Ideas We Love: The Woman Who Walked Around Soho
Issue Number 50: Karen Martin’s rallying cry for creativity
Hi there, how are you all?
So we made it to the big five-oh. 50 up. Our fiftieth issue. Well done us!
We discussed various ways of marking the occasion until something dropped on LinkedIn that reminded us why we joined this weird and wonderful industry in the first place.
The Idea. The Woman Who…
Take a look at Karen Martin’s rallying cry to the industry as she takes up her leadership of industry trade body, the IPA. Transporting us from Scotland to Soho, she has reimagined one of BBHs most famous films to compel us to keep talking, rather than typing.
Lovely.
Good job Karen & team.
Why we love it 💕
Karen’s predecessors would typically set the vision and associated agenda for what they wished to accomplish during their two year tenure via PowerPoint to industry leaders in a converted townhouse in London’s SW1. No doubt Karen will make some slides too, but what better way to prime that group than via a wonderfully shot and scripted film that seeks to remind us all why we’re actually here.
After all, it’s about being creative, stupid!
A lovely film, full of Easter eggs (well it is nearly Easter), all of which help make the point about what it is we bring to the party in an increasingly technical and templated world that seems hell-bent on stripping out the magic that human creativity can bring to a client’s organisation.
What we hope will follow 💕
As Matt Waksman wrote in Creative Salon this week, there is an awful lot of doom and gloom in our industry at times. Sometimes we’re overly gloomy and overly doomy. Martin’s film and the manifesto that will follow feels like it arrives at just the right time, providing us with both a shot in the arm but also a warning about what we stand to lose if we don’t remind ourselves of what makes our industry so good when it is at it’s best.
Martin’s film is a reminder that it is incumbent on all of us, no matter what job role we occupy to be both ‘‘small c creative” and “small s strategic” and not just leave those things to our colleagues with those words in their job title
A reminder that it is our difference and our perspective on the world which provides value to our clients. That we should be proud of sitting separately and distinctly from the organisations we service.
A reminder in the power of positive provocation, that relaxing into the status quo and the ‘way things are done round here’ will never elevate us from the sea of sameness.
A reminder that in a fragmented commercial and creative landscape we have to find ways to work better together and that to paraphrase the founder of Martin’s agency BBH, none of us are as good as all of us.
Until next time,
Cheerio
Tom & Matt x