Tell your sins to Imaginary Client

Once upon a time I helped a luxury hospitality group in the Persian Gulf define and communicate their offer. We had countless conversations around perceptions of luxury, and concluded that 7-star self-indulgence was in the eye of the beholder. Their hotels should provide the culture and environment that inspired guests to create their own luxurious experiences. The Rolls Royce Phantom shopping limos, Dan Dare helicopter pads, gold plated Presidential Suites and personal butlers were generic. High flyers expected nothing less, and the competition offered similar attractions. Guests told us that our differentiator was the quality of interaction with management and staff. Not rictus grins and subservient deference, but warmth, idiosyncrasy, ingenuity and inventiveness.

I come across many companies who regard their partners and consumers as an inconvenient truth. The recession is littered with the remains of organisations that did not know how to listen and respond. In these times of TripAdvisor, and Dell’s transformation from the bête noir of PC owners to the doyen of social media communities, brands no longer dictate the terms of engagement. Customer power, blistering technological progress, and economic volatility must be met with curiosity, spontaneity and creativity. Imaginary Client joined my brand workshop team a few years back, and has been invaluable in helping clients to re-focus. I create a ‘safe place’ where sinners confess their transgressions to Imaginary Client and receive absolution.

Tom

Tom

Tom

The worm is a fitting symbol for today’s personality-led politics. Forget policy, forget ideological difference, forget principles; the media agenda is led by the snap sentiments of a handful of individuals. If the worm turns, there’s a story. And so the leaders’ communications advisers work on ways to keep it happy – a softly ascending form of happy.

As anyone who has had their creative work ‘considered’ by a focus group will tell you, this is no way to assess big ideas, still less formulate principles and policy. Luke Johnson, Chairman of the Royal Society of Arts, captured the problems with such research-led methods in an excellent FT article in March. “Great breakthroughs in fields such as new product development are frequently achieved by avoiding surveys and committees altogether,” says Johnson. Ditto profound political principles, like celebrating the huge benefits of immigration and open borders.

How I have longed for Claud Cockburn to leap from the afterlife and hold all this timid, worm-headed political thinking up to inspection. I recommend an evening with ‘I, Claud’ when the electioneering finally leaves you cold. This book brings together Cockburn’s three volumes of autobiography published between 1956 and 61, and spans everything from his determination to set up an independent weekly political paper free of the controlling fingers of the establishment (he succeeded, it was called The Week) through to his days as a Times correspondent, a war reporter for the Daily Worker, a Punch columnist and a member of the editorial board of Private Eye. Along the way he describes his experiences as a combatant in the Spanish Civil War, an interviewer of world leaders during international crises (Hitler blacklisted him) and a long-term target of Special Branch.

Cockburn was an irritant to reactionaries, especially those in the Labour Party, and the wry wit in this book suggests he made for a formidable adversary and entertaining company. Along with the incision of his analyses into hubris, oppression, corruption and war, ‘I, Claud’ is sustained by an inspiring belief in our desire and ability to change the world for the better. Whether you lean his ideological way or not, you might find his optimism refreshing.

Tim