Immaterial girls (and guys)

Comic Relief last night posted a record result, achieving nearly £55m, up from last year's £40m. All this at a time when 1 in 4 are worried about losing their job, over 90% are worried about the economy (from February The Futures Company data) and people are trying to cut back on their spending.

On the one hand, perhaps this data in itself explains the huge increase on last year. The 'distraction factor' that a cause like Comic Relief can give from the constant bombardment of recessionary gloom is powerful in itself. Harrowing as the scenes shown in Comic Relief are, they are an opportunity to forget woes closer to home.

But maybe there's a deeper, if connected, reason. Another piece of data from The Futures Company data shows that around half think that pre-recessionary consumerism profligate (I can't remember the exact wording of the question) and about the same number see this recession as causing a fundamental change in how we consume. As business as usual consumption becomes less appealing, is it that causes and values-based spending is more important?

Of course, Comic Relief is a strong brand and this year its infrastructure and a hugely 2.0 approach will have helped more than ever to facilitate engagement (both emotional and in terms of donating) with this brand.

Whatever the reason, it's more evidence that recessionary pressures do not mean we suddenly drop all our values and hold on to every last penny.

Being, doing and trendspotting

I had a course yesterday on 'discovering my voice'. It was led by Stewart Pearce, Master of Voice at The Globe theatre in London a coach to all sorts of famous people in the arts, business and politics. As you may guess from his blog, some of the ideas verge on the philosophical, if not spiritual, side of the voice and associated physiology and psychology. I find some of these less engaging, but I was left with many thoughts, two of which I'd like to share.

First, his key distinction was between doing and being. In voice terms, doing is that of the busy executive whose voice is strained with energy and stress (or Alan Carr, perhaps), while being is the more magnetic, confident and charismatic strains of Obama in full flow. However, as Stewart is well aware, this metaphor runs a lot deeper.

Much of the social (and consumer trendwatching) commentary of recent years has surrounded the growing extent to which doing has overtaken being as the modus operandi. We've heard about time and energy pressures, faster paces of life, larger portfolios of products, services and media consumed, growing individualism and the experience-seeking society. All of these talk to a life built around doing, doing, doing. And these lifestyle trends have been facilitated by unprecedented levels of disposable income (in the West), consequent increasing access to travel and leisure, fragmenting family and social structures and technological uptake and Web 2.0 and all that goes with that.

There have been counter-trends towards being, but up until now these have largely been more micro and more niche. Urban knitting, the slow food and grow-your-own movements, going 'off grid' are all examples.

Throw into this picture the recession and suddenly there is an interesting dynamic created. Doing is inherently unstable or, as Stewart would have it, uncentred. But with the recession comes uncertainty and fear borne of this insecurity. These are things that make us look to resilience and this, it seems, may well come from a return to being. A Euromonitor report on top trends for 2009 suggests that:

"While people will be more self reliant, “we” not me will thrive and family and community will be pushed back together."

Whether an unfortunate redundancy literally forces us to stop doing, or whether it's just the prevalent instability, it looks like being will become more important.

Because of this, one unrelenting trend will be the search for authenticity in brands, companies, governments and people around us. While this may have been borne in the past of looking to anchor ourselves in something authentic, this transparency has the potential to become a prerequisite as we look to those things around us to also live these newfound values. The whole point of centring your voice in being rather than doing is that it allows for this autheticity in your communication. As consumers turn to being, it is precisely what they will expect of the brands that they consume.

The second - and much more concise - thought I had from the day is this: we should be as broad as we can in our search to understand changing cultural dynamics. There is a richness of understanding in the eminent voice coach who is exposed to all sorts of people, some incredibly influential, on a daily basis. There is also so much to learn from the stand up comic - something I realised one night last year where I saw so many trends carefully described across the marketing world, simply and wittily exposed, with new and exciting persepctives and insights. Which, somewhat circuitously, brings me back to Alan Carr. Where else should we be looking?

Engaging brains

A browse through WHSmiths ended up with me buying The Ecologist magazine for a recent train journey, and I was struck by the article 'Oops, wrong brain' by John Naish. It's not freely available online, but there is a slightly shorter article here and it's based on his book. I'll try to explain.

Essentially, neuroscience has found that the brain is really quite like an archaeological dig, unearthing three layers which evolved over time. Each level is responsible for different urges and, ultimately, behaviours. At the core is the reptilian brain which is all about basic life functions, then there's the 'old mammal' brain which learns, recalls and emotes and finally the civilised 'new-mammal' brain responsible for conceptualising. It's the penthouse of thought...



While we may believe (or try to persuade ourselves) that our highest brains are in charge, whether we know it (or like it) our lower brains often call the shots. In the 19th century the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer rather poetically saw our conscious, thinking self as an impotent passenger on the shoulders of our blundering, decision-making, willing self - we can guess at our motivations but that's about where it ends. Ever wondered why that unexpected restaurant order came out of your mouth?

The 'problem' with the lower brain's control in certain instances is that it's wired to look after very animal needs in times of conflict for resources, mates and food - the reptilian brain is driven by arousal, basic life functions and sex. This part of the brain releases the feel-good chemical dopamine as its urges are about to be fulfilled and is programmed to want more. It doesn't quite realise that times of cave-dwelling scarcity are behind us. In short, it can encourage excessive consumption and undermine happiness by never being content and creates conflict by being suspicious of others who compete for resources.

All is not lost, however. We needn't be slaves to these low-brained drives. In fact, it's a case of training ourselves to interrupt these urges and, quite simply, engaging our civilised brains. Naish suggests one key way of doing this: being grateful for what we have. A study at the University of California encouraged hundreds of people to keep a diary of things that they are grateful for and found that they entered a cycle of kindness: being on alert for others' good acts made them willing to reciprocate generosities. Moreover, the ability to delay self-gratification correlates with higher intelligence, the ability to manage complex problems and better self-control.

There's more in the article, but it ends trying to consider the implications for environmental behaviours, particularly in light of the recession. Obviously, feelings of scarcity are heightened and people will naturally lean more towards their lower needing brains, probably at the expense of environmental concern. My quick reading of the recent nVision Central Scenario (a summary of trends in EU consumer attitudes and behaviours) has it as painting this picture, feeling that the recession will lead to consumers becoming more individualistic at the expense of external generosity. For them, some of the most 'boosted' trends will be 'volatility and disloyalty', 'the culture of fear' and 'culture of compensation.'

However, if nothing else the recession will be a shake-up. A director at Mindshare likes to refer to recessions as 'Darwinian gales of change', sweeping through a landscape, shaking it up and picking the weak from the strong. This is true of markets, where company standings change rapidly, but it is also true of consumer behaviours, attitudes and even behaviours.

With this in mind, can the recession prove a positive boost for attitudes and values that live in the higher cortex: those such as gratitude, restraint, community and family spirit and sustainability? I don't see why not. A return to these types of values was already growing before the recession with growing feeling of responsibility for the environment and disillusionment with the growth of ostentatious and individualistic culture. Can't the recession make people re-evaluate and come to realise what's really important? The start of the following video by an advertising planner at Leo Burnett's also testifies to this.

What about brands and their roles in this? How about the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, the newest Co-op ad or the gratitude-filled Muller ad?

A piece of data I saw recently claimed that 'visionary' companies outperform 'standard' companies 6:1 in terms of stock market returns. So which companies and brands are going to be visionary and to take this opportunity to rise above the melais?

Beyond 'interestingness' of data

Through a family connection, I ended up having dinner last night with two academics in the field of human-computer interaction. Thankfully, conversation didn't nosedive into the scenario of human-computer marriage - it turns out their study is all about the visualisation of data, and this spurred me into finally getting some of my thoughts together.

There are papers, books, blogs, tweets and more on this stuff, but what's just so enticing for me is the power and ease with which stories can be told when it works. This really is an example of analytic detail and creative visualisation energising and raising each other aloft. Here are some not-that-new examples of visualisations in the digital age.

I'll no doubt come back to this topic but, in the meantime, here's a favourite - and very much analogue - example of Edward Tufte, an inspirational author on the subject of analytical design. Can you spot the seven dimensions depicted in this 1869 map of the Napoleonic retreat from Moscow in the winter of 1812-13?

(For a better image see here)

In no particular order, here are a few thoughts I'd like to explore in this realm (many of which I'm sure have already been extensively looked into just waiting for me to read!)

• To what extent can the growing availability of data and the crowd-sourcing potential of the internet help innovation in this field? Look at the tools already available (sorry for some duplication with the above link)!


• We have all sorts of growing data sets that are based on networks (Facebook, Twitter). How can visualising these and the flow of information across them help us understand the power of communities and the potential social and marketing impacts?


• The widely acclaimed book Nudge is based on a notion of choice architecture and the importance of getting it 'right' for complicated and complex decisions. How can visualisations provide the right feedback and relatability for choosers in certain of these? Maybe an example of this is Fiat's ecoDrive technology.


• In the world of marketing communications, demonstrable effectiveness and efficiency are still the holy grail. Sir Martin Sorrell talks of effective use of insight as one of the critical competencies of his WPP agencies going forward - what can we learn, what can we add, and which start-ups should Sir Martin have his eye on?


• How can this all be used for 'good'? Can the right data and right visualisation of it help to create attitudinal or behaviour change about, say, climate change and energy consumption. Perhaps I've already answered this with the Nudge point above. Alternatively, can we harness or create movements by tapping into the right people? Perhaps the Facebook/Twitter point holds the key to this.

[To explain the title: One common frustration with the way that people look at data is that very often people launch themselves into it in detail without looking at the bigger picture first, missing all sorts of gems along the way. To combat this computer scientists have come up with various measures of 'interestingness', by which a computer can be programmed to pick out different trends, clusters and data points that may prove to be important. But the point is that there has to be a human touch to get at what is actually interesting, and a good visualisation can in some cases tell the critical story with much more power, ease and art than the output of even the most accomplished programme. It has the power to move beyond 'interestingness'...]

What's in the name?

I studied Maths and Philosophy at university and always insisted that both are at their best when seen as 'pure' disciplines, the beauty of which is in their abstract natures. However, one - more applicable - thing stood out above the rest: the powerful description of human life offered by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy. For him, life is an eternal opposition between wild, free, unhindered expression on the one hand and logical, ordered thought on the other. He uses the metaphor of the two Greek gods Dionysus (the god of wine, inspirer of madness and ecstacy) and Apollo (god of light and order) to respresent this battle.



Nietzsche's key point is that life is at its richest, most fulfilled and least destructive when both our Apollonian and Dionysian drives are allowed to be expressed (as in the best of Greek tragedies). It's not about one overcoming the other, or even a balancing act, but about one being 'energised and raised aloft' by the other. Elements of life are best when both creative, free expression and logical, conceptualising order are present.

So what? Well, I've found this theory a useful 'organising thought' for so much I've seen, in particular since joining the world of marketing communications. I want to use this blog to store and share some examples from wide and far, as well as considering counter-examples.

Final note: clearly this idea isn't new - left brain/right brain thinking sits up there with blue sky thinking as an overused piece of business speak, and other blogs such as Logic+Emotion are firmly in this territory. Let's see what I can add...

You can, of course, read more about Nietzsche's Dionysus and Apollo idea in Wiki or find the whole - beautifully evocative, if a bit testing at times - book on Google books.