Opportunity: a challenge for 2009
People are spending less, retailers are going under, agencies are laying off staff and the weather is unseasonably cold. 2009 started as 2008 ended, with many in the communications business wondering what lies in our immediate future in these troubled times.
I remember listening to Timo Veikkola from Nokia (who on an unrelated note holds one of the coolest job titles I’ve stumbled across - Future Strategist) at PSFK London 18 months ago telling us that the future will be utterly fantastic. He was right, but not in the way I interpreted it back then.
A perfect storm has been brewing for the last decade, and perhaps we are now entering the vortex of this beast. Media consumption has diversified beyond many “experts’” predictions (remember the guy from IBM who said there was a worldwide market for “maybe 5 computers”?), people are more cynical than ever with regards to their attitudes towards profit-seeking corporations and the economic avarice that was bred during the industrial revolution under the guise of free-market capitalism has crippled our economies to a degree that could never have been predicted.
With this backdrop, how is the future fantastic and what does an agency like Geronimo have to look forward to this year?
If I could boil it all down to one word I would say: opportunity.
There are a myriad of clichés that tell us how in tough times, the best shine. And in that is the challenge that is on our doorstep as individuals, agencies and an industry. Are we really ‘creative’? Or have we been hiding behind our self-appointed expertise and generous budgets? Do we really believe in the primacy of the idea, or is it the primacy of ‘I hope this idea convinces a panel to give it an award’? Can we tailor our messages to the complex reality that faces customers and people today, or are we more from the ‘throw enough things at a wall, and something will stick’ school of thought? These are the questions we need to asking ourselves, because the time to really prove what we as an industry have been telling clients for years (namely that we understand people and are the most skilled in providing the service we do) is now.
Now is the time for us to give people communication ideas that resonate with them, that make their lives better, even if only in a tiny way. The value of a positive experience, the power of good if you will, has often been overshadowed by our own egotistical drive for obtuse creativity that extravagant budgeting has allowed. Now that the belt has been tightened, it’s the value of the idea, the experience that is paramount. We need to be more effective than we have ever been before.
The only way to survive in these times is for us to be exceptional at what we do.
How’s that for a challenge?
Sam