So, whilst the Sentric Digital team have been out in Ibiza this week visiting long-term and lovely client We Love…Music, i’ve once again found myself sat in the office, watching the rain pour drawing silly little diagrams to help me understand the world.
I drew David Beckham in a West Ham shirt. That didn’t make sense. I drew David Cameron talking to the Indian Music Industry. That didn’t make sense. I drew a diagram about investors, and this made me think; are investors and creatives the same breed of people? I got all excited and drew some pictures about Investors being creative and creatives investing, and it led me to the conclusion that the principles and processes behind investment decisions and creative decisions lead to the same path – success.
An ex-investment banker that i’m currently doing some work with spent an hour convincing me this morning that serious investors (think investing in an idea and that being Google) like disruptive businesses that are high risk. I thought he was mad given recent events in the financial sector. However, reward far outweighs the risk, and they risk putting money into several businesses knowing that some will fail. The reason it’s high risk is that if it fails to ‘disrupt’ a market/industry, it’s failed. This is quite similar to when you sit down at a ‘creative’ meeting where you put 10 ideas down knowing that nine and a half will fail. Ok, not like you’re putting £100m into the 10 ideas, but you get what I mean.
Linking the investment thought process to the creative thought process, there are similarities. The campaigns that genuniely work are ones that are disruptive. If every brand in the world set up a Facebook page and a blog and talked about the same old rubbish, the world would be a dull place. When someone devises a campaign that is genuinely ‘disruptive’, the campaign, in investor speak, goes Google.
A fine example of such work is Mr Aleksandr Orlov of CompareTheMeerkat.com fame. We all sit down to watch the TV and up comes a Meerkat shouting about cheap car insurance and stupid stories about his ancestors. What. On. Earth. It’s so disruptive it’s daft, and because it’s daft enough to be funny it works. Maybe those GoCompare idiots should’ve taken notice, because their campaigns are just plain annoying.
Bringing this back to Entertainment which is our focus, look at Lady Gaga. She is surely the most disruptive person of this century. Is she a woman? Is she a man? Has she got a c**k? Is she a midget? Why does she dress so funny? Is she a lesbian? Is she a drama queen? Is she a bigger diva than Lady Mariah Carey? The hype that surrounds that little New Yorker with a weird dress sense has propelled her, in little over 24 months, into one of the worlds biggest stars. She’s got over 1bn hits on Youtube, sold over 30 million records and is a genuine phenomenon. Why does she achieve this and Scouting For Girls don’t? Apart from the obvious, she is disruptive. She draws people of all demographics in because she’s intriguing, and her songs are friendly and catchy and she’s genuinely got talent.
So, there are distinct similarities between investors and creatives, however they come from completely different worlds. Investors wear suits and drive posh cars, and the creative genius that is Lady Gaga’s creative team will wear converse and drive posh cars. Investors say they want to make money, artists and creatives say they ‘do it for the art’. Same outcome, but a different way of getting there.
This wraps up another week of rambling. Stay tuned next week for when disruptiveness goes wrong, featuring Lindsay Lohan.
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