This Week in Strategy: I came into the office early and switched as many M and N keys on keyboards as I could. Some might say I'm a monster but others will say nomster.
Hi Strat Pack,
Another absolute nomster of a week.
Let's start with some positive news: Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM all announced that they would stop (or pause, in the case of Amazon) selling facial recognition technology to the government. Reuters, in typical Reuters fashion was extremely diplomatic about why this is an issue: Research found that face analysis was less accurate for people with darker skin tones, adding to activists’ warnings that false matches could lead to unjust arrests. Concerns also arose over whether facial recognition could be used against protesters unfairly.
Matt Cagle, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, said, “When even the makers of face recognition refuse to sell this surveillance technology because it is so dangerous, lawmakers can no longer deny the threats to our rights and liberties.”
Switching gears! I am a big linguistics nerd. I love learning about how languages evolve and grow, and even how they go extinct. Two things I want to share with you that I hope you find as interesting as I do:
This Twitter thread by Sophie Ross: As a language lover, I adore jotting down Indian turns of phrase in English, whether translations from Indian languages, archaic English phrases or new inventions. Indian English is a valid & charming language in its own right, so here are my favourite Indianisms in English.
I've been thinking a lot about the concept of 'bully' languages, like English, that are pushing out other languages, as people feel they need to speak the lingua franca at the expense of their mother tongue in order to assimilate into a culture. For context, check out this clip from Language Matters, a documentary on PBS about languages that are going Nearly half of the 6,000 languages currently being spoken on earth are at risk of being lost forever by the end of this century. . Consider the notion that "to learn the language of another people is a sign of respect; to respect the mother tongues of other people is a way that we can keep languages alive." And consider this: more Europeans are trilingual, than Americans are bilingual. I speak only one language, (and I do it poorly), and every time I leave the country, I'm reminded of how limiting that is for me. (You can watch the full documentary on the PBS app, and I highly encourage it)
One last thing before we jump in this week. Your Kids Aren't Too Young to Talk About Race: Resource Roundup. An excellent resource adapted from research by the Children's Community School in Philadelphia. And if nothing else, please click this link to see how decisions about race are intertwined at every phase of the development process. At only 3 months for example, babies look more at faces that match the race of their caregivers.
Alright, quit messing around trying to figure out my PBS login so you can watch that Language Matters film (if you want it, just ask!). Let's jump right in.
The one thing to read this week
1) Communication Has Been Our Most Effective Weapon for Fighting the Pandemic [Doug Garnett]
[ED Note: this was written in late May before the racial justice protests. It's true for fighting Covid-19 but I think the takeaways resonate even stronger for fighting for equality for the millions of POC in the US. And please read the Sutherland article linked below!]
On Tuesday I wrote the following my sketchbook:
The Pandemic feels so medieval. It’s hard to accept that in our modern times, a disease of such danger and horrible death can be loose in the world AND that mankind’s only active weapon against it is communication.
With this thought hovering in my mind, I was struck by this morning’s Rory Sutherland article in the Spectator about how behavior change has been mankind’s weapon to fight the spread of the Corona Virus.
Our joint thoughts arrive at truth:
The world is being saved by communication which changes behavior.
Take a deep breath now and read that line several times.
For all our technology, for all our venture capital funded breathless superiority, for all our massive investments in medicine, for all the hard work in regulations and laws of our governments, the fate of humanity is being shifted by communication leading to behavior change — a result which will save tens of millions of lives — if not hundreds of millions.
For all our ability to see the shape of the virus, to analyze it’s RNA, to establish GPS tracking of victims, to build and crunch massive data sets, getting people to live their lives wisely is our best response.
For all of social media’s sturm und drang, for all the “patriots” carrying heavy weaponry at state houses, for all our need for groups of humanity, clear, consistent messages have come through to the vast majority of humanity and we have done well with those messages…so far.
Communication IS the Starting Point of Change
Why does the world struggle to believe that communication is the starting point of all true power — at least the world of CEOs, engineers, technical marketers, accountants, manufacturing specialists and HR? And how would we train ourselves differently if we understood that individual and mass communication are the foundation of a world which both survives and thrives?
Amid our incredible confusion about power, though, communication has caused change: Over a billion people have made drastic changes to their lives in the span of a few months including willingly entering a time of uncertainty with steps which hurt their short-term economic well-being.
Creating a company valued at billions of dollars? Chump change. Saving the lives of a few hundred million people? Priceless.
2) If You Are Uncomfortable Talking About Race, It Means You Are Comfortable With Racism And Are A Shit Planner … [Rob Campbell - The Musings of an Opinionated Sod]
In the wake of Ahmed Arbury and Geroge Floyd, quite frankly, the idea of doing a presentation on strategy seemed so utterly pointless. So 2 days before [Rob was scheduled to give a chat at GroupThink's planning] event, I wrote something new. Something that was about why Black Lives Matters is the only thing that really matters to me right now.
How the ad industry HAS to change. How the ad industry may talk a lot about diversity and inclusivity but its actions are racist. I’m not saying that is their intention or that they even realise it, but it’s racist. And I’ve been complicit in that.
Again, not intentionally, but still done it. Anyone who is white has … because we’ve let our privilege create a gap between our actions and our self awareness.
Finally, I talked about 6 things people could do TODAY to make a positive difference to any person of colour … whether that’s through education, responsibility, judgement or action.
Now I must admit I was scared to write this presentation. Not because I was worried it would make people feel uncomfortable, but because I’m a white male who has had every privilege going and the last thing I wanted to do was come across as if I was claiming to be an expert on this matter or whitesplaining anything.
Which is why I didn’t write the presentation. I co-wrote it. In addition to capturing some of the lessons I learned from the brilliant people of colour I’ve worked with and known over the years [which is a lot given how long I spent in China and Asia], the main bulk of the presentation was put together – after seeking their permission – with the irrepressible, wonderful and take-no-shit-from-anyone-especially-me … Maya Thompson, Breanna Jones and Chelsea Curry. I’ve written and talked about them a lot. They changed my life. Literally.
I genuinely believe I can never thank them enough, but one way I try is to take on the issues I should have taken on years ago but thought not being racist was enough. It isn’t.
So here it is … it’s my usual picture rubbish, but hopefully the bits that are there will make sense to everyone. The real presentation starts at page 28, the previous slides were linked to the talk I was going to give so I could lull people into a false sense of security so they would get comfortable before I talked openly, emotionally and plainly about an issue that should be the focus of every human right now, but isn’t for a whole host of unimportant or self-serving reasons. Should anyone want to know more about the presentation, please get in touch. But most importantly, please act. Black. Lives. Matter.
Slides 1-5: Just introducing me and why I am happy to be invited to present.
Slides 6-10: How the standard of work being created is generally very poor and how we are all contributing to it in terms of the things we are talking about. Which isn’t the standard of the work and sounds more like us trying to be clients than people valuable to clients.
Slides 11-23: Insights matter because people matter and if you want to make work that is intriguing, interesting, provocative and fresh, you have to care about people, culture and subculture or you’ll get nowhere.
Slides 24-27: I talk about how I was going to talk about the wonderfully crazy project we’ve recently done in China and how understanding sub-culture made building something specifically designed to look like ‘future Mars’ was perfectly sensible but ….
Slide 28: I need to pause the topic of the talk because frankly, the events of the past week have really upset me – specifically the reaction of many agency leaders – and I want to talk about something that matters more to me.
Slides 29-31: Black Lives Matter. There’s many lives that matter, but right now – for me – Black Lives Matter is the only one that matters.
Slides 32-34: Lived around the World, eventually moved to America and then met 3 brilliant women who changed my life. Maya Thompson. Chelsea Curry. Breanna Jones.
Slides 34-39: This is how they fundamentally changed my life for the better by helping me see how blind, stupid and complicit I’d been and then [with some values my Mum taught me] the journey we went on – and still go on – together.
Slides 40-49: Announce this deck has actually all been co-written by Maya, Breanna and Chelsea. Three main reasons for this. I don’t have credibility, I don’t want to come across as whitesplaining and I want any advice I give to be genuinely valuable to people of colour, not a white persons interpretation of what is valuable.
Slide 50: How my industry is racist. Doesn’t want to be. But is. And I use a recent ‘challenge’ put out by Cannes as an example. For the record, they launched a competition on how to attract more diversity into the industry and gave a media budget of £100,000. That’s right they were committing an amount of money most agencies would spend for dinners during Cannes for a topic that they claim is hugely important to them. They don’t intend to be racist but they – like the whole industry – is acting in ways that are.
Slides 51-58: What we have to do to stop being a racist industry including letting go of everything we thought we knew and starting again.
[Please note slide 54: Lots of people say they’re ‘colour blind’. By which they mean they claim they treat everyone the same. The point of this slide is that while we should absolutely treat and value everyone the same, we should do this in a way that acknowledges individual backgrounds and beliefs. Not doing this can result in one of 3 things. [1] We treat everyone the same but based on our definition of what ‘same is’. Which is often white, which means we expect people of colour to adapt to us and our standards. [2] We generalise groups for our convenience, so we call [for example] everyone who is black, “black” … ignoring the vast range of backgrounds, beliefs and nuances they could have BECAUSE PEOPLE OF COLOUR DO NOT ALL COME FROM THE SAME PLACE!!! Or [3] because of being ‘colour blind’, you see everyone the same [which we don’t, let’s be clear on that] so you end up making the same work for everyone thinking it will be resonant with everyone. It isn’t. See how Rihanna highlighted this when she launched her Fenty cosmetics and simply added colours for African American skin, fucking up the big cosmetic companies who had ignored this for decades]
Slide 59-60: Highlighting when you start from scratch it can work, because my son Otis is living proof of it. He has lived in 3 countries and loves them all equally, while accepting and respecting their individual differences.
Slide 61: If you need a commercial reason for why Black Lives Matter [and if you do, you’re a prick] it’s because people of colour can make this industry great again because on top of all influential culture being born from black culture, people of colour understand nuance, values, struggles and humanity better than anyone as they have to deal with this shit every day.
Slide 62-63: Thank you to all the people of colour who helped co-write this presentation – especially Maya, Chelsea and Breanna – and justice for George Floyd.
3) Kick the Door Down with Your Brand Manifesto [Emotive Brand]
Building a successful brand can feel like building a ship in a bottle. There are so many delicate and interlocking pieces to monitor and keep safe within a defined system. It’s a process that rewards research, meticulousness, measuring twice, and cutting once.
If a vision and mission steer your organization in the right direction, a brand manifesto is the incandescent energy source propelling you forward. It’s inspired, creative, motivating, an appeal to pathos. It infuses the emotional “why?” into a brand. Why do you matter? Why should we care?
As Chris Langathianos writes, “The manifesto is a versatile tool designed to clearly articulate what the brand stands for – what is it that gets its employees out of bed every morning and motivates them every day to deliver on the brand’s vision. It is explicitly not about a brand’s product or service, but rather speaks to the heart of why they sell it in the first place.”
It’s Apple saying, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” It’s Nike saying, “If greatness doesn’t come knocking at your door, maybe you should go knock on its door.” The brand manifesto is a cultural cornerstone for the brand that resonates in a personal way. It should lay the groundwork for why employees should work hard to deliver upon the brand’s value proposition and create an exceptional customer experience.
In Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk “How great leaders inspire action,” he suggests that if your brand truly wants to inspire an audience to follow you, your core message should focus on your organization’s purpose. “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it,” he says. “If you talk about what you believe, you will attract those who believe what you believe.”
How to Write a Manifesto
How should a manifesto look and feel? I love this abstract checklist from Mark Di Somma, where he says it should have:
The anger of a placard
The commitment of a doctrine
The beauty of a story
The hope and excitement of a vivid dream
The sense of a philosophy
The call to action of a direct response ad
Obviously, every company is different with its own unique way of expressing itself. But in general, brand manifestos speak in a collective voice, an active tone, and are prompted by a burning desire to change the status quo. If you need help getting started, an easy fill-in-the-blank exercise is, “We are A, we believe in B, and that’s why we C.”
This is something that should be able to be read aloud with verve. The implicit danger here, of course, is sounding too hyperbolic, too chest-beating, too self-important. Why is a software company talking like they are about to storm the beaches of Normandy?
The key is to ground your manifesto in the reality of what you do – then examine the highest-level emotional impact of why that matters. What does the world look like if you realize your company’s vision and mission? It’s still ownable, it’s still you – it’s just the best, most impactful version of you possible.
4) Quick Hits: A few articles that are concise, important, interesting, impactful, and I'm not going to write long descriptions for them
600 Black Advertising Professionals Demand Meaningful Action From Leadership in Open Letter [Ad Week] PLEASE READ THIS The letter, led by ad veterans Nathan Young and Bennett D. Bennett, demands agencies take concrete, measurable steps to improve the representation and working conditions of black employees and other minorities in the industry. The list of 12 actions include tracking and reporting workforce diversity data on an annual basis; extensive bias training for HR employees and management; and a wage equity plan. “As loud as these protests are, it is impossible to overstate the pain that has been felt by your Black colleagues as the still-fresh wounds from Ferguson, Baltimore and countless other flashpoints of racial violence were once again re-opened,” the letter states. “We hurt because we have seen this movie before. We hurt because we expect that, once again, when the streets have cleared and the hashtags have been retired, little will be done to address the systemic racism and economic injustice we face each and every day.” You can read the full letter to agency leadership here
How Facebook Became the Social Media Home of the Right [Vanity Fair] In reality, by ceding, and even groveling, to the conservatives in the way that Zuckerberg has, he has already created a divide not within Facebook itself, but within the entire internet. Facebook has become the home of the conservative right, and as a result, the most shared content on Facebook is almost always conservative in nature. For example, Kevin Roose, a reporter with the New York Times, often posts (on Twitter) a list of the top 10 posts shared on Facebook in the past 24 hours, which almost always come predominantly from conservative voices, including Fox News, Ben Shapiro, ForAmerica, and the right-wing conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza. On the other hand, Twitter has largely become the voice of the left, where the most shared stories, content, videos, and opinions are often much more latitudinarian in nature. Think about almost every video that has gone viral in recent years showing something dumb Trump has done or said, a moment of police brutality, or someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez berating a Republican senator or CEO banker. They all found their vitality on Twitter. Or go and look at the trending topics of the day, which are almost always topics of the left. On Thursday the number one post on Facebook was a video shared by the conservative commentator and political activist Candace Owens, where Owens said that George Floyd was a “horrible human being” and that “racially motivated police brutality is a myth.” The video was viewed on Facebook 24 million times in less than a day.
Inside Peter Luger’s First Bid to Modernize, a Pandemic Survival Tactic [Eater] “We hadn’t taken a credit card for 133 years, now we’re credit cards only. We never touched delivery, now we’re exclusively delivering takeout. We’ve adapted more in the last week than we ever have or ever will.” — David Berson, general manager, on the impact of the coronavirus.
5) Department of Great Work
BabyNames.com makes a powerful statement in honor of the black lives lost to police violence [CNN] We only knew their names after they died. But you can find them all on the homepage of BabyNames.com, a popular name planning website for prospective parents. "Each of these names was somebody's baby," reads the site's homepage. A black box with dozens of names, all belonging to black Americans who've died due to police violence or, in a few cases, at the hands of civilians. It's an incredibly powerful statement. [ED Note: I know! I know! CNN, autoplay video, not ideal. But I'm going through AdWeek and AdAge articles like crazy this month and needed a paywall-free site.]
NASCAR's only Black driver, Bubba Wallace, will drive a car with a special Black Lives Matter paint scheme during the Martinsville race [Business Insider] "I'm excited for the opportunity to run the #BlackLivesMatter car for Martinsville," Wallace said in a video his team posted on Twitter. "One of our best racetracks, statistically my best racetrack for sure. With this statement that we have, running this racecar, being on live television on Fox, I think it's going to speak volumes to what I stand for, but also the initiative that NASCAR, that the whole sport is trying to push."
Band-Aid launching new bandages featuring range of skin tones [KMBC News] FINALLY! I used to work on Band-Aid and can confirm that we've been pushing them to do this for years. The bandage brand, which is owned by Johnson & Johnson, announced it is committed to launching a range of bandages in light, medium and deep shades of brown and black skin tones “that embrace the beauty of diverse skin.”
Pizza Hut Gorbachev TV Spot Commercial :60 International version [YouTube] This real ad from BBDO in 1997 really stars Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Premier of the Soviet Union. I recently discovered this ad, and it's a friendly reminder that even when there is total upheaval in the world, at least we can agree that perestroika was good for Pizza Hut. As a side note, Gorbachev himself is still alive (who knew!?), and ostensibly living in a datcha somewhere in Russia. Also check out this dope perestroika postage stamp. Love the Soviet take on capitalism
Platform Updates are on hiatus this week.
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