GUEST POST from Kevin Roberts

I’ve been talking lately about the Age of Now. We’re living in a time of electronic instant everything, constant updates, limitless choices and channels.

According to a new paper by Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert just published in the journal Science, there’s a reason why people strive to live in the moment. Simply, it makes us happier. The Guardian reports: “Happiness is found by living in the now … the benefits of living in the moment are extolled by many philosophical and religious traditions, but until now there has been scant scientific evidence to support the advice.”

The study showed that daydreaming takes away our happiness. People are more likely to be joyful when doing things that involve them in the moment, whether it’s having a conversation, exercising or making love.

It’s a surprisingly obvious outcome in these uncertain economic times, where dwelling on the past or thinking about the future can be huge sources of anxiety.

Satisfaction, pleasure, fun, entertainment, connection and, most importantly, love are things that take us into a fuller moment. For enterprise of all kinds, the inquiry goes: am I creating a magic moment? Am I turning down the volume on yesterday and tomorrow? Am I turning up people’s fun dial – today?

Image source: Personal Development Courses

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GUEST POST from Kevin Roberts

Last month I was in Israel to celebrate the 25th anniversary of BBR Saatchi & Saatchi at the Peres Center for Peace. BBR has been on a tear in recent years, including a recent rebranding campaign for Kosovo entitled The Young Europeans. They’re also behind one of the most ambitious projects to come out of a creative organization: The Impossible Brief.

We launched the Impossible Brief this summer at the Cannes Lions Festival. The goal is to get creative thinkers around the world to contribute innovative ideas for how to bring about peace between Israel and Palestine. The project is based on the belief that creativity can be a powerful force for positive social change. And if any cause needs a jolt of creative thinking, it’s the ongoing Israel/Palestine conflict.

Beyond a doubt the most memorable episode of the visit was my meeting with the President of Israel and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres. We discussed the future of the Jewish State, Israel’s image in the world, and the phenomenal innovation in the Israeli economy.

The highlight of the exchange was when we traded leadership philosophies. President Peres is a founding father of Israel, having held leadership positions in the Israeli military and government for nearly 60 years. Lucky for me, he obliged with his wisdom on leadership.

As soon as I got into the car after the meeting I took out my pen, here’s what I wrote:

1. Leaders must not be afraid of being alone.
2. They must have the courage to be afraid.
3. A leader must decide. He should not agree or disagree. He says “yes” or “no.”
4. A leader must pioneer, not rule.
5. A leader is not on the top of his people but ahead of them in front.
6. Leadership is extremely hard work.
7. When you have a chosen a destiny . . . never give up.
8. Leadership is based on a moral call.
9. What is right today is different tomorrow.
10. It’s not enough to be up to date; you have to be up tomorrow.
11. To lead is to listen, to pay attention to every detail, to decide.
12. Everything that once was controversial ultimately becomes popular.

These are the lessons of a lifetime of service. Tattoo the list to the backs of your eyelids.

Overall, the trip was a revelation. BBR Saatchi & Saatchi has reached No.2 in the Agency of the Year rankings in Israel, and throughout the agency and across the country I found energy and inspiration wherever I went. The nation is constantly in the grip of crisis and yet it continues to flourish, not least due to the moral leadership of President Peres. I’m looking forward to a trip back there soon.

Image Credit (Shimon Peres, Kevin Roberts handshake): Yossi Zamir

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GUEST POST from Kevin Roberts

Over the last decade our understanding of how emotion relates to consumer decision-making has grown enormously. Insights and findings around creating Loyalty Beyond Reason continue to illuminate Lovemarks, most recently from Peter Boatwright and Jonathan Cagan – two professors at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. They have released a book with Berrett-Koehler Publishers entitled Built to Love: Creating Products That Captivate Customers.

The book is full of insights on the benefits of creating products, services, and technologies that inspire love, what they call “high-emotion companies.”

You can instinctively know a high-emotion company because you feel its warmth. It can be anything from an electronic glow like Apple to a big rig designed to drive a payload with tremendous respect and a lot of love to a retailer who knows how to charm your cotton socks. These are all experiences designed specifically to elicit emotion. They build emotion into every interaction with the customer, whether it’s advertising, store design or letterhead. And it shows in reputation.

Boatwright and Cagan move this concept forward with their “High-Emotion Index” which compares the stock performance of companies that provide more emotion with those that provide less. They compiled a list of 40 promising, innovative consumer product companies based on rankings from BusinessWeek and Interbrand. Then they surveyed consumers to identify which brands elicited the most powerful emotional response.

It turns out that you would have been wise to invest in one of the high-emotion companies Boatwright and Cagan write about. Between 1997 and 2007, over 80% of investors in high-emotion companies did better than the Dow Jones index, the NASDAQ, and the S&P 500. A solid example of the premiums powered by emotional connections.

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GUEST POST from Kevin Roberts

Procrastination is something we are all prone to at one time or another. Case in point: I sat down to write this blog post thirty minutes ago. Before I finally got to writing, I first opened a bottle of wine, flipped through the latest issue of Monocle, and answered some emails.

In his review of the new book The Thief of Time – a collection of essays by writers, social scientists, and philosophers on the topic of procrastination – the New Yorker’s James Surowiecki explores some interesting aspects of this ubiquitous bad habit.

For instance, Surowiecki tells us that procrastination is “a powerful example of what the Greeks called akrasia—doing something against one’s own better judgment.”

In other words, procrastination is proof that our decisions are more emotional than they are rational. I often say that 80 percent of decisions are emotionally driven, and that’s exactly what happens when we put things off. We succumb to the emotional pull of delaying unpleasant activities like starting a new diet or visiting the dentist.

The Lovemarks approach actually uses this aspect of human decision-making to help create powerful, positive experiences. Clients too often retreat to campaigns that list the virtues of a product, and invite the consumer to perform cost-benefit analyses before making a purchase decision.

Inherent in the Lovemarks philosophy is the understanding that, even if the customer weighs the costs and benefits of a particular purchase – whether it’s a new car, a laptop computer or even a toothbrush – their decision will be driven by their gut. If this wasn’t the case, we’d never miss a dentist appointment or cheat on our diets.

It’s the reason that Lovemarks seeks to make products, brands, and services irresistible, not just irreplaceable. By making a product irresistible, you appeal to consumers on an emotional level. And, as Surowiecki’s article shows, reason leads to conclusions, but emotion leads to action.

Image Source: Fast Eddie

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GUEST POST from Kevin Roberts

The writer Douglas Coupland, coiner of the phrase GenX, is an ominous kind of guy. In a reverse mirror image, he’s calling himself a “radical pessimist” against my school of “radical optimism.”

By radical I’m not just meaning extreme, but consciously applied, as per the Rules for Radicals classic by late veteran activist Saul Alinsky. Coupland’s school of radical pessimism has led him to create “A Radical Pessimist’s Guide to the Next 10 Years” which has just appeared in the Globe & Mail, and true to form, offers a bleak depiction of the coming decade.

Of the 45 “tips for survival in a messed-up future”, the first one is to recognize that “it’s going to get worse”; the last is that “we will accept the obvious truth that we brought this upon ourselves.” In between are a bunch of glass-half-empty insights and predictions such as “You’re going to miss the 1990s more than you ever thought” (I don’t think so), “Hooking up will become ever more mechanical and binary” (I’m still cheering for romance), and “Dreams will get better” (this I can vote for).

Most of us are well aware that the future will be VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous). But it’s easy to make that same assessment from the point of view of the optimist. I see the future as being vibrant, unreal, crazy, and astounding. When I think about the possibilities of the future, it raises my heart rate with excitement.

Ultimately, however, optimism is a choice. In my experience, it’s the correct choice. At numerous points throughout history, it was easy to make gloomy predictions about the future. Whether it was World War II, the bursting of the dot-com bubble, or the aftermath of 9/11.

And yet, time and again, we find ways of banding together, harnessing our creativity, and not just persevering but thriving. The challenges of the future will no doubt be novel, but they won’t be insurmountable. Whether it’s breakneck technological change, environmental sustainability, or economic turnarounds, these are issues that need to be met with radical optimism and the conviction that Nothing is Impossible.

Image Source: etsy

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GUEST POST from Kevin Roberts

Gap Inc. recently received a lesson in the power of Lovemarks. Earlier this month, the clothing retailer unveiled a new version of its logo which ditched the classic all-caps blue box emblem that the company had used for over two decades. The company replaced it with a sleeker logo featuring helvetica typeface and a small floating blue square.

According to one Gap spokesperson, the redesign was intended to help shift Gap’s brand from “classic, American design, to modern, sexy, cool.” What Gap failed to realize, however, is that, like all Lovemarks, their brand doesn’t belong to them anymore; it belongs to consumers.

Only two days after the new logo was unveiled, popular outrage on Facebook was so intense that the company had to reconsider. At first, Gap responded by inviting fans to submit their own design suggestions (which sucked in 4,660 submissions from over 1,000 designers in five days). Soon after they announced that, for the time being, they’re sticking with their classic logo.

This is clear proof, as if anymore were needed, that in today’s Participation Economy the Consumer is Boss. If she doesn’t like something, she has more power than ever to make her voice heard and change things.

Gap failed to realize the strong emotional connection that its consumers have made with their company logo over the last twenty years. It wasn’t just a rabid Twitter flash mob that caused this change of heart by Gap, there seemed to be a genuine outpouring by fans who love their Gap just the way it is.

This incident, although seemingly negative, is actually good news for Gap; it’s uncovered a well of activism (and it seems, affection) for the company that Gap hadn’t appreciated. New fans! Proof that the company occupies a special place in the hearts of customers.

Gap’s snap decision to nix the redesign plan shows some responsive listening. Their intuition about the new logo was somewhat astray, but like Tropicana, they did the right thing.

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GUEST POST from Kevin Roberts

On the issue of sustainability, I’ve adopted the “Do One Thing” strategy. Pick a practice that makes your life better and helps sustain the planet, and stick to it. This can be something as simple as riding your bicycle to work, watching less television, or purchasing energy-efficient light bulbs.

It’s a simple strategy, and, if executed properly, is followed quickly by “Do Another Thing.” In most instances, small changes in behavior can have a massive effect on the world.

I stand by this approach to sustainability, but sometimes you’ve got to shoot for the moon. I’m proud to say that that’s exactly what my friends at Procter & Gamble are doing.

P&G has just announced a sweeping and ambitious Sustainability Vision, which includes powering their plants entirely with renewable energy, using 100% recycled or renewable materials in all of their products, and having none of their waste end up in landfills.

What’s most inspiring about P&G’s sustainability efforts is that they extend far beyond the environment. Through a variety of initiatives aimed at providing food to hungry children around the U.S., increasing access to education in India, and helping Chinese school children adopt good hygiene habits, P&G is fulfilling their responsibility to improve lives and make the world a better place for everybody.

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GUEST POST from Kevin Roberts

If you’ve got four minutes and want to have your mind blown, take a look at this entertaining (and educational) video from Steven Johnson, author of the book Where Good Ideas Come From, which was just released recently. If the book is as good as the video, I’m sure you’ll be seeing more about it on this blog in the very near future. (And what is it about watching someone draw on a whiteboard that’s so hypnotic?!)

Johnson brings a fresh perspective to examining how breakthrough ideas are formed. Instead of focusing on the psychology of innovation, he asks why certain environments seem to produce more original and exciting ideas than others.

His conclusion: many of the best ideas come from the “collision of smaller hunches.” Environments that enable people to bring their inchoate ideas into contact with other people’s are where the magic happens.

This reminded me of something our Chief Creative Officer at Saatchi & Saatchi NY, Con Williamson, recently said about his creative management style. He described it as a “Big Italian Dinner.” Get a bunch of smart, creative people into a space where they can feel comfortable being loud and opinionated, and wait for breakthrough connections to form.

It works. If you look at history, the big bursts of creative thinking often happened in a comfortable public space. Johnson points to the coffee houses in the age of the enlightenment, or the Parisian salons of modernism. In both examples, these places offered creatives a venue where they could get out of their private space, discuss their ideas and collaborate.

As a CEO of an ideas company, it’s nice to be reminded that a big part of my job is to create the type of workplace environment where ideas can “mingle and swap” as Johnson puts it.

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GUEST POST from Kevin Roberts

I love hearing stories about how big ideas came to be. It turns out that, oftentimes, world-changing innovations weren’t the result of an isolated epiphany or the effortless insights of a genius. They were accidents.

The technology blog Gizmodo recently told the story of the “10 Greatest (Accidental) Inventions of All Time.”

My favorite involves one of the most ubiquitous gadgets in the world: the microwave. According to Gizmodo, the microwave came about when Navy engineer Percy Spencer was working with a microwave-emitting magnetron (then used in radar arrays) and “found that a chocolate bar in his pocket had started to melt.” He deduced that the microwaves were to blame, and used the principle to create the popcorn-popping device we all rely on today.

Play-Doh also has a great origin story. It was originally marketed as a substance for cleaning spots off of wallpaper. It wasn’t until children began using it to create Christmas ornaments that it caught on as a toy.

This just goes to show that, as I often contend, ideas can come from anywhere. As someone in the ideas business, it’s good to be reminded of how often good ideas can blindside you.

It’s for this reason that, when it comes to managing creative individuals, I find it best to set some basic rules, and get out of their way. You need to create a space where wild ideas can be aired and accidents happen.

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GUEST POST from Kevin Roberts

Since the release of James Cameron’s Avatar last year, 3D films have become a hot trend. With films like Alice in Wonderland and the release of state-of-the-art 3D televisions from companies like Samsung and Toshiba, it seems like everyone is interested in making flat images into three-dimensional experiences.

The Japanese design firm Nendo, on the other hand, has turned this idea on its head. They have designed a series of household items (chairs, coffee tables, lamps) that appear to be simple, two-dimensional line drawings, but are actually real three-dimensional objects. The two collections (“Thin Black Lines” and “Blurry White Surfaces”) have been on display in London since September 20 (in fact “Thin Black Lines” is housed at the Saatchi Gallery.)

Nendo’s proclaimed mission is “giving people a small ‘!’ moment.” Those rare “wow” experiences that can sometimes give you a real jolt. With these two collections, they’ve succeeded. These are addictive to look at, and they stimulate the senses in a truly original way.

Clockwise: stool, chair, bowls, vases. Image source: Design Boom

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