And How Is This Story Relevant For Our Own Industry?

We have to be brave to change Two years ago, the Golden State Warriors, an Oakland/San Francisco-based NBA team, that hasn’t won a Championship in almost 40 years, changed the game of basketball. And what they’ve done may seem odd at first, but in the end it’s so painfully logic, that one might ask “why the hell has no one done this before?” And what have they done, you might ask? They looked at stats. They looked at data. If you’ve seen “Moneyball”, the movie with Brad Pitt, it’s kind of the same thing. As you might know, a basketball court has the board with the rim, the painted area and the three-point line. Every basket scored inside the three-point line is worth 2 points and, of course, outside the three-point line, is worth 3 points. Now, what the Golden State Warriors did was, they’ve analysed the stats and realised that the percentage of risk of shooting from within the 2 points but really far (on the verge of almost being a 3 pointer) is pretty much the same as from shooting from the actual 3 points area. So…why not go for the 3 points, right? High-risk, high pay off. Seems logic, if the risk is the virtually the same. So their overall strategy is, they either shoot really close to the basket — in which it’s almost a sure thing that they can score — or they shoot long distance for the 3 pointer. And what they’ve done was they’ve built a team around shooting from afar. They’ve brought in Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, 2 of the best shooters in the world, if not the best. And boy can they shoot… And what that means is that the opposing team players need to chase them, to try to stop them, opening up huge gaps for Stephen and Klay’s team mates to easily dribble all the way to the basket for those easy, up close, 2 points. And on a side a note, this is their offensive strategy. Their defensive strategy is to force the opponent to the exactly what they don’t do, which is shooting from the area of high risk, low pay off. Clever right? But to do that they had to challenge everything that is known and taken for granted on the game of Basketball. And they’ve started with Steve Kerr, Golden States Warriors head coach, former 3-time champion with the Chicago Bulls in the 90’s alongside Michael Jordan. A 3 point shooter himself, he redefined the old school team positions and roles and brought a new vision to the game basketball based on the science of movement. He felt that a swift, unexpected change from one season to the other would catch everyone off guarded. And he built a team to do one thing outstandingly well. And over the past two years they became NBA Champions, trashed every major NBA record and all of the other teams are now facing “adaptation or defeat”. And that’s bravery. Well, mostly because almost every major agency in the world is basically every other NBA Team nowadays. They’re trying to do a bit of everything, a bit of digital, a bit of above the line, a bit of below the line, a bit of design, a bit of social. A bit all of over the place. But nothing really outstandingly well. Yes, there are some agencies that can pull it off, but they are too few. “Most agencies aren’t doing nothing really outstandingly well.” And in a world in which consultancy companies are taking over our business, our branding and comms business, we need to nurture the amazing. We need to embrace the outstanding. We need to make the extraordinary our way of living. Don’t get me wrong. Consultancy companies are doing their work and they’re doing their work just fine. They’re coming in to the clients, going through all the processes, all the organization structures, all the staffing and ways of working and then they suggest something. They get paid royally and leave. It’s just a matter of time until they also start coming up with comms and branding ideas. And where will that leave us? In deep shit, that’s where they’ll leave us. Because not only we’ll realize we couldn’t adapt, but we also weren’t brave enough to lead the way. We’ve to be bold and savvy enough to be the business partners that our clients need and want us to be. So let’s be brave. Let’s stop for a moment. And instead of buying smaller highly specialized shops just to be able to say “oh, now we also do digital, or “now we’re also in retail…”, let’s look at the landscape of where we can be of added value. Real added value. Ideas. ….. Ideas. And when I say ideas, they don’t need to be JUST comms ideas or branding ideas. They can be a service idea. A new product idea. A new category idea. A new way of customer care idea. A new uniform idea. A new retail decoration idea… A great idea is universal. It works here, in Japan, Brazil, anywhere. But we have to be brave and stop trying to reach out to everything at the same time. We’re simply not doing our job properly if we set out to do that. “We have to stop, listen, and be snipers.” And if we’re brave enough to hit the brakes and listen, really listen, to what the people need, like and wish first, and then what the client wants and needs, then we can put together the right team in place, a team that’s no longer within the old school setup of art and copy, but a team of technologists, illustrators, musicians, strategists, make up artists, cooks, doesn’t really matter… And I’m lucky enough to work for an agency that still looks at digital as an expertise, unlike what major agencies are saying that any idea can go anywhere and that everything is digital. Yes, everything can be enhanced digitally, but it’s not because it can…that it should. At VML I like to think that we’re brave enough to listen first and act then, almost like a sniper. It doesn’t mean we’re slower, it means we’re focused. We’re excited with new tech but never in awe. And each and every team in the world needs to be assembled with one aim and one aim only: To shoot straight into people’s hearts .