scott goodson's writings

The Sixth Extinction?

The New Yorker has also published a rather scary piece on the mass extinction of frogs. Being a proud frog, I must say that I was thunderstruck by this article and feel the need to try to do something about it. Any suggestions?

The article in the New Yorker describes how graduate student Karen Lips observed the mysterious disappearance of large numbers of local golden frogs, in the nineteen-nineties, at several locations in Panama and Costa Rica. Whatever was killing Lips’s frogs moved east, like a wave, across Panama.

More here >>>

De-globalization

There's a great piece in the New Yorker Think Tank about the possibility of a new idea on the rise in global culture: deglobalization. It's an interesting thought. Perhaps more relevant for Western companies who have already reached around the world and are now retrenching. But perhaps not so relevant a thought for companies coming out of the merging world markets such as Brazil or India. Have a read:

From the New Yorker:

Last month, the PIMCO bond and economy guru Bill Gross wrote, “The future of the global economy will likely be dominated by de-leveraging, de-globalization, and re-regulation.” De-leveraging and re-regulation are easy to grasp. American households, for example, are shifting rapidly from borrowing to saving; this change in the United States during the last nine months has been particularly dramatic, and not exactly helpful to our consumer-dependent economy. Banks have already de-leveraged and shifted large chunks of their bad debt to taxpayers. Re-regulation is in the newspaper headlines every day—one of its goals, presumably, will be to prevent Wall Street’s wizards from re-leveraging. But de-globalization? What might that actually mean? The economic crisis has not abolished Moore’s law (which observes that computing power, and thus the power of electronic devices, has doubled about every two years since the invention of the computer chip, in 1958.) Whatever their states of mind, more and more people are plugging into the grid, and will continue to do so; even in hard times, the cost of electronic integration will not pose a serious obstacle. At the same time, cell phone and computer users are also expanding the depth and reach of their online activity. So that form of globalization will certainly accelerate.

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Surge in creativity

The NY Times today reports a surge in creativity in the US as a result of the economic times we are living through.

Liz Fallon, 30, a visual artist in Portland, Me., started selling her paintings and drawings to private collectors about 10 years ago, when she was still in college. She has not sold an original work in almost a year. But in the Portland area, Ms. Fallon said, there seems to be a kind of artistic renaissance under way as various groups, like photography cooperatives and drawing collectives, form to connect creative professionals with one another.

“As for myself, freed from the constraints of creating for a specific buyer,” Ms. Fallon wrote, “I’ve experienced my own surge in creativity and have been producing a great deal more than I used to. While it would be nice to still be getting paid for my work, the need to be more resourceful is having a beneficial effect on the arts community around me.”

Cadine Navarro, an artist in New York says: “I feel that artists are well equipped to deal creatively with such situations and with a bit of persistence and optimism, can turn this recession into a point of strength.”

Read the full piece here >>>

Better agency model for the emerging market

What do I see as the new agency model of the emerging new market? The model that delivers strategic and creative excellence, innovation and a lot of agility - and is able to scale a brand quickly?

The better agency model must do three things:

It must have a new ideas culture, a new value culture…and a new talent culture. The agency model of the future is built around the value of ideas. You might say there’s nothing new about this point. Our industry talks a lot about ideas.

But at the same time, we have allowed the emphasis, the value, and the fundamental business model of our industry today, to shift away from ideas and to focus predominantly on execution.

A lot of lip service is paid to the value of ideas, but agencies are often primarily regarded as executioners and, in that regard, purely as suppliers. In the future, suppliers will be valued less and less and squeezed more and more. It is idea generators who will be most valued – because “ideaspeople” create the greatest value, across every industry sector, not just our own.

So the new agency model has to move the value of our industry away from execution and back to ideas. Firstly, by demonstrating and standing up for the value of ideas. And secondly, by outsourcing execution.

Now, by outsourcing execution, I don’t mean for a moment giving up responsibility for execution. It is very important that we steward the process – and we do this flawlessly for some of the biggest advertisers in the world - but less important that we feel we must execute everything, and be able to provide a full range of execution services “in-house”.

The pressure on agencies, often self-inflicted to be able to claim ‘We do absolutely everything’, is entirely counter-productive to fostering a culture that focuses on and celebrates the value of ideas.

Interestingly, outsourcing execution not only re-emphasizes the value of ideas; it also re-emphasizes the value of specialist executioners. Idea creators and idea implementers are both key.

At the implementation end, the opportunity to be the Fedex of the execution marketplace is an exceptionally valuable one in its own right – when it absolutely, positively has to be produced overnight, or in some other very tight timeframe

And there are some interesting developments in this area.

At StrawberryFrog, protecting a true “IdeasCulture” has always been our aim. We haven’t embraced this change for change’s sake, but in order to ensure “new creativity” and “originality” as well as innovation and a hell of a lot of agility. We have always been about the value of great ideas, and outsourcing execution to media buying companies or major digital production organizations was a key part of our founding philosophy ten years ago. We have developed strong partnerships with PR firms and specialists in various areas of expertise and technology and in different geographies.

At StrawberryFrog we have extraordinary talent in-house, but we also outsource into a unique network of talent literally all over the world, while we steward huge brands nationwide and across all continents. Pulling these partners into the StrawberryFrog team gives us tremendous reach and power, innovation and dynamism, as well as some very unconventional disciplines that you wouldn't find in your traditional agency such as mobility crm capabilities and social media listening.

Not every client is ready for this – yet. It takes a creative CMO to understand what the true value of this model really means vs the traditional legacy agency model.

Our model was not inspired by the old agency model, but by architectural partnerships and feature movie productions, i.e. the best available talent from wherever it’s assembled for the duration of a project. This is the StrawberryFrog model as it was developed ten years ago, and perfected over the years - and, through the experience of stewarding complex campaigns for major clients in the US and in other regions.

CMOs are looking for more, better, faster

Things are getting busy. Very busy. So much so that I simply haven't had much time to write on this blog. After the economic collapse in the back end of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, the phones started to ring again in early spring. First there were one or two inquiries a week. Now it's a new call a day. I have been in touch with a select group of other modern agencies, and it's much the same with them. We are getting a lot of calls, most of them from large clients that previously worked exclusively with the very big legacy holding company agencies or networks. But they are searching for something new and they are a great deal more informed and curious about new ways of doin things than clients in the past.

This is a phenomenal sign for places like the FrogPond.

We've noticed that clients are looking for smarter, better, more effective and more efficient partners. Partners that are part of the solution, not the problem.

If current contact growth rates hold up, we could be witnessing the first significant shift in business away from the traditional agencies who have controlled and dominated the ad industry for decades, towards new, more innovative firms with the competence and pedigree to strategically steward a brand and scale it with creative excellence in all media. Far-fetched? Perhaps. But if you understand the pressures clients are under to achieve both effectiveness and speed, then you can see why they are searching for new options, and how challenger agencies are able to leapfrog the systems that have been around for 40-50-60 years.

After living through the recent psychological impact of the failure of some of the biggest firms in the world, businesspeople simply no longer believe that their accounts are best parked at the traditional corporate agency. Nor do they believe the myth that just because it's a huge building with thousands of people in cubicles, that putting your account there is a safe choice. On the contrary, clients are starting to feel that putting their accounts in a traditional agency is perhaps the riskiest move to make. When we started StrawberryFrog ten years ago, it was virtually unheard of for huge major clients to award multi-million dollar accounts to new challenger firms. This is no longer the case. We have proven over ten years that you can do what huge clients need and want, but do it differently than the dinosaurs. Many of the calls we've received the past month have been from America's blue chip companies wishing to meet us and understand how we can service their businesses and brands differently from the legacy agencies.

For agencies like ours this is a welcome sign. "Yeah, yeah yeah", you say. "We'll believe it when we see it." Sure thing. But even in the face of that semi-corny line, these calls do signal the importance of brilliant ideas, the resurgence of strategic and creative excellence, and not the focus on money or the crushing weight of bureaucracies. Today, intelligence, experience, innovative and being agile as hell counts. It's good to be a firm in the outside lane at a time when that's the best place to be - without, I dare say losing any creative quality.

The pressures of the economy mixed with the media revolution underway are pushing clients to take hard looks at their traditional agencies, and this is blowing the cobwebs out of the advertising attic, and creating new opportunities for modern agencies that have proven track records of re-energizing huge brands or launching new brands from scratch and scaling them into successful businesses.

Viva la revoluion!

Quaker Cultural Movement Case: StrawberryFrog Brasil

New roles in advertising

For a long time there have been the same old jobs in advertising. But all of a sudden there are new kinds of jobs out there in advertising which require new kinds of skills. New roles have started to appear in advertising that have not been here before. Like green shoots exploring upwards out of the grey brittle bottom of an age-old pine forest, these new roles have evolved because of what’s happening out there. More modern agencies already have them embedded in their teams, but if you’re thinking of a career in advertising, these new roles will become increasingly important for the industry as a whole.

Digital presence strategist
This person is a hybrid web strategist with curiosity about new technologies and a familiarity with mobility applications. This is not a media strategist or a technologist. This is a new role in the US. These guys have tended to be mostly Nordic because 3G happened there like 10 years ago or Japanese, and more recently British and or other Northern Europeans. This is the role on the rise in advertising. I use the term “advertising” because it’s the only short-hand word that carries the weight of strategic and creative excellence in all media, including digital and brand PR. This is a role on the rise because it is becoming important to have a strategic thinker sitting in the team who understands all the complexities of the social media scene, the mobility scene and all the innovation opportunities out there.

Idearator
This is an idea generator who has a legacy in the digital space but is broad enough to come up with ideas that live in all media. This person must play across many disciplines. This role will become increasingly important because the emphasis, the value, and the fundamental business model for agencies has shifted away from a focus predominantly on execution to a focus on ideas.

Partnership director
Partnering with ‘best-in-class’ individuals and firms is what enables agencies like StrawberryFrog to leapfrog the traditional legacy corporate agencies. This person’s role is to continuously manage the agency’s partnerships and be able to draw on the world’s best talent, tailored to a client’s specific needs. While all agencies work with outsourced talent in some shape of form (some more openly and overtly than others who hide this fact), this is now becoming a mainstream way of working in the evolving media revolution. And this role will become a mainstay of the best in class firms able to deliver for their clients globally and across many different disciplines.

Social media-whatever
I'm not going to write much on this. But anyone with any expertise in social media has been important for some time now, and this area of expertise will only keep growing.

Saturday Rainy NYC kids suggestions?

Please post some suggestions.

Thanks

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