Volume 81: Lords of creep-tech.

1. Lords of creep-tech.

tl;dr: Amazon follows Facebook with a bevy of creepy devices.

This week Amazon held their annual ‘throw vast quantities of shit against the wall and see if any of it sticks’ devices event. Most of it, as usual, was a bunch of incremental updates to TV streaming.

But, a recurring theme this time around seems to be Amazon’s doubling down on “creep-tech.” What is creep-tech, you might be wondering? Well, it’s all the creepy crap that puts cameras and microphones and sensor-based surveillance all over our persons and homes. Last week it was the Wayfarer/Facebook mashup. This week it’s a veritable smorgasbord of Amazon devices. First up, the Amazon Astro robot looks like a cute vacuum cleaner with an iPad duct-taped to it but is actually an in-home surveillance device. The people who worked on it think it’s a horrible product that’s pathetic at recognizing faces, will fall down the first staircase it comes into contact with and is mainly designed to gather as much of our personal data as possible. Anyway, it’s available now by “invite-only,” which seems weird as I can’t imagine there’s pent-up demand for a $1,000 surveillance device that can wink and carry a beer but can’t vacuum the floor and needs to be kept away from stairs. Of course, if this isn’t creepy and intrusive enough for you, we also have their entirely dystopian in-home security drone, the Always Home Cam, the Amazon Glow, which spies on our kids, and the Echo Show 15, which spies on everyone else. Whew. And that’s just the stuff I could be bothered paying attention to. Plenty more was announced if you can be bothered.

With the release of all this bad stuff, it does make you question why tech companies think thinly-veiled in-home surveillance without much of a value proposition is somehow a compelling value proposition? Well, I don’t think they particularly care about the consumer value proposition. Instead, this is much more to do with all the rich data they’ll have access to when their AI-enabled devices spy on what everyone is up to, which in Amazon’s case means selling us more paper towels and toilet paper. And ads.

But, following the past 18 months, surely we’ve become more attuned to the negative impacts of in-home surveillance. Just look at the spectacular growth of creep-tech aimed at employers and schools. (As an aside, I’m horrified that companies and schools think it’s OK to force employees and students to have their cameras on at all times so that poorly coded black-box surveillance algorithms designed to enable totalitarian regimes can decide if they’re working diligently enough).

Anyway, this neatly brings me to privacy and Amazon’s issues with its Ring brand and all of the ways in which it uses and abuses our data, which would seem to sit rather uncomfortably with repeated claims from Amazon that our privacy is central to their affairs. As an aside, Ring is a truly dystopian brand with product solutions that seem innately geared toward feeding the paranoia of the most fearful among us.

Unfortunately, creep-tech is most decidedly here but hopefully not to stay. Hopefully, we will widely shun the worst examples, forcing these tech companies back to the drawing board.

2. Race to your bottom.

Tl:dr: The smart toilet is finally here. Cue bathroom humor.

I suppose the smart toilet was inevitable following every other form of smart device like smartwatches, smart glasses, smart doorbells, cameras, microwaves, refrigerators, surveillance robots, etc.

Now, when I say smart-toilet, I don’t mean the well known Japanese variety that variously heats, cools, sprays, washes, blows, and generally pampers to the soothing sounds of birds and waterfalls (assuming you can interpret the pictograms, of course. Otherwise, the whole experience can be somewhat…surprising). No, the new breed of smart-toilet focuses on our waste. Specifically, analyzing and interpreting human waste for health-related reasons.

Now, if we can get past the idea of a toilet with a camera in it looking at our poo and using AI to interpret potential health conditions and horrendously misguided terminology like “analprint,” it does make sense. After all, scientists have for years been monitoring sewage to analyze everything from the prevalence of opioids in the human population (way too high) to a tracking system for community outbreaks of COVID (pretty cool, actually).

The real question, though, is going to be one of adoption and trust. While I think it will be hard to get past our general squeamishness and emotional hang-ups regarding bodily functions, it’s the idea of what happens to our data that I find of particular interest. So far, we’ve proven to be remarkably cavalier when it comes to the exploitation of our data for profit by bad-faith actors, so it will be interesting to see how free we’re willing to be with data that’s so very, very, well…personal.

Which, perhaps strangely, brings me not to Amazon, as discussed above, but to Apple. Over the past couple of years, Apple has made a play to be the defender of privacy, handily using Facebook as their anti-privacy foil. And, barring a recent aberration with their now on-hold policy of scanning everyone’s iPhone for known images of child abuse, they’ve done a pretty good job building this perception. (sidenote: the whole phone scanning thing is a super-tricky area that bigger brains than I am vastly more competent at discussing)

The advent of the smart toilet, though, has made me realize the long game that’s playing out here. The real reason for a privacy focus from Apple appears to be much bigger than just Facebook or Google selling ads. As technology becomes more deeply integrated into our lives, more intrusive to our daily routines, and as our data trails become deeper, richer, and even more personal, it’s likely perceived privacy, security, and anonymity will become ever more important.

I hadn’t thought of it before, but it looks like Apple is on a long-term path toward becoming the trusted arbiter of privacy. A third party that others, like smart toilets, will have to do business with to get over a privacy bar that’s likely to become higher as technology becomes more intrusively personal, and others like Facebook and Amazon continue to poison the well.

3. Good strategy, bad strategy.

tl;dr: Some hallmarks of what makes a good brand strategy.

If you work in branding, it’s decidedly easier to hide as a strategist than it is a designer. If you’re in charge of the strategy, your work isn’t generally going to be anywhere near as publicly visible as a designer, which means it isn’t going to be critiqued, criticized, and occasionally parodied the way theirs will be. But, just because fewer people see your work doesn’t make it invisible. I can’t tell you how many boring, bland, beige brands I’ve seen where my first thought isn’t that the design is terrible, but that there’s a complete lack of compelling strategy underpinning it.

So, what are some indicators of a good strategy that we should be on the lookout for? Well, I’m not going to pretend I have an exhaustive list, but here are ten thoughts in no particular order of importance.

First, ditch storytelling. Brand strategy isn’t a story. Strategy is about connecting what the brand can be to what the business needs it to do; it’s about creating direction, guiding actions, and finding a space where the brand can succeed. If a story or stories are a part of that output or are necessary to sell the strategy, then great. But let’s be clear, in the same way that a brand isn’t a story, neither is a brand strategy.

Second, beware of over-complication. The best strategies simplify complexity into easily understood and easily actioned concepts. The very best are “obvious in hindsight.” This means they’re so obvious that the response upon seeing it is “Doh! Why isn’t somebody else doing that already?” On the other hand, the worst strategies are complicated, overly lofty, disconnected from the business, and hidden behind layers of frameworks and buzzwords.

Third, strategy isn’t sold by weight—something drilled into me in my time at Wolff Olins that is still true today. If a strategy can’t be communicated in a compelling way across a very few slides, it isn’t a very good strategy. While 100+ slide decks might make it feel like we’re creating value, they aren’t particularly valuable, so cut it down.

Fourth, great strategies cut-through. You have to assume that everyone is looking at the same research and insights that you are, so if you rely on these inputs alone, you’ll inevitably end up with the same strategy as everyone else. (Sidenote: I once saw a $1m+ brand strategy deliverable from BCG that identified the top 10 category buying drivers, circled the top 5, and called it the brand strategy. That’s a no good, very bad strategy right there.) The art of strategy is reading between the lines and making non-obvious connections, of viewing the market through a critical eye that seeks what others might have missed, and of trying to figure out what it would take to be different rather than the same.

Fifth, written briefs are for clients, not teams. I can’t reiterate this enough. If you’re working together with designers and writers or whoever, then they are your team. There isn’t a “strategy team” and a “design team,” and your team isn’t to be communicated at via written brief. Instead, you should be talking to each other, batting ideas and concepts around, and together thinking about how the strategy and the design should weave together to inform each other. This is an interplay that creates better and braver work, which is why it’s blatantly obvious when it isn’t happening.

Sixth, capabilities matter more than any amount of ‘why.’ I genuinely believe Simon Sinek is the world’s best salesperson. How else could a dubious concept based on a single anecdotal example backed by zero empirical evidence capture the imagination of so many “data-driven” executives? Being serious for a second, “why” as a brand strategy is a path to nowhere. Customers couldn’t care less unless your why is to make a better or cheaper product for them. (“Why” is generally more important as a concept for employees than customers, but even then should represent only a facet of the overall strategy, not the strategy itself). Instead, when looking for sustainable advantages and differentiators, I more often find myself looking for clues in the organization's capabilities, how it is structured, what its competencies are, how its belief system works. Here is where you’re more likely to find things the competition will find hard, sometimes even impossible, to copy.

Seventh, think future, not past. Way too much brand strategy looks backward, even though strategy as a concept is solely concerned with the future. As a result, we get inordinately obsessed with equities built in the past, rather than focusing on what the brand needs to do in the future. Instead, start with a future-focused perspective, where the only role the past has to play is how much it can help enable a desired future state. Sometimes, that might mean minimal change. Other times, it might mean a lot. But don’t start from a place that’s handicapped by the past; let the situation decide.

Eighth, strategy should guide actions, not just messages. There are many legitimate reasons why brand strategies are framed solely in communication terms, but that doesn’t make it right. The best strategies guide actionable choices across the business, which help differentiate the whole experience and not just how the brand is communicated.

Ninth, beware of the purpose trap. Purpose can be a powerful concept but is decidedly not the right strategy for every brand. Generally, the best indicator of a genuinely purposeful organization is one that it uses its purpose as a filter when making hard choices that mean forgoing profits rather than seeking to monetize purpose for profit. If the purpose is not deeply held by the organization, does not overlap with a real customer need, is disconnected from the business, and is unlikely to live anywhere other than an advertising campaign, it isn’t a purpose; it’s a trap. Try not to fall in.

Tenth, passion…and doing your homework. It doesn’t matter how good your strategy is if you can’t sell it, and it’s tough to sell things you aren’t passionate about, which is why your ability to present the work with an underlying passion is so important. But you can’t rely on passion alone because that would be a manifestation of sociopathy. You need to do your homework and be able to demonstrate why this is the right thing to do and have all of the underlying reasons at your fingertips, even if they aren’t all included on your ten slide deck.