I remember watching the Gulf War on CNN. I had just moved to New York where 24 hour news was already well established and I spent days glued to live coverage of Operation Desert Storm.

I had never seen anything like it before. Using satellite technology, camera-equipped weaponry, and infrared photography CNN broadcast dramatic images of tracer fire illuminating the night sky over Baghdad and missiles destroying their targets. It was like watching a Hollywood movie. Although I was a South African living in New York, the spectacle of war created by CNN made it difficult not to become an American patriot.

Twenty years later, war continues to rage in the Middle East but we are now experiencing it in a whole new way. This time, the message is not being controlled by major media corporations, but by millions of ordinary people shouting their personal opinions across Facebook and Twitter. While this may seem like a more democratic way to cover the conflict, social media is becoming a giant amplifier for the fear and hate that is fueling the conflict in Gaza.

This war was bad enough when it involved just the Israelis and the Palestinians, but now, thanks to the immediacy and ubiquity of social media, it has begun to spread across the planet, causing millions to “unfollow”, “unfriend”, disavow and generally turn against their colleagues, family members, and closest friends. Ideological skirmishes are breaking out in every corner of cyberspace, fueling the animosity, anger, and momentum of the conflict. I scroll through the battlefield that my newsfeed has become and I fear that the democratization of media has created a cacophony of dissenting voices that could tear our world apart. Amplified through the lens of social media, the tiny Gaza strip has expanded to consume our global psyche, becoming a kind of Liquid War that is spreading to every corner of the globe. Like the Cold War, this Liquid War is polarizing the world, creating enemies out of complete strangers, spawning confrontation and threatening to thrust the entire planet into war.

Edmund Burke famously said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” While it is true that we can not stand idly by and watch people kill each other, by broadcasting our opinions on a conflict that most of us do not fully understand we are becoming complicit in it, enabling it to grow and spread, fueling the hostility rather than contributing to a solution.

I have always believed in the egalitarian nature of the Internet. I firmly support the democratization of media and I celebrate the rise of a digitally empowered citizenry… but with this power comes commensurate responsibility. We are no longer passive consumers of mass media. We are the creators and disseminators of popular culture and it falls to us to modulate the conversation. Using Facebook or Twitter as a soapbox to broadcast your personal opinion about the war will only serve to exacerbate the conflict. Every tweet, every post made in defense of one side or the other is an ideological missile launched into the fray. And as we have seen from this bloody war in Gaza, every missile begets another. War breeds war. Animosity breeds animosity. For every pro-Palestinian post there are a hundred pro-Israeli responses, for every anti-Israeli tweet there are as many anti-Hamas retweets.

Isn’t it time that we called a cease-fire?

Growing up, we were taught that the more we talk about an issue, the more likely we are to resolve it. But the incessant buzz ringing in my ears is forcing me to question this conventional wisdom. I believe that Social Media has the power to amplify important issues. I was enthralled by the role it played in the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement. I was impressed by the support that the Kony video managed to drum-up from people who generally don’t give a damn about what happens in Africa. But what I also learned from the Kony case study was that people weren’t only motivated by the issue at hand. They were also motivated by their own newfound power.

Not long ago, there was a rainbow that went viral… but in the same way that social media can make world news out of small miracles, it can also transform a regional conflict into a world war. The interconnected nature of our modern mediascape isn’t necessarily a force for good… it is simply a mirror that reflects and magnifies our collective psyche. If we focus it on the right things we can enhance our ability to solve problems and make the world a better place. But if we aim its awesome power at our dark shadow we might just plunge the world into blackness.

Selfies are all the rage… but it is tempting to dismiss them as a passing fad, or worse, yet another example of a narcissistic society obsessed with instant gratification and instantaneous fame. But the Selfie is important because it is not just a portrait of our selves, but a portrait of our times as well.

Over the past fifteen years technology has changed our world. It has yanked power out of the hands of media owners and governments, and placed it in the hands of the general public. It is democratizing everything. The Selfie is a product of this shifting dynamic and it is symbolic of our new, empowered citizenry.  Today, almost everyone has access to a camera-phone and the ability to share their photographs with a global audience. In the past, portraits were reserved for royalty and those in power, but today the common people pictured in these Selfies are the people-in-power and this is their preferred style of portraiture.  Every Selfie taken, regardless of how trivial it may seem, is a proud declaration of our connected generation’s newfound ability to communicate in a free and frictionless manner.

It is also tempting to underestimate the importance of the Selfie because of the throwaway manner in which it is used. But the Selfie’s disposable nature is significant because it represents a society in which the value of information is no longer determined by its permanence, but by its transience. In the past, the world’s knowledge was preserved in leather-bound books, but today it is spurted-out in the form of 140-character tweets that flow like rivers of rainwater towards an ocean of infinite knowledge. We live in a world where art and wisdom are no longer to be found only in museums and books, but within the fabric of our ever-expanding collective consciousness – a consciousness increasingly comprised of transient digital content like Selfies.

But for me, the most significant aspect of the Selfie is the fact that it is a profound reflection of humankind’s increasing intimacy with technology. According to author and inventor Ray Kurzweil, humankind is rapidly moving towards a “Singularity” – a point of convergence between human and machine. Kurzweil believes that when Artificial Intelligence finally surpasses human intelligence, we will be forced to merge with technology. He refers to life beyond this point as Transhumanism. While one may find these predictions far-fetched, a quick inventory of our daily tech usage indicates that we are indeed headed along this trajectory. The Selfie marks an important step on this journey, because it is a symbolic reflection of our gradual convergence with the machine. If Kurzweil’s theories do indeed prove to be true, then the Selfie can provide us with a glimpse of what this co-evolved human/machine consciousness may look like.

In a world of Transhumanism, the subject of a portrait and the tool with which that portrait is made, will become one. The painter will, in effect, become the paintbrush. The photographer will become the camera. We will become both subject and object… and that will change the nature of “the self” and of portraiture forever.  So, next time you take a Selfie, look deep into your lens and you may discover that your reflection is in fact a projection of your future self.

 

 

 

My father was a great entrepreneur. He came to South Africa at the age of 20 with £5 pounds in his pocket and went on to build one of Johannesburg’s most iconic retail food brands.

When he opened Fontana Highpoint in 1970, it was the first 24-hour convenience store in the southern hemisphere. In keeping with his flair for the dramatic, my father held an opening ceremony at which he threw away the keys, publicly declaring that the store would never close.

But retailing was only one chapter in my father’s business adventures. He was an international trader dealing in electronic appliances, meat, and crude oil. He invested in a commercial explosives factory in Greece and launched the first scratch-card lottery in South Africa.

Looking back, I now realise that my father’s career was defined by his creativity and his courage. But growing up I never quite grasped these things. I viewed business as dull and boring. After a childhood spent working in his stores – packing shelves, checking expiry dates, and serving Cornish Pasties – I was determined to forge a different path for myself. I did not want to be a businessman like my father. I did not want to compete with his shadow. Instead, I wanted to be a filmmaker.

After four years of studying film and television in New York, I returned to South Africa to make my first movie. Unfortunately, funding proved to be a problem. After two frustrating years, I decided to start a web development company instead. It was an act of desperation, a kind of escape from the disappointment of a failed dream.

The company I co-founded, VWV Interactive, rapidly grew to be South Africa’s leading web development company and within 18 months we had sold 49% to Primedia and Datatec. It was an unexpected success. And in some ways it was an unwelcomed one as well, because I felt that it had forced me to deviate from my path.

I decided to leave VWV and return to my goal of making a movie. But Primedia convinced me to join them instead, allowing me to establish an entertainment division. And so my journey as an “accidental tourist” into the world of business continued. Within 6 months we had acquired Ster-Kinekor for R1,5 billion and I was sitting on the board of the country’s largest film company – but I was still no closer to making a film myself.

Within a year, we launched a new, JSE-listed internet group called Metropolis and, at 28 years old, I was the youngest CEO of a Johannesburg-listed company. Most people in my position would have celebrated their success, but I felt like a failure because I had abandoned my dream.

When my two year contract at Metropolis expired, my wife and I packed-up our lives in Johannesburg and escaped down to Cape Town. I dusted off the eight-year old script and went out and made the movie.

Over the next ten years, as I continued with film, new business opportunities opened to me, and, despite myself, I found the idea of launching new businesses creatively enthralling.

I started a creative consultancy, a television commercial production company, and a branded entertainment agency. But they were all small companies, focused on enabling my ambitions as a film director. At some point  I realised that I was getting more creative fulfilment from building these small companies than I was from making the films and TV commercials that I was using them to produce. And that is when I decided to start a real business – one that would not be limited by my ambitions as a filmmaker but that would leverage my creativity as an entrepreneur instead.

After years of stumbling unwittingly into new business opportunities I finally realised three things:

1. Above all else, my father was an artist;
2. Above all else, I am an entrepreneur;
3. Above all else, entrepreneurs are artists who apply their creativity in business.

We were so similar, my father and I, and yet it took me forty years to reconcile his ambitions for me with my own ambitions for myself. Finally, I go to bed at night comfortable in the knowledge that he would be proud of what I have become… and I fall asleep immensely grateful for all the invaluable lessons that I have learned from him.

Great relationships are like Russian Matryoshka Dolls. They are a series of partnerships within partnerships – between client and agency, between agencies, and even between departments within the client’s business. These partnerships are all vital because they ultimately facilitate the most important partnership of all – the one between your customer and your brand.

Based on my 20 years of experience, here are 10 simple principles that can help you transform a rickety client/agency relationship into an unbreakable one:

 A value exchange

In a client/agency relationship, an equitable value exchange cannot simply be based on money. It is not enough for a client to write a cheque, or for an agency to be an order-taker. Great relationships require a deeper understanding of one another’s business. As a client, you need to know what your agency is trying to achieve and then you have to help them fulfill that vision, in the same way that they need to go beyond simply answering briefs in order to help you achieve your goals.

Partnerships

Great client/agency relationships are partnerships – stemming from a profound change in focus. In an ordinary client/agency relationship there is a risk that the parties service different masters, because while the agency is answerable to the client, the client is ultimately answerable to their customer. Being in partnership means that both agency and client work in service of the end-consumer. Firstly, it shifts attention away from the brand and towards the customer, where that attention should ultimately rest and, equally importantly, it makes both parties’ goals congruent.

Remuneration

The right remuneration structures can support goal congruency. In an ideal world agencies would not be paid for their time or effort. They would be paid for their ideas and how well they work. As the team from CP+B has said, “we need to be obsessed by the outcome we create, not the output we make.” A simple performance-based bonus can do a great deal to ensure goal congruency.

Determining what success looks like

The challenge, and the benefit, of establishing a performance-based bonus is that it forces both client and agency to agree on a set of clearly-stated objectives so everyone knows upfront what success will look like. But also translating these objectives into appropriate KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) is vital. Many campaigns fail because the agency is chasing arbitrary KPIs that have no real connection with the campaign’s objectives. KPIs must serve as leading indicators signaling whether or not you are on track to achieve your goals.

A common vision

To forge a true partnership, your agency must understand and share your company’s vision. They must also have clear sight of your commercial goals. Armed with that information, your agency can truly begin to live your brand.

Integration across agencies

As the lines between digital, traditional, creative, and media all continue to blur your respective agencies are vying for the same territory, while being told to work together in a more open and collaborative manner. Marketers who want to avoid conflict between their agencies must ensure that those agencies are not pitted against one another. In my opinion, the future will belong to the agencies and marketers who can forge integration across multiple disciplines and businesses.

Motivation

Inspired and motivated agencies do better work than browbeaten ones. This may sound like an obvious thing to say, but many companies still hire bullies to manage their supplier relationships. Companies who are serious about forging great relationships with their agencies must weed out those who abuse their positions of power. They must encourage creativity, proactive thinking, and even failure.

Failure

As we shift from a world of broadcast media to one defined by interactive, participative, and real-time communications, the marketing industry must shift from a linear way of working to a more iterative one. In this new era of lean thinking it is more effective to build, measure, and learn than it is to produce in a linear fashion. In an iterative production cycle, failure is no longer an undesirable end-state, but a vital building block along the journey. As David Droga from Droga5 said, “as an industry we have to learn that when you put something out there, it really is just the beginning”. We can make mistakes but what’s important is how agile and responsive we are in fixing them.

Breaking down the silos

Marketing can no longer exist in isolation. The mobile, social, always-on nature of today’s consumer demands that what you say and what you do are closely related. This means greater integration between marketing, IT, sales, distribution, and all the other parts of your business. In the words of Lee Clow, the legendary adman, “brands have to understand that every touch point with their brand is an ad.” The challenge is that every one of these touch points is often represented by a separate silo in the company.

From formal to fluid