È con vero piacere che ho l’onore di annunciare la nascita del Future Department, un’iniziativa di business community e networking internazionale, cui ebolaindustries è stata invitata ad aderire per prima in Italia. La prossima settimana cercherò di raccontarvi meglio come funziona, cosa offre e come si può entrare a farne parte.


La cosa più interessante è che prima di essere business-oriented, il progetto è decisamente content-oriented, per cui offrirà una grande opportunità di interscambio con una community selezionata e internazionale.

Ma c’è di più, il Future Department lancia anche una rivista, The Next Issue, il cui numero zero è in uscita a novembre. L’idea originale è che mentre,  normalmente, in ogni altra rivista gli articoli pubblicati rappresentano la fine di un viaggio, il tema è stato trattato, e l’autore e il lettore passano oltre, qui ogni articolo pubblicato sarà invece il punto di partenza, sviluppato e condiviso da un gruppo speciale di autori: i lettori saranno infatti anche i collaboratori. Il primo numero prevede un ricco editoriale in cui sono stati invitati a contribuire oltre 70 persone da tutto il mondo. Tra queste ci sono anch’io ;) Il tema dell’editoriale risponde al seguente interrogativo: “, quali sono  le sfide che state affrontando ogni volta che vi trovate a  realizzare progetti e idee innovativi, in un contesto come quello attuale, imprevedibile e fortemente orientato al cambiamento?”

Per chi volesse approfondire il tema, a seguire troverete la mia personalissima risposta.



"I’ve been in the business of strategy, brand and communication for over 10 years now, working internationally as well as in my main market, Italy. Not a very long time compared to many other experts and gurus, but enough to recognise that we’ve come to a critical turning point, almost an evolutionary step, as it never happened before. Everything is changing, not one thing at the time, but all together, each one affecting the other: people, media, environment, behaviours, needs, attitudes. And most importantly, they’re changing rapidly, unpredictably, turning conventions upside down and creating a totally new environment. We’re all invited to join a new world, where communication needs to find a proper place, approach and rules of engagement. No turning back point: things we’ll never be as they were before.

It’s all very exciting, uneasy and challenging. From now on, bringing ideas to fruition will almost demand a reverse engineering process: the capacity to question everything, to break rules and conventions in the way we used to do things and very often to re-start from scratch.

But one challenge sits above all: it’s called complexity. Recognising the fact we’re moving towards an environment ruled by complexity is the first step. Even though the question remains the same, “How do we create effective communication, that enables relevance of brand-contents and eventually engages people (no more consumers, nor target)?”, the new answer lies in the world of complexity.

The challenge is apparently odd: brands are complex, whereas people look for ideas that ought to be simple. Is this a contradiction? I don’t believe so. I think that complex doesn’t mean complicated and, most importantly, doesn’t have to be complicated. Complexity is about multiple layers of meanings and connections, it’s about interactions, it’s about having multiple expressions and nuances under a unique fil rouge or a consistant thought-idea. I always think of Nike as one of the best examples of a brand that is complex in its nature and continously changing expressions, but never contradictory, nor complicated, nor distant or un-emotional.

I keep repeating myself that a complex thing is not a complicated thing. Having said that, this is only the edge of this iceberg of challenges that complexity brings into the game. Hence, bringing an idea to fruition in this context where we need to challenge complexity has many further implications and other challenges.

Strategy&creativity integration is the very first: the idea generation process is becoming more and more of a continuum between strategy and creativity. The two things will need to work together, often osmotically, back and forward, jumping from one to the other. They need each other evermore, at different levels and stages. You cannot be irrelevant and you can’t afford not to engage and involve your people.
 
This in turn lead to a further challenge, that concerns the way traditional agencies run their creative process and the way agencies are structured and organised. How are we going to organise the workflow in a way that ensures the development of a media-neutral idea with many stakeholders and contributors? Moreover, the people and skills that are needed in the idea generation process are expanding and moving across categories: creatives alone are not enough, strategists neither… how do you bring into the process the technological skills, the understanding of the way certain things can actually be developed and executed? Let’s just think of the implications of ideas that have implications for mobile, Bluetooth or rfid, or whatever next. Or even, what other skills do you need if you want to turn your brand into a content producer, not an advertiser?

And this brings in another critical challenge when thinking about fruition of ideas: execution. I have the strong feeling that execution is becoming a critical area of effectiveness for the success of an idea. Ideas that are great on paper need to be turned great in reality and this brings a much bigger emphasys and attention on the executional elements of a project. With traditional media like tv and press, the process was relatively easy, controllable and ownable. But what happen when the project is integrated and it requires each time, a completely new sets of skills, specialistic expertise, innovative technologies?

Different players, the best in each field, have to be grouped together and made to work together under a leading voice. Will this be the voice of the advertising agency? I think this is the ultimate challenge: to regain in front of clients the core, leading expertise in the development of communication ideas for the brands we are asked to look after.  This is what communication agencies should build their credentials and reputation in the future: the key owner and developer of real integrated ideas, able to build authentic, relevant and engaging relationship with brands".

mr white