Do You Boil Down Or Boil Up?

Boiling ideas down in advertising planning is a very popular pastime - aka reductive thinking.  However, in networked media, the opposite is true.  The aim is for an idea to boil up - and preferably - over.  Both approaches have their attractions and are largely determined by their natural media.  TV and billboards are about the big punch.   The web is about seeding and weeding.  These different outlooks make a huge difference when it comes to preparation.  If you've only got one shot at getting your message across, then taking a lot of time to finnesse your plan is a must.  You want a bold flavour and it may take time to blend the ingredients, with plenty of mistakes made behind the scenes.  However, networked media is about many intimate fragments that on their own can be meaningless, but in time will build into something complex and alluring.  To succeed you must get chopping, chuck the ingredients around a bit, throw in a few random spices and maybe let other people make some suggestions along the way.  Indeed, the preparation may never end because the rich process is often the desired outcome - not the tasty dish itself.  Bringing these two styles into the same kitchen (or studio) is tricky.  While one chef is focusing on adding the final slither of vanilla truffle to their perfect white dish, the other will be energetically throwing spaghetti at the wall and asking passers-by for opinions on the sauce.  But now paymaster Big Brands want the sociability of Tapas mixed with the fine experiences of Haute Cusine.  So inevitably change is coming.  Although not without some pain.  Such a major redesign of the planning processes to mix styles is going to leave many eggs - and egos - on the floor.

Comments

This is very, very, true. The elements of what makes a good open source brand (in the sense of your manifestos), go directly against the traditional ad/marketing industry paradigm. They remove the need for a lot of the early stage creative work.

If you allow your customers to tell your brand story for you and to become your brand, the creative role becomes one of a yacht helmsman: You are steering the ship, but you are doing this within the boundaries of the what the wind and tide are doing. Trad-ad companies are used to sitting behind the wheel of a large diesel engined sunseeker gin-palace, point and open the throttle.

I can't see that many of the old-hand creative directors/agencies being able to relinquish control of the the process enough to allow open source branding to work for them.

This is why I was so surprised when you announced that the digital divide was closed.

[James Cherkoff]

Rory, you are right. The old creative directors/agencies can't. But we are now starting to see that the new ones can. Albeit early days.

Oh definitely, and many of these new agencies are started by the enlightened members of the big agencies who have left out of frustration: TAG, Grand Union, Blast Radius, etc.

But whilst these guys are good, I think very few people have really understood the medium of the internet as yet.