Time and strategy seem to wait for no brand (said no-one ever). I’m suffering a bit of a time panic in general actually. For a start summer went away a while ago and meteorologically speaking it’s autumn in less than a month. We’re almost two thirds of the way towards Christmas. The X Factor mass crud starts this month. And I don’t seem to have time any more to write this blog. Come to think of it, that might be about a lack of any creative thought….good, so now I’m depressed as well as deep in to a horological crisis.
All of which got me thinking about time in our industry. I spend my time dipping in and out of agency life, seeing a snapshot and therefore forming a time-compressed view of how things are running. This may or may not be reality over a given few days of course. It’s bemusing though that time doesn’t seem to be what it once was. Are we on the cusp of having no time for strategy? The following things do trouble me a bit…
Us agency types can waste a lot of time actually. Social media, personal correspondence, asking who’s joined the call, figuring out who just dropped off and whether anyone’s actually able to hear, all that sort of stuff. It might be better spent on banter and interaction, informal coffee gatherings to chew some client cud, or even lunch with the client. How very traditional, I know.
Senior people don’t seem to have time to think much about projects and clients any more, until a last minute presentation review is absolutely required. This is worrying. I’ve seen the most experienced strategy heads spend a week running from meeting to meeting, without time to download properly to the team, without time to input sensibly in to the brief, or time in the office to do anything other than reply to emails. The good news is that many of them are good enough to pull a last minute insight out of the bag. The bad news is it’s hard for junior resource to learn. And occasionally just a bit reckless and dishonest from the client’s point of view. I think that we need to make time and strategy the best of friends again. Brilliant creative insight needs some space. No, not on Instagram.
Decent briefs are sometimes compressed in to a load of background that can be found on websites, with business strategy, objectives and success criteria kind of missing. But shouldn’t insight and inspiration at least start with a cracking brief?
Reality and pointless time-panic don’t always sit comfortably. Sure, agencies can achieve an awful lot in a short space of time, with decent planning and a deadline looming. Since when however did fact-finding, positioning, architecture, name (plus legal), identity plus visual system and guidelines squeeze comfortably and sensibly in to three weeks? More often than not I’ve seen agencies sign up to this, without asking if the ‘deadline’ at the client end is a business necessity or to do with someone’s preference to achieve a sign off before their holiday.
And – time to show my age now – things were really well organised on the time and strategy front when teams welcomed a person to do the sorts of things that used to fall under PA / secretarial skills. Project admin, putting together presentations, organising the team, booking travel, co-ordinating meetings. Someone to notice, action and inform. Stuff that was properly valued and facilitated strategy heads the time to revel in strategy. I’ve seen some amazing team assistants work their way through account management to the top of the agency game. Maybe that’s something to do with their skills in time management?
What might we do about this? I suspect ignore it and carry on winging lots of time-compressed things with a cheery industry smile. Possibly because no-one has much time to think it through. I fear my time is too short to offer anything too constructive today. Time and Pop Master (averaging 27 points these days) wait for no ageing freelancer.
