How long have you been faking it?
Nobody wants to admit when they don’t understand something or that they need help – but it’s time for the digital industry to ‘fess up, says Richard Townsend, managing director at Circus Street.
Why is it that senior media and marketing people in many organisations struggle with digital? The most common belief is that the pace of change between the late 90s to the early 10s happened so rapidly that by the time many of them realised that they needed help, it was too late to catch up – they became embarrassed to ask the easy questions.
Before Circus Street became exclusively an online learning company, I used to hold coaching sessions for senior media people where I would take them through the digital basics. It was often disguised as a ‘strategy’ session or an ‘up-stream’ digital session, but in truth it nearly always got back to me talking about the fundamentals.
More often than not I would start the session at the whiteboard and ask the question:
“Can you tell me the difference between the Internet and the web?”
I would face the whiteboard and wait for an answer. I would deliberately make this a painfully long period of time. Eventually, I would turn around and start to explain it. The purpose of this exercise was to point out to them that perhaps they weren’t quite ready for a high level up-stream strategy session just yet.
If there were also more junior people in the room, it wasn’t uncommon for the most senior person in the room to take a call and then never be seen again – they just couldn’t face being ‘exposed’ in front of the people they led.
The result is that many senior media people feel like they are winging it. A senior publisher, admitted to me, in a candid moment that in any meeting that starts to veer towards the phrase ‘digital strategy’, he has just enough ‘digital’ vocabulary to get him to the door without embarrassing himself, whereby he makes a quick exit.
Part of the problem is that there isn’t a huge amount of clarity around the word ‘digital’. It’s too broad and means different things to different people.
‘Digital’ is often mistakenly referred to as a channel, as in: TV, press, radio, cinema, out-of-home and then digital. But as we all know, all of those channels have digital components.
Digital is often viewed as something that happens at the edges. That’s why we have digital departments and digital agencies and strategies. If you take this view then digital is something that somebody else needs to know.
Most media people didn’t choose their field because they wanted to learn about IT. They probably chose media because they had a flare for ideas and strategy and they saw themselves as good communicators. IT skills are someone else’s bag, right? Digital is viewed as a bit geeky and something for the very young to understand; senior people should concern themselves with the real business of running the company.
Our view is that digital isn’t something that happens at the edges but in the foundations of the business, running all the way through. In essence, you are a modern business that incorporates digital thinking completely, or you aren’t at all. As Tom Goodwin, the senior vice president of strategy and innovation at Havas Media, said recently:
“Of course in 2015 we don’t have electrical advertising agencies or have electricity strategists or heads of electricity, It’s just a given that everyone gets it. So why is it we allow ourselves to talk about digital the same way?”
Uber isn’t a company with a digital strategy. It’s a company with a strategy. That strategy is founded on an innate understanding of how digital technologies enable a business to become more customer centric. The same goes for WhatsApp, Spotify, Netflix and lots of other modern media businesses.
Soon we will be able to get rid of the word digital and just start talking about media and marketing again. You will either understand it or you won’t.
Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean you need to rush out and learn to code and certainly not in a day as some businesses would have you do. You do need to know some of the basics though, before you get to the more important task of doing your job. Here are a few simple questions that you should be able to answer:
– What is the difference between the Internet and the web?
– What is the difference between a native app and a web app?
– What does Google call its algorithm?
– What did the caffeine index change?
– What is owned and operated content?
– What is intent data?
If you are struggling with them then perhaps you need to go back to school.