What if we were obsessing over the tools and not the idea? I’d like to see a move to empathy over technology; perhaps it’s time to reduce the dominance of digital people.
I see a lot of terrible ideas that seem overflowing with technology, but bear no resemblance to how people actually live their lives. Do I really hope for drone-delivered parcels to my 47th floor studio? Isn’t pre-ordering my Starbucks on my phone just creating new problems and putting the work onto me? What if “buy me I’m better” was a more powerful call to action than “sharing my story”on Twitter. I don’t know that I have a good story about Kleenex, or if I did, that I’d want to tell the twitterverse, the place marketing and news folk hang out – not real people.
We’re in a digital world now, but we’re emphasising the digital over the world. In the digital world people still enjoy talking, we still use technology to aid face-to-face meetings, we are still humans driven by fundamental human instincts and these will never change. The real skill in marketing in 2014 and beyond isn’t keeping up to speed with all the changes, it’s being aware of what is the same, what is profound and new, and what is the gimmicky edge.
A digital tribe
I’ve been lucky to work with many the best digital people in the world, but we are still such a tribe. We have digital agencies, digital creatives and digital strategists. Their offices feel demonstrably different, people with headphones, meetings where people type on laptops, they use instant messenger internally and the phones sit gathering dust. These folk tend to understand the tools perfectly, but struggle with true understanding of the complexities, behaviours and motivations of normal people. Apps from San Francisco mirror perfectly this populations’ need to do laundry and order a pizza without talking to someone. There are hundreds of ways to talk to girls or guys online, but not a single decent app to order flowers.
This is the species we’ve let loose on advertising, they’ve become the gurus and the leaders of the new world. They get flown around the world to present their ideas, they speak at SXSW often in place of the older, wiser people. In the digital age, we’ve incredible targeting technology, insane buying programmatic and publishing systems, yet we still deliver the crappiest ads known to man. We’ve reimagined retail outlets like Argos by sticking the catalogue on an iPad, rather than looking at how people like to shop. The digital age is a tide that floats all ideas.
Tweeting house plants
We’re at the dawn of the internet of things. We’ve case study videos for tweeting house plants, fridges for phone calls, connected forks and more. It’s going to change advertising, right? Our Fitbits can order a sports drink for us after detecting exercise, but can’t I just pop into a shop? Do I want my lights to stop working because the internet is down? Every case of iBeacons seems to be about distracting people when they are at their most vulnerable, stressed and overwhelmed by information.
So while I love technology and I’m wildly optimistic about the future, I’d just love technology to be applied better. We’re in an innovation funk where what’s done is painfully driven by what people can do, rather than what people want. Shouldn’t we use technology to solve problems or make things easier?
Idea-led marketing
So I’d like a more mature, idea-led marketing environment and I don’t see this happening by increasing the importance of digital thinking. Instead, we need to change how we work with it. We’ve always thought some of the value of digital experts was in how they can guide us on what is and isn’t possible. For many years this was essential, but things are different now. When technology is making everything possible, it’s better to dream big ideas and make things people never dreamt were possible.
For me, the future of marketing, advertising and products design is to remove digital talent from the top and put digital thinking at the heart of our business to be driven by everyone. I think the role of specific digital people needs to be in the implementation. They need to shape ideas, to make things possible, to be the producers, they need to serve the idea and people. You wouldn’t expect coders to write the screenplay for the Toy Story movie, yet they are vital. You don’t expect sound engineers to write songs or record them, yet they are the essential team that shapes the final product, but it’s not led or created by them. We need to get comfortable with everyone thinking about the digital world, but digital talent as the support and not the head architects and engineers.
Some think we need to teach our kids to code, maybe we just need to keep them curious and creative. Let’s keep focused on people. We don’t need to think mobile first design or have digitally led agencies, we only need to think about people and ideas to connect with them in the modern world.
Tom Goodwin is the CEO and founder of the Tomorrow Group. You can follow him on Twitter @tomfgoodwin
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