Do you still remember the writer Maximilian Glanz? He wrote a novel throughout his life under the title: "Why it is that the individual does not feel good, although we are all doing so well.
Do you feel the same way?
And isn't that the perfect headline for the chapter in which world history currently finds itself?
We live in disturbing times.
Once upon a time, sex was dirty and the air was clean, and our food kept us healthy. Today, what we eat is responsible for most diseases and deaths, and at the same time, the production of our food is also destroying our habitat.
Man, born as an emphatic being who cannot live alone, likes to live against each other. Not only in Rouge One were rebellions built on hope, today one wins elections by depriving others of hope.
Many are much better off today than ever before in every respect, yet the proportion of people living in poverty has been rising steadily for ten years.
Social media are particularly effective when they stir up the antisocial.
When did "we" stop meaning "with each other"?
Yes, we live in disturbing times. The normal madness, so to speak.
Who wants to be a millionaire?
For many decades, a better life has been defined by "more and more". Grow, grow, grow - in between a few crisis years, but then grow again, then more again. What else?
There wasn't much time to think. Work to live or live to work? It doesn't matter! The time between "I don't like Mondays" and "Thank god it's friday" still somehow passed and then it's already a nice weekend again anyway.
Nevertheless, this is what we stubbornly call civilisation.
#WhatIsThatFor1Life
This is exactly what a rapidly growing crowd is suddenly thinking about on very different levels, especially many from the under-40 generation, who have experienced little except growth and prosperity.
Consumption as one of the most popular tranquillisers no longer works there in the way it used to. On the contrary.
After all the years of attending seminars to learn how to make a bunch of money so we can buy lots of stuff, we now spend a bunch of money on seminars to learn how to get rid of that stuff. Magic Cleaning, Digital Detox, Simplify your ... everything. Fewer and fewer people find meaning in the "have-haves" or succeed less and less in filling the holes of meaning with them.
What am I?
On the contrary: take a look at the special interest shelves of magazines and bookshops or check out seminar programmes on the web - the amount of offers raining down from the topic cloud "Find your true destiny, your calling, your calling" is swelling to a deluge. Personality development programmes without end have grown into an industry, motivational and inspirational speakers are in demand like never before - luckily, I am one of them. Something seems to be massively missing from people's lives, and now they are noticing it little by little.
By its very nature, this applies equally to companies.
The top 5 reasons for which my consulting services are requested are:
- How are we supposed to continue with our advertising when in reality advertising no longer works?
- How can we attract the best people for our team?
- How do we deal with digitalisation?
- How do we become innovative?
- How should we redesign our website.
Whatever is asked, the initial discussion is usually not even ten minutes old before we come to the real question: "Who are we - and why?" As a rule, the mission statement or the corporate principles are then brought out, which were developed together in long difficult processes and finally adopted after everyone was able to agree on something after all. This is where my ability to be polite and honest at the same time is put to the test. Most of the time I lie, because a man who tells the truth needs a fast horse, but I don't even have a car.
The truth should be told in a harsh tone, or even better, written on the wall with freshly drawn nose blood: "Are you crazy? That's supposed to distinguish you from other companies? - Go to the next best company and ask for their mission statement. It will be the same vapour as yours. That's why you can't remember a single sentence of your mission statement. What's the point..."
Lead image, hello?!? What picture? Where does it lead? Who and why?
Want to try it out for yourself? - For fun, take your mission statement and after each sentence ask yourself the question: "Instead of ...?" So for example: "We want to offer our employees secure jobs where they can develop optimally." - Instead of "... insecure jobs for stupid human material ..."?!?
Who are you - and why? This is the basic question of our humanity and determines our entire earthly presence and, for companies, the über-life question. Most people didn't have an answer to it in the past either, but now, in these times we find ourselves in, it becomes obvious.
All or nothing.
Because in these times everything becomes obvious, relentlessly. Thank you WorldWideWeb.
Google itself is the perfect illustration of this. Google creates an overview of the WorldWideWeb and at the same time plunges us into total disorientation through the Always & Everything.
We see everything. Whether we want to or not and whether it is true or not. We can hardly tell the difference and certainly not the meaning.
For centuries, we have managed to cover up the gaping hole in our senses. With bustle, functioning, distraction, volume, noise, consumption. With price promotions, advertising campaigns, advertising pressure, shouting, fussing, flailing ...
This is no longer viable.
Those who know me know that I have decades of experience as an advertising creative under my belt, and I admit: we certainly had some good times together. The times could also be nice because they were completely different from today.
What money, intelligence, creativity, life time and substance is thrown out day after day under the heading of advertising, and in the end the next story comes out in which a stupid pig talks to a stupid farmer? Or a behaviourally challenged family living in a furniture store? Or a car that, filmed to "spherical music in unusual perspectives, cuts its trail through the canyons of the big city in dynamically edited sequences?" A dumbass who waddles through his country in a duck waddle and then happily bites into his chocolate bar while his dumb big sister waddles in a penguin waddle to lure her children into the kitchen where she rewards them with an emulsifier mixture? A famous, award-winning actress singing into a mineral water bottle in a stuck lift?
Are you all right?
Honestly, this is the best that comes out with all the effort and these huge budgets?
No doubt a panel of experts is instantly on hand to present the proven success of each commercial on a few PowerPoint slides. Diarrhoea is also successful: in the end, all the shit is out.
Please! Pull yourselves together a bit! Is that really all you're capable of? I don't think so!
Hard but hearty.
Businesses have a responsible role in the world, internally and externally. Companies have the almost unique opportunity and the noble mission to fill a vacuum that they have even helped to create to a large extent.
Man's life has no intrinsic meaning. He seeks meaning through values, meaning and relationships. This gives orientation. For a long time, we found a good part of this orientation - at least apparently - in what we buy. Here lies a huge chunk of responsibility that, in the right hands, turns into a sparkling diamond called meaning.
A company that develops a so-called narrative can responsibly offer orientation. Internally and externally. Then the questions about advertising, finding employees, digitalisation paths, innovation goals and website design almost answer themselves. Then sources of enthusiasm and value narratives bubble up without end.
Then a mission statement is created that people not only remember, but one that they never forget. Think different. Just do it!
The apocalyptic emptiness of politics tears a huge hole in people's lives. Politicians are skipping their jobs and at best act as projection screens instead of doing their damned job as projectors. There is a whole generation of old actors in fashionable, yet mostly badly cut suits living from the confusion of their - quite highly successful - performance with the urgently needed task of leaders into a future in which all(!) people are better off than they are today. This is almost like confusing the - quite highly successful - performance act Helene Fischer with a musician.
The vast majority of today's leaders are, at best, misleading us, but probably leading us by the nose, straight into error.
Cobra, take over.
This is precisely where companies have to apply their responsibility levers, especially in a time when the economy encompasses and permeates everything. For many years, the Austrian Chamber of Commerce used the slogan "If the economy is doing well, we are all doing well". That may be a little too short-sighted in some circumstances. However, there is no doubt that when the economy is doing badly, we all do badly, because the economy is all of us.
So the keywords "economy" and "business" are not the next best backdoor into the excuse that one is not meant to be. Businesses and the economy are not fat economic bosses and overpowering systems. Businesses are us humans making decisions in search of our meaning and purpose. We should demand more of ourselves than just doing our job well, because only then does our own meaning emerge.
These are disturbing times and at the same time exciting times we live in, definitely there's no opportunity for boredom.
And these are times in which the mediators of values, visions and mission statements are needed as rarely before. Projectors that throw a picture on the wall and win people over to fill this picture with colour and life together.
Images of a future in which humans use digitalisation for the benefit of all, and do not abolish themselves in a desperate, pointless attempt to be the better machine. A future in which innovations of every company feed the success of the company as much as they offer solutions to social challenges. This will attract people who want to work for just such companies because they are like-minded in word and deed. They will tell about it, share the common story and the responsible - former - advertising people will do something that moves people because it benefits them, beyond advertising.
Velux has obviously understood all of this in an excellent way and has masterfully The Indoor Generation masterfully in the project. The website speaks for itself, the Film anyway.
Our times need stories, storytellers and even more: story sharers. The ability to tell stories has been programmed into us humans by evolution. It is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal. The principles of story are very simple and universally valid, across generations and cultures. This is how Neanderthal man became Homo sapiens - Homo narrans - Homo ludens - Homo faber ...
Let us use this ability with all our strength and urgent responsibility. Because no tool knows morality. What the hammer does is determined by the person, what is posted is determined by the user. Barack Obama has a twitter account just like Donald Trump.
Martin Luther King Jr. didn't have a twitter account, but he had the dream that one day "we" would mean "with each other". These are shared values, shared aspirations, shared stories.
So if you don't just want to talk about have, have, have or the price, but respectfully engage with your audience about values, then engage people with a story that is relevant to both of you and create meaning. That's how you do it today, as a company beyond advertising and as a person alike.
That's exactly what my grandmother, old Story Dudette, meant when she once whispered to Maximilian Glanz, who, shaken by writer's block, was desperately crying into the manuscript pages of his novel: "No Story. No Glory."
P.S.: Maximilian Glanz and his novel originate from Helmut Dietl's imagination and were brought into the picture in the twelve-part television series "Der ganz normale Wahnsinn" ("Madness") from 1979. The series was cult at the time, they just didn't say cult yet. They didn't say horny yet either. Taking the era into account, the a reunion pleasure, at least nostalgic-folkloric pleasure. We had nothing else. Except dirty sex and clean air.
P.P.S.: Recommended reading!Because we are already on the subject of "meaning and well-being": My friend Andreas Salcher, real-life multiple bestselling author, has once again written a wonderful book: "The whole of life in one day. The Method of Seeing Your Whole Life in One Day opens up unimagined possibilities: All the important issues that normally mature slowly over years and events that string together over long periods of time can all at once be experienced from a new perspective. Suddenly, new, important questions emerge, even if it's already afternoon like mine, but the rear-view mirror is far from being the preferred window for looking at life.
Andreas Salcher writes about the discerning person who knows how to use his mind, the searching person who thinks beyond his own existence, the forgiving person who is at peace with himself and others, the curious person who never stops learning, the vulnerable person who is capable of love and compassion. Ultimately, he writes about how each of us can discover - again and again - the meaning of our being and gives inspiration, insight and understanding for oneself and the encounter with others. A book that moves the reader and moves something in the reader and in any case sharpens the focus on empathy, the scarce commodity in our strange times of abundance. Thank you, Andreas Salcher!
The link to Amazon is intended as a service for snooping around and for when you want to feed your Kindle right away. Every bookseller is happy about a purchase and gets every book in the twinkling of an eye - sometimes the hand is turned around two or three times ... The reward for this: There is always a lot to discover when visiting the bookshop, and I am also happy about relevant tips from story insiders - not only from the non-fiction & specialist book corner.