In is the new in. A Cannes Lions speech

In is the new In.

David Shanks.

davidshanks@oliver.agencyTwitter: @dgshanksLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davidshanks

Our agency world hasbeen getting further and further away from our clients.

‘The trouble with marketing and communications is that it is a little like the Americans and the British.

They are separated by a common language.’

“The challenge for communicators is to move from being viewed as a reactive function to a proactive one, engaged with the outside world of consumers and to connect more with the inside world of clients,” says one director.

We have got to adjust that positioning.’

Agency view.

Agency view Client view.

The Digital Panopticon

We are being watched.

The architecture of participation is inherently an architecture of surveillance.

OLIVER

500+ people globally.First in financial performance in The Drum’s list of 100+ independent agencies.

Google, Beats, Starbucks, Adidas, 3M, Pepsico, AXA, Britvic, KPMG and Kimberly Clark.

Independently owned.

Oliver = Dark horse

Oliver understands The Creativity of Time.

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And especially the notion that:

Time is a creative asset.

Time Convention 1.

Less time is now the most potent creative asset in the modern world.

We need to to turn the positive management of less time into long-term, brand building, strategic creative differentiation.

Quick means good in the modern world.

Turn this turbulence into true opportunity to stay ready.

Time Convention 2.

We are living in different dimensions from our consumers.

The biggest enemy to any agency is a fourteen-year old kid with a laptop.

Apps are made in a month or a day.

Consumers expect responses on the internet in under a second.

But developing ideas within this new quick-is-good mindset is one which too many agencies fundamentally refuse to positively recognise.

Time Convention 3.

The Battle for the Interface.

Tom Goodwin, Havas.

These companies are incredibly thin and flexible.

They own the interface where the profit resides.

Their consumers form impressions, picking up and sharing information from different sources.

They are nimble in the way they consume media.

And it’s put them – particularly Generation Y’s digital natives – ahead of where most corporate structures allow companies to play today.

It’s all about agility.

And we’re always playing catch-up.

Time Convention 4.

We must learn the value of rapid collision.

Our business is still based on separation.

We still do not like to mix unlike-minded people or situations.

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Collaboration is still generally restricted to specific categories of people who feel comfortable together because they speak a common language.

This is safety in numbers.

But purer solutions occur when you have more capacity for provocation.

Especially under time pressure.

Difference creates true differentiation.

Time convention 5

Time is now realtime

We also need to deliver dialogue in realtime, because given consumers expect responses in a second or even less.

Marketers simply don’t have the time to relay critical or highly relevant data to people who are not living the experience the way they are.

So. What if?

What if a different kind of time-positive global resource is now required?

How might it operate?

The clue lies in proximity, but is as a much a proximity of mind as physical closeness.

Managing time as a creative asset is now all about intimacy through proximity.

In is the new In.

With the new ‘agency’ part of this sweet spot was powered bypeople who are proficient in creativity and technology?

Who understand the shifts in society and who can steer a path

What if:

The need for agencies to be independent of their clients in order to represent the consumer.

Has now been replaced by the need for agencies and their clients to co-exist in order to understand the consumer.

With the new ‘agency’ part of this sweet spot was powered bypeople who are proficient in creativity and technology?

Who understand the shifts in society and who can steer a path

What if:

The need for agencies to be independent of their clients in order to represent the consumer

Has now been replaced by the need for agencies and their clients to co-exist in order to understand the consumer?

What if clients and agencies worked together through mutual, extremely well-connected centres or cells of creative intelligence?

That are much about learning and listening as they are about producing and delivering?

What if these joint creative nerve centres experiment as much as they execute?

Who make lots of mistakes, in order to learn?

And quickly?

In much the same way a scientific company would employ a research and development centre?

In ways that rids us all of redundant barriers and unnecessary processes?

Through a tenuous and highly tensile relationship, co-dependent on mutual intelligence and shared desire?

Each working to both its own and the bigger global purpose.

Each sharing.

Each reacting in exactly the way the consumer demands?

The final question we must ask ourselves:

What business benefit would this shared intelligence provide?

The short answer is freedom.

Doing things quickly sets you free.

Liberating timely and highly-effective content to realise the ambitions of both brands and their customers.

Facilitating true empowerment through instant shared knowledge and understanding.

Constantly changing and reshaping as we barrel through complex communications universes.

By simply being faster, smarter and much more productive.

What we do know becomes irrelevant.

What we can learn quickly becomes critical.

In other words, freedom through time.

Together with our clients, in their world.

Perversely, in order to maintain independence.

Which is why In is the new In.

Thank you.