GENERAL IDEA.’s Post

I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Investor / Board Member at Boy Smells!

Welcome to the Carnival of Commerce..... Remember when omni-channel was a disruptive idea in retail? Forcing brands to grapple with the concept that they needed to sell in stores, on websites, through phones and social platforms all in one seamless customer experience? The tech forces driving those changes continued getting better and better until one day we were all shopping everywhere all the time. New technology is once again reshaping commerce - this time, not where we buy but how we experience it. Fashion, celebrity culture, sport, entertainment, news, travel and food have collapsed into one amorphous and unending content consumption experience: this is the Carnival of Commerce. At the Carnival, shopping is not a distinct and separate task but something that takes place within the flashing lights and constantly whirling ferris wheel of our blended digital and real lives. It is watching the Barbie movie and then purchasing from its universe of product collaborations from roller blades to toothpaste to luggage. It’s the NBA becoming a pre-game catwalk through tunnel fashion. It’s Douyin live streamer Zheng Xiang Xiang flashing through a carousel of products and whiplash speed. It’s the funhouse of Drake’s virtual shoppable ‘Embassy’ mansion. It’s McDonald’s inviting you to travel back in time with its retro Happy meals for adults. It’s Beyonce and Taylor Swift’s tours creating a consumption boom that’s been credited with boosting the overall GDP of the United States. Today brands need to see themselves primarily as entertainment propositions, enticing consumers with a a multi-platform, multi-sensory experience that is as exhilarating and imaginative as any fairground. The products they sell are just the souvenirs of a good time.

The Vestiaire Collective campaign demonstrates the power of creative CGI to deepen emotional storytelling..... Intellectually, we are all now aware of the damage of fashion waste. We are used to seeing discarded clothing piled high in landfills in other countries, comfortably out of our own day to day lives in the West. But do we really feel that impact on a visceral level? What if we were confronted with it at the very point that we purchased it - our ghosts of fashion past coming back to haunt us? This was the foundational insight for the work from our technology arts sister agency, Reference, created with Vestiaire Collective, as the business announced a further round of bans on fashion fashion brands being sold on the platform. A visualisation of mountains of discarded fashion in famous cities from Paris to London to New York urged people to consider ‘What if fast fashion waste was on your doorstep’? The video has 11 millions views to date and helped generated coverage from Vogue to Harper's Bazaar, amplifying Vestiaire Collective’s message far beyond anything the words in their press release alone could have achieved. This is the creative promise of CGI - not as a way to generate ideas themselves, but to push an idea far beyond what is possible in the real world and at far greater speed. We all know fast fashion is hugely damaging to the planet. But not the bits of the planet we see every day. Creative CGI changes that, and in doing so jolts us into greater consciousness.

The 2 fundamentals of a successful idea: truth and taste. Recently we’ve been inspired to hone our thinking on our creative process, and creativity more generally. What are the ingredients that go into making something good, something that lots of people sincerely engage with? What makes people love Jacquemus or Jay-Z? Distilled into one essential question: what makes an idea successful? To us the answer is equally simple. A successful idea is in the meeting of truth and taste. Truth is the ability to distill an idea down to its essence, to have absolute clarity about who you are, what you think, and to posses the confidence to express that without compromise. Humans have an innate ability to sense authenticity, and we gravitate towards it. We often talk about the Carl R Rogers idea that ‘what is most personal is most universal’ The specifics of your own unique experiences also illuminate universal themes everyone can connect with. By sharing your truth, you claim your authentic voice. The starting point of any successful idea is in connecting with the absolute essence of what makes you, you - whether a brand or an artist, and to communicate that unapologetically. Taste is, according to Rick Rubin “our ability to distinguish the good from the very good, very good from great.” Taste defines the way an idea is brought to life through words, music, images. It is the twin component of success. Taste is original creative expression and creative perceptivity - the ability to present something in way that lands in that magic place of making something that feels new to others, but at the same time gives them something they wanted without knowing. From Beyoncé to Jacquemus and Apple to Dyson. Truth and taste are what make great art, and great brands.

JAY-Z Lexus GS 300 This The Book Of HOV moment brought to you by Lexus Brooklyn Public Library https://lnkd.in/e6RdQw5W