Will this be how real change happens?

Change is happening right now, that much is true.

This is probably the hundredth article to share that as a blatantly obvious statement of fact in the first sentence. But what specifically are these changes within our industry? What are people actually witnessing right now beyond strong communities coming together to clap for carers and the stark contrast between people enjoying their gardens and baking sourdough and those struggling to find food at food banks? We know people are experiencing loss, anxiety and uncertainty, we also know they are enjoying less air pollution, more time with family and being creative and innovative during isolation.

But what else?

In this article we will discuss three key questions we have explored with a community of industry people, academics and creatives. Our first question was what changes are you observing during Covid 19? We, as Purpose Disruptors, hosted a virtual event that brought together fifty industry insiders to share their observations from a personal, business and societal perspective. This revealed the ‘green shoots‘ they are witnessing, which together with Dr Orit Gal (systems theorist) we have pulled into key insights. Next we will discuss the important question: will these changes stick post Covid 19? Is this the start of something new? Or ‘Covid Wank’ as the godfather of Marketing Mark Ritson would say. Or are we in fact already victims of gaslighting as highlighted in the brilliant article by Julio Vincent Gambto ‘Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting’. Finally, we will share our thoughts about what happens next? We know that our industry is a socio-economic amplifier, so we at Purpose Disruptors believe that for change to happen it is going to take many of us acting simultaneously to intentionally direct our creativity and energy – it will be up to you to choose where you direct yours.

Q1: What changes are being observed during Covid 19?

Last Tuesday afternoon, we at Purpose Disruptors invited fifty people from competing agencies , across all disciplines from London, Manchester, Bristol, LA and beyond to come together for a virtual industry event. The purpose of the event was to unearth the ‘green shoots’ of change they are witnessing on a personal, business and societal level. The outcome was incredible, they generated over two hundred interesting observations.

We started the event with three amazing speakers. Dr Orit Gal, complexity theorist, talked about how change happens, Ben Essen, CSO at Iris, shared the pathways that are available to us and Gabi Kay, from Gigantic Fucking Solutions talked about the courage we need to act. All spoke about the need for community, something which the Purpose Disruptors is dedicated to creating and building.

Following this, we broke into zoom rooms to answer the question – what green shoots of change are you witnessing? Below is a summary of the key insights and the observations that lead to these.

We as People

For many within the industry the crisis has completely changed the way they work. Their professional and personal routines are radically different and they have needed to learn new skills. It has also provided a pause that naturally, has encouraged both welcomed and less welcomed streams of thoughts regarding their personal circumstances and aspirations.

While many are obviously concerned with professional and personal worries, the ‘green shoots’ identified at this level generally relate to three main themes:

1. A discovered sense of wellbeing connecting to family, community and the local environment; from “I now know my neighbour’s name is Chris” to “my kids are teaching my parents to FaceTime, we have never been closer as a family” and “I’m hearing birdsong and noticing plants growing daily, my world has got smaller and nature feels closer”

2. Increased degrees of freedom at work, whether in terms of working patterns, teams or decision-making processes; including “It turns out that working from home is actually easy, I might never want to commute to an office again” and “I’m connecting with my team on a new, more human level as they are in their home” and “I’m rectangled out of my mind”.

3. Many small opportunities for feeling helpful, effective and valued. People said “I’m now part of a WhatsApp group of about 70 people and we all help each other out with food” and “people I work with who have been furloughed are being really creative with their time, working on their own projects” and “I’m really appreciating all the free sharing of knowledge – ideas, recipes, tips, I’m learning lots”.

We as Businesses

For any agency big or small, COVID-19 has disrupted creative output, budget commitments, deliverables, cash flows and management dynamics. As agency management teams frantically try to re-establish some working patterns, they also expect some clients to be cutting down on budgets, while others possibly not recovering at all.

Yet, some interesting ‘green shoots’ are also evident.

1. Brands have been forced to react. This has increased transparency and exposed their true values and priorities, this has made it easy for consumers to delineate between ‘good brands and bad brands’ “clients and brands are now breaking down into those that want to support and those that want to exploit”, “watching influencers like Jamie Oliver and Joe Wicks with no filter, in their living room has set the bar high for transparency”- “brands like big pharma are looking for ways to help, we can be cynical about it but we could also hold them to it”.

2. Consumer expectations have shifted, brands can no longer hide behind old platitudes, requiring both them, their agencies and their comms to follow through and walk the walk. “people have a new critical eye, it’s about solving not selling” “quick and scrappy comms has become normal even from big businesses, like CEOs writing public emails”

3. At an operational level successful remote working has led to an increasing trust in employees, quicker decision making and enabled more space and freedom for creativity and collaboration. “Clients are making decisions faster and for once we are all working to the same brief”. “We are working together as a team via zoom and I’ve realised a business is a collection of people not the four walls of the office”. “Seeing different partnerships from brands, helpful ones you would have never seen before – like Lidl giving staff to other retailers”.

We as Society

Unlike an economic crisis or a war which hold complex cause-effect logics, pandemics are chaotic, operating like random extinction events, simultaneously decimating many different links within our dense social ecologies. Yet at this level the ‘green shoots’ are becoming the most visible.

Generally speaking these can be divided into 3 themes:

1. A renewed sense of community spirit; so desperately sought after, especially in bigger cities, but never having the context / excuse to emerge “The Church is a collection of people now not a building, people are actually more connected than ever thought our WhatsApp group”. “I had given up on feeling part of a community in London but now I know my neighbours and I feel like I belong here”. “Action groups are stepping forward, picking up prescriptions, doing shopping, looking after the vulnerable”.

2. A disruption in old patterns of social status symbols; who is valued, what they’re valued for, and the diversity of their backgrounds “there has been a paradigm shift for many underpaid, low status workers who are suddenly empowered with new names -key workers”. “There is clarity for all the corporates who aren’t actually essential at all”. “There is a total lack of interest in what celebrities have to say and a new glorifying of ‘talent’ being uncovered in day to day citizens on social”.

3. New levels of awareness of global interdependence and connectivity as we experience the crisis simultaneously across the world. “The world feels closer, we can listen to stories from around the world all the time, we don’t have to physically be anywhere”. “I find myself looking at how other countries are dealing with this, in Slovakia the Govt are recommending what people should have at home”. “The whole world is connected right now in this crisis, we are in it together”.

Q2: Will these changes stick post lockdown?

Mark Ritson, the godfather of marketing says no. Which of course is possible. In his recent articles and webinar he claims it is all “Covid Wank”. All the signals of change and green shoots we are witnessing are to be ignored and what we must all do as quickly and efficiently as possible, ideally in a single line against the wall with our fingers on our lips is return to BAU.

Others will say that it was all a dream and the things people noticed in the quiet pause of lockdown didn’t really happen at all. They are going to make you question what you saw, how it felt and your personal experience of it. As Julio Vincent Gambto says in his brilliant article we need to ‘Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting’.

And yet, the volume and range of green shoots observed, identified and named by many means real change is possible. Dr Orit Gal explains that “systemic transformation requires deep shifts within multiple patterns – mindsets, flows of resources, networks of collaborations, and micro-behaviours. In essence, this means disrupting old self-replicating patterns and encouraging new ones, both hard to actively achieve. Yet, the tragic crisis of COVOD-19 has inadvertently disrupted many seemingly stable patterns across our society, our economy and our politics. Some will never regenerate, while new ones will inevitably emerge. This temporary systemic state of recalibration provides a rare opportunity for purposefully encouraging certain patterns over others.”

Is it possible that we could strategically increase the chance of these positive green shoots emerging and growing by shining a light on them and actively finding ways to support and enhance them, rather than letting them wither away?

Orit goes on to share that “creative efforts need to simultaneously explore the shifts, potential and challenges at the personal, business and wider societal levels. Within each level, old patterns have been disrupted and new ones are taking hold.” At Purpose Disruptors, we believe they can stick and the question we have now is – how do we work collaboratively to support and enhance these ‘green shoots’?

Q3: What will happen next?

Marketing and advertising are a systemic amplifier, whatever values, status symbols and priorities we put out in the world through storytelling, branding and other comms resonate with society as a whole.

Until now, this has not been a deliberate or conscious process.

As Orit says “ advertising does not operate in some unified way, but rather as an ecology shaped by the daily independent choices of thousands of people working on hundreds of different campaigns. Thus, the enormous gravity of its influence is not intentionally directed towards anything, including humanity’s long term needs and aspirations.”

What we see is a huge opportunity.

Our question is – what if it could be intentionally directed towards something?

At Purpose Disruptors we think that through continuous, open conversation and true collaboration the enormous influence of our industry can be intentionally directed. According to complexity theory, this can’t be a top-down mandate, but rather requires a bottom up emerging process with space to experiment collectively (together and separately), with output and actions. In doing this, we could not only transform the industry we work for, but, because the industry is a systemic amplifier, we can help transform society at large towards a more sustainable and equitable future. Which is a pretty exciting idea.

So, what happens next? This is up to you. In essence, you have to choose.

The thing is, we are adults. As adults, with agency, we can ask questions, we can make our own choices. We do not have to stand against the wall in a single line waiting to be told what to do if we don’t want to. Many people do not want to go back to BAU because we understand it was broken.

Since 2018 we have been building a community of like-minded people who want to create change in our industry and beyond. At the end of May we are launching a campaign – The Great Reset (more to follow on this). Our network includes some incredible high profile and up and coming creative talent, brilliant strategists, awesome account people and producers along with academics, scientists and artists. If this sounds like something you would like to be part of get in touch lisa@purposedisruptors.org.

Authors:

Lisa Merrick-Lawless (Co-Founder & Director : Purpose Disruptors)

& Dr Orit Gal (Complexity Theorist)