Our Bucket's Edge: A conversation with Alex Bogusky (Sixty Excerpt)
June 6, 2011
Interview by Lane Karczewski, 2011 CW
What a job, huh?
Seniors in every agency know it, graduates about to enter the field sense it and prospective ad students better take note before giving up their full nights of sleep - a brand can be the hardest boss to work for.
Our industry has begun to reinvent itself at a mind-numbing rate. Most rules about how brands connect with consumers are broken daily and the ones that aren't are rewritten by the time we wake up the next day.
These are the things on my mind as I sit down to a Skype call with Alex Bogusky, former creative lead at Crispin Porter + Bogusky and founding insurgent at FearLess Cottage, his latest endeavor since departing an industry he at times brought to its knees. I'm anxious to hear his thoughts on how agencies can continue to reinvent the relationship brands share with consumers.
"I feel like what you're talking about already happened," he says. "Haven't we already fully digested that everyone fundamentally changed the way they behave? Technology made it so you have to provide more than entertainment. You can't interrupt. You have to engage." His tone of voice indicates these words shed their luster long before this Skype call. "I think I was part of that revolution," he admits.
No surprise there. After all, Bogusky's creative notoriety stems from having been one step ahead of everyone during his more than 20 years in the business. To me, the notion that agencies must continue to reinvent how clients stay in sync with consumers seems valid. Alex takes it one, admittedly huge, step further.
"You think of capitalism and you think of business," he begins. "There is a lot of ever expanding energy there. That's what capitalism does - it conquers and moves into new territories, where it finds new resources."
Bogusky has taken me into uncharted waters. Three years heavily immersed in the study of advertising and I can't recall the word capitalism having entered my mind once.
"It's like dropping a pebble in a bucket of water," he continues. "The ripples move outward, right? That's how capitalism works. Businesses think, hey, we'll just ride these waves forever."
But the metaphorical waves eventually hit the bucket's edge. Here, Bogusky makes his biggest point. As these waves collide with the wall, something crucial happens. "The energy within those waves doesn't go in a different direction or at a different angle. It goes in reverse," he explains.
"So imagine the bucket's edge these waves hit - that's what capitalism is hitting today - the edge of our ecosystem. As a human race, we've reached the edge of our ecosystem and what it can sustain," says Alex.
After years of helping sell some of the world's foremost brands, Bogusky now spends his efforts exploring the other side of advertising's fence, wearing the hat of consumer advocate. He believes an ecosystem strapped for resources calls for a redesign of capitalism, one that's ultimately more consumer-centric. His example of ripples in a bucket is his way of detailing the flipped landscape businesses face today in which what was once business as usual, from this point forward, is anything but.
"Where secrecy was the advantage in business, now it's transparency," says Bogusky.
He goes on to explain how success once relied on things a business kept hidden from consumers. "I know all our secret ingredients. I know the special way it's made. I know all the research we did on you and why we're going to put this ad in front of you at this particular moment for this particular reason," he recalls of old business. "It tallies up to a relationship with consumers that just doesn't fit anymore."
This foregone relationship is straight out of the playbook of old capitalism, from a time when interaction between company and consumer meant nothing more than money exchanged at a cash register. "The new relationship is going to be much more authentic with the ability to make choices that match my values as a consumer," he explains. "Transparency is letting the consumer into the world of info you have so there isn't an asymmetry between what you know as a company and what I know as a consumer."
Sharing its deepest, and sometimes darkest, secrets with the public makes a business more likely to pinpoint areas that could use improvement before it's too late - like its impact on the environment. While the concept of sustainability is popular with the public, some businesses have been hesitant to come around. "Unfortunately, sustainability has gotten this notion of sacrifice with a lot of CEOs today. They believe they have to sacrifice to be sustainable," says Alex.
What results from this mindset are businesses that attempt to become more sustainable mostly because it's in vogue. Bogusky believes this is the wrong approach. "Companies should become sustainable because they're reading and understanding the definition of the word - it simply means you get to stick around."
And while it's not difficult to be proactive in these regards, failing to do so can be costly for a business. Consumers are increasingly quick to recognize a brand's shortcomings in transparency and sustainability before the brand itself. This worst case scenario is one in which consumers are knocking on your door, pissed-off with pitchforks in hand, upset over business practices about which you could've been forthcoming.
"The businesses that are, at least right now, being most successful are ones moving most rapidly towards collaboration," he says. Collaboration, according to Bogusky, is the new competition. "Being competitive was the old energy. You'd block companies from markets. You'd steal their people," he explains. Not anymore. Not only is our ecosystem running out of resources, it's brimming with an audience more connected and virally vocal than any generation before it. Never before has an audience been more profitable or perilous to a brand's livelihood, depending on how they perceive they are valued by the brand.
To me, Bogusky speaks to the redesign of capitalism with the conviction of a man who has waited 20 years to say something, only recently having been able to verbalize it. His mind is made-up and his passion is infectious.
But what the hell does this all mean for advertising?
"If I were an ad student, I wouldn't be looking for a job in an agency. I'd be looking for a job in a company," says Bogusky.
"If there is any creative revolution going on, it's that the way in which a company conducts its business is its best advertising," he says. It seems as though a capitalism running on fumes has businesses trying to realign with consumers in more authentic ways, and practices like transparency, sustainability and collaboration look to be their best bets. While these progressive ideas begin to manifest themselves as trends throughout business, the agency of record's role becomes less easily defined.
"Agencies are in some trouble because of the way they're positioned," says Alex. Companies today ought to take a moment and look inward at how they operate before looking outward to how they're perceived. "It's hard for the agencies to participate in that because it isn't what they've been asked to do, " he begins to explain.
"Who is going to be most transparent fastest? Who is going to be most sustainable fastest? These ideas don't come from agencies. They tend to happen within the organization," he continues.
Though quite unsure of an agency's role amidst this redesign of capitalism, it's clear Bogusky doesn't intend to discredit the industry he recently exited. "It's not for a lack of effort from shops," he explains. "It's just that clients tend to have a preconceived notion of what they expect from their agency."
"When you aren't looking for those ideas out of that space, you miss a lot of opportunities." Bogusky believes this is indicative of how marginalized agencies have become today. "It's a crazy shame because if you're a client, you have no idea the firepower the creative department at your agency has and what they are capable of."
I sign off Skype as intimidated as I am enthused. Did Bogusky just tell me he wouldn't dare look for a job in an agency if he were starting today? And that the most effective advertising a company does is the way it conducts business?
I had gone into my conversation with Alex curious about how agencies could reinvent the connection shared between brands and consumers. I left with the realization that if there is anything an agency needs to reinvent, it is its own connection to its clients.
A brand's world is slowly but ever so surely being turned upside down. The same things that better serve businesses in these transformative times - transparency, sustainability and collaboration - hold equal value for agencies as they aim to reconfigure what they can offer clients.
Transparency on behalf of agencies will provide clients a better understanding of the creative capabilities that exist within its walls. An agency promoting sustainability should attract like-minded clients to create the type of work from which everyone will benefit. Collaboration between client and agency, where creatives foster a deeper understanding of business and clients push for more creative, will drive robust business solutions that put today's consumer where it belongs most - in the driver's seat.
If our industry applies the lessons learned by today's businesses, not only will we be able to help reinvent a connection with consumers, we'll be able to help reinvent capitalism.
What a job, huh?
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MANY THANKS:
To Alex, for his time and thoughts.
To Peter Coughter, for the set-up.
