Jerry Maguire: “I‘m finished. I’m fucked.  24 hours ago I was hot. Now….I’m a cautionary tale.”

At the Global Festival of Media I facilitated a panel of technology entreprenuers around the topic of “shift”. In short, in the world of exponential change linked to things like technology, social, mobile and big data are agencies going to take avantage or be hit by the shift. The idea was inspired by the the “Shift Happens” video. The last proper version of it I can find dates back 2 years ago.  It is already 2 years out of date!!!! So I gave them some more recent stimulus. You can read it on this sister blog : The stimulus – are agencies really awake to THE SHIFT?

The wonderful serial technology entrepreneurs :Stephen Messler, Cameron Yuill and Peter Goodman were my panel. So having read some stimulus…I asked them to be honest to questions like these (and they were):

1. Are agencies capable of taking advantage of the shift, or are they in the stands watching the water on the pitch from exponetial change rise…just before the whoosh that drowns them?

2. Is it possible for agencies to change – if so what do they need to do?

3. If you were the CEO of an agency what  would you do tomorrow?

Their response:

1.Agencies don’t disrupt their own model.

In comparison to the agency and brand world our entrepreneurs were not just comfortable with change, but sought it out. To quote Cameron: ” as an entrepreneur  - I wake up every morning and poke a fork in my eye”.  To quote Stephen: “We look at a market or a space and think how can we @£$% it up”. To quote Pete, who is that unusual thing a British Tech Entrepreneur:  “The difference between me and my mates in the pub was that I was willing to fail. In the USA Tech community failure is a badge of honour.  It is seen as good experience. Not in the UK”.

The fundamental nature of a tech entrepreneur is not only the speed at which they are willing to progress, but their willingness to cannabalise or destroy what they have already built. Consider how Apple cannabalised its previous products with its new ones.  Tech entrepreneurs also don’t get wedded to their original idea if it isn’t working.  They pivot. YouTube started off as a dating site.  They could not get video to stream or upload and went off to fix it.  They then realised they had an idea and they pivoted.  YouTube was born. In contrast, despite the desire to change claimed by agencies from a Tech Entrepreneurs perspective agencies at best adapt and do so slowly. They are unwilling or unable to rip up what they do.  This makes them vulnerable to change, because eventually somebody else will – just ask Nokia.

2. Can an agency tell you the big question they are trying to answer?

Tech entrepreneurs seek to find a problem or a gap in a market and fix it. They are driven by an insight into an issue and go full out on the answer.  See YouTube earlier. From the entrepreneur perspective – whilst they can see all agencies re-branding and changing what they do or say they do…big data…social…branded content etc – they struggle to easily identify what is the one problem that an agency is passionately trying to answer. In a tech start up there is a vision and possibly IPO that everyone is aiming for. The IPO is not the objective.  You get to the IPO by making your answer work. Everyone is moving in the same direction and working together in a tech start up, or an ogoing sucessful tech business. Without this vision (the answer) it is much harder for an established agency to motivate all of its people to embrace change in the way a tech entrepreneur business can.

3. Does the business model lead the business?

Tech entreprenuers start with a business model in mind, but will change it, adapt it or invent a new one. There was mobile and online gaming before Angry Birds and Farmville – but the way they used micro payments or virtual products also made a big idea much more commercial. Agencies need to ask themselves whether the model they work to, or the business they are in (be it creative, or media, digital etc) – has really changed? There is a danger that agencies are defining both the market they are in and their model based on the past. Is there something else other than commission, fees or performance bonus? Should an agency look to other areas for its business? Just adding new functions in contect or social or data isn’t it. As the tech entrepreneurs would point out…at a time where media and communications in the broadest sense should be rising and with it their role – agencies are from their perspective not easy to partner with.  As Pete Goodman said ” The first question from an agency to me tends to be “how much?  - not what does it do?” . As Cameron Yuill pointed out ” We went to see an agency recently and they said they couldn’t do anything because they had yet to develop their IPAD strategy.” He was puzzelled: 1. Why was there had to be an Ipad Strategy vs a business stratgey and 2.What they were waiting for? As Stephen Messler commented “There are some brilliant tech businesses out there who would love to partner with agencies.  They tend not to be invited in. If they are – agencies need to understand that a partnership is not sticking an unbranded slide in a client powerpoint”

4. Be good at what you are good at.

The nature of tech entrepreneurs and tech people means they are good at some things and not at others.  Tech entrepreneurs are disruptive and get bored easily. As Stephen Messler honestly said “If you brought me into an agency I’d ultimately destroy it”. That means tech entrepreneurs admit they are not as good at building and running a process, integrating things into a total solution,client service and making sense of what they do for brands. They tend to talk more comfortably to techies about tech.  “Agencies are brilliant at what we are bad at” said Stephen Messler. In the entrepreneurs opinion…agencies should wake up and leverage what they are good at.  They need to be honest with themselves and realise their own tech reality. At present an MIT grad isn’t going to have an agency top of their list for places to work.

5. If agencies want a bigger place in the tech shift they need to take seriously issues on credibility and trust.

At the Global Festival of Media in 2011 I ran a panel called “When Wall Street meets Madison Avenue” (video here).Dell, Vivaki and Google were the panel. The industry audience (agency, media owner and marketers) voted that Google would be the biggest commercial beneficiary of the shift to data.   In 2012, the attempt by agencies to piggyback data and  to shift upstream in their business model still has big barriers in its way. They operate against the pressures for their services to be commoditised by procurement and pitches. The 2012 Festival of Media Survey of Global CMO’s found that 35% believe they are not paying enough for agency services. That still means the majority, if agencies offer enhanced data and technology led services and charge for it, are not convinced or willing to pay any more. Also the elephant – and its a big one – is trust. Regrettably for agencies, their shift into digital trading desks has had an unexpected spin-off.  Call it a misunderstanding – as Agency CEO’s did when probed on the number– but the fact remains that 72% of Global CMOs surveyed believe agency trading desks are not transparent.  72% is a heck of a misunderstanding. Further, 80% believe agencies are not as good at digital media as they are at traditional media. The size of these numbers from agencies prime audience to buy these services shouldn’t be ignored.  To put this in a shift context: when the i-phone first arrived Nokia deflected it by saying (a) we still sell 40% of mobile phones (b) they are only in smart phones and that is a small % of the market (c) the i-phone is only really getting traction in USA…not in other markets and certainly not in big future markets like India and China (they cannot afford it!).  That was 5 years ago.  WHOOSH.

6. Invest in the future – not the margin.

Yet the biggest issue for agencies adapting to, or indeed benefitting from, the shift may not be client belief – but their culture. As my “Shift Happen” panel of entrepreneurs pointed out, tech entrepreneurs disproportionately invest in building out their businesses and profit may come later. Agencies struggle to reinvest in the new/change as they have to deliver margin every quarter. My entrepreneurs pointed out that there is a limited amount of tech talent with ideas and they are expensive – “where do you think they’ll go and who is willing to support the investment that it needs?”

So as the facilitator and an ex agency man….what is my view?

Shift means that to go forward you can’t look back.  You need to look sideways. The longer you have been in an industry  - as most of the agency CEOs have – the harder it is likely that you can look at things that way. The changes that occur don’t stay in neat boundaries. The shift in the music industry is well documented, but it was not just from CDs to downloads. Madonna shifted from a deal with Warner Music to a deal with event and venue promoter Live Nation.  Music shifted to become the 3^rd biggest category in gaming.  Music is at the heart of reality TV – from American Idol, X Factor and now The Voice. The opportunities are there for the agency world to change – but can it look sideways and then move?

Personally, as I again watched the global media agency and media owner community discuss the future at The Global Festival of Media 2012, I saw a lot of bright people and some great thinking and debate…but….and it is a big BUT – I’m still reminded of attending the Festival of Media four years ago.  We were talking about then about change to agencies and digital. I was in the bar with one of the leading CMOs in the music business after.  He laughed.  I asked what he was laughing at.  He said “this media conference feels just like a music industry conference from 10 years ago.  We said and did exactly the same”.

The question is not shift for agencies. The question is …..are agencies brave enough to pivot in a way the music industry didn’t and in a way a tech entrepreneur instinctivel can’t help but do?  Hands up the Ageny CEO most willing to poke himself in the eye with a fork!

Jerry Maguire: “I‘m finished. I’m fucked.  24 hours ago I was hot. Now….I’m a cautionary tale.”

Millions of people have watched on YouTube various forms of the video “Shift Happens”. It makes real the realities of the exponential change we are going through – but the last proper version of it I can find dates back 2 years ago.  It was done for an Economist conference.  It is scary and eye opening. Watch it. Then think…. It is already 2 years out of date!!!!

Last week I facilitated the “Shift Happens” panel at the Global Festival of Media. The wonderful serial technology entrepreneurs Stephen Messler, Cameron Yuill and Peter Goodman were my panel.

Before we met as a panel, I pulled together some more recent stimulus for my panel to consider on the shift. I’ve shared it below.  The purpose of this blog is to just make you think for yourself first. This is the stimlus.  I have then written a separate blog which will give their views.  I’ll publish in a few days.

So….thinking about the shift…here is your stimulus:

The top 10 “in-demand jobs” in 2010 did not even exist in 2004. In 10 years time, over 40% of Fortune 500 companies will no longer be here. Surely now is a good time for agencies to consider what this means for them.

Joe Rickards in the Next Big Thing makes the present reality very clear: “When Social media activity is bigger than porn on the web (like now). 1 in 5 couples meet online (like now). What happens in Vegas stays on Twitter, Facebook, etc (like now). When Groupon reaches $1bn in sales faster than any company in history (like now). When 90% of customers trust peer recommendations and only 14% trust advertisements (like now).”

Sir Ken Robinson said: “For most people through history transport was the horse and wheel – then came the steam engine.  If you think of last 3000 years of human history as a clock. If each min is 50 years. Nothing really happened on the face of clock until 3 minutes ago. the internal combustion engine was 3 min ago. 2 min ago the motorcar. 1 min ago rocket propulsion. 50 secs ago space travel. 10 secs ago the reusable space shuttle.  Same is true of communications.  11 mins ago printing press invented in 1540. 3 mins ago Morse Code.  2 mins ago telephone.  90 secs ago the radio. 85 secs ago TV. I min ago the fax. 25 secs ago the PC. 12 secs ago the internet. 10 secs ago the mobile phone and now….. Google, Facebook and Twitter etc.  None of this has stopped.  It is getting faster.”

Sir Ken Robinson went on to make some other human connections: “In 1800 there were 1 billion people on earth – 97% lived in cities; in 1900 2 billion people – 15% in cities; in 2000 6 billion people  - 50% lived in cities; by 2050 9.5 billion  - 70% will live in cities. Some tools just help you to do things that we always do – others are transformative.  When print was invented in the 15th century it was transformative.  Within 50 years it transformed the culture of Europe because it liberated the access to ideas on a scale that had never been done before. The telescope and clock – changed perspective of who we are. Culturally the human species changes very quickly – technology leads this. Culture is the connections between people.  It is non-linear, organic, unpredictable.”

In 1930s when TV came out the New York Times said:”It would struggle as you had to sit to watch it – unlike radio where could listen and do something else. The average American family doesn’t have time for this. “The TV didn’t add itself to western culture – it changed it.  The car didn’t add itself to culture.  It changed it.  Many things happen and arrive. There are several candidates now for transformational technologies x by 7 billion people.

My good friend Russell Buckley has the most brilliant presentation on exponential growth. You can watch a version of it here. We are used to linear progression. You can guess how far you are from the back of the room – that is linear. However, exponential growth is rather harder to get your head around. Exponential growth is when things double vs a period of time – a year, a minute etc. As Russell explains:  If you sit in the top seat of a 150,000 sports stadium and a drop of water is placed on the half-way line.  If it then doubles every minute – so 2 drops are placed after 1 minute and 4 drops after 2 minutes – how long is it before you drown in the highest seat in the stand? The answer is 49 minutes.  This may surprise many. More of a surprise is that with 45 minutes gone you will be sitting in your seat and saying no more than “there is water covering the pitch”.  Then “whoosh” – you are dead.

We mistakenly think that the predicted “year of mobile” has never arrived. The truth is that mobile’s effect has been increasing exponentially.  We are about to see the “whoosh”.  Consider other industries who are smug that they have ridden the effects of digital – like the ad industry, or high street retail, banking or book publishers, etc.  Just maybe they are sitting in the top seat of their industry stand and have only noticed that there is water on the pitch.

The iPhone is only 5 years old this June. Nokia – once with a 40% of all mobile sales announced last week a 30% decline in sales and a net loss of £760m. To quote the famous Nokia internal CEO memo – “they are on a burning platform”. It seems not only too late to put out the fire – but also to leap. Consider the decline of an effective business model for newspapers, the closure of numerous record chains and so on. The truth is we haven’t just got technology. We have disruptive technology. The web, search, social, the cloud, mobile, connected TV, mobile payment etc is not acting in isolation – but together. Models and markets don’t just change – they mutate.

As the Economist says: “A surge of new technologies and social media innovations is altering the media landscape. Convergence is everywhere. It is easier than ever to reach a mass audience, but harder than ever to really connect with it.”

Nokia is one prime example of the shift effect, as are Microsoft; both didn’t see the changes epitomized by the rise of Apple.  Google also started off as not seeing what the trend to social media meant.  It is only is now trying to grow Google+ … including running an advertising campaign to grow a social media. The more recent business realities of Yahoo, or AOL are well known.  The recession created a perfect storm that didn’t change things. It exposed us to the reality that all sorts of business models were on thin ice.

The shift had already occurred, but everyone was ignoring it.  The cash cow of classifieds or recruitment advertising fell away rapidly to the web.  The model and cost of an editorial team, a paid for cover price and advertising got harder to make work.  Lower cost and more dynamic online models that curates content – particularly in trade sectors – has become increasingly the norm. Free and convenient is the distribution model for major newspapers in cities like London.  Metro is one example of a flip to the old model of newspapers.  Another is the London Evening Standard – which converted from a paid for title to a free and now has a bigger circulation than any national upscale newspaper in the UK.  New businesses like Groupon arose.  Groupon is in effect daily local based offers to an audience.  Yet – it never occurred to any national newspaper to pivot their model and their existing audience and to become a Groupon themselves?

“Big Data” is now the new agency buzz word. Digital and the concept of data capture, its use and value is something that most original non-digital media owners have been slow to grab onto. Their moves into digital saw it originally as an extension to their existing channel – and something else to sell.  Ad networks and now demand side platforms disrupted the assumption about an ability to charge a premium purely based on the display channel and content.  With a huge supply of online display inventory – the ad network, then the auction platform and now the sophisticated, data analytics based, real time bidding platforms have thrown a huge spanner into how advertising and media works. The rules people knew for how media is priced, what you look to target, what defines value and who gets a cut in the revenue along the way have changed. What defines a power position in this market has changed with it.

Search and Google, in case we forget, remain one huge disruptive influence to the assumptions of what is advertising and how decisions are made and influenced. Consumer behaviour, business behaviour and commercial behaviour have changed as a result.  Whole sectors and markets have been redefined in how they work: from insurance to airlines to retail. In the USA e-retailing sales are predicted to be $226bn in 2012. We all now understand the concept of Cyber Monday. The day in the run up to Christmas where online shoppers chase the final posting times to get online gifts. Cyber Street battles High Street for business. £456million was spent online in the UK on Cyber Monday in 2011 in just 24 hours – up 14% than the year before. High Street retailers are reacting by bring the January Sales forward to early December. Black Friday in the USA and Cyber Monday in many countries are concepts that show how a change in one consumer behaviour can dramatically affect another.  The concept of mobile shopping & social shopping are two more recent shift such factors. The influence on behaviour and decision-making that come from the reality of mobile, be it location based, connected to an app, or to the web, or social communities are starting to be felt.  Availability and price are no longer just confined to the store you are in or were going to.  Peer recommendations or reviews can significantly change intended choices and behaviours.

So now….having read this stimulus…be honest and answer these questions.  Ideally in the comments box below:

1. Are agencies capable of taking advantage of the shift or in the stands watching the water on the pitch before the whoosh ?

2. Is it possible for agencies to change – if so what do they need to do?

3. If you were the CEO of an agency what one thing would you do tomorrow?

For some other views on this come back and see the entrepreneurs view on agencies reality to THE SHIFT.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is the most widely used personality profiling indicators in the world.  (I happen to be a practitioner). It examines and evalauates our preferred style of dealing with the world and the people in it, and identifies our preferences on four dimensions.  The dimension relating to how we prefer to take in information is the Sensing-lntuition dimension. Those who have a preference for sensing prefer to take in information through what we would call the normal senses, to find out what is actually happening, recognising the practical realities of situations and seeing things “as it is”. Those with a sensing preference will be more likely to tell you literally what is in the picture (a ginger cat, the number of cans of lager etc). In contrast, those who prefer intuition have a preference for taking in the big picture, focussing on the relationships and connections between facts &  information rather than the information itself, seeing new possibilities and new ways of of doing things. They are more inclined to see things in the picture that are not literally there, like how the cat got in the fridge, what he might do next, or even what the cat is thinking.

Everyday we see or experience things, often we are exposed to the same thing as others. Then we mistakenly believe we are looking at a situation (or a picture) and normally assume that you are seeing similar things to everyone else. My stimulus is not the same as your stimulus. My answer to the same question will not necessarily the same as yours. The general population is over 75 per cent sensing with a minority being intuitive. People who have a natural tendency to see the more lateral and unusual connections are harder to find.  They will also normally be in the minority in most companies, teams, meetings and discussions. Intuitive perception can often find itself having a harder job getting heard.

So here is the bad news. New insight and ideas are hard to find anyway. To make it harder, we often exhibit this default myopia that not only makes it harder to see them, but harder for them to be recognised when they appear. We  can blind side ourselves to other perspectives and new ideas. We also can, some people in particular, discount what others see. Or worse, put them down for seeing it and saying it.  Because we don’t see what they see in the information – how can it be there?  In organisations that recruit to type the difficulty is even greater. More people see the same way. The culture over time shifts to seeing what it wants to see – and what they see is the same thing.  Those who may see things differently find it hard to get heard, they get seen as the weird sheep and commonly leave. When companies get to a situation where they can’t imagine what can come around the corner – because they cannot actually see it – it is often close to the moment when they get run over.

Now the good news and there are 5 bits of it:

1. We don’t work alone or have to look at things, or generate ideas just from our own perceptions. Stimulus combined with a fresh perspective is a potent recipe. Some perspectives you may not  like.  Some you may disagree with.  Some may not work. But you now have other alternatives to build on your thoughts or to provide the stress test to them.

2. Sensing & Inuition are preferences not fixed setttings in our personality.  We can all choose to act out of preference or appreciate those who can see things differently to us. Sensing & intuition are both fantastically useful in evaluating situations & coming up with new ideas. People with an intuitive preference can still sense and people with a sensing preference still exhibit intuition. They may find it not as natural to do, but they can still do it. We all sense when we do things like taste food, notice a stoplight or memorise a speech. We all use intuition when we do things like get stuck and come up with new ways of doing things, think about future implications for a current action, perceive an underlying meaning in what people say or do, or  see a bigger picture.

3.  Sensing + Intution – when we see each others perspectives, can make for biggest or most numerous of ideas. It is a mistaken belief to see those who have an intuitive preference as the only source of new inspiration.  They may be more likely to see the bigger picture, but they are also less likely to see what is under their nose. Is the idea for Google based on sensing or intuition. Of course, its based on both.

4. Breaking the habit of seeing the world only from your perspective can be done in minutes not days. When teaching people about facilitation techniques one of my favourites is to ask a group (say 10 people) to close their eyes for 30 seconds.   I ask them to think about “what have a cat and a fridge have got in common?”. (I’m not sure where I got this question from). Having done it, I then also ask them to guess how many different answers will get from the group in total. At most people guess about 10. The reality is normally way more than 10 – frequently 20. If you also allow the suggestions made to stimuluate others “both have feet”, makes someone else think “both have a tail” (the flex on the fridge), in a few minutes you can have 30 connections. The most bizarre of which to date was “you find them abandadoned in unkempt gardens when they are dead”. That came from a Finance Director.

5. The more you or a company does it – the easier it gets to do. You may ask why  30 connections for a cat and a fridge of any use to you or your business? The cat & the fridge exercise is an illustration of what can happen if, even for short time, a situation is created where people are forced to suspend their own perceptions and use a combination of their different perceptions to look at a stimulus. This is just brilliant news. Just do the maths. If 12 of us all saw the same two things in a stimulus the total answer would be 2.  If 12 of us all saw 2 different things in stimulus the total would be 24.

Thank god I checked my quarantine box this morning. Both Jennifer Aniston and Angela Jolie had sent me emails to me. I could have missed them.

Spam is a funny thing.  Intending to destroy your computer, or hijacking your email contacts to allow someone to exploit your friends, or just to fraudulently part you with your money because deep down you’d like a better erection. Yes. It’s fake viagra. The double con of fake viagra is that they may also send it to you.  If it isn’t Viagra – what is it? Very rarely people get caught doing it.  Here is a story about a man getting a “stiff sentence”.

Fake Viagra is also big business. I just wondered….if the most innovative people on getting you to pay on the web are pornsites – then how expert are the “Fake Viagra Boys” at optimisation of email headlines.  So – I rifled and researched through 4 days of my quarantine bin to produce this analysis.  I can now reveal the 12 (inches) strategies and the headlines used to encourage you to click through for the chance of a fake stiffy. We start out classical with Urgency and Discount, but it progresses through to Stud and ends in Surreal.  Michell Obama gets a mention, Jay Leno and Cockzilla…. and some may offend…or even arouse.

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Edward Munk’s Sheep of Destiny

My son who is 18 will probably have 20 different jobs and 5 different careers. The world he will live in won’t progress like the one I’ve grown up in.  It wont stay the same. I think back to when he was 4 and he drew a picture of an orange dinosaur. As a dad, I said, “great dinosaur”. Then for some strange reason I also said “the only thing is…dinosaurs are not orange”. Why on earth did I say that? He was 4. Was I trying to exert my authority? Could not knowing the colour of dinosaurs be a health hazard (like not noticing fires are hot?)  All I do know is he had the best reply…”who knows!”. Of course, he was right. Unencumbered by preconceptions and known rules – especially ones based on creatures that I’d never seen that died millions of years ago – he could let his thinking be free. He takes his A levels this year. Success is results. It is targets. To succeed you need to learn to the test. You can be successful in school and at work if you can learn what to think.  We could of course  also teach them how to think.  However, society and business as been preferring “what to think” over “how to think” for some time.  Systems, structures, businesses, schools, pupils have targets…grade targets, school league targets, quarterly company targets, banking bonus target.  You may find some time to just think differently….but the pressure from targets and the time and effort that they squeeze out of people often make them seem like a luxury that is easily  sacrificed to continue pursuing what the system demands on time.

As recession bites, businesses fail, people lose jobs and what was certain is anything but. If you are a newspaper or a journalist… is the model or your career going to stay the same? If you area a record company, a musician or artist is the model or the skill set going to stay the same?  If you are a bank or a banker…. a country or a politician… an airline or a pilot… a mobile operator or a phone maker…is the model going to stay the same?

I have a sheep on my laptop bag. It is Edward Munk’s Sheep of Destiny. “He smiles because he sees your future and oh how HAPPY that future be!”. Apparently, there are 3 types of sheep. 90% of sheep are follower sheep. They go where the other sheep go in the field. 9% of sheep are leader sheep. They decide where the sheep graze in the field and move them all from place to place. Then there are 1% weird sheep. They neither follow, or feel compelled to move from place to place organising everyone. They see the field from their perspective. In the normal sheep world weird sheep seem to have no real role. And yet, when crisis hits and the field is full of snow or a fox enters – it is the weird sheep who know how to escape through the dry stone walls . Of course, so can all the other sheep escape – but the leaders would have to give up leading the sheep the way they always have and the followers show their own mind. There were no doubt weird sheep working in the music, airline, banking and every other industry – but they didn’t like them as they didn’t fit. Many of them were seen as not fitting in and many left. Weird sheep don’t see things the same – that’s what makes them special. That’s why every company should have some and learn to listen to what they say at least some of the time. At schools and home we can make more sheep weird. You teach them how to think vs what and go wow an orange dinosaur…what made you think of that. If the world is guaranteed to not work out the way we expect don’t we want people who can deal with it…or perhaps enjoy shaping something different.

You have no doubt heard of the decline in bees.

The collapse in the global bee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honey bee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the global economy. In the UK alone, bees contribute £200m a year to the economy through pollination.

Bees play a crucial role in pollinating some 90 commercial crops worldwide.

 It’s not just fruit and vegetables; alfalfa, a major cattle crop, is 90% reliant on pollination by bees. The British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) estimates that if people were to take over the job of pollination from bees in the UK, it would require a workforce of 30 million. In Southern Sichuan, pear trees are pollinated by hand after the honey bee population was wiped out.

Bees  extinction would mean not only a colourless, meatless diet of cereals and rice, and cottonless clothes, but a landscape without orchards, allotments and meadows of wildflowers – and the collapse of the food chain that sustains wild birds and animals.  Is that serious enough for you.

Lots of research is going on into the decline in bees.   Colony collapse disorder is the popular described affliction.  The varroa mite, which attacks the bees a key cause.

What is now being connected is that the main cause is in fact a lack of biodiversity. The simple logic is that the human use of bees for professional pollination has led to the breeding of a limited numbers of types of bees and a lack of biodiversity to allow bees to natural survive:

• Biodiversity is…the variety of life on Earth > 13m species
• This is the real world wide web, and its all connected
• Oxygen you breathe from plankton in the oceans & leafy forests
• Fruit & vegetables you eat pollinated by bees
• Water, you drink part of a huge global cycle involving clouds, rainfall, glaciers, rivers and oceans.
• Biodiversity sustains these natural living systems
• It recycles waste, controls floods, regulates climate, etc
• It provides us with food, fuel, health, well being & future

Biodiversity is a thought many businesses might think about too.The lifecycle of a business is shorter and shorter.  World’s change. Markets change.  Consumers change.

Microsoft and Nokia once the leaders in their respective computing and mobile fields have seen their share prices steadily decline. They have seen their market dominance eroded.  Just recently, they looked to merge in the mobile space to take on rivals like Apple & Google.

Google recently bought Motorola. That is a heck of a leap for a technlogy company who provides web services to move into manufacturing handsets.  Apple, in case we forget, spent years just making computers until Steve Jobs returned and they then made portable music machines, an internet friendly mobile phone and most recently the tablet.

Google and Apple are, of course, the easy much heralded examples of innovative companies who are in the tech space.  Consider instead Tesco.  Once a UK supermarket, it is now mainly international, but also a bank, petrol station, insurance company and an online retailer.  Amazon started in books. It now sells many things. It also created the Kindle.

Success is often linked to the ability to innovate.  In hindsight, innovation sounds great.  The Ipad is a great idea. Yet we forget the Apple Newton.  Apple’s previous and failed attempt at  a tablet/pda. It was manufactured for Apple by Sharp in 1993 and killed off in 1998. Android is a great idea from Google and Google+ …as a sort of social network.. is getting traction, yet we quickly forget what happened to Google Buzz – Google’s previous sort of social idea that didn’t make the cut.  Everyone now talks about geo-location and check ins.  We may forget that Google bought Dodgeball a geo-location mobile check in service in 2005 before later closing it.  (The founders went on to start up again as Foursqaure.)  Google in fact has numerous ideas,over 100 acquistions, various innovations and not all of them have worked.

Albert Einstein once said “anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried something new”.  As the executives at Nokia or Microsoft or numerous other businesses pour over how their world changed – they’ll normally say they innovated. Nokia had its own version of an Apps store before Apple. In the N95 – Nokia had a internet enabled mobile pre the launch of the i-phone that got rave reviews.  Microsoft had Windows software virtually everywhere.  Its web browser Internet Explorer was the default.  Now few phones run on Windows.  In many countries, Google’s Chrome or Mozilla’s Firefox (a not for profit collective) are what people use to browse the web.

Microsoft, Nokia and so many businesses innovated.  However, they didn’t innovate enough outside their model of how the world works.  As bee hive owners look for the collapse of bees they look for a cause that isn’t them.  Be it the varroa mite or the effect of mobile phone signals or whatever.  The pattern is similar in business. Companies look for a culprit that was not down to them. When the world changes they hang on to what they have and try to re-engineer it. When the i-phone launched Nokia saw it as (a) small (b) an elite and expensive user group (c) only in the USA – a market they were not big in (d) one phone when they had many.

The truth is that breeds of creature, even species, eventually die out. The same is true of companies.  The issue for bees is not that the varroa mite or something else caused the bee population to plummet.  It is the fact that the diversity in the type of bees had been reduced from generation to generation.  We’d encouraged bees who were good at making honey or doing commercially pollination. We’d ended up with less and less types of bees. As we commercially farmed, we also wiped out the natural habitat of creatures that pollinate -i.e. help new things spread and grow. When the varroa mite hit – we had less species that could survive it – so the bee population could not fight back or adapt. We had  less places off the beaten track where new pollinisation could come from. We’d created a perfect storm for bees – with few places for the species to hide or regroup.

Biodiversity is just as important in business. Microsoft for all its focus on computers also allowed itself to diversify into games consoles with the X-Box. Originally, when it made software, it allowed itself to diversify into the internet with explorer.  As Google sees Facebook change online behaviour, it is in part protected by its other previous diversifications. It means all Google’s eggs are not in one basket called search.  It also means that the company has a mindset and attitude that hasn’t just come from building one type of bee.  The management approach that led to the success of Android is core to how Google now looks to re-energise its approach to the whole company.

Of course business bio-diversity comes with no guarantees.  It comes with deadends. It comes with what seems like unnecessary distractions on new fronts when companies are fighting battles at home. It does also come with a better chance of survival in the long term.  If you don’t diversify your business and your thinking you may survive for years. The one sure thing, however,is  if companies don’t diversify is that one day the end will come. When it does – it will come quickly and not from where you might expect. Markets, consumers and business don’t just change – they mutate.  Businesses need to allow themselves to do the same.

The other day I was in WPP global media agency Mediaedge:CIA.  Whoops – I mean MEC.  It was Campaign’s agency of the year in the UK in 2010. As they pointed out in the press release a few months back when they changed the name, that colon (between Mediaedge & MEC) has caused issues for people for ages.  Half the time they called themselves MEC anyway. Let’s be honest, its holding company WPP – started out as a shell company name bought by Martin Sorrell. As most industry old hands will know it stands for Wire & Plastic Products (shopping carts originally).

There is now some sense of poignancy to WPP’s name origins.  It reflects the pragmatic commercial nature of WPP’s founder. Regardless of whether WPP is where you would have started as a brand name – you combine it, the story, the Sorrell personna,  the PR machine – it is truly a powerful brand.

Now for the irony.   Many an agency spend their time advising major brands on how to differentiate their brand from the competition, or steer their communications so a consumer atleast understands what they do or stand for.   So why do so many agency names, agency naming, name changes and their own branding…. seem to owe less to imagination/differentiation and more to the letters left over in a hand of scrabble.  I’ve puzzled over this. I figure there is a simple answer.  There must exist a book on naming an agency.  I’ve never seen it, but clearly there are rules. Therefore, there must be a book agencies buy to help pick names. When you have your first child you get a book of names to inspire you.  When car makers name cars they use a book of animal names, or solar bodies, or just letters and numbers.  So, for the first time I reveal the 7 strategies to naming an agency. I use the word strategy loosely.

1. The Crosby Stills Nash & Young. This is the stock route and its still the most popular.  You take the founders name and try to make them sound like a decent rock band. Occassionally, people get the order wrong and you sound like a firm of solicitors – Archibald Ingram Streatham, Bartle Bogle Hegarty etc.  Don’t you think Bartle Hegarty Bogle sounds like a better band?  Here, of course, you are trading on the fame of the founders. You are also angling for the “pay me more when you buy me out effect”… because my name is above the door. At this point, the rock band ensemble strategy meets the Dolce & Gabana premium brand price stategy. The Crosby Stills Nash & Young route does have a few key issues.  First, it relies on the founders being successful, famous and sticking together.  In the agency world that can never be relied on.  Second, sometimes you may want to add the fourth or fifth Beatle.  Hurrell Dawson – added 2 senior partners a year or so into its life in Mosely and Grimmer (one has now left). WCRS (see acronyms later) – which was founded in 1979 as Wight Collins Rutherford & Scott – added its 5th Beatle at one point.  Having got the name order right and sounding more rock band than solicitor, WCRS went public. WCRS  then had the connudrum of how to accocomodate its fifth & sixth Beatle in 1985 with  Roger Matthews & Alfredo Marcantonio. (see 7 ages of WCRS).  It plumped for…wait for it…WCRS Matthews Marcantonio.  This from the agency that did BMW’s 7 series, Orange & Carling Black Label. Oh yes – the other issue associated with option one  is ego.  This breaks down into 2 key decisions. A.  Is your name in the title.  B. Where does it come in the order. WCRS is of course now part of the Engine Group – see group names later.

2. The pragmatic acronym. Having spent years with the names above the door – even if only a few – you just get sick (or the receptionist does) of saying the whole sentence everyday and 20 times a day if you do new business.  Add to that that the original founders have retired, passed on, or most young people who work there or you sell to go “who is he?” and the pragmatism wins.  Bartle Bogle Hegarty becomes BBH, Vallance Carruthers Coleman Priest becomes VCCP, J Walter Thompson becomes JWT.  You get the idea.Further down the line there is the international merger. The powerful UK agency is bought by the big network. In the process, commonly, the genius of the founders and their history gets lost as the international name and the largest footprint from the USA holds sway.  Abott Mead Vickers becomes AMV becomes BBDO. Boase Massimi Pollitt becomes BMP becomes DDB.  In the middle are the nonsense years where you hold onto both names for “transition”.  BMP DDB, or AMV BBDO hover for a while. Imagine if brand’s adopted the same strategy.  Between Marathon & Snickers name change we’d of  had Marathon Snickers.  What we’d recommend to others isn’t what the industry does itself. By the way OMD, Omnicom’s large media network is the merger of the DDB media network Optimum Media & BBDO’s Media Direction.  See how they cleverly both had “media” in the names. Media companies tend to do that and tell you what they do in their name.

3. The better legacy scrabble answer. Occaisonally, someone never starts the dance over time from founder names above the door that drifts into meaningless acronym to anyone who doesn’t know them 20 years ago.  The best example of this is PHD.  From its outset it was an acronym of its founders names Patterson, Horswell & Durden. Cleverly they ordered them to make it mean something else that was memorable and had another “intelligent” meaning which fitted their brand persona.  Now PHD is one of Omnicom’s global media agencies.  All of the founders originally sold out and then left – yet their company idea, their legacy and their names live on. Give these guys a job at a branding agency. PHD by the way is a 3 letter no vowel and 9 point score in Scrabble.

4. A made up name that means something or not.  If you put your ego in check and forget that when it comes to sell, or negotiate your leaving package, that having your name above the door gets you more personal fame and personal cash – you might do what you advise your clients. That is invent a brand name that has some meaning and resonance for what you do or believe. Mother, Adam & Eve, The Red Brick Road, Seven Stars, are among the more recent on this route.  If you go back you’ll find previous successful agencies in their time in creative and media world with names like Yellowhammer, i-Level, or Naked. What is intersting about this route is that it also tends to come with a passion to change the way the industry works…to buck the model.  That leads to an idea as to how they believe they want to be different and a brand name sort of just follows.  Of course, no doubt at some point in the future the years of building a differentiated and successful business coincide with the desire to sell up and cash in. At which point the defending of the name coincides with commercial pragmatism.  When you are acquired or you merge with someone else the name that has the most value for international business wins. The buisiness is worth more and you get more cash. “Hey I had principles when I started – but I’ve taken the risk and worked hard to build this thing. I’ll give up on the name for more cash.”  I once knew a fairy whose name was nuff. Would you change you name for money I asked?  She said “Fair Enough”.

5.  Car branding for media networks. Then there are the international media agencies who do branding.  Firstly, it is really hard for a few people to set up a media company – especially if it buys these days.  So you have very few founders names above the door in media agenies to start with.  Often they have grown up like spin-off sitcoms from their original parent ad agency and then the knocking together of all those same entities globally. Unlike Cheers which begot Frasier – the nature of international media agency brand names has more of a Ronseal approach.  There are 3 routes.  A. Eventually end up with a merger of acronyms – see MEC and OMD earlier.  B.  They find a thesauraus and look for words that sound like they are large, powerful and intelligent: Mindshare, Zenith, Starcom, Maxus, Carat, Initiative, Universal. Coincidentally – if any of these turned up as names for models from Ford you would not be surprised. C. You take the word media and add something to it: Mediacom, Mediavest, Media Planning Group. You get the idea.

6. Bond villain holding companies. In the world where agencies are now owned by holding companies, who are listed on stockmarkets and talk more about this quarter’s growth than the work, we then have the holding company brand name.  These holding companies are run more by the money men  than the ad men.  The names are neither meaningful as words or with the exceptions of WPP – as pragmatic as to be a bought off the self  as a shell company acronym that just does. Some, like Publicis, started life as an ad agency. As for the ideas behind most of them – perhaps the key driver was global domination. I asked my children to suggest what sort of companies do you think Omnicom, Interpublic Group, Havas, Aegis,WPP, Publicis are?  One of them said “are they names of the companies owned by James Bond Villains? I’m only saying.

7. The  legend branding route. You may end up creating an agency and making a lot of money. The truth is that some people had an idea, were always bothered about doing great work and doing the things the market wouldn’t. You may end up like David Ogilvy with your name still over the door of a global network years after you invented many of the rules on how to do better advertising.  You may end up like Bill Bernbach – the legendary creative with your name reduced to one of the Bs in global ad network DDB.  You could of course become a global network based on 2Bs and a H:  Bartle Bogle & Hegarty.  All legends, all with very different skills  and still with the power that when you say BBH it conjures up their names and what they’ve done. Of course, BBH is now part owned by Publicis – but the majority is held by BBH. So they still control their own destiny. As their strapline says. They zig whist others zag. You may end up like Patterson Horswell & Durden.  Known by those in the media industry at the time as 3 people who went against the network agency model, who built a business on better first and bigger second. No longer involved in PHD, but aware that many of the ideas behind it live on. Or you may end up like James Walter Thompson who in  1868 aged 24 completed service in the U.S. Marines Corp on the USS Saratoga.  He then moved to New York to find a job. Carlton hired Thompson as a bookkeeper. Thompson found that coming up with concepts and sales were much more profitable. He became he  a very succesful salesman for the small company. In 1877, he bought the agency for $500 and renamed it J. Walter Thompson Company. You may know where this idea ended up. It’s JWT. Of course we cannot forget Maurice & Charles Saatchi whose name lives on not as initials, but as a byword for an ad agency people know. Rather uniquely, not only is their name not reduced to an acronym, but like New York, it was so good they named it twice and twice again. First in the Saatchi & Saatchi network they founded, that they then left, but still continues as part of the Publicis Group. Second in the new global network and holding company they founded of M & C Saatchi that exists today. Global, founders names with intact initials and surnames.  These guys know a thing about branding, legend and legacy. They have a simple strapline that the company stands for “Brutal Simplicity of Thought”. I rememberwhat all these guys did and what they stand for many years on. That is powerful branding.If you want an acronym then QED,respect to you all. There is something for anyone to think about when they start up in a new agency or work in one that already exists. Good agency branding is really no more than “I wish I’d done that”.

We are now entering that moment for the 2012 Olympics where we forget what was promised. Instead, excitement kicks in that the Olympics are almost here. However, a reality check is needed. We won the Olympic Bid on a promise of leaving a legacy of more young people playing sport in the UK. We actively slagged off previous Olympics whose legacy was white elephant arenas in our bid presentaion. So pitch won – mind the gap in the strategy to deliver it. It is more distance of a javelin than height of the high jump.  Here are just 10 gaps that come to mind:

1. Where were the proper measurement objectives for the legacy? On  Insidethegames Jim Cowan points out that any obvious pre & post target for a legacy is what Tony Blair, UK Prime Minister, said in the presentation. “Our vision is to see millions more young people in Britain and across the world participating in sport and improving their lives as a result of that participation.” Having hunted around I found the wooliest of Labour Government legacy targets: “Getting people more active: help at least two million more people in England be more active by 2012 & inspiring young people through sport: offer all 5-16 year olds in England 5 hours of high-quality sport a week & all 16-19 year olds 3 hours a week by 2012″. If familiar with political promises, you may notice that the 5-16 year old wish is just recasting what should happen naturally in schools as a new target. Language like “offer”  & “help” are not the same as “participate”. The 2m target is rather a small round number (including what should happen in schools anyway). As we don’t know what it was before, or how it will be measured, it doesn’t really matter. The current govt scrapped these targets. Instead, they have new participation targets linked to funds for sports bodies: for example, the ECB deliver 270,000 people playing cricket. More sensible, it would seem, but these targets are linked to funding. So if cricket misses its target it gets less government money.  If you can spot how the way the Olympics concept is being built links into participation in these sports – you are a better man than me – though Archery will be staged at Lords!
2. What if I spent money on actualy providing sport opportunities for young people vs bidding for the Olympics? The 270,000 target of increased participation in cricket for the ECB isn’t helped by the systematic removal of playing fields and time for sport in the school curriculum.  It has occurred  in the UK from government to government for numerous years. The UK is unlike many other countries. Funding and support of sport is not seen as a government responsibility. Intead, its deligated to quangos with some targets and some funding. So a few hundred £m has been siphoned off to bodies like Sport England to create an Olympics participation legacy working with local authorities. At the same time £625m is going back the other way from London Council taxes to pay for the Olympics. A current extimate is that it will cost the UK over £9bn to stage the Olympics – roughly 3 times more than the original claimed. Maybe there are alternative ways the £9bn could have been spent to achieve the legacy vision.
3. The absence of a joined up government strategy for sport. Rather bizarrely late last year the govt announced a plan to slash £162m funding for schools sports partnerships (something it has now done a u-turn on). But it isn’t the just the current government who have a lack of a coherent, consistent and joined up sports strategy. The Labour govt presided over our Olympic bid. They also interfered in an instruction that future UK Ashes games must be live on terrestrial TV. This would have effectively wiped £ms off the funds for the ECB in loss of TV rights. Given that the ECB spends most of its funds encouraging participation – particularly at youth and grass roots level (which the govt doesn’t) – many of the coaches and facilities available to kids would have gone. As the current govt put in its targets for participation among sporting bodies – it also removing the funding for Labour’s previous made up “free swimming initiative”.
4. Why is there no link or section on the 2012 website to find a local sport to join? With hopefully millions going to the official 2012 website for tickets or curiosity – surely that is a great opportunity to connect young people to play or get involved in a sport locally now? I trawled through the website and could find no mention or link that helped me do just that. There is a section called “get invoved now” – but that is about helping out for free.
5. Where is the social media strategy for 2012? OK it is still a year away, but the signs of a social media strategy or a campaign to participate in sport isn’t evident.  The official 2012 Olympics Facebook Page has 419 likes and is exceptionally uninspired. There is a thousands of  likes of the Olympics Volunteers page (we need 70,000), but if you volunteered you are not being rewarded with content, info or even good humour.  Surely if a legacy involves more young people participating in sport what you would do on social media would be of primary importance?  Even if just to do it as badly as building a massive user group so that after the Olympics you can post to their wall. “Get off Facebook and actually play some sport!”
6. Why no positive discrimination in enticing attendees? There is a kids discount for certain events – but not the big ones.  We all now know that the way the tickets were allocated did not ensure that young people were nore likely to attend.  There isn’t  a local area allocation to attend – unless you are a councillor being looked after. Whilst the issue of non-participation by youth in sport is most evident in poorer & more downmarket areas in the UK, the opportunity to provide tickets or an Olympic experience to such groups is hard to see – especially in disadvantaged areas. You can apply for a free or discounted ticket. There is a ballot where school kids can get access if their schols register, but that has been published so late (a reaction possibly to the issues over tickets) that it has come out largely in the school holidays when neither schools or kids are there to apply.  By its very nature it is more likely to be jumped on by Private schools that the state schools with less sports who most need it.
7. Global image over local substance. The normal London Marathon route that runs through more deprived areas of East London was changed for a more TV pictureque 10km loop in central London for the Olympics. Only after an extended legal and PR battle has Seb Coe promised some (quite small) investment in jobs in the area, that the Torch will run nearby and senior Olympic members will go to Brick Lane and promote local curries. Poorer locals – who have their area decimated with building works and traffic jams, their local taxes diverted, now realise their is no local preference. Residents of Lewisham won’t be getting preference for The Dressage that will take place nearby in Greenwich Park. So the legacy of inspiring future 3 day eventing champions from SE13 may be slower than was planned. Not that there will be any permanent facility left in the Park. Nope – millions of pounds will muck it up from being used to play with the kids, or to walk the dog for a year before and years after – but it will look good on the telly.
8. There is little evidence that the trickledown effect from major event to participation really exists. The 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games made no measurable impact on immediate post-Games participation rates in the area. Studies have questioned the “role model” thesis, according to which people are inspired to take up sport after watching their heroes. It has been argued, for example, that much of the thinking about the relationship between sporting role models and wider sports participation fails to understand the complexity of processes of learning and behavioural change. Of the research that does exist, an analysis of sports participation in Australia between 1985 and 2002 revealed that in the year following the Sydney Games in 2000, 7 Olympic sports experienced a small increase in participation while 9 declined. There was a similar pattern for non-Olympic sports, with the largest increase in non-competitive walking.
9. UK government doesn’t have a good record for the legacy of its big idea projects. You struggle to find a grand govt scheme or commercial idea that has worked in the UK. One possible benefit of the Olympics maybe to restore some of the rail infrastructure that has been mis-managed and not delivered by the grand pseudo privatisation plans for our railways and underground. The Millenium Dome was another failed big govt idea.  A huge white elephant created for the Millenium – nobody really attended the exhibition created. The post-exhibition plan had been to convert The Dome into a football stadium which would last for 25 years never materialised. In 2002, it went into liquidation by which time the cost was £789m and a further loss of £1m a month. Meridian Delta eventually picked it up for next to nothing and spent £600m redeveloping it and converting it into what we now knowas the O2 Arena.
10. The promise for the Olympic Legacy was made by a politician and a former Olympic Athlete. Lord Coe is of course both a great athlete and a former politician. I have no doubt that Lord Coe’s intentions and indeed desire for a legacy of greater participation in sport amongst are youth is true and well intended. However, as Larry Elder American Broadcaster once said in the 1950s when talking about govermnet policy: “A goal without a plan is just a wish”

The wisdom of Roy Jeans

The “wisdom of Roy Jeans” could sound like many things.  It could be a Country & Western hit. It could be a movie starring Gary Cooper. It could be a moving novel about a defence lawyer fighting for normal people’s rights against an oppressive state regieme. It may indeed still be all of these. However, for me, it is a battered piece of paper that is stuck on my wall. It’s been in every office I’ve been in since about 1996. I make sure it is in a place that I can see everyday.

Roy Jeans was a work collegue.  He has since become a good friend. At the time of writing the note, he could have been a political enemy. He worked for the same organisation, but for a different part of it. It was in his own and his business’s interest to see my part of the business fail.

Then one day I resigned. I was going to a new company.  In that company, I would be a direct competitor to the company that Roy Jeans worked for. On the day I resigned, he popped over to see me.  He wished me well.  We had a beer. Then – as a final gesture – he wrote me this note. He couldn’t rememeber where he got the ideas from. He said that he’d had it tucked away in his drawer.  He thought he’d share it.

As Roy Jean’s said: You start any new job with the best intentions.  Everything is possible. You can do everything the day you join. The thing is that at some point things don’t go your way. You can look for excuses. You can look for others to blame. Roy Jean’s advice was to just look at this note.

I still have it. I thought I’d share it.  It’s for anyone in a new job.  It’s for anyone in an old job. It is for anyone running a business.  It’s for anyone thinking of starting a business. It’s for any politician. It’s for anyone who is responsible for anything, or anyone, or even themselves.

So here it is….the wisdom of Roy Jeans

1. Deal with reality as it is, not as you would like it to be.
2. Be candid with everyone
3. Don’t manage.  Lead.
4. Change before you have to.
5. If you don’t have a competitive edge, don’t compete.
6. Control your destiny or someone else will.

I put in a bid that went into £000s for a variety of tickets – hoping to get some. I was hugely disappointed originally, as were my children (remember the legacy thing!) when we originally believed that we would not go either. Many others that disappointment is worse – they are not as lucky me. There is of course the additional wind up of the months of not knowing, keeping funds in an account just in case one day someone decides to allocate me some tickets and draw down on my request.

Disappointments happen.  More people applied that tickets were available.  That is the answer we are being told.  No lets deal with the truth.  It is yet another example of the complete lack of consistent strategy and consideration for what this Olympics is “supposedly” trying to achieve.

The  bright people at Locog  do not seem bright enough to understand that the random ballot is not the same as being fair. Random is that….random. It means that we could have had 100,000 people who bid for lots of tickets getting them all and leaving many more with nothing.  It could mean everybody gets just a few tickets. Both are random occurrances.  The second one, however, is also fairer and consistent with the supposed objectives.   How difficult would it have been to have started the ticket allocation by giving everybody who applied 2 tickets and then redrawing the remainder? How difficult would it be if in addition to selecting tickets that you had to give them a preference? If you put swimming down as 1 you would be more likely to get it.  If you put it as 10 – you were less likely etc.  How difficult would it have been to provide a geographical preference filter.  Given that I live near Greenwich Park and I’m (a) paying for the change going on for Equestrian events in local taxes, (b)having the park I walk my dog and play with my children disrupted for ages before and (c) ruined for years after with no legacy (it is £millions spent for a temporary solution)… how hard would it be to weight the event I could walk to so that I had a better chance of getting tickets?

Sir Seb Coe has got more similarly to Sept Blatter everyday.  When he faces the public at interviews you can see him get irritated by their questions – rather than actually listen to what they have said and change things. Seb is driven, but also makes up his mind about what is being done.  He listens to few people – least of all the people the games is supposedly for.  His pronunciations and public statements are things generated for the moment he is dealing with.  If you ever look at the narrative of the Sir Seb Coe story of why we are doing the games, how decisions on who will get the stadium after the event and now the manner in which tickets are allocated the story isn’t consistent.  To use a sporting analogy  – “the goal posts move”.   There was an independent body to decide on how the stadium would be used. Lord Seb had no vote on it.  However, he couldn’t help but be all over the media saying that he’d probably prefer a West Ham type bid rather than Spurs.  In any company when a decision is made on a tender you declare any interest and are not allowed to do, say or contact anyone to affect the outcome.  It seems it does not apply for the Olympics and Lord Seb Coe.

I have written another blog about the fallacy, inconsistency, lack of evidence and lack of executional ideas to deliver the “legacy strategy”.  Lest we forget, the £3bn that we originally bid for The Olympics (that has now grown to £9bn spend) was all about getting more young people to play sport.  They would – the unproven argument goes – be inspired by watching and being part of the Olympics in London and take up more sport.

Silly me, but I would have thought that to deliver on that strategy then the more people – especially young people – who got to attend the games the better.  Had people not got their tickets, but all young people had they would get it.  Had they charged even more for the tickets – but used the money so that more young people could have subsidised tickets they would have got it too.  people might be frustrated at not going, but they’d get behind the idea.  Perhaps lots of young people have got tickets – but it certainly was not a big part of the policy (more of a PR nod) and it isn’t announced. If it was catered for ….then only at minor events.  We certainly are not going to be told what the real numbers are for who applied for what tickets and how it broke down by age or effort.  Nope, facts and figures are carefully chosen and spun to suit in Locog.  We hear that 10,000 troops and their families will get tickets. Good idea – but why find out only after the ticket anger breaks?  Simple, it is positive spin timing to deflect the cock up on the people’s tickets.

The ideal of a London Olympics to inspire young people and the nation has long ago become a subset of justifying the PR spin about it. Having spent the money, the primary objective in the decisions is not getting young people playing sport.  It is to get the money back and have the event fully attended. The reason so many applied is we were spun on the demand to get us to oversubscribe. The money has been sucked out of us – but with no idea or control over what we may get.

When so many people are disappointed against what they expected, at this point, the claimed objective is then revealed as no more than words.  Politicians conceived the idea for the Olympics bid, the manifesto promise has somehow got forgotten when he came to office. Politicians notoriously only listen to the electorate in the run up to elections and then only use it to say what they want to hear. No doubt the games will be ready on time, the seats sold etc.  Getting it done is not the same as getting it right.  The ticket allocation fiasco is the latest example.  Clearly it is a cock up – but I don’t hear anyone admitting it at Locog.

The claimed objective and legacy of the London 2012 Olympics calls for a ticket strategy that has more people attend not less and especially more young people. It clearly doesn’t do it.  So it is incompetent, unfair and further evidence that what was said to win the Olympics bid were words only.  After all, if we were really bothered about more young people playing sport, would you really spend £9bn on the Olympics?