Issue 12: A bulletin for big ideas and better business.

OPINION/ CREATIVITY 

Katie Jackson’s slick thinking

Channel 4’s chief marketing officer on trust

If people are outraged, you’re probably onto something. Last November Channel 4 released a campaign for its Climate Change season, with a bold film at its heart. The film opens with a gang of executives boarding a private jet. As a voice from the Tannoy system announces that the flight will be a mere 14 minutes, the passengers rip off their suit trousers to reveal white underpants with oil slick skid-marks. They start twerking, and chaos ensues. After that, a similar scene unfolds in a board meeting, and then in a political debating chamber.

The commercial attracted more complaints than any other content on the channel in 2023. It drew ire from groups ranging from MPs to members of Mumsnet. While some found it crude (sorry), it was also among the most audacious and effective ads ever aired. And it makes a simple point. A small cabal of powerful people could do far more with the stroke of a pen than millions of individuals could do in a lifetime.

The secret to creating work like this is trust. When 4creative came up with the concept, we knew it would require a leap of faith. From the Marketing team, from the Comms team, from the legal team, and from our key stakeholders. But that leap of faith wasn’t as difficult as it might have been. Why? Because of the trust built between these teams and the confidence in each other’s expertise.

Relational and Transactional 

A trusting partnership is made up of two things. The first component of trust is relational; how your teams gel on an interpersonal level. When this element is present, you can relate to each other’s worldview, you understand what motivates or frightens each other. The conversation flows simply, and you find each other easy to empathise with. Crucially, you like each other.

The second component of trust is transactional. When this element is present, people pay heed to the professional stuff. Everyone turns up to meetings well prepared and on time, financial commitments are clear, expectations are managed. Work is delivered on time and to the right standard – there is a base level of rigour and competency. When relational and transactional elements are both in place, it’s impossible not to have trust in each other. But beware the pull to prioritise one over the other, they each play their part.

When relational and transactional elements are both in place, it’s impossible not to have trust in each other

Restoring faith

Where creativity is concerned, we need trust more than ever. In an age where companies are able to measure everything, the will to take a leap of faith is dwindling. Stakeholders by and large want to see the numbers, evaluate the business case, mitigate the risk. The result is expected – because it’s based on what’s gone before – and therefore forgettable. This urge to validate might seem reasonable, until you notice how heavily our society relies on blind faith more generally. Our justice system hinges on hard evidence, but we trust in deeply subjective human juries to brings about a sentence (just have a watch of Channel 4’s The Jury: Murder Trial). Our financial system relies on everyone accepting the value of money (an innately valueless thing). Religion is the epitome of a belief system at odds with objective evidence. We trust banks, institutions, and the state, but where the impact of creativity is concerned, we’re less easily convinced. And this is a grave error.

Trust is an overlooked driver of success. Its component parts – relational and transactional – provide a foundation for provocative, unorthodox and exceptional ideas to flourish. When we were developing the Climate campaign, we knew that the concept itself wasn’t universally liked. But whilst it wasn’t liked, no-one could argue it wouldn’t have the impact we were looking for. Ultimately, your stakeholders don’t have to like your idea. But if they trust and believe in the team, the work will fly.

📣 ALL STAFF 

We’re on a mission to unlock creativity.

The next cohort of The Business of Creativity course launches on the 29th April. It’s an eight-week masterclass that gives attendees all they need to reach their (limitless) potential.

Find out morehere. 

THE AGENDA

1.
Milan’s Salone del Mobile will arrive in the Italian city this week. Any self-respecting furniture company will have rented out a space either in the sprawling halls of Rho Fiera or across the city’s neighbourhoods. The northern Italian grand-tour continues for those who have mixed creative interests: jump on the high-speed Frecciarossa train just in time for the opening of the Venice Art Biennale.
16-21 April; 20 April onwards 

2.
It would be remiss of our title not to celebrate World Creativity Day this week: shame the United Nations stipulated it should fall on Sunday, rather than coinciding with the release date of this very newsletter. Still, a read-through all back-issues is surely the best way to mark the occasion.
21 April

3.
The greatest best drum-up campaign on Earth gets underway this week as the Olympic torch is lit in Olympia (at a ceremony complete with toga-clad priestesses), ahead of the Greek leg of its relay journey. After that, it will set sail for France, landing in Marseille before being carried all around the country and its overseas territories. Sometimes, the run-up and anticipation to a major event (or release) can be almost as iconic as the thing itself.
15-26 April

4.
The overall winners of the 67th World Press Photo Contest are announced this week in Amsterdam: head to the opening of the organisation’s exhibition at the atmospheric Nieuwe Kerk for a snapshot of the major – or tragically overlooked – stories shaping the world today, as well as a pointed look at the most fearless talent in photojournalism.
18 April

Screen time: a new era of retail?
Contributor: Robert vant Hoenderdaal / Alamy Stock Photo

PARIS / RETAIL

Kicking and screening

Be it about online browsing or pushing a trolley down the aisle, this week’s World Retail Congress in Paris should act as a one-stop-shop for ideas on the future of the industry. Over three days of talks, CEOs, marketers and designers will discuss the biggest problems facing bricks-and-mortar and how to entice new generations to the check-out. But between sessions on the surprising re-birth of the department store and (of course) the role of AI in retail, there will also be room for an intriguing debate on the “store as medium” – which envisions shops as a futuristic space that should be filled with plentiful screens, smart shelving and personalised adverts. If the above sounds mildly dystopian, and you (like many of those who, during the pandemic, rediscovered their neighbourhood stalwarts) are still hung up on the nostalgic ideal of a mom-and-pop joint, stick around for the programme’s conversation on “retail in an era of mass distraction”. In matters of retail – and any other customer-facing pursuit – is more stimuli the right response to our shortening attention spans?

Contributor: Clo’e Floirat

CREATIVE HACK

Persistence

We often associate creativity with sudden flashes of brilliance. Many believe that the best thinking comes when a problem is fresh. In reality, the opposite is true. Your best idea is more likely to be your last idea.

“Let’s make history”
Contributor: Newscom / Alamy Stock Photo

LONDON / POLITICS

Memoir of mayhem

Writing a memoir when your political career has crashed and burned is a risky business. But former UK prime minister Liz Truss has an appetite for dicey decisions. And she’s unlikely to go down in history as the country’s most perceptive leader – her 45-day term was famously outlasted by a rotting head of lettuce. This week sees the release of Ten Years to Save the West, a behind-the-scenes account of her infamous premiership and word of warning on how to avoid a similar fate. But when time in office (or any project) has failed quite so spectacularly, is a public post-mortem analysis ever a good idea?

“All political memoirs are, of course, about legacies and shaping how history will see them. ‘History will be kind to me,’ as Churchill said, ‘for I shall write it’,” says Dr Ben Worthy, Lecturer in Politics at Birkbeck college, London. “For Liz Truss, this will be doubly so, and she faces an even trickier task. She will need to somehow re-shape and salvage her reputation as one of the shortest ever serving PMs who crashed the economy, while also shoring up and strengthening her political influence into the future.”

Indeed, reputations are better fixed by looking forwards, rather than backwards. Beyond this, an inability to acknowledge shortcomings is kryptonite for creativity and personal growth.

GENEVA / INNOVATION

Inventor redux 

The cultural lore around inventors often portrays them as eccentrics hunting for a complicated (and often robotic-looking) solution to a potentially minor problem. But when the International Exhibition of Inventions opens its doors in Geneva this week, how many of these DIY, fiddling-in-the-garage types will be filling the halls? The inventions showcased will range from a “roboter barista” to a “transparent sun nanocurtain” and a “mountain rescue app” – via scientific discoveries that don’t quite roll off the tongue. Such as: “eco-friendly material with accelerated anaerobic biodegradability for smart cards”. While every new product, launch or idea could be considered an invention, there’s something about the world that conjures up an endearing, possibly disappearing world of practical objects meant for a very specific, as-yet unexplored function. Modern-day inventors may nowadays use renders and projections rather than screwdrivers as their tools, but every creative would benefit from tapping into the unbridled, wacky fun that old-school, flash-in-a-pan inventions brought to the market. After all, for every boiled-egg slicer in history, there was also a miracle mop ready to be patented and turned into a million-dollar enterprise.

Eager as a…
Contributor: dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock Photo

MONTANA / MEDIA

Natural appeal

If you’ve ever sought solace in a Sunday-night repeat of Blue Planet, you’ll probably know why animal-centric cinema has such an enduring, soothing pull. This weekend, Missoula – a town in Montana suitably surrounded by forests and trails – plays host to the International Wildlife Film Festival. On the schedule, there’s a pack of features on everything from wolves to otters, and buffalos to bees. While there’s a specific brand of fuzzy comfort to be drawn from films about furry creatures, much of the reason why these documentaries exist – and are watched by nature-lovers – is a call to action to protect a waning ecosystem. In this, like many creative endeavours that have an activist backbone, it’s often useful to find the right balance between pointing out the problem and providing the right dose of hopefulness: it can be the key to ensuring a roaring success.

When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it.

/Jacob Lawrence