Freelance Strategy Director Jo Booth on the value of being independent and remembering that teamwork creates the best work.
IT IS VERY EASY TO GET SO CAUGHT UP IN OUR WORK THAT SOMETIMES IT PAYS TO GET AN OUTSIDE VIEW. When advertising agencies hit that point, they call Independent Strategy Director Jo Booth, for some perspective.
In between pitches, Jo took some time to talk to GapJumpers about what it takes to prosper in the creative industry.
If there is one thing I have learned during that time, it’s that life in communications is really about keeping an open mind; it’s the only way you’ll learn and keep learning.
Jo Booth
Q: Jo, how did you get started in advertising and specifically planning?
Jo Booth: Having started life as a historian it was more a twist of fate rather than grand design that got me hooked on a career in advertising.
When I finished University I started working for a small management consultancy firm who were challenged with putting forward a business case for launching the Financial Times in Germany.
One aspect of the project was to analyze global advertising revenues alongside general category communications.
That sparked my interest in brands and the effect they had on consumers.
So began my career in strategy and planning; some of my more recent projects have taken me to India, Korea, Japan, Russia and China; not forgetting Soho, Leeds and Sheffield along the way.
If there is one thing I have learned during that time it’s that life in communications is really about keeping an open mind; it’s the only way you’ll learn and keep learning.
Q: How has running your own company influenced your work and thinking as a planner?
Jo Booth: “When everything seems to be going against you remember the aeroplane takes off against the wind not with it.” Henry Ford.
Starting my career by going it alone mostly influenced my mindset, which has, over the years, become more individualistic and unconventional than those I meet taking a more linear or traditional career path.
Neither way is wrong, it is what it is, in life you have to do what is best for you. It’s also taught me a great deal about self-reliance, courage and experimentation.
It fosters a way of looking at life from the “outside” in, a must for any kind of researcher, strategist or planner. It also keeps your thinking fresh and sharp.
You become open to all sorts of interesting collaborations or partnerships, you are constantly learning new ways to solve creative and strategic conundrums.
In truth it has made me much more of a skilled ‘adaptor’; by that I mean I can quite easily and readily fit with different people and situations and turn my hand or brain to most things.
It has also taught me to be an avid ‘translator’, bringing logic and creativity together quickly, simplifying and explaining things to people rapidly and not forgetting the bit I love the most, influencing different personalities and creative skill sets with ideas that create interesting outcomes.
Q: What are some of the risks and opportunities facing the creative industry?
Jo Booth:
“Our industry is at risk of becoming a commodity, the very thing we set out to make sure didn’t happen for our clients when it all began.”
When I look over the parapet it is quite difficult to distinguish what one agency does versus the other. A few stand out because of their attitude but most stand out for the wealth they are creating in the “now”.
It’s almost that the competency and capability of an agency has become its own enemy as we’re all obsessed by solving strategic and creative problems incessantly quickly to prove our “value”.
As a direct result our brains are stuck in constant output mode which means we rely on recent successes to reach an answer quickly rather than coming up with broader based solutions.
This “cut and paste” mentality allows us to quickly step into performance mode and deliver answers persuasively.
But this sort of expediency does not lend itself to experimentation, or quite simply put, trying new ways of solving strategic problems with different skill sets and different approaches.
Having a thousand ways to dissect a problem is the greatest opportunity that exists for our industry today.
An analogy: I once spoke to a psychiatrist who reviewed other psychiatrist’s practices. He said the most effective psychiatrists just knew lots of different kinds of therapy styles and who to deploy them on.
We are living through extraordinary times; we know more about how advertising works, we are all processing System One thinking thanks to Daniel Kahneman.
Behavioral Economics is starting to unpick the psychology of buying and at the same time we have more data than we know what to do with. We are living through an age of experimentation and co-creation and as such need to broaden our capabilities.
More time and focus needs to be placed on how we solve client communications problems rather than just churning out the more obvious expedient reactions.
What the communications industry needs right now is a more collaborative and inter-disciplinary approach to problem solving.
I believe this will lead to better brand building and longer-term sustainable delivery in the so-called digital age. There has never been a better time to get curious.
Q: New technology has amplified old and created new forms of behavior. How do you decide what to invest time and money in to build skill-sets around?
“Excellent question! New technologies have given us different ways to solve problems, to approach things with newer, faster and more iterative methodologies, as you say, interactions happening in real-time have led to new forms of behavior.”
“However you still need a mixture of core competencies around you, but these core competencies need the courage to “bounce” off each other to solve problems and formulate answers together.”
“Integrating digital thinkers, innovators, creative minds, researchers, strategists and analysts is probably the hardest part, bringing these people together is where the time and money should be spent.”
Jo Booth
Q: What qualities do you look for in a successful Planner?
Jo Booth: I look for people who have an innate curiosity about the World around them, it’s less about which stellar campaign they want to “wow” me with, this is too transitory to take too seriously.
For me it’s more about how they view the World, not their World and their success.
Planning began with the premise of searching for a balance between insights, truths and facts and the ability to champion, what a brand should stand for.
To be able to do this well you need the constant collaboration of others and an interest in the people around you.
I would urge anyone about to embark on a career in planning not to be overly clever, but to be overtly useful, that way you’ll always be a welcomed member of any team or collaboration and as such your ideas will turn into actions.
Q: If you were to test a candidate’s skills by giving them a small project, what would you ask them to do?
Jo Booth: I’d ask them to invite me to dinner to discuss why the world of communications will have changed by 2020.
What they choose to put on the menu and who they invite into the discussion and to dine with us is up to them.
Hosting a dinner party is very much like the pitch process; you need to understand what will make it memorable, the ability to think on your feet, and above all, great orchestration skills in order to bring all sorts of different people together for mutual benefit.
Q: What should students and graduates, looking to up their chances of breaking into the industry, focus on, in terms of skills and knowledge topics?
Jo Booth: The fact that 97% of the World’s data has been created in the last two years is utterly significant here.
Gain an understanding of data, not just on a micro-level in order to set realistic campaign objectives, but also at a macro-level to show how it can help us understand human behavior.
To do this well you must keep your knowledge base as broad as possible because:
- this helps you know what approach works best when you analyze data;
- it gives you an unique point of view instead of a conventional one, which helps to change people’s perceptions and re-invent what is possible.
Q: In his essay on how to build brands in the digital age, Martin Weigel writes:“There is as much to unlearn as there is to relearn”. What are you unlearning and relearning?
Jo Booth: I don’t think it is so much about unlearning and relearning, for me it’s about adapting and being open to new approaches to solving the wider commercial problems that agencies are now challenged with.
I think the relevance of brands has shifted for the better and our relationship with them has changed forever.
Consumers see brands for what they are today rather than what they’re told they should be, consumers are shaping the agenda and shaping the brand experience.
We are living in an age where relationship boundaries are changing, where like any good relationship transparency and trust will govern transactions and goodwill.
I’d like to draw on a quote from Roger Waters who said, 25 years ago, “What it comes down to for me is this: Will the technologies of communication in our culture, serve to enlighten us and help us to understand one another better, or will they deceive us and keep us apart?
I believe this is still a supremely relevant question and the jury is out. There is a lot of commercial clutter on the net, and a lot of propaganda, but I have a sense that just beneath the surface understanding is gaining ground.
We just have to keep blogging, keep tweeting, keep communicating, keep sharing ideas.
Q: With the way that tech, design, comms and product development are merging, what would you advise your 20 year old self, if she asked you where to work? Why?
Jo Booth: I think I’d still advise her to start in research, but probably to combine biotech research with communications research.
I think it’s as important to know how things are created and made today as it is to understand how they are communicated, interpreted and sold.
Either that or forget about “work” and go and win X-Factor, after all you never know what you’re really good at until you’ve tried!
Trying is the antidote to failure and the cornerstone of success.
Thank you Ms Booth