The Formula 1 champion Mario Andretti once said: “If things seem under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”

Jung von Matt Stockholm, the agency where I work, started out in 2006 and was thus a fully-integrated analogue and digital creative shop from start. Being ’idea neutral’ isn’t really enough these days as clients demand more for less – more creativity and more accountability for less money and less time. Since real compensation levels hasn’t increased in the last decade and the shelf-life of innovative agency ”products” is constantly decreasing, we have been looking inwards.

What if the way we (and most agencies) work, the ”production function” of the agency is what needs to be changed (rather than the product, which is evolving anyway)? For the last months we have been challenging and rethinking exactly this by asking ourselves:

- Does it really take weeks to formulate a proper strategy and create good ideas? - Can we create an end-solution that’s even better (more creative and more strategically robust – i.e. quality) in a fraction of the time? - Can we work in a fashion where planning and creation are iterative processes rather than linear? - Can we be more dynamic in bringing in specialist competencies? - Can we challenge the traditional art director + copywriter setup?

We believe that the key to answering these questions lies in the managing of chaos by pragmatically embracing it, not by controlling it. We have been looking at the emergency room and how patients are treated: always through a systematic, multidisciplinary and super-decisive step-by-step process.

It’s not really rocket science, but coping with modern-day communication challengs requires a new set of principles and mindset to what and why we’re actually doing with whom – from start to finish.

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Most products are commodities. Yet, in this commoditised world many planners and creatives try to communicate product uniqueness.

”There’s nothing unique about this product” is a too common stated that results in frustration or in advertising that is irrelevant.

Relevance and differentiation are of course still important objectives of communication, but they don’t necessarily have to be based on product relevance. The important thing, after all, is the goal – to sell more stuff.

It’s time to bury the benefit ladder thinking.

As I see it strategic planning carry much of the responsibility of advertising thinking. If we are determined to base advertising on dramatising product features, we will always have the problem of products that are commodities.

What’s the alternative? The answer is philosophical:

German philosopher Immanuel Kant concluded that we can know nothing about things as they are themselves. We can only know the world of appearances. In other worlds, objects have no inherent properties beyond the ones provided by our senses.

And even modern-day science tries to redefines what everything is actually made up of.

What does this mean in practice for brand thinking?

Most importantly, there’s only one reality, the one perceived by the beholder. There’s no absolute truth or arguments, only the perception of it.

Does this mean we can communicate whatever we want? No, but freeing ourselves of product benefit thinking and embracing the fact that perception is everything means we also can reframe the role of communications. We can create alternative brand propositions that aren’t based on product propositions and by doing so we find ways of connecting with people in new and meaningful ways.