John Winsor

As It Happens

As It Happens from renan ozturk on Vimeo.

Renan Ozturk and his Camp 4 Collective is turning adventure film making on its head. You see, Renan is supposed to be in front of the camera instead of in back of it. Well, that's not exactly right. He's acutually gone all quantum mechanics on us and is in two places at once. Both in front of the camera and in back of it.

As technology makes the equipment to produce media the lines between the subject and the writer (in this case the filmmaker) have blurred.

Now the story is captured as it happens. And, it's much more interesting.

How Do We Shrink?

Sitting here tonight watching CNN and thinking about the looming US Government shutdown. We have always been a culture of growth. We grow our communities. We grow our businesses. We grow the size of our houses. We grow our incomes. We even talk about growing emotionally. The philosophy of growth is so engrained in our collective conciousness. In fact, we fundamentally believe that:

Growing = Winning

and

Shrinking = Loosing

But, is that really true? What happens when things need to get smaller. I was struck by the wonderful NY Times article about the downsizing of Detroit. How does Detroit shrink? What city services will be delivered to which neighborhoods? There are hard decision to be made.

What would happen if we lived in a smaller house? What happens if our incomes shrink?

In business, technology creates deflationary pressure on almost everything, how do we accept shrinking in a culture of growth?

My sense is we're looking through the wrong lens. It shouldn't be a trade off between growing and shrinking.

Maybe it's about setting up our businesses and our lives in a flexible way so that we can deal with whatever comes our way.

 

Achieving Perfection

I was inspired yesterday by Miles' posting of one of my favorite quotes of all time. The first time I ran into Saint-Exuprey's quote was in Yvon Chounaird's inspring 1995 essay, "The Next 100 Years." If you haven't read it, it's a must for any of us who struggle with doing the right thing in business. Yvon used the quote as a guiding light at Patagonia to always simplify not just the design of the clothing but also Patagonia's business practices. He did radical things like cut the number of items he sells from 375 units to 280, actually shriking the company for the sake of making it better.

Yvon and Patagonia have always been an inspiration.

The advertising industry has gotten caught in a cycle of adding more. More headcount. More practices. More agencies. More stuff. More costs. It's easy to see how we got here. It's how the industry is compensated. The bigger you are the more money you make.

But what happened if we instead took Saint Exuprey's advice to heart? Today's technology allows us to create great advertising without all of the overhead we've had in the past. (A Gigabyte of memory cost $12,000 in 1909 and now costs $.05.)

Maybe instead of adding more to create advertising we should all think about taking as much as we can away. How can we take away time, money, and headcount?

While we might not be able to attain perfection we certainly can strive to create better adveritising.

 

It's Time to Evolve

I’ve been struck by all of the recent accusations flying around as client/agency relationships have become more fluid -- from the rant of an industry honcho at the latest 4A’s conference saying he blames clients for the state of the industry to the “they didn’t fire us we fired them” attitude of agencies making the rounds every time a client decides it’s time for a new direction.

Sorry, I just don’t get it. It’s like they said in Mad Men, “we are artisans, not artists.” We create work for clients. This is a business. A business built on solving problems through great creativity. Sure it’s changing. Every business changes. Somewhere along the way some folks have forgotten that.

The world of advertising has gotten a lot more complicated. Consumers have a lot more power. That’s the way it works. Besides, the greatest creativity comes from complications and constraints, and using them to figure out brilliant business solutions. Clients -- more than ever -- need our help solving those business problems in a positive and constructive way.

As an industry, we can either help clients figure out the future or sit back and long for the Mad Men days of three martini lunches and big TV budgets.

Let's lean forward instead of back.

Let's be positive instead of negative.

Let's let go of our egos and insecurities and radically evolve this industry of ours for the betterment of clients, consumers, creatives, strategists, and everyone else.

The Power of the OTA Community

I had the opportunity to spend Friday with Hugh Weber and folks at the OTA Sessions in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. What a day. 350 folks were there sharing and building community. Of all the events I get to go to OTA is now one of my favorites. Places like Sioux Falls are real. And, in that athenticity is power. Expect a lot from Hugh Weber and the rest of the OTA community. They are forging something wonderful in Sioux Falls.

If you have a chance to get OTA next year, don't miss it.