Jon Curnow's Digital Home
My body’s capacity to survive on three or four hours of sleep a night never fails to astound me.
I am back from my weekend in Spain. My body’s capacity to survive on three or four hours of sleep a night never fails to astound me. My body’s capacity to flake out at that point and render me incapable of anything for another seven days also amazes me. So I should start sleeping now …
Mr. & Mrs. Smith is an action-comedy film about a married couple who are secretly assassins.
Friday night is warm across London so we met some friends, had tapas and headed to the flicks to see Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Unusually for me, I knew what it was about before I actually sank into my lovely comfortable Clapham Picture House seat and – therefore – I wasn’t surprised in either a good or bad way with this film.
The premise: Mr. & Mrs. Smith are killers for hire but they don’t know that about each other. You need to gloss over the huge holes in that, for they don’t matter. The ongoing lies each one has to tell to cover their other life as a hitman is ruining their marriage. So, they seek counselling and somewhere along the line – again, don’t worry about the detail – they end up trying to kill each other.
The lead-up to the assassination attempt(s) is essentially background filler and, thankfully, is over pretty quickly. When the penny drops – and Mr. & Mrs. Smith head to kill the other – is the point where the movie gets better. As you would imagine for such a blockbuster, the killing spree is well covered with special effects making the gun battles comic-book in style and certainly all the more enjoyable for it.
This film, however, is made by the unexpectedly witty dialogue that writer Simon Kinberg has peppered the film with. For plot details and suspense, then two deadly assassins trying to kill each other is – perhaps – better left to Robert Ludlum. A husband and wife couple doing the same and you’ll laugh along to the clever use of the dialogue which moves this film. When it really gets going, it’s great.
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt keep it moving well. They are a convincing couple and have all the moves a film of this nature needs. Most importantly, they carry the dialogue convincingly as a married couple.
Don’t expect realism nor a movie that takes itself seriously. Expect a surprisingly entertaining cinema experience. The fact that some in the audience applauded at the end should suggest you give this film a chance.
We gathered customers in a room and asked them what they wanted from our products in the future. Strategy was discussed but not revealed here. Sorry. It was, however, an interesting insight into the dynamics of a group of industry competitors who really shared a common view on the way forward.
Yesterday, we tried something new (well, new to us, anyway). The kind of thing that could have gone horribly wrong had we not got it quite right. We gathered a small group of our customers and, more-or-less, locked them in a room with some of our product and development people to discuss what’s next in online advertising (we did feed them, it wasn’t cruel!). Truthfully, there was no key (although I sat blocking the door for some of the day, but that was to do with the shape of the room) and customers could leave if they wanted to, although if they tried I, in turn, tried to lure them back with coffee (the Dutch said I made it too bitter by plunging too quickly, but that’s another story). It was an interesting experiment and one, I hope, we’ll repeat again.
The first lesson is that managing a group of competing interests like this is akin to conducting an orchestra in that there are many sections who all need to play their part to get the best out of the day. There will be the large string, brass and woodwind sections who have clear ideas what they want from your product and each want to make sure they are heard. Then, of course, there’s the percussion section who seem to fill in the gaps with novel little additions or ideas that hold the other parts together. Fortunately, we had a great conductor in the shape of one of our key product managers from our US office. I guess the rest of us turned the pages on the musical score for the others. Here, my metaphor breaks down and I’ll move on.
I’m not breaking any confidences by suggesting that the key themes are universal to the digital ad-serving business: the industry is maturing and major organisations have moved from wondering what their web presence is all about to how they can make the most money from it and how it integrates into the rest of their business portfolio. I took away a consensus that suggests that the top three things important to the industry are:
and, as all great customers should do, they would like these issues resolved in the next release cycle. Of course, we were given a much deeper insight into what our business needs to do to meet these – and the other less obvious – requirements and industry challenges (do you think I’m going to tell you now?). It was fascinating to see how players in our orchestra interacted, many having never met before. It’s great to see competitors sharing information and, if any of them read this, I’d like to say thanks for your input. I’m sure we’ll do it again. We kept the group small(ish) – more chamber orchestra than philharmonic – so that we could get the best out of the day but if you’d like to be considered for the next one then you’d better be a customer in about 12 months from now!
Now, I’m starting the weekend by heading off to see a solo musician. Tori Amos is playing Hammersmith Apollo in a few hours. I believe she can play the piano rather well. I guess she’ll conduct herself.