Issue 21: A bulletin for big ideas and better business.

Yes, we Cannes

Watch out for our Cannes Special Edition, containing coverage of this year’s Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. It’ll include interviews, stories and snippets from the Palais de Festivals. Landing in your inbox this Friday. But first: Sir John on why great creatives buddy up.

OPINION/ CREATIVITY 

Get it together: why creatives run in packs

💬 Sir John Hegarty

Everyone is familiar with the buddy cop genre. Two characters with conflicting personalities – one is a square, the other a maverick – are assigned a case. After some bickering, they find a way to work together, and bring the villain to justice. This template exists in countless films. But there’s altogether less awareness of how frequently it springs up in the art world.

The annals of art history are filled with buddy stories. Impressionist painters Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gaugin became friends in 1887. Gaugin went to stay with the Dutch artist at his house in Arles and the two developed their techniques there (before falling out spectacularly). Helen Frankenthaler and Grace Hartigan, two abstract impressionists, formed an alliance that stood in opposition to the male-dominated art world in 1930s New York. In almost every major period of art, creatives cluster together to learn, critique, and – sometimes – argue bitterly.

Coming together to exchange ideas pushes the discipline forward

Spending time with the best is the fastest way to improve your own creative practice. The artists who banded together and formed collectives understood this. The same principle is true in entrepreneurship. Today, the sharpest leaders understand which district they belong in. In London, your finance company belongs in Canary Wharf, and your design practice is better positioned in Clerkenwell.

This week, the greatest minds in advertising and brand communications will assemble on the French Riviera for Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. And it’s the coming together to exchange ideas and push the discipline forward that represents the exciting bit. As ever, there will be plenty of conflicting personalities, but delegates can be relied upon to keep the bickering to a minimum. On stage, at least.

THE AGENDA

✏️ Pencil it in: your agenda for the coming week

1.
The Summer Exhibition returns to London’s Royal Academy: this joyful jumble of a show, open to both established and emerging artists, has been a progressive format defying creative hierarchies ever since it began in 1769.
18 June  

2.
What’s the best way to get into a creative mindset: slowing down, or applying pressure? With World Sauntering Day swiftly followed by World Productivity Day this week, you can put both approaches to the test.
19 June, 20 June

3.
One of the menswear calendar’s pre-eminent shows, Pitti Uomo, opens its children’s iteration this week. It’s never too early to be well-dressed: Pitti Immagine Bimbo is proof that sometimes creative expansion is about tailoring your brand to new demographics.
19–21 June

4.
A bit of tuck at a low afternoon ebb can re-energise the mind. Those in the snacking industry will be attending Stockholm’s Snackex this week, ripping into a packet of crisp and nut news.
12–20 June

5.
Los Angeles’ creative credentials stem from its film, TV and music industries. Its inaugural Design Weekend is showing the city has more strings to its bow. It’s about time the city’s cultural offerings went beyond the blockbuster attractions.
21–23 June

Source: Juan Pablo Bravo from Noun Project

WASHINGTON DC / AVIATION

Core premise

Boeing’s CEO Dave Cahoun is due to testify before the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee for Investigations today as part of an inquiry on the aviation giant’s safety practices. Ever since two crashes involving its MAX 8 model in 2018 and 2019, in Indonesia and Ethiopia respectively, the company has come under intense scrutiny: another incident earlier this year on a plane operated by Alaska Airlines has only increased the pressure. Whistle-blowers have repeatedly voiced concerns over safety issues being ignored by managers. Cutting corners is rarely a good idea – in aviation it should be unthinkable. Competition between airlines may often focus on the level of service – or branding – that each operator can provide; but expecting standards from manufacturers should be a given. The main role of an airplane is to get people safely from A to B; everything else is accessory dressing-up. In this and in any creative pursuit, it is vital not to lose sight of the core purpose in the task at hand.

CREATIVITY

Contributor: Sir John Hegarty

LONDON / MEDIA

Sounding off

The internet introduced the notion that information ought to be free. For newspapers and magazines, that posed a commercial conundrum. While publishers have become stricter about offering content for free (and better at communicating its value), podcast producers are facing a similar question. How to make them pay? Thanks to their skyrocketing popularity, podcasts have become a loud voice in the media landscape – but given they were born as a largely free format, getting listeners to shell out is a tough sell. According to a talk at the Publisher Podcast Summit in London last week, there is room to grow in subscriptions: what matters is to offer perks that go beyond a Spotify-style, ad-free experience. Investing in making exclusive, bonus content just for paying customers is key: anything that can spotlight the quality and effort that goes into an endeavour will go a long way in getting creatives the recognition (and renumeration) they deserve.

Source: Penguin Random House

US / LEADERSHIP

Pandemic papers 

The pandemic left an indelible imprint on the creative industries. But what about the period’s influence on TV, film and books? Some series reflecting on the experience of lockdown have already been released, but Anthony Fauci’s memoir On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service, coming out this week, is as direct an account of the Covid years as they come. Some may be surprised that there is still appetite to look back to a time that many have sought to erase from their memories, but literature has always provided a handy tool to retrospectively tidy up a narrative. Having become globally renowned during the pandemic as the steady hand of public health – and providing a rational counterpart to Trump’s erratic antics – Fauci can present himself as a hero at a time when the US seems orphaned of one. Pandemic setting or not, fables of resilience against the odds always have a way of hooking an audience’s attention.