Hive Health

As many of you know we move offices at the end of the week to our new London office in Soho. Not content with the organisation chaos that comes with one office move (ask Tim what a dishwasher looks like these modern days) we have also been finalising arrangements for New York. This is it, our other new office. It’s our first formal entrée into the US. Based in Chelsea, with great views and full agency facilities we now have a lovely space in Manhattan. Many thanks to Roxanna, Kate and Lois for helping us. As ever, you are all welcome to beapart there too. For now though we don’t have people permanently based there so London is still your best bet. But watch this space because we aim to change that very soon.

Ian rocked into the office this morning, fresh from a PM magazine all agencies round table shindig with a number of agency leaders, MDs etc.

These mornings are a feast of fun for us in the office, a usually calm, collected and considered Ian, can barely contain his overnight simmer. He positively is busting for a chat, and Jas and I can almost feel him ready to boil over.

Anyone who encounters Ian will know it’s pretty hard to get a rise out of him (I can lay claim to managing to do this almost once – in an incident, involving my 6^th Nokia N95 in 2 weeks and a pint of cider. Although Vodafone’s dismal approach to customer service is co-culprit)

This need for an outburst lasted all through our first-thing-Friday People meeting until he could take it no longer. No AOB? BANG. The topic of this rare eruption?  Innovation, advertising agencies, the nature of conceptual creativity i.e. the ability to do a different more connective ad, versus innovation – the ability to provide solutions our clients are not expecting. Jas shouted INCOMING and we all hit the deck.

What stuck me – is the clear struggle Ian was having with wanting desperately for the industry, or more specifically agencies to grow up and evolve and stop boring each other with tales of clients, late adoption blah, blah (anyone still awake?), With the pleasure he was getting from seeing innovation being falsely encapsulated by an obsession with the ad, what goes into an A4 page, and whether illustrative style, or a bloody banner can be seen as ground breakingly progressive. blah blah blah.

I think what we were viewing can encapsulated by the term Schadenfreude. In fact I know it is because I have just spent ten minutes on Google trying to spell it. I was eventually able to confirm this is the case and that the term definitely isn’t German for pork chop.

I think one could argue that Communications holding companies buy ‘established innovation’ i.e change that’s margin friendly. Be that agencies that show high levels of creativity, an unusual regional speciality, or  integration model. It certainly was the case with the three I have been under (although I can only speak for healthcare). Their model is set up to buy novel agencies at the top of their game, and make sure that they keep doing what they are good at, never deviating too far from a formula that got them purchased. No risks and certainly no investment without return.

I was told that the agency world’s approach to innovation was ‘bloody stupid’ by a clever  guy, Craig, I often sit  next to at the  Company of Cutlers in Sheffield. He put it a bit like this; his world; the stainless steel industry is split into revenue from commoditized and specialist products. And all the players in the market know this. (To me it’s a bit like artwork, design, traffic and the sexier agency products services). They know that the commodity business is always under margin pressure and threat (when was the last time a page of artwork cost £400?). And they know that the specialist products migrate to becoming the commodised ones (conceptual writers at medical writer rates).

Sheffield steels answer to this reality is to set up R&D, cap the maximum margin and devote the remaining resource to innovation, partner with academia and the great and the good to push constantly what drives ultimate value – providing services and products that are first to market. Find ‘unused to’ products that meet existing needs but do so either more efficiently or in better way.

Given this I couldn’t figure out why agencies don’t have R&D. Why don’t they someone tasked with research, with finding new ways of solving established problems.

Is it because 20% margin and 4 out of 5 on the annual review is fine, and innovation requires investment and less short term returns?

I’ve been sitting here waiting to type this blog for about twenty minutes, trying to decide what to write about the launch of eBee.

I could mention the guerrilla marketing at the digital marketing awards.

I could mention that it was a night of firsts for me – first company I’ve launched, first time I’ve ever used spray paint, first time I’ve been asked to remove it.

I could tell you about all the people who have  made this possible: clients, patients, a team of inspirational, passionate individuals and the 5 months spent pre launch collecting amazing technologies to play with and developing the technical development capacity to make them work for brands.

I could tell you how lucky I feel to have been asked by the founders of Hive (the mothership) to turn a business concept founded on ‘borrowing’ innovation from other industries, making it healthcare relevant and turning them into reality.

But instead I’ll just invite you to visit and you can decide what you’d like to know for yourself

Post the PM digital awards last night what I really needed was a dark warm room, a duvet and to be entertained. Fortunately part of this was possible, unfortunately only after having to go to Brighton to hunt down insights into Nurses/virology/technology for 9am. The skedaddle back to Town for 3pm proved all a bit of a blur.

This entertainment came in the form of an afternoon with Paul Smith, sharing his views on inspiration, business, customer satisfaction and being polite. Equipped with wild gesticulations, vivid facial expressions, and a bit of dancing he provided a total inspiration for us. It was hard not to be enthralled by him and totally hit the mark – a perfect replacement for what could have been an afternoon of Murder she wrote.

Paul built his archetypal British label on a foundation of playfulness, an impeccable eye and a steely business sense. Since setting up his first shop with wife Pauline Denyer in 1970 – he’s been knighted, had his own exhibition and owns 230 ‘individual’ stores worldwide. But more than any of this, he proved to be a total gentleman, true to himself, and elegant in his honesty. Classically quirky to the core.

His views on globalization, homogenization, and characterless multinational organisations were bluntly put. He willed us to strive for character and difference, to not just repeat what is successful, and role it out country to country but to strive to build on that success, to challenge it, or risk becoming yesterday.

His views on success and happiness were nicely encapsulated in him recommending we all ask ourselves “what’s the point of you”, defining what we love doing, and doing it. No more complicated than that.  Awesome.