Finding a Fresh Way into Reality

Can brands offer a new way into reality?

You are still trying to find the other sock and were not quite ready for that question, were you?

I hear you!

Reality is something we hope doesn’t shift too much or it could make us all dizzy.

Most of us don’t think about it much at all.

How can we, we are looking for the other sock?

Luckily we have people like Nobel Prize winner Tomas Transtr?mer who’s work was described as ‘finding a fresh way into reality’ to deal with the big questions.

This got me thinking when I read it many years ago.

What does branding have to do with reality?

Reading about his work encouraged me to pursue the folly of a research degree into shifting realities with the design of communication (like Transtr?mer did) and ask how can we pave the way and trigger new realities (the unconventional) and new possibilities??

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for university degrees, its just they are not too conducive to unconventional thinking.

But I have often, I mean quite a lot actually, *brand nerd*, thought about what brands have to do with how we form our ideas of reality.?

Or to cut it up into more chewable chunks, what do brands have to do with what we think is important, noteworthy or just a good idea?

Now you are seeing it. We’ll at least I hope you are seeing it.

If we keep SEEING things in the same way, then we keep ACTING in the same way. What prevents change is staying the same.

While that might seem like a less than astounding statement, it is unnervingly true.

The core offering of creativity I was told at design school, was to offer another perspective, another way of seeing.?

We don’t really need a new perspective, let alone a new reality, until the one we have has some serious draw backs.

Hello warming oceans.

Then we update it.

And sometimes there are leaps in this updating expanding what we see as possible.

Last week I wrote about mobilising our capacity to act. If you missed it, check it out.

What immobilises our capacity to act is a kind of desensitisation. A tuning out and a turning off. An unwillingness to shift.

The less we have to do with nature the less we care about it. Protect it? Why? What has that got to with me?

The less our cultural narratives have to do with the earth the less we think about it when we make choices.

It is a kind of numbness that caused us to not notice things that needed our attention.

So how do we shift our attention back? How do we start caring more, starting acting quicker? Be less numb?

Can each brand chip in and contribute to new ways to see and new ways to act that cool things down a little? And if they can, then how do they?