why ad agencies are rubbish at HR and talent

apparently one of the worst jobs ever

This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently, as I've just left a really good job in a great agency to try going freelance.

Iain's written a nice post about how it's hard to get and retain motivated, creative, multi-skilled people, because, put simply, if they're that good, they'll go do their own thing.

I then read this awfully arrogant article, by a freelance computer programmer, on Reddit:


Working a real job is a win if you're lazy, greedy, or unmotivated. If you're average, you fit right in. And if you're above average, the basic terms of employment and premise of the arrangement is against your interests.


So in the face of this attitude (which I don't agree with), how can you retain smart, entrepreneurial people?


This is a prime example of how advertising agencies totally fail to walk their own talk.


You get the best people by making your work environment so unbelievably, jaw-droppingly cool, that it's legendary to work there.


You get the best financial and care packages for your staff - healthcare, profit shares, all that kind of normal stuff. You also need the best working processes that give your staff freedom to work effectively on interesting stuff.

Those are hygiene factors - all your competitors will start to offer the same anyway.


Then, the real work starts. You have to now make sure that your workplace is the arguably coolest place to work in the whole world. You have to add little flashes of cool to every single touchpoint with your employees - you know, the kind of the thing we tell our client brands to do to their consumers.

Ad agencies are still totally stuck in the 80s when it comes to all this stuff. Think of all the agencies you've been to with massive plush meeting rooms, but with their creatives sat 9-6 in call centre conditions just upstairs. All the while we're telling clients that consumers have all the power now, and it's about real values and authenticity.

The sad thing is that business knows this already - Google's market is the most creative and talent-driven business in the world today, and their office is a total geek's dream.


link to video of Google offices on YouTube

It really annoys me when top creative agencies do things like rewarding employees with iPods to keep them motivated - how unimaginative is that? Would you dare suggest such a mundane promotion for your clients?

Photo from Monky

"You're very creative. Have an iPod."

Some numbered points:

1. People will do irrational things if they're in love. You tell your clients this is true for consumers of their FMCG brands, so believe it's true for your employees and your agency. People will pay £3 quid for fruit in a bottle, and they'll stay in jobs where they could be paid a few more grand elsewhere.

2. It's hard work, and there's no one-size-fits-all solution - building a GooglePlex wouldn't be right for keeping talent at JWT. You need to understand your agency brand, understand your staff and have creative ideas which resonate deeply within both.

3. It's not going to be cheap, but it will work out in the long run, and being creative can achieve better results than unimaginative spending.

4. People follow other people - especially the active ones who create the agency culture. So you have to put extravagant effort into keeping these people. For example, when a very "on-culture" person has leaves an agency, the sense of loss is huge compared to the job-importance of that person. I remember feeling like this when Cookie left my old agency, and I didn't even know him that well then.

If you look at that list - it's all painfully obvious stuff that we present to clients again and again, but somehow we think it doesn't apply to the people we employ.

This would be a good time to name drop Work Club, where my friend Charlotte has just joined. They also believe that agency HR practices are in need of a shake up, and have a number of neat innovations, like planner-creative teams, and giving people a lot of freedom and flexibility in the way they work.

Anyone else seen any good workplace HR innovations?

sex, marriage and death on facebook

You know that game sex-marriage-death, where someone names 3 people you know, and you have to choose which of the above you’d do to them?

My friend Simeon’s agency, Hyperhappen, have made a Facebook application where you can play this online with your Facebook friends, and it shows on your profile how much you’ve sexed, wedded or killed.

Link to the Shag-Marry-Kill app.

It’s to promote the new movie, Knocked Up, which is kind of about sex and marriage life choices.

Definitely the best (in fact probably the only good one) branded application I've yet seen.

piss controlled gaming

I don't normally just post ads and things here, but this is so dope. Saw it on my friend Vincent's blog - it's anti drink-driving game controlled by sensors in a urinal.

I'm not totally sure about the execution, but the idea of using the media this way is spot on.



Link to YouTube

been on hols

I went to the Isle of Wight for a weekend and hung around, generally having a nice time on the beach, and getting soaked.


seaweed that looks like a dog


On the way back, I was greatly entertained by these Ikea tube panel ads. I really like them - nice idea, cute executions, products at the centre of it all. There's also one with a sheepdog rounding up some white Ikea chairs.


Great Indoors - person cowering from Ikea crocodile

recycled toy jewellery: bear head necklace

Edit: I've put this for sale on Etsy here, for 20USD or 10GBP. If you're in London, I'll deliver it to you too.



This is now piece number 5. An unwanted head from a toy bear, hand cut, finished and hand painted, with little costume jewellery blingy eyes. I hope to start selling more items like this as soon as I can find more plastic animals to mutilate.

monkey suicides

I'm currently working full time so not huge amounts of time for blogging. I'm having quite a nice time, couple of really interesting projects, but I forgot how expensive working 9-6 is! Leaving the house, travelling, eating, and generally being in a rush all the time.

Anyway someone today at work sent this utterly brilliant site round - MonkeySuicide.com



It's so good that I think it can't be from an agency (Mother?), but I'd like to be pleasantly surprised. It's a bit like a live web2.0 version of Bunny Suicides.


Link to youtube of Bunny suicides video

personal disco component

Disco Lite in Action, originally uploaded by brett burton.

I love disco, and anything pretty much with flashing lights on it. I found this light boombox while looking for images for a presentation - it's a shame they don't still make stuff like this today.

Instead, the market is totally dominated by identical iPods and plain white iPod speaker sets. Boring.

EDIT - my friend Nick found a video!


And there's an ebay auction for one (look in the comments of this post). A similar model was used in Madonna's "Hung Up" video.

Beersphere - Wednesday 15th August

Hey guys, it's the best planning event of the summer - Beersphere.
In the Eagle just near Old Street tube. Planners and other communications people drinking and chatting in a pub.

Full details here at Faris's blog.

I'll be there from 7:30 onwards. Woop!

recycled toy jewellery: triceratops de los muertos

Another dinosaur ring. For the first time, I'm quite pleased with the painting on this one.

best use of multimedia: how stories propagate

photo from n3wJack


After that post I wrote about transmedia, I thought I would put up my favourite example that I use to illustrate how a good, rich, idea spreads in a transmedia way. It's a slide I knocked up ages ago when this stunt happened - feel free to use it, as long as you don't use it for evil.

It can be used as a this-is-how-the-Internet-works kind of slide, or to show the importance of trying to make ideas richer.

It started in retail (droplifting is the posh term for what Banksy did), and all the different content - images, music, stories, product - whizzed around the Internet. Different people were interested in different aspects of the stunt, which all contributed to the story as a whole.

incredible stop motion urban lightwriting

photo from hal

Ages ago I blogged about some us doing some slow exposure photos, and I was wondering what this kind of photography was called. The answer is lightwriting.

Check out this incredible new video produced by the lichtfaktor crew - it combines light writing with stop motion animation and general awesomeness.


direct link to youtube

It's to advertise a Star Wars VS Star trek season on Sky - surprisingly forward thinking, good stuff. An example of letting those who know how to do it get on with it without too much agency interference.

As a point of interest, I found this video via the Wildfire Network - a kind of network that enables blog/website publishers to get paid for seeding Wildfire clients videos. I signed up out of sheer media-curiosity and so they sometimes send me videos, but this is the first one I've thought worthy of writing about.

transmedia giant lego man washed up on beach

There's a lot of talk about "transmedia" right now, basically meaning

a story which unfolds across lots of different media platforms, with different media contributing distinct bits of the story to make up the whole thing.

I think the plannersphere as a whole has been guilty of perverting and dumbing down the meaning of this, using it to refer almost exclusively to treasure hunts, ARGs (alternate reality games), mysteries or teaser campaigns.

Transmedia means more than simply having your audience dig around for info!

One example of something hailed as transmedia is Golden Jigsaw - this is just a website treasure hunt where you collect pieces of a picture. It's not transmedia storytelling, here's why:

1. There isn't a story.
The only story is "where's the next clue?". There isn't a plot to uncover - it's just a hunt.

2. It's not transmedia.
It only uses one mechanic - looking for clues on websites - so where are the multiple media platforms?



In the article Transmedia 101, by the term's founder Henry Jenkins he mentions the example of Pokemon.

A cartoon, a series of video games on every platform, a card game and a movie - all combining to create a rich universe full of life and stories that you can enter at any point - now that's transmedia.

There can be the odd mystery here and there, but the whole thing doesn't just rely on intrigue, like a lot of the teaser campaigns being called transmedia.

The purpose of my rant here isn't just to try to define things for the sake of it, but because transmedia comms planning is a powerful idea, and I hate to see it trivialised by being applied to every treasure hunt out there.

Also, mechanics like intrigue and mysteries are powerful ways to engage audiences, but there's no need to yell transmedia at them!


Children play near a giant smiling Lego man that was fished out of the sea in the Dutch resort of Zandvoort August 7, 2007. REUTERS/Marco de Swart

Anyway, a giant Lego man was washed up on a beach in Europe just yesterday. This kind of thing is what we need more of in transmedia campaigns, not just endless Internet hunts and teasers!

recycled toy jewellery: dinosaur ring

I just finished making this for my friend's birthday. I don't think it's very practical, but it was fun to make and paint. Dayglo orange with nu-rave multicolored tiger stripes.



This is how it started life - as a small plastic heterodontosaurus from the Brick Lane car boot sale:



You can see more photos of it if you're interested here on Flickr.

I might try to make more and sell them on Etsy, but they are dreadfully time consuming and fiddly.

facepainting 2.0

I just did some work helping to set up a blog and design some very lo-fi business cards to advertise facepainting at kids parties around London.

The strategy for the blog is to dominate search by very specific London regions. There are quite a few directories for large areas like East London or Tower Hamlets, but to advertise on all of these would be too competitive, expensive and time consuming.

Instead, by blogging about various jobs and art activites done in specific areas, anyone searching for say "facepainting in Finchley" will hit that particular post, get to see pics, and hopefully make an enquiry.


business cards, front and back

The cards look quite cute and stand out well on noticeboards. Importantly, children like them too - when she gave one to a parent with 2 kids, one of the kids came running back to ask for another one so both her and her brother could both have one.

see the blog at http://www.vickleart.co.uk/

I finally have to leave my bedroom

goodbye, bedroom

I'm going to be working at Holler for 3 weeks, starting Monday 13th August and finishing Tuesday the 5th September.

One of the things which interested me was the fact they have an in-house marketing team - a kind of cross between a media and PR team, who can get stuck in with seeding content, setting up partnerships and doing all that kind of WoM stuff that's becoming so fashionable lately. Plus they seem like nice, fun bunch.

Feel good to have something sorted until September, so I can relax and devote this week to my admin and other projects.

brilliant piece of toilet ambient

You know you're a advertising dork when... you take pictures of your mate's toilet because you find the marketing implications of a sticker interesting.

This is brilliant, because it gets the brand right into the place of usage, reminding you to clean your toilet and which product to do it with (Toilet Duck).

in praise of shutting the hell up

Having recently been to lots of interviews, meetings, and coffees, I've been conscious of myself talking a bit too much sometimes. Nerves, poor preparation, leading to jabbering. I also found myself boring someone with a really awful anecdote just yesterday in the pub, and instead of doing the noble thing - stopping halfway and apologising - I finished it to the punchline-less end. This post is my way of saying sorry to the world.




The purpose of talking is to get exchange feelings and ideas to other people. These can be simple, like "I am happy to see you" or more complex ideas such as "why I love planning".

When we abuse this exchange, we're essentially relegating ourselves to the level of mental illness, like the guy outside Primark in Hackney who argues with himself.


Abuse No.1 - Using too many words to get across your idea across


photo from cdmoats

Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, one of the most powerful speeches in history, in just 2 minutes, 267 words.

He's also responsible for one of the greatest insults ever, of which is particularly poignant to ad-men:

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know."

Abraham Lincoln



photo from david

The Terminator is one of the most memorable and quotable characters in movie history. In Terminator 2, Arnie speaks only 700 words and gets paid 15 million dollars.

Enough said.


Abuse No. 2 - Talking at people when they're not interested in your ideas

This is what you see on really bad dates. One person endlessly talking rubbish, and the other wondering how much of this they can stand before they can shut them up by kissing them. Obviously this is bad, so here are some signs that you should let them talk or change subject.

1. If people start shifting, fidgeting, glancing around, they're bored of you.

2. If their responses (e.g. uh-huh, yuh) become more frequent, and more mono-syllabic, you should also stop talking.

3. If people started out quite bouncy and energetic, and now appear listless, you have sapped them of their will to live.


On talking lots VS doing lots

In actions, doing things, practicing, we learn and gain skills.

Like Russell's possibly apocryphal story about a ceramics class, sometimes the best way to create quality is through quantity. Fail harder and all that.

However, talking isn't like this. No one ever got smarter by talking too much, or by talking -at- people. Giving a lecture doesn't make you smarter, it's the preparation and feedback from students which does.

Excess thinking, yes. Excess writing things and doing things, yes. Excess talking, no.

Word.

make stuff cool VS make cool stuff

I've been super busy over the last couple of days, meeting work-related people, hanging out and saving money by having lots of home-cooked food.

The other morning I went to a lovely event called Brunch Bites 1.0, organised by Mike Butcher. It's a coffee morning in the Breakfast Club in soho, aimed at web/mobile entrepreneurs and industry people. Note my new "suitable for gainful employment" haircut.


Image from Thayer

I met a nice guy called David, who wrote a book on how music propagates through social networks, and a couple of smart guys who are launching web2.0 and widget startups.

I felt a bit dirty being the only ad-guy there - I was surrounded by really positive, do-er mentality people, who believed in providing people with great services they'd want to adopt, rather than relying on marketing. Those of the let's just make cool stuff school of thought.

Advertising, on the other hand, has always been about making stuff cool, or desirable, without really changing the content (e.g. the ingredients of the Shreddies).

While there's loads of talk now centered around marketing that provides value to customers, and doing genuinely interesting things, it's important that we don't lose the ancient skill of creating communications that incite desire, rather than just inform.