13/03/07

Are books becoming even less relevant?

Russell Davies, in conversation with Richard Huntington (again) and Mark Earls.

In this podcast (MP3 here) they pretend to talk about a specific planning brief set by Russell to readers of his blog (part of the “how to plan” series of posts). In fact, they end up revealing how smart people like them approach a brief to pitch for new business. It’s fascinating on many levels. They talk about their strategy (be more remembered and more liked than the competition), tactics (don’t be right, be interesting - all your competitors will be as right as you could have been; work out your opinion and make everything else fit; and of course, zag when everyone else zigs) - and they talk about their methods of research to inform all of the above.

So we get how they begin working: Googling the CEO, marketing director; looking up speeches, annual reports, declared accounts; basic stuff. Then they talk about getting some insight - so they call other planners at other agencies who have worked on similar brands / products (I think this is what they mean when they say ‘categories’). They call journalists, city analysts, refer to fast company. They read the Guardian and trawl for references to competitors and developments - all for any insight into the business and mental state of the client. Then for the fluffy warm stuff - quantlite - they may put the brandname into flickr / youtube/ technorati to see what comes back (and both lots of results and no results are warm talking points at the meeting). I found it inspiring and also reassuring to know that we all have the same methods, broadly.

But what I found astonishing (almost as an afterthought, as I listened to this with a planning head rather than a publishing head) was that they don’t, specifically, do, is search in, or for, books.

Books are mentioned in passing - that they might go to the cultural theory section of a bookshop, but not sounding very likely. But as a primary, or even secondary - or even tertiary - source of reference, books aren’t among the first tools used by smart people in business every day.

How worrying is that? Well, if you’re a publisher or a bookseller - very. How indicative is it of the world beyond account planners? I don’t know. But it resonates with me, and friends I’ve spoken to anecdotally who are more likely to read filthy LondonLite or the Metro than a novel - and they work in publishing!

Why is it? Of course, books are slow to come to market - these guys expect to read a blog by someone working in their target market and to glean info from that, up to the minute accurate, in seconds. Books are hard to find, to stock, and cost money, when almost all of the resources above are free. But it’s not just that.

I don’t have the answer but surely we must come back to the old “the threat isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity” question. Books - and /or at least the content within them - need to evolve to a point of being totally relevant and un-forgettable about if they are going to compete in a world where people (even ones approaching middle age) turn to google and the web before they open a book. Google book search is a massive part of this, but there is still the time-lapse in a book being written, edited, submitted to google. (Assuming the publisher buys into the book search programme benefits).

I guess we’ll try to talk about this on Thursday, but maybe somone should commission Russell and the others to sit around for an hour and talk about publishing, bookselling, and reading? If I had the cash I’d do it in an instant.

Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with publishing beyond that, but you may enjoy the chat.

Russell Davies, in conversation with Richard Huntington and Mark Earls.

Posted by Peter Collingridge in Publishing, Web.