Why its all about Bill Buxton

Check out this great MSN video - Bill Buxton: advertising’s future technology

In 2009 I was working with Microsoft advertising division as a consultant helping them create and sell products to media agencies. I was lucky to get the winning seat at lunch at their imagine conference. Typical advertising people chatting about advertising stuff, I was one of them so I fit right on. Until Bill Buxton comes along and says something that stuck with me ever since.

'If you want to know what is going to be big in 10 years time then look back to what was created 10 years ago.'

He said eBay was the best place to find what will be big. He should know as he has one of the biggest collections of technology objects known to man. On the day he pulled out a bunch of touchscreen technology created in the mid 80s.

5 years later Im half way through a masters in innovation and one comment I saw in the video above from him is the basis of my view of innovation.

' ….anything that is going to impact your life in 10 years is already 10 years old now that changes the nature of innovation from one of alchemy, starting some great idea out of scratch to one of prospecting and discovery, insights and relationships'

thanks Bill

If you want insight, get out of the building

One of the things I found weird working for different agencies and with marketers is that they always talk about understanding the customer. Yet they never leave their building to truly experience their audience. A pitch comes in for an FMCG brand and the first thing they do is organise focus groups. What about just walking down to the local supermarket and just standing in the aisle for a while.

Quite a few years ago now I did a brand planning course where at the end we had to create a strategy, creative brief and creative concepts for a chocolate bar that had no fat. I did some data analysis and detailed that the bar should go after the chocolate bar market not the health bar version. I also did two particular pieces of research that stood out. I walked around a supermarket watching women in the chocolate aisle. What I found was that women would be less likely to grab a chocolate bar in the aisle and more likely to grab it closer to the counter. This insight around 'shame' felt like fertile ground. I then created some concepts and set up a movies night at my girlfriends house with a group of girls in the target audience, the perfect environment for chocolate. I let my girlfriend run the session as I thought the depth of understanding of that 'shame' would be harder to say to a guy. They not only validated a concept but built on it making the language more feminine and more specific.

I topped the class on the assignment and the teacher highlighted the amazing effort I'd gone to mixing a strong analysis of the market and a deep understanding of the audience. Building it all into a great concept and good creative work. That act of observation, creation and validation was very simple and all of it cost me not much more than a couple of chocolate bars and making dinner for my girlfriend. Yet I've sat through piles and piles of expensive research and got very little insight to that depth that can truly be successfully used for any advantage.

If you are in the business of understanding people why not get out of the building and actually experience those real people. There is something very human and empathetic about interacting with people in reality not just reading about it. Not just treating a situation like a test subject just being a human being in a human space. Then having the ability to truly pull out what matters to whomever you are studying is still a skill that is hugely undervalued.

Every company should have a Self Destruct button

They say quite of few people have self destructive personalities which are seen to lead to very negative behaviour from the individual. But what if you used a self destructive personality in a positive light to constantly evolve. What if your company constantly self destructed and started again.

I was recently in a meeting and we were discussing how to implement a new ethos and framework into the company. I made the comment 'we have to implement this process so everyone works to it, then start to pull it apart again'. I just kind of blurted it out. After everybody laughed and kept on with the meeting I realised that's now what companies have to continue to do to survive. 


I started reading Idris Mootee from Ideacouture's blog Innovation Playground quite a few years ago and forgot how concise and loaded with positive rhetoric his posts are. He made a great statement within his post How to forget creatively

'We all create our own environments and are then constrained by them'

The environment you create for big companies often works to that time, that place, that talent and that cultural context. But how do companies play to the speed and agility of the start up communities that could change their market in a matter of months.


We have all been there. Come up with an idea that worked in that particular situation. We got praise from the people around us, collegues, friends and maybe even the industry we work in. So if it worked, it made you feel good and everyone is happy. Why on earth should we change anything. Why ruin a good thing. Thats how we see it as individuals. Think about that on the scale of management to investors or shareholders. 'Yeah everything is swimming along great ... but we dont believe it anymore so we are going to completely change everything we do'... wouldnt go down well would it.

The speed of change (or velocity as people like to use to throw some drama in) doesnt play well with the consistent use of old techniques. But there is a fine line between when too and when not too. I believe 99% of innovation these days is just iteration. A slight change on something that everyone feels comfortable with and has quantifiable justification. Which I can understand from a company's perspective because most are run by people with economics background and feel their job it is really to mitigate risk. Dont lose what you already have. But what if their is a greater risk that isnt immediate but is still eminent.

To quash the immediate negatives of a self destructive behaviour (ruining what you currently have) You almost need to create a team within the company whos job it is to test the current model to destruction. The objective is very simple. 'If you wanted to ruin our business model, how would you do it'. Identifying the holes in their strategy or execution. It really plays to the first three R's of Idris's transformation model

It makes sense to completely separate the team from the process. Completely different talent, place and just leave them to it. Im sure there are many movies that have government black ops squads who are off the radar and there job is to pull apart the system. It could also work to evolve your systems, innovate into areas you never thought about and generally make your company better for the long run.

Like when you are a little boy. Destruction can always be fun in understanding that now you need to rebuild it in your own special way. But the more interesting bit for companies is how you deliver the final R from Idris's model

How to create insights

How To Create An Insight

View more OpenOffice presentations from mickstravellin.

Insights are one of those quite subjective things that people argue about constantly and a limited amount of people have actually stated how to create one. In my recent education attempt of a number of countries and grads etc on creating insights. I put this little presentation together to help them out a bit. As per usual there is a little control c control v going on, but also the S.A.M. concept is something I made up in the shower one morning.

A special thanks has to go to Mat Milan over at critical mass and his insights presentation where he uses columbo as an example of an insightful person (I read the other day he has alzehemziers so sad).

Have a look. I hope you find it useful

IPA: Fast Strategy Cards on Popfly

I did a bit of a popfly mashup of the photos I took of the fast strategy cards from the IPA Fast Strategy event in London on the 28th of April.

'The Prepared Mind'

uploaded by mike fischer on flickr

I have been throwing this around in my head for a while and it came up again with an event invitation from the IPA around 'Fast Strategy' which is going to be run by Richard Huntingdon of adliterate here in London.
So to link the two I started thinking about the usual planning timeframe, which I believe would go something like this. Take a brief, go out and discover or search for the information you need to build the context. Identify GAPS, get some more research and maybe create a strategy, talk to creatives about it, sell it to the client. Brief creative. This all happens in a reasonably long period of 2 -3 months. Im sure everyone does it differently but it takes time
But what happens if you have the 'the prepared mind'.... what happens when you know before you are asked.
Mat Milan highlighted some of this in his great presentation on insights.... and his link to the TV character Columbo. The key things were:

The prepared mind is......

• A repeatable process
• Always running its process
• Always asking questions
• Prepared to look beyond the obvious

I think these are great. But I would like to broaden it out and put it in the context of 'fast planning' which is the reality of today no matter what department of plannig you work in. In the high tech, information rich world we all live in. I think there is more to ad to that.

The prepared mind is.....

• Always discovering
• Always cataloguing new information
• Always sharing with others
• Always linking old with new
• Always ready to go at any given time

I believe the modern world allows us to deliver 'fast strategy' as we have done a lot of the analysis before the problem hits our desk. We have consistent clients for a reason. Never giving up on knowing more and linking important things together, will enable us not to make a decision from gut feeling on the fly. But to make a decision because we could have addressed some of the hard work beforehand.

I have found with blogging and my fascination ,as well as involvement in the web 2.0 world. I can have everything at my fingertips. My constant need to discover has lead me to all sorts of places. People within my agency (and now friends in others) are starting to realise that if you need any information quickly, I probably have it on hand or can get it quickly. Even if its not on my clients, I often send out things to others for theirs. Delicious has everything and anything on it. This blog has a million things, all the blogs I read have great stuff. My custom search engines are great ways to get to things. There are millions of other options as well.

The truth is I believe we can deliver 'fast strategy' without loosing all of the strengths of time. This constant flow of information should allow us to pre-empt problems and construct an answer at the ready. This also gives us a great perception with our clients. As they have the feeling that you really do know their busieness and care as much as they do (Im an idealist by the way) Oh my god. It sounds like all those stories of technology speeding up the working process could be true. Lets not jump there just yet. But I guess we just have to make sure we synthesise, prioritise and utilise the information appropriately to create the best insights, strategy and ideas. But I believe the prepared mind.... can do this with ease.... Its just how prepared do you have to be? I will just keep on trying, until I find out.