Only Dead Fish

Gone Fishing

My my. I think I must be witnessing the effects of the first and third laws of psychological time because this year seems to have flown by. So I'm off to slow down time a bit. Dead Fish is taking a well-earned Summer break for a couple of weeks but will be back before you know it. Have fun, be good.

What If?

Johnny (ever the collector and curator of interesting points of view) points at a post from Tim Kastelle that draws an interesting point from Anything You Want, the book on entrepreneurship by CDBaby founder Derek Sivers.

The book tells the story of how a voice coach that Sivers had when he was in a band would encourage him to sing a song fast, then slow, an octave higher, then an octave lower, and in doing so created new and unforeseen choices for the best way to sing each song. Sivers goes on to make the point that the same approach is useful when lookng at a business model or plan - working through scenarios of a plan that requires only $1,000, or is designed for ten times as many customers, or is based on wholly different assumptions.

It's a good reminder of the value of recontextualising. When presented with a challenge, the temptation is to focus on the limitations of our situation: "if only the budget was bigger, we could...". I prefer questions like: What if you had half the budget to work with? What if you had no budget at all? My hunch is that the answer to those questions are far more interesting.

Slowing Down Time

Seeing Noah's post prompted me to re-read Steven Johnson's rather lovely piece that talks about his reasons for moving from his long-time home city of New York, across to the West coast and San Francisco.

This kind of change, believes Johnson, is intrinsically good in itself because the changed context helps you see your old home in a different light, and understand better what really matters: "Changing the background scenery helps you see the foreground more clearly".

But it's also good because it seems to slow down time. To paraphrase Johnson paraphrasing a friend who wrote to him about the move, when you're in your routine and frequenting the same old places time seems to accelerate. But all the complexities of moving and navigating a new environment means that all the things that once passed as background are suddenly are thrust into your conscious awareness. The act of having to figure more stuff out every day makes you more acutely aware of the passing time. So more than anything, says Johnson, "we're moving to slow down time".

This reminded me of 'Making Time (Why Time Seems To Pass At Different Speeds and How To Control It)' by Steve Taylor, which I read last year out of sheer curiosity. In the book, Taylor talks about what he calls the 'first four laws of psychological time':

1. Time speeds up as we get older

2. Time slows down when we are exposed to new experiences and environments

3. Time passes quickly in states of absorbtion

4. Time passes slowly in states of non-absorbtion

Taylor draws on a whole series of psychological studies and examples to make the case that the speeding up of time we experience is related to our perception of the world around us and of our experiences, and how this perception changes as we get older. The speed of time seems to be relative to how much perceptual information our minds absorb and process - the more information there is, the slower the time goes.

It's a cliche, but time is by far our most valuable commodity. The older I get the more precious time seems to get to me. I think that's less about a sense of it running out, and more about being increasingly conscious of the possibilities of how each moment might be used. We talk a lot about the value of continually creating for ourselves new and different contexts and experiences. Perhaps one of the less talked about (apart from Johnson of-course) but no less important reasons for doing this is that in doing so, we slow the passage of time.

Image courtesy

Agile Planning (Redux)

The smart guys at LHBS in Vienna asked me to give a talk on Agile Planning earlier this week as part of their series of "Uncomfortable Talks" designed to promote some good, challenging thinking on the practice of communications and planning. It was helpful in bringing together a bunch of disparate thoughts I've long had around this subject but if I'm honest, it was difficult to know where to stop - it's a subject that touches so much of what we do, so there's a lot more I could've talked about. But I guess central to my theme here is that though there is much talk of the impact of digital, particularly around social media platforms, and the importance of failing fast and so on, my sense is that the kind of fundamental change that is required won't happen unless we actually change the way we do what we do and the culture that surrounds that.

You'll note that I reference the thoughts and concepts of a number of smart thinkers in the talk and I've done my best to attribute clearly wherever I can. At the start of the talk, I showed the short film (above) of John Jay talking about creativity. As well as being a brilliantly insightful two and a half minutes of film, he also frames rather wonderfully a number of the themes I then went on to talk about. I hope you like it.

Agile planning

View more presentations from Neil Perkin

HT to Asi for the John Jay link

Post Of The Month - June 2011 - The Winner

After a strong showing from Bud Caddell's The Big Fail, this month's vote turned into a race between Martin Bailie's excellent Why 'How' Is As Important As 'What' and Jennifer Hohn's Adventures in Failure but in the end it was the latter that won through. So well done Jennifer - you get the props of your blogging peers and are entered into the Hall of Fame. Thanks everyone for voting and taking part, and don't forget to bookmark your good reads for nomination in next month's vote.

Post Of The Month - June 2011 - The Vote

Thanks to all for some good nominations. So this month's vote is between:

The Big Fail from Bud Caddell

My Very Unofficial Cannes Lions 2011 Recap from Olivier Blanchard

What Art Has Got To Do With It by Rishad Tobaccowala

Why 'How' Is As Important As 'What' by Martin Bailie

Adventures in Failure by Jennifer Hohn

Is That All There Is? by Jim Carroll for BBHLabs

Resolving The Trust Paradox from John Hagel

Ah, Business Ethics, Didn't We Sell That To The Chinese? by David Everitt Carlson

And you can vote below:

Agencies As Incubators

Does it make sense for an ad agency to launch an incubator for tech start-ups? You could (and many no doubt would) say that this was merely a distraction from the day job. An unnecessary aberration from what agencies are meant to be doing. Personally, I think it makes a bunch of sense. Here's why.

This year's Cannes Lions seemed to be a marker in the sand of how the tech and ad worlds are increasingly colliding (or 'marrying on the beach', as Mel eloquently put it). But as Olivier Blanchard points out, whilst agencies don’t need to become technology innovation engines, there undoubtedly is a need for ongoing collaboration with technology pioneers, for staffers to become tech savvy, and just for them to keep up: "Technical innovation can increase agency capabilities, cut costs, accelerate the campaign development process, and blow everyone’s socks off (consumers and clients). Who wants to turn that down? You?"

The Portland Incubator Experiment has been going for a couple of years, actively supported by Wieden & Kennedy, and serving "as a hub for community, entrepreneurship, and creative thinking." Startups get access to upto $18,000 of seed funding, office space in Portland for a three month period, and get to collaborate with and learn from other startups in residence, industry mentors, successful alumni and Wieden & Kennedy staffers. PIE also offers access to "thoughtful" investors, and exposure to Portland's mobile and open source development communities. It's a lot like Paul Graham's excellent Y-Combinator model, except this year W&K are involving several brand clients including Nike, Coca-Cola, and Target (brands who "aim to find unexpected solutions, accelerate new business, and keep innovation at the forefront") and PIE are looking for startups which have emergent opportunities that are brand and business aligned.

This reminded me of this rather intriguing (and anonymous) answer on Quora about how Apple uses its significant cash reserves to maintain a decisive advantage over its competitors in product quality. When new component technologies first arrive, says anonymous, the upfront capital expenditure required to produce them can be so huge, and the margins so slim, so as to make it prohibitive for manufacturers. Apple steps in and uses its cash to help pay for the building of manufacturing capacity in exchange for exclusive rights to the production output for an agreed period of time (6 - 36 months perhaps), and following that for a discounted rate. This enables Apple access to new technologies far ahead of its rivals, which it can use to create products that cannot be duplicated. Once competitors catch up, and the technology becomes commoditised, Apple still has advantage through the special pricing it has already agreed. This means that once the product line is no longer premium, it can still be produced more cheaply, yielding higher margins and more cash, which can then be reinvested in continuing the cycle. They are in effect "creating an unrivaled exclusive supply chain of advanced technology literally years ahead of anyone else on the planet".

What Apple have foreseen, is the advantage that comes from building a unique pipeline of smart cutting-edge technology. And to draw a parallel, what W&K have seen is the advantage that comes from mixing it with smart, cutting-edge technology talent. W&K's involvement in PIE is part of a series of experiments, they say, to help transform the industry, redefine brand experiences, and build new relationships with the communities they reside in.

That last one - the opportunity (particularly in these difficult times) to invest in entrepreneurs and to give something back - is reason enough to do it. But I think they realise many other advantages in engaging with people and thinking at the forefront of technology. Not least a point of difference for their business. Access to new and interesting tech. But most of all, access to the talent and to new and different thinking applied in creating solutions to problems. No, agencies shouldn't be technology innovation machines, but the smart thing about what W&K are doing is that they are making themselves a contributory part of the local tech scene, making connections, and no doubt soaking up some of the culture, more than a little of the expertise, and a healthy dose of that startup pixie dust. It's a model that other businesses, and not just agencies, could learn from.

Image courtesy

Post Of The Month - June 2011 - Nominations

Time to open nominations for Post Of The Month, so please nominate the best posts that you've read and which were posted in the month of June in the comments below. As always, I've listed a few starters and once I have a good selection I'll stick them all up for a vote. OK, my starting four are:

The Big Fail from Bud Caddell

My Very Unofficial Cannes Lions 2011 Recap from Olivier Blanchard

What Art Has Got To Do With It by Rishad Tobaccowala

Why 'How' Is As Important As 'What' by Martin Bailie

Please add your own nominations in the comments below.