Opening up to possibility

 

This 10,000 word essay may be the best thing I’ve read this year related to my work. Here’s my review:

I can thoroughly recommend this essay on the nature of the two brain hemispheres - what they do and what they’re like. Why we need both and why as a society we’re becoming left-dominated, with less appreciation of tone, irony, metaphor and humour.

Forget the simplistic, convenient explanation that “the left brain is rational and the right brain is emotional” - this isn’t the point. In McGilchrist’s own words, “one way of looking at the difference would be to say that while the left hemisphere’s raison d’etre is to narrow things down to a certainty, the right hemisphere’s is to open them up into possibility.”

Wise, erudite and indispensible.

Next step - investigate the website . I see that the excellent Orlando Wood is featured. 

Bloomin’ Lemons

 

In my last post, I referred to a talk by Orlando Wood, which sent me down an Orlando-shaped rabbit hole in search of more of his wise and wonderful thinking. He has published two books, Lemon and Look Out, which sound well worth reading. And as a preview, there’s a 20 minute film, produced in June 2020, those heady days when we thought the pestilence was as good as all over ...

I don’t think a marketing-related film has ever made me feel homesick before, but I’m afraid this one did, with halcyon scenes of the Thames in all its midsummer glory. Where the Lemons Bloom starts with an anecdote about Goethe, and how working as an administrator for the Court of Weimar stifled his creativity, so much so that he took off and fled to Italy in the middle of the night.

This reflects Orlando’s premise: that advertising has become less effective over the last fifteen years or so, due to a shift to the left-brain mode. Flatter, more abstraction, less holistic, less employment of metaphor and humour. No doubt a consequence of the obsession with being “data-driven”.

And it’s not just marketing communications. Culturally, the effect is only too apparent - intense focus on particular words, often taken out of context. Obsessions with categorisation and labelling people. A widespread sense of humour failure and lack of appreciation of nuance. 

Is human intelligence becoming more artificial, I wonder?

Parable

 

I am not normally a fan of “social experiment” ads. There was a nasty spate of them a few years ago - either manipulative codswallop by beauty brands for “poor me” narcissists. Or po-faced offerings from previously jolly beer brands jumping on the latest Twitter trend. Patronising, preachy and pretentious stuff, instead of being informative, entertaining or useful.

However, when we’re talking life or death rather than cans of cheap lager or mostly-water body lotions, maybe such ideas can make a point. 

“First Aid for Humanity” is an ad by VMLY&R Poland for the Polish Red Cross, supported by BNP Paribas. The idea was a first aid training course that used dummies that not only looked like real people, but were modelled based on real people who have faced discrimination. These were a homeless man, a Muslim woman refugee and a genderqueer activist. The participants in the course were encouraged to set any prejudices they may have had aside. At the end, they met the people behind the dummies in real life to hear their stories.

Have a look here.

I listened to a talk by Orlando Wood the other day, and he mentioned that advertising that gets noticed employs metaphor, connections and relationships and is in some ways like a parable - it’s not telling you what to think, but leaving you to process it and work that out for yourself.

And of course, “First Aid for Humanity” is a 21st-century retelling of one of the greatest parables of all time - The Good Samaritan (see Luke 10: 25 - 37), about the man who “fell among thieves” and was ignored and left for dead by both a priest and an assistant priest of his own religion before he was rescued and cared-for by a man of a different and opposing religion. 

“First Aid for Humanity” is an effective piece of communication, but I did wonder if it could be have been even more effective if the dummies had gone beyond the “acceptable” victims of discrimination. 

What if your neighbour is a skinhead football hooligan with a few dubious tattoos?