As an outsider to your world I always find your posts provocative. It's interesting to see how your thoughts and your industry is really starting to track with what was traditionally thought of as "technology" businesses. The whole idea of good enough in particular is something that has been getting a lot of heat in the tech space lately, including this article in Wired, " The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine" http://bit.ly/3YORll. Although it has nothing to do with making commercials or building brands, it still seems to have a lot to do with the future of you business.
JV
· 1 month ago
Great referral to the Wired piece. Definite connections. Affirms to me even more that apparently, my bar is way too high. Love the use of the word "crapification." I would submit another word that has been part of the evolution; Wal-Martification.
Since this article leads us to other industries affected by Good Enough, I would recommend a viewing of the HBO documentary Schmatta - From Rags to Riches to Rags http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/schmatta/index...
Steven Shore
· 1 month ago
Thanks for the shout out Jerry.
Three things:
1) I hope you don't feel that I was suggesting that you weren't a master of prose. IMHO you're a great writer.
2) I disagree that agencies cannot nurture talent. Wet behind the ears writers and art directors rise to become agency presidents and creative directors, best selling authors and movie directors. While some may move on to their ultimate success, their talent was first identified and then (at least initially) nurtured within the agency's culture.
3) It was a damn good mix tape.
jsepoch
· 1 month ago
my pleasure. and, no i didn't think you were critical of my writing my style but as you rightly pointed out I'm not a professional. being an expert was once an exclusive group. technology makes it so everyone can publish or direct or edit or...
as it relates to agencies being nurturing environments, it has proven so in the ad space i.e. account superstars, creative pitchmen, etc. i rarely see it in areas of production. directors who have risen through the ranks made it through their own ambition not through any grand plan by the agency leadership. to create that type of mentorship with DIY film makers will be a major culture shift, one i'm not sure they either have the vision or expertise to realize.
and, what was on that mix tape. love to know what i was listening to 20 years ago.
cd
· 1 month ago
Here's a question for both of you.
What would you do if your top billed director was asked to go in house, and went?
Doug Schumacher
· 1 month ago
Nice post, Jerry, and I'm curious what was on that mixed tape.
Regarding 'good enough', convenience for the end user is a large driver of that. And it's something that agencies or production companies - whoever's producing the campaign - would benefit to keep in mind. Because the campaign doesn't just stop after the content is developed. They have to continue to make things easier and more convenient for the consumer. Easier to watch, share, store, reference, and so on.
I'm surprised how many good ideas I see that have nice execution, but haven't factored in the components that will make it a successful case study.
jsepoch
· 1 month ago
hi doug, this is something i never thought of so i'm glad you brought it up.
ease of use must work hand in hand with quality of entertainment. a few years back, we did a series of short films for microsoft that i thought were great. they not only had no seeding strategy but also buried the films 20 pages deep on a web site. once again, the goal is the same "make good stuff and market it well" it's just the platforms and strategies have changed.
thanks for the comment.
sharonlew
· 1 month ago
I read Steve's article with great interest. However I feel that most agencies have not proven themselves to be the best place to nurture 'talent'. Unfortunately I do think they are rapidly acquiring the technology to pay for said talent, under their roof. This is more of what they have always done, pay for a vendors talent and skills to execute their idea. Now they are simply acquiring the vendor as well.
However when the creative is left in the lone hands of the client and the agency, there is no middle man to fight the good fight (or take the blame) to create the best possible work. Most large agency creatives and producers are doing their job with both hands tied behind their back. Clearly the work will and has suffered from this, further leading us to 'Good Enough'
The crowdsourcing concept, and the success of this, is the best example of ‘good enough’. Let anyone create the ad, as long as it’s being watched. Any press is good press etc..
After weeks of watching Major League Baseball, the proof of good enough is glaring. I personally can't wait for the games to end so I can get a reprieve from all the mediocre advertising that has slipped thru the hands of those who thought it was good enough.
jsepoch
· 1 month ago
i love it when you comment.
two things i want to say in response. i agree 100% that the natural constructive fight between agencies and production companies is the creative energy needed to make something great. when all the chefs were trained in the same kitchen it tends for everything to taste the same and often very bland.
the other things is "good enough" to me is more about the quality of the production value as oppose to the quality of the idea. there is a lot of mediocrity not because we want there to be but because good ideas with good execution are harder to come by then we care to admit.
sidewalksurfing
· 1 month ago
2 things:
i have a really hard time believing that a traditional Ad Agency / corporate environment will ever foster or nurture cutting edge / great directors. Directors (good ones) tend to be like fine artists. To say that a corporate environment is a fine place to bring up this kind of talent, as if it's a painter's studio, is utterly utopian at best, IMHO. Agencies will do something, but not well. kinda like all of the mediocre in-house editing / post companies. None of these things emerged from a desire to do better work or execute a specific idea - they emerged from the bean-counters. Maybe if this is reversed then it may grow organically inside an agency, but yeah, i see it as a penny-wise pound foolish type of situation.
secondly - Jerry, i think this is one of your best, most concise and inspiring posts on the state of our industry (at least to an owner of a vfx / design company) please keep up the great work.
I once ask a chain-smoking friend, "Why do you smoke?" He casually replied, "I like to smoke." How do you even get a debate going with a Client with a similar mindset?
Why do people eat at places like Applebee's? Because they do mediocre consistently. Too many Clients, Agencies and prodcos are settling.
Everybody's definition of Good or Good Enough is different. This issue dovetails into the previously discussed forums here of Why isn't there Standards? or How can we all deal with the current climate of the industry?
Until mindsets assimilate or a standards bar is realized, we will continue to see less-than-creative spewage spill from our flatscreens. Don't get me started about the production Process. Clients (especially the next generation) who have no true point of reference of what Good is will simply go along with mediocre. Even if they don't even know they're going along. IMHO.
charlesday
· 1 month ago
There are two thoughts here, I think. Who will be creating stuff. And how will we be exposed to it.
Ideas and their production will increasingly come from the same place. In my experience, in a race towards innovative solutions, the entrepreneur almost always beats the corporation. So, I think the better work will increasingly come from smaller, progressive, innovative companies able to take advantage of the ubiquity of technology you describe. Large agencies will also produce content. But will struggle to keep their best people who will be attracted by the possibilities that newly emerging companies will be able to offer for creative expression.
'Good enough' is another way of describing a concept I first read about a couple of years ago called the fidelity of experience. The quality we are willing to accept for a piece of media is defined by our environment in that moment. MP3 is more convenient than cds and records, and so we accept limitations in the quality. But people are paying more money than ever to go to live concerts. And there MP3 quality sound is nowhere near good enough.
The same applies with movies. Youtube and Hulu is good enough for watching movies under certain conditions. But if you have friends over for movie nights, you'll probably want the Blu-Ray version with surround sound. And the latest blockbuster release, demands iMax, pre-selected seats and $19 popcorn. Which is why Hulu has tripled its audience in the same year Hollywood is on pace to pass $10 billion in ticket sales for the first time in history.
'Good enough' applies to the moment. And works up and down the scale of media fidelity.
As always, the people that succeed will be those that understand the audience best and create stuff that resonates with them, as a concept, as an execution and in terms of the fidelity of the experience.
Steven Shore
· 1 month ago
I’m sure most of us would agree that good is the enemy of great. The concept of “good enough” as it applies to the friendly debate Jerry and I have been having, is much closer to Charles’ reference to the “fidelity of experience” than it is to the many posters who read “good enough” as a willingness to accept mediocrity.
Last year I had the interesting experience of working as a consultant to one of the largest tech firms in the world. They were conducting a process review exploring how their film and video production would evolve as they ported the lion’s share of it into the digital space. Over the course of several visits to the firm, I developed a relationship with the executive creative director of the account’s global agency of record. This ECD had developed a theory, well received by the client, that he described as the “relevance curve”. The curve looked like the famous “Long Tail”: just imagine a big budgeted Super Bowl spot at the high point on the upper left corner and a micro-budgeted spot for, say, a golf website along the long tail at the lower right hand side. The idea was that the more precisely-targeted the audience, the less necessary production value became. We are only just beginning the era of micro targeting. Micro targets will necessitate micro budgets. The sheer volume of ads created will require this. A micro targeted audience will be more desirous of information than it will be of entertainment since the assumption is that they’re already interested in whatever product or service for which they’ve been targeted. For those who attended Bob Greenberg’s remarks at BOARDS, this factors into his prediction that demo ads will prevail over metaphorical ads. So, for the sake of this discussion this is where “good enough” comes in.
I don’t want to beat this talent-nurturing thing to death other than to say that there are kids coming out of college today who are as comfortable with production technology as aspiring art directors back in the sixties were with their pencils. In today’s ideation mix, is the traditional writer/art director team the only way to go? Is it really that difficult to imagine a world where a writer and director dream up a concept and go off to shoot it themselves?
As I stated in the ADWEEK column, none of this dooms traditional directors to extinction, it simply augments what they do. Many comments, both here and attached to the ADWEEK piece, view this solely through the lens of traditional production, where the director has attained status akin to that of a pop star. This is a far more utilitarian perspective on the “director”, whose sheer ubiquity in the future will diminish such stature.
As for the mix tape, I’ll have to rummage around the car to find it to get you a play list. I remember Stone Roses and Terrence Trent Darby on one side. The other side had generic music from the sixties recorded for Vegas strippers to dance to…
joelwynne
· 1 month ago
Interesting post. the concept of good enough is a moving target. Moore's law states that processors will double in clock speed and halve in price every year. More and more fibre-optic cable gets laid around the world.
Practically this means that we have seen over the past couple of years broadcast quality on the internet improve from SD 640x480 to full screen mpeg2 and recently moved to HD. This trend will continue.
Practically what this means is that audience members requirements for the media they consume changes. Production companies and media creators will do well to keep this in mind. Your message starts to be defined by the medium (a tip of the hat to Mr McLuhan) - when you have full screen HD available to you, you better have a really good reason to produce something at the lower end of the production value graph that you speak of and it will only be appropriate for certain brands.
Without having heard what Bob Greenberg said at Boards, from what has been said in the article and the comments below, IMHO I think he is inaccurate, as even "demo" ads for shampoo will need to have high production value. How else can you show the glossiness of hair to good effect?
Steven Shore
· 1 month ago
Demo need not mean low-fi. One example cited as a demo was the Mac vs PC campaign.
joelwynne
· 1 month ago
That is more clear, but then to ever be the contrarian you are swinging dangerously close to infomercial territory.
Mac vs PC is a cleverly cheaply done metaphor rather than a demo ad.
Would really have loved to be there to personally have seen both Bob and Jerry speak :(
Fern Martin
· 1 month ago
THE SHARP NAIL, not the big hammer....
Great ideas, and concepts need execution that brings them to life....nothing more and waay nothing less.
WE WORK HARD TO REFINE THE IDEA, to let it say all that it can in the window that we work in...we must tailor the work to the needs of the job, not the other way around. Different concepts, different executions, different needs....the trick is identifying what tool best serves.... and utilizing it.
All Comments
Since this article leads us to other industries affected by Good Enough, I would recommend a viewing of the HBO documentary Schmatta - From Rags to Riches to Rags
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/schmatta/index...
Three things:
1) I hope you don't feel that I was suggesting that you weren't a master of prose. IMHO you're a great writer.
2) I disagree that agencies cannot nurture talent. Wet behind the ears writers and art directors rise to become agency presidents and creative directors, best selling authors and movie directors. While some may move on to their ultimate success, their talent was first identified and then (at least initially) nurtured within the agency's culture.
3) It was a damn good mix tape.
style but as you rightly pointed out I'm not a professional. being an
expert was once an exclusive group. technology makes it so everyone
can publish or direct or edit or...
as it relates to agencies being nurturing environments, it has proven
so in the ad space i.e. account superstars, creative pitchmen, etc. i
rarely see it in areas of production. directors who have risen through
the ranks made it through their own ambition not through any grand
plan by the agency leadership. to create that type of mentorship with
DIY film makers will be a major culture shift, one i'm not sure they
either have the vision or expertise to realize.
and, what was on that mix tape. love to know what i was listening to
20 years ago.
What would you do if your top billed director was asked to go in house, and went?
Regarding 'good enough', convenience for the end user is a large driver of that. And it's something that agencies or production companies - whoever's producing the campaign - would benefit to keep in mind. Because the campaign doesn't just stop after the content is developed. They have to continue to make things easier and more convenient for the consumer. Easier to watch, share, store, reference, and so on.
I'm surprised how many good ideas I see that have nice execution, but haven't factored in the components that will make it a successful case study.
it up.
ease of use must work hand in hand with quality of entertainment. a
few years back, we did a series of short films for microsoft that i
thought were great. they not only had no seeding strategy but also
buried the films 20 pages deep on a web site. once again, the goal is
the same "make good stuff and market it well" it's just the platforms
and strategies have changed.
thanks for the comment.
However when the creative is left in the lone hands of the client and the agency, there is no middle man to fight the good fight (or take the blame) to create the best possible work. Most large agency creatives and producers are doing their job with both hands tied behind their back. Clearly the work will and has suffered from this, further leading us to 'Good Enough'
The crowdsourcing concept, and the success of this, is the best example of ‘good enough’. Let anyone create the ad, as long as it’s being watched. Any press is good press etc..
After weeks of watching Major League Baseball, the proof of good enough is glaring. I personally can't wait for the games to end so I can get a reprieve from all the mediocre advertising that has slipped thru the hands of those who thought it was good enough.
two things i want to say in response. i agree 100% that the natural
constructive fight between agencies and production companies is the
creative energy needed to make something great. when all the chefs
were trained in the same kitchen it tends for everything to taste the
same and often very bland.
the other things is "good enough" to me is more about the quality of
the production value as oppose to the quality of the idea. there is a
lot of mediocrity not because we want there to be but because good
ideas with good execution are harder to come by then we care to admit.
i have a really hard time believing that a traditional Ad Agency / corporate environment will ever foster or nurture cutting edge / great directors. Directors (good ones) tend to be like fine artists. To say that a corporate environment is a fine place to bring up this kind of talent, as if it's a painter's studio, is utterly utopian at best, IMHO. Agencies will do something, but not well. kinda like all of the mediocre in-house editing / post companies. None of these things emerged from a desire to do better work or execute a specific idea - they emerged from the bean-counters. Maybe if this is reversed then it may grow organically inside an agency, but yeah, i see it as a penny-wise pound foolish type of situation.
secondly - Jerry, i think this is one of your best, most concise and inspiring posts on the state of our industry (at least to an owner of a vfx / design company) please keep up the great work.
regards,
tim crean
SUSPECT vfx + design
www.suspect.tv
ps - post that mix tape!!!!
How do you even get a debate going with a Client with a similar mindset?
Why do people eat at places like Applebee's?
Because they do mediocre consistently. Too many Clients, Agencies and prodcos are settling.
Everybody's definition of Good or Good Enough is different. This issue dovetails into the previously discussed forums here of Why isn't there Standards? or How can we all deal with the current climate of the industry?
Until mindsets assimilate or a standards bar is realized, we will continue to see less-than-creative spewage spill from our flatscreens. Don't get me started about the production Process.
Clients (especially the next generation) who have no true point of reference of what Good is will simply go along with mediocre. Even if they don't even know they're going along. IMHO.
Ideas and their production will increasingly come from the same place. In my experience, in a race towards innovative solutions, the entrepreneur almost always beats the corporation. So, I think the better work will increasingly come from smaller, progressive, innovative companies able to take advantage of the ubiquity of technology you describe. Large agencies will also produce content. But will struggle to keep their best people who will be attracted by the possibilities that newly emerging companies will be able to offer for creative expression.
'Good enough' is another way of describing a concept I first read about a couple of years ago called the fidelity of experience. The quality we are willing to accept for a piece of media is defined by our environment in that moment. MP3 is more convenient than cds and records, and so we accept limitations in the quality. But people are paying more money than ever to go to live concerts. And there MP3 quality sound is nowhere near good enough.
The same applies with movies. Youtube and Hulu is good enough for watching movies under certain conditions. But if you have friends over for movie nights, you'll probably want the Blu-Ray version with surround sound. And the latest blockbuster release, demands iMax, pre-selected seats and $19 popcorn. Which is why Hulu has tripled its audience in the same year Hollywood is on pace to pass $10 billion in ticket sales for the first time in history.
'Good enough' applies to the moment. And works up and down the scale of media fidelity.
As always, the people that succeed will be those that understand the audience best and create stuff that resonates with them, as a concept, as an execution and in terms of the fidelity of the experience.
Last year I had the interesting experience of working as a consultant to one of the largest tech firms in the world. They were conducting a process review exploring how their film and video production would evolve as they ported the lion’s share of it into the digital space. Over the course of several visits to the firm, I developed a relationship with the executive creative director of the account’s global agency of record. This ECD had developed a theory, well received by the client, that he described as the “relevance curve”. The curve looked like the famous “Long Tail”: just imagine a big budgeted Super Bowl spot at the high point on the upper left corner and a micro-budgeted spot for, say, a golf website along the long tail at the lower right hand side. The idea was that the more precisely-targeted the audience, the less necessary production value became. We are only just beginning the era of micro targeting. Micro targets will necessitate micro budgets. The sheer volume of ads created will require this. A micro targeted audience will be more desirous of information than it will be of entertainment since the assumption is that they’re already interested in whatever product or service for which they’ve been targeted. For those who attended Bob Greenberg’s remarks at BOARDS, this factors into his prediction that demo ads will prevail over metaphorical ads. So, for the sake of this discussion this is where “good enough” comes in.
I don’t want to beat this talent-nurturing thing to death other than to say that there are kids coming out of college today who are as comfortable with production technology as aspiring art directors back in the sixties were with their pencils. In today’s ideation mix, is the traditional writer/art director team the only way to go? Is it really that difficult to imagine a world where a writer and director dream up a concept and go off to shoot it themselves?
As I stated in the ADWEEK column, none of this dooms traditional directors to extinction, it simply augments what they do. Many comments, both here and attached to the ADWEEK piece, view this solely through the lens of traditional production, where the director has attained status akin to that of a pop star. This is a far more utilitarian perspective on the “director”, whose sheer ubiquity in the future will diminish such stature.
As for the mix tape, I’ll have to rummage around the car to find it to get you a play list. I remember Stone Roses and Terrence Trent Darby on one side. The other side had generic music from the sixties recorded for Vegas strippers to dance to…
Practically this means that we have seen over the past couple of years broadcast quality on the internet improve from SD 640x480 to full screen mpeg2 and recently moved to HD. This trend will continue.
Practically what this means is that audience members requirements for the media they consume changes. Production companies and media creators will do well to keep this in mind. Your message starts to be defined by the medium (a tip of the hat to Mr McLuhan) - when you have full screen HD available to you, you better have a really good reason to produce something at the lower end of the production value graph that you speak of and it will only be appropriate for certain brands.
Without having heard what Bob Greenberg said at Boards, from what has been said in the article and the comments below, IMHO I think he is inaccurate, as even "demo" ads for shampoo will need to have high production value. How else can you show the glossiness of hair to good effect?
Mac vs PC is a cleverly cheaply done metaphor rather than a demo ad.
Would really have loved to be there to personally have seen both Bob and Jerry speak :(
Great ideas, and concepts need execution that brings them to life....nothing more and waay nothing less.
WE WORK HARD TO REFINE THE IDEA, to let it say all that it can in the window that we work in...we must tailor the work to the needs of the job, not the other way around. Different concepts, different executions, different needs....the trick is identifying what tool best serves.... and utilizing it.