At the beginning of last year, Ikea’s chief sustainability officer, Steve Howard, coined the term “Peak Stuff” in reference to many areas of material purchase that have peaked and already begun to plateau.
Oil sales in the US, commodities like beef and sugar and even automotive sales in certain countries, following the mass adoption of Uber, are following suit. Since then the application of the principle of peak stuff has been used to describe anything and everything from Peak Apple (the recent stagnation of iPhones sales) to Zombies (mass desensitisation resulting in the likes of the just about tolerable movie, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies).
Given the ubiquitous nature of the ‘trend’, I began to wonder where it might manifest itself amongst that swathe of media industry developments that position themselves at different intersections along the adoption curve – peak print? Most Probably. Peak meetings? Almost certainly.
Whilst wistfully looking back at 2016 through figures and references to gain some insight on where or where abouts we may be peaking out, I turned to LinkedIn for inspiration.
Here it quickly occurred to me that peak stuff might not take the guise of any channel or platform usage behavior petering out, but given the tirade of articles and counter articles (circa 1.7m LinkedIn results for ‘marketing strategy’) that exploded from just about every agency Tom, Dick or wannabe Ritson last year (circa1.3m results for ‘TV vs Digital’), could it be that as an industry we’ve reach ‘Peak Opinion’?
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the importance of debate – it’s the foundation of democracy, but the incessant and compulsive nature of the way we go about it, I believe may have gone too far. Of course, like the majority of recent postings it’s all linked to grabbing headline attention, with the need to make increasingly outlandish and provocative claims, often poorly substantiated to gain news feed traction.
Competitive 'thought-leadership’ through professional social media is rife and regularly encouraged, yet often it seems, with individual, not agency-wide interests at heart.
Last year, Harvard psychologists reported that people spend 80% of social conversation talking about themselves; whilst the content of industry posts might come with a veneer of professional integrity, in many cases, when we look a little closer, it’s appears that self-interest is the motivating factor.
Has the reach and frequency of agency opinion become more important than growing agency and client business? Maybe it’s time to start thinking about our own frequency cap, or possibly even, a frequency peak?
This culture of ‘posting for sport’ leads to an environment where arguably our focus becomes more outward-looking; more concerned by the reactions of rival agency peers and industry figureheads, than delivering our views internally to help shape agency progression and unify organisational thinking and beliefs. When did the role of agency influencer become more significant than the ability to influence the agency?
With so much contention across many areas of the media and advertising right now, from how to balance the growth principles of sophisticated mass marketing, with one-to-one precision targeting though data to more superfluous topics like TV vs YouTube, it’s important that debate occurs not just in the bubble of social media, but in real life agency forums and client workshops.
That way agencies and clients learn and grow together, aligning on marketing principles and metrics, and move forward with a unified communication vision; an approach we’re working through under an internal initiative called ‘One MediaCom’.
By no means are we looking to discourage individualism, but as an employee, my opinion should come with a dash of electric pink cool aid.
So, in 2017, I’d like industry opinion to keep a few things in mind:
1. Is now a good time to chime in? If people acted the same way in meetings as they did on LinkedIn, they’d be told to pipe down and wait for their turn. Everyone loathes that know-it-all planner who just won’t let up. Why not adopt everyone’s favourite meeting guideline flowchart (below), when it comes to professional posting. Are you informed enough to grab the limelight? If yes, go chase that debate, if not, well, why are you talking?
2. Beyond opinion, is the article helpful to others? Helpful opinion through professional networks clearly has an audience. GroupM and now WPP’s Group Marketing Director Greg Graham’s single minded content approach around great presentations has proved that, resulting in some of the most viewed industry posts of 2016.
3. At times, ditch the digital debate. Come together as an agency to talk, agree, disagree on the big issues and move forward with a clear product view you can all get behind.
And on that note, I open this up for opinion. Unless it’s peaked, of course.
By Mike Deane, head of strategy at MediaCom