.

According to traditional Western philosophy, Value is made up of three elements;
Truth, Beauty, and Good.

Makiguchi's theory of value, however challenges the notion of ‘Truth’ as a value.

For Makiguchi, truth is found in the ‘correspondence between an objective reality and the words and concepts applied by humans to that reality.’

In other words, value is ‘relational’.

To illustrate this, think about the a news report of some incident or other. The news report itself is either true or false.

But the truth or otherwise of the said report is independent from the concept of value, ie the value lies in its positive or negative impact on people's lives.

Makiguchi considers truth a matter of ‘qualitative equivalence’.

Value must then be viewed as the 'relational power of the object measured by the quantitative response of the subject'.

So value is derived from the interaction between humans and their environment. It’s relational.

So Makiguchi proposed a different three elements of value.

'Beauty' (or it’s opposite, Ugly?) relating to sensory response.

'Gain' extends and expands the total experience ('loss' is obviously the flipside).

'Good' is the ‘social’ benefit (ie in the same way that gain is to the the individual ('evil' being the b-side of that).

This philosophy of value, therefore, is an invitation to engage with and create beauty, 'gain, and good.

In this way individuals, organisations, networks or brands can create ‘potentially limitless value’.

Yeah?

Saturday, October 25, 2008

10 questions towards a new creative brief....

I'm trying to develop a Creative Brief template, if you have a minute.
In a non-advertising context where we are looking to create content (or to facilitate the creation of content by others) and utility; what does the brief look like?

Here's where i'm at - suggestions, modifications, critisisms all welcome.

Position in 8 words…
In a nutshell, what do we want to do?

The Brand
What does it look like? How does it feel?
What do people actually say/think about it?

Who are the community we are looking to serve?
Who are we talking with?
What level of permission do we have with them?

But who are they really?
How do they think? What music do they like? Who are their friends?
Where do they play? etc

Why should I believe you?
What backs this up? Prove it. What de we rally know..facts?

Call to action?
What do we want the community to do as a result of engaging with this?

Why?
What is the background or context?

Media?
Are there specific media we need to address?

What data do we want to ask for?

How do we measure?
What will success look like?
What do we want people to think as a result of participating?

UPDATE:
Thanks to @deirdre for pointing me to this conversation around branded utility from 2006...

Monday, June 23, 2008

variations on a meme

There's a mini-meme a-brewing round the Droga5/Net 10 - what is the role of the agency? - ad-google-purchase - conundrum stirred up by Alan Wolk, elaborated on by Cam Beck, amongst others and mentioned here a couple of posts back.

To recap: Droga5 make cool viral and :30 for US mobile operator Net10. Net10 claim in ads that other providers are evil. Cursory googling of Net10 customer reviews reveals Net10 customer service etc to be pretty average at best in the eyes of users.
Many of the comments on Scamp (where the debate started) reckon agency make ads, duff products are nowt to do with us.

Alan says: 'too many agencies can’t even be bothered to use Google to see if the product actually lives up to the brief. Can’t be bothered to realize that for most non packaged-goods items, the consumer pattern is now ad -Google-purchase.'

Semi anonymous commenter bg adds:
'I think one group escapes blame here: brands. [Brands] are just as responsible for the fragmentation of advertising and marketing responsibilities as anyone...'

Mulling this around on the train home while listening to Elvis Costello's classic '89 album 'Spike' a lyrical couplet resonated somewhat.

'One day you're going to have to face
A deep dark truthful mirror
And it's going to tell you things that I still love
you too much to say'
Elvis Costello 'Deep dark truthful mirror'

We recently worked with [Brand X] on a project involving user generated content.
The project ended up being compromised a bit by the reluctance of the client to incorporate some of the (most basic) social elements to the project. The reason for this was; that some students had conducted experiments with [Brand X] product - the results cast a shadow on the integrity of some the the claims about the product.
[Brand X] then had to take a serious look at their product (and into the deep dark truthful mirror)and get it fixed.

Seems to me the same connundrum here.

Brands need to be aware that not only is the adage 'you're brand is not what you say it is, it's what google says it is' ringing true - its also what google potentially says it is once the eager pro-sumers have finished conducting their experiments.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

value creation agent

Ive been asked a few times recently
'What is it you do?'- ie what is your status?
Now Ive had various 'careers' and job titles through time and traditionally that's what's defined the answer to that question, however on reflection that's not really satisfactory. Where does that leave me if I'm a plumber from 9-5 and a stripper at night?

I quote from the scriptures...
And it is written:

'Keep your silly ways or throw them out the window
The wisdom of your ways, I've been there and I know
Lots of other ways, what a jolly bad show
If all you ever do is business you don't like'
Ian Dury - Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll (1977)

In the interests of creating some value here, this is an excercise in the bleedin' obvious (so obvious it's all too easy to forget).

Something I've come to realise is that;
as human beings 'status' is defined by a combination of the things we think, say and do.

This works for companies, teams or whatever as well, in case you were wondering when the marketing bit is coming in. Ive heard this described as 'inside-out branding'

By first setting a goal (not to be confused with status) - in a digital ad agency for example; give our clients quality, innovation, support and knowledge to help grow their brand and business, or something like that. What do we want to achieve? Stand for something, create value.

Meeting that goal will, more than likely, put you up there in the NMA respected agencies list (that's yer status)

How do you do that? Wisdom and action. That's the cheese and ham in the sandwich.
It's also the difficult bit.
Wisdom = Figure out what to do
Action = and then do it.

Simple - but not easy. What's easy is to bail out if starts getting too hard.

'What is it you do?' - be a value creation agent.

Hat tips to Jason Jarrett and Edward Canfor-Dumas

Friday, January 11, 2008

A new Agency Model?

Thanks to Neil Perkin from the excellent Only Dead Fish for bringing this presentation by Albion to our attention. Much chatter about new agency models in the past year or so. These guys have a pretty decent stab at articulating.

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