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Let’s go

2013-12-09T09:42:00.001-08:00

If you want something, go get it. Period.

I fully believe in this, nobody is going to push to achieve what’s best for you more than you.

This doesn’t become truer than when you discuss what you want with others and they fail to follow through with what you know is best for you.

I’m referring to my last move to an agency that I thought held the same values as I did.

To be honest I knew the role wasn’t right from the get go but felt I could make it my own and that the opportunities raw materials were there to do so successfully. As the Pareto principle states, you only need 20% of the raw materials to get 80% of the effects. It became apparent over time the 20% wasn’t up for grabs.

The thing is and the advice you usually receive when you do realise the role, place and everything else isn’t what you thought it was going to be, or what you could make it is to just play the game and continue to get on with it. I mean lets be honest that is a lot of peoples game plan.

Life is short though, at the end of the day having a frank discussion with a few people gives you the answer you need and you just have to ask yourself, can I get what I wanted, produce what I know I can or get even close to the reason that I moved here.

I’m disappointed it didn’t work out, like any other kind of relationship, but shit happens. Thankfully I do like putting myself into situations that I feel uncomfortable in, as that’s how you inoculate yourself to making mistakes when you’re afraid. The only annoying thing is, when you are inoculated, dealt with the problem in question and the situation hasn’t continued to improve and evolve. You are fighting the same disease over and over again in slightly different guises.

So I have been inoculated to a variety of different things, most of which were very similar to each other. I don’t make the same mistake twice, so let’s go and make some cool stuff happen.

As Ne-Yo said:

It’s not about what you’ve done

It’s about what you’re doing

It’s all about where you going

No matter where you’ve been

Let’s go!

Made to believe in doing something different*

2013-10-27T10:16:00.001-07:00

*I’m not sure what different means, I just know that when I interviewed for new employment its ratio to the usage of any other word was formidable, although that is more than likely a flaw in my vocabulary.

I’ve been working at my new gaff for a little while now. I’ve ended up going to a place that stood out a bit from what is a wide landscape of carbon copy bricks and mortar in different wrappers, and the wrappers aren’t really that different. I’ve come to realise due to the incestuous nature of talent and client pressures you're unlikely to walk through the doors or into a conversation that doesn’t feel like Groundhog Day.

Having said that I am fascinated by adland. I constantly find myself reading into agencies propositions and new entrants that state they are something different. There is some interesting stuff going on with the whole ‘integrated’ offering that agencies want to put on the table for clients, the truth is though not many deliver it. This does become a bit of a frustration as not many places seem to really understand what it is they offer, it’s just whatever encapsulates everything you think needs to be there; data, brand, social, experiential etc etc.

The reality that I understood was at this point in my career I have nothing to lose, it’s just all about playing the landscape that’s there and as long as I’m learning as much as possible and facing different variations of challenges there can be no bad decisions. I wasn’t getting the challenges I needed in my previous place, although it did give me a lot from the beginning, so the best thing for me (and it is of course a selfish decision) was to leave on the best terms possible and keep moving forward.

The things I bought into through the interviews at my new place were luckily supported in the first few weeks #1 Getting the right people interested and into a room to meet a cool new start-up to help collaborate on projects, that really are doing different stuff #2 The proud display and discussion of their work and #3 There honestly was an entrepreneurial spirit that allowed for a slightly different approach with briefs.

As I continue my journey though I am starting to loose faith in the adland model and the part I can play to avoid being a robot in a machine. I don’t know if advertising can continue to be the answer to do so, all I know is I will try my hardest to not be part of the monotony that my future may face.

*Please note the word ‘different’ has only been used 8 times in the article you have just read.

And here’s my leaving speech that I recently got sent, I was 9 pints in at the time which may explain why I look a bit spaced out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5RQ8Mttw9o.

From T to U

2013-08-18T05:48:00.000-07:00

A planner looks to solve, clarify and discover what problem a client is trying to solve, getting the client to trust the approach and give an agency space to go about producing the best possible work that achieves the greatest return on investment. This is achieved by asking the right questions to get answers from the right places, inspiring the client and agency teams to develop ideas, finding new opportunities and being the catalyst for change for the better. This is what I see planning as at least; everyone will have a slightly different view.

When I first immersed myself into the advertising industry and found where my role was within it I saw the planner as the intrepreneur within an agency, I still believe this and it acts as the foundation for how I’m mapping my career. This is however an approach that I don’t believe fits with many agencies, as it may involve pushing back repeatedly to the client, discovering that some solutions actually aren’t profitable even though they may have got thousands of Facebook likes and not being scared to step out of your specialism for a solution.

This approach works in the same way it would to starting a business: Take data where you can take data, immerse yourself in qualitative research, build an idea, overlay the data, share and develop the idea with as many people as possible, calculate an ROI with appropriate metrics, hone, sell in, implement, evaluate and optimise. If you were to approach an investor with a business proposal the hard value would need to be known, yet so often business problems are ‘solved’ without this and that doesn’t seem right.

Over the years as I have shared this thought with a variety of Planners, Heads of Planning and CSOs I hear a lot of chat about wanting T shaped planners. A T shaped planner is someone that has a variety of shallow skills with a key specialism in which they are experts, with the thought being get a wide variety of T shaped planners and you’ll cover all the bases. As a planner though you are likely to be incredibly curious, a curious individual however won’t keep those shallow skills shallow for long as they will no doubt develop. I therefore don’t believe planning is about the T shaped planners but U shaped planners, with a constantly developing stack of skills.

A brief will never be solved exactly the same way across multiple T shaped planners, it will however likely be solved by their expert field in question. The HoP or CSO may have therefore given them the brief as their specialism is required in this case. It won’t however always be that specialism that is best though as you examine it and as that T shaped planner is blinded by their experience in their specialist field they are unlikely to see that. A U shaped planner aka an intrapreneurial planner would be unlikely to be blinded by this as they don’t hone in on their niche they are experts in and their bias to promote that field throughout the agency. There is no point starting from a set solution over and over again as the results will continue to be much of the same.

The industry is constantly evolving to try and solve the problems that the modern world continues to throw at it; I’m excited to see how planning and agencies continue to solve them. I just can’t see that T shaped skill sets are the way forward to do this, as a T shaped planner may just think of this,

without considering this,

or this

and that would be a real shame for creativity and the future of business.

Made to believe approach

2013-05-04T07:44:00.002-07:00

I’ve been thinking quite a bit recently about what my approach in planning and generally across the board is.

In particular in planning though and the reason as a career path I love it so much is the fact it’s not a process it’s an opportunity. Your value comes with finding value in clients, selling ideas and acting as the alley-oop for creative… you are basically the entrepreneur within an agency.

...So I sat down and figured out what I do and want to continue to do as my MTB approach:

Don’t be a robot

Always look to do things differently and better. Fix the machine don’t give into it.

Say “what the fuck”

If you believe in something and want to do it, don’t be afraid to fight for it. Experience as much as possible, live a broad and fulfilling life. Don’t hold back or be afraid to make the same point twice.

Care for others

Always be useful to others in a way they appreciate. Bring out the best in people, never take ownership of ideas and always stay accessible. Don’t be too clever for your own good.

Always be positive

No matter what keep the energy and enthusiasm. Be the catalyst, the motivator, stay interested and interesting.

Speak up

Share your opinion and always have one, growing and developing it at every opportunity. Do not seek praise, but constructive criticism. Always keep learning.

Task: Make an advert for you

2013-04-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

It has been an incredibly long time since I’ve last blogged, let’s see if this post can get me back into the swing of things…..

A lot has been going on that has be awesome fun. This post follows on from some self reflection and a course that I’m currently on that’s allowing me to put a lot of thought into practice.

I’m three weeks into an Account Planning Group course that focuses on building the ‘leaders of tomorrow’. The first week’s session was led by Mia Kennedy (Former Head of Planning at AMV turned expert Executive Coach, Trainer and Facilitator) who helped us to understand our natural strengths of which mine were (according to https://www.viame.org/survey/Account/Register, so obviously shouldn’t be taken too literally):

#1 Creativity

#2 Curiosity

#3 Gratitude

#4 Hope

#5 Bravery

….. how we can then leverage these core natural strengths to the best of our ability and understand others strengths in order to accompany them in the best possible way. From understanding this it helps you know where you stand among others and how you can develop yourself to become the best you can. The group that is part of these sessions is really good and has led to some really interesting conversations on from this first session.

The second session was led by Alison Chadwick (Executive Coach and former Director of BBDO University) and her session built on from Mia’s in the sense that the discussion moved onto emotional intelligence. From the understanding of who we are, how we operate and can naturally develop ourselves, how this then influences others, how our different motivations drive us to behave and how we can adapt or at least be aware of how we can compliment these differences…… both were very thought provoking.

For the third meet up we are having a session on making the most of your creativity. In preparation for this we need to put an advertisement together for ourselves on one side of A3 paper.

….. This follows on nicely from self reflection and the past two sessions focusing on understanding yourself and others, as well as their perception of you.

I have always been pretty aware of what motivates me, how I live my life, what makes me happy and what I want to achieve so I found this to be an appealing challenge that made me want to blog about it. To think about it a bit more:

When I look back to my childhood and speak to my parents I was always a really happy child but never fit into the school system, I in-fact got tested for ADHD and hearing problems a fair few times. As my Dad said their rationale for why I never did what people asked me to do was probably because I couldn't hear them….. turned out I could hear fine, I just didn’t see why I had to do it.

Later on I must have realised the awkwardness I showed through the beginning of primary school wasn't going to get me anywhere, there was a reason I had to do it and changed the approach after my parents had repeatedly been told I was a ‘difficult child’. One of my school reports actually stated ‘Matthew is an anomaly’, which can’t be a good thing at 9 years old…… instead I must have understood that if I was seen to be the most well behaved child I could get away with a lot more, while still being myself (I realise this is making me sound pretty strange, but if you can’t be honest then what’s the point). This was probably due to all the things Alison’s was discussing around understanding how different people are and how you need to behave in order to have a happy relationship….. thankfully 9 year old me learnt that.

Something that collided nicely with learning this was going to Disney Land when I was 9 and Disney World when I was 11. My perception of what a good day was had changed, the parks inspired me even more than Disney programming had.

From 11 I wanted to run The Walt Disney Company, I know this sounds like an odd childhood dream. It sparked the determination within me. This was me at 11, I’ve learnt a lot more since then having worked at The Walt Disney Company when I was 19/ 20, I realised it wasn't what I wanted and I wanted to make my own mark.

Anyway I still have my unbridled determination to do whatever I want to do, I’m yet to realise the full potential of what this can lead to but more than happy with the journey, therefore with all this insight it was clear what my creative stimulus was to build an advert for myself:

Number 1 – When you have a good day, don’t just settle for that. I never want to accept enough is enough from something, I believe there’s always more fun you can have.

Number 2 – Not doing things the way others always believe you should. You know what is best for you, go for that, let loose and enjoy the ride.

Taking these two principles into consideration of how I have been since I was a child and how I plan to continue to get what I want from life I developed the advert below to represent me:

The image represents the two sides of my personality, the fact that I will just say what the fuck, if I’m ever perceived as a goodie two shoes it probably is an act. The line refers to the fact that life is short and you should do whatever you want, even if that scare’s you as there’s no point settling for the status quo. It also refers to the determination of not wanting to just be average/ good at what you do…. Surely you should always try to be the best, so what if you fail, at least you tried.

Robot design

2012-08-11T12:11:00.000-07:00

Think Fast

2012-07-07T10:40:00.003-07:00

Even though I have worked in data I put this presentation together with Emma..... It's not always good to over think and over analyse everything!

Loving Change

2012-07-07T08:48:00.001-07:00

I've decided to add a new area to the MTB blog in homage to my past company. ‘Love Change’ is perhaps not the best slogan for a company to live by, as having now left the company I have truly embraced it. As an individual however, Love Change is most definitely a very important aspect of life.

I have decided to leave my past employer. As it can become true with most strategies, you realise your positioning and direction has gone as far as it can within its current environment.

Also what I have found to become true when looking for a new challenge, with uncertainty comes less change. People lock themselves down within their current roles, securing their niche and go into safe mode forgetting about the aspirations they may have had to progress. Recruiters explained to me repeatedly about how employees are more interested in trying to protect themselves against the change their company may be pushed to inflict against them.

We surely all want to be in control of our own destinies and by wrapping ourselves up in a corporate protective blanket this does quite the opposite. This also leads to a less profitable company and strategically it’s not going to allow us to keep pace with the East, or even get out of the economic trough we sit in.

I hate to throw the phrase of ‘in these economic times’ around negatively as I believe its times like these that you can really make a name for yourself. It shouldn't be something used in order to justify delay or safety.

I have no interest in stagnating. I know that if we do love change and aspire to take on new challenges and achieve new goals we won’t be following companies like:

-Kodak failing to recognise the importance of digital cameras

-Sony unable to keep control of the portable music market on from the Walkman

-Blockbuster not realising the shift to digital movie rental

All I know is we all have goals we wish to achieve. If the goals we have set for ourselves are challenging enough then we will need to change certain things to achieve them, lets not allow ourselves to fall into limbo.

Good old Walt Disney has something to add:

"In this volatile business of ours, we can ill afford to rest on our laurels, even to pause in retrospect. Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future." —Walt Disney

Losing my marathon virginity

2012-04-25T16:24:00.000-07:00

http://slidesha.re/sZ61Aa

Down and dirty with data

2012-03-04T13:15:00.004-08:00

“I keep saying the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. People think I’m joking, but who would’ve guessed that computer engineers would’ve been the sexy job of the 1990s?

“The ability to take data – to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it, is going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades…”

Hal Varian, The McKinsey Quarterly, January 2009

Data is increasingly being used to tell stories in different and more interesting ways.
I very much enjoy what Feltron is doing. You may not be interested in his Personal Annual Reports from 05 – 09, but they do demonstrate the expressive language of data (making the previously uninteresting, interesting).
Feltron is self admittedly only a couple of steps ahead of a future world packed with sensors and people who have taken ‘the red pill’ (i.e. those who have started digitalising their life for posterity).

News teams are craving this sort of trackable storytelling, looking forward to a time when people will be able to experience news on a different level, interactively and in real time. For news junkies, this is incredibly exciting. Imagine being able to read a story on the BBC News website and then being able to delve deeper into it to find out more about the subject. For example, if a headline reads WHO declares swine flu pandemic, the article might also include the latest WHO data for people to explore.

Giving the reader more power, adding transparency to institutions and enabling stories and comments to evolve from this, will allow the internet to become the great leveller.

WOT WE NEED IZ INDAPRENEURS

2012-03-04T13:11:00.000-08:00

We iz facin wicked economic times (I’ll calm the Ali G references down, I promise.)

Business is in a bit of a state. Simon Watson, partner at BDO warned: “Although we hope this recession may be over, the consequences still remain. We are going through a period of profound societal and technological change, which will mean that some business models will wither away and die.” Change must occur to thrive and grow.

I propose, in true Ali G fashion, that what this country needs indahouse to strengthen the economy is indapreneurs.

What on earth is an indapreneur I hear you ask? Much like an entrepreneur, an indapreneur is an individual with great business and entrepreneurial nouse, but who works within an organisation as opposed to for themselves. These indapreneurs would have a primary focus on data, to set key performance indicators for their organisation.

But why do we need them? In the current environment it’s more important than ever that any investment’s ROI is clear, so it comes as some surprise to learn that businesses aren’t investing more to educate their employees about the power of data.

As part of his ‘President’s Prize’ award-winning IPA Excellence Diploma paper, Matt Sadler surveyed 122 people across creative, media, direct, digital and PR agencies. Respondents agreed that reliance on data was increasing (rating it an average 4.1 out of 5), yet employers weren’t seen to be committed to training staff to use it effectively (with employer commitment rated an average of 2.5 out of 5).

The challenge of indapreneurs would be to demonstrate the importance of data, and banish the prevailing perception that data is “boring”, “cold” and “limiting to creativity”.

Give away everything you know and more will come back to you

2012-03-04T13:04:00.003-08:00

One of the ideas I've been thinking about recently is getting each other in companies to openly share skills. Not only with close colleagues but colleagues far and wide to Fuel a better future for all those associated with the same business. As isn’t that what ‘work’ should all be about.

“Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world” - Sergey Brin
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recent work blog post

I’m busy, you’re busy, we’re all really busy. The reality is this isn’t going to change.
Wherever we go it’s going to be the same story. So it’s always pretty tough to work and think about things outside of our ‘jobs’.

I know that when I retire I’m not going to remember the evaluations, dashboards, campaign reports or briefs. I want to obviously do my upmost to produce the best work I possibly can, to the absolute best of my ability.

What I will remember though is the people I’ve worked with and what I’ve learnt from them along the way and the success this has yielded.

I believe Engine has something very special. We are growing. We are multi-skilled individuals in the same building working across a spectrum of projects. Yet if we’re honest we don’t really know WTF is going on with all the businesses and the growth exacerbates this.

It’s not confined to us of course; it’s the same story across all big business.

We love change and stand for this; if we can achieve definitive change we will change the game.
We now have an intranet; I’m sure at lot of us have seen how these things can play out from working at other companies.

This won’t work unless as very busy people we find the time to strive towards what others can’t. That’s what will be remembered.

I’ve had a think of how to best use the Intranet; my thought can be viewed on the intranet: www.enginebeta.com/ideas/1020. It would be excellent to get your thoughts.

It’s basically resulted in a Burning Man style mentor skill shared Screencast-o-matic You Tube stored cohesive client and employee inspiring platform.

You learn a lot more when things go wrong than when they go right

2012-03-04T13:02:00.001-08:00

The strategy here is firstly knowing when things are going wrong (away from your vision and goal) and secondly finding the solution to making it right again

Life is awesome; if this changes then we have to eliminate the negative and strive for excellence

The strategy for success is having a strategy for success

Datadumbration - E2E.LT

2012-03-04T12:27:00.002-08:00

Following on from 'predicting the future' blog post, let’s look into end to end life tracking (E2E.LT):

Clear feedback

You remember when we all went to school and university. It was pretty good having that instant feedback from everything you did comparatively to all your peers. You knew exactly where you stood in terms of achievement and progress. E2E.LT brings back this clarity and transparency.

A sense of progress

Throughout all the years of school and university when you’re continuously being graded and tracked you can clearly see how you’re doing over time. This is another important aspect E2E.LT makes possible throughout life. Not only that but when generations before you have complete LT you are able to compare yourself to them and clearly set benchmarks.

The possibility of success

With the above two points personal success becomes more tangible. Life aspirations now become more visually defined.

Satisfy your curiosity

How you have managed to achieve in the past can be clarified, how you got there and how you can keep consistent.

Chance to solve a problem

If you want to inflict more pleasure or deflect pain this is where you can, from looking at the previous points and solving any issues that the data has highlighted.

When E2E.LT is operating this information will clearly be very powerful, regulations will therefore need to be constructed to protect it.

Getting a little bit more philosophical with E2E.LT there’s a great book entitled Finite and Infinite Games that states there’re two ways to approach everything, firstly as a finite game that can be won or lost, or as an infinite game, entering into things with a sense of curiosity and playfulness. I found this to be very thought provoking and following a glance at E2E.LT I’ll leave you with a passage from the book.

Infinite players cannot say how much they have completed in their work or love or quarrelling, but only that much remains incomplete in it. They are not concerned to determine when it is over, but only what comes of it.

For the finite player in us freedom is a function of time. We must have the time to be free. For the infinite player in us time is a function of freedom. We are free to have time. A finite player puts play into time. An infinite player puts time into play.

Here’s a widespread list of some steps towards E2E.LT to explore:
Fitness - Nike +
Adding scores, challenges, trophies, and competitions to what would otherwise be just a running self-tracker.

Health - Health Month
Let‘s you set up rules for your own health behaviour for one month, and then win loose points and badges (and cheer and be cheered by others) based on those rules.

Finance - Mint.com
Allows you to set yourself financial goals and track your progress towards them.

Sustainability - My Leaf
Allows you to compete with other drivers regionally as well as globally on how energy efficient you are driving your car.

Entertainment - Club Psych
In the media industry, companies try to make their online properties more sticky and engaging by adding minigames, challenges,(redeemable) points and leaderboards to them, as in the case of the USA Network show Psych.

Shopping - Barcodehero
In retail shopping, companies like BarcodeHero bring the concept of ‘checking in’ from Foursquare or Gowalla to stores or products in stores, again complete with points, leaderboards and other game elements.

Productivity - Play Nice.ly
And even in the productivity space, several companies have set up services to add game elements to work tasks, as in the case of Play Nice.ly, which gameifies software debugging with points and badges earned for the number and quality of bugs you report.

Service vendors and agencies - Bunchball, BigDoor, Badgeville and GetGlue
Finally, a couple of service vendors and agencies have sprung up that offer game elements (points, badges, …) as a service layer to integrate into your site, as well as gamification design.

“Live long, prosper and thoughtful”

Life Strategies

2012-03-04T11:03:00.000-08:00

Life is pretty damn awesome as we get further into 2012 and all it has to offer, although it probably feels impossible to do everything you want.

It’s hard to even know where to start. This is where it helps to have a strategic mindset to help out a bit. As I’ve been thinking about what I want to get out of 2012 and how I can achieve it there are some principles I’ve come across that I feel would be good to share. In an upcoming post I will also raise the question of Zen living that will fall inline with the following 3 points:

Deferred lifestyle
If you have looked into individuals such as Richard Branson, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs they all have one commonality that jumps out before any other. The dream took priority; there was little if any delay in pursuing it. Whether it meant dropping out of prestigious educational institutions, entering multiple sectors or jumping into new markets.

Normal society doesn’t function in this way. It believes that we need to work as a form of continuous survival as opposed to working everyday in order to achieve our life’s goals and passions.

The key learning to take from this observation is don’t delay, just do (it). As Oscar Wilde said “no person is rich enough to buy back his past”, delaying therefore wastes this priceless gift.

As Willow Smith is demonstrating, she’s only 10 but she wants to go for her dream now and follow in Mum and Dad’s footsteps. I celebrate this.

Pareto Principle or more accurately Juran's Principle

This principle originates from an Italian economist (Vilfredo Pareto) his observation was that eighty percent of Italy’s wealth was generated by twenty percent of the population. Following this Joseph Juran recognised a universal principle he named “the vital few and trivial many.” The 80/20 as it’s also become known has become one of the most useful principles in modern day management. The principle also acts as an important lesson in life.

80/20 has been taken up by minimalist living, setting out to cut possessions and life’s activities down to the twenty percent that really matters. I know I’ve wasted a lot of time due to materialism and doing things that don’t really matter or act as a delay spurring a differed lifestyle. It’s always worth having a look at your personal and professional life and seeing how you can prioritise and focus on what really matters.

Tim Ferriss’s book The 4-Hour Workweek speaks about prioritisation and how it changed his life to become more effective and efficient to achieve his passions that he achieves not by asking himself “What do I want” or “What are my goals” but “What would excite me?”. When you’re able to focus on what really matters and excites you he’s proven what can be achieved i.e. Learning any language in 3 months.

Parkinson’s Law

As a final thought and something that nicely ties up these three observations. When outlining what you want to achieve it’s often hard to know when you want to achieve it. Especially after what we have just spoken about, you definitely don’t want to delay it and you don’t want to end up focusing on what is less important. As what is the pot of gold that justifies spending the best years of your life hoping for happiness in the last?

Parkinson ’s Law works to the principle that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. Cyril Northcote Parkinson, the famous British historian and author was qualified to make such a statement having worked in the British Civil Services seeing first hand how bureaucracy ticks. Bureaucracy itself is a by-product of our culture, due to the limiting belief that working harder is somehow better than working smarter or faster.

Work expanding to the time made available (physiologically speaking) means that if you give yourself two weeks to do a task that should only take a few hours, the task will become more daunting increasing in complexity along the way filling the time made available to it.

Parkinson’s Law as with this whole post has been an observation. If you start to set ridiculously tight deadlines to yourself it’s likely you won’t meet them and stress out while doing so. But by changing the perception of how work can be done avoiding what’s least important and taking more time off your deadlines than you usually would, can result in achievements you may never have thought possible.

One final thought I’d like to leave you with is from something I just saw on Sky movies, and something that rings true with me as I begin my first year completely separated from the restriction of an academic framework. With no mark scheme informing me of what direction to go to achieve what I want:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat

“I don’t much care where........” said Alice

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat

I'm Game

2012-02-26T08:43:00.000-08:00

Life is a game, kid! It all depends on how you play!

There’s a line in Forgetting Sarah Marshall that made me think:

Matthew: I have a question for you real quick. What did you think of my demo? Did you get it?

Aldous Snow: I was gonna listen to that, but then, um, I just carried on living my life.

Everyone’s default is that if nothing more meaningful or intriguing pops up they will happily go along living their life as normal, without a care in the world.

This is where the challenge stands for gamification, from the data we have to start manipulating it around game mechanics as we approach end-to-end life tracking.

The question stands as to how to do this. The answer? Don’t fear straying away form the blueprint of points, badges and leaderboards as it needs to mean something to the user, if not users will quit.

There’s plenty of activity gamifying data (check out the list). The secret is that gameified data must provide something that is already meaningful to the user in its own right. Game elements are like an amplifier: There has to be a genuine sound first, a value, an interest, a motivation for the amplifier to do any good.

I will leave this post with a thought. What do you do everyday that can be recorded and made more interesting through game design? It can be as simple as making a game out of email.

The balls aren't soft

2012-02-26T08:39:00.005-08:00

It was first described to me as the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

This gained my attention as I began to picture the Lingerie Football League. I would have never guessed the statement was actually in reference to playing Softball.

If you don’t already know the London Adverting Softball League (LASL) is the biggest corporate Softball league in the world.

Engine has two teams within this league – Portland Pirates (FUEL and PAA) and The Engineers (The remainder of Engine agencies). Of the 59 agency teams in LASL Portland Pirates proved their strength, becoming division one champions this year.

On from this league LASL selects 14 softballers (7 guys and 7 gals) from the league to create an ‘Allstar team’. As the Lingerie Football League became a distant memory, I went on and played for Portland Pirates all last season and went to the rookies trails for the Allstar team.

I was lucky enough be awarded a place on the Allstar team, that are now fully merchandisable as The Blitz (Pictured) and the opportunity to join The Blitz in The Players Tournament (TPT) in Las Vegas, Nevada. Competing at Big League Dreams we also partied incredibly hard, this was unfortunately in detriment to our performance, but not enjoyment.

I strongly recommend this awesome sport to anyone, all you need to start is some sort of hand-eye co-ordination and preferably drinking habits at the upper end of social.

2011-12-29T08:44:00.001-08:00

Following my most recent work blog post, I thought I’d add in a ‘StringTheory’ strategy.

First of all here’re some books that will be of interest if you liked the Engine blog post:

T he Innovators dilemma – Looks into how disruptive innovation can damage great firms by changing the game in a way they failed to foresee

The Singularity is near – A film based on this book is now out, if the only reading you enjoy is this blog. It’s about intelligence becoming enhanced by the union of humans and machines

The Physics of Star Trek – Basically put is Star Trek physically possible...... most technologies/technologists appear to have been inspired by the show as it is

Below is a screenshot from Blade Runner that’s set in the year 2019. Could LA look like this in 8 years?

I’ve shown this image as I wanted to make the point of how important SCI-FI is. From SCI-FI’s inspiration for the books above and its huge ambition for progress. LA is unlikely to look like the above in 8 years but it’s something that Philip Dick could imagine in the book the movie was based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? That other SCFI ‘imagineers’ could then design visually (Ridley Scott, Hampton Fancher and David Peoples).

Although SCI-FI still has a bit of a stigma attached to it:

As of late though SCI-FI and what was once considered geeky has become more socially acceptable, as Hollywood has promoted it into the mainstream. Making millions from Marvel and DC comic books I read as a kid (something I didn’t promote around school).

The strategy here is simple. Embrace SCI-FI, embrace your inner geek. This doesn’t mean move into your parent’s basement and watch back to back Star Trek episodes, it just means embrace imagination and the fantasy of what could be, so you can “invent the future”.

An example of the difference in mindsets is highlighted in Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel.

See you in the future. Where I hope you have a SCI-FI head on your shoulders.

Keep’n it real

2011-12-29T08:31:00.001-08:00

In the beginning there were commodities as the basis of the agrarian economy, the industrial revolution changed this as commodities became a raw material to manufacture goods. Goods have now become commoditised, with no care of who the goods were manufactured by. This has been reflected to the service sector with the sole care being price.

The shift that is now occurring away from this is towards an ‘Experience Economy’. The buying criteria for consumers are now being rendered by ‘Authenticity’.

As we begin to work smarter to create free time for ourselves to fill with experiences, the cost of this ‘free’ time will thus grow in value as we are driven to work longer and harder.

In 1972 Geoffrey Hoyle's book predicted what life would be like in 2010, it has now been reprinted with the title amended to 2011.

Among predictions of “vision phones” and “doing grocery shopping online”, one of the drastic wrong predictions in the 19^th century from the industrial revolution was that as we became more mechanised it would go a bit further to earning us a life of leisure.

Hoyle's three day week for 2010 has failed to materialise. "People are going to have to work very hard. It's gone the other way. People are working seven days a week. I'm very pessimistic now," he says.

We have been unable to use mechanisation and technology to truly make our lives easier. If anything they have made our lives more complex creating more demands upon ourselves acting as the catalyst to escape this and create authentic life experiences.

When attempting to create more free time in this experience economy remember the value of free and how you can best appreciate it.

The Construct of Christmas

2011-12-27T15:22:00.001-08:00

Before you know it, it's crept up on us again. Christmas is back - and with it comes the usual glee of xfactor singles, Macauly Culkin's single annual TV appearance, secret Santa - a traditional office party essential and all the while the anticipation and wonderment of why the excitement of Noel hasn't quite kicked in yet.

It's also a time that generosity is at an all time high. I cant think of many other times i would buy an Xbox 360 with the intention of giving it away.

Arguably moreso in 2011 than in other recent years, the world has seen events unfold to which our charity motor should also be in fifth gear. The economy has gone to s**ts (technically speaking, of course), war has ravaged the Middle East, floods in The Asian subcontinent have left thousands of children to sleep hungry and famine in East Africa has reached shocking new levels.

With shopping at a high, and Oxford Street becoming a Londoners nightmare, I've been thinking carefully about the construct of Christmas. Giving (and sometime moreso, recieving) Presents are great but who exactly who we are giving to in this 'season of giving'? Friends? Family? Loved ones? Sure, Why not. But who is the actual winner of Christmas, and is it who we are made to believe?

Heres some food for thought.

Whilst we wake up on the 26th of December, broke, hungover and surrounded by the latest technology and clothing which we think we really needed, there is a small slither of a segment who will wake up truly having being given to. These folk will wake up having a new few digits in their bank accounts and a substantial more to come a week later in the new year. The opposite holds true for the vast majority of us.

I am indeed talking about the top 1% at the top of the consumer food chain. Whilst we are giving, they are receiving. Each £1 we spend is filtered up the capitalist hierarchy till it reaches their pockets. In return, we, the 99% are given next years eBay collection to store in our closets for most of the next 12 months.

Meanwhile, whilst our money goes upwards, the bottom 1% continue to have nothing.

Imagine now, if each Christmas our money was spent downwards to those we recognise need a helping hand. Instead of ipods and handbags we bought blankets and food for the homeless. Instead of wrapping paper we invested in educational books for those kids ridden in poverty, or if we traded in one bottle of expensive champagne to instead invest towards clean water in an East African village.

What a difference that would make. Our money would do a lot more than what it does right now - Simply speaking, making the rich richer, and the poor (who are made to believe they need to buy, buy and buy on Christmas) a lot poorer.

So folks, whilst presents are great - and this christmas, you should of course buy for your loved ones and hope to receive too. But whilst you look left and right at who to buy for, send one thoughts upwards as to who you are really giving to and one thought downwards as to who you really needs to receive, and try to put those odd few pennies of your christmas budget aside for a good cause of your choice and really make Christmas the season of giving.

Merry Christmas and a very happy new year!

Predicting the future

2011-12-27T15:02:00.000-08:00

Often people find it’s better to avoid predicting the future in case you end up looking foolish: “Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput” – Sir Alan Sugar, 2005

“We’ll kill spam in two years” – Bill Gates, 2004

“We stand on the threshold of rocket mail” – U.S. postmaster general, Arthur Summerfield, 1959

“Britain doesn’t need telephones” – Chief engineer at the Post Office, Sir William Preece, 1878

With the speed that technology is evolving it’s becoming even harder to know what is going to happen next week, let alone in the next 10 years. But we need not accept defeat.

When predicting the future, the singularity can assist us. By practicing predictions from accelerated feedback loops, we can begin to grasp a tighter understanding of future events. Accelerated feedback loops were especially helpful for the development of the mobile web following the fixed line, with smart devices leading to a digitally responsive generation producing comprehensive records of their lives’ activities.

With this in mind, I predict that within the next ten years we’ll be tracking our lives end-to-end with a multitude of personal sensors – think Nike+ – and openly sharing the information. The opportunity for data gathering from this would be huge, making the loyalty schemes of today appear insignificant.

Here are a few feedback loops for you to explore:

WiFi body scales – WiFi blood pressure – Mass market sensors – Life achievement apps – Life achievement visualisations – Rewards for being active

If you’re thinking this all seems rather Orwellian, let me try to convince you otherwise. I believe with an enhanced understanding of our lives, we will be better equipped to seek out the things that make us happy, and avoid those which cause us pain.

As stated in Good to Great, the best businesses find concrete numbers to judge and manage themselves by, why then, not apply this to our lives?

However, I’m also inclined to agree with Alan Kay that “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”.

The Red pill/ Blue pill

2011-12-26T10:18:00.001-08:00

As you’re reading this the chances are you have or will take the red pill.

Do you know what I’m talking about?

The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. Taking the blue pill ends your relationship with the changing world. The red pill allows you to stay in Wonderland and see how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

The reference to the “The Matrix” reflects the decision millions of people make on a daily basis when “digitising” their life. The online world, after all, is a second life where there are no boundaries. A world in which you may behave differently to offline. You need to be more careful online though as actions become increasingly trackable and in the most part recorded for eternity. The decision to take the red pill should therefore be a conscious one.

This point is being made as a lot of people using online tools don’t realise what equations are being used to interpret behavioural data. Looking back at how Dunnhumby grew to its current strength, working with Tesco to form what we all know as the Tesco Clubcard, is a small form of this. Following the trial of Tesco Clubcard in 1994 the first response from Tesco's then-Chairman Lord MacLaurin was "What scares me about this is that you know more about my customers after three months than I know after 30 years."

Imagine the exabytes (equal to one quintillion bytes – that’s 19 digits) of data that currently aren’t being analysed to produce killer insight like the supermarkets weren’t doing prior to 1994. The potential that can be gained from this is nothing less than game changing. Taking the red pill now becomes more serious within life, as a lot like “The Matrix” once it’s taken there is no going back. Would you stop using Tesco Clubcard because you don’t like them knowing everything about you? It’s unlikely because you get benefits from this relationship.

As the internet becomes more entrenched within our lives, so too do business relationships with us (especially digital natives), and the data’s value increases exponentially. This is the reason why, when I was speaking to a Marketing Manager at a Business Intelligence Symposium last week, he made the statement that O2’s data is more valuable than their brand.

In a world where everyone has taken the red pill, entering a digital world, effective use of data can be pictured by imagining how online game achievement systems can be applied to the ”real world” e.g. recognising when somebody walks in to a shop and rewarding them for their visit. Welcome to the Matrix (skip to 21mins)

Joining the data revolution

2011-12-26T08:50:00.000-08:00

Since joining Fuel and speaking to friends, family and colleagues about my new role, I‘ve noticed a certain amount of “data distancing”. Even for so-called “diagonal thinkers”, data can be seen as scary stuff, and it’s not surprising considering the outdated image data has in this digital and visual age. This is changing though, with new terms such as “Infomagination”, research carried out by UCL shown here and the World Wide Web Consortiums’ Linked Data project shown here.

I’m by no means a mathematician as a new edition to this award winning team, with my past comfortably lying in strategic marketing. It’s just the opportunity Fuel has within the marketing space, supporting clients and enhancing creativity, is too big to miss. My data epiphany was sparked by the awesome series back in January that was The Virtual Revolution, demonstrating the impact of the web and its might as an empowerment tool. Particularly poignant for me was the idea that whilst this empowerment is deemed to be free, it does bide by the laws of economics, and there is certainly a cost attached. Whilst the exchange isn’t monetary, we are paying with our privacy and that is arguably more valuable.

The Fuel of my excitement:

The web based processing power of “the cloud”, mass adoption of smart devices and the growing development of augmented reality is bringing business intelligence to a new level. It’s leading to a deeper relationship between company and consumer and the ability for companies not just to understand consumers better but react to their behaviour in real time to optimize performance and with mobile accessible data solutions.

Google’s Eric Schmidt talks frequently of “Consumer Nowness” and “Mobile First” and that is no surprise considering that in many European countries there are more mobile phones than humans, with the Mobile web (last estimates I saw) growing 8 times faster than the equivalent fixed line web. When developing this it’s the data that drives the change becoming intertwined with your day-to-day like threads in a fabric.

Undoubtedly it’s an exciting time in digital. I however, am more excited by what lays beneath the surface of this and that is the much misunderstood world of data. Via this exchange of privacy and soaring adoption the “infomagination” can be developed to enhance market understanding. The untrackable is becoming trackable. The technology allows for it and is putting an end to the above the line stranglehold.

£million idea

2011-12-18T14:17:00.000-08:00

Presentation looking at getting more from what you've got.

Campaign opinion piece: Internal entrepreneurs

2011-12-18T14:11:00.000-08:00