Which made me think.
What do I do, exactly?

It is a general problem, of course, in a post-industrial society. (A manageable problem for us without working-class parents, but God help those with. Like my boyfriend the copywriter, constantly plagued by visions of his father welding.) And like with any knowledge economy job, I spend my days doing a myriad of different things, high and low. But it has to be possible to identity the activities that actually produce the most value, and define it with those. Like the baker, who stacks baking-tins from time to time but will present his work as baking bread and making cakes.

So, this is what I do.
I write emails, and I drink wine with people that matter in my brand’s universe.

The first is creating value by facilitating value creation by other knowledge workers (mostly), enticing CEOs to give keynote speeches (gently) or editors-in-chief to subject to deadlines (forcefully).

The second is creating value by building network, and it is what working in media will be increasingly about. Other businesses too, but with relationship-driven brands like media brands, it will be, in fact, everything.

Which is why I will, being a generous kind of person, give away a secret that will help you succeed in this business.
There is a trick when drinking wine with people that matter in your brand’s universe.
Make sure it is white.
Red wine stains your teeth.

Good luck.

Bryan F – A master of media

For example, in a recent Harvard Business Review article, economists Gökçe Sargut and Rita Gunther McGrath claims that in the last thirty years, complexity has

[…] gone from something found mainly in large systems, such as cities, to something that affects almost everything we touch: the products we design, the jobs we do every day, and the organizations we oversee.
(Sargut & Gunther McGrath 2011: 70)

Complex does not, of course, just mean complicated. It involves the transition from chain to network, from separate to interconnected and interdependent systems. Business is then, to use the terminology of Karl Popper, not a clock anymore, it is a cloud.

It is apparent then, that the tried and trusted way of thinking about business does not work anymore. It is, essentially, broken. We need another way of approaching business problems, one that is more attuned to this complexity. Especially when we’re doing entrepreneurial things. (Yes, I know. Me too, I have a deep-rooted aversion towards the Entrepreneur with a capital E. Megalomaniac characters balancing between having great networking skills and sociopathy. Smug technophiles with the capacity for reflective thinking like that of a Giant Schnauzer. And so on. However. Contrary to popular belief, entrepreneurial ventures does not have to include this unsavoury figure.) Entrepreneurial in the sense of starting something, but also to reinvent or revolutionize an existing business – by for example launching new products, finding new markets, or changing organizational models. And it is in exactly this search for change, for revolution, that existing business models fail to perform in a world of uncertainty and intricacy. This is where another line of thinking is needed.

But what does work, then? What line of thinking can actually help navigating in an uncertain, fast, difficult world? A couple of years ago, design thinking claimed it was it. And I felt towards it in varying ways going through the same process I often do: (1) Infatuation (in this case fuelled by the efficient trick of the Common Enemy – taunting MBAs was very clever). (2) Followed by a growing sense of belonging to a club where less intelligent people sit around collecting buzz words as if they were stamps. (3) General hostility.

But, I’ve decided to be reasonable. I’m not convinced that a designer can come up with the solution to world starvation better than someone who actually knows something about it, simply by being seemingly magically creative. In fact, it is a bit too close to romanticism surrounding nature people. Another reason I’m not convinced is that I’ve been to design school, and every time we did a project that went farther than our actual field of competence, every idea we came up with was rather shitty.

But there are elements of design thinking that are better tools for dealing with clouds, rather than clocks. Better, that is, than the standard business school equipment.

Number one. Start using the whole of your brain.

That is, to approach business in the way that Roger Martin defines design thinking – as bringing together the best of analytic reasoning with the best of creative, emotional thinking.

Why this is needed to tackle complexity? Something the artist Dutch video artist Guido van der Werve told about what he has learnt from chess Grandmaster Leonid Yudasin might serve as an illustration. (I wrote about it once before.) The game of chess is, according to Yudasin, too complicated for a Grandmaster to learn all strategies and possible outcomes with his rational mind. Instead, they train their aesthetic sensibility; they look for what feels and looks “right” to them.

This part of the brain copes with those complex and quite mathematical chess problems much better than the rational part, in the Grandmasters’ experience. Clearly something that suggests that all ways of thinking should be represented when trying to solve business problems.

Number two. Stop being so bloody linear.

Iteration, constantly refining and retuning your idea throughout the design process, is of course another  feature that separates design thinking from traditional business thinking. This seems even more fruitful as an approach when the world seems difficult to predict and complex. And it is in entrepreneurial undertakings like discovering new products and offerings that the unpredictability and complexity is the biggest challenge.

But surprisingly often, the traditional business process, that starts with planning and then goes on to execution and then has a little feedback arrow meekly attempting to make itself heard in the end, is taken for granted. It is, however, rather hopeless when everything changes constantly, and inconsistently. Dust yourself off and try again. Again and again.

At least, that’s worth a try.

This autumn, I have been involved with something that is rather brilliant. ( I am allowed to say this without it being bragging, actually, since said brilliance is more other people’s than mine.) My company, business magazine Veckans Affärer, has joined forces with Resumé, the largest Swedish communication industry mag, and B2B agency Hilanders, to start a conversation. A conversation about where the industries that define Sweden (hard and heavy stuff like steel and paper) are heading, and what actually drives their growth in the 21th century.

This discussion, between the communication industry, top management in B2B coorporations, and the odd publicist, has been played out on – yes, yes, yes – all our platforms, of which the site b2bconversations.se might be the quickest one to access. (Or, if you’re one of those Facebook-is-the-new-Internet kind of people, well, here then.) It is in Swedish, so it’s not for everybody, but for Swedes, there is some quite interesting stuff in there.

And on the 7th December, the next step on this journey will be the B2B Conversations seminar, at the lovely Berns Salonger in central Stockholm. Big name speakers, a panel with a couple of communication people with very good resumés who will occasionally ring a funny bell of some sort (Yes, buying a funny bell is my responsibility. I haven’t yet gotten around to getting one, but whatever I choose, it will be spectacular.), oh yes, and wine. Stockholmers, I hope to see you there on the 7th. Do get in touch for discounted tickets, I’m sure I can get you some, but you have to act quickly – we close registration this week.

* wiseacre part of myself: “Actually, different media do shape discourses. A pipe is never a pipe when mediated. This example would be only half as good as a Facebook status update.” Non-wiseacre part of myself: “Go away.”

In New York, I once saw a middle-aged hobo type sitting on the street with a tin cup in front of him and a hand-lettered sign reading I USED TO BE QUITE ATTRACTIVE. I noticed his tin cup was flush with bills. Another time, in San Francisco, I spotted another grimy homeless guy with a sign that simply read I NEED $ FOR A HOOKER, which also seemed to be inspiring charity from the local citizens.

from John Waters: Role Models (2010)

Sometimes I’m reminded of this.

They are like those birds that weave intricate nests in which they are as content to hatch out a pebble as an egg.

from Cyril Connolly: Enemies of Promise (1938)

The medium is the message. One of the most famous quotes about communication ever, and almost up there with the fifteen minutes of fame in terms of ubiquity. And during the 2000s, the idea of the media channel has been expanded, to encompass pretty much everything. Adding to print, broadcast, web, mobile, outdoor billboards, etc, brands advertise themselves on any physical object they find suitable to associate with. This kind of advertising uses creative associations between the brand and the medium so that it’s actually the medium in itself that communicates the message. So, really a case in point for McLuhan. Easily translated into entertaining, instantly graspable jpgs, ad blogs love this kind of brand communication. But is it effective?

There’s not much written about advertising outside of ‘proper’ media. Swedish rock star professor Micael Dahlén (a generally very clever man, isn’t he) has written a few things on it though. He calls employing a novel medium that makes a statement in itself creative media choice. Which is fine but could mean a wide range of media decisions, so I guess I’d call it something like creative context connections*. (That’s a nice alliteration which I could use with a trademark symbol, too, should I need to make one of those fluffy agency models.)

In both of these studies (The Medium as Contextual Cue. Effects of Creative Media Choice, Journal of Advertising, 2005 and Dahlén, Friberg and Nilsson: Long Live Creative Media Choice. The Medium as a Persistent Brand Cue, Journal of Advertising, 2009) experiments were made where traditional media (ad posters, print ads) and creative contexts were compared. An egg with an insurance company’s logo and tagline or a fire extinguisher with a salsa sauce label on it were two novel media used. The results: creative contexts were more effective than traditional media use in creating the intended brand associations. (This presumes a good match, of course, between context and product.)

As an added bonus, the medium itself can continue to remind people of the brand, something that hardly happens with regular media that’s normally filled with brand messages. Actually, in one experiment, exposure to an altered creative context (when the brand logo etc had been removed) even transferred new associations to the brand. A phenomenon that could be good or bad, presumably. Maybe you should be a little careful with, as in the first example above, associating your food brand with public toilets, hot air connotation or not.

What I would like to do a study on is a possible conflict with brand personality and tone of voice. The simplicity of the message when it’s created by association overlap between brand and medium (Salsa sauce – Hot – Fire extinguisher) and the inherent witty cleverness in making such associations make every brand sound quite similar, and frankly, maybe a little too advertising-y to suit any brand. An obvious rival is of course what trendwatching.com calls Brand butlers. Brand butlers are all those apps, sites or services that also work by association (Energy drink – Sport – App that keeps track of your exercise) but allow an own voice and add value. Like IKEA France’s brilliant covoiturage service, where you can meet people to share your ride to the store – making both driver and passenger save money, perfectly in line with IKEA’s brand values.

* I really dislike the word guerrilla advertising. It’s an example of the old militaristic language of traditional marketing, with its targeting of consumers and offensive and defensive strategies. In his seminal books on guerrilla marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson actually calls different strategies ‘weapons’. Amazing. (Also, dear creative, you’re in advertising, not an invincible jungle warrior. Deal with it.) So I didn’t use it.

So the campaign for Hurts which runs now is quite interesting. Hurts are, if you didn’t know it already, a Mancunian electro pop duo who (1) look good (2) dress up and shave, (3) are, or are styled as (in pop music, who cares?), hopeless romantics and (4) duet with Kylie. Alas, they would be perfect pop group, if they didn’t insist on sounding like Talk Talk.

Anyway, they’ve collaborated with Manchester novelist Joe Stretch, making an interactive story of sorts, called ‘Don’t Let Go’. Narrated by Anna Friel, the actress, each chapter is a track, and you’ll find the code for the next one at the end of each. Or actually codes, because it offers you alternative actions for your hero. And if you’ve chosen wisely and get through the whole experience (‘to stop arch villain Guy Lockhart from distributing his heartbreak cocktail and condemning humankind forever to a loveless, empty existence’, no less) without getting killed, you’re rewarded with the perhaps not so grand price of a preview track. It starts here, by the way.

Now, there’s something about this … Besides its obvious video game flirtations, it reminds me of, yes, hypertext fiction! The last time I was buried in Communication Studies literature, mid-2000s, the fascinating but elusive hypertext novels could still be described in old editions’ discussions on digital media. For some, inexplicable, reason, hypertext fiction – in which you could, yes, choose a path in the story with the help of hyperlinks – was thought to be an important element of entertainment in the future. Oh well.

The retro-hypertext idea aside, plus points for innovative media use, quality and execution. Some minus points though, for turning it into a promotional contest (with a price that requires real fandom for it to be desirable). It sort of puts the story in brackets, doesn’t it, transforming it from literature to copy. Why not trust the short story, let it be just that (hyperfiction or not). Soundtracked by the Hurts’ music, it would add more layers of the right kind of connotations to the band without the comp element. All in all, though, nice work. In other Hurts promotion media news, an equally nice promo box in line with their lovely Drones Club aesthetics, complete with comb and sheet music (images from Popjustice).

Or they’re just chosen a magnificently frightening dragon poster because they’re located close to the classic movie theatre Draken (The Dragon), and don’t see how this choice of imagery might contradict the first line below it: “We’re happy to welcome people with dental fear“.

But that’s not how it works.
To make good work, you need to gesso it first.

‘Have you gessoed it?’

Gesso is what you use as priming for paintings.
Gesso makes the surface stiffer.
It prevents paint from soaking into the canvas, paper or wood.
And it gives the surface more texture, so the paint sticks better.
Traditionally made of animal glue – skin, bone or cartilage – mixed with calcium sulphate (a form of gypsum) or calcium carbonate (chalk), it’s pretty, well, intimate stuff.

‘Stop! Have you really gessoed it?’

So, gesso.
The gesso is the client relationship.
It’s the trust you build.
The feeling the client gets that s/he’s in good, professional hands. That s/he can stop being scared – because s/he’s terrified – and with good reason. S/he’s bought something from you that’s so important to get right, something that will define how others see him/her, something that can make or break him/her, without seeing it beforehand. Terrified. That’s why s/he instinctively wants to regain a little bit of control, by telling you to centre the logotype because s/he’s asked around a little and a guy in Sales said he just doesn’t like it to the right. Or by treating your best, bravest ideas like they were a separatist group’s demands for independence: like something that should be negociated down until it’s completely toothless. Handling fears.

That’s why, if you haven’t been covering your canvas with client confidence building, calming gesso, your work will end up an ungessoed painting.
Difficult to get right, those expensive and carefully mixed oil colours sinking into the canvas, turning out dull and uneven.
And the surface cracking.
No matter how great this piece of art was in your mind.
So gesso. Understand, inspire, motivate, involve your client. It’s the groundwork to your masterpiece.

P.S. Obviously, not all client critique is down to bad gessoing. It’s often very insightful stuff. But with proper gesso, it will be easier for the client to find that relevant input. And for you to listen to it.