Slightly biblical setup to Trott's blog. Not that I'm complaining. It seems in his 'The Advertising Arms Race' never has a wiser word been said. In short, when developing weapons during the second world war there were two ways of doing things. The old and the new. The new way led to staggering leaps in human capability. The old and obsolete technology- forgotten, ignored- bubbled quietly away without anyone's notice. And then came the Cuba missile crisis. Potentially the most fatal conflict mankind has faced. Two enemies vying for a way to wipe out each's own enemy and in the process themselves, not forgetting the rest of us with it. Now in such a colossal conflict fought over a victory that is something hard to comprehend (in winning you kill you enemy but also yourself) you'd think there'd have to be some super smart winning strategy. But in reality the winner, well, turned out to be the old. The idea with killer capabilities. It would seem whilst new stuff is often better, improved, exciting and opens doors, there's always a place for the old stuff, and for it to do it better. It all sounds a bit like a 'lesson learned'. But read his full account, he tells it well...
THE ADVERTISING ARMS RACE, Dave Trott
First they had the V1.
Basically a flying bomb with a crude jet engine attached.
A very simple design.
But the next development was light years ahead: the V2.
This was the world’s first space ship.
They fired it 50 miles straight up, out of earth’s atmosphere.
When it reached its peak, it turned and dived on London.
The first thing anyone knew about it was when it exploded.
All of the R&D for both weapons took place at Peenemunde.
When It became obvious Germany was losing the war, the scientists had to make a decision.
They could stay at Peenemunde and be captured by the Russians.
They wouldn’t be killed, they were too valuable.
But they’d have to work for the USSR.
Or they could escape to the west, and be captured by the Americans.
And work for the USA.
All the old school V1 scientists escaped to work for the Americans.
Nearly all the more advanced V2 scientists stayed, to work for the Russians.
Fast-forward 10 years.
Now it’s the Cold War between the USSR and the USA.
Each side threatening the other with nuclear weapons.
The advanced German scientists (now working for the Russians) had developed their V2 into a genuine space ship.
In 1957 the entire USA was petrified because the Russians put the world’s first-ever satellite into orbit: Sputnik.
It’s hard to grasp the significance now.
But in those days it was like someone having military control of another dimension.
Suddenly all strategic thinking was geared around the premise that whoever controlled space would win any war.
For decades, that was all anyone could see.
Meanwhile.
The German old school V1 scientists had been quietly working away in America, on their obsolete design.
No one cared about them, so they were just left alone.
Without much of a budget, they’d developed a superior guidance system.
They’d developed better engines and technology.
And one day, they unveiled the cruise missile.
No one had ever seen anything like it.
It was exactly the opposite of everything all the world’s sophisticated rocket scientists were working on.
It could fly so low radar couldn’t detect it.
It would fly slowly so there was hardly any noise.
It didn’t have to sit in a massive silo with a large crew to guard it.
It was so simple it could be launched from anywhere: plane, a lorry, a boat.
It could even be launched from a submarine underwater, and find it’s way precisely to any target.
And you could make literally hundreds for the cost of a single ICBM.
Suddenly the whole game changed.
Everyone had been looking the wrong way.
Everyone had been spending more and more money in the race to have the biggest and best ICBM technology.
To build huge missiles that flew higher and faster then the other side.
Because of the spending on the arms race, on having bigger and better and faster and more powerful missiles than America, the USSR went bust.
They had no money left.
The Soviet Union broke up.
The ICBMs led up a blind ally.
You couldn’t use them without the other side using theirs.
Which would have meant the end of the world.
So the ICBMs were, in effect, useless.
But it wasn’t that way with cruise missiles.
They were smaller and cheaper.
You could use them just to take out a particular house if you wanted.
They cost next-to-nothing so you could use as many as you wanted.
They could carry conventional or nuclear warheads.
They weren’t part of the arms race.
And the world shifted 180 degrees.
Suddenly something that all the ‘experts’ had ignored came and bit them in the arse.
The old fashioned thinking that they pooh-poohed.
The obsolete technology that they called dinosaur thinking.
Suddenly all the people that blindly followed the ‘experts’ were stuffed.
Something everyone had written off wasn’t really dead after all.
Can you see any parallels with our business?
Everyone blindly involved in race for new technology that will solve everything.
Everyone saying that whatever came before that technology is just dinosaur thinking.
Everyone convinced that there’s only one answer for every situation.
Everything that went before is obsolete and can safely be ignored.
Any of that ring any bells?
Which brings me onto this. What a superb skill. Something most people would overlook. But nevertheless, where used correctly it creates the most spectacular of effects.
And then some Rory Sutherland. (On a bit of an adland binge). He has a lot of interesting things to say about the value of value added, by, wait for it, ADVERTISING! (see ma, I ain't sold my soul to the devil just yet...) Plus he's a funny man with some great knowledge of the world (or else damn fine researchers).
No comments:
Post a Comment