Why the Best Agencies Won’t Be Replaced by AI…They’ll Be Rebuilt Around It with Simon Billington, Part 3

[00:00:00] Mike: Welcome back to part three with Simon Billington. We're gonna talk wider system control points and also some final warnings from Simon. So without further ado, over to Simon. My name's Mike Lander, and you are listening to Higgle, the B2B Sales Club podcast, where we bring you actionable insights about sales, RFPs, negotiations, and difficult procurement discussions from sales leaders, ground leaders, and procurement leaders.
Please subscribe to get updates when new episodes are released.
So for the audience, basically, who are you? What do you do?
[00:00:37] Simon: Oh my goodness. My name is Simon Billington. I'm the Executive creative director here at Team Lewis. I've been a creative for 25, 30 years. Started at print and now find myself working heavily with AI and and the AI program for Team Lewis.
[00:00:50] Mike: This is about an uplifting of the agency world.
[00:00:53] Simon: Yeah.
[00:00:53] Mike: It's going to be recreated in a new form as it should be because there's disruptive technology, as we've discussed, changing the way that the landscape works. Yeah. Which leads me nicely into control points when we spoke before. Yeah. Yeah. And I was talking about control points when ah, control points, very important.
Control points. What do you mean by control points in a very practical way about how agencies work within the wider trillion dollar marketing industry. What is a control point and why is it so important?
[00:01:22] Simon: So, a couple different ways I think about this. Go back to the equations that I was doing in math and mechanics and pure maths when I was back at school or whatever it was.
And if you can have an equation where you can know what everything is on one side by inference, you know what it equals on the other side. And so these things over here become the control and that becomes the variable. The variable defines itself by the presence of the control. And if you just take that that little step further and then you start to think about creativity and its diversity, and when it happens, and when decisions are made that have no ability to be truly measured.
If you can measure everything else around it. The space that's left in the middle is by proxy, measurable. So you can start to understand cause and effect if something happens in this space and all this is known to be true, you know what that relative impact was. It's a bit like a margin in a business net versus gross,
[00:02:12] Mike: right?
[00:02:12] Simon: Just thought that actually made it, and you can sort of understand, well, that's what I'm gonna get at the end of it. And so that's again, another reason why I think that organizations don't quite realize it yet, but the measurability that they're gonna have over more elements. And I sort of have a bit of a view on where I think things are going in terms of how campaigns are gonna surface and how things are gonna be experienced by the audience and how they're gonna be evolving continuously.
There was a Choose Your Own Adventure movie that came up Band a snatch four years ago, something like that was on Netflix. And effectively you could determine what the outcome of the film was,
[00:02:45] Mike: right?
[00:02:45] Simon: If you think about marketing, the idea that things happen in 12 month cycles. You have 12 month objectives and it's all pushed back to the pin.
It's mental. Exactly. It's so bad in terms of, it's like basically on that day, I was that old and that day I'm now that old. No, no, no. You constantly aging. It's not like that. And so the way it will evolve, I think is gonna go down that road. I think we're gonna end up in a continuous growth mindset.
Constant measurability and constant adaptability with what the customer is experiencing. Yeah. And what they're responding and are receiving. But one thing I do wanna make really clear, I spoke to a developer about seven years ago. He asked me, what are you doing? And I told him, and Designer was a huge component of that.
He went, ha ha, you are fucked. And I'm like, why? He said, ah. Because it's all gonna be done automatically in the future anyway. You won't need to be involved.
[00:03:32] Mike: The opposite may well be true from that developer's perspective,
[00:03:35] Simon: hundred P. I mean, the irony is not when I was thinking about it in that context, I actually came back to what I thought was a fundamental truth.
If something is in front of me and it's constantly adapting to such an extent where it becomes a reflection of me, I will not buy it. I don't go to brands to see myself looking back. I go to brands 'cause I want myself to look better. There's a brand tension, there is an intentionality with the way that brand turns up.
That is what I buy. Mm-hmm. It is like a patchwork quilt of different elements that become the shield of me that I want the world to see. And therefore, if you employ overly variable, overly reflective materials within your marketing. No one is gonna buy a bloody thing because like I said, unless you are massively vain, whisper it, don't really like me go to brands to make me look better.
I want them to make me move forward. I want them to have the accountability for being that good and I want the association with that. And I think those are the things that still are gonna have to happen. Accountability thing is a huge thing as well.
[00:04:37] Mike: So bilbo control points. What are they in a marketing ecosystem, where will they move in the future?
[00:04:43] Simon: Multiple. Probably won't be able to list all of them.
[00:04:46] Mike: All would be too many. Yeah, a few would be good.
[00:04:48] Simon: A few. The data points are the real control points. The ones where you can measure something completely spend, obviously how much am I spending on that campaign? But really digging into the detail of that, if you can understand how much something costs, you can start to spend some time to think about what its value is.
And I worked on a campaign, which is about the evolution of the CFO. It talked about the idea that actually, if you have a receipt in front of you and a number of individuals who have gone down the boozer mm-hmm. Had a few pints. A traditional CFO would sit there and go, why have they spent money down the pub?
[00:05:19] Mike: Right?
[00:05:20] Simon: A progressive one would sit there and go. Worth every penny for the culture.
[00:05:23] Mike: Yeah, that was a good investment,
[00:05:24] Simon: a great investment, but it's also that receipt is a control point. And when you extrapolate that across your entire organization and you think about the metrics that are coming back from the performance of a social campaign, whether it's the number of e emails that are delivered in of themselves, there are micro control points.
The important part is to try and gain visibility of as many different control points as humanly possible, because while they may still be variable. As long as you have the ability to measure them, you can see the impact that change makes on them. If I can have that, those things in the world that haven't got the ability to be controlled or measured, we spoke about this earlier by inference, can then be measured because that's what's remaining.
And I think that's one of the things that's really interesting about AI, is the ability for it to create its own control points,
[00:06:09] Mike: right?
[00:06:10] Simon: And evolve disparate elements. So one of the ways in which we've aggressively employed it is previously every region had its own control points set up in its own way with its own language set or its own numbers set to it.
AI equalizes all of that now. Right. It interprets, it shows you where comparability is.
[00:06:29] Mike: Exactly.
[00:06:29] Simon: And it almost means like, well look, I can speak French, German, and Danish all at the same time.
[00:06:35] Mike: We don't need to have a standardized common language.
[00:06:39] Simon: And the other part with the control point is also the process to the process of which you do something.
Yeah. So when we were looking at one of the aspects of the tool that we were building, it was asked a question which was, well, where do we think this should go from a scoring perspective? Mm-hmm. And I said, look at the agency, the model. And look at the way that it works and use that as the process to derive the score.
So you basically go from, this is the objective that I'm trying to get from it. You go to the brief, you then extrapolate insight. You then look forward to strategy, execution, so, so and so forth. By taking that principle, that process that is then giving control to the outcome.
[00:07:15] Mike: Yes,
[00:07:16] Simon: VBar
[00:07:17] Mike: call.
[00:07:17] Simon: And so what it also gives is credibility to the implementation
[00:07:20] Mike: and repeatability.
And
[00:07:21] Simon: repeatability. You
[00:07:22] Mike: can do the same thing over and over again in a repeatable pattern to high quality standards
[00:07:26] Simon: methodologies. Are going to be everything, right? You're gonna see, not almost like statements of intent, but it's, this is our methodology, this is our approach. This is the way we interpret the world Through this process and the process.
I had a really interesting conversation with the head of AI development for foster and partners who,
[00:07:46] Mike: wow,
[00:07:46] Simon: one of our neighbors. We were talking about AI processes that we still allow for the cause and effect of human intervention. And how would that look and how could you still give that level of flexibility Ah, while still having the control and the response?
'cause I'd asked that question and then she came back, she went, this is the question. This is the beautiful question. It's perfect question. And that is what we're all doing across the agency landscape on one scale. Another, how do I automate this process? Yes.
[00:08:12] Mike: How do
[00:08:12] Simon: exactly, how do this moving quicker? How do I skip through these control points, make sure I'm hitting my targets, but still introducing the chaos required in order to make it unique and different.
It also reminds me of, I did a breakfast briefing round table many years ago. It was around data, which now seems more relevant than it probably did. Then the question that was posed to the room was, what state is your data in and how would you score it outta 10? Mm-hmm. Fascinating. Love. A room full of 10 people who come back all had different scores.
Fascinating part was the people that gave the score of three or four, outta 10 had better data competency in construction than those that gave seven, eight, or nine.
[00:08:49] Mike: Absolutely.
[00:08:50] Simon: And the reason why I think that was, yeah. Yeah. And you know, we kind of dug into it was
[00:08:53] Mike: there's a psychological test around this, I think as well,
[00:08:55] Simon: right.
I think somebody says, stupid doesn't know it's stupid. That was a reflection of the people that were there, but their process was far more robust. Yeah. Their control points were far higher and so they knew where their inadequacies were.
[00:09:05] Mike: Exactly.
[00:09:05] Simon: And that I go right agencies. Get on with it. Start looking at where you're bad, be truthful, get people in that have a different experience, a different lens.
[00:09:15] Mike: Absolutely.
[00:09:15] Simon: And you know, I know only too well every time I meet anybody because I just love finding out how stupid I am, because my ignorance is something that I want to try and or constantly work on. And God, I only hope that. When people watch this, they don't sit there and go, he doesn't know how stupid he is.
But you know, the reality is that maybe I am,
[00:09:32] Mike: but Bill, that's why I do the podcast. One of the reasons I do it is I meet fascinating people that keep reminding me how little I know.
[00:09:40] Simon: It's brilliant, isn't it, really? It's kind of like when you discover a new piece of music and you sit and go like. How is it that they could still find a different way of putting that together and and it just takes you somewhere else or it makes you feel something else?
Music is actually, if I think about the agency landscape moving forward, music is a brilliant analogy for it.
[00:09:55] Mike: I was just thinking of one, you go with yours first.
[00:09:58] Simon: Okay. I was thinking about the fact that four or three beats in a bar and basically you have stages to the whole piece and ultimately it's about making an emotional connection,
[00:10:05] Mike: right?
[00:10:06] Simon: That isn't an agency, I dunno what is, but you also have the opportunity to analyze and see things that are different. All you need is love had three beats in a bar, then had four beats in a bar. No songs do that. That's a hell of a song. So you don't have to always follow the exact pattern. But those bars are controls.
They are an understanding of what the process needs to hit and how it needs to operate around it. And the way in which that's gonna be made up is going to change. You know, it's gonna have more technology in there. And technologists are a quintessential part of the future. And this doesn't mean to say somebody who can code, somebody who understands the very way in which technology works.
[00:10:41] Mike: Exactly.
[00:10:42] Simon: I think somebody said that they saw it. Chief AI officer for the first time this week, and I think that was very interesting.
[00:10:48] Mike: If I look at an orchestra, take the music analogy. Yeah. And the agency world. I was thinking this morning on the tube, the role of the conductor, it struck me, there was kind of two roles for the conductor of the orchestra.
One is coordination. Make them sound nice, coordinate the instruments so that they all play in the right sequence.
[00:11:04] Simon: Yeah.
[00:11:05] Mike: You could ultimately automate that, I guess, ultimately. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You could automate the coordination. The bit that you can't automate is, well, what style should we play in and what's the mood of that music?
[00:11:16] Simon: Yeah.
[00:11:17] Mike: And where's the inferences? Yeah. And where's the pauses? And how do you take a piece for Valdis Four seasons. Yeah. And make it different. It's still Vivaldi's Four seasons. Yeah. But it has a very different feel.
[00:11:28] Simon: Oh God. Yeah.
[00:11:29] Mike: That to me is orchestration. Someone's gotta sit there and work out. How are we going to play this?
What emotion are we trying to get out of the audience?
[00:11:38] Simon: Yeah.
[00:11:38] Mike: How long is this thing going to be? How engaging does it need to be? Agencies need to play the orchestration role
[00:11:44] Simon: enormously, and that's where the visibility being at observe as many number of controls as human possible is essential to be able to doing that.
Because if you're gonna introduce anything into that mix, it's gonna have a ripple effect. And it's gonna have an impact. If you have a bassoon at the back of the orchestra and it's outta tune, the whole piece is not going to work. The conductor will sit there and go, bassy, tuni. That immediately brings everything back into correlation.
Weirdly, I'm gonna go away from the music analogy and I'm gonna go off to a story that I heard the other day. Again, Gary Oldman.
[00:12:15] Mike: Love Gary Oldman. What an actor.
[00:12:16] Simon: Slow horses.
[00:12:17] Mike: Slow horses. Just,
[00:12:18] Simon: you know what, I aspire to be as good a manager as him. I really did. Probably that grotesque, as I'm sure people can testify, but it was in Batman.
[00:12:26] Mike: Yeah, he was brilliant. In Batman,
[00:12:27] Simon: Christopher Nolan giving direction. He talks about the note he received from Christopher Nolan and. The EQ of Nolan at this point is what he demonstrates in the way he gives feedback. He walks over to ga me. He just looks at him and goes, there's more at stake and walks off.
Alman, he says, that's probably the best note right I've ever received. Why? Because Nolan did something that wasn't telling him what he wanted to do. He allowed the value of the actor to be able to deliver in the way that made it ownable by the actor. But he pushed him. Just nudge. And I mean, that just makes my heart.
As a creative director. I think the biggest problem with that is the director part, and I know there'll be creative directors out there that will not agree with me that they should be. You do that. You do that. You do that, you do that. No. I think create the space where somebody can do something that is in their heart to do.
And when you know you can do that with confidence because you have the controls in place to be able to allow that freedom.
[00:13:23] Mike: Exactly. The
[00:13:24] Simon: work that comes out, the other end of it is beautiful. It's so much more poetic because what it also does is when the team and those individuals, they stand in front of that work in front of the client and they deliver the energy in the room, that EQ.
That emotional, it's just all there and it's all so powerful and exciting, and that's why we do this job. We are in this job. We're a bunch of emotional people that want to fall in love every single day. I like Bloody Moulin Rouge for crying out your song and all that kind of stuff, and I watch X Factor reruns of people that may judges cry.
It's ridiculous.
[00:13:55] Mike: Yeah,
[00:13:55] Simon: yeah. I've said way too much. The reality is, is that those are the qualities that will and have to and will never go away. You can't talk and deal with people without that, but controls, if we control more. It weirdly, paradoxically gives more freedom
[00:14:09] Mike: as an ex buyer. As an ex procurement person, we do have a soul.
Most people think procurement people don't have a soul. That we are highly rational beings, and that's we do. Are you
[00:14:17] Simon: being ful against? However,
[00:14:19] Mike: when the panel's sitting and we're working out who we're gonna work with, taking the marketing category as one category, yes, there's a score sheet and I collect the score sheets and I'm gonna assess them all and put more next to each other and give an overall score.
Of course I am. Yeah, that's my job in procurement, but that's not how you win. How you win is when we sit as a panel and there's five of us, and I orchestrate the review, who we're gonna pick out the three that we've seen. Someone says to me. When Bilbo did that thing, remember that thing He did? Yeah. That thing.
And he really challenged our thinking and we all kinda lent into it. And we all went, wow, I hadn't thought about that. Yeah. That's who I want to work with. And I'd sit there and go, okay, great. They're not the cheapest. And everyone would go, they're absolutely not. We're not buying nails, Mike. And I'd be like, you're quite right.
We're not. Yeah. We're buying value. We're not buying a bunch of nails in a box. We wanna work with people who can stretch our thinking.
[00:15:12] Simon: Yeah.
[00:15:12] Mike: Because that's the whole point of working with a third party agency.
[00:15:16] Simon: Choosing an agency is like falling in love. So you've got a long list of boxes that you wanna check.
Ultimately, you can check all of them, but if your heart doesn't skip a beat, don't do it.
[00:15:25] Mike: And if I can't pick up the phone to you and have a difficult conversation and know that we're gonna have a tough conversation,
[00:15:30] Simon: yeah,
[00:15:31] Mike: but it's gonna be respectful. Based upon, we've got a problem to solve together, we're gonna solve it and get to the other side.
[00:15:37] Simon: Exactly. And I think the procurement process is one of the most challenging parts of the entire ecosystem because it has to be responsible for the decision, but knows it has to allow for the possibility that the decision might be decided in an unmeasurable way. Yes. The ability to make people wonder.
And when I say it's not wonder, it's wonder what if. Mm-hmm. You know, and I think again, the agency dynamic and all that kind of stuff with the client, again, come back to this income, but a lot of this, do I look at this and just go, what might be. God, that could be amazing. Yeah. Alright, let's do that.
They've ticked all the boxes. We know they're not an absolute idiot. They're know they're gonna be careless with all this kind of stuff. That one made me go, oh yeah, go on in.
[00:16:17] Mike: Because, go back to the Gorilla campaign. Do we think a, they sat down with a spreadsheet and worked out all the numbers and worked out, was it a good investment or did they go, we've got the numbers.
And yeah, this is really unusual. This is really out the box, but like flat. Eric,
[00:16:33] Simon: I have a funny feeling there's alcohol involved in that decision.
[00:16:36] Mike: I suspect so.
[00:16:36] Simon: But yeah, I think a
[00:16:37] Mike: flat Eric campaign's the same. Who'd have thought? That's not a rational thing. Yeah. It can't be.
[00:16:41] Simon: But that, but that's why it works.
Exactly. Because it's the opposite of a good idea. And I think that's it. Do I have the faith in that person that when you step off the edge of the cliff, there's gonna be that invisible bridge there? Yeah. Indiana Jones reference. And that's what I think is so exciting. And I think, again, you come back full circle.
Our journey constantly asks questions of us that we dunno the answer to, but we have the confidence of moving forward knowing that the answer will present itself later.
[00:17:04] Mike: Exactly.
[00:17:04] Simon: And agency's jobs is to do that.
[00:17:06] Mike: So let's come back full circle. Simon, it's been amazing. Thank you ever much very much for joining me on the show.
It's been fantastic. Bit of a tour to force of a conversation.
[00:17:13] Simon: Yeah.
[00:17:14] Mike: If you were out in the audience and you were listening to this on the way to work, having dropped the kids off, whatever it might be. And you thought, what's my takeaway here? If you're a 50 person agency leader and you're sat there thinking the future looks really uncertain is the best way of describing it.
[00:17:30] Simon: Yeah.
[00:17:30] Mike: What are the two or three things you'd say are the things to think about that give you a bit more certainty?
[00:17:36] Simon: Believe in uncertainty. Of course, I'd say something like that. Be brave. It's gonna be okay. Make sure that you are not waiting to work out what to do by what others are doing. Mm-hmm. If you wait to see what the competition's doing, you toast.
You've gotta be brave and you've gotta go out and do something.
[00:17:53] Mike: Very good advice.
[00:17:53] Simon: And it isn't easy because you're sitting there and you know, there'll be certain individuals that have more of a say in that than others in an organization. They have to just deal with the fact that they're gonna go home sometimes and they're gonna sit there and they're gonna have that little sick feeling in their stomach and go like, is this the right decision?
Is this the right decision? If you can go through that and you can carry on and you can take on that sickness, and then one day you'll look at it and go, Ooh, yeah, it's working. In agency landscape commitment to something is more important than having a good idea.
[00:18:17] Mike: Yep, absolutely. Pick
[00:18:18] Simon: a lane, crack on, you know?
[00:18:19] Mike: Absolutely.
[00:18:20] Simon: Because if you deliver it with conviction, the odds are it's gonna pan out, and I think you need that and you need a progressiveness. The bravery part is absolutely essential. I think there's obviously always a balance in any organization, which is the dreamers and counters. Make sure everything's accountable for, yeah, make sure you have full visibility, but don't hold onto it so tightly that it crushes the opportunity.
I've always said the greatest control over something is with an open hand.
[00:18:44] Mike: I love that phrase when you said that to me.
[00:18:45] Simon: Yeah. It's kind of is always, if you have faith in something and you trust in something. But you are not reckless in not paying attention, then it usually does serve you very, very well, trusting people.
I think Steve Jobs turned around and he said the one lesson that he learned that he really wishes he had done earlier and sooner was have a more longer term view on people.
[00:19:04] Mike: Right.
[00:19:04] Simon: I think one of the things I struggle with is the lack of fortitude for long, long-term investment and faith in the industry.
Some people wanna change things too quickly. Yeah. We talk about 12 months. I don't even think sometimes it's 12 months. If you've got an idea. Back it when it gets choppy back it, you've got forming, storming, norming, and
[00:19:23] Mike: performing.
[00:19:23] Simon: Performing with a little bit of hope. So I'd say go for long-term view. Be brave.
It doesn't have to be the right answer, it has has to be an answer and get after it. And when you start learning, make sure you align yourself with those things.
[00:19:34] Mike: Can I add one thing?
[00:19:35] Simon: Of course you can.
[00:19:36] Mike: One of my big hopes and wishes
[00:19:38] Simon: Yeah.
[00:19:38] Mike: And desires for agencies is. They don't just automate the how outta their existing processes.
Yes, if you do that, it is a road to utter disaster. I
[00:19:49] Simon: agree.
[00:19:50] Mike: Utter utter disaster because it's the easy thing to think about. The easy thing is I'll bring in an AI team, we'll automate what we've got already. It makes us more efficient, it'll improve margins. We're using ai.
[00:20:02] Simon: Yeah, that was one thing I thought about.
If you're gonna try and implement automation, anything like that, just as your point, don't automate what's already there. 'cause it's already doing it. Yeah. Okay. So you're just gonna waste a bit of time. Just replicate something, find out what the problems are, write the brief for it. And work out how you're gonna deliver the solution to that brief.
'cause what you then do is, whilst this thing's over here, which you may automate later, which already exists, you've got some partner to it over here that's now performing much better than it was before. The aggregate is much better than just trying to replace that.
[00:20:30] Mike: Exactly. Right. And on that note. Simon, it's been a real pleasure.
Thanks e much for joining me.
[00:20:34] Simon: Yeah, been awesome.
[00:20:35] Mike: Where can people find out more about you?
[00:20:37] Simon: You can go to team lewis.com and you can go find out there, or you can hit me up on LinkedIn. Simon Billington. There's no billboard on it actually. Maybe I'll add that.
[00:20:45] Mike: Maybe there should be.
[00:20:46] Simon: Yeah, exactly. Thank you ever much indeed.
[00:20:48] Mike: And that's the end of part three with Simon Billington. Simon, thanks ever for joining me on Higgle, the B2B Sales Club podcast. I look forward to welcoming a new guest next week. Please tune in listeners. Thanks for listening to Higgle, the B2B Sales Club podcast series with your host Mike Lander. Please subscribe so that you'll catch all the next episodes.