All That We Share

Over the past couple of years I’ve given a lot of workshops. I’ve been fortunate enough to talk about creativity in places as far flung as Stockholm, LA, Paris, Singapore and Mumbai. During the workshops I usually play a few commercials. Of all the ads I’ve shown, to the hundreds of people I’ve worked with, none has consistently produced as profound and heartfelt an impact as this one from TV2 in Denmark …

After the three minutes is up and I turn from the screen back to my audience there are always a couple of people holding tissues. It’s a spot which seems able to melt even the hardest of hearts.

Why?

Well, it is an exquisitely executed piece of work. The rhythm of the cut, the delivery of the voiceover and the gentle underscore all contribute to a perfectly judged tone, which could so easily have tipped over into mawkishness.

But the real power, of course, resides in the resonance of the message.

Whether we acknowledge it consciously or not, I think all of us have a growing sense that alongside the climate emergency the most pressing challenge of our era is the increasing polarisation of society. The UK, where I’m writing this article, is broken. There’s a deep fissure between Brexit Remainers and Leavers. Neither side is prepared to listen to or entertain the concerns of the other. And so we are locked in a poisonous stasis which harms everyone.

Anti-Brexit and pro-Brexit protesters. Jack Taylor / Getty Images.

And sadly there are plenty of other instances one can cite across the globe. The divisions between us are exploited and exacerbated by vested interests who would rather society was atomised. For anyone who doubts this, The Great Hack on Netflix will make for illuminating viewing.

Yet in the 180 seconds of the TV2 commercial we are presented with a profoundly reassuring truth: we have much more in common than we realise.

And that this truth is presented by a TV network lends it a deeper resonance.

Art, music, theatre and dance undoubtedly bring us closer together, but of all the manifest expressions of the creative impulse none has the power to unite like television. Our innate love of immersing ourselves in the stories we watch is matched only by our instinctive desire to talk about them.

As Jacob Weinreich, who headed up the team responsible for the TV2 campaign, said when I spoke to him recently on the phone,

“Unlike other brands, broadcasters can genuinely take a position that they bring people together. We start conversations. If we are conscious and cautious we can do something in a period where society is becoming more fragmented, where we are more individual … we can change it. We can bring people together and give people something to talk about.”

For TV2 this rallying cry ended up going way beyond marketing. It changed the shows they commission, the way they make them and the way they think about their role in Danish society.

It’s easy when you work at a TV channel to get a little too caught up in numbers, in what advertisers want, in ROI’s, RTB’s and the rest, and forget about the impact of what you do in the wider world. I believe that there’s a bigger, broader, more important purpose for television now than ever before. And that’s to stop us drifting apart.

Give this purpose, meaningfully framed in the context of your brand, to the kind of writers, designers and directors who I meet in my workshops, rather than yet another brand pyramid or gobbledegook positioning, and they will be genuinely motivated to make the best work they can. Because they will know it matters.

As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, aviator, poet and author of Le Petit Prince said,

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The creative arts have a huge role to play in helping us get through these tumultuous times, and none more so than television. So if you work in TV now is the time to start thinking about how best to use the stories you tell to fulfil the responsibility you have.