The plague that is consulting is hammering marketing budgets everywhere. Endless mindless Powerpoint that could have been done in a fraction of the time and points to obvious principles. and at a fraction of the cost. Thanks to Richard for the pointer to this read which makes the point well.

I don’t know how many digital strategy presentations I’ve been asked to sit through that look just like the presentation I saw at the previous client. Somebody has generally done a find and replace on client name and spiced it up with a few insights.

Something the locksmith had not grasped, but which the IT company and consulting firms understood all too well, is the role played by justifying bullshit in the modern economy. For every hour of economically productive work, ten must be spent in senseless activity to maintain the illusion that what you are doing is more difficult and labour intensive than it really is.

Dave Trott also made a similar point here.

It’s why we started Group Lark – advise, coach and counsel but in a fraction of the cost and with a focus on ensuring as many dollars from the effort drive business outcomes. Upend the traditional consulting model. Here is a simple diagram to understand what the effort will result in. Upfront alignment of total spend is everything.

Great video from Mark Ritson on the effectiveness of Tide’s recent campaign. And a counter from Doug Garnett. While I find the Tide work a little too self referential and not that great creatively I side with Mark that is is a clever campaign. Ultimately the result should be measured in terms of business outcomes which aren’t mentioned by either (or me) – and therein is the biggest problem I have with so many of these awards – we are celebrating strategy and creative rather than the business impact. Maybe that was buried in the award entry and didn’t make the light of day. But as they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant. 

Seems brands still struggle with marketing activity that crosses the line. Inevitable chest thumping and smirks result, social media pros quickly shout about how smart it all was, and I’m sure, a few awards will follow. But when do brands grasp that cheeky actions like North Face actually lower our (or at my) opinion of them. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you short. Basic integrity should kick in and questions like – “yes, but is this the right thing to do” should be asked. Abusing Wikipedia is the wrong move.

If you missed it. Leo Burnett Tailor Made replaced the images in Wikipedia articles about national parks with photos they took that have North Face products in them. When searching Google for these places, the first result is then often an image Wikipedia or a link to the Wikipedia article the ad agency defaced.

Perhaps North Face needs a stronger North Star?

Wikipedia had this to say:

“Wikipedia and the @Wikimedia Foundation did not collaborate on this stunt, as The North Face falsely claimed. In fact, what they did was akin to defacing public property.”

“This is a surprising direction from The North Face, as their stated mission is to “support the preservation of the outdoors” — a public good held in trust for all of us.

What has followed is the normal corporate speak:

“Leo Burnett Tailor Made found a unique way to contribute photography of adventure destinations to their respective Wikipedia articles while achieving the goal of elevating those images in search rankings.

“We’re always looking for creative ways to meet consumers where they are. We’ve since learned that this effort worked counter to Wikipedia’s community guidelines. Understanding the issue, we ended the campaign.

“Our team has further accepted an invitation by Wikipedia to learn more about the platform and their work to share unbiased, fact-based knowledge. We look forward to working with Wikipedia to engage with them, and with respect to their network of volunteer editors, better in the future.”

“Unique” is still wrong even when “unique” and like they didn’t know what they were doing. Hardly an apology. 

Liked Tomaz’ predictions. Have been pondering for some time the idea of a new generation of “unicorns” – or just good old-fashioned startups – that begin to siphon off underserved segments of incumbent’s customer bases.

Ansarada is a great example of this. Sitting at the intersection of information, processes, and collaboration for material events (siphoning from the cloud storage providers and CRM players which offer generic solutions ill-equipped to meet the needs of a material event (IPO, M&A, Audit, etc.). They also smash the prediction that data engineering becomes the new customer success.

Same is true of HR software – which SaaS providers have done a great job of addressing the big enterprise need – but little to address (at a reasonable price) the most basic needs of an org – like, building an org chart, understanding who is on point for what, and what is happening across a team. Much like Xero has done for small business accounting, more start-ups will look to address the needs of the small to medium businesses with far more economical, simpler and easier to use solutions.

Either way, a good read of what’s ahead in 2019. Four more sleeps…