A Word From The Management: Five Lessons for Creative Businesses from the World of Music Management

Brian Epstein by David Bailey

Inevitably creative businesses spend a good deal of time celebrating creative talent and achievements. And rightly so.  But how often do we acknowledge the people that put the ‘commercial’ into commercial creativity? Do we properly recognise the negotiation, relationship and executional skills that are the lifeblood of any creative enterprise? Perhaps we should pause occasionally and give a little appreciation to The Management.

I recently watched a compelling BBC documentary about management in the music business (Music Moguls: Masters of Pop, The Money Makers). The programme featured interviews with some of the titans of pop and rock management over the past fifty years.  They suggested a number of lessons that I’m sure apply to the broader creative industry.

‘To me what management is about is:  you take the art, if that’s what it is, and you turn it into commerce.’

Ed Bicknell, Manager, Dire Straits

1. Embrace the tension between creativity and commerce

Of course, creativity and commerce are not natural bedfellows. But they can be complimentary, rather than contradictory, disciplines. It takes a special kind of person to be equally comfortable with rock musicians and accountants.

‘My belief is that, when god gives you something special – a talent – he takes a little bit away from somewhere else. If you look at any artist, they’ve all got something missing. And I’m the guy that replaces it.’
Bill Curbishley, Manager, The Who

Creatives should cherish account management precisely because they ‘love the jobs you hate.’  We should embrace the inherent dissonance between commerce and creativity as a healthy tension in a business that thrives on diversity.

2. Believe in the value of creativity

It’s clear that the best music industry managers believe passionately in the value of creativity. And they are robust negotiators who do everything in their power to realise that value.

‘We were determined from the outset that, if we were going to be good at the music, we were going to be good at the business. And not get taken.’
Paul McGuinness, Manager, U2

In the broader creative sector we should do more to demonstrate our own belief in creativity: that it has a value; that that value is worth protecting; that without proper commercial advocacy that value will be diluted, commoditised, exploited.
 

3. Recognise the special talent of empathy

Scooter Braun is one of a new generation of talent management. He took Justin Bieber from YouTube star to global brand. He suggests that management can bring to the table a common touch; an understanding of how popular tastes are changing and how the public will respond to new ideas.

‘I think the way I hear music is the way most people hear music. If I have a reaction, why shouldn’t they? I’m not special. So what my talent is is literally not being special. I deal with special people. I manage special people. And the way I help them most is translating to them how not special people might react to them.’
Scooter Braun, Manager, Justin Bieber

The best managers, whilst not creating work themselves, are brilliantly empathetic: they recognise ideas that will resonate with ordinary people and they can therefore gently steer a concept towards its most effective execution.

4. Celebrate the commercial skills that realise creative value

Inevitably the music industry supplies numerous stories of commercial heroism.

When CBS offered Elvis Presley an unprecedented $50,000 to appear on the Ed Sullivan TV Show, his manager Colonel Tom Parker replied:

‘Well that sounds pretty good to me. But what about my boy?’

Led Zeppelin’s manager Peter Grant took on the all-powerful US promoters and negotiated an unparalleled increase in gate money, from 70% to 90%.

Paul McGuinness helped U2 gain copyright on their own material; renegotiate contracts; pioneer the stadium rock market; win higher royalties; develop U2-branded iPods.

Clearly a creative business should celebrate commercial as well as creative success. It should lionise the people that arbitrate on its behalf; that pioneer new sources of revenue; that realise creative value.

5. Seize the opportunity inherent in change

The best commercial brains see opportunity rather than threat in changing market conditions. Even amidst the turmoil that is the modern music industry.

‘We’re in the wild, wild west. There are no rules. That’s really exciting for an entrepreneur and it’s really exciting for a musician. Because there are no lines. You can write the rules every single day you get up.’
Scooter Braun, Manager, Justin Bieber

One of the curiosities of creative businesses is that they are often quite conservative. They get set in their ways, wedded to the processes and practices that delivered success in the past. We need more commercial optimists addressing the opportunities inherent in change; more business minds focused on re-engineering the model; re-inventing the fundamentals of how we work.

Of course, one wouldn’t want to embrace every aspect of rock and pop management. Sometimes in the music industry, commerce got the better of creativity. Larry Parnes managed many of the first British rock acts in the ‘50s and early ‘60s.  Notoriously controlling, he was nicknamed ‘Mr Parnes Shillings and Pence.’ Don Arden, who looked after the Small Faces, ELO and Black Sabbath, had a negotiation style that could extend to the edge violence.

‘If I’ve ever exploited anybody, it’s only because they wanted to be exploited.’
Don Arden, Manager, Small Faces, ELO, Black Sabbath

But, for the most part, the colourful stories serve to illustrate the extraordinary demands of working across commerce and creativity.

You’ll sometimes hear people in creative businesses diminish the contribution of ‘the suits.’ Colleagues make cheap jibes about these smooth operators, their suspicious spreadsheets and silver tongues. But in my experience the creatives who belittled account management were often the ones who were themselves not very creative at all. 

I was a strategist at a creative communications agency and I was fortunate to work with some of the best account management and finance people in the industry. I grew properly to appreciate their talents. I valued their fortitude, vigour and dynamism; their relationship skills and commercial nous.  I appreciated them all the more because these were precisely the areas in which I was weak. Above all I valued the fact that they got things done.

And that’s why I will always respect The Management.

A version of this piece was published by the Guardian Media and Tech on 21 March 2016

No. 75

Forgotten Revolutions: When the Radical Becomes Routine

Sometimes a revolution can be so successful that its principles and values become a new mainstream. Ironically the force of the original revolutionary impulse can be lost with the passing of the years, because, viewed from the perspective of history and hindsight, it all seems rather obvious. What was once incendiary and anarchic quickly becomes unthreatening and conventional.

Forgotten revolutions are worth revisiting because we may also be forgetting insights and perspectives that could be useful and relevant to the modern day. In remembering what sparked the revolutions of the past, we can challenge our own assumptions about the future.

Consider three great French revolutionary artists of the nineteenth century: Delacroix and the Lumiere brothers, Auguste and Louis.

Delacroix’s Sentimental Revolution

There’s currently an exhibition dedicated to Eugene Delacroix at the National Gallery in London. (Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art runs until 22 May)

Delacroix certainly looks revolutionary. In his self-portraits he sports lustrous dark locks and he stares out at us with poise and a knowing confidence. He was greatly admired by many of the titans of modern art that followed him: Cezanne, Renoir, Van Gogh and Matisse. They copied his work, wrote about his influence, painted bizarre tributes to him.

‘We all use Delacroix’s language now.’
Paul Cezanne

But to today’s eyes Delacroix comes across as rather classical and traditional. He painted landscapes, lion hunts and harems; triumphant heroism from history and sensual scenes from the Bible.

So what was it about Delacroix’s art that his successors so admired? In what sense was he a revolutionary modernist?

We need to understand the context in which Delacroix was working in the first half of the nineteenth century. He was reacting against the stiffness and formality of conventional French Academic painting. He shunned its cold intellectualism, its rigorous adherence to the rules of composition. He abhorred its ‘slavish imitation’ of reality.

‘The first merit of a painting is to be a feast for the eye.’
Eugene Delacroix

Delacroix’s work is vibrant, colourful, sensual. It is energetic, always on the move. He painted at speed, with freedom, vigour and distortion. The artist Odilon Redon said that his was ‘a triumph of sentiment over form.’

Having had it drawn to my attention, I found myself admiring Delacroix’s commitment to sentiment and spontaneity. He is conventionally said to represent the end of romanticism. But now I understood why the exhibition positions him at the beginning of modernism.

Have we in the marketing world, I wonder, slipped back into the easy conservatism of the bourgeois Academy, the slavish commitment to structure, form, accuracy and reality? Would we not benefit from some of Delacroix’s instinct, emotion, energy and immediacy?

And, more importantly perhaps, are we writing a final chapter or a first? Do we represent the culmination of a way of thinking about brands and communication, or the commencement of something new? Are we an end or a beginning?
 

The Lumieres’ Train and the Suspension of Belief

The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station is a modest film. It’s only 50 seconds long, black and white, and silent. It shows a steam train approaching a station; the train stops; men with moustaches and hats jump off and jump on; a husband and wife cross the screen, she in shawl, long skirt and hat, he with his hands in his pockets; guards busy themselves; a dapper young chap with a flat cap and bow tie looks awkward and leaps to get out of the way. That’s all, folks.

And yet, in its own way, The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station is also completely sensational. It was created by the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere and was originally presented to an audience in Paris in January 1896. It was one of the world’s first films.

Not having seen a movie before, the audience was stunned, particularly by the sight of a steam train, heading straight towards them. Hitherto theatre audiences had learned to ‘suspend disbelief’ when they attended a show. Now they had to suspend belief. They had to correct the compelling notion that the train was indeed there in the stalls, speeding directly towards them.

Legend has it that many fled to the back of the auditorium, so convinced were they that the oncoming engine was about to crash in upon them.

Of course, over time we have learned to live with the wonders of film, and today The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station seems rather ordinary. It’s often the case that we are startled, shocked and frightened by the new. But we have a phenomenal ability to come to terms with change; to accommodate it; to see its advantages and opportunities.

How do we recreate an equivalent sense of wonder today? What new technologies can surprise and delight in the way that the Lumieres’ train did one hundred and twenty years ago? Perhaps robots, AI, 3D printing and Oculus Rift can shake us from our scepticism; stimulate our jaded senses; challenge us once again to suspend our belief in what is real and unreal.

Whatever the technology, you have to side with the optimists. You have to imagine that there were a few Parisians glued to their seats at the first showing of the Lumiere brothers’ new film. They may have been a little scared, unsure of what they were witnessing. But they were also thrilled by the possibility of change and the wonders of a revolutionary modern age.

No. 74

Why Doesn’t the Spinning Ballerina Get Dizzy?... A Leadership Lesson from the World of Dance

 

Tamara Rojo as Odile

In Act III of Swan Lake, Odile, the Black Swan, dances thirty-two consecutive fouette turns en pointe. It’s an extraordinary thing to behold. Like an elegant spinning top, a human gyroscope. Your jaw drops. Surely the ballerina must get progressively dizzy. Why doesn’t she fall over and collapse to the ground in a heap of black tulle?

Of course, there is a technique.

From an early age a ballet dancer learns to ‘spot’: whilst rotating her body at a constant speed, she fixes her gaze on some distant point in the theatre or rehearsal room, and then whips her head round to refocus on the same point again. Spotting diminishes the amount that the head is spinning and so in turn diminishes the risk of dizziness.

Perhaps there’s something that business can learn here.

As the commercial world spins faster, one way or another we’re all engaged in change, whether managing it or making it happen. Sometimes it can be quite dizzying.

The rhetoric increases in volume. We’re on a burning platform. We’re going to re-invent, re-engineer, re-model. We need to be faster, more flexible, more agile. We’re seeking transformational change. We have change managers, change programmes, change champions. The only constant is change. It’s going to be 78 revolutions per minute.


In my own time in advertising I found that change could be inspiring, exciting, exhilarating. But the pressure for constant change could also be bewildering, destabilising and confusing for the broader staff base. As you launched another vision, introduced another expertise, proposed another process, your colleagues sometimes stared back at you with blank looks and empty smiles. What, you wondered, were they really thinking? 

We learned periodically to remind people that in the midst of change the objective remained the same: fundamentally we’re in the business of producing great ideas that shape beliefs, behaviours and culture; it’s the same as it’s always been; it’s all about the work.

Companies can suffer change fatigue. Too many empty promises, unrealistic projections, apocalyptic predictions; too many buzz phrases and brave new worlds; a revolving door of senior managers and singular ideas.

When all around is changing, we all yearn for a North Star to guide us, an anchor to secure us. Like a ballerina pirouetting on stage, when we’re in a spin, we need a fixed point to steady us.

What can that fixed point be?

It can be the reassuring consistency of a leadership team. It can be a reminder of unchanging cultural truths. It can be the clear statement of Vision, Mission and Values. It can be a well-articulated Purpose.

Whatever it is, it’s worth repeating. Over and over again.

In recent years scientists have suggested that there’s more to the ballet dancer’s stability than spotting; that in fact a ballerina’s brain learns over time to suppress signals from the balance organs in the inner ear which would otherwise make them fall over.

Perhaps a business too can, with repetition, internalise a sense of security in the midst of accelerating change; learn to sustain perfect poise and balance at the heart of the revolution. Just like a ballerina.

‘You know I saw the writing on the wall
When you came up to me.
Child, you were heading for a fall.
But if it gets to you,
And you feel like you just can't go on,
All you gotta do
Is ring a bell,
Step right up, and step right up,
And step right up.
Just like a ballerina,
Stepping lightly.’

Van Morrison/Ballerina

.

No. 73

Stick Or Twist? Learning When To Change

‘Oh, I’ve got news for you, Baby,
That I’ve made plans for two.
I guess I’m just a stubborn kind of fellow.
Got my mind made up to love you.’

Stubborn Kind of Fellow/ Marvin Gaye (Stevenson/Gaye/Gordy)

I recently saw an excellent production of the August Wilson play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (which runs at The National Theatre in London until 18 May). Through a ten-play cycle Wilson, who passed away in 2005, sought to document the African American experience. He wrote one play for each decade of the twentieth century. It’s a titanic achievement and surely one day a major British theatre company will stage all ten.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set in Chicago in 1927.  It considers the lives of a group of black musicians for whom slavery is a recent memory and discrimination is a current reality. Ma Rainey, the ‘Mother of the Blues,’ is booked into a studio to record, amongst other material, her signature tune, Black Bottom. Rainey is tough, imperious, defiant. Through years of bitter experience she has learned to stand up to the threats and enticements of corporate white America. Her manager and producer are eager for her to evolve her blues sound to accommodate the growing public enthusiasm for jazz rhythms. And they have an ally in the ambitious young dandy of a trumpet player, Levee, who has written a more jazz-inflected arrangement of Rainey’s tune.

Our sympathies are naturally with Rainey. We applaud her dogged determination, her inflexible insistence on doing her song her way. We want her to win.

Maybe we always side with the stubborn ones. We admire the independent voice, the tenacious spirit. Our cultural history is crammed with heroic tales of single-minded artists taking on the reactionary establishment, the carping critics, the fickle public.

So we applaud Ginger Rogers when she insists on wearing her ostrich feather dress for Cheek to Cheek, despite the protestations of Fred Astaire, who found the wayward plumes distracting.

We delight in the rigidity of Samuel Beckett’s stage directions, which preclude any new director’s interpretations of his work. 

We cheer when we hear how Shostakovitch responded to critics’ comments as he was finalising his Leningrad Symphony:

‘I take them under consideration, but not into practice.’

But are we right to side with Rainey? Perhaps her producer and manager are just thinking about money. But Levee clearly has artistic, as well as selfish motives, to adapt her piece. And why not sympathise with the audience’s appetite for change, freshness and innovation?

Is the accommodation of public opinion and preference inherently wrong? Shouldn’t any creative endeavour evolve and transform in tune with times and tastes?

I suspect that, whilst we celebrate romantic yarns of artistic integrity and defiance in the face of feedback, most of us in the commercial sector are engaged in more nuanced, calibrated calculations. Indeed the navigation of different dynamics and tensions is at the heart of commercial creativity. We’re not pursuing ‘art for art’s sake.’ We have attitudinal, behavioural and financial goals. For us creativity is not an end in itself. It is a strategy for achieving effectiveness.

In my experience the best Creative Directors and Strategists know when to be stubborn with an idea; when to stay with it, despite dissenting opinion and challenging research. But they can also judge when to back off; when cumulative evidence or circumstances prevent progress. Sometimes they evolve and adapt a concept to accommodate the external point of view. And sometimes they can switch effortlessly from single-minded passion to starting all over again.

Fundamentally we need to learn when to stick and when to twist.  It’s not a science. It’s a skill.

‘You notice how in winter-floods the trees which bend before the storm preserve their twigs. The ones which stand against it are destroyed, root and branch.’

 Haemon to his father Creon in Sophocles’ Antigone

In many ways Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a joyous, funny, inspiring play. But there’s also a note of sadness hanging over proceedings, as the whole cast variously reflect on their experiences of prejudice, failure and loss.  As the wise pianist, Toledo, says of his own disappointments:

‘Gonna be foolish again. But I ain’t never been the same fool twice.’

No. 72

On The Outside Looking In: Difference Craves Difference; Difference Creates Difference

Different Work Requires Different People

In creative businesses we talk a good deal about the value of difference in delivering brand success. We seek to design different brand positionings, different strategies, different executions. We believe difference creates stand-out, preference and loyalty.

But what kind of people invent difference? Where do we find them?

I recently encountered reviews of the life and works of two great American artists, the actor Marlon Brando and the photographer Saul Leiter. Brando and Leiter were born in the early 1920s within a year of each other. One achieved quick and widespread fame; the other earned recognition slowly, and primarily within his own community. But, through the work they did in the ‘40s and ‘50s, they both helped rewrite our understanding of their respective professions.

I found that, though Brando and Leiter shared little in terms of personality and renown, their engagement with difference was similar.

Marlon Brando: The Wild One

‘I’m going to have a special microphone placed in my coffin, so that when I wake up in there, six feet under the ground, I’m going to say: ’Do it differently.’’

Listen to Me Marlon is an excellent 2015 documentary film exploring Marlon Brando’s life and work through his privately recorded audio-tapes. In discussing his early career, there’s a clear sense that Brando from the outset was obsessed with doing things differently, with developing his own unique style.

‘Never let the audience know how it’s going to turn out. Get them on your terms. Hit ‘em. Knock ‘em over with an attitude, with a word, with a look. Be surprising. Figure out a way to do it that has never been done before. You want to stop that movement from the cardboard to the mouth. Get people to stop chewing. The truth will do that. Damn, damn, damn, damn. When it’s right, it’s right. You can feel it in your bones. Then you feel whole. You feel good.’

Although Brando comes across on film as a pillar of strength, a brooding, confident presence, his childhood was far from happy. Both his parents were alcoholics and he had an uneasy relationship with his father. The introverted Brando was sent to a military school in which he felt alone and isolated.

‘I was very shy. Sensitive, very sensitive…. I had a great feeling of inadequacy; that I didn’t know enough; that I didn’t have enough education. I felt dumb.’

Acting saved Brando. And in particular the acting coach Stella Adler saved him.  (Adler was herself a successful actor who, inspired by the Russian theatre director Constantin Stanislavski, founded her own acting studio in New York. Brando was an early pupil.)

‘‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said. ’You have a right to be who you are, where you are and how you are. Everybody’s got a story to tell, something they’re hiding.’’

One can’t help inferring that Brando’s quest for difference was in some way driven by his own sense of marginalisation. Angst ridden, feeling out of the ordinary, he was at the same time fascinated by differences in others.

‘I was always somebody who had an unquenchable curiosity about people. I would walk down the street and look at faces. I used to go into the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street in a cigar store. I would watch people for three seconds as they went by and try to analyse their personalities by just that flick. The face can’t hide many things and people are always hiding things. I was always interested to guess the things that people did not know themselves. What they feel; what they think; why they feel. How is it we behave the way we do?’

What emerges is a picture of an exceptional man whose interior and exterior lives are inextricably linked. Brando’s self-reflection seems to have created his curiosity about others.

‘Unless we look inwards, we will not ever be able to clearly see outwards.’

Saul Leiter: The Quiet American

‘It is not where it is or what it is that matters. But how you see it.’

There’s an excellent exhibition of Saul Leiter’s work currently at The Photographers’ Gallery in London (until 3 April). If you’ve seen the splendid film, Carol, you’ll recognise the inspiration for the art direction.

Leiter was certainly different. He was the son of a famous Talmudic scholar and was studying to become a Rabbi when he upped sticks for New York, determined to become a painter. Leiter went on to pioneer colour street photography in an era when colour was not considered a serious medium. And although he was a great admirer of Henri Cartier-Bresson, the master of the ‘decisive moment,’ Leiter had his own distinct perspective on the role of photography in our lives.

‘Photographs are often treated as important moments, but really they are fragments and souvenirs of an unfinished world.’

So Leiter didn’t go out to capture the events and drama of the street. Rather he was drawn to the insignificant and fleeting; to bold colours and abstract shapes. Indeed he bought out-of-date film stock because it was cheap and he liked the distortions and unpredictability that came with it.

Leiter’s work is all hydrants and hats, fire escapes and steamed windows; a red brolly, a yellow headscarf; workers in the snow, commuters on the train; bold commercial type in modest surroundings; reflections in the rain, shadows in the bright sunlight. It’s a gentle set of impressions. Overseen, overlooked.

Leiter’s style may well have been determined by his personality. He was self-deprecating, understated, unassuming. He was a Quiet American.

‘I spent a great deal of my life being ignored. I was always very happy that way. Being ignored is a great privilege. That is how I think I learnt to see what others do not see and to react to situations differently. I simply looked at the world, not really prepared for anything.’

So again we see a creative person with a distinct perspective on his art born out of a very particular personality. And again we see an obsession with the observation of others.

‘If we look and look we begin to see and are still left with the pleasure of uncertainty.’

Difference Craves Difference; Difference Creates Difference

What can we conclude from these two leading practitioners in the art of difference?

Firstly they were themselves different. They were on the outside looking in. Their marginalisation gave them an enhanced ability to look and learn, to observe others. Outsiders look harder and see more. And because they are different themselves, they are better equipped to create difference.

The best creative businesses embrace outsiders. They welcome the unorthodox and unusual, the idiosyncratic and individual, the different and diverse. They respect the quiet voice, even when they are daily engaged in loud proclamation. The best creative businesses make outsiders feel like insiders.

And yet, as with any organisation, there are powerful forces of inertia at play. Recruiters fish in the same ponds; leaders appoint in their own image; and company life has a centrifugal force that drives conformity and convention. It abhors rough edges and irregular behaviours. Often we cherish originality, but balk at the eccentricities of original people.

I think the creative industry should more actively embrace the belief that different work requires different people. Diversity should not just be a social responsibility. It should be a strategic imperative.

 ‘I’m on the outside looking in
Gotta find a way, gotta find a way back to your heart dear, once again
Won’t you take me back again?
I’ll be waiting here ‘til then
On the outside looking in.’

Little Anthony & The Imperials/On the Outside (Looking In).
(Teddy Randazzo and Bobby Weinstein)

An abbreviated version of this piece was published in the Guardian Media and Tech on 16 February 2016

No. 71

NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND 15

The Space Between Our Ears

At The Barbican recently I attended an extraordinary performance by Simon McBurney of the Complicité theatre company.

The Encounter considers issues of environmentalism, materialism, communication and time. In the play McBurney relates the story of Loren McIntyre, an American photographer who in 1969 was dropped into the Amazon rainforest on an assignment for National Geographic. McIntyre soon locates the nomadic Mayoruna tribe that he had been hoping to shoot, but soon loses the camera he had been hoping to shoot them with. Nonetheless, he follows the Mayoruna deep into the jungle, to the brink of starvation, tripping on their mystical herbs, joining them in their quest to find ‘the beginning.’ McIntyre is convinced that the tribe’s shaman is communicating with him telepathically. ‘Some of us are friends’, he seems, rather cryptically, to be suggesting, over and over again.

McBurney enacts this compelling story without costumes, or set, or other actors. In fact the stage resembles a radio-recording studio as McBurney, surrounded by props, circles a ‘binaural’ microphone that records in a kind of 3D.

We the audience listen through headphones. We hear voices, sounds, noises in the dark; we hear McBurney creating beautiful birdsong, the buzz of mosquitoes, the growl of airplane engines. He blows into the microphone and we feel the heat of his breath on our ears.

We are together in the theatre, but alone in our private soundscapes. We close our eyes and follow McIntyre into the heart of darkness.

Overall it’s a disarming experience. It made me think of the phenomenal power of sound, of storytelling and of the imagination. It took me back to the power cuts of 1974’s Three-Day Week, when we listened with mother in the candle light, to Radio 4 plays and Dr Finlay’s Casebook…

In the communications industry we spend so much time and money these days on location shoots, on CGI and special effects. We seek to recreate the past, to simulate the future, to bring distant lands to our doorsteps. But we leave little room for the imagination. It’s as if we’ve lost our faith in the phenomenal human capacity to dream, invent, envisage.

In his book Hegarty on Advertising Sir John Hegarty urges us to think beyond platforms, technologies, channels and media space. He encourages creatives to concentrate on ideas, and on communication’s ultimate destination, the mind.

‘The only space worth occupying is the space between someone’s ears.’

It’s a healthy reminder. Ideas engage the brain more effectively than any cunning creative device, canny media strategy or quirky technology. Ideas are comfortable unadorned, in the nude so to speak. And the best ideas have a life of their own. They are suggestive, seductive, conspiratorial. They linger.

As I left The Barbican that night, inspired but also confused somewhat by what I had experienced, I could not help hearing a voice whispering quietly at the back of my brain:

‘Some of us are friends.’

(The Encounter is on tour across the UK and the rest of Europe until 25 June)

Appetite

‘I’ve weathered the storms. I’ve fallen down and I’ve gotten back up.’

The recently released documentary film Mavis! tells the story of Mavis Staples, singer with The Staple Singers throughout the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, and even on into the ‘90s. She has now been performing for 60 years and still sings her heart and soul out at the age of 76.

Mavis grew up on the South Side of Chicago, the neighbourhood that spawned soul legends Sam Cooke, Curtis Mayfield and Jerry Butler. Her father Roebuck ‘Pops’ Staples organised his children into The Staple Singers, combining his own country blues heritage with a vibrant gospel sound. Pops sang with a sweet, thoughtful voice, young Mavis sang with raw, deep emotion.  As Bonnie Raitt observes in the documentary, she was ‘sensual without being salacious.’

Initially The Staple Singers’ material addressed purely gospel themes. Then one day, while on tour in the South, Pops took the family to see Dr Martin Luther King speak at a local church. He was deeply moved by the encounter.

‘I like this man’s message. If he can preach it, we can sing it.’

The group took to singing Freedom Songs in support of the civil rights movement. Songs such as ‘Why? (Am I Treated So Bad)’ and ‘Long Walk to DC’ had conviction, courage, clarity of purpose. They signed to Stax and had huge hits with ‘I’ll Take You There,' ‘Respect Yourself' and many more besides. They created anthems of authority, yearning and pride.

Mavis comes across as a luminous, forthright, humble soul who can laugh in the face of ageing:

‘That’s the best time I’ve had since I got my new knees.’

Her speech is intercut with the rich vocabulary of the church and the civil rights struggle.

‘I’m a living witness….I’ll stop singing when I’ve got nothing left to say.’

It’s this appetite that most impressed me. The appetite to ‘keep on keepin’ on.’ Appetite is an elusive quality. One minute you have it and the next it has completely deserted you. Mavis illustrates very powerfully that the key to sustaining appetite over the long term is a sense of purpose, a sense of mission.

In the marketing community we’ve been talking a good deal about Purpose over recent years. Purpose defines a brand’s broader social responsibility and contribution. It galvanises colleagues, partners and stakeholders around a higher order goal.  But critically Purpose ensures that appetite endures, that it is persistent, permanent; through thick and thin, good times and bad.

‘I’ve come too far to turn back now. I’m determined to go all the way.’
Mavis Staples, Mavis!

  
Speak Like a Child

‘It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.’
Pablo Picasso

When I was younger I well recall being told that The Jam derived their sound from The Who and The Kinks; that Echo and the Bunnymen owed their sonic style to The Doors; that first generation Dexy’s were channelling Sam & Dave. I cared not a jot. These were our bands. They were our team. No sarcastic snipe or world-weary remark from the older generation could tarnish their integrity.

Now I’m the one that can hear every young band’s influences. I can’t ignore the shadow of a Beatles chord progression, the echo of Marvin’s rhythm section, the replication of Morrissey’s wordplay. And so I struggle to enthuse.

The Curse of Middle Age is familiarity, recognition, experience, discernment. Your palate, once refined, can become jaded; your enthusiasm qualified. You can’t see the originality.

And I suspect this Curse of Middle Age is at play in the workplace too.

One of the keys to sustaining interest and value in professional life, particularly in the creative industry, is to shed this corrosive cynicism; to dismiss the instinct to say ‘I’ve heard it, seen it, done it before’; to refrain from rose-tinted nostalgia; to retain a wide-eyed optimism; to be childlike, not childish; to learn to speak like a child.

‘I really like it when you speak like a child.
The way you hate the homely rank and file
The way you’re so proud to be oh so free and so wild.’
 

Paul Weller/The Style Council/Speak Like a Child

No. 70

The Memory Machine

It’s almost a year since Gwyn and I left BBH. This is a piece I wrote soon after our departure, reflecting on my time at the Agency and the broader theme of memory.

It was first published in the Winter 2016 edition of You Can Now magazine.

'I remember, I remember,
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn.’

I Remember, I Remember/Thomas Hood

When I was a child my mother often read this piece to me from The Golden Treasury of Poetry. I could tell that nostalgia was a powerful thing, even when I’d not lived long enough to experience it.

Now that I am of robust middle age, memory and remembrance of things past are powerfully present. I’m increasingly drawn to reflect on my history in order to make sense of my future. And increasingly I have to guard against the corrosive force of sentimentality. (As Lou Reid said, 'I don’t like nostalgia unless it’s mine.’)

I have recently left the advertising industry after twenty five years’ happy service. It’s interesting to consider what I can and can’t remember.

I have forgotten endless meetings in poorly lit conference rooms at home and abroad. I’ve forgotten the compromises, the arguments, the politics. The indignity of labour. I’ve forgotten the decks and documents, the Power Point and power plays. I’ve forgotten many of the Pitches that we won and lost. I’ve forgotten entire strategies and campaigns. Clients that were good, bad and ugly, often at the same time.

People, events and things that once seemed terribly important are diminished by time, their memory fading to grey. All forgotten.

So what do I remember?

I remember Dav on the harmonica, Reddy on the ukulele, Kev on the penny whistle. I remember Kidney conducting, Kendall coaching, Pollard swearing, Wardy giggling, Stacey smoking, Charlie punching the palm of his hand. I remember Ben’s acrostics, Nigel’s aphorisms and JB’s acid wit.  I remember Bish on the table, Fernanda on the dance floor, Dylan on the football pitch. I remember Joe having fun, Blatch having disasters, Pepp having a quiet word. I remember John Hegarty singing Fairytale of New York. And more besides...

It seems that I can recall with vivid clarity faces, phrases, places, gestures, and moments. It’s a kaleidoscope of trivial detail. Why are these the dominant memories of my employment?

Virginia Woolf once said, ‘I am writing to a rhythm, not to a plot’. I think perhaps that’s how my career recollections have played out. I have lost the plot, so to speak. The grand narrative of success and disappointment, trophies and triumphs, has slipped quietly into the night. I’m left with this curious soup of the incidental and the inconsequential. I guess it’s the rhythm of the Agency’s culture that I’m recalling; the rhythm of a great Agency working in harmony, marching as one to the beat of a creative drum. I’m inclined to say that my memories are predominantly of people and personalities because culture matters; because culture is the critical determinant of career success and fulfilment. I do believe this.

But I’m also conscious that we can’t entirely trust the evidence of our memories. We are unreliable narrators of our own lives.

I have read that, according to the science of memory, we generally do not recall actual events. For the most part we call to mind the memories of those events; and sometimes the memories of the memories. And so our recollections of the past can adjust and evolve with retelling and remembering. Memory has been compared to a palimpsest, a parchment on which the original script has been erased and overwritten. In other words, memory is a ‘multi-layered record’. It is flexible and plastic. It is creative, reconstructive and autobiographical.

That’s why so many people swear that they saw Bugs Bunny in Disneyland and the Sex Pistols in Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall. Some call it False Memory Syndrome; others call it wishful thinking.

Some time ago I attended a performance of Harold Pinter’s Old Times in which Pinter considered the malleability of truth. As the character Anna put it:

‘There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened. There are things that I remember which may never have happened, but as I recall them so they take place.’

Harold Pinter/ Old Times

The play’s programme notes helpfully explained the psychology of memory.

‘Two forces go head-to-head in memory. The force of correspondence acts to make our memories true to the way things were, while the force of coherence acts to tell a story that suits the self. We know that autobiographical memory is a reconstructive process, drawing together different sources of information and putting them together in ways that can differ subtly from telling to telling. These dynamic reshapings often serve to make memories as true to how we want the past to be as to how it actually was.’

Charles Fernyhough, Pieces of Light, quoting Psychologist Martin Conway

So my recollections of my time at work are both a reflection of the truth and of my own sense of self. I make my memories and my memories make me.

It strikes me that the communications industry has long put the creative, autobiographical nature of memory to good use. It has supplied contexts for experiences, ways of remembering; reconfigurations of events, so that we feel more positively disposed to repeat them.

That beer was more refreshing, that holiday was more rewarding, that car was more thrilling, that conversation was more entertaining.  It was the real thing, the ultimate drive. It was the happiest place on earth, the best a man could get. It got you back to you. You loved it.

Advertising is more than a promise for the future. It is a reconstruction of the past.

Of course the past and future are inextricably linked. I recently read an interview with Sir Nicholas Penny, the outgoing Director of the National Gallery, in which he made the case for respecting our heritage: ‘Real concern for the future is always more persuasive in those that have a genuine feeling for the past’. I’m sure he’s right. By giving a brand historical context, we give it a narrative that makes sense of its promises for the future.

Critically, memories can sustain consumers through a brand’s absence.  Memories excuse marketers from the expense of ‘always on’, ever-present media strategies; and consumers from the waking nightmare that these strategies represent. Because memories endure when we’re not around. At its most powerful advertising supplies the recollective material for enduring experiences and relationships. Advertising is a Memory Machine.

I wonder do we properly appreciate this? Are we so concerned with momentary messages that we ignore more meaningful memories? Do we ever ask what memories we are seeking to inspire for our brand, lest perhaps it is forgotten in our absence? Are we so eager to create a vision of the future that we disregard our vision of the past?

To conclude where we began. In another verse from The Golden Treasury of Poetry, Christina Rosetti made a plea that resonates through time and particularly rings true for a middle aged ad man looking for a new frontier: remember me.

‘Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell of our future to be planned:
Only remember me.’

Remember/Christina Rosetti

No. 69

NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND 14

Garden and Woodland Special

Learning from Lilies: Strip Away the Context

I recently attended Painting the Modern Garden, an excellent exhibition examining the garden in art between the 1860s and 1920s. (It runs at the Royal Academy in London until 20 April.)

In the late nineteenth century there was a horticultural revolution. Bourgeois Europeans and middle class Americans had affluence and leisure time, and a yearning to preserve something natural against the march of industrialisation. Gardening became an obsession. They studied, imported, cultivated and collected. One contemporary writer proclaimed, ‘I love compost like one loves a woman.’

Artists seem to have been in the front ranks of this revolution. Gardens provided a subject to express their thoughts about nature, beauty, colour and light. Gardens could suggest interior as well as exterior truths. Pissaro, Renoir and Bonnard; Sargent, Van Gogh and Matisse. The great painters of the day repeatedly set their easels up outside, in the garden.

Painting the Modern Garden is an exhibition of intoxicating colour: radiant, ravishing yellows, pinks and purples; intense sensory explosions. One feels the heat and languor of a long Summer’s afternoon. White linen, lace and crinolines. Let’s play croquet on the lawn, take tea on the terrace, reel around the fountain. Sunflowers, dahlias, peonies and poppies. Come consider the chrysanthemums, tend the rhododendrons with me.

And then, of course, there was Monet and his wondrous water-lilies.

At Giverney Monet painted water-lilies over and over again. He studied them, scrutinized them, isolated them in their stillness, floating in the reflective water and changing light. He removed them from their context. They became abstract contemplations of colour, tone, atmosphere and silence.

One critic observed: ‘No more earth, no more sky, no limits now.’

I was struck by this comment and found myself thinking about the role of context in brand marketing and communication.

Context is central to good marketing. If we can understand a brand’s place in the world, we can promote its relevance more effectively. And the broader the cultural context considered, the deeper the understanding. But whilst context is critical to comprehension, effective communication requires compression, distillation and focus. So ultimately we must strip context away.

Too often we fail in this respect. We try to cram our messaging with visual, verbal and conceptual cues. Show the user, signal the occasion, reference the tradition, give the reason-to-believe, bash out the benefit. Communication becomes loud, cluttered, busy and bewildering. Context can be constricting.

Imagine if you could express your brand as an abstract truth, not an observed reality; an intense distillation, not an actual depiction. Imagine if you could strip away the context, narrow the frame, focus on the essence itself.

What would you say? What would we see? How would we feel?

Why We Go on Awaydays: A Reminder from Shakespeare

‘Good servant, tell this youth what ‘tis to love…
It is to be all made of sighs and tears.
It is to be all made of faith and service.
It is to be all made of fantasy,
All made of passion and all made of wishes,
All adoration, duty and observance.
All humbleness, all patience and impatience.
All purity, all trial, all observance.’

As You Like It, V, ii

Last week I saw a marvellous production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It at the National Theatre in London (running until 29 February).

As the programme notes point out, As You Like It is a ‘green world’ comedy. Its characters escape the oppressive regime of the city for the Forest of Arden. They’re leaving behind convention, hierarchies and the pressure of the present. In the forest they can be more contemplative, philosophical, romantic. They can express themselves freely; they can imagine possibilities; they can explore new roles and identities. They undergo transformations, revelations.

In recent years we’ve perhaps become a little sceptical about Awaydays. The heart sinks at the awkwardness of seeing our senior staff in their weekend casuals. We shun the flip-charts and Post-Its, gummy bears and energiser drinks; the bumptious facilitator and the embarrassing ice-breakers. We balk at the expense in time and money. And so generally we end up just taking a couple of hours in a conference room over at the Media Agency. The future can wait…

But I’m inclined to say that genuine Awaydays justify the cost. Increasingly we have our heads down, dealing with today’s pressing challenges; we rarely look up to talk about tomorrow’s. Awaydays provide an opportunity to draw a line in the sand, to consider broader themes and more distant horizons, to dream new possibilities and imagine the unthought.

And Awaydays do indeed gain something from being away.

‘There’s no clock in the forest.’

Orlando, As You Like It

‘Let’s Play Crusaders’: The Price of Difference

Martin and I shared a bedroom overlooking the back gardens of Heath Park Road. In the summer you could see all the other kids in the street - the Richards, the Chergwins et al - playing Cowboys and Indians in their own little domains. 

‘Let’s play Crusaders,’ we determined. (The ‘70s were more innocent times, somewhat lacking a proper historical context…)

Mum made us white smocks from old sheets and we imprinted bold crimson crosses on their fronts. We completed the outfits with blue balaclava helmets and woollen tights borrowed from our younger sisters. 

And as we skipped around the garden, taking on Saladin and his scimitared hordes, it struck me that it’s not easy being different.

‘We are stardust.
We are golden.
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden’

Joni Mitchell/ Woodstock

No. 68

Take Off Those Ego-Tinted Spectacles

As we all know, youth is a quest for identity and belonging. When I was at school I had a strong sense of my own identity, but wasn’t too sure where I belonged.

There were the Sports Boys who talked press-ups and poly-gym, fixtures and fights. They were jokers and gamblers, and full of derring-do. There were the Cool Kids who conversed about mousse, gel and Jam lyrics. They wore Never Mind the Bollocks badges on their blazer lapels and had their ears pierced at Debenhams in Romford. And then there were the Swots. Socially awkward, clinically shy, they debated the Napoleonic Wars, Virginia Woolf and wildlife documentaries. They were quietly competitive around arcane knowledge and academic grades.

I guess most of my peers would have put me down as one of the Swots, though I have had a lifelong aversion to David Attenborough’s oeuvre. Nonetheless I liked to move discreetly between the various groups. And I achieved this by offering free Latin translations every morning on the low wall by the Tuck Shop.

For the most part each student group inhabited their own self-contained world. There was very little interaction between the clusters. But occasionally they would look up and make cutting observations on outsiders. It was a way of reinforcing belonging. I was struck by the fact that the Sports Boys thought all the other boys were spineless, weedy wimps. The Cool Kids laughed at the other kids’ sartorial blunders, their poor haircuts and oafish musical choices. The Swots just thought everyone else was stupid.

Fundamentally all my young friends saw the world through the prism of their own particular tastes and competencies. They wore Ego-Tinted Spectacles.

It was only after I had been in the work environment for some time that I realised we were still wearing our Ego-Tinted Spectacles. Our world order and sense of priority were primarily determined by our own qualities, strengths and achievements.

This phenomenon could sometimes extend to company leaders who set objectives in line with their personal goals; surrounded themselves with people with a similar set of skills; and appointed like-minded acolytes to senior positions. The trouble is that a tendency to monoculture can make a business inflexible, impermanent and vulnerable to external threat. And of course the curse of great leaders is often to anoint successors who are merely pale imitations of themselves. (Consider Alex Ferguson…)

I’m a firm believer that leaders demonstrate an ability to magnify their own particular strengths. Leadership for me is The Amplified Self. But the very best leaders must also have an equally strong sense of their own shortcomings. They address those shortcomings by co-opting colleagues whose virtues are equal and opposite. They recognise and reward the very qualities they lack themselves. And they understand that long-term business success is achieved through diversity of working method, culture and style.

So, if you want to get on, if you fancy yourself as a leader, try seeing the world from other people’s perspectives. Take off those Ego-Tinted Spectacles. And ‘put yourself in my place.’

‘Put yourself in my place,
If only for a day.
See if you can stand
The awful hurt I feel inside.’

Put Yourself in My Place/The Elgins/ Holland-Dozier-Holland

No. 67

Are You a Good Loser?

I recently attended the Artist and Empire exhibition at Tate Britain (which runs until 10 April). It boasts portraits of British aristocrats in unfamiliar local garb; maps and mementos; etchings of exotic wildlife; and, inevitably, partisan paintings of triumphs and treaties.

I was struck by the fact that there were also a good many images recording defeat: heroic deaths, military martyrdoms, hasty retreats. You can see the demise of General Gordon at Khartoum; the last stand of Major Allan Wilson at the Shangani; and, in a rather portentous painting, an only known survivor making his way into Jellalabad, Afghanistan. Creating a positive narrative around disaster seems to have been a Victorian speciality. I imagine the intention of these tragic images was to convey a sense of nobility; a reinforcement of values; a commitment to persevere.

The exhibition prompted me to consider how we engage with failure in commerce. How good are we at dealing with defeat?

‘Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.’
Vince Lombardi, Coach, Green Bay Packers

Whether we like it or not, defeat is an everyday reality for even the most successful modern business. Brand owners have to recognise that their customers are endlessly fickle; their competition will occasionally outflank them; often their new product launches will founder. Agencies have to concede that they will generally lose more pitches than they win; most of their output will go unrewarded; and, like political careers, all accounts end in failure.

Of course, we are taught that mistakes are essential to entrepreneurship. Loss is a source of lessons and learning. We want to ‘treat every failure as an opportunity.’ We endeavour to ‘fail forwards.’ We love ‘burning platforms.’ We ‘mustn’t waste a good crisis.’

This doesn’t mean we book a ticker-tape parade every time someone cocks up. In truth, despite the management wisdom, we tend to be superstitious about loss. It punctures momentum. It lingers like a bad odour. You don’t want to get too close.

From my time in the Agency world, I recall that one’s initial response to defeat was often to cry foul, to blame failure on the foolishness of the Clients, the perversity of the process. Personally I would immediately seek comedy in defeat. I found it had a short-term restorative effect.

The first question after an intensive six-week pitch for a luxury brand came from the laconic representative of China, the most important growth market: ‘Where is the luxury in this?’ We knew immediately the game was up…

In time we commission reviews, post mortems and ‘wash-ups.’ We ask for Client feedback. We pose the difficult questions. We scrutinise procedures and personnel.

However, excessive self-reflection can be counterproductive. We find ourselves seeking scapegoats, ‘reaching for the blame gun.’ So the audits and introspection start to damage morale. I well recall being reprimanded by a younger colleague who felt that the Agency leadership’s painful honesty was undermining collective confidence. And we thought we were being fashionably transparent.

My former boss, Sir John Hegarty, didn’t subscribe at all to the conventional view of defeat.

‘Many people talk about failures as opportunities to learn. Saying this seems to make people feel wise and worldly. Well I say bollocks to failure. Don’t dwell on it. Move on. Forget it.’

Sir John Hegarty, BBH, Hegarty on Creativity

John’s contention resonates well with creative people. They have to insulate themselves against damaging negativity; they must look forward to opportunity, not back at disappointment. Maybe we could all benefit from a little indifference to defeat.

In my opinion we are generally too emotional in the immediate aftermath of failure and too rational when the dust has settled.

I wonder, should we adopt some of the Victorians’ myth making? Perhaps, rather than embarking on earnest self-examination, we ought to seek the emotion in error, find heroism in loss, defiance in disaster. We should use missed opportunities as a means of reinforcing belief, commitment and values. Setbacks don’t just illuminate the way forward; they galvanize the collective spirit.

And I’d still maintain that, just occasionally, it helps to laugh in the face of failure.

‘If at first you don’t succeed, try try again. Then quit. There’s no use being a damn fool about it.’
WC Fields

Previously published in the Guardian Media & Tech Network

 No. 66