Issue 41: A Bulletin for Big Ideas and Better Business

OPINION/ COMMUNICATIONS 

Dumb-liner: please stop this motto writing madness

💬 Sir John Hegarty

We need to talk about end lines. These pithy, pervasive, and preposterous phrases have spread like a great plague. From the world of big brands – to start-ups, schools, local businesses, institutions, and government departments. The contagion has now reached a critical mass, where even your local tradespeople bung some sort of verbiage on the side of vans and business cards. Pimlico Plumbers, the UK’s largest independent team of pipe un-cloggers used the ambiguous: “More than just plumbers”. Taking this line too literally results in great disappointment: they have neither the equipment, nor the inclination to (a) groom your dog, (b) remove a concerning mole from your back, or (c) offer savvy crypto investment advice.

If your team can only come out with some banality, it’s best not to bother

Luxury brands are among the worst offenders for putting out lines that are somehow grandiloquent and meaningless at once. Watch brand Tag Heuer has been “chasing dreams since 1963”. Private jet company Flex Jet claim to be “commanders of the sky, serving captains of industry”. London hotel The Emory simply claims to be “like no other”. A cruise company promises that “you are the destination.” Cryptic, misleading, patronising pony. A truly great end-line stirs the audience, creates memorability and a mental imprint. A bad one diminishes your brand’s impact.

Where end lines are concerned, there are a few rules to consider. Here’s the first: your business doesn’t actually need one. If your brand team get together and can only come out with some banality, it’s best not to bother. The second: if your end line has the word “tomorrow” “future”, or “world” in it, scrub it out and try again – think of “Different Worlds, One McKinsey”, (dreadful). Finally: if you have to say it, it’s probably not true. Mercedes-Benz Group should therefore re-think its claim of being “unlike any other”. For ninety-five percent of brands out there, it should be end-times for end-lines.

THE AGENDA

✏️ Pencil it in: your agenda for the coming week

1.
New Yorkers will be donning their most ghoulish gear for this year’s Village Halloween Parade in New York. The event attracts some 50,000 visitors.
31st October

2.
Internet Day marks the date in 1969 that computer science professor Charley Kline sent the first electronic message over a network. It marked the start of a creativity quantum leap.
29th October

3.
Diwali, the festival of lights, will be celebrated around the world this Thursday. One of the major festivals of Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism, it marks the triumph of light over darkness.
31st October

4.
The world’s oldest festival of documentary and animation films, DOK Leipzig, kicks off in Germany this week. Highlights include films on everything from gold-mining in Venezuela to defiant gardeners in war-torn Kyiv.
28th October – 3rd November

5.
The yearly Santander International Banking Conference is more exciting than it sounds. Entrepreneurs, academics and policymakers will assemble in Madrid to discuss the big issue – global growth.
31st October

UNITED KINGDOM / ECONOMY

British Chancellor Rachel Reeves
Credit: Matt Crossick/Empics/Alamy Live News

Budgeting for brilliance

The new Labour government’s first UK Budget will be announced on Wednesday. It’s a chance for the party to demonstrate how dedicated it is to bolstering the country’s creative clout, and figures from across the industry have been calling for more investment in the sector. The UK’s creative industries are worth some £125 billion, according to official figures. That makes the category larger than life sciences, automotive manufacturing, aerospace and the oil and gas sectors combined. Around 2.3 million people rely on a job in the sector. The UK is also one of only three net exporters of music, the largest exporter of books and second only to the US in the advertising industry. What’s more, over half of the top 20 film releases last year were made at least partly in Britain. If the government really commits to nurturing its growth, the return could be stratospheric.

ON CREATIVITY /

Credit: Sir John Hegarty

ITALY / DEVELOPMENT

Flags of The Group of Seven (G7)
Contributor: passport / Alamy Stock Photo

City slicking

The G7 Ministers’ Meeting on Sustainable Urban Development kicks off in Rome on Sunday. The group was established as a response to the 1973 energy crisis and has progressively expanded its focus over the years. Presidency shifts between countries annually, with Italy at the helm for 2024. A key priority on the Italian agenda is sustainable urban development, and the upcoming meeting is a chance for ministers to discuss how cities can become more environmentally-friendly. Creative thinking is an important part of this challenge, as proven by cities like Oslo. The Norwegian capital has introduced innovative urban strategies in recent years, such as powering its buses using a biogas produced using household waste and using geothermal wells to heat new developments. The city is now on track to meet its targets of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 95% by 2030, proving the benefits of outside-the-box solutions.

LONDON / DESIGN

Portrait of Film Director Tim Burton
Contributor: Steve Speller / Alamy Stock Photo

Calling the shots

London’s Design Museum has just opened The World of Tim Burton, a new exhibition dedicated to the legendary film director’s fantastical oeuvre. Burton, who is known for features including Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice, is revered for his whimsical, gothic style. And the museum’s show offers a glimpse into his wildly creative mind with some 500 of his drawings, paintings, photographs, sketchbooks, moving-image works, and sculptural installations on display. It follows in the footsteps of the museum’s hit show on maverick director Stanley Kubrick and will be followed next year by an exhibition on the work of Wes Anderson. It’s not often that film directors are honoured by these kinds of shows, so it’s refreshing to see the Design Museum blazing a trail that highlights their wide-ranging contributions to contemporary culture as well as offering insight into all the behind-the-scenes work involved in bringing a big vision to a big screen.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

/Francis Bacon