The Lookinglass Consultancy

"In the long run, we're all dead," posited John Maynard Keynes. 

I say posited because recent announcements in the development of 3D printing suggest we may not be far away from a time where death becomes an option.

Far away being a relative term. Your children's children, perhaps. 

While we consider the ramifications of that kind of evolution, an email circulating this morning highlights the requirements of sustainable evolution within the current limitations of medical science.

• Knowing what you stand for.
• Applying those standards consistently.
• The capacity to evolve. Ideally, pro-actively.
• The ability to accept there will always be critics. No matter what you do. 
• The discipline to remain focused regardless.

In this case, good genes have also played their considerable part. Proving that when it comes to longevity, medical science is still the pupil.

Some lessons from today.

1. Don't build a business on all or nothing bets. Coming second in a football match means you lost. Coming second in business means you're Bill Gates.

2. Be precise in your vision for the future. Only then can you hold yourself accountable. The first step to improvement.

3. Learn from your mistakes. When something doesn't happen the way you forecast it, analyze why and what you can do to improve the outcome next time.

4. Don't expect limitless growth from a group without some mistakes along the way.

5. If you're an Englishman, never ever expect Germans to do what you want.

Around 5pm EST this coming Sunday, Germany will win the World Cup. 

It will happen because six years ago, having been unceremoniously dumped out of the European Championships - during which the team failed to win a single game - the German football authorities decided to rebuild.

The did not undertake this mission lightly. They didn’t embark on a conversation-heavy, action-light series of meetings and investigations. 

They hired a man and asked him for a plan.

Fortunately for them, and for the rest of us waiting for our respective countries to demonstrate there is a reason beyond passport issuance to believe that next time will be our time, they hired a man capable of giving them a plan.

They hired a man called Jurgen Klinsmann. 

Klinsmann had won the World Cup with Germany. He had played at the highest domestic levels of German, Italian, French and English football. He had moved to California, thereby removing himself from the day-to-day petty politics of European football and ensuring he retained objectivity.

Klinsmann did three things that are a model for anyone re-building a business.

One. He solicited opinions. From players and managers alike. Everyone who would have some influence over how his German players would play. Then he empowered them to make a contribution.

Two. He defined the characteristics of how his Germany would play. Characteristics that were based on well-established German traits. Being dynamic. Aggressive. And decisive. Traits that Klinsmann readily admits were the cause of two World Wars. But which he believed could be better Purposed on the football pitch.

Three. He built an organization capable of surviving his departure, in the knowledge that the emotional effort required to build the foundations would quickly create friction between him and the German Board.

It was not an easy transition. Early results were poor. And he almost lost his job after 18 months. Only a decisive win over the U.S. in 2006 keeping him in place for the World Cup that year.

His team came third. And was celebrated throughout Germany. Then Kilinsmann resigned and handed over the model to his young assistant, Joachim Loew.

Two years later, Germany were runners up in the European Championship.

This afternoon, they play in their second consecutive World Cup semi final. 

It is a case study in organizational re-structuring.

Vision. Execution. Evolution.

And built, not around an irreplaceable individual or a single skill. 

But around a Purpose and a set of timeless characteristics.

Klinsmann’s work has changed the face of world football. Created a template that others will follow. And will bring hundreds of millions of Euros worth of value to the German economy.

As an Englishman, praising German anything is hard.

But between now and Sunday evening I'll be doing something for the first time in my life.

Hoping for a German victory. 

Change indeed.

A week at Cannes is hard work. Physically. Financially. And emotionally. The relentlessness of what’s next being punctuated by the constant evaluation of how we’re doing.

How we’re doing is relative. To the day, the hour, the occasion and the group we are with. 

Cannes is geo-locational and hierarchical. Success being measured on a complex, unwritten, but widely known metric. Lunch at du Cap with two prospective clients is trumped by a boat ride to St Tropez with one, but beats drinks at the Carlton with three. And La Colombe d’Or is worth changing your flight home for. 

For many that don’t go to Cannes, particularly those that pay the bills, the week is seen as a waste. Of money, of focus and the opportunity to do meaningful work at home. 

It’s easy to see why. Four days in the South of France comes conceptually attached to the world of Ian Fleming. Beautiful, powerful women mingling with men in white suits in the pursuit of global domination. Proof that every spy novel comes from a basis of fact.

But beyond the billionaire’s yachts’ moored off St Tropez, or Cap d’Antibes - is that a helipad or a swimming pool on the aft deck and is Armani on board this week? - beyond the glistening sheet metal of the most expensive motors, beyond the limitless supply of rosé, the simple truth is that for any advertising-related business, Cannes is the most valuable investment of the year.

People comes to Cannes wanting to engage. Heads of companies, thought leaders, decision makers, movers and shakers. All are willing to meet, to talk and to explore what might be made of this. The blue and white strata of Ralph Lauren-inspired summer vistas removing limitations of imagination that otherwise restrict the vision of those paid to have one.

This alone makes Cannes worth the price of admission. The limitless possibility of meaningful and memorable conversation with people that can make things happen.

The other return on investment is membership to the club that Cannes represents. The club of, ‘I’m serious.’

If you go to Cannes you’re tempted by the potential. If you’re there it’s because you’re serious. Oh, the beauty and booze are part of the compensation. But use them as motivation even once and you’re not going back. Because if that’s why you’re there you don’t get it. And Cannes separates the don’t get its from everyone else like a canning factory.    

But there is waste at Cannes. Sleep for instance. Cannes operates in a different reality. Time passing six to eight times faster. That boat ride to St. Tropez for lunch takes 30 minutes, though your watch tells you it's seven hours since you left. Lunch at du Cap? 15. It is a reality that makes sleep impractical, every moment of disengagement a wasted opportunity to make a connection, have a conversation, promote an idea.

Fortunately, most people don’t. Sleep. At least not much. The four hours a night that seemed like a bare minimum when the week began, is reduced to nothing by the time Saturday come along - sixteen hours after we arrived on Tuesday.

The other waste at Cannes, is opportunity. Wasted by the ocean-full.

There are obvious examples. And some that are almost imperceptible.

Of the former, this year’s winner was Yahoo. A company desperate to be seen as relevant. Proving that money and its spending are not dispositive in an attempt at brand significance. Yahoo sponsored the Gutter Bar, a folly of immense proportions. Sponsoring the Gutter Bar is like sponsoring air. Everyone knows it's not true.

Yahoo also handed out purple flip flops to anyone they could find on the Croissette. All of which went un-worn, from what I could see. And promoted a branded sand castle event on the beach, at reportedly vast expense. Somehow seeing a team of people put Yahoo’s logo into a pile of sand does not convince me I should do something about my relationship with Yahoo. Nor does it tell me what they would like that relationship to be. In a world in which consumers and brands are having conversations, sticking your logo on my feet and in my face, morning noon and night is the act of a bored child, or a dying brand. Not a company trying to solve my problems or provide me with value.

Yahoo’s waste did inspire me to think about how to create the most effective brand placement at Cannes next year. The idea I came up with would change the way Cannes works for everyone that attends. And I’m going to suggest it to one of our clients. I’ll let you know if it goes anywhere.

But the greatest waste at Cannes this year was the opportunity for re-definition. By the Festival itself.

Cannes operated under the theme of  “Connections Made Easy.” As an example of truth in advertising, it leaves a little room for improvement.

Cannes is an analog event. It has a badly designed, difficult to navigate, hierarchical (that word again) website. And offered ‘Cannes Connect’. An unintuitive online delegate tool.

But at check-in you are handed an enormous canvas shoulder bag filled with reams of printed paper. You could hear trees crashing in Brazillian rain forests. The week’s schedule is offered in a booklet that has no page numbers. And is too large for any short or shirt pocket. 

“Connections Made Easy” is the foundational Purpose of advertising. And there is much about the Festival that encourages those connections. 

But the “Made Easy” part is a work in progress. 

Which makes sense.

Because Cannes is a reflection of an industry.

One struggling to separate from its past and embrace its future.

But one with the ability to change the way we see things. In this case, in 72 seconds.

Happy 4th of July.

I went to Cannes last week. I was not alone. 

In addition to Magic Johnson, there were about 6,000 delegates. As well as some 2,000 people who attended without seeing the benefit of registering for the seminars, workshops and Awards ceremonies.

At 2,800 Euros it’s been hard to argue with that decision in years past. The downside to missing the seminars and workshops being hard to discern. The results of a 50 year old food-chain that had little new to offer, and conversations each year limited to the debate of whether a Grand Prix would or would not be awarded. Whether the consumer gained any benefit from that discussion is open to debate. Albeit a limited one.

But over the last two years the advertising food chain has been bent out of all recognition. And at Cannes this year, the conversations inside and outside the Palais started to pulse to a different rhythm. That of getting started.

The future of advertising has been debated incessantly over these last couple of years. The tv commercial is dead. Publishing is dead. It’s the web. It’s branded content. It’s apps. It’s geo-locational. TV is back. And is here to stay (this I read on the way to Cannes). It’s digital. It’s integrated. It’s all about brands. It’s all about utility.

For an industry based on subjectivity, the desire of the cognoscenti to define the future in absolute terms is at best confusing. At worst, it’s destructive. And very, very expensive.

The advertising industry is about making connections. Between an advertiser and its customers. Everything else the rest of us do serves only that purpose. 

For fifty years, that relationship was one way. Today, it’s reciprocal. A concept that the industry has more success talking about than doing something about.

The advertising industry typically points to two pieces of work as representative of its ability to evolve. The first, BMW films, contributed to record breaking sales the year after they appeared on the web. That was nine years ago.

The second, Nike ID, is widely touted as the best example of an integrated platform. That work is nearly six years old. 

For an industry based on innovation and creativity, it shows a frustrating paucity of imagination. 

This year the festival awarded its Advertiser of the Year award to Unilever’s CMO, Keith Weed. During the week he described the industry’s attempts at digital evolution as reminiscent of high school sex. “Everyone talks about it, a few do it, no one’s very good at it.”

On Saturday night when he picked up the award he made a wish. “That a year from now, someone will have stopped talking about being integrated and will have done something integrated.” Hard to argue with that.

At best, the advertising industry is engaged in a reluctant revolution, the brakes to which  are being applied by the very DNA on which the industry is based. The vertical hierarchy of the food chain, from advertiser, to agency to supplier, being reflected in the internal structure of most agencies. 

Some mid-sized, creatively renowned agencies have begun to break down those constraints. Other companies, Mekanism and the Barbarian Group among them, have grown up around a horizontal model in which collaboration acts as both the glue and the fuel.

But with these relatively rare exceptions, the companies that deliver most of the industry’s work are still defined by a top-down model in which motivation is guided by winning awards, getting a better title and better clients, and the associated compensation that goes with all of that. 

And at Cannes on Saturday night as the flashbulbs flashed, it was easy to see the mortar being re-applied to the traditional model - virtual tuck-pointing to a tired edifice.

But through the strobe lights it was also possible to just make out the beginnings of a new industry. A horizontal platform. Founded on two traditional strengths. 

• The power of story.
• And our species’ limitless capacity for originality when we work together.

Over the rest of this week, I’ll talk about why those characteristics are so important, how to spot the obstacles that slow their growth and how to build them into a business model capable of leading the change. One comfortable with uncertainty. 

In the meantime, I encourage you to watch the Man Who Walked Around The World, provided for your convenience below.

As I said, the power of story, and our limitless capacity for originality.

But great delivery helps as well.