You would do a far better job if you went and sat in the park

James Whitmore, MD of POSTAR, says to make sense of today, why not place yourself in the future? Get up from your desk now. Abandon your computer and smart phone. Go and sit in the park. Lie on the sofa. Think…

There is a passage in Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” worthy of the most persuasive media sales presentation. She describes a near future where women are no longer allowed to read. Magazines and newspapers are banned. Her heroine recalls the glossies she once held in disdain and laments…

“What was in them was promise. They dealt in transformations; they suggested an endless series of possibilities, extending like the reflections in two mirrors set facing one another, stretching on, replica after replica, to the vanishing point. They suggested one adventure after another, one wardrobe after another, one improvement after another, one man after another. They suggested rejuvenation, pain overcome and transcended, endless love. The real promise in them was immortality.”

There is a media planning idea here. To make sense of today, why not place yourself in the future? It is a constant trait to observe that no time has ever been like the present; that never before has there been so much change, so many opportunities, such confusion and complexity. Only with hindsight do we gain context. I suggest you step into the future and look back.

I sense that we are becoming too fearful of the unknown; we sublimate our imagination, too readily abdicating responsibility to statistics. I blame ‘ROI’, ‘evidence based decision making’ and all the other constraints of the timid and insecure.

It’s like deciding that the known universe ends at the far reaches of your garden. You can count every blade of grass, enumerate each slug and snail, catalogue your flowers and calibrate their growth. Eventually everything is so familiar that it is hard to distinguish anything at all. After a while it all looks the same.

Undeniably it is correct, intelligent and well executed. It is also limiting. If the highest number you know is ten, you will never get to eleven. Worst of all, it is ineffably dull. Quite how did a creative industry defer decision making to traffic wardens?

Get up from your desk now. Abandon your computer and smart phone. Go and sit in the park. Lie on the sofa. Think.

Rebel. Free your mind. Travel forward twenty years or so.

Be Margaret Atwood. Imagine there is no longer electricity to power the internet, mobile networks and Wi-Fi. How would you describe each of the myriad opportunities that have been lost? Conjure a world with no cameras. How do you explain television and cinema to someone who will never get the chance to see them?

Then think of the brand as your progeny. What are your hopes and desires?

Now match the lost opportunities to your dreams. Describe with insight and feeling and you can plan with passion.

What would you rather; a brand that meets the next quarter’s metrics or a brand that is immortal?