Issue 81: A Bulletin for Big Ideas and Better Business

OPINION/ CREATIVITY

Creativity moves culture. And culture moves markets.

💬 Greg Hoffman

There was something unusual going on with the cars at the Miami Grand Prix this year. During a pre-race ritual, they cruised around the track at a fraction of their normal speed. Each race car had space for both team drivers (not the usual single seat), and from a distance, they looked somehow pixelated. On closer inspection, there was a reason for all this. The cars were made completely from LEGO, the famous toy brick company.

All teams were accounted for, and each car was recreated in graphic detail, from the team colours and the sponsor logos to the design of the cars themselves. The activation was a masterclass in how to attract attention and create a memorable moment. It was the opposite of traditional (place logo here) sponsorship marketing – instead it was surreal, playful, and deeply imaginative. It was technically audacious, too. Each car used 400,000 individual bricks, and had to be strong enough to last a 3.3-mile lap of the Miami International Autodrome.

Creativity invites new audiences to enter the world of your brand

We are used to hearing about how creativity drives distinction and moves people. But it also acts as an invitation for new audiences to enter the world of your brand. When executives sit around and wonder how to increase the bottom line, they should remember the formula that we can infer from the LEGO example: creativity moves culture. And culture moves markets.

Let’s break it down. Step one: creativity. Putting together life-sized replicas of F1 cars in toy bricks is one-of-a-kind, whimsical, unexpected. Step two: culture. The activation captured the attention, (and captivated the imagination) of drivers, teams and the 2.17 million viewers who tuned in. Then step three: markets. The stunt created a wide ripple effect that fed into LEGO’s tie-up with Formula One. It’s not only about the people on the ground witnessing this in real life, but also the viral effect across social media. The impact that creativity has in creating a moment in culture has a long commercial tail.

We have never had more access to tools that allow us to move an idea from our minds and into the physical (or digital) world… at high speeds. In this scenario, imagination is the greatest differentiator and the most effective way to keep your brand in pole position.

Greg Hoffman is the founder of Modern Arena, former NIKE chief marketing officer, and author of the best selling book Emotion by Design: Creative Leadership Lessons from a Life at Nike.

THE AGENDA

🗓️ Diarise this: your agenda for the coming week

1.
The annual Lucerne Festival stirs in the Swiss city this week. One of the leading events in the classical music calendar, this year’s theme is ‘Open End’, in recognition of works that ‘remain unfinished, that strive for the infinite, that were intentionally designed as works-in-progress, or that were continued by others.’
12th August – 14th September

2.
Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startups list will be published this week. The title will put together its prediction of the twenty five ventures that have the best chance of hitting unicorn status.
13th August

3.
The longest continually running film festival in the world isn’t Cannes or Venice – it’s Edinburgh. The festival opens with the UK premiere of Eva Victor’s comedy drama “Sorry, Baby” and closes with the world premiere of Paul Sng’s immersive documentary “Reality Is Not Enough”.
14th August 2025 – 20th August

4.
Crypto continues its reputational recovery this week. Bullish, an exchange headed by NYSE Group boss Thomas Farley, seeks to raise $630 million in an IPO.
13th August

5.
The International Tango Festival will be contested in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The affair highlights the importance of tango to Buenos Aires’ social and cultural life.
13th – 16th August

US / AI

‘A unified system’: GPT-5 as announced on the OpenAI site
Source: OpenAI

OpenAI offers a step

The dramatised unveiling has been a mainstay of big tech trailblazers since the days of Steve Jobs’ famously bombastic Keynote speeches. But sometimes the number of superlative claims made by founders are at odds with what the new device or software can actually deliver. Since last Friday – when OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman unveiled GPT-5, the updated version of its AI assistant – the world has been able to test the limits of what the company has promised of its new LLM. The update professes greater intelligence and performs well when it comes to reasoning, writing and coding tasks. And GPT-5 is said to come closest than any other system when pitted against human experts in an internal benchmarking method that gauges (according to The Economist) “complex, economically valuable knowledge work.” But some observers report that the new model is only a slight improvement on GPT-03, which was released last spring. It’s a reminder that progress is often less about breath-taking leaps, and more about incremental steps.

ON CREATIVITY /

Contributor: Sir John Hegarty

UK / EDUCATION

Personal moments of intellectual challenge: Examinations
Source: StockCake

A-level grades have shaken off covid

College students in the UK will be nervously anticipating this Thursday, when their A-level results are revealed. Will it be off to Oxbridge and the great advantages of a prized institution – or elbowed into a less auspicious location? Either way, the pressure is undeniable. But this year’s cohort are expected to fare better than their seniors. Attainment took a knock as the covid-19 pandemic caused shuttered schools and led to exams being called off and since then, grades have been down. Now authorities say that the results this week are likely to resemble those that were awarded back in 2019. While most students this year will have experienced some pandemic-related disturbance, they are the first age group not to have suffered it during an exam year. There is also a learning towards career-focused subjects, with more opting for areas like business studies and economics over history and English Literature, for instance. In recessionary times, students are looking for the skills to pay the bills.

PALO ALTO / ART

Typical 1900s Bay Area architecture: New upcoming Hauser & Wirth location
Source: Hauser & Wirth / Photo: Jon McNeal Photography

Can Hauser & Wirth crack Silicon Valley?

Big art and big tech don’t mix – or so it would seem. Two giants of the art dealing world, Gagosian and Pace, have both faltered in their attempts to gain a footing in the Bay Area of San Francisco in recent decades. The former held out for five years from 2016, and the latter managed six after opening its doors for the first time that same year. Now Swiss mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth is making a foray into the world’s most famous innovation cluster. The gallery, due to open next spring, will sit in Palo Alto, close to Stanford University and the Meta and Google campuses. But do the famously laser focused folk who inhabit Silicon Valley care about art? The new institution will be hoping to turn around the preconception that they don’t.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

/Samuel Beckett