Some of the brightest, most future facing minds in marketing & innovation (and me) came together at Collider's first ever Madtech summit in Central London earlier this month.
Innovation, Artificial Intelligence and virtual reality were hot topics, but the question at the heart of the debate, which included representatives from Camelot, Puma, media agencies and start-ups was one of the toughest tasks facing the industry today: how to embed innovation in to our businesses.
The acceptance of the need to be open to change and break down traditional barriers which hold back brands and agencies in trying new things was a key outtake from discussions on the day, however those in the room found common ground on the issues faced with pushing such solutions through:
1. Innovative technology solutions, by their nature, are new and require a leap of faith from brands to test them
2. Allocating budgets towards solutions such as VR, AI and other future technologies is problematic as they don't sit in traditional marketing pots (press, TV, digital etc).
3. None of this should stop senior brand stakeholders from pushing for innovation across their businesses and expecting their agency to be ahead of the curve in bringing them the latest and potentially most beneficial solutions
It is instructive to look outside our day to day for stand-out examples of innovation at work.
There are some revealing anecdotes in Alastair Campbell's new book 'Winners', which examines the remarkably consistent traits of successful individuals and teams across business, politics and sport.
None more so than the story of Barack Obama's fight for party leadership with Hilary Clinton.
Obama's use of digital and data to gain the upper hand has been well documented, but what becomes clear in the book is that whilst The Clinton camp saw the value of the digital tools available to them, the role of harvesting data to help the campaign was siloed and entrusted to a few individuals.
In other words, digital was 'going on over there somewhere'.
Obama understood no more of the intricacies of the data available, but he understood its potentially vital importance in driving him to victory.
Thus he hired the best minds around and embedded them at the core of the campaign trail. Any potential marginal gain they saw from the data was aired and acted upon.
Whilst the opposing camp felt safe in the knowledge that opinion polls showed them coasting to victory, Obama's team got under the skin and segmented the data to determine the opportunities to sway votes and it ultimately resulted in a victory.
There are clear parallels here with the way big corporates and even media agencies operate.
For this reason, it was hugely encouraging to see that those present at the Madtech summit included HR heads as well as agency innovation teams and client heads.
If we wish to truly embed innovation at the heart of our industry and businesses, it will require not just a specialist few, but a leadership team invested in innovation from the top down, so that those holding the purse strings can rely on a workforce who buy in to their ethos and possess the knowledge and skill set to make innovation a reality.
The relatively recent reinvention of Lego as a mass appeal, cool, fun for all the family brand (a modern day Simpsons?) has been a revelation, and it's interesting to note that their staff received social media upskilling as part of this effort.
This in itself represents an innovative attitude to change - if 50% of your staff are trained to be open to innovation, it's possible to transform from a boring-old-build-a-castle-with-bricks brand in to a relevant, revitalised brand with mass appeal and viral marketing which enters the cultural zeitgeist.
To me it's clear the appetite for innovation is as prominent as ever.
The attitude of those in the room on the day was a refreshing desire to break down traditional models by involving as much of the workforce as possible in the innovation curve.
When even Lego can make themselves cool again, and 90 year old brands like Puma are so open to change, the signs are good.
Innovation shouldn’t be something that’s ‘going on over there’. It should be at the heart of our businesses and in the minds of our employees to ensure we keep up with the trend and drive better business results.
By Tom Casswell, Account Director, Havas Media
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