The best of moulds

Media-neutral, solution-neutral. That was the unique point of the marketing consulting firm I started to work with. Simply, it meant: we are not an ad agency. If a brand, say Lux, came to us with a problem we would not say, “Let’s make an ad!” We would find a real solution that will solve the exact problem. May be the solution was to change the product size. May be the solution was to do more research. May be the solution was to speed up production. May be the solution was an ad. We would find out.

But we began with a plain sheet and a blank mind.

We began naked.

And then we clothed in the solution of our choice.

Just because we had no solution to begin with, we had endless solutions to choose from.

For the past couple of years, I have thought hard about this. Because a human being cannot fly like an eagle, swim like a whale, or stay suspended in the air like a humming bird – we can now do it all better than them all. We can fly across the globe (in a plane), swim deeper than a whale (in a submarine), and stay suspended in the air (in a chopper). We can climb flat rocks. We can train our throats to produce a variety of sounds or modify our voice with machines. We can amplify one human’s voice to reach across miles… Our thoughts can travel across the world in seconds through the Internet. We can change the color of our eyes with contact lenses. We can dye our hair. We can put on fur coats or sheer muslin tunics. We can walk through fire and stand close to live volcanoes. We can cook an amazing variety of dishes.

We can do all this because we couldn’t do it all when we were born.

Out of our handicap, arises our ability. In having nothing, we have a choice to have anything, within our resources and context.  

We have a naked mould. Which lets us design, choose, adapt the best of suitable moulds.