Are you thinking paranoid enough?

There’s an old joke: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

It has more than a grain of truth in it.

"Gotcha!"

For me, a degree of paranoia has always been a valuable aid to thinking about projects, problems and solutions. Because any time you just accept a brief at face value, you may be missing a giant bear trap hidden inside it. 

Sometimes, it’s been put there deliberately, as a test. (Not nice, but not unheard of). 

Other times, it’s the result of ignorance or incompetence.

Or an ugly combination of both.

Now I’m not saying that all your clients are out to get you. Or your colleagues either, who can be equally culpable. The kindest explanation is that they didn’t see it, either.

As Isaac Asimov wrote: “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity".

Whatever the reason, some healthy paranoia will help you to spot the trap before you fall into it.

Camp Paranoia: An exercise in caution ...

Many years ago, I was shipped off to participate in a management training course. It was run by a bunch of ex-military types at a camp in the bush near Bowral in New South Wales.

There were a dozen of us from the Melbourne and Sydney offices of a large Australian advertising agency. Given the era - and the macho culture of that particular agency - it goes without saying that all of us were men. 

There were several rising Account Barons, a couple of rather weary Creative Directors and a solitary Planner (me). Already, cracks were appearing along the tectonic fault lines of function and location. There was a feeling of mutual distrust and a strong competitive spirit. So much testosterone. Things didn’t bode well.

“Your mission, should you choose to accept it …”

We got the briefing for the first ‘team building’ exercise. We were divided into three mixed groups of four. Each group was given a knapsack with a few odd-looking bits and pieces of kit inside. We were told that instructions on how to use these would be made available further along the track.

We were then led off to three separate clearings in the bush and presented with the first part of our challenge. Each team was confronted by two large slabs of wood, roughly the size of railway sleepers, loosely connected with four loops of rope. We had to stand on them, lift them with the ropes and ‘ski-walk’ them to a central point, exchange with another team and proceed on to a check point for the next part of the challenge.

The start was signalled by a great deal of noise from the unseen camp staff - people banging on tin plates, blowing whistles and shouting: ‘Go! Go! Go!”

“And they’re off!”

So off we went. Our team luckily managed to find a decent rhythm and arrived at the swap-over point first. The next team arrived a few seconds later. There was no sign of the third team. (It turned out they’d fallen over several times).

“Quick, swap!” said one of the Account Directors, “Let’s go before they get here!”

I paused.  Something didn’t smell right, and it wasn’t the wombat shit littering the track.

(Weird fact: Wombats shit in cubes)

“Hang on a minute,” I said. “All three teams have to swap. If we swap with you, there’s no-one for the other team to swap with”.

 “Fuck them!” came the response.

“Bear with me” I said. “Did anyone actually say this was a race?”

“Life’s a race, Ian” said an Account Director with a sneer.

I ignored his sarcasm and stuck to my guns. 

“That’s as may be. There was a lot of ‘rah rah rah’ at the start, but nobody said it was a race. Now, I’m willing to bet the other team has got something in their knapsack that we’re going to need later on. Why don’t we wait for them now, so all three teams can swap and go on together. If you’re right, I’m perfectly happy to race my guts out later on so we win. But if I’m right, we’ll all get stuck and have to come right back to here on those bloody sleepers.”

The Senior Creative Director from Sydney thought this over for a second and said “Yes. Let’s wait. At least until we know what this is all is about.”

“All together now …”

What it was all about, in fact, was ‘collaboration’. (Not 'competition'. Definitely not 'a race').

Each subsequent stage required the input of all three teams and all the bits of equipment we shared between us. 

Instead of rushing, we completed the rest of the course at a steady canter, solved the various problems and went in for the debriefing. 

The seven percent solution.

The ex-military types were impressed.

“Only seven percent of teams get it right at that first stage. Ninety three percent fail right there and have to go back.”  

Our bosses, who were present but not participating, smiled contentedly at each other. (Smug bastards).

“We’ve been set up …”

We did get it right, but it was all down to paranoia. I had a strong feeling we were being set up to fail and wanted to avoid the trap, even though I wasn’t sure exactly what it was.

The Creative Director put it another way: “We had a Planning breakthrough!”

Hence my original question: Are you thinking paranoid enough?

Paranoia can be a great motivator.

It goes far beyond the natural desire to get things right, by embracing the mortal dread of getting it horribly wrong. 

Thinking paranoid can help you to avoid making stupid mistakes and looking like a complete idiot. Because being an industry laughing stock is rarely a good career move.

And with the sheer number of anti-social people using social media, complete and utter public humiliation is now only a couple of clicks away.

So how do you make paranoia work for you? 

Simple: suspect everything. (And everyone).

More to the point, question everything.

“You want us to do what?”

If it’s a brief, what does it ask you to do?  Is it reasonable?  Is it achievable?

More importantly, is it the right thing to do?  Does it actually address the real business problem the brand needs to solve?  (And is this something that communications can achieve?)

From my experience of reading many client briefs over many years, I have a rule of thumb.

On average, a written client brief will consist of:

•  70% irrelevant material (usually padding in the form of copious raw data)
• 10% wrong conclusions (drawn from the irrelevant data)
• 10% oblique hints at the real issue the brand is facing and
• 10% wish list/prescriptive items (the things the client really wants to do, regardless)

Now it's been pointed out to me that this is very cynical. I don't disagree, but as I said, it's based on experience. And paranoia.

Faced with such a brief, the only sensible reaction for the paranoid is to suspect all 100% of it, do your own homework and then write your own brief.

You may decide the client brief is wrong, and go in a different direction. If so, good for you. Having done your own research, you have the evidence to support it.

You may reach the same conclusions as the client brief. If so, good for you. At least now you have some certainty that what you're doing is the right thing.

Creative paranoia.

The same goes at the other end of the strategic thinking process, when you get presented with a creative proposal.

Cast a wary eye over it. Does it meet the brief?  (So far, so good). 

Is it impactful? (Good). 

It is clear? (Complex is OK, ambiguous is generally not) Could it be misinterpreted?  Does it mean what the creative team thinks it means? Or could there be another way of looking (and laughing) at it.

Language is tricky and subtle. And potentially dangerous …

Just a word …

A journalist recently wrote about a change in a football team, talking about an incoming player replacing a much-loved veteran by ‘filling his boots’.  

Now I sincerely hope - for the player’s sake - that’s not true. He may well be nervous, but ‘filling his boots’ isn't the same as ‘filling his shoes’. 

One small change in footwear - one giant shift in meaning.

“Wrap your laughing gear round this …”

Dave Trott recently posted a story about the launch of Dasani Water in the UK.  

Coca Cola took the US online ad campaign and ran it for the UK launch. They positioned it as ‘water with spunk’.

Now, in the US that’s like saying, ‘water with spirit’ or ‘water with sass’.

It may well mean that in the US. Not in the UK, it doesn't ...

‘Spunk’ has a very specific colloquial meaning in Britain, and that is - how can I phrase this delicately - ‘male ejaculate’.

So the attractive model in the ad with the headline ‘Can't live without spunk’ had no idea that what she was really communicating had nothing to do with water.

OK. A bad ad can make your brand (and you) a laughing stock. But it's not necessarily the end of the world. For Dasani, things got worse.

The press started to take a closer look, and discovered that the product was simply filtered tapwater. And while it was being supplied to them by Thames Water at 0.03p per litre, Dasani was charging 96p for a 600ml bottle, a 360,000% markup.

Most people don't mind paying a bit more for bottled spring water, but they quickly decided that Coca Cola was just taking the piss. It goes without saying the brand is no longer available in the UK.

Safety last.

Creative bravery is admirable. Boldly going where no one has gone before. But while you shouldn’t let caution stop you doing something new, you also shouldn’t throw it completely to the winds.

You still need a safety check , and for creative it should come at the end of the process not the beginning. (There's no point writing: "Don't cock it up" in the creative brief).

But that’s clearly the bit the team at Dasani forgot. Somebody inside Coca Cola UK wasn’t paranoid enough to question the wisdom of using an imported idea in a new market without testing it first.

They can't have done any research at all. The laughter from the respondents would surely have been a dead giveaway something wasn't right. ...

But you have to wonder why nobody in Coca Cola asked their UK agency what they thought. Maybe they didn't have one. Was this an entirely in-house effort? (If so, there's a lesson about the perils of 'groupthink' right there).

If they did ask, why didn’t the agency immediately go full metal paranoid? How did they miss something so blindingly obvious? 

Two Schools?

It’s said there are two basic Schools of History. 

One is the ‘Conspiracy School’, which posits that everything that happens is part of a giant, inter-connected plot directed by dark forces who stay hidden from us. 

The other is the ‘Cock-up School’, which posits that no-one is really in charge of anything, so history just staggers from one total cock-up to the next. 

I personally tend towards the latter theory, but I’m prepared to concede there’s no reason why conspiracy and incompetence can’t co-exist.

Either way, be prepared.

“It could happen to you, if you’re not careful”

To reiterate: paranoia remains the best antidote to this clear and ever present danger.  

When everyone else says ‘great’ is exactly when the right-thinking paranoiac should say: ‘What could possibly go wrong?’

Don’t be bashful about it. Sharing your paranoia is a valuable safety check. (For you as well as the rest of the group).

Ask someone else what they think. What do they see that you might have missed? (If they laugh, you've probably got good reason to worry).

Don’t worry that people might think you’re just being crazy. What if you’re right? 

You never know. Maybe they are out to get you, after all …

Footnote: Lessons from the masters

 “The young know everything, the old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything.” Oscar Wilde

 “Your mind is working at its best when you're being paranoid. You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation at high speed with total clarity.” Banksy

“Age and guile beat youth and a bad haircut every time.” PJ O’Rourke