Matt Di Paola: “User Experience Is Our Legacy”
Back when the Y2K bug was making headlines, Huge Inc. opened its first studio in Brooklyn with a belief that design should be user-centered. Fast-forward to twenty years and the company’s philosophy still rings true today, arguably even more so than in 1999. With 12 offices spread across four continents, Huge has become an industry reference in matters of design, technology and innovation, bringing brands and people closer through creative solutions and unforgettable experiences.
To get some insight on how the company operates on a daily basis, we spoke with Matt Di Paola, Managing Director of Canada. In a candid and open chat, we covered the evolution of Canadian advertising, what drives creatives to produce their best work and how humans are reacting to the excessive personalization monitored by algorithms. Feel free to take part in the debate by leaving your thoughts in the comments section.
Innovation is a big part of Huge. How does that translate to advertising?
I would actually say that we are not an advertising agency. User experience is our legacy. We have been winning some agency of record (AOR) type of work recently, but that’s coming through brands that want to create interesting experiences for the user. If you want a traditional advertising agency that is going to make TV spots, that’s fine — it’s just not us. However, if you need a creative company that is going to be the advocate for the end consumer and their needs, well, that’s what we do.
How are brands in Canada reacting to your offer?
Well, first of all, I think the advertising market in Canada is going through a reinvention. It’s a discussion I keep having with my industry colleagues. We’re talking about a mature industry that has commoditized itself; everyone is fighting over the same reducing dollars. I say “reducing dollars” because many of the clients have started doing things in-house, simply because they have so much going on, it’s not sustainable to bring in a third party. Let’s take a client with some sort of retail capacity — they have their own teams to run their e-commerce platforms because they need to be able to make changes quickly. As soon as the data comes in, there may be a need to change pricing or remove a product from a page, and it does not make sense to have to contact an agency every time this happens. The same goes for social media content, blog posts, videos, the works.
With that in mind, you have to understand where the value is. Before, there was value in the making; now, the value is in the thinking. Brands still need outside help on the thinking level, because it is very easy to become myopic and not be able to adapt to the marketplace without outside influence to help them shift as the market shifts.
Before, there was value in the making; now, the value is in the thinking.
Are brands transferring from traditional advertising agencies to smaller creative offices that focus on strategy?
As I mentioned, advertising is going through a reinvention and the agency model is being disrupted. Some agencies still work 100% on an AOR model, in which a team is assigned to work with the same client for the duration of that brand’s contract. The way I see it, though, these companies have issues with staff turnover because creative people crave new means to express themselves. Clients want consistency, creatives want variety. So you’re already at odds with that. Creative people usually don’t sign up to work in an agency and tend to only one client. It comes to management to then handle this tug-of-war, finding projects to keep the team motivated. Otherwise they will leave for another challenge, sooner or later. The people who stay tend to be complacent, which in turn upsets clients who are paying to see fresh ideas. If you think about it, that is a tough model to follow in a creative business. It is possible to make it work, but you have to have a clear understanding of these dynamics and promote a company culture that caters to both sides.
That’s an interesting point — how important is it to institute a solid corporate culture in a creative business?
It’s difficult to define what a “good corporate culture” is because it is so relative and personal. The heart of the matter is — we’re all still people working with people. So as much as consultancies and creative agencies get into each other’s sandboxes, clients still want to work with people they like. Clients want to work with people whose ideals are like theirs or like what they aspire to bring to their company.
Still on this subject, can you comment on what it is like to work at Huge?
It is an open-concept office. I sit in the middle with the Executive Creative Director in a way that we are both very accessible. Full transparency. The idea is to stimulate collaboration, so there are couches set up for people to interact and get away from their desks. In the back, there is our maker room for our physical design work. We have a 3D printer for prototyping back there — we’ve made shoes, barbecues, cycling helmets and goggles, as well as pop-up retails shops for SK-II. We’re actually designing an office space for Google right now.
What happens when you need more privacy, say, when a client comes in?
We do have a boardroom specifically for these meetings and client pitches. There are also times when teams are working on a project and they need their space, so we have war rooms set up for that. Those are different than a meeting room because the point is to use them throughout the length of the project. So when a specific room is designated to a team, people can use the walls, leave materials without worrying about emptying it out because someone might need to use the space the next day.
What is the staff like?
I believe we have an office of specialists. Each one of them is excellent in different fields. Part of the management team’s job is to make sure there is enough interesting work coming in, because we have a lot of ambitious, creative people who are here to try and make change.
Speaking of making change, can you comment on any trends moving forward?
I see an increasing level of personalization now, and the tension that it is starting to bring. Let’s take what is happening over at Facebook, for example: the more narrow it got on personalization, the more people have started resisting. Users began to realize they were actually missing out on a lot of content, simply because the algorithm had decided they would not be interested in it. And now they have to make an effort to go discover things outside of their echo chamber, with a feeling of having been censored before.
In that sense, what is the limit in delivering a tailored custom experience and trapping the user in their comfort zone?
I think the limit is that people still want choice. Take a platform like Spotify — it actively puts music in front of the user that is outside of their behavior. It is up to the user to engage with it or not, but at least Spotify is giving the option.
Then, if you go to the other side of the spectrum, there are companies like Amazon that give you too much choice, too many products to sort through. Smart speakers seem to be a good answer for that, though, because when you ask Alexa or Siri a question, it gets back to you with a single response. It will be interesting to see this evolution. With people suffering from decision fatigue, the need for curation will continue. And that curation is going to be personalized, but only to a point.
The human element comes into the curation, I suppose.
Definitely. There’s a triage that artificial intelligence can do, but at the end of the process, people still want to talk to a human being. If you look at the travel industry, a chat box can filter people out and do some of the initial work, but once you engage to a certain point, you are talking to a real person. The human aspect will always be important.
