Interview with Piers Fawkes, founder of PSFK.

When I first stumbled upon PSFK.com, I was fascinated by its seemingly all-encompassing, anything goes content. So, when I recently talked to the website’s founder Piers Fawkes, my hopes were high that he would wax poetic about the complexity of the PSFK system. However, these expectation were quickly smashed to bits: “It’s simple.”, said Fawkes, “our mission is to inspire people.”

Quite some tradition to become a part of: In more archaic times, inspiration used to be the job of the muses. Actually, they invented the job. As daughters of Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, they knew what being noteworthy and memorable was all about. And if they so wished, they would kiss an artist and help. Or not.

The muses wouldn’t stay fickle forever. There was a time in advertising when two publications offered help, reliably: Subscribe to Luerzer’s Archive and Shots, and you were guaranteed to see the most inspirational work in the industry.

Well. It’s been a while since I looked at Luerzer’s. As clients and agencies are trying to create relevant conversations, making a great ad becomes only one of many skills. The sheer number of things we advertisers now do has made inspiration more difficult again. While that creates headaches here and there, it opens up opportunities for places like PSFK.

Piers Fawkes explains this by introducing the pair of literal and lateral inspiration. Literal inspiration takes place when Creatives see the best work in their field. “And you need literal inspiration, for sure.” However, in his view, this only gives birth to work that stays within current boundaries. “It doesn’t create any new ideas.”

To stimulate the kind of radical thinking that creates conversational capital, creatives need “lateral inspiration,” says Piers: “See what else is going on, what else is exciting.” Therefore, PSFK picks up stuff that lumbers around in our peripheral vision and throws it onto the main stage. “We pick ideas that would challenge you, [that] aren’t very easy to translate into advertising.” This kind of inspiration obviously doesn’t work for everyone. But 750.000 readers every month think it’s worth their attention.

And while his strategy of lateral inspiration isn’t new, his business model may be. Other than Luerzer’s and Shots, PSFK is a free resource. Which brings back the internet-age-old question: Who’s paying?

Shouldn’t there be a significant cost difference between kicking out a link to my Facebook page every day (me, free) and a bunch of people each filtering a couple of hundred feeds a day (PSFK, also free). Not really, says Fawkes. Because his team has to read the whole internet anyway. The additional effort to post the good stuff isn’t zero, but it’s not worth messing with tons of Google ads or Freemium schemes.

“Anyone who’s got a creative job can come to us and get new ideas. We provide those ideas through Publishing, through Events, and through Consultancy. And the money comes in the other way.”

Turns out, PSFK is a prime example of Chris Anderson’s “Free” economy: offering freely available “datapoints” for free and charging only for the more cognitive efforts of recognizing meaningful patterns. Listening to Fawkes, this seems to equally reflect his personal beliefs, as it is a great strategy to enter the market: “[Traditional] research is all about controlling data, and then charging for that data. But, it’s all there. How can you charge for that data?”

Obviously, you could try. Instead, he wants PSFK to focus on creating value by making sense. On an average project, his team will look at about 800 data points from the web, and then establish links, trends, meaning… and of course a preferable course of action.

Compare that to one the old school research ways of locking a group of 20 people into a KGB-style interrogation room with one-way mirrors: If that ever produced a muse’s kiss at all, that muse increasingly looks like a chain-smoking 83-year old italian grandmother.

So the clients are coming, and they are expanding the reach of things that they want PSFK to have a go at. It usually starts with creating a report, Fawkes says “but sometimes we then move further and go into concepting: and this could be everything from communications to product, to retail, to service.”

Step by step, PSFK is moving into a hotly contested space: a seat close to the top of the table, preferably to the left of the client’s marketing director. It is here where the interesting talk is talked. Where the “high level creative thinkers” as Fawkes calls them, are being placed. All the while, the production expertise is moving further and further down the table – looking at their neighbor and whispering: “Whatdhesay”.

Of course, PSFK is small. Very very small. So there is no reason for Martin Sorrell to loose any of his 37 Billion £ sleep, yet. But Fawkes has indeed “thought about whether PSFK is a future agency model.”

He thinks his company has a shot. To a certain extent because it understands trends. But Fawkes is modest about the fact, that – while their method is pretty unique right now – other strategists could do this too, if they put the time into it. He thinks the quality that really sets them apart is being a medium, with “750.000 very interesting people reading our site every month.”

Big numbers are always cool, but what impresses more: those are mostly creatives. The social web may have enabled everyone to create, but the truth is, less than 1% do. Thus, whatever shows up on PSFK.com, during PSFK events, or on his twitter feed, influences the influencers. Fawkes is narrowcasting to the content makers and information brokers on the web. “We’re not mainstream media. But we’re a different kind of media.”

For the last two years I’ve read many articles on how one of the future functions of an agency is to have a community, and to give clients access to that community. I’ve always wondered what that would look like. It seems PSFK is off to a start worth watching.

Thus, when I recently met Creative Director Juan Morales from SapientNitro in their Miami Beach office, I was curious about their creative culture. They seem to have found a way to use technology to surprise – and even bring forth a chuckle. SapientNitro’s award winning ideas include an icecream machine that dispenses free ice-cream when you smile at it.

Mixing Art and Science isn’t easy: It requires the right people and the right way of working together. So who does SapientNitro recruit? What kind of creative comes up with the idea for something like the Autotrader App that can tell you the value of any car you see?

Apparently, there isn’t a typical neo-creative yet: “We have a lot of kids here that never did advertising before.” says Juan. But as he mentions that there are many web-developers in his team, I can’t help but think that it’s probably easier to move from a deep understanding of technology into branding than going the opposite way.

Either way, once-separate skillsets are finally converging, Juan says: “You get a new kind of creative.”
What is new about them? Mostly, their focus on making those digital things really work: Not just for the red eyed jury member in Cannes, but for you and me when we use it. “We’re consumers first.” says the Creative Director, which is really different from the old style CD who “only” needed to understand the consumer.

That’s why the guys at SapientNitro don’t think of themselves as a “digital” agency, Juan says. His team is creating ideas for their clients, any way they need them. He smiles while he relays some of the initial confusion that SapientNitro inevitably causes: being a tech company – and a creative agency! But the truth is, turning data into value will become one of the biggest fields for brand differentiation, and whoever is creative there, will have the clients ear.

It’s all about creating a fluid experience. One of the most important tools for making that happen will be the mobile phone. And it looks like the biggest motivator drawing us to into that experience will be gaming. Of course, Foursquare won’t keep me up playing until the sun comes up (Assassins II, anyone?). But it is definitely interesting how smartphones, by bringing virtual and physical together, are becoming the perfect “game controller for your life”, as Juan puts it.

Making digital things, mobility, gaming principles: it doesn’t sound like the job of advertising is going to get simple again any time soon. At SapientNitro, collaborative skills are therefore in high demand. To bring science and art together, you need to be great at what you do, but you also must be able to forget for a minute “whose job is what”.

To create outstanding advertising in this new world you still need the passion of a creator. But you need other people even more.

Soul superstar John Legend said something memorable about his recent partnership with American Express on the “unstaged” series on YouTube/Vevo: “It was a relief to not have to worry about how well the songs would do on the radio.” (AdWeek 2010)

In an ironic twist, Branded Entertainment seems to have created a space of artistic liberty that stands in fundamental opposition to the day-to-day economic burdens of a platinum selling star.

John Legend’s comment sheds light how record labels are losing their protective function. First the download model robbed them of their production power. Then, the fall of record stores took their distribution powers. Now the uncertain economics of the new music industry have robbed most labels of the incentive and the ability to be courageous.

“We never had to think about how these songs would do against Lady Gaga.” As brick-and-mortar retail visibility drives less and less sales, radio has become the dominant gatekeeper once again. And the computer-generated playlists that dominate programming today, lead to a dramatic reduction of songs on the air. Sometimes this creates rather surreal experiences: I remember last December, while surfing the english speaking radio stations in Miami, I was sometimes able to hit Jay-Zs “Empire State of Mind” three times in a row.

In this situation, brands are redefining their role they play for artists. While advertising money has been behind most of the content we enjoy, it usually comes to the artist via a complex redistribution network of labels and media. This paid many a middleman’s paycheck, but it also created a layer of protective anonymity. The artist was free to do what he wanted, as long as the label believed there was money to made. But with the redefinition of media and label economies, artists might be better off to forgo the anonymous relationship for a much closer one with a corporate Maecenas.

The freedom from the dictates of a fickle market creates new constraints. These too, are more personal than those of playing 2nd fiddle to anonymous demand. At one point during the AdWeek event, the discussion drifted towards the motivation behind Legend’s cooperation with The Roots. Both Legend and ?uestlove were adamant about their commitment to the political agenda of Barack Obama, and the need to answer the backlash of the Tea Party movement. Meanwhile, you could physically sense the discomfort of American Express marketing manager Courtney Kelso. But she did not interfere.

Shortly afterwards, Kelso was called on it by the excellent moderator. How much was she willing to risk? Her answer seemed to prove that American Express had thought about this long and hard: “We are a 160 year old brand, so obviously we have to be careful about who we partner with. But censorship was never an option”, Kelso says. Why is Amex willing to take the risk of an uncontrollable messenger? They wants to reach a new demographic, and these people won’t be impressed by something as sanitized as, say, Michael Bolton.

The inherent unpredictability of the patron-artist relationship outlines the importance of trust in branded entertainment. It is radically different from the anonymous transfer of funds that kept the old rectangle of advertising money, medium, artist and label going.

While this makes creating Branded Entertainment a little bit harder. It also makes it a lot more interesting.

That’s why Naked London hired Creative Director Jim Thornton, who did some pretty nifty and original work at Mother and Leo Burnett, to set up an edgy little creative department. And that’s why I talked to Designer Lorenzo Frutta to see why a young creative would go to Naked, a place that’s first and foremost known for strategy.