The magpie collects
I'm a firm believer that powerful ideas emerge from diverse influences being smashed together. How can a truly inspirational idea develop from a homogeneous group of people gathered in the same meeting room, using the same photo libraries and search engines? Or as Albert Einstein so succinctly put it: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I steal concepts, language, news snippets, visual references and clever analysis from everywhere. Being out-and-about as an independent consultant gives you the opportunity every day to take fresh information in and apply it to projects.
X marks the spot
Well you can’t be in branding and not pass comment on X, formerly known as Twitter, can you? There have been LinkedIn posts and column inches galore on the subject, and so the noise Musk wanted has been more than achieved. I will therefore add only this. X…what’s your story?
To a lesser or greater extent, all rebrands are break with the past – or else why do it? – and are directing hearts and minds to a different or enhanced future. But X is operating more like a sticking plaster over the past. At best it’s communicating “watch this space”. Or if I were feeling a little more generous, “anything’s possible”. We don’t have any genuine insight about what X is going to be, bar a super-app of some sort.
Technically, the reveal of the logo – because that’s all this is, not a full repositioning and therefore rebrand – happened too early. But the attention created has been phenomenal. Musk will be revelling in the attention X’s uncertainty has created.
Interviews are often rubbish
There’s been an interesting thread on LinkedIn recently about sharing interview questions in advance of interviews. In principle I really like this, for inclusivity reasons in particular. But there’s an underlying assumption that interview questions either shared beforehand or asked in the meeting are good! Often questions are dry and generic, immediately diminishing the draw of a role and a company, and not giving the candidate anything to chew on, or the space and freedom to show their metal.
Effective interviewing is a real skill and much more emphasis should be put on interviewers doing it well. (Turning up having read a CV is a good starting point people.) So train managers/interviewers on how to get the most out of people, and make sure they know that monologuing about their business or department for 30 minutes doesn't reveal much about the candidate! (I've experienced the listening game in interviews too many times.)
Hopefully any interview questions are just the starting point for an insightful conversation about challenges, opportunities and relevant experience but also a door opener to discovering someone's potential. i.e., My pet peeve, don't just look at past job titles on people's CVs, discuss their ambition, what's next and what they want to learn, as well as getting to know them in the round. Find out who they are as an individual not just a job title and what they believe they're capable of? Then you start to get to cultural fit, on top of experience criteria, and even to people who can help shift your culture and business in the direction you need.
Oracy yes, spin no
Call me sentimental, cheesy, naïve or a dumb broad (actually not that), but when the world gets really heavy, I return to The West Wing. Any season from 1-4 will do. Who doesn’t feel reassured by a Toby Ziegler and Sam Seaborn speech in the midst of complex geopolitics, national tragedy or new policy that will lift people out of poverty and provide everyone with equal opportunity.
So of course Oracy being on the agenda at schools in the UK works for me. Being able to express fluently and grammatically in speech is an incredible and requisite skill to really get along in life. But it is abused.
We don’t need to look too far for examples of people using their speaking skills to deceive, obfuscate, dress up and motivate, when the substance isn’t there to back up the claims. This is a crime I need to be cautious of committing too.
There’s nothing I like doing more on the copywriting front than packing lots of meaning into as few words as possible. But I can feel my skin crawl with embarrassment as three word slogans are tripped out by politicians, fully aware that I’ve been guilty of the same and of some greenwash too.
Recently, I’ve noticed regular mention of the need to create, take hold of or steer the narrative, and of the need to develop the “right” backstory. As if all these things are open to manipulation and the story is all that matters to get you to where you want to be. Well they are open to manipulation, but I’m putting in a new bid for substance. Oracy, without the spin.
Have you heard the garbage in, garbage out saying? Here’s how Wikipedia describes it:
“In computer science, garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) is the concept that flawed, or nonsense (garbage) input data produces nonsense output.”
The same goes for any kind of input or briefing. If you don’t provide a decent brief, you only get decent creativity back if the someone(s) on the receiving end bother to challenge it, rethink it, push the boundaries a bit – or a lot – and tell you you’ve got it wrong.
Where does this leave us with briefing the machines I wonder? I’m going to find out with Midjourney, the San Francisco founded, generative AI research lab.
The twist is though, I’m not going to brief in the fantastical, as with most of their Community Showcase images. A large number of which, btw, seem to be images of remarkably similarly featured young women.
Wide eyes, button nose, white/tan, flawless skin anyone? Because it seems that’s the only response there is to the key words lady, woman, girl, empress, bride, cyberpunk, cyborg and beautiful alien girl!!" To be fair, that is probably what the world in the main is telling the machines. (GIGO right there.)
No, the twist is giving Midjourney the sort of briefing given in branding and comms all the time. You know core thoughts/ideas that are intended to lead to something distinctive, not just on the logo front but in terms of an overall visual brand or campaign.
Are the machines up to it? More interestingly perhaps, how does the briefing need to change to get outputs that aren’t garbage. Watch this space.
Don’t forget what isn’t measured
I’m all for great career advice. I’m not sure I received any at school or university. I didn’t know what the university milk round was so didn’t turn up and my career may have ended up differently if I had. So that was a bit of social capital I missed out on. Just a small lump of social capital compared to the amount many others don’t have and that’s something this country needs to work on for young people today. What I’m not sure it needs to work on is giving future jobs advice to five year olds. I’m with Margaret Heffernan who wrote in the FT “Schools should teach curiosity, not careerism”. Don’t get me started on the education system today, particularly since my sis gave me the book for Christmas “Sedated. How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis” (James Davies). Everyone being programmed (quite literally) to fill an industrial box is a shabby route to continue on for human existence. We’ll soon be measuring kids performance in coding as a matter of priority, as well as English and Maths, and while coding for sure is important, if we only measure and therefore manage that, what are we forgetting and leaving behind? If we did teach curiosity not careerism, we could cross-fertilise all subjects, come up with cool stuff and be a lot happier as human beings in the process.
In a small sample of just me, my friends, my family and colleagues, there is a backlash underway against being absolutely freakin frenetic all the bloomin’ time. No one’s loving always having soooo much to do and having too little time to do it and resentment is building about consistently being asked to deliver great stuff at speed just because sometimes it can. This interview with Cal Newport catches all that vibe and while it’s focused on the digital workplace many of us are beholden to (i.e., constant messaging and information distractivity (my new made up word), I love the ultimate recommendations – three principles – for living life in general and ending up with something you’re proud of: 1) Do fewer things; 2) Work at a natural pace; 3) Obsess over quality. Newport concludes on his theory of productivity: “That trio of properties better hits the sweet spot of how we’re actually wired and produces valuable meaningful work, but it’s sustainable.” I’m going to promote it. Thank you Vicks for sharing the interview with me.
Musk on meetings
Anand Sanwal from CB Insights (I almost always read his emails) shared an email Musk sent to the Tesla team. Fingers crossed, as Sanwal said, that this isn’t urban legend, as it’s the only thing I’ve ever nodded to positively that’s emanated from Musk. Maybe if a Tesla was within my reach that would be different. But anyway, the email was about meetings and productivity. Top line rules: 1) Avoid large meetings; 2) Leave a meeting if you’re not contributing; 3) Forget the chain of command (big thumbs up to this rule); 4) Be clear, not clever (my favourite); 5) Ditch frequent meetings (I hate weekly “touch base” meetings that always get moved); 6) Pick common sense (makes sense). Wouldn’t argue with any of it in fact. And then there’s other stuff Musk says and does…
Take it down a notch
When Terry Smith, CEO of Fundsmith, expressed his scepticism about the stated purpose of Hellman’s (to tackle global food waste) and of Lux (inspiring women to rise above everyday sexist judgements and express their beauty and femininity unapologetically), I did get his point. He had his reasons for challenging Unilever, but he also drew attention to what’s been happening far too casually in branding for the last 5+ years.
Brands have felt the pressure to be both ethical and world-changing at their core. Because of the zeitgeist but also because they’ve seen the likes of Unilever benefit from attaching social and environmental aims to their brand. The result though, is too many businesses and products aligning themselves with saving people and/or the planet, without strong enough justification to do so.
Cause related marketing used to be enough for brands to make clear they are not just evil money-makers (while they made money out of positive associations). Which meant their core purpose could be a little more prosaic, though no less important to the customers they serve and still expressed in very human terms.
So while all businesses and brands should be playing their part to protect people and planet, their purpose should be utterly true to them. It is time to take most purpose statements down a notch.
Unilever, from experience, will be taking their “higher purpose” statements for Hellmann’s and Lux very seriously. By taking action. Not just delivering words.
This episode on the future of work, from the Weekly Economics Podcast, is a must listen for anyone involved in capturing business cultures with words or aiming to direct them with the creation of purpose and values statements. Important questions are raised about the genuine benefit of having comfy beanbag environments, with their suggestions of inclusivity and creativity, when what people really need is more time outside of work, or the persistent push for self-entrepreneurship and betterment, when employees aren’t given freedom to choose or act. The words we thought were good to include in lists of values need rethinking, again.
One of my favourite “little books of” is Taxi Driver Wisdom by Risa Mickenberg, a series of quotes taken from conversations with New York City cab drivers. It contains page after page of classic real-world wisdom, though not all of it you want to hear! I was reminded of it when I discovered, Ceyda Oskay’s “Sleepdust: Uber Drivers Singing Lullabies”, an eight minute edit of dialogues between the Turkish artist and Uber drivers that took place in London in 2019. You hear the drivers sing lullabies from the countries they migrated from. It’s a very gentle and poignant listen. A natural miscellany of cultures. It reminded me of cab rides I took from Brixton to Heathrow, always with Floyd who I brought back duty free and who told me about his plans for a chicken farm. His wisdom one day: you don’t have to go if you don’t want to. So I didn’t.
I need to thank Caoilfhionn O’Connor, creative director at Likely Heroes, for pointing me in the direction of The Selby Films. Even those more obviously for brands are a masterclass in how to capture people’s stories without going overboard in selling an angle on them. There’s a central message always, but it unfolds with ease instead of being edited so tightly that the person at the centre of the story feels like a puppet. Amongst several favourites is this one capturing Jazzi McGilbert who set up the Rep Club. Her quiet telling of her own story is perfect too. Love her line: “It makes it feel like a sort of speakeasy vibe...it’s everybody’s little secret they want to tell someone else. But maybe not everybody”. The same with Selby Films, you don’t want to lose what’s special by everybody doing it. But there’s lots to be inspired by.
Why hasn’t this been done before? Gender Swapped Fairy Tales, by illustrator and author Karrie Fransman and creative technologist Jonathan Plackett, is such a simple but brilliant idea. But harder to execute than first thought apparently.
The idea began when their daughter was born and they first imagined using a basic search and replace algorithm to swap pronouns around . But they discovered: “oddities in the English language meant an artificial intelligence was necessary to detect the context of the sentence and to apply the language accordingly.”
In her interview with Creative Review, Fransman described how many periphery elements in stories are gendered:
“Even the kingdom becomes a queendom, and a hen is now a rooster, and it’s all really tiny little things littered in the language. Brothers and sisters turned into sisters and brothers, and women were now introduced by their professions – they’ll say ‘miller and her husband’ – and they’re introduced first as well.”
What better demonstrates the extent to which gendered thinking and attitudes are embedded in our language and lives.
Fashion world edits
I kept the September 2018 issue of Elle magazine because it was dedicated to sustainability. It’s typically the biggest issue of the year and it was Elle’s first with 100% recycled-waste paper. That was just the first indicator of what felt like a major change in stance by the publication. Not just fashion conscious but conscious fashion. I liked what I was reading and it’s true to say across the many magazines I enjoy reading (old skool, I know), sustainability – in all its forms – has risen up the agenda. Phew.
Looks like GQ, November 2020, is a keeper too. An extended editor’s letter, by Dylan Jones, is a broad-ranging missive on the state of the world and the role of brands in it. It opens with an exterior picture of Selfridges’ flagship Oxford Street, with the sign signalling their net zero strategy and a call for all of us to change the way we shop. Pretty incredible for a luxury store like that to suggest consumption isn’t king.
Jones’s editor’s letter carries on, part analysis, part prediction and part plaintiff cry for brands to understand what’s going in in the world, respect the impact of the pandemic on individuals today and the disaster climate change represents for future generations. He asks brands to make the decision to make a change, by implication to make the world a better place.
Retail is facing major challenges and as a consequence brands too. Will survival point them in the direction of more empathetic and environmentally positive behaviours? Jones points out the accelerated shift to digital, the requirement for experiential retail that is less transactional, more relational and, in pandemic times, ana experience that gives people space. A far-reaching suggestion is that we’ll all want our brands nearer to home. That flagship store on Oxford Street could be a thing of the past, with smaller stores for leading luxury brands existing in towns. We could order off the internet, but where’s the life-enhancing experience in that.
I’m glad fashion and lifestyle magazine editors are writing about these things. It’s been two years since the Elle sustainability issue I kept. I hope Dylan Jones’s call to action gets a faster uptake in thinking and behaviours.
