You’ll no doubt have read about the work which Stagwell, the group which owns businesses like Anomaly and 72 and Sunny, did for the Israeli government on positioning and message testing, and more recently the expose that it was Havas who comissioned this work.
The organisers of group Led By Donkeys have been arrested for some of their work ahead of Trump’s visit to the UK. Two US late night show hosts have been silenced. The co-founder of Ben & Jerry has left, after many years of using their brand to be an activist, no longer feeling able to speak up.
And I expect every single one of us has a moment to pause where we’ve been asked to work on a project which challenges our values, our morals, perhaps even our humanity.
Indeed, I expect some of us left employment for this as a reason - no longer willing to be part of a system which supports authoritarian regimes, which supports violence and discrimination, which fuels division - with the ideal that ‘being independent’ gives us some sense of control or autonomy over the work we do (or refuse to do), and the impact it has and we can have.
Yet, in parallel, I’ve been in private conversations where fellow independents have been afraid or unable to speak up, speak out, or simply support a cause - concerned how it might affect their reputation, income, even their ability to continue living in a certain country.
And it’s not conspiracy-theory-paranoid-type thinking any more. We’ve passed the point where airing an opinion can see you silenced.
I know the phrase “we’re not saving lives here” is often applied to marketing, but where inaction leads to lives being lost, can we so flippantly pretend that our work and our role doesn’t have a significant impact on real lives?
Advertising, communications, marketing, brands, content, social, digital - it’s all sold on the promise of influence, persuasion. It does have an impact, and our contribution (or refusal to contribute) is significant.
Caroline Keylock shared a post this morning about the importance of “hope” and this week’s member takeover comes from Sarah Housley, who has recently published a new book on Designing for Hope.
I feel like we’re at a pivotal moment - not everyone is in a position of privilege to be able to choose, but if you are, there is a choice: to be part of the problem, or part of a designing and building a better, more positive future.
Matthew.
👋 Hi I’m Sarah.
I work in futures thinking - related to strategy, but a friend rather than a twin - and I’ve been a member of Outside Perspective since I went freelance a couple of years ago. I work as a researcher, writer and speaker, and publish a free monthly Substack newsletter called Design Intelligence. My new book Designing Hope: Visions to Shape Our Future just came out, and researching this book made me hyper-aware of the metanarratives that shape our ways of thinking.
I keep track of Labubus and matcha lattes and Dubai chocolate, but my job is to zoom out. I’ve seen this kind of work called stretchy thinking, or the ten-thousand-foot view. It can be difficult to keep zooming out when there’s so much to zoom in on. But when you zoom out, you can see the bigger narratives - the shifts in ideas and perception that inform how we behave and why.
A lot of words have been typed about the stuck future over the past few years. There are a few different causes for the lack of creative and conceptual newness that has been sensed (and I think working class people being priced out of creative careers, as highlighted years ago by Mark Fisher, is a bigger factor in this than is usually acknowledged). The main driver that gets pointed out, though, is social media. The infinite scroll created the infinite remix, and this is now being exacerbated by generative AI that is designed to provide the most statistically likely next pixel or group of letters.
I would put some of our stuck future down to the dystopian projections that dominate our shared imaginary too. Think headlines about AI taking all jobs, or an ever-looming recession, or the house-buying or pension-saving prospects for Gen Z. These futures are presented as inevitable and they depress our appetite for alternatives. But no future is inevitable.
There are a few meta-narratives growing at the moment that present different ideas about the general direction of the future.
There’s abundance, led by the book of the same name by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. Abundance advocates for building, infrastructure and YIMBYism: there’s a good explainer, and critique of it, in this podcast.
There’s collapse - explored in-depth in Luke Kemp’s new book Goliath’s Curse, which he talks about compellingly in this podcast. Collapse is a favourite theme in lots (and lots) of Medium articles and Substack posts.
And there’s eco-populism, a growing movement that connects the dots between inequality, climate breakdown and climate solutions, that has been championed by the new leader of the UK Green Party, Zack Polanski, as well as Rupert Read and Caroline Lucas.
Abundance and eco-populism advocate for where we want to go, and how we should act today to get there, while collapsology is more about accepting the direction we seem to be heading in anyway - and perhaps thinking about the outcomes of it differently.
If we have been stuck, we now have a few choices. And of course, there are more emerging. In my book and in other work, I look at images of the future and think critically about what we are being presented with and what’s missing. We can do the same thing with narratives. What biases are present in the options we are being shown? What’s missing?
I think about this Indy Johar talk a lot. He’s asked in the Q&A at the end how he thinks about hope. And he answers by talking about duty.
Futures thinking offers choice, and a pathway for actions that will scaffold you from the present day to the future you want to inhabit.
This might seem abstract, intangible, not urgent.
But I think it’s crucial - particularly for strategists, because there is so much influence in the work we do.
Which meta-narratives are you working towards? What direction of change do you want to see - and how can you scaffold towards it?
» You can connect with Sarah in the community or on Linkedin.
» What designers can learn from magical realism. Speculative designers Dunne & Raby on going beyond reality and breaking away from “overly rational futures”
» Elizabeth Goodspeed on ethics. The logistics and risks of rejecting work on moral grounds, and how to keep afloat without losing your soul
» AI branding is growing up. According to Design Week, it’s moving from sparkles and sci-fi to something more human and narrative-driven
» Anyone interested by AI should also be watching robotics. Tech tradeshow IFA just showcased a robot vacuum that can climb stairs and a robot lawnmower that can play catch with your dog
» Window dressing. World of Interiors’ new photoshoot, with creative figures dressed up as homewares, is worth your time.
» Sarah Housley’s book on futures is out now - a great read.
» David Mattin on Post Human Economics (thanks Joel)
» Landor’s Aaron Sheilds on Appreciative Inquiry (thanks Uri)
» Paul Feldwick on the history of Creative Awards
» Nika Talbot on the value of ‘human’ content.
» Hannah Gray’s Fall Cultural Vibrations report.
» Ocado have published a “State of Search” report based on their grocery user behaviour data - interesting read.
» Forward any scamming emails to rescam, and they’ll keep the scumbags busy
Briefs discovered and curated from across the stratosphere.
Promote your brief - or tell us if you’ve found work via the project.
⭐️ FEATURED ROLE: Ogilvy are looking for a Global Social Strategy Director with beauty/wellness exp - 12mo FTC (London,UK) https://outsideperspective.co/gigs/20250915-ogilvy.html
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That’s all for this week.
mk✌️
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