Perfection and the Death of Deadlines

In the 90’s Chiat/Day had a slogan “Good Enough Is Not Enough.” Their mission was delivering excellence.

Today everyone commits to delivering 110%.

Lately, I overheard someone promising to give 150%.

I wondered if they had a Mini-Me stashed around the corner waiting to be unleashed once the deal was done.

The other day during a final round of tweaks, I joked with a client “I’m a perfectionist - ninety five percent!”

Then later, I thought there may be something to it.

The ascent of online media has led to the decline of fixed deadlines and a commensurate growth in deadline creep.

When you can go live with a single click, a day here and there isn’t usually as important as getting it “right”.

But just how can you get it right unless it’s live and interactive?

I’m pretty sure you can’t.

You can guestimate, theorize, opine, second-guess and deconstruct.

But you’ll learn more from a week of real-time, real-space feedback than a year of working without it.

Bounce rates and click-throughs are the only opinions that really count.

Online, “Good Enough” is good enough - at least as a place to start.

Because when you can make changes with a couple of clicks, the temptation is to tinker with things forever.

On the surface this is positive, continual improvement being a holy grail of business, sports, personal development and just about any aspect of modern life.

The flip side is that if nothing’s ever finished, if all work is work in progress, then when and maybe even how do we say: Enough!

Because what we think of as examples of perfection, say the Eiffel Tower or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel were both deemed finished at some point.

Someone had the confidence to say: Done!

And after that point changes essentially became impossible.

It’s not like Michelangelo or Gustave Eiffel could say, “I need to tweak it a bit lads, put the scaffold back up.”

There is a school of philosophy that tells us perfection is unattainable.

Even a seemingly perfect snowflake isn’t perfect.

Pop it under an electron microscope and you expose its lack of symmetry.

Another school of philosophy tells us it’s these very imperfections that constitute perfection.

My experience suggests that there is a sort of mirage-like quality to perfection.

The closer you get to it, the more elusive it becomes and the last 5% is the most elusive of all.

If you’re not careful, the quest for it can lead to a type of paralysis.

And most of the time you don’t need it anyway.

You Can Take the Boy out of Advertising, but…

In London, in 1938, there was an agency called Dorland’s where a young man named Eric, had been employed for two years as a Trainee Account Executive. In September of that year, the agency lost a major account and as agencies do when a major piece of business walks, they started laying off staff.

Eric fully expected to be fired -- and when he wasn’t, he felt strangely disappointed.

So he did what disappointed young men have done since time immemorial.

He went to sea.

And not just on any old tub, he signed papers as an apprentice on a windjammer, with the Conradesque name of Moshulu.

At the time, Moshulu was one of thirteen vessels still powered entirely by sail, engaged in the South Australian grain trade.

Owned by Swedish owners and governed by Finnish maritime law, Moshulu’s working practices were rather traditional.

Hence, upon boarding the ship in Belfast’s York Dock, Eric was simply ordered “Op the rigging” and told to keep going.

When he could go no further, he found himself clutching the cap of the main mast, 198 feet above the keel.

Having proved his head for heights, Eric was given a berth in the Fo’castle and Moshulu set sail.

So began the shipboard adventures of a raw boy of 18 learning the trade of an Ordinary Seaman.

Three months later…Moshulu put in at Port Victoria, South Australia.

Once bargains had been struck and contracts drawn up, she was loaded with 4,875 tons of grain.

The cargo was made up of 59,000 sacks which were manhandled into ketches at dockside, ferried to Moshulu and manually loaded into the ship’s holds.

This backbreaking work took a month.

On March 11, 1938 Moshulu set sail on the return leg.

91 days later she was lying off the entrance to Queensland Harbour in Ireland.

The crew didn’t know it, but they had won the last grain race.

In 1956 Eric Newby published a wonderful book about the voyage aptly called: The Last Grain Race.

Apt it may be, but not accurate.

The title is simply untrue.

It was not the last grain race.

It was not even the penultimate grain race.

It was actually the second to last grain race.

Consciously or not, Eric had learnt something from his time at Dorland’s.

Because, what kind of title would The Second to Last Grain Race, or Almost The Last Grain Race have made?

But he understood the value of smart positioning.

So The Last Grain Race it was.

And the book was a hit.

It launched Eric Newby’s career as a travel writer.

It’s still in print today.

And you can’t argue with that.

I Bought Twitter Followers Behind the Bike Shed

It started as a “Did you know?” And of course, I didn’t.

“You can buy Twitter followers,” a colleague continued.

And what started as an innocent conversation about social media became a little murkier.

I expressed amazement, well perhaps not exactly amazement, but certainly a degree of surprise.

Which isn’t surprising, as one way or another the internet is a continual source of surprise.

And I forgot about the conversation until a couple of days later when my colleague sent this link:

I got to Twitter late and after a year of tweeting I had 52 followers.

So it naturally crossed my mind that finding a following organically was taking quite a long time.

Especially if you subscribe to the theory that one digital year is equal to ten human ones.

There is a metaphysical point where ideas become action, however small the initial step may be.

A few keystrokes revealed there are actually several sites offering to fix you up with a twitter following.

At around $25 a thousand for real followers, which are people with a twitter account, as opposed to dummy accounts set up by bots.

Affordability alone made the opportunity tempting.

But it still felt shabby somehow, like buying a degree, or not changing your underwear every day.

Why?

If Klout can “trade” in my social media brand, why can’t I trade up in it?

Surely the main point of the digital era is that the old rules no longer apply.

Reputations don’t have to be hard-won.

You can go-viral any time - but probably not with just 52 followers.

All I want is more exposure for my blog, and wasn’t this simply the digital equivalent of paying newsboys to stand on the corner shouting, “Extra, extra?”

Then I read a Mashable story claiming Newt Gingrich followers are spam bots.

Hell, if it was good enough for the GOP…and at least my followers would be human.

Ethical dilemma resolved - I got into buying mode.

At which point 1,000 seemed kind of paltry, why not go for a Klout busting 5,000?

So I loosely specified the interests I wanted my followers to share (advertising, marketing, creative thinking, ideas, current affairs, etc.) and anted up around $85.

The process would take 12-20 days and I was warned not to follow or unfollow anyone while it was taking place.

By Friday at 8.16 AM I had 109 followers

At 11.50 AM there were 185.

Over the weekend they plateaued at around 340 (something to do with the algorithms – If you want a more detailed breakdown of process and options Tyler Cruze’s blog is very informative) before continuing to climb to 951 at time of publishing.

About half only fit my profile very loosely, but they certainly open up the randomness of Twitter…

My feed is full of all kinds of stuff.

Religious nuts, porn nuts, Beliebers...in several languages.

In retrospect maybe I should have started with a 1000.

But there’s always a learning curve.

Has it made a difference to hits on my blog?

It's probably too early to say.

Social media experts tend to agree, it’s not the size of your following, but your connection to them.

They bang on about not diluting your personal brand.

I get that up to a point.

There are a few of the original 52 I banter with sporadically, they’re interesting and informed, if they were in town, I’d buy them a beer or whatever.

But just how much damage can you do to a personal brand of 52 followers?

I listed them, so not too much I hope.

And if any of my newly enhanced following are reading this, I’m sorry I bought you.

But stick around and I’ll treat you good.

I promise!

The Only Statistic That Counts

I like to get away when I can. So I’m lying in a hammock in Tulum sipping an ice-cold Pacifico.

The hammock is gently rocking thanks to a constant offshore breeze.

Four pelicans glide overhead in formation and then dip where the turquoise water meets the almost white sand.

Tulum is a beach town in Quintana Roo, a state in south-eastern Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula.

Watching the pelicans until they fade into grey smudges, it’s hard to believe I’m in a country engulfed in a drug-war.

But as the BBC reports, according to federal government figures, 47,515 people have been murdered by narco-terrorists in the last 5 years.

Conversely, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the murder rate in the Yucatan is 0.1% per 100,000 of population. No US tourist destination even comes close, to being as safe as I am here.

Statistically, 0.1% is insignificant, unless you are the unfortunate one-in-a-million.

In which case the statistic becomes hugely significant, albeit posthumously.

The Internet may not have been made for statistics, but its binary DNA seems made to order for their proliferation.

Sites like Survey Monkey and Poll Monkey make it easy for anyone to spit out fresh, crunchy stat bites.

Not unnaturally, the flip side of proliferation is desensitisation.

9% unemployment is terrible, it weakens society and affects us all to some degree, naturally I sympathise--but hey I’m alright Jack!

Hell, I’m on vacation.

Unemployment statistics, like crime statistics only really matter when they affect you directly.

The further they get from the centre (you, family, friends, and friends of friends) the less you feel their impact.

If that sounds callous, it’s only 51% callousness brought on through extreme statistical overload.

The proliferation of statistics inevitably means a correlative decrease in credibility.

You can find stats to support any and all points of view.

From the cynically disingenuous, beloved of lobbyists and politicos, to the deliberately goofy, it’s misinformation by the numbers.

Until the only statistic that counts is the one you believe.

It’s as well to remember it’s a belief and not a fact, unless you can prove it, and chances are you can’t.

As the man said, there are “Lies, damned lies and statistics,” the question is which man?

Fittingly, the quote has been attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, Alfred Marshall and Mark Twain.

So it’s a one-in-three chance we even know who coined the phrase.

Time for a second beer, or will that be my third?

Every cliché was once original

I was walking past the Pizza Pizza near my office.

They had a sandwich board outside, appropriately advertising sandwiches.

And not just any sandwiches, but sandwiches on “artisan ciabatta buns!”.

I asked the guy behind the counter and of course, the buns are frozen.

Now whether food can be both “frozen” and “artisan” is questionable.

But as the LA Times reported on Sept 28, 2011 “Wendy's has its Artisan Egg Sandwich, Ralphs Markets offers Private Selection Artisan Breads and Starbucks sells Artisan Breakfast Sandwiches”.

More intriguing than foodie nomenclature, is the speed of the word’s downward trajectory.

In just a few years, “artisan” has become a cliché to be avoided, and evidentially it’s not alone.

Lake Superior State University just released its 37^th annual list of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness.

Their methodology is hardly scientific - the public basically nominates words they’re fed up with.

This ad-hoc approach probably explains how “occupy”, as in Occupy Wall Street made the list.

According to Wikipedia, OWS only started on September 17, 2011.

Can a word really reach it’s sell by date in less than 4 months?

Apparently it can.

From kilobytes to petabyte, language is changing faster.

And it can legitimately be said that acceleration is just as much part of the zeitgeist as innovation.

"Faster, Faster until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death", as Hunter S. Thompson said.

Our love affair with speed is inextricably bound with our need for the new.

So we don’t just consume tangible products like cars and fashion and technology.

We also consume ideas, creating a vortex of novelty and redundancy, and nowhere is the churn more pronounced than with business jargon, where today’s hot phrase is tomorrow’s cliché.

And if you blinked, well you know…

And business publications from Inc to heavyweights like the Economist and Harvard Business Review implore us not to use certain clichés.

But dismissing a phrase simply because it’s a cliché seems foolhardy, because not all clichés are created equal.

Low hanging fruit may be an evocative metaphor, but it’s an unnecessary piece of business jargon.

You’d be better off saying: easily attainable objectives or rapidly achievable results.

It’s easy to forget every cliché was once original.

Thinking outside the box, contrary to popular wisdom, is an extremely elegant phrase.

You may not be aware of the phrase’s origin describing a solution to the nine dot puzzle.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJS4TvjTDaI]

It’s a metaphor rooted in reality and purpose and one that’s not easily paraphrased.

But use thinking outside the box in a meeting and you’ll be lucky to escape with a funny look.

The problem with thinking outside the box is not that the phrase is a cliché, but it’s a cliché that’s become diluted through misuse.

While E=mc2 and the iPhone are examples of thinking outside the box, your new promotion for acme widgets almost certainly isn’t.

But we crave the next new, so we shoot the messenger anyway.

Brevity is Good

Merry Christmas.

Driving Innovation

In January 1948 post war Germany lay smashed and broken. And Heinz Nordhoff started his new job.

He’d been hired as head of the Wolsfburg Motor Works.

The first thing he did was replace the English sign with one that said: VOLKSWAGENWERK

The British who were supervising the plant sensibly overlooked this small act of bravado.

But it didn’t escape the attention of the rag-tag, largely refugee, workers who produced a quirky little car that came to be known as the Beetle or Bug.

The second thing Nordhoff did was move into the factory.

For six months he slept there on a cot.

This also got noticed by the demoralised workforce.

Two months later, he was summoned to a meeting in Cologne.

On one side of a conference table sat Henry Ford II and Ernest Breech, Ford Motor Company’s chairman.

On the other side were Colonel C. R. Radclyffe of the British Military Government and Heinz Nordhoff.

The purpose of the meeting was simple, to persuade Ford to take over Volkswagen -- for free.

When it came to decision time Ford turned to Ernest Breech for his opinion.

Breech replied, “Mr. Ford, I don’t think what we are being offered here is worth a damn.”

And the verdict was unanimous.

A British company,  The Rootes Group had turned down the same deal the year before.

Sir William Rootes dismissed the car as, “too ugly and too noisy.”

Curiously there is no record of either Rootes or Ford driving the car.

Still, one thing was clear.

They couldn’t give Volkswagen away.

It wasn't hard to see why.

The plant lay in ruins.

Allied bombs had shattered large areas of the roof and all the windows.

Much of the floor was ankle-deep in stagnant water.

Production was pitifully slow, at least 300 man hours per car.

German Reich Marks were almost worthless, so raw materials like steel and coal had to be bartered for Volkswagens.

The only buyers for the car were the occupying forces.

Even though it had been designed by the legendary Ferdinand Porsche, the VW's engineering was hardly noteworthy.

Air cooled engines had been around since the 1900s.

Rear engine design went back to the earliest days of cars.

Ditto rear wheel drive.

Independent suspension was not unusual.

There was nothing innovative about it

And it was small and funny looking.

But Heinz Nordhoff thought different.

And he left the meeting determined to make VW the largest car manufacturer in Europe.

He realised these features had never been combined in a car with such good fuel economy and reliability at such a low price.

And that was an innovation.

It was a car Porsche had designed from the inside out.

A car that looked funny, only because its bodywork used as little steel as possible to cover the engineering.

Post war Europe was going to need cheap reliable transport.

And Nordhoff believed the Beetle could provide it.

He just had to figure out how to make them efficiently and sell them effectively.

So although there was hardly any production, he instigated strict quality control.

And although there were hardly any sales, he decided VWs would only be sold the VW way.

Even as the factory lay in ruins he sketched out the blue print for a global dealership network on old cardboard boxes.

His strategy was revolutionary and very simple.

Service first, then sales.

Nordhoff was determined to “provide the best service in the world”.

Gradually his vision became reality.

By 1949 VW had recruited over 200 dealers throughout West Germany and production reached 46,154.

When the company expanded to Canada in the 1950s, parts worth $30,000 were shipped, before a single car was sold.

It was the antithesis of the sales driven North American auto industry.

As VW expanded into the US, they insisted that their dealerships all looked the same, with uniform signage and service bays that were clean and brightly lit.

And service did drive sales.

The millionth Beetle rolled off the assembly line in 1955.

In 1961 Volkswagen became the third largest car manufacturer in the world.

By 1962 a million Volkswagens had been sold in the USA.

Henry Ford II congratulated Nordhoff personally.

He had taken a white elephant and turned it into an empire.

How did he do it?

This is how Nordhoff outlined VW’s philosophy in 1961:

1. To develop one model of car to its highest technical excellence.

2. To dedicate ourselves to the attainment of the highest quality.

3. To destroy the notion that such high quality can only be attained at high prices.

4. To subordinate technological considerations to human ones.

5. To give the car the highest value and build it so it retains that value.

Good advice for the innovation business.

Even if you're not building cars.

N.B. the majority of facts in this post are from Walter Henry Nelson's excellent book, Small Wonder -- The Amazing Story of the Volkswagen.

Benetton 2 Vatican 0

Benetton’s new campaign employs some masterful Photoshop technique, one of  those rare instances where the execution is so flawless, it is the concept.

And who can hate the concept of Unhate?

Unhate is pretty close to love and you can’t hate love, can you?

As masterful as the Photoshop manipulation is, it’s nothing compared to the company’s manipulation of the Vatican.

They hung a huge banner of the Pope kissing the Imam from a nearby bridge.

This unbridled provocation left the Holy See somewhere between St Peter’s rock and a hard place.

Not to denounce the image was unthinkable.

But denouncing it would bring world attention.

Catch 22.

So predictably Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi spoke out against the campaign:

"This is a grave lack of respect for the pope, an offence against the sentiments of the faithful and a clear example of how advertising can violate elementary rules of respect for people in order to attract attention through provocation,"

He said, thus making my underline a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Maybe they didn’t have a choice.

But they did have a precedent.

Because Benetton did more or less the same thing in the 1990s, with Oliviero Toscani’s original United Colours of Benetton campaign.

Only this time it was an image of a priest kissing a nun that drew the Vatican’s denunciation and worldwide media attention.

Given they had no choice, they still had an option to act more wisely.

Because it wasn’t like the Vatican didn’t know what would happen when they denounced the current ad.

True, their protest got it withdrawn, but their intention to pursue legal action will only keep the campaign in the public eye.

And I'm not sure what their legal grounds could amount to.

A case for defamation will be shaky and I predict it will never get to court.

Here's why:

First, is the image actually of the Pope?

Second, if it is, are the image rights cleared?

Third, irrespective of the answers to the questions above, are they objecting to shades of homosexuality, or inter-faith acceptance?

I would say both are equally shaky ground.

Maybe they should have handled it a little less stridently.

A little more humorously.

Maybe they could have said something like:

“The Holy Father endorses love, but not the unauthorized use of his image.”

And left it at that.

Soft power instead of hard power.

I'm neither a theologian or a diplomat, but I doubt it would have made the situation worse.

After all none of the other world figures in the campaign have reacted so vehemently.

As the saying goes, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

But the Vatican shouldn’t feel too bad.

However adroitly they were played by Benetton, it was nothing to the way Benetton played the world’s media.

Will it sell more sweaters?

I think so.