Out with the same old and in with the new in all we do

Haul out the feather dusters, three-step ladders, Mr Min and big garbage bags. It’s time for some spring-cleaning.

Anyone who has engaged in a serious bout of this kind of cleaning will know that the task is so much more about letting go and meeting the future rather than just dusting out the cobwebs and finding new places for things.

Due to some journalistic spring-cleaning, this will be my last column for a while. I got to thinking about the notion of saying goodbye and realised there are so many things that the marketing and advertising fraternity needs to say goodbye to.

We can start by bidding adieu to our inertia and our obsession with treating verbs like nouns. The future of great ideas can only be accessed by realising that “transformation” is actually a doing word.

Every day, in small ways, we all have the task of making our spaces diverse — not just ad agencies but marketing companies too. If we don’t do this, we succumb to the single story, which only ever offers a single perspective on every problem. And in a world of storytelling, this is dangerous.

We can let go of our fear of the future and technology. This is the most exciting time to be in the communications space. Everything and anything is possible and the only limitation is our own shortsightedness.

Tech is no longer its own niche spot on the geek’s shelf. It is in everything we imbibe and it makes our world infinitely better. About three decades ago, all we had were newspapers, radio and TV to do our advertising. Now we have everything, including artificial intelligence and the virtual world. And while we’re talking tech, we can get rid of the panic regarding the digitisation of creative thought. We will always need humans, human ingenuity, human connection and human creativity.

We can discard any behaviour that is not inclusive. The bold, bright future has no space for any negative “isms” such as racism, sexism or ageism. It’s not about the exclusion of white males but rather the inclusion of black people, women, women of colour, people with grey hair and any others relegated to the outskirts of humanity. While we’re tossing out clothes we’ve outgrown, we can say ciao to the traditional ad. The new era of advertising is intricately connected and not quite as HD as we assume.

We don’t have to make things with a fine polish and shine. We just have to make it good enough to share. Instead of finding one solution to a major brand problem, we can find multiple solutions based on who we’re solving for and where we’re solving the issue.

Finally, we can relinquish the restraints that responsibility puts on creativity. As we climb up the ladder, there’s a weird change that overcomes us. We become boring. We become enslaved by the perspective of leadership. And we become less inspired. Leaders need to learn even more and faster.

Now, more than ever, is the time to uphold the power of creativity. The leaders who have long arms ready to embrace the future will not be afraid to be ignorant, to learn, to experiment, to make, to fail and to remake.

As we shed the dead leaves of winter and enter into the reverie and lightness of spring, let’s also shed the dry, old ways of doing what we do in this business. Advertising and marketing is evergreen and so rewarding. We just have to make sure we allow it to be that way. Like Marie Kondo says in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, “keep only those things that speak to your heart. Take the plunge and discard all the rest.”

Here’s to the catharsis of a good goodbye and a fearless plunge.