To Improve Is to Change; To Be Perfect Is to Change Often

To Improve Is to Change; To Be Perfect Is to Change Often
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Stream epitomises the famous Churchill quote, "To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often".

Stream in Cannes brought home, as if we didn't know it already, that marketing is war and marketing is chaos. You have to be able to adapt to that and derive your energy from winning and creating new ideas, as our job is both harder and much more compelling than ever before.

From our point of view everything is media, all humankind can be mapped and anything is possible. Our client's reputations go up and down on the stock market of social media and we need to navigate everything from Google to packaging, from YouTube stars to uniting the worlds of brand marketing and CRM.

To do that clients need a marketing spine. A framework to order the chaos. We also need to accept that nothing in our world will ever be neatly packaged with the ordered campaigns of old, where we planned, created and bought months in advance. We need to be live; we need a new way of working; a new way of creating content and a new way of measuring success. We also need a cultural shift to work in a more open source way, with speed and provocation creating ideas that are rooted in cultural relevance.

To remain relevant an agency must change yearly, and for campaigns to remain relevant they must be able to adapt and change every minute.

This is why we created The Loop.

The Loop is a real-time adaptive marketing platform, which brings all available data into one place to create a 21st century version of integration across all disciplines.

We use a proprietary real-time system to make collaborative and adaptive decisions across paid, owned and earned media. The Loop is a data rich war room or newsroom that looks at the trends, CRM, behavioral and best digital thinking across 'loops' in an adaptive marketing or Moneyball-like system.

Much like the main premise in Moneyball -- that data can be analyzed and insights derived to provide competitive advantage -- the adaptive platform is constructed to encourage agency and clients to think at a strategic and tactical, campaign level in real-time using multiple sources of data streams -- to gain advantage for our clients. We keep The Loop in a state of constant reinvention, constantly adding more data sources and partnerships to stay in front of the competition.

The key to The Loop is however not the data, but the behavioral change that it drives by bringing client, agency and specialist teams together in one space to view and discuss that data in real time. This seemingly simple tweak to the usual workflow produces a massive step change in results. Moving from 'all team' emails and long lead times to the fast visualization of possible solutions, allowing insights to be uncovered and quick shifts in media spend to be made at campaign level, or deeper and more long term changes to be implemented in real-time.

To ensure The Loop continues to adapt it is kept in a constant state of evolution: continually immersing clients in the experience so they can interpret data and keep up with the zeitgeist -- and even be part of it; adding more data streams, whether client, media or third party-derived and pushing for ongoing education for the teams, constantly viewing and evaluating decisions and learning from the results.

Data interpretation is the DNA of the system but it is also weighed on CRM, effective returns, ROI and KPIs. The system allows the team to think in real-time and then implement shifts in the balance of media investment, resources, strategy and tactics.

We think The Loop combines Wetware (Human) thoughts combined eloquently with the best of Software (Machines) data.

It is about culture and change as much as technology and data. It is also this combination of human provocation (aka Martin "interviewing" Marissa Mayer!) and data abundance that makes Stream such a powerful gathering.

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