Revelateur Studio 6/26/24 Revelateur Studio 6/26/24

Truth is Golden Ep. 23 - Start with Why w/ Stephen Shedletzky

During the summer break, I will be sharing the last three episodes of Truth is Golden, my previous podcast that’s been discontinued a few years ago. I still believe to this day that this content is evergreen, hence my ongoing effort to republish it so that people can learn from creatives about what makes them tick and how they’ve become successful.

In this episode, I had the pleasure to talk to Stephen Shedletzky, former Lead Igniter at Simon Sinek's Start With Why and one of the nicest, most genuine human beings I have ever met. We talked about the importance of purpose, culture and of course, Rock'n'roll.

Shed has since written a book and started his own consultancy, continuing to inspire leaders to foster productive cultures.

Check it out below.

About the podcast: The intent behind our podcast series "Truth Is Golden" is to look at renowned creatives and their work with a critical eye. We aim to ask deep questions in order to peel back the layers of marketing, clever one-liners and sexy branding. We want to show the world what it truly takes for genuinely creative forces to find their own voice build a career on what is very often nothing more than a drive to do things differently. We want to hear about the successes, the failures, the inspirational stories and the lessons gleaned from all of it. We want the truth, so that we can inspire other people to fulfill their own creative aspirations and in the process contribute to making the world a better place.

Revelateur Studio 5/8/24 Revelateur Studio 5/8/24

Truth is Golden Ep. 22 - Not Just Numbers w/ 5468796 Architecture

This interview was initially published in June 2020.

I had the pleasure to interview Saša Radulovic, Johanna Hurme and Colin Neufeld, the partners at 5468796 Architecture as part of our Truth is Golden series. I was impressed to discover, in the course of my research for this interview and after talking to the 3 partners how approachable, genuine and friendly they were, on top of being some of the most innovative and creative architects alive today.

After doing the interview, I had the pleasure to meet Saša and Johanna by chance while they were in town and they proved to be just as nice in person over a drink.

If you want to know where the future of Canadian Architecture is headed, do yourself a favour and listen to the interview below.

Post-Production: Ryan Aktari

Revelateur Studio 10/4/23 Revelateur Studio 10/4/23

Truth Is Golden ep. 303 - Adults Are Not All They’re Cracked Up To Be w/ Liam Gadsby

This interview was initially published in May 2019.

2023 update: I’ve been friends with Liam for years and my initial impressions still hold. He’s a funny dude that’s a pleasure to be around. I also hired him to be the voice of Architects’ Claim Stories, a podcast produced for Pro-Demnity insurance company (minus the cursing) in which he’s proven to be a supremely talented voice artist.

The most memorable interviews are those in which the guest becomes a friend. This is one of those.

Liam Gadsby is a veteran comic and all around creative force living and performing in Toronto. I met Liam one day at the local café and his larger-than-life personality is what drew me to him. Upon befriending him, I learned that he was an unstoppable creative force and came to appreciate being around him for a good laugh. He’s comfortable with things that most people would shiver at the mere mention of and goes through life doing his thing, regardless of what other people think.

About the podcast:
The intent behind our podcast series "Truth Is Golden" is to look at (future) renowned creatives and their work with a critical eye. We aim to ask deep questions in order to peel back the layers of marketing, clever one-liners and sexy branding. We want to show the world what it truly takes for genuinely creative forces to find their own voice build a career on what is very often nothing more than a drive to do things differently. We want to hear about the successes, the failures, the inspirational stories and the lessons gleaned from all of it. We want the truth, so that we can inspire other people to fulfill their own creative aspirations and in the process contribute to making the world a better place.

Credits:
Produced by Revelateur Studio
Post-Production: Ryan Aktari
Music: Bounce Trio, Star Animal, 2014.
Organ & Keys : Matthieu Marthouret
Ténor Sax : Toine Thys
Drums : Gautier Garrigue
Composed by Toine Thys (copyrights SABAM).

Buy it on BandCamp :
weseemusicstore.bandcamp.com/album/smal…big-rivers

More info and music here :
www.youtube.com/user/weseemusic
www.matthieumarthouret.com
www.facebook.com/MatthieuMarthouret.Music/

Revelateur Studio 10/26/22 Revelateur Studio 10/26/22

{PODCAST RERUN} Truth Is Golden - 205 | Less Is More Or Less w/ Dan Brunn

A brief 2022 take on this podcast: When I started podcasting 5 years ago, I had no idea what I was doing. I had an idea of what I wanted to accomplish, but on the technical side, I sucked and I was also terrified to record myself for the public to hear. “What are they going to think of me?” was a constantly recurring mantra in my head and I would routinely get the jitters in the hour leading up to an interview.

Four years on, I feel much more positively about the whole endeavour, but if I ask one thing of you is this: don’t judge the execution too harshly and instead focus on the content of the conversations. I think after all these years they still hold tremendous value.

Dan Brunn’s early life in Tel Aviv, subsequent move with his family to Southern California at age 7 and his later nomadic lifestyle as an adult certainly did not make his life easy, yet set the stage for a highly creative and driven character to develop. Someone as uncompromising as he is a kind soul who wants to do good in the world. Dan is a young(ish) architect based out of LA creating buildings inspired by the Bauhaus aesthetic he grew up around in Tel Aviv, but also influenced by Southern California modernism. We chatted about what moves him, his very early love for architecture, his influences as well as his love of cars, music, food and travel. Listen in to hear Dan speak about his work and life.

The intent behind our podcast series "Truth Is Golden" is to look at renowned creatives and their work with a critical eye. We aim to ask deep questions in order to peel back the layers of marketing, clever one-liners and sexy branding. We want to show the world what it truly takes for genuinely creative forces to find their own voice build a career on what is very often nothing more than a drive to do things differently. We want to hear about the successes, the failures, the inspirational stories and the lessons gleaned from all of it. We want the truth, so that we can inspire other people to fulfill their own creative aspirations and in the process contribute to making the world a better place.

Credits:
Post-Production: Ryan Aktari
Music: Bounce Trio, Star Animal, 2014.
Organ & Keys : Matthieu Marthouret
Ténor Sax : Toine Thys
Drums : Gautier Garrigue
Composed by Toine Thys (copyrights SABAM).

Buy it on BandCamp :
weseemusicstore.bandcamp.com/album/smal…big-rivers

More info and music here :
www.youtube.com/user/weseemusic
www.matthieumarthouret.com
www.facebook.com/MatthieuMarthouret.Music/

Revelateur Studio 9/28/22 Revelateur Studio 9/28/22

{PODCAST RERUN} Truth Is Golden - 203 | There Is Something Funny About This w/ David K. Levine

In episode 3 of our second season, I talked to David K. Levine a distinguished academic, political economist and popular author. We talked about his midwestern childhood, how economics can explain a lot of modern society challenges, his transplant life in Europe and how one of the biggest risks he took was a late-career change, taking on subjects he was not an expert in. Listen in to hear more about David and his accomplishments.

About the podcast: The intent behind our podcast series "Truth Is Golden" is to look at renowned creatives and their work with a critical eye. We aim to ask deep questions in order to peel back the layers of marketing, clever one-liners and sexy branding. We want to show the world what it truly takes for genuinely creative forces to find their own voice make a go of a career at it. We want to hear about the successes, the failures, the inspirational stories and the lessons gleaned from all of it. In short, we want the truth, so that we can inspire other people to fulfill their own creative vision and in the process contribute to making the world a better place.

Revelateur Studio 9/14/22 Revelateur Studio 9/14/22

{PODCAST RERUN} Truth is Golden - 202 | We're All Going To Die w/ Stefan Hunt

In episode 2 of our second season, Stefan Hunt, recounted his -short- life story, from a typical western childhood in New South Wales, Australia, to his early foray into film making, crossing the US at 18 with no money, a bieber haircut and a drive to surf all 48 states, including the 20+ landlocked ones. His first film, self-described as “cringeworthy”, got him some attention and eventually led him to become the multi-talented professional filmmaker, artist and storyteller he is today; all the while continuing on his literally off the beaten path journey. Listen in to hear more about how one can be a highly creative, decent and compassionate human being at the same time.

Revelateur Studio 1/20/21 Revelateur Studio 1/20/21

[PODCAST] Truth is Golden Ep. 309 - Creative Being w/ Tiffany Pratt

Tiffany Pratt is a creative force of nature and self-described fairy godmother of glitter. In this interview, she peels back the curtain and lets us take a peek into her wild, crazy, colourful world.

https://tiffanypratt.com

Without further ado, check out our final Truth is Golden episode for yourself, it'll be worth your while.

Listen to it here.

Revelateur Studio 12/2/20 Revelateur Studio 12/2/20

[PODCAST] Truth is Golden Ep. 308 - Under The Influence Of Terry O'Reilly

Lining up podcast guests can be quite the ordeal. Sometimes it literally takes years before busy people accept an invitation if they reply at all.

Terry O'Reilly, arguably someone who's in really high-demand was such a guest. His wife and producer, albeit a lovely person, kept telling me that it may or may not happen a number of times until I decided to give up. Low and behold, about 6 months after I threw in the towel, I received an email asking "are you still interested in interviewing Terry?"

Needless to say, I put my little bruised ego aside and quickly obliged. The moral of the story is that persistence is key and sometimes, even after you give up, things will still happen.

At the end of the day I hold no grudge with Terry or his producer wife, they were just safeguarding his time for the important work he does and ultimately I'm glad it worked out because this is one of my favourite interviews to date.

Without further ado, check out the penultimate Truth is Golden episode for yourself, it'll be worth your while.

Check it out here.

I want to give a special shout-out to Natasha Lebel, who initially turned me onto Terry long-time podcast "Under the Influence" to which I took an immediately liking and have been a rabid fan of ever since.

Revelateur Studio 11/18/20 Revelateur Studio 11/18/20

{PODCAST} Single Serves ep. 109 - Billou on Succeeding in Downtimes

I interview Nicky Billou, podcaster, coach and self-described "millionaire-maker" about success in downtimes.

Listen to the episode to learn more about Nicky's philosophy and hear him spread the knowledge about success.

Revelateur Studio 11/5/20 Revelateur Studio 11/5/20

Single Serves ep. 108 - Waugh on Innovation in Architecture

Andrew Waugh, co-founder and principal at Waugh Thistleton Architects in London, is our guest on the latest Single Serves podcast. He joined us to discuss innovation, the future of architecture and surprisingly, cars.

Listen to the episode to learn more about Andrew's work and its impact on the profession.

Revelateur Studio 10/14/20 Revelateur Studio 10/14/20

[PODCAST] Truth is Golden Ep. 307 - Start with Why w/ Stephen Shedletzky

When I started this podcast almost 3.5 years ago, I had no idea what I was doing, nor how I would accomplish it. All I knew was that I had a burning desire to talk to creatives about their lives, work and accomplishments.

Today, this is one of the things I'm the proudest of and despite all its imperfections, it's been amazing to be able to get into the heads of so many really smart and deeply engaging guests.

Sadly this is coming to an end, as I feel that I've exhausted the potential of this format and it's time to kill it before it becomes stale.

Fear not, there are still two interviews with incredibly interesting guests to be released after this one, but I have stopped recording new ones and will instead focus on the other RVLTR podcast: Single Serves, which is not showing any signs of slowing down.

In this episode, I had the pleasure to talk to Stephen Shedletzky, Lead Igniter at Simon Sinek's Start With Why and one of the nicest, most genuine human beings I have ever met. We talked about the importance of purpose, culture and of course, rock'n'roll.

Check it out below.

Revelateur Studio 6/22/20 Revelateur Studio 6/22/20

[PODCAST] Truth is Golden Ep. 306 - Not Just Numbers w/ 5468796 Architecture

After doing the interview, I had the pleasure to meet Saša and Johanna by chance while they were in town and they proved to be just as nice in person over a drink.

If you want to know where the future of Canadian Architecture is headed, do yourself a favour and listen to the interview below.

Revelateur Studio 5/1/20 Revelateur Studio 5/1/20

"Just as dyed hair...

Photo by Iulian Patrascu — Photo by **Iulian Patrascu**

...makes older men less attractive, it is what you do to hide your weaknesses that makes them repugnant."

Taken straight from Nassim Taleb's book of aphorisms "The Bed of Procrustes". It is a book demonstrating how modernity is sometimes trying to fit a still poorly understood world into neat little categories that help make sense of the world cognitively, but also have a tendency to hide the limits of our knowledge, sometimes at great cost, when said limits conflict with reality.

This particular aphorism is revealing because it expresses what we all observe around us every day. Our default assumption (I still haven't figured out if it's an innate trait or a cultural phenomenon) is to want to hide what makes us appear weak, in order to save face and look good. But it does quite the opposite as is often the case, say with plastic surgery, as we cross the chasm, also know as uncanny valley, but this time in reverse, where humans end up looking more like artifacts than artifacts, which carries a major YUCK factor.

This is now also officially supported by science.

What do you think? Is design as a discipline trying to be too perfect?

I hope you take as much pleasure reading my writings as I do writing them because they are created for your enjoyment!

Click “>>subscribe” at the top left of this page, to get our daily (or weekly) updates straight into your inbox. You can also write me a little love note here. I truly enjoy having conversations with you about what I write.

Revelateur Studio 6/30/19 Revelateur Studio 6/30/19

What is creativity and why it is critically important for your business?

Reading time ~11 minutes

What is creativity?

All it takes for anyone to experience true, unapologetically unbridled creativity is to observe kids, say under the age of 8, in a state of deeply-focused play. The world around them ceases to exist as they build incredibly inventive and intricate narratives in their heads, all the while telling their ideas in great detail to whomever is willing to listen. They have no fear, no shame, even though these ideas, can sometimes be very, very silly. Socializing for the first 18 years of our lives takes care of making us feel ashamed for having crazy ideas, develop self-censorship and worst of all, make us believe that being unendingly creative is at best a waste of good ol’ productive time.

On top of that, 12 years of mandatory, conventional schooling, beats creativity out of many of us. In other words, we’re taught to become uncreative in favour of other so-called more desirable attributes that help us play well with others. Those that are rebellious enough to not let that creativity be sucked out of them, find themselves labeled “creative” later in life, in this instance the epithet carrying a negative connotation, as if creativity was an undesirable quality.

My opinion is that the people who forgot how to be creative, label those who remained so as idle daydreamers purely and simply out of creative envy, as they were tricked into adopting someone else’s vision of success and achievement, which involved fitting a mould of societal expectations. Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand that, to live in a peaceful and productive society, some social norms are required, as unbridled creativity can become a hindrance if not tempered by a need to live harmoniously. But, the world we currently live in has seen the pendulum swing too far the other way and we are now submerged by a sea of milquetoast, bland sameness, because we are too afraid to stand out.

Case in point: all the houses in my neighbourhood look the same, I can find the same chain retail outlets coast to coast and most new hospitality projects in my hometown surf on that popular scandinavian-muted-pastels-simple-geometric-forms aesthetic that makes me want to puke my guts out. When creativity is considered a dispensable luxury, I truly believe that we are missing a tremendous opportunity.

Why is it important?

While some people are able to be more readily creative than others, the truth is that we are all creative at all times, every day of the week. It’s just that a lot of those creative acts go unnoticed and uncelebrated. Finding a way to prevent that pesky raccoon into your trash is a creative act. Negotiating peace for good with your asshole neighbour over who should clear that shared driveway - close to home for many of us - is another. Substituting that missing ingredient for something else in that favourite recipe of yours after the local grocery store has closed, yet another. What happens in the public’s perception is that the celebrated acts of creativity are the big, obvious ones. Just the same way we revere the biggest Hollywood stars without paying attention to the extremely talented local comedian, while forgetting that the big star was once a starving, unknown comedian.

However, it’s these little creative achievements that we rarely take the time to acknowledge and celebrate, because they don’t appear to be significant in the grand scheme of things, that are the foundation of a truly creative mind. The reality is that a lot of small creative achievements often lead to major breakthroughs over time.

Because of that cultural misperception of creativity - the notion that creativity is a nice luxury better left to artists, us creative professionals can be very easily suckered into embracing that point of view. By letting other people define what we do and how we’re being creative, we relinquish the opportunity to fully express creativity by allowing the inherently messy, convoluted and sometimes lengthy creative process to be whittled down to the idea of a black box, out of which great ideas are thought to magically come out of. In the real world, creative professions have a critical need, to give themselves the time to be creative when facing a new problem that requires an innovative solution.

I personally battle with this every day. In my role as a photographer of the built environment, people often assume that I can just show up and snap pictures of their latest creation and voila, their desired money shots magically appears. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but the reality isn’t that clear-cut or even easy to understand. I can mitigate a lot of the random factors in the process of shooting architecture, by codifying some of the steps I need to take in order to document a project, but I also have to constantly ensure that I make room for serendipity and allow for random disruptions, thoughts, situations and interactions to affect the process so that I can come up with the money shots that my clients have come to expect.

In other words, I have to make room for creativity by not constraining the process too much, in order to avoid making every single one of my shoots look the same. Invariably, a handful of shots, sometimes the best ones, are the ones that weren’t planned, noticed after I’ve packed all my gear and I am on my way out. Sometimes, what appeared to be a dud during the photoshoot, turns into a money shot with some clever editing.

Ultimately, creativity is important because it is the mechanism by which we solve puzzles and contributes to the progress of mankind. Granted, some creative ideas are literally and figuratively destined for the toilet, but Dude Wipes can’t be faulted for being uncreative, especially if you look into the way they market themselves. I would go as far as arguing that ass wipes are almost as important to the progress of mankind as the design of the Apollo space program was, as they both require liberal amounts of creativity, in the form of original ideas that were never thought of before. Granted, the impact of these two creative extremes is clearly not going to be the same and history will judge them accordingly, but creativity is the fuel to innovation’s rocket. There is no innovation without creativity and unexploited creativity is wasted potential.

Creativity is a process

The aforementioned little creative acts that we perform everyday and that we often don’t acknowledge are great to practice one’s creative muscle, simply by remembering that we can come up with new ideas to solve old problems pretty much all the time. If one improves their creative output by 1% every day, after a year, it amounts to a 3700% improvement! By building a creative muscle and deliberately practicing a little creativity every day, one can train that muscle to flex on a regular basis. In short order, this skill can be leveraged to solve increasingly complex problems. It certainly requires discipline but the upside of doing this for a significant amount of time can be huge.

The creative discipline can be codified, through empirical experimentation, as it will be different for everyone. As an experiment of one, it needs to be nurtured and improved over time. However, it is challenging to teach it to others and share as everyone has different thinking and learning styles. Therefore, it becomes about finding out what works for oneself while being very aware of what constitutes a creative act in order to train our minds to identify and amplify creative thinking, a positive reinforcement of good behaviour. For example, one of the ways I train my creative muscles, is to answer a question every day and come up with 10 different answers to that question. The question can be anything and the answers don’t have to be good. After doing this for more than 5 years, I can confidently say that my ability to come up with ideas is far ahead of what it used to be before I started this daily practice.

How to make room for creativity?

Often, though not always, the workplace, much like K-12 schooling can be very stifling for creativity, as it aims to conform the workforce to set schedules, spaces and work processes. Some structure is necessary to run a lean, mean business, but one has to be careful to strike a balance between giving workers enough space and freedom to be creative while at the same time keeping the essential structures in place that don’t make a workplace total chaos. I’ve seen very positive improvements in workplace design of the last few years, where the environment is designed to create the space for serendipity and chance encounters, which are fuel for fostering a creative environment.

I recently came up on this quote by Simon Sinek that is the perfect aphorism to describe this issue in the workplace:

“Rule books tell people what to do. Frameworks guide people how to act. Rule books insist on discipline. Frameworks allow for creativity.”

The same way the creative process is unique to each and everyone of us, a workplace culture that makes room for creativity will be different for each business, as a big part of that environment will come from what the company is about and how it operates.

While ultimately each person has a different way of being creative and expressing it, there are some near-universal principles that can get us started on the path to creativity. First of all, a lot of creative ideas come from random connections that our brains make. That’s one of the reasons why more and more people live in cities, all over the world. Cities have the unique ability to create the possibility of random encounters and serendipitous connections that enable us to have creative breakthroughs. By the same token, it is well documented that a lot of major discoveries have been made completely by accident, such as penicillin.

Second, happy accidents being the fertile ground for creative ideas, it is always helpful to make more room for serendipity in our lives. Talking to random strangers at a party, daydreaming while bare feet in the grass (the skin to ground connection is said to enable certain thought patterns to emerge), taking long showers, going on a trip to an unfamiliar location or merely wandering aimlessly around your neighbourhood are all things that contribute to the emergence of creative thoughts.

How that translates in the workplace is both in the physical and cultural realms. In the physical world, it’s important to create literal spaces for random encounters to happen. There is a reason why the water cooler is so well known for facilitating these interactions, as it creates a social space for people to mingle and engage in small talk, which can lead to new and innovative ideas, we’ve all had that eureka moment that happens when someone says something seemingly innocuous.

In the cultural realm, it means that the organizational culture recognizes and encourages employees to experience different work environments that are suited for different tasks and that they be given freedom to play around and find what works best for them. Maybe that local cafe is where your top employee is the most productive. If that’s the case, why stifle them by making this impossible instead of seeing the potential of increased productivity and give them the freedom to work as they see fit, where they see fit?

In practical terms, what you need to do to foster creativity will look very different from what the next guy needs to do, but being aware of those issues and willing to do something is a great first step. As for developing a culture and implementing policies encouraging creativity and innovation, it requires you to take a deep look at the current state of affairs and find out which are the gaps in creativity that need to be filled.

Parting words on trust.

Being creative requires us to be in an environment where we feel safe to unleash our potential. To do so, we need to be able to trust the people around us that our expression of vulnerability, which is what creativity essentially is, isn’t going to come back to bite us in the ass. It’s up to leaders to create a trusting and trustworthy environment where we can fully express ourselves. It also begs the question: why are we still largely operating on a model where employees have to come into work everyday, to sit at a tiny cubicle and punch in the clock, when the work could just as easily be done from a jungle villa in Nicaragua?

Perhaps it’s time to apply a little creativity in the way we work and develop our own idiosyncratic ways of working that make us more creative and innovative, instead of copying what everybody else is doing?

Special thanks to Pete VonDeLinde for bringing the joy of Dude Wipes into my world.

Arnaud Marthouret is the founder of rvltr and leads their strategy, visual communications and media efforts. He has helped numerous architects and interior designers promote themselves in their best light - pun intended - in order to help them run more effective practices and grow in a meaningful way.

If you have questions about this article or rvltr, or want to chat about your strategy and communications, you can leave a comment, share with a friend, or reach him at arnaud{at}rvltr.studio.

Revelateur Studio 5/6/19 Revelateur Studio 5/6/19

Truth Is Golden ep. 303 - Adults Are Not All They’re Cracked Up To Be w/ Liam Gadsby

Check out some of his Fat Man Fit trailer work here.

Buy it on BandCamp :
weseemusicstore.bandcamp.com/album/smal…big-rivers

More info and music here :
www.youtube.com/user/weseemusic
www.matthieumarthouret.com
www.facebook.com/MatthieuMarthouret.Music/

Revelateur Studio 4/21/19 Revelateur Studio 4/21/19

Launching Single Serves Podcast... Important Conversations About Design!

Dave+Sharp+Architecture+Marketing+Advisor.jpeg

I’m launching this podcast in order to bring the world’s foremost experts on specific topics relating to architecture and design. These are the important conversations that I think we’re not having enough of within the industry. It’s meant to be educational, sometimes funny and above all, get us to talk about serious topics without taking ourselves too seriously.

Single Serves Ep. 101 - Sharp On Social Media For Architects

Dave Sharp may be a youngster, but in a short time he's built a respectable business around helping architects navigate the world of social media and marketing. Dave and I talked about social media for designers, its pitfalls and untapped opportunities. Listen in to learn more about the topic.

About the podcast: Single Serves is a podcast where we interview experts on single issues of interest to architects and designers. The thought-provoking ideas shared here are intended to inspire our listeners to become well-rounded entrepreneurs who are the leaders of their field.

Listen here.

Revelateur Studio 9/20/18 Revelateur Studio 9/20/18

Truth Is Golden Ep. 205 - Less Is More Or Less w/ Dan Brunn

Dan Brunn’s early life in Tel Aviv, subsequent move with his family to Southern California at age 7 and his later nomadic lifestyle as a adult certainly did not make his life easy, yet set the stage for a highly creative and driven character to develop. Someone as uncompromising as he is a kind soul who wants to do good in the world. Dan is a young architect based out of LA creating buildings inspired by the Bauhaus aesthetic he grew up around in Tel Aviv, but also influenced by Southern California modernism. We chatted about what moves him, his very early love for architecture, his influences as well as his love of cars, music, food and travel. Listen in to hear Dan speak about his work and life.

Revelateur Studio 8/9/18 Revelateur Studio 8/9/18

Truth Is Golden Ep. 203 - There Is Something Funny About This

Revelateur Studio 7/13/18 Revelateur Studio 7/13/18

Truth Is Golden 202 - We're All Going To Die

Revelateur Studio 6/28/18 Revelateur Studio 6/28/18

You're not you when you're a commodity.

Last week, we took a look at well-know advertisers and some of their campaigns, as well what makes great advertising.

In this second instalment, we take a look at how creativity is here to save the day, how empathy can help us gain a deeper understanding of our audiences and ourselves as well as the value of risk-taking in a safety-obsessed world.

Creativity is only way to stand out

There are many examples of ads out there that were able to stand out and be remembered many years after they were released. If not all of them, the huge majority are remembered because they were conceived in contrast with other, more conventional ads. It’s that contrast with the conventions that made them stand out.

Creativity can take many forms, but humor is the widely considered to be the fastest way to break the mold and send a message that company X isn’t like companies A,B,C and D. It takes courage because as humans, we generally do not like to stand out and want to blend in, to relate. A company with the confidence to stand out, is a company that knows itself well enough to know what makes them unique and not be afraid to communicate that message in their adverts.

Understanding of one’s audience is the only way to truly connect.

The risks taken in setting oneself on the path to stand out from one’s competitors can be mitigated by researching one's audience and gaining a deeper understanding of who they are. You need to learn about them, their fears and their aspirations. By doing so, you will gain two things: first, a direct path to forming an emotional connection with them and second, the ability to cut through the noise and send a message that they will instantly relate to.

Understanding oneself

Similarly, companies have to spend time understanding themselves and do their homework reflecting on what makes them unique, as well as combine that knowledge with that gained of studying their audience. Finding a purpose is a great place to start. A lot of companies out there have a default purpose that is uninspiring. It is necessary to dig down to what the aspirations of the business are. Every great company has clear and concise purpose and is very clear on what that is.

Armed with the tools of empathetic understanding of itself as well as its audience, any business can set itself on the path to stand out.

But I'm afraid of taking risks!

Setting oneself apart is taking a risk, no question about this. There are many examples out there of companies that alienated their audience because their messaging veered too far from what people were accustomed to. However, armed with the right tools, solid knowledge about itself and its audience, a business should be able to find a way to both stand out and not alienate the people it caters to.

Ultimately, it comes down to this choice: either one is willing to take risks and the potential reward is great, or one decides to stick with the status quo with the high probability of commoditization and increased competition, making it harder to run a successful business. Do you want to be Old Spice or Charmin?

It is also important to remember, and O'Reilly explains that in detail in his book, that the large majority of companies who have taken a leap of faith and changed their messaging for the better have seen tremendous returns. Case in point: Snickers with their ongoing "You're not you when you're hungry" campaign has seen their global sales in the first year of running the campaign increase by 15.9%.

What are examples of businesses you’ve seen taking similar risks and get results? Comment below to share your thoughts!