Upstream #161
beautifully ugly, values, the big blur, dreams and noseriding.
Hey, how do? Been an odd couple of weeks with some holiday time in between. Moving forward slowly. Festina Lente and all that I suppose. Anyway, letâs go.
âThe eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.â
Virginia Woolf
culture // beautifully ugly
Politics has been based on the fantasy that humans are reasoning beings. The left, still operates with this idealistic, facts based view. The right, has a ruthlessly accurate view of the emotions and psychology of people. The ugly truth. Unfortunately, qualitative research often avoids the ugly truth, preferring sanitised, smooth, palatable and simple narratives. Frictionless realities. Easily sold. Easily bought. But fantasies. We need to face truths. In marketing. In life. In life, the truth is it's hard. But a war on pain has robbed us of resilience, and sold us a mirage thatâs making us miserable. Historically, suffering gave us meaning. A life without it, might cause us grief. The truth can be tough and ugly but we need collective resilience to face it, name it, show it raw. And just like Burger King's Real Tastes Better Mexican work, it can also be beautiful.
brands // values
The Lineker BBC thing is mad isnât it? Heâs a good man, with strong morals. And, he's not a bystander. Heâs now changed his social profile to a picture of him beside the BBC George Orwell statue and the quote carved in stone which reads, âIf liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they donât want to hearâ. As Alaistar Campell points out "surely our personal values are measured by the things we are prepared to ignoreâ. And you know, a principle isnât a principle unless is costs you something. In a world of talk, what value to we put on actions? On people being congruent with the values they claim to uphold? I wrote a small piece on the fairytale of values and the implications for brands. Values matter, but only if they mean something.
technology // the big blur
Hard to look past the ChatGPT and MidJourney updates as talking points. Both are incredible. Theyâve given everyone new superpowers. Just look what people could do with GPT4 in 3.5 hours. It made a game of Pong in 60 seconds. Turned a hand drawn sketch into a website. It reviews contracts and passes most Bar exams. Itâs insane. MidJourneyâs update was equally impressive, these comparisons of prompts and images are crazy. All AI. All instant. These Disney animators watch an AI animation feature for the 1st time. Itâs, as they call it, a Toy Story moment. The implications are becoming clear. The Atlanticâs CEO Nicholas Thompson makes the point, weâre entering the Big Blur. As AI integrates and improves exponentially, we wonât know what's AI and what's human? And honestly, soon enough, we wonât care.
creativity // dreams
LVMH recently became the Europeâs 1st company to break âŹ400bn value. A company built on dreams. Jim Carroll wrote wonderfully about the Netflix doc âThe Kingdom of Dreamsâ. It charts the rise of LVMHâs houses, the tension between creativity, art and business and what we can learn from luxury. Jim concludes by stressing the importance of putting creativity and commerce in harness, but equally the danger of maverick creative directors. Tough because itâs those mavericks that got the company to where it is. Meanwhile companies like P&G, have become efficiency machines with creative and marketing tool kits that are now mostly in-house, data enabled and AI powered. This piece by P&Gâs Marc Pritchard, barely mentions creativity. Can we still make people dream, with machines? Weâll see soon enough.
five random (ish) things:
The new middle aged, stretched & exhausted đ„±.
10 charts for a changing world đ.
2023 challenger brands to watch đ.
1/2 of UK TV starts like this đ.
Very clever agency ad đč.
watching // noseriding
How in the name of god was this invented? Impossibly cool. Physics, feeling and the Coanda Effect. Enjoy the weekend folks đźđȘ.