No B*llsh*t on the Silicon Beach

No Bllsht on the Silicon Beach

Martyn Gooding

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What do you tell your hairdresser you do for a living?

Social Media? A web designer?

Marketing? That sounds a little old.

A little small.

A bit naff.

How about advertising?

People get that. Sounds grand.

But we don't do that.

We don't make TV ads any more. Or large outdoor posters.

So what do we do?

Whatever grand language we choose. It's unlikely to translate to a punter.

And that's a problem.

I have a theory, that the more complicated your job title - the less you do.

Take Tim Berners Lee, the creator of the internet.

The. Actual. Internet.

He says he's a web developer.

Not a Global Executive Technology Officer.

And I believe this is a beacon of what's wrong with our industry.

And why I don't like most industry conferences.

Because we've forgotten the language of the customer.

I took our creative team to Silicon Beach last week. The creative and digital festival that's just moved from Brighton to London.

The most notable talk was at the end of the day from MT Rainey. The R in RKCR and one of the people involved in the 1984 Apple ad.

She just told stories, with no slides. Only playing the films she referenced.

As a result the room - and twitter - fell silent, as we were listening.

No tweetable buzzwords. Or pseudo-psychological analysis of the work, or audiences.

She did what we all say we do for a living: communicated.

Simply.

Clearly.

Earlier in the day Lauren Currie, of Design studio Snook, invited a group of young women on stage to experience what it's like being a speaker.

Helping grow their confidence as thought-leaders in the industry.

Many of them did what they believed was the thing to do on stage at an advertising conference: They volunteered up some tweetable wisdom about advertising.

But then a 16 year old, Leila Willingham, won the day by calling out the B*llsh*t that we all speak - in this case about gender equality.

She told us to grow up and sort it out. Stop over-analysing.

Meat and potatoes communicating.

And this, if anything, is what we do for a living.

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Martyn Gooding

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