Just seen this work for the Cannon Pixmas – Bringing colour to life. It’s absolutely stunning, epic, beautiful stuff and works so well at dramatising the vivid colours:
Also, I recently saw the following film which Dentsu, in conjunction with BERG, made to promote themselves. It’s a lovely bit of work, using iPads and Stop frame animation to extrude 3d light shapes.
There is also an interesting post on their blog where they talk about 10 spartan rules which are 10 principles written in 1951 by President Yoshida to guide behaviour at Dentsu in Japan. They seem just as relevant today. Sadly, the 10 new ones which they added beneath it are utter BS and seem totally contrived. The original 10 are below:
1. Create work for yourself; don’t wait for work to be assigned to you.
2. Take an active role in all your endeavours, not a passive one.
3. Seek out large and complex jobs. Trivial tasks debase you.
5. Once you begin a task, complete it. Never give up.
6. Lead your fellow workers. Be an example for them to follow.
7. Set goals for yourself to ensure a constant sense of purpose. This will give you perseverance and hope for the future.
8. Move with confidence. Confidence gives your work force, focus and substance.
9. Find new solutions. This is the way we ensure satisfactory service.
10. When conflict is necessary don’t shy away from it or be afraid. Conflict is the mother of progress and the source of aggressive enterprise. If you fear conflict, you will become timid and servile.
1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.”
I don’t entirely agree with it, mind. Maybe because I’m over 30 and am constantly being excited by things that are only just getting invented. Indeed, that’s precisely what keeps me addicted to all the “digital” stuff. Maybe that’s because I’m a so called “digital native” a term he doesn’t agree with. But, i’ve been making digital stuff since i was a teenager and as such am hard wired to constantly look for the latest innovation, explore how it works and then assimilate that into new possibilities with creative application.
Perhaps the quote would be more true if point 3 referred to things that are invented after you’re 70. I dunno. I hope that by the time I’m that age, I will still be as interested by new stuff, and I have a hunch all the people like me will be too. It’s more a case of people who are 70 now or of a previous generation where technology moved a lot slower than it does now, in our exponential times.
I love the definition / explanation of “media”. I think it helps broaden the term, as there will be more and more different types of media and, as Russell says, it’s hard to know where the edges are. You can slice it up into owned, bought and earned media. You can divide it by channel. but ultimately it’s about the application of that media by the people who are using it.
Extrinsic motivation is rewarding someone for doing something, intrinsic motivation is the thing that drives us to do things we love, like play an instrument or learn a new craft.
So, what motivates people to work harder? It’s not money. Indeed money, weirdly, can make people work less hard.
It reminded me of this
One of Saint’s creatives, James Manning, sent it round a while ago and it’s REALLY good. The content is fascinating but the way is is presenting is also excellent. I’ve embedded it below.
One of the findings was that for purely mechanical tasks, higher pay = higher performance. However, as soon as even rudimentary cognitive skills were involved, higher incentives lead to worse performance! There is loads of evidence and numerous case studies to support this finding.
The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough not to have to worry about cash. Then once that has been done, it’s the higher order needs such as autonomy, mastery and purpose which play the most important role.
There’s a company (Atlassian) that, one day a month, allow the workforce to work on whatever they want, how they want and with whom they want. As long as they show what they have done to the rest of the workforce, in a fun meeting. What they have found is that they came up with a load of fixes and improvements to existing projects, plus innovations for new stuff.
At Saint we have something called “The nursery” and it is an excellent example of this. It’s run by Chris Jefford , our Innovation Director. And it exists to create a place for us to innovate, explore and create stuff that is not for any specific client brief but that interests the people involved. Ultimately it does benefit our clients too. If a new technology comes out, we will use the nursery to get to grips with it, so that we can implement it into a project when the time comes. We may also create stuff for clients that they haven’t asked for and if they buy it, great. If not, we have learnt something. typically, you will see Chris and some of the coders and creatives huddled around a pile of dismantled 80’s technology, some Arduino chips, some household devices and a loose brief involving a subject that is topical at the time.
The interesting thing about this is that one of the people involved, a freelance Flash scripter, told Chris that for every half day we pay him to work on the nursery, he will contribute at least half a day for free. It’s interesting to see people staying late and really getting passionate about the projects that come out of there. I don’t think it’s any sort of perverse desire to work on non-paying stuff. It’s just the passion that giving a bit of creative freedom generates.
What interests me most about this is that there’s no reason why the same passion, commitment and genuine excitement can’t be generated on normal paying work too. We have had projects where everyone involved have worked late into the mornings and all weekend even once the project has been well beyond the level expected by the client. But the team wanted to make it better. They wanted to make it the best it could be. If it’s an exciting project and people feel empowered and autonomous, the sky is the limit.
We are now seriously considering how to create a model that actively facilitates this sort of passion on a regular basis. How to give people the ownership and belief that they would have if it was their own side project that they did in their spare time. We all have other interests. The great thing about creative agencies, and especially Saint, is the diversity of people’s interest. There are musicians, sculptors, street artists, and much more. Pretty much everyone has a passion outside of work. However, we are in a unique position to be able to bring our passions to work.
Good advertising agencies are like a petri dish for creativity, where cross fertilisation can lead to beautiful mutations. If we were to harness the collective creativity and passion of our team to even a fraction of its potential, it would be formidable.
The challenge is how to do this. But I am committed to unlocking this potential.
For a funny but sad commentary / discussion / slanging match between much of the respected digital arts community and one “douchebag” director, who didnt need to get involved, go here
It’s a real shame that advertising agencies rip off people’s work so blatantly – without so much as a credit. I’m sure, half the time, that the artist involved wouldn’t even expect money if he were given some recognition.
Just came across this great little video about the last agency on earth. Really well done and quite amusing.
I think they might be right. If agencies don’t evolve, they will eventually die out. The majority are still woefully behind the times in terms of understanding the modern consumer and how to reach them. So far, they are not experiencing any problems because of this, so they think everything is fine. However, if all the clients were to suddenly realise that they need a change, the agencies would not be able to respond quick enough and would have a crisis on their hands, as it would be too late. In order to bring about institutional education and a fundamental shift in perception, you need a bit of time. You can’t just hire a few geeks and say “job done”. You need the whole agency to ‘get it’. The trouble is, often, the people in the top few layers are blissfully ignorant and may well have someone beneath them who is 1 page ahead of them in the manual, so can pull the wool over their eyes, but is no better themselves.
I don’t agree with the video that broadcast media will die out completely. I think it will continue to play a role, but that role will be a very different one indeed.
When I set up my next agency, it will be just as capable of doing great TV, print, experiences and more as it will obviously be in doing digital. It will also foster a spirit of constantly looking forward and making sure we are on top of any innovations or advancements in new channels. This is something that people from a digital background are used to doing anyway, because that is the nature of technology. It’s what keeps us interested. It’s always changing and you need to constantly keep learning or you are left behind.
The agency of the future will recognise this and embrace change. It will also stop thinking about things in such a silo’d and traditional way.
The trouble is, changing an existing agency is like turning a super tanker. Indeed, in many ways it’s harder. A super tanker will eventually turn. However, some parts of an agency may never truly adapt.
The only real solution is to start again with a blank sheet of paper. Cast aside all preconceptions and look at things with fresh eyes. Forget how things used to be done. How ’should’ things be done? Any existing agency coming from either side of the divide will always be either “an above the line agency, doing digital” or “a digital agency, doing advertising” and they will always be doing things in a way that is similar to how things used to be done.
People’s habits have changed beyond recognition in the last twenty years. Have agency models? No, not really. They haven’t fundamentally changed for a lot longer than that. Sure you’ve had the odd gimmick or social experiment like St Lukes. But nothing that has really addressed how to go about creating work that is in tune with the modern consumer.
There’s a massive opportunity for a new type of agency to start as they mean to go on and launch right in the sweet spot that everyone else is clamoring towards!
