Average Intelligence and why The Beatles didn’t really mean it
By: Anthony Battrick
I watched an extremely dull video from the FT recently. It was about AI (of course). Its conclusion was that AI will change the future of work but that it’s still uncertain how (inevitably). There was much use of words like ‘humans’, ‘data’, ‘productivity’, ‘models’, ‘feedback’ and ‘CEOs’ (yawn). There were stock shots of tech gurus on stages wearing T-shirts, and shinily soulless office-blocks/skyscrapers, mixed with grey/beige in-office interviews featuring various ‘expert commentators’. Two of the interviewees were identical right down to the hairstyle, accent and cringing, orthodontic smiles. Somebody had done a questionnaire from which they’d developed ‘personas’ based on people’s (sorry ‘humans’’) attitudes to AI (apparently some ‘humans’ use it, some don’t but like the thought of using it, some hate the thought of it and some are indifferent – WOW!) One interviewee spoke so consistently in opaque jargon that she may have been a cyborg herself (but she did work in HR so I suppose that’s to be expected – that peculiarly ‘modern’, threatening form of weaponised corporate disingenuity). It was clearly written by AI (or the journalist responsible should hang her head).
I don’t have a problem with ‘AI’. I’m not frightened of it. I play Football Manager far too much and have done for years. That’s an ‘intelligent’ aggregation of data gathered about football players (so ‘real’ that most clubs use a version of the same system). It’s moronic and after a few weeks of my most recent session I get hit by the shameful realisation that I’m being ‘played’ by an animated spreadsheet and delete the game in disgust. Much more productive to be screaming at the hapless, overpaid idiots playing for Manchester United on the TV (they can hear me you know, and they DO care – honest they do!)
Will I ever grow up? At least, ever enough to get a job in HR?
No, the problem I have is a growing sense that the world is actively seeking mediocrity. AI is just another tool to achieve contemporary society’s limp vision of ‘efficiency’ and ‘risk management’. Governments love the idea of it because it can, ideally, save money by avoiding the employment of ‘humans’ at tax-paying humans’ expense. Businesses love the idea of a ‘smoother workflow’ or a ‘more efficient process’ and they HATE risk. And in communication it means we can avoid the dangerous process of having ideas and trying to be original – there’s a formula that can be served up to us. Even when we say we prize originality and creativity agency bosses crave a ‘system’ or ‘model’ that we can sell to clients, preferably involving AI tools, so we can create a seeming ‘guarantee’ of ‘effectiveness’.
For years in advertising, I remember more original ideas being dismissed by clients because they just weren’t ‘average’ or ‘expected’ enough for them. They wanted a campaign ‘like’ another campaign. They wanted a formula like P&G or Mars, which could be measured and validated by a hugely expensive, quantitative research methodology (that investment was sacred and it was heresy to question it). It’s far easier to build your career by showing through modelled mediocrity that you’re not risking anything, than by presenting something new, outstanding but relatively unpredictable. The latter takes faith, instinct and an intent to enrich what you’re doing and providing to the world, rather than just to ‘get it right’ (meaning not wrong).
The people I admire are those that produce wonderful things, not by seeking a model to exploit consistently, but by sticking their necks out and doing what feels ‘right’ to them. Which is where The Beatles and the entire British beat explosion comes in.
I’m shamelessly stealing these observations from musician friends of mine (after all, I’m a post rationalising planner, and only a humble singer/harmonica owner). The great bands of the 60s didn’t actually KNOW a great deal. They hadn’t aggregated knowledge of American rhythm and blues, carefully learned and mastered the techniques of Freddie King or great country artists like Buck Owens. The Beatles were so ignorant that (or so the legend roughly goes) when they were still the Quarrymen they travelled across Liverpool to find the only man in the area who knew the ‘7’ chord (indispensable to rhythm and blues playing). Even Jimi Hendrix was exiled to London, because he wouldn’t play like he was supposed to.
There were no youtube videos or AI driven online ‘manuals’ on how to play. Even the records of American rhythm and blues and Country bop / rock n roll were in short supply. My mum told me that at the weekend she had a choice – spend her money on a single or go to Old Trafford to see Best, Charlton and Law (now those were the days!)
So these lads from all over grimy 50s Britain would sit in bedrooms, listening to a limited singles collection, with a sub standard acoustic guitar and try to make similar sounds. They’d get it WRONG – perhaps unwittingly expressing elements of the folk, classical, music hall and swing music that was all around them – and in so doing, they stumbled into making a type of music that revolutionised popular culture. So much so that the Yanks would then imitate THEM.
Perhaps that’s why so many of the bands lasted 5-7 years at best. The Small Faces were ace, but when they split, Steve Marriott formed Humble Pie with the legendary Peter Frampton and played extremely accomplished but, increasingly, rather dull ‘blues rock’. They learned how to play too well and too conventionally!
The same goes for many creative ideas in business. Campaign ideas often aren’t born from perfect models of strategy. The famous Barclaycard campaign with Rowan Atkinson came about because people in focus groups thought he was funny, but the agency’s scripts weren’t! As luck would have it, Rowan was interested in working with them in order to create his comic ‘James Bond’ character (later to become Johnny English). The accidental genius of Atkinson trumped a lot of analysis and clever thinking (or provided the spark to lift it from theory to wonderfully engaging practice).
We CAN’T really achieve these kinds of breakthroughs if we WANT average, if we AIM something that’s informed by an analysis of the broadest range of data available to produce a mean, or a mode, something SAFE.
Yet that’s what is happening. In today’s ‘hit parade’, it isn’t Lennon or McCartney or Harrison or Starr writing a song that blows the socks off an entire era. It’s a team of eight or nine, all contributing a little bit to a production with the star adding a bit of instrumentation and vocals over the top. It means everyone can get a cut of the royalties and the results, deliberately safe, formulaic playground like chants that act as ear worms, sell loads.
In today’s communications and business, consultants, agencies, researchers, AI applications, behavioural scientists and the like all chip in to produce intentionally samey results. From the soulless droves of SUVs on our roads, to the jargon-filled blue, grey and white (with sometimes a touch of orange) websites of B2B companies (optimised for SEO to be exactly the same as each other) and the drab, formulaic nonsense of advertising we now go to every length to block.
For crying out loud, I even saw a piece of graffiti today – ‘ONS’*. Are today’s guerilla artists devotees of statistics, I cried (at the wheel of my practical, box-like, super average Honda Jazz)? Appropriately, as I glanced to my left there was scrawled over a fence the appropriately personal message ‘Save Tone’….
[*For international readers or those mercifully spared exposure to it, ONS is an acronym commonly associated with the Office for National Statistics in the UK]
Please let’s not seek average. Having good ideas and original products isn’t the ‘risk’ people think it is. Most of the time we’re creating a piece of commercial communication or a product that will satisfy an existing need, not a Turner Prize winning piece of conceptual art or a Caractacus Potts like invention. It doesn’t take much to do what we do with flair, to signal an intent to not only satisfy but delight customers. In so doing we display confidence and produce a lasting impression that ‘average’ simply cannot replicate. A kind of ‘expensive signalling’ that shows we’re committed, resourceful and attractive.
To do that we need to dare to look at things differently, to do it ‘wrong’. You can discover the right type of wrong by listening to people who produce, use or want your service; by removing yourself from the conventional jargon of your industry and using clear, evocative language; by looking at your brand as a character who acts to produce thoughts and feelings in its audiences, rather than ‘an innovation hub empowering stakeholders throughout the trading ecosystem to maximise scarce resources through excellence in workflow solutions’.
Don’t imitate, don’t seek average, be top of the pops. As Steve Marriott sang, it’s all or nothing.
