Find your partner and embrace the unknown
Cross-pollination
People are programmed to embrace the known and feel anxious about the unknown. When faced with a challenge, we naturally turn to the lessons we learned, the customs we know and the people we are acquainted with. There’s an element of safety there, since it feels trusted and predictable. Getting a different perspective takes both a conscious effort as well as a modest realization that you may not have all the answers. As a brand, sometimes that’s exactly what you could need.
When it comes to inviting a new perspective, a term you sometimes hear is cross-pollination. Taken from the plant world, where new life arises from the introduction of pollen from other plants, cross-pollination in science, business or marketing refers to great ideas arising from combinations of viewpoints that haven’t met yet. It’s what happens when dentists talk to space engineers to develop x-ray cameras. It’s what happens when physicists turn to cereal producers to understand the universe. And it’s what happens when medical researchers turn to parkinson’s drugs to help people kick their cocaine habit. Tapping into different disciplines, departments, cultures, ages, mindsets, motivations and orientations turns out be worthwhile, since more diversity seems to be leading to more diverse ideas.
A gospel for any brand?
Reading this might feel like a gospel for any brand: mix things up and success will be yours. The reality however is more complex and nuanced. Researcher Lee Fleming showed in 2004, by analyzing 17.000 patents, that overall “the financial value of the innovations resulting from cross-pollination is lower, on average, than the value of those that come out of more conventional, siloed approaches”. This would make cross-pollination more of a popular trend or talking point and not a clearcut road to success. Luckily, there’s more. According to Fleming, “research also suggests that the breakthroughs that do arise from such multidisciplinary work, though rare, are frequently of unusually high value — superior to the best innovations achieved by conventional approaches”.
The right partner
The key seems to be to find the right sort of cross-pollination to come to such a breakthrough. Potentially, you can cross senses, time, professions, purposes and abilities. According to Fleming, the more established and well-understood the fields are that you bring together, and the more deep the expertise is of the people you bring together, the bigger the chance is for success. For brands it seems cross-pollination mostly works when the viewpoints don’t collide, but when the expertise of one party is needed to open up a challenge of another and vice versa. It’s about finding a partner with a smart technology, a bright idea or unrivalled expertise. Artists, craftsmen, thinkers, businesses. Cross-pollinating could break open your isolation and let your brand grow by introducing a new element.
Sinc and Samsung
Back in 2015 we were brought together in a joint project of Sinc and Samsung. The latter was scratching their heads over a challenge. If art is your passion and you have curved television screens with a better-than-life quality, how do you let people experience both of these in a new way? At the same time, Samsung was developing their worldwide strategy, in which it offers young creative talents a platform by letting them use their innovative technology. This triggered Sinc to form a concept and use the power of cross-pollination to find a partner. A partner that could use Samsung’s technology to find a new audience. A partner that can utilize the curved screens to revitalize their product. A partner like the Panorama Mesdag Museum in The Hague.
The reasoning, like with most good ideas, was plainly simple. If you have one curved screen, you have just one curved screen. But once you start connecting them to each other, at some point, you’ll have a full circle. Or a panorama. What if we could bring to life one of the biggest and most iconic Dutch paintings?
To realize it and fulfill Samsung’s worldwide strategy, all we had to do is find the right creative talent to pull it off. Naturally, we turned to video artist Menno Otten, who had already brought to life some of most renowned paintings in Dutch history in video format.
Moving Mesdag
Together (Sinc, Samsung, Panorama Mesdag & Menno Otten) we introduced ‘Moving Mesdag’. The coming to life of the masterpiece Panorama Mesdag on 14 S-UHD television screens. A 6-minute visual journey across 24 hours and 4 seasons. An immersive experience, placing the visitor on the dunes of Scheveningen, to see what Hendrik Willem Mesdag saw, 130 years ago. Moving Mesdag showed that cross-pollination of the arts, technology and branding offers value for all parties involved. The partnership opened doors to places where commerce and culture usually don’t intersect. Menno Otten pushed the boundaries of his creativity and realized his most ambitious project yet. Panorama Mesdag revitalized its heritage and increased traffic to its venue. And Samsung created brand and product awareness and translated their global strategy of arts affiliation to a local scale.
Sinc and Samsung
Today, Sinc and Samsung are both expanding on the idea of cross-pollination in our work. Samsung has recently joined forces with the Dutch olympic short track speed skating team to create the ‘smartsuit’ and partnered with the Rijksmuseum to translate their collection into a smart cover for mobile devices, thereby bringing the arts to a younger audience once more. Sinc has since utilized the possibilities of cross-pollination in an initiated project called New Champs, together with partners like the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, Adecco and the UWV, to help 45 plussers that have gone unemployed find a new job and pick up their life again. Over the years it has become clear to both parties that embracing the unknown and partnering with someone outside your comfort zone, can lead to great results. So our advice: be the flower to suck up that pollen and make your bubble burst. It’s worth it.
Would you like to know more about the project, or our views on cross-pollination? Ask our strategist Benjamin!
