“the purpose-idea”: ten questions for mark earls

If had to pick the two or three busi­ness books that have “chan­ged my life” in the last cou­ple of years, Mark Earls’ “Wel­come To The Crea­tive Age” would be on the list, without ques­tion. Recently he also published his second book, “Herd”, which picks up where “Crea­tive Age” left off.
In order to turn more peo­ple onto his work, I pre­pa­red for him ten ques­tions, which like Seth Godin before him, he kindly agreed to ans­wer below. Rock on.
Ten Ques­tions For Mark Earls
1. I remem­ber “Crea­tive Age” sen­ding shock­wa­ves through the Bri­tish adver­ti­sing esta­blish­ment when it first came out in the early 2000’s. You basi­cally came out of nowhere and dec­la­red that mar­ke­ting and bran­ding, at least how we gene­rally defi­ned it back then in the adver­ti­sing world, was dead. That it was inte­llec­tually ban­krupt. Care to ela­bo­rate?
Thin­king back now it must seem a bit odd — a bit pre­sump­tious, maybe — to make this kind of dra­ma­tic dec­la­ra­tion. But remem­ber this was a tur­bu­lent period — Fuku­yama was dec­la­ring the end of his­tory, ideo­logy etc etc. And there was a fresh fee­ling in the air in Bri­tain — the arri­val of a New Labour govern­ment after more than a decade in the wil­der­ness felt to many of us like the pas­sing of a baton from one gene­ra­tion to the next. I was having the time of my life wor­king in the crazy crea­tive co-operative St Luke’s, where we were pushing the idea of “What it is to be a crea­tive busi­ness” to the limit, and then fin­ding that there were no limits (Apart from our­sel­ves, as it tur­ned out).
Part of my thin­king was sha­ped by all of this con­tex­tual stuff, but I think the most impor­tant thing was the rea­li­sa­tion that the clus­ter of ideas we sold as “mar­ke­ting” was basi­cally the pro­duct of a par­ti­cu­lar time and place (they bear the cul­tu­ral and inte­llec­tual imprint of mid-Century, Mid­west Uni­ted Sta­tes) and not some collec­tion of eter­nal and irre­du­ci­ble truths (like the laws of Maths, say). This — and my day-to-day expe­rience trying to use these old ideas to shape crea­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tions and beha­viours that really work — led me to work out what was wrong AND offer something that bet­ter reflec­ted what we’ve lear­ned about humans, busi­ness and crea­ti­vity over the last half-century.
2. You were the first per­son to make me actually ask the ques­tion, “When I say ‘Brand’, or ‘Bran­ding’, what do I actually mean by that? Do brands actually exist as we say they do, or are they just a men­tal cons­truct to make us adver­ti­sing types sound more cle­ver in client mee­tings?“
So here’s Mark Earls, this highly res­pec­ted Bri­tish brand guru, get­ting paid lots of money to bet­ter arti­cu­late the idea of ‘The Brand’, and sud­denly you’re telling your clients, “Hey, you know all that cle­ver ‘Brand’ stuff you’ve been paying my agency lots of money for? It’s actually all a load of crap.“
So I’ll ask you the same ques­tion your clients undoub­tedly asked you: “Why is it crap?“
Let’s start with the good stuff about “Brand”: it’s clearly a popu­lar idea, it’s spread far and wide into poli­tics and self-help books. It’s use­ful, in that it allows us to talk about the clus­ter of stuff that floats around repu­ta­tion and per­cep­tion and so on. It looks like we can mea­sure it because it’s something that seems like folk out there in Con­su­mer­land can talk about.
So what’s wrong with it: well, first of all “Brand” is a metaphor. It’s not a thing, even though we talk about it as if it were: it’s a way of tal­king as if.
Second, it’s a fat-metaphor: there is no agreed defi­ni­tion, so we can use it to mean just about anything we want — to pre– or prosc­ribe wha­te­ver we want. Most brand con­ver­sa­tions need an agreed set of defi­ni­tions or…
Third, “Brand” is what you get as a result of doing great , not a good guide to what to do — it’s the sco­re­board, not the game.
Fourth, “Brand” is a dis­trac­tion from the main game, which is doing great stuff for cus­to­mers and staff (“baking it in”, as for exam­ple the Zeus Jones go on about). P***ing about in Brand­land is a good excuse not to really get to grips with the stuff you need to get to grips with, and it tends to lead you off into “com­mu­ni­ca­tions” rather than actually doing something.
Fifth, “Brand” per­pe­tua­tes the myths we like to hold tight to, about the power of mar­ke­ting and com­mu­ni­ca­tion — some­ti­mes when you hear brand folk talk, they seem to ima­gine they are sor­ce­rers and magi­cians, wea­ving bin­ding spells and illu­sions. More often than not, they like to use mili­tary metaphors. The truth of course is that mostly were neither of these things and have a mar­gi­nal effect at best.
3. Then after you con­vin­ced your friends and collea­gues [some of them, any­way] that all this was ‘crap’, the first thing they would’ve asked you is, “Well, OK, so what else ya got? What comes next?“
And your ans­wer tur­ned out to be a big one. A VERY big one, Indeed: “The Purpose-Idea”. I’ve told a LOT of peo­ple about the P-I over the years, since first dis­co­ve­ring it in “Crea­tive Age”. This time, I think we’d all rather get it from the horse’s mouth. Please explain the P-I to us mere mor­tals. Thanks.
Put really simply, the Purpose-Idea is the “What For?” of a busi­ness, or any kind of com­mu­nity. What exists to change (or pro­tect) in the world, why emplo­yees get out of bed in the mor­ning, what dif­fe­rence the busi­ness seeks to make on behalf of cus­to­mers and emplo­yees and ever­yone else? BTW this is not “mis­sion, vision, values” terri­tory — it’s about real dri­ves, pas­sions and beliefs. The stuff that men in suits tend to get emba­rras­sed about because it’s per­so­nal. But it’s the stuff that makes the dif­fe­rence bet­ween suc­cess and fai­lure, because this kind of stuff brings folk together in all aspects of human life.
4. I like The P-I. Explai­ning it to peo­ple pretty much has made paying all my bills a lot easier in the the last few years. The Blue Mons­ter was a P-I. When you see a real P-I wor­king in action, it cuts through the clut­ter and igni­tes pas­sion in a way that, for the money, your stan­dard “Here’s why you should buy my pro­duct” mes­sage simply can­not com­pete with. In spite of this, I see peo­ple in the busi­ness resist it. Something about it that sca­res them. What do you think that might be?
Like I say, I think it emba­rras­ses the grown-ups: a lot of folk think busi­ness is some sepa­rate ratio­nal sphere of acti­vity, in which maths, analy­tics and ratio­nal thin­king pre­vail (whether it’s in cus­to­mers’ or emplo­yees’ minds). P-I makes things per­so­nal — makes you put your balls on the line. It cuts through the crap of “stra­tegy” and all that pseu­dos­cience that we hide behind.
5. One thing that makes your work so com­pe­lling, I believe, is that you have a lot of con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple who are NOT in the adver­ti­sing world, but ins­tead inside the world of aca­de­mia. You also seem to devour books on social and beha­vio­ral scien­ces. Did these inte­rests pre­date your adver­ti­sing career, or did it deve­lop on the job?
I’ve always been inte­res­ted in how things (really) work but my job has allo­wed me to indulge that more and more. Over the years, my curio­sity has led me talk to folk who don’t have an axe to grind or a ves­ted inte­rest in marketing’s expla­na­tions of how things work. So, for exam­ple, recently I’ve been wor­king with a great guy, Alex Bent­ley, who’s an aca­de­mic anth­ro­po­lo­gist who spe­cia­li­ses in how ideas and beha­viours spread through popu­la­tions. If it works for stone age pot­tery sty­les, 21st popu­lar music, dog breeds, cha­ri­ta­ble giving and mar­ke­ting jar­gon — all things that mar­ke­ting folks’ models can’t or haven’t bothe­red to do the math for, I think his expla­na­tion of how things spread is a pretty good expla­na­tion and should serve as a great place to start. If it is also groun­ded in the con­sen­sus in modern beha­viou­ral and cog­ni­tive scien­ces about human beings, well again so much the bet­ter.
I’ve been sur­pri­sed how rarely folk do this — loo­king broadly across other dis­ci­pli­nes. At best we take sli­ver of some expe­ri­ment we read about in Scien­ti­fic Ame­ri­can Mind, say and force the new thing to sup­port our old ideas. The snake oil sales­men of the so-called “neu­ro­mar­ke­ting” are one exam­ple; the whole “influen­tials” word of mouth gig is another. On the one hand, it’s a shame; on the other, it allows me to make a good living!
6. Back in the early days of mar­ke­ting and adver­ti­sing blog­ging, it seems that me and my fellow blog­gers were taking great and cons­tant delight in dec­la­ring that “Ad agen­cies are dead”. Five or six years later, and they’re still with us. Have they evol­ved, or are they just living on borro­wed time?
Living on borro­wed time. Their eco­no­mic models are scre­wed. The one thing you read on the faces of the guys (and it is mostly the guys) who run them is “Not on my watch”: They know that a major dis­con­ti­nuity is coming, they know we’re all going over the cliff, and that it’s all going to be dif­fe­rent the other side but they just hope to have paid off the school and college fees before then. They’ve done pretty well to hedge all of this with a bit of digi­tal tin­ke­ring but frankly they’re too slow, too fat and not set up to embrace what’s next (Which isn’t about mes­sa­ges btw).
7. In “Crea­tive Age”, you des­tro­yed a very sac­red cow of the agency world, The Brand. With your second book, “Herd”, you suc­cess­fully went after an equally mas­sive agency sac­red cow: The Idea of Con­su­mer as “Heroic Indi­vi­dual” [Embo­died by cul­tu­ral icons like The Marl­boro Man, or the exis­ten­tial ath­lete wea­ring Nike’s]. Your mes­sage see­med to be, actually guys, we’re social ani­mals. We’re social pri­ma­tes; we behave more like chimps and gori­llas, more than we behave like lone, cigarette-smoking cow­boys. Care to explain the idea further?
Again to sim­plify: Human beings are to inde­pen­dent action, what cats are to swim­ming. We can do it if we really have to, but mostly we don’t… Ins­tead, we do what we do because of what those around us are doing (Wha­te­ver our minds and our cul­tu­res tell us).
So if you want to change what I’m doing, don’t try to per­suade me– don’t try to make me– do anything. Ins­tead, enlist the help of my friends…
But not cru­dely (as in “Recom­men­da­tion”). That’s just per­sua­sion by another name: another “Push” tac­tic. I’m con­vin­ced the ans­wer lies in crea­ting “Pull” (i.e. Social) for­ces.
8. Get­ting to know you over the years, it seems a big part of your sch­piel is telling peo­ple, namely, peo­ple who work for com­pa­nies, that actually, you know, busi­nes­ses aren’t machi­nes. Homo Eco­no­mi­cus doesn’t actually exist. Actually, com­pa­nies are the same they’ve always been: Human being collec­ted together for a sha­red pur­pose. And until you start recog­ni­zing your company’s own huma­nity, you’re just making it a lot har­der than it needs to be. That would be an easy sell to me or the ave­rage gaping­void rea­der. But how hard is it to sell into a large com­pany, one that’s been doing the same old things for years? Do you feel you’re pushing a boul­der uphill, or do you find peo­ple pretty recep­tive to your new way of thin­king?
It depends. Some­ti­mes — when times are tough — folk will bite your arm off for anything new. At others, it’s no-change-whatever. Other folk do things the reverse i.e Good times = Expe­ri­ment!
Also, I try to remem­ber that– as I tell them about their own attempts to influence their cus­to­mers– I can’t make anyone do anything. They do what they do because of their peers.
In this con­text, it’s worth poin­ting out how the world has moved since I star­ted tal­king HERD. I was on the frea­kier end of things in 2001 – 2; now, I’m mains­tream enough that young adfolk are for­ced by The IPA (the Bri­tish equi­va­lent of AAAA) to study my work. Weird.
9. You and I have both left the ad agency world, me to become a car­too­nist, you to become a con­sul­tant. That being said, the agency world still exists, it’s still making money, and we still have some dear friends still in the busi­ness, who we’d still like to see do well. From what you’ve lear­ned from the ever-changing world we both seem to be living in, what advice would you give our agency friends? What can agency folk do to create value for their clients, in spite of so many adver­ti­sing and bran­ding sac­red cows already having been tur­ned into ham­bur­ger meat?
Start making things (rather than com­mu­ni­ca­tion — com­mu­ni­ca­tion is not the ans­wer, in fact it’s an excuse).
AND
Work out — like the dudes at Ano­maly and Another Ano­maly — how to make money from making things.
Also…
Work out how you can make the kind of pla­ces that you or I, or the peo­ple who clients really value, want to work.
10. Ok, Mr Purpose-Idea Grand Ninja, if some­body asked you what was YOUR OWN, indi­vi­dual P-I, how would you ans­wer them? Just curious.
Hel­ping us all do bet­ter stuff by making sure our thin­king is straigh­ter.
You see, I don’t have the ans­wers (and even if I did, it’d be point­less telling the world). But I can make you think a bit har­der about stuff — I can help you throw away the use­less stuff, the stuff you don’t need any­more.
[You can also follow Mark on Twit­ter here.]