I recently spent two months living and working from my wife’s home village in Southern France. Since my very first visit there 16 years ago, the pace of life, life-work balance (reverse emphasis intended) and the high value placed on the art of everything are their own forms of stress relief.
It’s a culture now being tested by a COVID world very much like ours. Labor shortages in most key industries due to people making job or career changes, a greater number of people retiring than the number of people entering the labor force, etc.
The burden on internal and external communication is also very much like ours. Especially in the transportation industry.
A Brussels-based consultant I had coffee with said it best, “If you understand communication in terms of who needs to know what, where, when and why – and thus have tech skills beyond execution – you’re needed and highly valued anywhere in the world.”
We likened it to executions in search of ideas that dominate advertising today.
So clients and agencies, keep making the work look good and do cool things. Make it reflect your brand look and even embody brand purpose. Everybody else is.
Which is exactly the point.
Execution is important, but get above it. Push for a differentiating insight, strategy and idea. One that empowers externally and internally by being the right message to the right people, in the right place, at the right time. One that outlives its exposure and works overtime to propel your brand over time.
One that resonates.
The world is just too execution cluttered, insight challenged and reactive vs proactive for brands to thrive otherwise.