The Star of the East
There was a pub in Shoreditch…Archive for January, 2009
How to hire creative thinkers and grow your empire
1. pick someone just like yourself
2. pick some completely different to yourself
1. is good, I like myself, so I’m going to like them, aren’t I? I’m pretty good at my job, so they’ll be great too. We’ll share values, we’ll both like the same kind of music, we’ll understand each other. We’ll agree with each other [they'll agree with me].
But won’t that be a bit boring? What if I get bored of all my music, where I get new tunes? What if their crazy shirt collection gets crazier than mine? What if I have a problem I can’t crack. My clone’s not going to have much more luck. What if there’s something I’m not very good at [god forbid] or I don’t like doing? So you go for someone who compliments you. No. they don’t say nice stuff, they form a yin to your yang or whatever. They tell you where you’re going wrong. You don’t have to listen.
In reality it’s mixture of both. I look for people with craft skills, attention to detail, graft skills, evidence of hard work [that's supposed to be me]. But I also look for something completely unexpected; a failed novelist, a Nick Cave fan [head of strategy at Chemistry], a Russian Weapons expert [Wunderman], Mr T’s nephew [TMW], a polite South African girl with a ninja alter ego [Lateral]. Yes, after a few years they will be offered huge amounts of money to go elsewhere, but hey, you can always make some more. And they take what they’ve learnt out there with them.
They are your industry PR.
Triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13)
We’ve never been able to hide behind soft measurement in digital advertising and marketing. The same servers that deliver the content are counting all the time. Page clicks, unique site visits, post view, ad impressions. There are plenty of numbers but making sense of them is where the skill lies.
The Data Analysis experts that I have been lucky enough to work with have given me an unique insight into Direct Marketing discipline. It’s a scary door, best kept firmly shut to mere mortals.
For creatives the key strategy is to set your own benchmarks. I don’t mean lower expectations, but it is vital to reach a shared agreement with a client as to what a campaign is trying to achieve. All too often internet advertising confuses hard sell click through sales with raising brand awareness. More often than not agencies themselves fall into the trap of trying to deliver both. And failing to do either. Set your own targets. Then exceed them.
Digital Dreams pt 2 (Reality)
But in the meantime we had the pay the rent. We designed and programmed touch screen interfaces for digital information kiosk prototypes.
We discovered Information architecture [5 people, 5 black markers, one very big bit of paper, lots of arrows]. We discovered clients [never knew what they wanted, didn't understand what we were talking about]. We discovered breakdowns in communication.
We discovered the internet. Or at least we had Demon accounts, a 14.4 modem that looked like a Stylophone,
and a lot a patience.
Digital Dreams
When I started out in digital in 1992 I had no intention of getting into advertising or direct marketing or PR. I’d just left St Martins in the middle of a recession with a Graphic Design Degree nobody wanted.
But I had a mad friend from college who was into what he called hypertext. We weren’t novelists or rock stars or movie stars but we wanted to create a new 4 dimensional Art form.
A multilayered novel, a multimedia happening, or a wetware experience.
