Why every single digital agency in the world is a failure

Digital media allow you to do the most astounding things.  Engagament, measurability, personalisation, virality, blah-de-blah-de-blah. And many digital agencies all over the world have done wonderful things in all these areas.

But there is one glorious property of the digital age which no brand has ever exploited. Which suggests there is something wrong with the way digital agencies approach problems - or perhaps the way they are used. Or paid. Or something.

My colleague Candace Kuss at OgilvyInteractive recently Twittered the question "Why didn't a mobile brand invent Twitter? And why didn't Kodak invent flickr?" Funnily enough Russell Davies had made exactly the same point a few weeks before.

The marvellous digital property of which I speak is this: it is possible online to create something of enduring and self-sustaining value which attracts and maintains an audience without requiring that media money be constantly shovelled in its direction.

Sales promotion people use the phrase "self liquidating" of any promotion which financially washes its own face (because the £3.95 cost of the cuddly Charmin bear, say, covers all the client's costs). The internet makes possible something you might call self-liquidating brand building. The maintenance of brand saliency under its own momentum. (Google, eBay, etc, do rather a good job of this, being among the world's most valuable brands while spending minimal sums on bought media.)

And it's here that our record has been less impressive. I would love to be corrected here, but I cannot think of a single case where a brand has created something of lasting value online (I obviously exclude the more obvious transactional mechanisms here - online check-in, Tesco.com, etc) which had more than a flash-in-the-pan entertainment value.

Not a single Facebook application has been created by a brand - at least not yet.... and as far as I know no major brand has created a widget or a gadget. The greatest ever mobile application  was never supported by a brand - and seems to have disappeared - while millions have been spent by those same brands creating silly handset games or whatever.

So what's with the ephemerality thing? Is it that we focus too much on attracting audiences through entertainment and too little through creating utility? Are we still trapped by a campaign mentality "and, for my next trick, this brand will....".  Or is there some other problem?

Any suggestions welcome.....

The Campaign Award for Unfashionable Briliance

Every single conference is full of them: the innumerable self-congratulatory adland references to Great Brands Metrosexuals Really Like. Innocent. Apple. Nike. The Guardian. Fresh & Twatting Wild.

Nothing wrong with this, of course. They are great brands which, as all great brands do, understand and flatter their target audience. It's just that their target audience always happens to be, er, us.

I'm poddling along to D&AD this evening where I have no doubt that the assembled Camdenites (motto: "Retouching while Rome Burns") will give a lifetime achievement award to one of Jonathan Ive's farts. But for now I'd like to spare a moment for some wonderful brands which never receive a peep of recognition from any of us.

Here are my first four nominations for inclusion in the Unfashionably Brilliant Hall of Fame.

Argos. If this chain were Japanese, you'd have no end of London Planners singing its praises. A very rare bricks and clicks retail success story. As Travelodge, below, appeals to the inner Calvinist in me.

National Express Coaches. Coach travel (see George Monbiot) needs to lose its downmarket trappings and reposition itself as the greenest mode of travel - which it is. But National Express is already an astounding innovator: amazing pricing, smart SMS ticketing, onboard wifi, the works.

Travelodge. An extraordinary Private Equity Success Story. A fabulous website. And truly brilliant pricing. They even sent me a complete location list to upload to my GPS.

Finally, on the subject of lodges, The Reverend Dr Ian Paisley. "No one likes me, I don't care." He has ploughed the same unfashionable furrow for 40 years. But when I see him shaking hands with Bertie Ahern I finally know progress has been made. Someone that unfashionable won't sell out, you see.

Okay, what are your nominations? A bottle of Sherry (also unfashionably marvellous) for the best suggestion.

Fireworks or Explosives?

Richard Warren has just remarked that ad agencies should be doing far more than making advertising for their clients if they are to prosper. I entirely agree.

But Chinese history suggests that other people may get there first.

Everyone knows how the Chinese invented gunpowder. But thought it was a spendid way of producing fireworks.

We currently hold a special formula for business ideas: but we use it to make nice content.

Like the Chinese, are we just too preoccupied with sound and vision - loud noises and pretty colours - to realise that ideas can do more than gain attention: they can change the shape of things?

Look at your clients' budgets. How much of this money is spent on communicating things - on media costs? How much is spent on doing things - or creating something - a service, a new level of World of Warcraft, putting wifi on trains, whatever? How has this changed since 1994? Not at all? My point exactly.

Is Planning killing Blogging?

Unlike a Mr Lowery, who believes speculative online discussion is detrimental to the serious business of planning, I am seized by the opposite fear: that the tedious demands of daily work may be distracting planners from their all-important blogging.

This is not a facetious point, by the way.

One of the most useful contributions to discussion of "brand ideas" is the notion of the "generous idea": an idea which is neither self-contained nor finite in its means of expression, but which allows for repeated, fertile adaptation and development in almost any medium or discipline - and by people other than those who conceived it. It is no surprise that this notion arose first in the blogosphere.

Now it might have been Russell Davies who came up with this vitally important distinction in the world of ideas; it might have been Richard Huntingdon or someone else entirely. More likely, given the nature of the community, the concept arose through discourse. But, what's really significant is that, when I publish this on the Campaign blog, I won't get 25 whingy letters from different planners claiming that "I came up with the concept acting entirely alone and unaided and Russell/Richard/Mark just stole it. The Bastard"

And, say what you like about the planning blogosphere, it is this which distinguishes them from almost everyone else in our business. They are simply a little more 'generous' with their ideas.

By and large creatives don't blog; account men don't blog; media buyers certainly don't (though channel planners probably would). Why not? There are plenty of reasons - but one likely factor is that these other people are typically more interested in using ideas to secure individual advantage within their field than to advance the overall sum of wisdom.

The typical creative team treats its latest idea with the kind of furtive secrecy that is normally unknown outside an Al Quaeda cell, selfishly guarding their every thought lest someone else apropriate it. Planners, by contrast, are more generous, more eager to share.

It is for this reason that they are displacing creative people as industry rockstars. For while many creative people (in the UK - not so much the US) selfishly confine their thinking to the brief-by-brief level of execution in one medium at a time, it is planners who open up their minds to whole-brand questions, in the process becoming the greatest force in promoting effective integration between disciplines.

There are, of course, generous creative people: in fact a kind of generosity of thinking and a readiness to collaborate is what distinguishes a brand-level creative from an ad-level creative; those rare generous thinkers are also priceless in media and, of course, in digital agencies. There may well be generous account people, though as "Nature's BMW drivers" they may find the concept of giving away thinking as unnatural a form of behaviour as slowing down to let someone out of a side-road. But planners seem more possessed of the quality than anyone else.

It is quality which, in a world of 'polyphonic' brands (another blogosphere concept) will be more than just valuable, it will be essential. Because the notion that an entire brand can be reflected through one idea from two people in three media is fast becoming untenable. The people whose thinking is generous enough to co-opt lots of other people in the co-creation of a brand will be the people who suceed. 

So don't complain if your planners are blogging. They are just practising for the future.

Sir Patrick Moore's greatest observation

The main reaction to Patrick Moore's remarks - that TV is a Gynocracy, far too concerned with makeovers and other fripperies - was the usual Guardianesque hand-wringing. How could he say such a thing?

Me, I don't think he went far enough. My own impression of television is not merely that it is dominated by women but that it is almost exclusively the preserve of women called Jane. This seems unfair.

Now before you get grumpy, I am reliably on record as saying that far too many major industries in the UK (the railways, the telcos, management consulting, mobile telephony) are excessively controlled by men. Typically a rather left-brain man far more preoccupied by systems than with with service.

As further proof of my new man status I even went and bought my own copy of "Inside her Pretty Little Head", a splendid book about marketing to women by Philippa Roberts and, er, Jane Cunningham. (I was going to send my PA out to get it for me, but the trip would have taken her past Russell & Bromley and she would have been gone for sodding hours).

But, new man or no, I still think Sir Patrick's is a fair question to ask. Because I do not subscribe to the current left-wing doctrine that the best way to improve the status of anyone brown, non-Christian or female is to absolve them of all criticism for anything they do.

Controversially I don't think that homophobia is okay if you are a called Tupak, that female subjugation is fine if you are called Mohammed or that genocide is no problem if you're called Saddam. And so I don't think that frivolity and trivialisation are okay if you happen to be called Jane.

Frankly I think the current preoccupation with interior decoration, makeovers, clothes, shoes and fancy goods is now excessive. It is wrecking our high streets - for God's sake, how many shoe shops do we need?. And it is also wasteful (clothes thrown out after a few months, kitchens after a few years). It also trivialises: depressing to note that practically half of the readership of Heat are graduates.

This girly-and-proud-of-it approach contrasts unhealthily with the US where a far greater share of household income goes on Bass Fishing boats, leaf-blowing machines, gas-barbecues, ride-on mowers and other large metal things, and where the average woman could competently handle a U-Haul Truck.

But I don't mind this in itself - we all must find ways of enjoying life. I simply mind that it never receives a word of criticism from anyone. In fact it is universally celebrated. And that, I think, may be in part down to the Janes.

But what do you think? I'll report Sir Patrick's remarks below - let me know your reaction.

Quote begins here....

Veteran astronomer Sir Patrick Moore has blamed women bosses at the BBC for ruining television with a galaxy of lifestyle shows he says should be consigned to the nearest black hole.

"The trouble is that the BBC now is run by women and it shows: soap operas, cooking, quizzes, kitchen-sink plays," he told the Radio Times. "You wouldn't have had that in the golden days."

Sir Patrick, 84, who is celebrating the 50th year of The Sky at Night, one of the world's longest-running series, said television was now "much worse" than when he started out.

Political correctness has wrecked some of his favourite shows, he added.

"I used to watch Doctor Who and Star Trek, but they went PC - making women commanders, that kind of thing. I stopped watching," he said.

Moore once even cast a monocled eye over EastEnders while in hospital, but said he wasn't hooked.

"I suppose it's true to life. But so is diarrhoea - and I don't want to see that on television," he said.

Women newsreaders didn't escape his criticism.

"These jokey women are not for me," he said.

"There was one day (in 2005) when BBC news went on strike. Then we had the headlines read by a man, talking the Queen's English, reading the news impeccably."

Moore, who admitted being "rather hurt" earlier this year when the BBC put out the 650th edition of his program at the unearthly hour of 1.55am, has dreamed up a solution to TV's woes.

"I would like to see two independent wavelengths - one controlled by women, and one for us, controlled by men. I think it may eventually happen."

The BBC shrugged off the criticism, describing Moore as one of the most loved figures on British television.

"He is, as always, forthright in his personal views and that's what we all love about him," a BBC spokesman said.

How unassailable is Google?

You probably assume that Google is completely untouchable. Give me a few billion and I'll happily prove you wrong.

Warren Buffett, on buying into Coca Cola, justified his decision by saying that "You could give me $10bn and ask me to unseat Coke from the number one spot in soft drinks - I'd fail."

I think he's probably right. But is the world's new number one brand quite as unassailable as its offline predecessor? I'm not sure.

Let's leave the brand to one side for a moment. There is the simple matter of product. After over one hundred years, Coke has attracted only one palatable competitor in its own category. Having shopped for my evening meal at M&S Food, I am content to trek a hundred yards or so to another shop just to buy Cola that tastes as God intended - and if you have tasted M&S Cola you'll know why.

Google, by contrast, has quite a few adequate direct competitors (purists will name or or two search engines they regard as better) and plenty more lateral competitiors - Wikipedia is one that comes to mind. They simply are not yet sufficiently better to justify breaking one's Google habit - the search engine equivalent of my hundred yard walk. One day they will be.

Unlike Coke, Googe sells direct. There is no intermediary distribution chain for the competitor to crack. Moreover Google's user base is spectacularly inter-connected - hence volatile. A Google boycott over some ethical infraction could strike in a week. Perrier style, Google may find recovery difficult.

 Then remember that Google is not a 2.0 play - it does not benefit from Metcalfe's Law. We are not drawn to Google because of its sensational array of advertisers, as we are when we go to eBay. To the user, the sidebar is a sideshow.

 Finally, the brand lacks the clarity and focus of its early years. And has also lost its charming naivety - the inevitable price of getting successful. Just as it is not credible for mawkish Scouser  Paul McCartney (a multi-millionaire for forty years) still to harp on about his Liverpool Childhood when receiving his Classical Brit, Google cannot play the innocent newcomer card forever.

Finally, Google's fortune to some extent rests on the labours of others. On the users who are identifying themselves by their searches and on the content creators whose content is being sought. (Wikipedia is now close to overtaking sex as a search term - though the two are not of course mutually exclusive).

The possibility exists for a competitor to offer to share revenue with users - or at least to reserve revenue to be put towards the charitable causes of the user's own choice. Couple this with a modest £5bn marketing budget - reasonable in view of the value that could be created - and you could make the Google throne a lot less comfortable.

Just as Coke is more threatened by bottled water than by Pepsi, so Google's nemesis will arive from an oblique angle. For this reason, I hope that Yahoo and Microsoft are not planning a full frontal attack.