From shit to leaky pipes: Five lessons from TEDx Sydney
In this opinion piece Roshni Hegerman and Lachlan James share their five most valuable insights from the recent TEDx Sydney event.
Arguably the world’s most inspirational event, TED and its local variations, TEDx, reliably deliver equal amounts of insight, foresight, revelatory sparks and imagination-bending stimulation.
We challenge anyone to walk away after even one TEDx talk without any inspiration, but here we have gathered the five lessons we took away from TEDxSydney 2015 for those who missed it.
1. Go backwards to look forward
Technology doesn’t have to be complex and scary. That was the message from Tom Uglow, creative director of Google Creative Lab. We are simple people who love simple things, and yet everything is continuing to get more and more complex.
Takeout: We too in marketing have a tendency to overcomplicate. Maybe sometimes we should see technology in different ways and go for solutions that are more backwards compatible and intuitive to our nature, rather than always trying to be new and complex.
The beauty of TEDx is that it exposes you to people and ideas not in your personal mainstream. Hamish Skermer, billed as the ‘King of the Compost Toilet’, was a great example. In his very entraining presentation, he argued that we should stop seeing ‘shit’ as waste and instead reframe it within our ecosystem. It has huge potential as a fertiliser (among other uses) and the benefits of this alone are huge.
Takeout: Not all ideas shouldn’t end on the cutting room floor, nor should agencies fear reprisals from clients or demonize creative who indulge in an occasional bit of recycling. So long as the brief is being answered, why should it matter?
3. Perception is everything – so let’s get it right!
Not content with being a world-record holder, Paralympic gold medallist and an Order of Australia medal recipient, 24-year-old Dylan Alcott is also a motivational speaker. Driving down a street in Melbourne, wheelchair-bound Dylan saw an ad for drink driving picturing a person in a wheelchair who was portrayed as depressed. His question was, why do we need to portray disabled people as depressed? In his experience, it’s not the reality and it’s both insulting and harming.
Takeout: In marketing we all too often go for ‘easy impact’ – the obvious visual message. We need to think more laterally about the way we deliver these sorts of messages, the way they are perceived by a wider range of people (beyond the original intent) and the effects they will have.
4. It’s time for multiple purposes
Leaky pipes are supposed to be bad, right? Artist Tega Brain proved otherwise with her dynamic experiment in sustainability showing how leaky pipes can lead to ecological growth and whole new life. This was a great reminder that things don’t have to be solely used for one purpose.
Takeout: While there is a current hype to creating a single purpose for most brands, there may be an opportunity in understanding how a brand can serve multiple purposes in consumers’ lives.
5. Adapt or die: the end of material consumers
Design theorist and philosopher Tony Fry talked about the world we have created within our world – a fundamentally unsustainable world that’s destroying the very world we depend upon. Surprise, surprise – the problem is us! We are both the product and the producer of the unsustainable, and so we have to learn to adapt in order to survive. As Fry explained, to successfully adapt we have to move to be cultural producers, rather than just material consumers.
Takeout: As McCann’s own Truth About Global Brands study uncovered, 85 per cent of people believe that global brands can make the world a better place. However, they also feel that their relationships with brands are one-sided, in that they don’t get much from brands in return for their loyalty. Brands have an opportunity and expectation to play a greater role in our lives and in sustaining our communities with products whose by-products can be recreated for another useful purpose.
- Roshni Hegerman and Lachlan James are McCann Sydney strategy directors
Thanks for this.
I watched the TEDx Sydney “live” stream and found it really dull and boring.
For me these events are about challenging ideas and not about drumming/dancing or flashbacks to beatboxing.
JV
User ID not verified.
It’s still a very enjoyable day, but this year missed the mark for me and most talks felt dumbed down and preaching to the converted. When morning tea is the most challenging part of the day you know the topics need to improve.
User ID not verified.
@james
The drumming would be the E for the Entertainment component of TED: technical, entertainment and design.
User ID not verified.
To Cannes (d)
You are right.
I suppose that it is a matter of taste when it comes to entertainment. It seems to me that the entertainment part of this event was not up to the standard of the other elements. It looked more like “padding”.
I don’t mean to be picky but it is actually Technology, Entertainment, Design.
James
User ID not verified.
I agree, it was not as special as last year. The music component has gone off on a less than inspirational path, not happy. Loved the shit guy! And I really feel that you can try to be too clever with food (ant butter), although I understand from the chef at Aria responsible, that it was the best PR for them EVER. http://www.tenthhouse.com.au/b.....dney-2015/
User ID not verified.
Oh, and I forgot – loved all the videos this year.
User ID not verified.