Talking with Faris Yakob

Faris Yakob talks to Elen Lewis about his latest book, Paid Attention and how a parable about the mess hall in the Marines tells us everything we need to know about bold leadership.

What are you reading right now?
The Martian By Andy Weir
The Anatomy of Humbug by Paul Feldwick
The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen

I have developed a sort of web-browsing approach to books, which I write about here, along with a list of more books.

What inspired you to write Paid Attention?
The spark was an article in The New Yorker about the pickpocket magician Apollo Robbins. He talks about managing attention, and how "attention is like water" and that image really struck me. It pulled lots of strands together in my head. Attention is foundational idea of advertising, the A in AIDA, the thing we pour into the top of the funnel, the currency we buy and sell in the form of impressions.

But, like lots of long buried assumptions, it seemed that we didn't really think much about it at all.

What does bold marketing leadership look like?
Leadership is one of those tricky things where talking about it can make you seem fake, especially if you aren't American. So let's talk around the subject.

Why do birds that fly in a V follow the leader? Because she is in front.

Leadership is pioneering and directional by its nature, then.

Bezos says: "A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well."

We are naturally impressed by the non-obvious, the difficult, chosen freely. We often mistake this - novelty breaks through because it seems interesting or hard to do, but simply replicating it does not. That's the wrong outtake.

Simon Sinek uses a nice parable about the marines to explain how leadership works. It's responsibility, not just authority.

When he asked a many starr'd general why the marines were so DAMN GOOD, so known for being elite, dedicated, loyal etc.

He said: go to any mess hall in any marine base anywhere in the world and watch: the most junior person eats first, the OFFICERS EAT LAST. It's an unwritten rule, a symbolic gesture, that earns them the respect of their men, and a practical one: you don't want hungry marines.

What do all marketers need to know about earning consumer attention?
Attention is a many splendored thing. We live in world of infinite content constantly crying out for our attention, and it's a precious, finite resource. It's all we have, in some ways.

The attention arms race has people bouncing from stimuli to stimuli, hooked on the intermittent variable rewards.

So, ultimately, it's just to remember that human attention has value, if we want some we owe them for it, and that something earned is worth more than something bought.

What do all marketers need to know about the future of their industry?
Prediction is hard, especially about the future, as Niels Bohr actually never said, but there you go.

If everyone needs to know it, you can assume it will present itself at some point. Marketing needs to only remind itself that the role is not the managing of agency rosters, but rather understanding behavior, business and brand.

Oh, and robots. Probably.

How can science fiction help?
By telling us how to deal with the robots.

Actually, science and its fiction have an interesting relationship. Engineers reading Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson built Second Life and Google Earth based on ideas in that book.

I think of science fiction as the last bastion of the novel of ideas. Philosophies, and their consequences, explored through narrative.

The map is the not the territory, but who wouldn't want a map to the future?

What advice would you give to a marketer at the beginning of their career?
The epilogue of my book is advice for young people. The nice people at an agency called Ologie put it on a bookmark.

What advice would you give to your 17-year-old self?
Hang in there, it's going to be AWESOME.

Also, it probably was awesome then too but teenagers eh?

Everything feels too much when you are 17. It probably wasn't always raining either.

Faris is co-founder of Genius Steals, an itinerant strategy and innovation consultancy he started with his wife, Rosie.

He is the author of Paid Attention, and a contributing author of Digital State [2013] and What is a Brand? [2015], all published by Kogan Page. He is lucky enough to be invited to speak and consult all over the world. He was named one of ten modern day Mad Men by Fast Company but hopes he is less morally bankrupt.

Despite living on the road, you can reliably find him on Twitter (@Faris) and on his blog: www.farisyakob.com.