Tech? Check?

Beware tech "advantages."

With the holding company formerly known at WPP firing it's CPA-leader and replacing it with a technologist from a division of Microsoft, there's a lot of industry chatter about WPP transitioning from a communications business to a technology business.

(WPP has reverse-amoeba'd itself since 2020. It has half the revenue, half the accounts and less than half the people of just a few years ago. Calling them any kind of business is a stretch.) 

But there's a problem with a business, a social-organization, a person, an university, a ball-team relying on technology to give them an advantage. Except in extremely-rare Nvidia-like circumstances, technology-primacy is rarely a sustainable edge. The people who sell technology (which is how most entities get technology) don't sell it exclusively to one client. They'll sell it to anyone who has the money to pay for it.

To steal a bit from Robert Herrick's 1648 poem, "To the Virgins to Make Much of Time," there's this admonition.

"Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

Tomorrow will be dying."

A tech advantage, for the metaphor-dense, is like Herrick's rose

buds. It's an advantage today. Tomorrow it will be dying.

I remember way back when I was in my first agency job in the 

early 80s, there was a very smart, crafty and driven art director. 

While every other art director in this 50-art-director-agency was

scribbling marker comps, S started using press-type.

In an instant, his comps looked better and more professional 

than anyone elses'. He sold more campaigns. He quickly moved

to an office with more windows and a paycheck with bigger

numbers. 

The same sort of phenomenon occurred when the Mac came

into our lives. Those who used it first got out of the gate quicker.

They had what some people call a "first-mover advantage."

I saw the same thing when I toiled on the playing fields of the

lord. There was a team that started using aluminum bats while

everyone else was swinging the ol' ash and hickory. The ball 

came off the aluminum faster than it came off wood. They hit

harder and farther. They won more ball games.

Then, as always happens, everyone else got press-type. Or

Macs. Or aluminum bats. Or anyone of one-hundred-million

things over the course of human history that gave one group an

advantage over everyone else.

In 1990, I went to work at Ally & Gargano for one of the best

writers in the business, Ed Butler. Showing copy to Ed was

practically an all-day affair. It was a bit like buying a puppy from

a real dog lover. They want more than you're money. They want

to make sure you're a "good home."

Ed wanted more than copy from me. He wanted to make sure I

was learning. He wanted to pay his wisdom forward to someone

who would, when their time came, pay it forward as well.

One afternoon, Ed told me a story about an extremely gifted art

director he worked with called Ted Shaine. Ed said Shaine told

him, "All I have to do is win one gold pencil a year and I've 

earned my pay."

My point today, if you can find one, is pretty simple.

Technology is replicable.

People with drive, talent, vim and wit are few and far between. 

Organizations can commit to "industry standard" tech.

Or they can commit to a higher standard of talent.

If you have unlimited funds, spend and spend and spend and

buy the machines you need.

If you don't.

Invest in people.

And let them work.