Strands of Genius: Nick Asbury + Pinterest Predicts 2024
Strands of Genius: Nick Asbury + Pinterest Predicts 2024
featuring: an interview with our guest editor and a research report
Welcome to the Bonus edition of Strands of Genius! On Fridays, we’ll be publishing interviews from our guest editors, and sharing a research report. Thanks for being along for the ride. Oh and by the way, you look great today :)
:: STEAL THIS THINKING | RESEARCH REPORT ::
Did you know that 482 million people use Pinterest? They use it to plan what’s next in their lives; their next home, their next meal, their next trip. This gives Pinterest unique insight into the future—what’s going to be really big, really soon. Pinterest Predicts is a not-yet-trending report that shares emerging trends for the coming year. They say that it’s THE guide to what people will browse, try and buy next. What do you think? Do you use it to see the new trends?
:: DIVE IN | THE INTERVIEW ::
NICK ASBURY, WRITER AT ASBURY & ASBURY
>> Nick Asbury guest curated Strands on December 21st, 2023. Read it here.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what keeps you busy. How did you end up doing what you’re doing today?
I'm a writer who took a while to realise it. The smart thing to do with my life would be to commit wholly to poetry, or humorous writing, or Substacking and 'thought leadership', or copywriting and brand strategy. Instead, I think of my writing life as a long corridor, where I open various doors and spend time exploring each of those rooms without fully committing to any of them. The main rooms have been Perpetual Disappointments Diary (a downbeat journal that became my one commercial hit), Sideways Dictionary (a bank of analogies for technological terms that I developed with Google), Smile in the Mind (a book about witty thinking in graphic design), Realtime Notes (3.5 years of daily fast poems about current events), Songwritings (writing songs and writing about songs) and Thoughts on Writing (my Substack about purpose and the politics of advertising).
What excites you most about what you do?
Eventually finding out why I'm doing it.
What beliefs define your approach to work? How would you define your leadership style?
I believe creativity ends with why. We write and create in order to find out why we feel the urge to write and create. Purpose is the enemy of creativity: it asks you to define the goal in advance, and it ultimately subsumes all art into politics. It's a siren call we must resist.
What has been the most rewarding project you’ve worked on and why?
Recently, it's been a poetic manifesto for the Antarctic Science Foundation. It takes the form of a poster titled "This isn't us saving the planet". I wrote it after a call with their CEO, and it came out fast.
We are big believers in diversity -- Not only because we believe in equality, but because we also think it’s better for business. How do you frame these kinds of conversations, both internally and with clients? Is there an emphasis on action, or are the conversations really more about communication?
I believe that diversity, in the sense of actively seeking out applicants from all backgrounds, and being alert to your biases when making judgments, is a moral good in its own right. It doesn't need to be justified in terms of leading to better work or being 'better for business'—and I believe it's a trap to argue that it does. If you argue that (for example) you need a black woman on the team in order to market to black women, then it leads you (with the best of intentions) into thinking that the woman you hire is somehow a representative of their demographic as a whole. That's a dehumanising thing to do. We're all individuals and none of us can perfectly see beyond the bounds of our own individual experience. No agency can be perfectly 'representative' of the population as a whole. Yes, of course, a more 'diverse' team might increase the odds of more wide-ranging insights. But the key skill to nurture is cognitive empathy: the ability to see, however imperfectly, beyond your own identity and put yourself in the shoes of other people. It doesn't matter what your identity is: if you can't nurture that skill, you won't be much good at advertising.
Switching gears a bit, how do you find time to balance personal interests with your career? Do you believe work/life balance is possible? Anything you’ve implemented that you recommend that others try?
I don't have any generalisable advice. We're all fighting our own battles.
What’s your media diet? Where do you find inspiration?
Podcasts, newspapers and (still) a carefully curated Twitter/X. I usually find inspiration in the in-between state between sleeping and waking up—those 10 minutes can be pretty fertile. I am also my best self after 1.5 pints of beer, and before 2.75 pints.
What’s the best piece of advice/knowledge you’ve stolen, and who/where’d you steal it from?
Pick your battles. I can't remember where I heard it.
Nick, can you tell us about your forthcoming book called The Road to Hell?
Yes! Thanks for asking. The blurb goes like this:
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, says the proverb. Never has that been truer than in the case of corporate purpose, the movement that took over the business and advertising world following the financial crisis of 2008.
Guided by the mantra ‘do well by doing good’, businesses embraced a social purpose agenda that sought to align doing good for society with doing well in the marketplace. The result, according to author Nick Asbury, has been a wave of humourless and hubristic advertising and a spiral of worse social outcomes, as businesses wade into issues beyond their remit, while neglecting their real ethical responsibilities.
A critic of purpose from the left, Nick Asbury builds a case against corporate purpose, covering what it is, where it came from, how it leads to worse marketing and how it leads to worse social outcomes. As a positive alternative, he makes the case for creativity, cognitive empathy and valuing the human over the corporate.
Amid the fierce and topical debate about purpose and corporate politics, The Road to Hell is an urgent intervention, offering a clear, first-hand critique of where purpose fails, while also seeking to salvage and redirect the good intentions of many purpose advocates.
(I hope that's a good blurb—one way or the other, the book should be out in the first half of 2024.)
You can keep in touch with Nick on Twitter or Substack.
If we can ever be of help to you, even outside of a formal engagement, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
rockON,
faris & rosie & ashley | your friends over at geniussteals.co
@faris is always tweeting
@rosieyakob hangs out on instagram
@ashley also writes for deaf, tattooed & employed