Julia Margaret Cameron: Sometimes Truth Is Out-Of-Focus

'What is focus - and who has the right to say what focus is the legitimate focus?'
Julia Margaret Cameron

It’s two hundred years since the birth of the experimental photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and there are two exhibitions in London celebrating her work. (The V&A until 21 February; The Science Museum until 31 March)

Although Cameron came to photography late in life (she first took up a camera at the age of 48), she was a pioneer in the understanding of photography as an art form. Most of the early enthusiasts regarded photography as a science that should concern itself with accuracy and precision. Cameron aimed to ‘record the greatness of the inner as well as the outer man.’

Certainly many of Cameron’s portraits have an intimacy that still resonates today. She shot in profile or face-on, making astute use of lighting and shadow. Her sitters have a stillness, a seriousness, that suggest the private, individual, interior life. It’s as if she’s caught them on their own in a room looking in the mirror.

Cameron came in for a good deal of criticism from the Victorian photographic establishment for the perceived ‘mistakes’ in her work. There were blotches and swirls resulting from the uneven application of chemicals and smearing when the plates were wet. And many of Cameron’s images were slightly out-of-focus.

‘What in the name of all the nitrate of silver that ever turned white into black have these pictures in common with good photography? Smudged, torn, dirty, undefined and in some cases almost unreadable, there is hardly one of them that ought not to have been washed off the plate as soon as its image had appeared.’
The Photographic News

Cameron believed that her technically flawed images conveyed greater emotion, truth and impact. And some of the more enlightened critics of the time agreed.

‘Mrs Cameron was the first person who had the wit to see her mistakes were her successes and henceforward to make her portraits systematically out-of-focus.’
Macmillan Magazine

The state of being in-focus is of course a technical matter. But it is also something that is socially determined; something that is felt.

In a fabulous scene from Woody Allen’s 1997 movie, Deconstructing Harry, a camera crew is having problems shooting the actor Mel, played by Robin Williams. After inspecting their lenses, they conclude that there’s nothing wrong with their equipment. It’s Mel that is out-of-focus.

‘Mel, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re soft. You’re out-of-focus…I want you to go home; and want you to get some rest. See if you can just sharpen up.’

I have a lot of sympathy for Mel. Sometimes we just don’t seem to be in tune with everyone else. We’re out of step, misaligned. Sometimes we feel out-of-focus.

Could the communications and marketing industries learn from Julia Margaret Cameron? Would we ever willingly seek to be out-of-focus?

We are for the most part cursed by an obsession with polish and perfection. But this very finesse may diminish our ability to communicate authenticity, integrity and emotion. Conveying truth is not the same as conveying fact. Facts are hard, precise, unyielding. Truth is a matter for intuition, interpretation and imagination.

We could also learn from Julia a singularity of purpose, a determination in the face of critical pressure.

My mother was a keen amateur painter. She worked in oils using a palette knife, a method taught by the TV artist Nancy Kominsky (Paint Along with Nancy was a big deal in the UK in the 1970s). I once came across her painting a series of seagulls on a rock. There were four or five of them all in a line, pointing in the same direction. It looked to me as if they were queueing for a bus. I told mum that this wouldn’t happen in nature; that things are less regimented in real life. She told me she didn’t care. This was the picture she wanted to paint.

No. 65

NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND 13

Truth Amplified: Is Now the Time for Verismo Advertising?

‘Now then you will see men love
As in real life they love, and you will see
True hatred and its bitter fruit. And you will hear
Shouts both of rage, and cynical laughter.’

Tonio, Prologue, Pagliacci

In December I attended a magnificent performance of Ruggero Leoncavello’s Pagliacci at the Royal Opera House.

Pagliacci was first performed in 1892 and it is regarded as one of the definitive verismo operas. The term ‘verismo’ derives from the Italian word ‘vero,’ meaning ‘true’. In verismo composers sought to break with the operatic tradition demanding stories of deities and mythical figures, nobles and royalty. Verismo concerned itself with the lives and relationships of ordinary folk.

Over its brief seventy-five minute running time Pagliacci tells the tale of a touring theatre company beset by plots and rivalries. Among the company is Canio, the clown, who rails against a life in which he must play the fool while his heart is breaking (‘Vesti la giubba’). It is one of the most moving arias in opera.

Pagliacci is not a mere everyday soap opera. It deals in extremes of passion and emotion. It is a tale of lust and jealousy, of intrigue and infidelity. It conveys a heightened reality. It is truth amplified.

I think the world of brand marketing could learn something from verismo. Firstly, of course, the most effective communication tends to feature regular everyday people, rather than the wooden marionettes of advertising cliché. But, secondly, the best work often puts those average people in exceptional circumstances.

Because of its brevity advertising must always distil; but, in order to create impact, it must also intensify. It amplifies truth.

Moreover, Pagliacci illustrates how to manage a dramatic ending. The story culminates in two tragic stage deaths. At the last the actor, Tonio, addresses the audience: ‘La commedia e finita!’ (‘The play is over!’) Perfect.

‘The Most Difficult Thing To Do Is What’s Most Familiar’ (A Giacometti)

I recently visited an exhibition of Alberto Giacometti’s portraiture at The National Portrait Gallery.
Giacometti grew up in a small Swiss village and his early paintings of his family are colourful, sunny and seemingly effortless.

However, over time, and as his unique personal style developed, his portraits became more intense. He subjects his sitters to scrutiny. He locates them in the centre of the canvas, facing straight out at us, almost confrontational. He labours to capture their essence in the stillness; to distil the truth of their identity. He repeatedly scratches and scrapes at the paint until he is satisfied. The works are often small-headed and hollow-eyed. The sitters seem alone and remote. Staring out at us in grey, black and brown, they haunt the space.

Reflecting on Giacometti’s relentless pursuit of his subjects’ vital presence, the exhibition notes quote Samuel Beckett:

‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’

In the world of brands and marketing we deal in the everyday and familiar. But this doesn’t make our jobs easier. If anything it makes them harder. Stripping away the clichéd, extraneous and redundant; isolating the human essence, the genuine insight, the cultural nuance. These are genuine challenges. Only the truly great practitioners can make the ordinary proclaim its vital truth.

The Benefit of the Doubt

1965 looms large on the London stage at the moment. The Trafalgar Studios are hosting an excellent production of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming (until 13 February). This great play was first performed in 1965. Meanwhile the Wyndham Theatre is staging Martin McDonagh’s darkly comic Hangmen (until 5 March), a work largely set in 1965.

In 1965 the Beatles played Shea Stadium, Bob Dylan went electric, Ali beat Sonny Liston and West Ham won the European Cup Winners’ Cup. But these two plays consider more sinister themes.

The Homecoming tells the story of a long-lost son returning with his wife to his robustly working class North London family home. It’s a place of masculine threat and inarticulate regret. The past haunts; violence is just around the corner. Speeches are coded, veiled, misleading. There seems to be so much left unsaid.

“The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear… One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.” 
Harold Pinter

McDonagh’s work considers the plight of Britain’s last hangman at the time when capital punishment was abolished. He doesn’t let us settle. Is he condemning hanging and the culture that accompanied it? Or is he criticising the sixties liberalism that swept it away? His characters are difficult to pin down. Again there is menace, mistrust, misgiving. Sometimes the audience laughs when it should be disturbed. Perhaps comedy and fear are more adjacent sentiments than we might imagine.

One walks away from both plays with a sense of unease and uncertainty; with more questions asked than answered. It’s actually quite a satisfying sensation because, of course, life itself is marked by doubt, mystery, ambiguity.

“There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.” 
Harold Pinter

For the most part we consider modern commerce a field for certainty. We strive to deliver openness and transparency. We earnestly endeavour to make brands comprehensible and credible. We convey approachability, accessibility, familiarity. We explain ourselves.

But I wonder would some brands not benefit from embracing a little more mystique, an aura of expertise, a suggestion of secrecy? Imagine a brand that asks more questions than it answers; a brand with hidden depths, not manifest shallows.

Should we not give ourselves the benefit of the doubt?

No. 64

Shallow Grave: Do We All Suffer This Modern Malaise?

‘I think I’m sick and I don’t know if my ailment has a name. It’s just me sitting and staring at the internet or the television for long periods of time, interspersed by long periods of trying not to do that and then lying about what I’ve been doing. And then I’ll get so excited about something that the excitement overwhelms me and I can’t sleep or do anything and I am just in love with everything, but can’t figure out how to make myself work in the world.’

Brooke, Mistress America

Over Christmas I saw last year’s magnificent movie, Mistress America. It’s a New York comedy directed by Noah Baumbach, and co-written by Baumbach with one of its stars, Greta Gerwig.

Gerwig plays Brooke, a charismatic 30 year old who juggles jobs as a spin instructor, an interior decorator and a maths coach. She’s endlessly contemplating new ideas for fame and success. Her t-shirt concept was stolen, but she now has in mind to open a Williamsburg restaurant where you can also cut hair.

Brooke is all cosmopolitan cool and shallow affections; her enthusiasms are sudden and spontaneous, her attention is deficient and unfocused. She embodies a modern malaise: a yearning to achieve without a willingness to strive; a wealth of ideas, but a poverty of application. She seems at once impressively aware and yet incredibly naïve.

‘She could see the world with painful accuracy, but she couldn’t see herself or her fate.’

Tracy, Mistress America

This condition of disparate passions and rootless enthusiasms is often characterised as something that afflicts the young. But I’m inclined to say we all suffer it to varying degrees in the internet age. I certainly do.

Some years ago I had a colleague we dubbed Future Girl. She was entirely cool and spoke in a kind of text language that avoided vowels and prepositions. Future Girl was culturally alert, but never watched films because they lasted too long. Are we all becoming Future Girls now?

‘Right now it’s only a notion, but I think I can get money to make it into a concept, and later turn it into an idea.’

Producer, Annie Hall

In particular, Mistress America prompted me to query my own reverence for ideas. We cling to the belief that ideas are rare and precious; that ideas people need to be protected, nurtured and encouraged. But sometimes ideas seem ubiquitous and cheap. Everyone nowadays has a killer app and a craft-based retail concept. And every new idea earns a nod of recognition. We’ve already seen it, heard it, tried it, done it. The web has made us blasé, cynical, jaded. We have become all-seeing and all-knowing; but we are nonetheless far from all-action.

‘Discipline is what the world needs today, baby.
Heavy, heavy discipline.’

 Prince Far I/Under Heavy Manners

Sometimes it seems that modern culture sorely lacks application and execution: the resourcefulness to carry out the research, to find the partner, to smooth out the rough edges, to do the math; the commitment to see a task through, to do the dirty work, to travel the hard yards. We celebrate ‘T’ shaped people, but most of the people I meet are ‘__’ shaped.

It’s easy to blame the internet, but I think the coffee has a lot to answer for too. We’re increasingly stressed and paranoid; we suffer attention deficit disorder on a mass scale and now there’s ‘phantom vibration syndrome’ to worry about too.  Our smart phones are making us stupid. We upgrade our devices and downgrade our time. We say we’re multi-tasking when really we’re multi-dabbling. And as we juggle our roles, we’re endlessly dropping balls. Are we all accelerating towards a shallow grave?

As we embark on another year, I’m going in search of some psychological blinkers. And I don’t mean mindfulness classes.

No. 63

Let's Turn That River Round: A Lesson in Creative Thinking from the City of Chicago

Sometimes the conventional tourist trail can be rewarding. In Chicago last October I joined the Chicago Architectural Foundation’s River Cruise. A charming guide (an unpaid volunteer docent) gave us a potted history of the Windy City’s magnificent skyscrapers.

We glided past the Tribune Tower of 1925, a neo gothic triumph of flying buttresses and spires. We marvelled at 1929’s Carbide and Carbon Building, all art deco elegance in black granite, green terra cotta and gold leaf. Its design was reputedly inspired by a champagne bottle. We paused to admire Mies van der Rohe’s IBM Building of 1973, a single-minded symphony in black anodized aluminium and grey tinted glass. We swooned at the rippling façade of Jeanne Gang’s eighty four-story Aqua Tower, completed in 2009.

 Mies van der Rohe - IBM Building next to the circular Marina Towers by Bertrand Goldberg

Chicago’s architecture is not just impressive, beautiful and richly diverse in style and tone. It also tells a story of bold entrepreneurism and creative problem solving.

The forty-story Jewelers’ Building of 1927 was once the highest building in the world outside New York. In a crime-challenged city the Jewelers’ Building boasted a car lift to ensure the safe transfer of diamond merchants direct to their offices.

Montgomery Ward is the oldest mail order firm in America. The beautiful Catalog House of 1908 provided two million square feet of storage and office space over its eight stories. ‘Pickers’ were issued with roller skates to traverse the vast concrete floors.

Wherever you look around Chicago you see ingenuity at work. There are skyscrapers built over railway lines and on eccentric shaped plots that posed huge engineering challenges. And urban invention continues to this day. Since 2001 the city transport authorities have been constructing a pedestrian Riverwalk along the south bank of the Chicago River. It aims to open up the riverside to the public, with floating gardens, lawns, cafes, boating lakes and fishing piers.

                                       Section of the Chicago Riverwalk

Inevitably, not all of Chicago’s architectural innovations were successful. For instance, the onion-domed Medinah Athletic Club Building of 1929 (now the InterContinental Hotel) has a blimp mooring station on its roof.

Jeanne Gang - Aqua Tower

Nonetheless, ingenuity, creativity and bold ambition seem to have driven Chicago forward from one decade to another. I was particularly impressed by the city’s endeavours to deal with its poor drainage.

Since its early years Chicago had suffered sewage and sanitation problems. In the 1850s and 1860s whole buildings and streets were raised on hydraulic jacks to accommodate new drains. And yet the still rapidly growing Chicago continued to suffer deaths from typhoid and other waterborne diseases. The city responded by building the 28 mile Sanitary and Ship Canal. The canal connected the Chicago River to the Des Plaines and Illinois Rivers. And it thereby reversed the flow of the Chicago River! Whereas previously it had discharged into Lake Michigan; now it flowed away from it.

I couldn’t help thinking that these tall tales, impressive statistics and leaps of lateral thought put modern London to shame. We don’t seem able to build an airport, a runway, a concert hall, a bridge with herbaceous borders. Our roads are congested, our streets polluted, our cyclists are always at risk. And our Government wants to sell our social housing rather than create it. All we seem capable of is stacking empty glass boxes one on top of the other, as far as the eye can see.

We often characterise such urban challenges as failings of the planning process or the political system. But, at a more fundamental level, they betray a lack of confidence and imagination. The transformational impact of creativity should not be limited to the interiors of our homes, shops and galleries. It should extend right the way across our cities: to our public buildings, our recreational space, our offices, our domestic architecture, our transport infrastructure.

Just think what we could achieve if we had the determination to turn our river round.

No. 62

Turn The Arc Lights On The Audience: A Modern Marketing Lesson from The Who

‘Music is not a prayer to god. It’s a prayer to the audience. It’s about you. It’s about you. I don’t write songs about me. I write songs about you. That’s why I’m successful.‘

Pete Townshend, Lambert and Stamp

Lambert and Stamp is a splendid documentary about Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, the managers of The Who that mentored the band from West London mods to global rock superstars.

The Who were a thrilling, combustible, mercurial stage act. They were cheeky, angry, dapper and aggressive. They were ‘meaty, beaty, big and bouncy.’ They were ‘maximum R&B.’ But, more than this, they were a band that gave expression to post-war British teenagers; to the disaffected working class; to stylish urban kids that wanted to get on. The Who spoke for their generation.

‘People try to put us d-down,
Just because we get around.
Things they do look awful c-c-cold.
I hope I die before I get old.
This is my generation,
This is my generation, baby.’

Pete Townshend/The Who, My Generation

In the documentary Chris Stamp relates how, during the band’s American tours, huge arc lights were stationed at the back of the stage. At the finale of each gig they would shine the arc lights’ powerful beams through the group so that the audience were illuminated. The crowd invariably stood up as one and became part of the experience.

This instinct to shine a light on the audience, on their tastes and style, their passions and pain, seems to have been right at the heart of The Who’s success.

Pete Townshend, The Who’s guitarist and lead songwriter, cuts a thoughtful and engaging presence in the film. He repeatedly returns to his conviction that The Who put their fans at the centre of their creative process.

‘Everyone thinks that it’s you that influenced [the audience], not the other way round… You become a mirror to the audience. [Lambert and Stamp] started to develop it as a way of harnessing the energy of the audience, which was to empower them; to make them realise how important they actually were.’

Pete Townshend, Lambert and Stamp

I found Townshend’s argument compelling, not least because I come from a communication tradition that was uncomfortable with the thought of ‘holding a mirror up to consumers.’ We regarded our core task as persuasion and so we always put the brand and its point of view first. We sought to craft ‘emotional selling propositions’ that won consumers’ hearts, in the expectation that their minds (and wallets) would follow.

But Townshend argues that marketing should go further than this. As he succinctly puts it: ‘You don’t market to them; you market them.’

‘When you do marketing you’re always trying to find some way to get round the fact that the audience are a problem; the consumer is a problem. Well, the way that you stop the consumer being a problem is that you don’t give them what they want; you allow them to be. You affirm who they are. You don’t try to change them.’

Pete Townshend, Lambert and Stamp

I’m increasingly of the view that Townshend is right; that in the modern age of consumer empowerment, audiences don’t want to be targeted, tracked and interrupted; they want to be represented, supported and encouraged; they want their views articulated, their hopes expressed, their fears addressed. Audiences want advocacy, not advertising.

We should think of a brand as a community, a neighbourhood, a union; a collective that needs representation. A brand should be a club worth joining, a membership worth paying for.

Of course most marketers know that marketing is all about putting the consumer first. But whilst this is readily articulated, I’m not sure it is fully lived, certainly not in the way Townshend suggests.

We may understand our audiences, but do we truly empathise with them? Do we start every conversation with their tastes and preferences, hopes and aspirations? Do we really see our role as advocacy?

The evidence of rate fixing and rip-off pricing, dodgy diesels and data leaking, mis-selling and horsemeat suggests otherwise. If brands are to re-earn eroded trust they must fundamentally remodel their relationships with consumers: from marketing at them to marketing for them. In short, we need to turn the arc lights on the audience. Because this is a generation that won’t get fooled again.

 ‘I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution,
Take a bow for the new revolution,
Smile and grin at the change all around,
Pick up my guitar and play,
Just like yesterday.
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again.’

Pete Townshend/The Who, Won’t Get Fooled Again

No. 61

Should Philanthrocapitalism Begin at Home?

In 1967 Paul McCartney admitted to a national newspaper that he had taken LSD. Soon after, an ITN reporter asked McCartney if this was a matter he ‘should have kept private.’ In his response McCartney elegantly articulated a dilemma at the heart of modern media.

McCartney: ‘You’re spreading this now at this moment. This is going into all the homes in Britain. And I’d rather it didn’t. You’re asking me the question. You want me to be honest. I’ll be honest.’

Reporter: ‘As a public figure, surely you’ve got a responsibility…’

McCartney: ‘No, you’ve got the responsibility not to spread this now. I’m quite prepared to keep it as a very personal thing if you will too. If you’ll shut up about it, I will.’

What are the ethical responsibilities of media channels? Do the media have an obligation to seek the truth and share it, whatever that truth and wherever it may be found? Or should respect for privacy (and concern for security) act as a constraint?

In the past media outlets prided themselves on their ability to ‘speak truth to power.’ But such is the capacity of modern broadcasters and journalists to spread information, to shape opinion, to provoke a response, that the media represent a considerable power in their own right. And with that power surely comes responsibility.

McCartney’s argument for media responsibility seems as pertinent today as it did in 1967, and we may perhaps broaden its application beyond traditional media brands.

Technology has created a social, political and economic revolution. But it has also ushered in new societal challenges. Our world is increasingly cursed by cyber bullying and salacious sidebars; witch-hunts and lynch mobs; hacking and trolling; shaming and blaming. The same technology that spreads knowledge and understanding can also intensify hate and bigotry. The very platforms that liberate the wisdom of crowds also facilitate the cruelty of the mob.

Hitherto tech brands have for the most part clung to a kind of ethical neutrality. They are the medium, not the message. They cannot be held accountable for the content they carry. But is this not a denial of responsibility? If Silicon Valley won’t tackle the social ills of social networks, who will?

Mark Zuckerburg and Priscilla Chan recently announced that they will gradually give away 99% of his stake in Facebook to fund the Chan Zuckerburg Initiative.

Nowadays such endeavours are rarely termed ‘charity’. They are described as philanthropy, or social investment, or ‘philanthrocapitalism’. Whatever we call it and whatever the reservations around tax and the democratic deficit, I think we should nonetheless applaud this extraordinary act. But where should the money be spent?

In Zuckerberg’s post he states that ‘we have a moral responsibility to all children in the next generation.’ The mission of the Chan Zuckerburg Initiative is ‘advancing human potential and promoting equality.’ Such a mission could embrace all manner of activities. From alleviating poverty to eradicating disease; from promoting social justice to enabling sustainable development; from providing access to technology, to education, to microfinance. So where to start?

It used to be said that ‘charity begins at home.’ Perhaps philanthrocapitalism should begin at home too.

I suspect the most appropriate and effective means of this new initiative ‘advancing human potential and promoting equality’ would be to address the darkness on the edge of town: the web-pests, trolls and haters; the bullying, blackmail and bribery; the manipulators, exploiters and electronic thieves. Surely the phenomenal technical expertise available to the architects of the social web should be directed at the phenomenal societal challenges posed by the social web.

Silicon Valley has given today’s generation knowledge, connection and freedom of expression. What greater gift could it give the next generation than security, privacy and protection from harm?

No. 60

NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND 12

‘Still Learning’: Goya and the Key To a Long Career

I recently attended the splendid exhibition of Goya portraits at The National Gallery in London.

I had previously considered Francisco de Goya y Lucientes a painter of martial horrors and grim nightmares. He was clearly deeply moved by the cruelty on all sides in the Peninsular War. And, following an illness in his mid-40s, for much of his life he was profoundly deaf, a condition which no doubt precipitated dark thoughts.

But Goya’s portraits are light, fresh and vivacious. He characterises Spanish nobles and royalty as warm and approachable; academics, soldiers and clergy as thoughtful and affable. Their humanity reaches out to us across the centuries. Some scholars attribute the vibrancy of Goya’s work to the fact that he added the final highlights to his pictures at night. In his Self Portrait before an Easel you can see how he had adapted his hat to carry candles.

Goya may not have been quite the tortured artist of my imagination. He died at the ripe old age of 82 in an era when the average life expectancy in Spain was 40. And he was painting right up until the end. What was the key to his long, productive career?

Well, firstly Goya must have been graced with supreme skills in client management. He survived turbulent times as the Spanish court underwent one regime change after another: from the Inquisition to the Enlightenment to the return of reactionary conservatism; from Spanish Kings to English generals to Napoleon’s puppet rulers. After the departure from Madrid of the imposed French monarch, a number of Goya’s paintings were denounced as ‘obscene’ by the reinstated Inquisition and the artist was obliged to go through a ‘purification’ process to clear him of collaboration. But somehow Goya clung on his position at court. It made me think of the summersaults an Agency undertakes to retain business through the merry-go-round of CEOs and Marketing Directors.

Goya’s recipe for career longevity certainly includes perseverance and principle. A few years before his death, the artist’s finances were in a terrible mess. Yet he stubbornly refused to reissue his most successful series, Caprichos, in order to generate funds. He wrote to a Spanish friend, ’I’ve no more sight. No hand, no pen, nor inkwell. I lack everything – all I’ve got left is will.’

However, perhaps the critical determinant of Goya’s long and successful career was his appetite for new skills and new forms of expression.

Goya only started painting portraits at the age of 37. Before then he had been making a successful living as a religious artist and tapestry designer. He was a master of etching, but late in his career he embarked afresh on a series of miniatures in ivory and he taught himself the new techniques of lithography (drawing directly onto limestone).

Towards the end of his life Goya created a rather moving black crayon etching of an old man with a long grey beard hobbling along on two walking sticks. It carries the inscription ‘I am still learning’ (‘Aun aprendo’).

It was around this time that a friend wrote of Goya, ‘He is deaf, old, awkward and weak…But so happy and anxious to see the world.’

If We Want To Raise the Bar, Do We Have To Lower the Tone?

‘There is an inherent conflict between that which is highly viewable and that which is highly illuminating.’

William F Buckley

I commend to you the recent documentary film Best of Enemies. It tells the story of the 1968 televised political debates between two ‘public intellectuals’ at the height of their powers, William F Buckley and Gore Vidal. Buckley was the hero of modern conservatism; Vidal was a leading novelist and liberal critic.

The ABC television network, coming a distant third in the ratings war behind NBC and CBS and working with a constrained budget, commissioned the debates to liven up its coverage of the 1968 Republican and Democratic conventions. (‘The Unconventional Convention Coverage.’) Buckley and Vidal were invited to consider the issues raised by the day in conference and the broader political context. ABC got more than they bargained for. Intellectual blows were landed, insults flew and ratings soared.

The debates demonstrated that the public had an appetite for intelligent discourse, but only if it was delivered with the added sauce of confrontation and conflict. The coverage ushered in the combative approach to politics that has cursed American television news discussion ever since.

 ‘Argument is sugar and the rest of us are flies.’

​Richard Wald, Former ABC News Senior VP

It would be easy to concede that the public have always had a taste for strife. But we should beware of confusing long-held convention with timeless truths.

I suspect the American audience of the late ‘60s was responding to an era of polite media consensus. They wanted change. Is not the reverse true in the modern world? Are we not fatigued with artificial altercations and bar room bickering?

Could there possibly be a growing appetite for serious, intelligent debate without the staged spats and squabbles?

Beauty Beyond Reach

‘We’re not ugly people.’
Carol

The magnificent movie Carol conjures up romance in the New York of 1952.

It’s a beautiful world of bulbous cars, wide shouldered overcoats and streamlined dresses; of fur coats, clutch bags and cat eye sunglasses; of bright reds, coral and taupe; of dry martinis in the Oak Room and endless cigarettes.

It is a world of inordinate beauty, but one where the ultimate beauty, true love, is elusive. It is seen through car windscreens, obscured by crowded rooms; it is just out of reach, observed from a distance; it is mediated by convention and bigotry.

In marketing we’re endlessly endeavouring to make our brands more accessible and attainable. But there’s a special romance, a special beauty, about that which we can’t attain; that which is just out of reach.

‘Too far away from you and all your charms.
Just out of reach of my two empty arms.’

 Just Out of Reach (Of My Two Empty Arms)/ V Stewart/Performed by Solomon Burke

No. 59

NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND 11

What Price Genius?

Steve Wozniak: ‘What do you do? You’re not an engineer. You’re not a designer. You can’t put a hammer to a nail...’
Steve Jobs: ‘Musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra.’

Steve Jobs

The film Steve Jobs is more than a conventional biopic. It boasts the taut dialogue of Aaron Sorkin, the assured direction of Danny Boyle and an acting tour de force from Michael Fassbender. It also has a distinctive theatrical three-act structure, concentrating the action on three pivotal product launches.

The movie uses the behind-the-scenes drama before these launches to explore the psychology of the man at their centre: his relationships with his colleagues, his ex-girlfriend and his daughter; and his own sense of self. Jobs was clearly a genius, but he was also troubled and had flawed relationships. In the film he says of himself, rather poignantly: ‘I’m poorly made.’

For anyone in the corporate world it’s hard to watch the Jobs movie without asking questions about the nature of leadership and commercial success. So many of Apple’s phenomenal accomplishments were directly attributable to Jobs’ extraordinary vision; but clearly they were also precipitated by his drive, his obsession for detail and his exacting standards.

What is an acceptable price to pay for success? What level of collateral damage, to colleagues and culture, should we accommodate in the quest for greatness? When does the end not justify the means?

Steve Wozniak: ‘It’s not binary. You can be decent and gifted at the same time.’

Steve Jobs

How Do We Accommodate Corporate Autism?

The same weekend that I saw Steve Jobs, I also read about an award-winning book concerning autism, Neurotribes by Steve Silberman. (Reviewed by James McConnachie, The Sunday Times, 22/11/15)

Autism is a condition characterised by inability to relate, self-isolation and obsession with sameness. In the 1930s the Viennese paediatrician Hans Asperger thought that autism was a relatively common trait, ‘an extreme variant of male intelligence.’ He also observed a link between autism and genius: ‘For success in science and art a dash of autism is essential.’

In the 1940s the view became established that autism was a rare and extreme condition. The book relates how it was only in the 1980s that the psychiatrist Lorna Wing identified autism as a broad continuum. Nowadays we expect 1 in 68 children to be ‘on the spectrum’, whereas in the past only 1 in 2000 was thought to have the condition.

Given that so much of a company’s personality and values is tied up in the personality and values of its leadership, we should perhaps give more thought to the psychology of our leaders. Should we be surprised if entrepreneurs and industry visionaries are often somewhat isolated, obsessed and have a reduced ability to relate to others? To some extent these have been the characteristics that qualified them for a leadership role. Or, ‘passionate, goal oriented and independent,’ as the leader’s job spec would have it.

We need to better understand the science behind this corporate autism and to give our leaders more support. It’s no longer appropriate to shrug and say that genius has its price.

Silberman’s own conviction is that autism should be accommodated within a broad conception of ‘neurodiversity’; that we should think not of disorders, but of different ‘human operating systems.’ We can start, he suggests, by embracing different perspectives on ‘normality’.

‘By autistic standards the normal brain is easily distractible, is obsessively social and suffers from a deficit of attention to detail and routine.’

Ultimately we need to broaden our expectations of leaders, embracing more psychological types and more neurodiversity. We need a new class of 'leadership operating system' fit for an age of partnership, empowerment and change. Because you can't change your behaviour if you don't change your mind.

Are You Nostalgic for the Future?

I confess the Steve Jobs film prompted a certain amount of nostalgia in me: nostalgia for a time when advertising played a central role in the grand corporate narrative (there are quite a few references to Lee Clow and Chiat Day); and also nostalgia for the future.

The movie begins with a compelling piece of archive film. We see the science and science-fiction writer Arthur C Clarke interviewed in 1974 by an Australian journalist. Asked what kind of future he envisages for the journalist’s son, Clarke sketches a world of in-home computing, global connectivity, online shopping and flexible working. In short he predicts the internet age.

One is reminded how exciting the future used to be. I grew up with the space race, NASA, Apollo landings and The Clangers. We dreamed of astronauts, aliens, asteroids and tin foil. I made a lunar landscape out of papier mache.

More recently we’ve witnessed the most dramatic technological transformation since the Industrial Revolution. We’ve seen extraordinary levels of personal, political and commercial upheaval. It’s been a thrilling, inspiring, challenging ride.

But has the future lost some of its lustre? We have become aware that the same technology that spreads knowledge and understanding can also intensify hate and bigotry; that progress brings new challenges in the areas of privacy, security, inequality and corporate oligarchy; that the freedoms of empowerment also carry the responsibilities of self control.

Whereas we used to look forward with wide-eyed anticipation, we are now engaged with the practical challenges of realising tomorrow today. Inevitably we can suffer change fatigue. A certain amount of circumspection is natural.

Nonetheless I’m a firm believer that hope and optimism are the first steps to progress. We should perhaps rededicate ourselves to imagining a future beyond our present, however complex and challenging that present may be. We should not deny ourselves the chance to dream.

‘Space is the place.
Space is the place.
There is no limit to the things that you can do.’

Sun Ra/Space Is The Place

No. 58

A Man Having Trouble With An Umbrella: Recognising the Power of Repetition

My grandfather was a retired policeman with a warm heart and authoritative manner. At weekends he would drive Martin and me along the A13 to his old haunts in Barking, Poplar and Limehouse. Hard to believe now, but ‘going for a drive’ was a popular leisure activity in the ‘70s. At traffic lights and junctions, Grandpa would playfully greet other drivers with a ‘Hello, Mary’ or ‘Yes, of course, Dave, you go first.’ He didn’t actually know Mary or Dave, but he was aware it amused us. And every time we went past a triangular sign indicating road works (by means of the silhouette of a labourer planting his shovel in a pile of earth), Grandpa would exclaim: 'There's a man having trouble with an umbrella!'

We loved that joke. To a young boy it was deeply silly, slightly surreal, somehow subversive. And it improved with repetition. As we rolled around in fits of laughter at the back of the Rover, the gag didn't seem trivial at all to us. It seemed important. And I'm pretty sure it was.

Repetition reassures. It creates a sense of familiarity, intimacy, common currency. Consider catchphrases and slogans; jingles, chants and incantations; aphorisms and end lines. These may be regarded as lower forms of expression, but they have an insidious potency. We assume that familiarity breeds contempt. But often the reverse is true: familiarity breeds contentment.

I recently came across a review of The Song Machine, a new book that considers the methods of the modern music industry and today’s high-tech record producers. It’s a calculating world of ‘writer camps’, ‘melodic math’ and the quest for elusive ‘bliss points.’ The author reaches an interesting conclusion about the science of hits:

‘For all the painstaking craft involved… the crucial factor in our emotional engagement with music is familiarity; in other words, if you were repeatedly to hear a song you didn’t like, that proximity would eventually breed affection.’

Mark Ellen/ The Sunday Times, reviewing The Song Machine by John Seabrook

That explains a lot...

Familiarity also resides at the heart of brand value. The first brands were founded on the reassurance of consistency: this product is the same as the last product you bought; it’s made from the same ingredients and it’ll perform in the same way.

I wonder, do we in modern marketing properly appreciate the power of repetition? Of course, we endeavour to be disciplined about visual identity; and, in a media context, we take account of frequency, dwell-time and wear-out. But this is a quantified, rational view of repetition. Do we really understand the qualitative, emotional value of repeated experience?

Earlier this year I attended a production of Aeschylus’ Ancient Greek tragedy, Oresteia. I was particularly struck by this exchange:

‘What’s the difference between a habit and a tradition?’
‘A tradition means something.’

At their best brands are not just mindless habits. Through repeatedly exploring territories and ideas that are relevant to people, the best brands establish their own meaning, their own traditions. In this age of nudge theory and behavioural economics, we spend quite a lot of time seeking to change habits. What would happen if we sought occasionally to establish traditions?

Certainly our creative instincts are all the time working against iteration. They urge us to embrace change, innovation and reinvention at every turn. Every campaign is a fresh challenge; every new brief is a blank sheet of paper. And these instincts are intensified in the modern age. There are infinite platforms to be filled with unique content; there are ever-increasing consumer appetites to be sated. We live in dynamic times of difference and diversity.

In our obsession with reinvention the commercial communication sector is at odds with other creative professions. In the film, gaming and TV industries the occurrence of a hit is a cue to explore sequels, series, formats and box-sets. Why are we so nervous of repeating success?

Of course, none of us needs a return to the dark days when advertising drilled the same messages into the crania of hapless, captive audiences; over and over again. In the interactive age we need communication coherence more than rigid consistency. We need theme and variation, call and response. We need campaigns that evolve and amplify.

It’s sometimes helpful to think of modern brands as ‘meaningful patterns.’ Brands reassure through rhythm and repetition. With infinite variety they examine, echo and expand ideas.

Some years ago I attended a talk by the esteemed fashion designer, Paul Smith. He explained that, when it came to window displays, he believed in ‘the power of the repeated image.’ Accompanying a pale blue cotton shirt with a royal blue version of the same shirt; and then navy and deep indigo; next to a twill or a denim execution of the same design; adding a polka dot pattern, a striped print or floral detail. It was theme and variation played by an orchestra of blue shirts. And it created a very compelling, harmonious effect. At once both thrilling and reassuring.

Perhaps the power of repetition in the digital age is best expressed through the concept of memes. For many marketers memes are merely a form of iterative campaign, something involving white type and cat videos. However, insofar as a meme is ‘an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means’ (OED), then surely brands are memes. Brands exist not in factories or spreadsheets or shop shelves. They exist in people’s minds and in their behaviours. For what is a brand, if not a shared set of behaviours and beliefs? We always sought to create content for brands that was 'talkable'; nowadays we aim to create the imitable, adaptable, copyable and repeatable.

Of course, brand management is fundamentally a  balancing act between consistency and change. Some brands are too conservative; others are too capricious. Working out whether to 'stick or twist' is a critical marketing skill. All I'm saying here is that, occasionally, in times of transformation, the argument for holding a steady course gets shouted down.

Perhaps when we’re being seduced by the siren call for radical reinvention, we should also have the tender words of Billy Joel singing in our ears. Repeatedly.

‘Don’t go changing, to try and please me.
You never let me down before.
Don’t imagine you’re too familiar,
And I don’t see you anymore.
I would not leave you in times of trouble
We never could have gone this far
I took the good times, I’ll take the bad times
I’ll take you just the way you are.’

Billy Joel/ Just The Way You Are

No. 57

Democratising Glamour: Is Marketing Due a Return to Aspiration?

Last Sunday I attended a gig by the luminous ‘80s pop band, ABC. They performed their essential 1982 album, The Lexicon of Love, in its entirety. Martin Fry’s literate pop skipped effortlessly along to chopped guitar patterns, sensuous saxophone and opulent orchestration. Bliss.

For my generation The Lexicon of Love was a defining work. We would play it end-to-end at college parties. We danced dramatically to its pop-soul rhythms, playfully enacting the lovelorn lyrics. We shot ‘poison arrows’ across crowded rooms; we aimed ‘looks of love’ at imagined sweethearts; we remonstrated with each other that ‘tears are not enough.’

‘Well I hope and I pray that maybe someday
You’ll walk in the room with my heart.
Add and subtract, but as a matter of fact,
Now that you’re gone, I still want you back.’

 Martin Fry/ABC, All of My Heart

Punk had taught us to be angry – at society, at convention, at our diminished opportunities. Post Punk had taught us to think – beyond the confines of our education and the narrow horizons of our modest suburban lives.

The Lexicon of Love taught us to dream.

It suggested that somewhere, behind a red velvet curtain, there was a world of style, intrigue and romance just waiting for us. It was a glamorous dreamland of gold lame jackets, of loss and loneliness; of meaningful glances and withering bons mots; of unconfessed and unrequited love. It was film noir re-imagined in a Technicolor age. And all available for the price of a Long Island Iced Tea.

There’s a tendency to dismiss the aspiration of the ‘80s as somewhat shallow and materialist. But at the time this aspiration seemed incredibly democratic. We had grown up assuming that some things were only available to the gilded elite; that ours was a more modest lot - of sausage rolls and Sandwich Spread on the sofa; of straight-glassed light & lager down The Drill; of chart-topping disco at the Ilford Palais. But ABC suggested that a heady, intoxicating glamour was immediately accessible to us if we had the youth, wit and imagination to conjure it up.

We trooped down to Sweet Charity and invested in second hand silk ties and ‘50s suits with a shimmering sheen. We cultivated Country Born quiffs, sturdy brogues and moody expressions. We covered our bedroom walls in Cartier-Bresson.

‘The sweetest melody
Is an unheard refrain.
So lower your sights
But raise your aim,
Raise your aim.’

Martin Fry/ABC, Poison Arrow

In the marketing world of the late ‘80s we talked a lot about ‘aspiration’. There were aspirational lifestyles, aspirational experiences and aspirational adverts. We imagined that, with a nod and a glance, certain brands could convey access, acceptance and allure.

It all seems faintly absurd now. And, of course, the genre of aspirational advertising fell victim to over-promise and under-delivery. It drowned in an excess of lip-gloss, Elnett, high heels and shoulder pads; too much black and chrome; too many moody businessmen peering through blinds and striding purposefully around industrial apartments.

Nonetheless, I would suggest there was something worthwhile in all this. For all its faults, ‘80s advertising was seeking to democratise glamour; to bring hitherto exclusive worlds within reach of ordinary people; to make the aspirational accessible and affordable.

I like brands with a democratic purpose. I like it when Ikea talks of ‘democratizing design.’ I like Sam Walton's original intent to ‘give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people.’ These are admirable ambitions.

Culture is dynamic. It’s on the move and people want to move with it. Surely one of the primary roles of brands is to introduce the many to the tastes of the few; to encourage social mobility. ‘Aspiration’ is not a dirty word.

‘But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.’

WB Yeats/ The Cloths of Heaven

Now, of course, we live in an age of authenticity, utility and transparency. But we should beware. If we strip away all the artifice and confection from brands, we'll also strip away the fantasy and romance. We’ll be left with the earnestly artisanal and the sincerely sensible. Someone you’d want to avoid at parties.

I notice that, since the last UK election, people have started talking seriously about aspiration again. Perhaps the pendulum is swinging. When everyone else is beating the drum for ‘keeping it real’, now may be the moment to revisit the dreamlike charms of glamour and escape.

Perhaps it’s time to dust off those spats and don that gold lame jacket. Because you wouldn’t want to be left with Martin in the land of regret and missed opportunity…

‘If you gave me a pound for the moments I missed,
And I got dancing lessons for the lips I should have kissed,
I’d be a millionaire, I’d be a Fred Astaire.’

Martin Fry/ABC, Valentine’s Day

No.56