12: Return with the elixir
We're craving seamless transformation — so indulge our digital minds and analogue hearts.
Seamless design and customer odysseys
My colleague at Thinque, researcher for Seamless, and occasional dandy — Anton Järild — and I descended from our mountain retreat at the chalet at Le Jorat on a misty January morning. Our planned journey of seven and a half hours from the Alps via the Mediterranean would take us all the way from Sainte Foy-Tarentaise to Florence, Italy. We were leaving behind a month of wood-chopping, powder skiing, snow, hammams, and Jacuzzi-based strategy and writing sessions. I promise you, it wasn't quite as Brokeback Mountain as it sounds. There were also vegan dinners, discussions about the merits of quinoa versus bulghur, and whether gluten-free beers qualify as craft beers. Wait — this does sound kind of Brokeback Mountain-ish or at least very hipster metrosexual. This is what can happen when you grow up in a sartorial menswear context as the son of a sartorialist.
As it was, Anton and I were destined for the eighty-ninth Pitti Uomo in Florence on behalf of our client — Georg Sörman. Florence, the mecca of sartorialism, dandyism, and metrosexuality. In menswear terms, we were making the pilgrimage from rural wooden-cabin fever and brands like Woolrich, Filson, Livid Jeans and Barbour, and entering the sophisticated urban piazza of L.B.M. 1911, Crockett & Jones, Berwich, Thomas Mason, Brunello Cucinelli, and Loro Piana. We were undertaking an odyssey from a world of rugged durability and patina to one of style, savoir faire, and sprezzatura (Italian for ‘studied carelessness').
Like 35 000 other fashionistas, we were descending on the epicentre of the Renaissance to geek out and gawk out. Our Airbnb host in the Alps, architect Jean-Pierre, drove us down in his beaten-up Renault minibus from the Le Jorat chalet to the nearest town with any decent infrastructure, Bourg-Saint Maurice, where we piled my waxed Filson bags containing our digital nomadic belongings into the Tiguan that was going to take us from this last large town, along the Tarentaise Valley in the heart of the French Alps and over into Italian territory. This was the German automobile — Vorsprung Durch Technik, as a certain car manufacturer within the Volkswagen family might say — that was going to take us from 1171 metres elevation, through the Mont Blanc tunnel, via Portofino on the Mediterranean, and then, finally, help us settle on the Tuscan capital. Coming to Florence is the semi-annual pilgrimage that global fashion buyers, family business owners, bloggers, photographers, fashion students and the world's most important brands in menswear style make. Like anadromous and catadromous schools of fish, they make this migration to feed, capture design nutrients (and maybe mate). It's a week of flair, male peacocking, narcissism, and voyeurism. And an extreme nerding out about seams, cuts, lapels, Goodyear welting, silhouettes, finishes, provenance, thread counts and stitching techniques. Pitti Uomo is in many ways an inspirational Italian finishing-school version of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy — with the essential difference that the people who pilgrimage to the Padiglione Centrale at Fortezza da Basso, and ‘circumstrut' its fashion equivalent to the Kaaba at Mecca (the central piazza outside) are already well versed in the intricate and nuanced language of sartorialism.
Our drive took us through the snow-covered valleys of the Rhône-Alpes, past castles and cows from Milka chocolate ads. We are reminded about regional honour products like the Opinel knife and AOC protected Beaufort cheeses as French signs rush past us and we swish through tunnels and over infrastructure feats. And while Anton and I usually have lots of things to discuss and debate, on this occasion my co-researcher acted co-pilot, while we both quietly enjoyed David Brooks' 2012 book The Social Animal on Audible's audiobook. The only disruptions emerged from the central navigational dashboard occasionally highlighting a turn-off or, more frequently, one of many toll roads. The first time we had to pay a toll, I was convinced that our Volkswagen would become the first of many vehicles in a line-up of honking cars cursing the Swedish ‘Volvo'-driver who didn't bring cash and coins to enable seamless transitions between regions and nations. But I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the normally largely cash-biased Franco–Italian border regions had evolved to accept both credit cards and Telepass, making the journey rather seamless from a payments perspective. An important detail, as my payment diet doesn't include carrying either cash or notes (curse these bacteria-covered remnants of ancient empires).
And so with David Brooks providing some insightful white noise, speaking softly to our subconscious minds about what drives individual behaviour and human decision-making — an apt topic given the peacocking at Pitti — both Anton and I dreamed our merry selves away to the world of exquisite textiles as we emerged out of the Mont Blanc tunnel into the Aosta Valley. We cruised on, reflecting on Brooks' depiction of human beings as driven by the universal feelings of loneliness and the need to belong — what he labels ‘the urge to merge' — and how we shortly would bear witness to the social circus in Florence, and headed south to Portofino on the Ligurian coast.
By the time we arrived in Portofino, the temperature had ascended by 18°C, the elevation had dropped by more than 1167 metres, and a cosy Mediterranean breeze greeted us with the aquatic scent of salt. And I had managed to illegally park our Tiguan by mounting the pedestrian harbour walkway in fancy Portofino. Like a true local I took one insouciant look at the wheels and arrogantly made my way with Anton towards the restaurants. By the time we arrived at the Foursquare-recommended eateries at sequentially 2.57 pm, 2.59 pm, 3.01 pm and 3.03 pm, all the maître d's announced that their kitchens closed at 3 pm and that it was impossible to serve us. All were wearing analogue watches. Of course, the fact that the Serie A was playing surely had nothing to do with their lack of customer-service enthusiasm. Our stomachs, which had been longing for Mediterranean fare all day, felt the grating presence of a frictive seam emerging. We continued our desperate search for food through the alleys and along the Molo Umberto I, with the same nod of low-season inhospitality at each juncture. Our journey continued along the waterfront until luckily our ‘urge to merge' was convivially returned by the owners of Capo Nord, who had set up a wooden pop-up stand serving local delights next to the port. They managed to move us from awareness, to engagement, to evaluation, to decision and loyalty on our customer journey (see figure 12.1, overleaf) from Sainte Foy-Tarentaise to Portofino in a millisecond. A simple minestrone soup served in a plastic bowl with a glass of Montepulciano had never tasted so sweet. Their pop-up brand was immediately imbued with a superior sense of human dignity and empathy, as we sat slowly digesting the food and gawking at the splendid multi-coloured buildings lining this millennia-old summer home to aristocrats and artists.
Figure 12.1: designing seamless customer experiences with digital and analogue touch points
A shot of espresso, or more accurately a ristretto, woke us up from our sense of timeless sophistication admiring the Tyrrhenian Sea, and alerted us to the sun's slumbering light. It was time to get back behind the steering wheel and emerge onto the final stretch of autostrada between Portofino and Florence. For the whole trip, covering 654 kilometres, I had felt vaguely in sync with the speeds on the motorway. Arriving in the Tuscan capital, we felt how the heartbeat of this medieval city rhythmically slowed us down. Soon, mopeds, models, tourists and streetcars were criss-crossing and messing up my seamless communications with the posh English female navigation voice (I like to imagine that it was Keira Knightley), and I even managed to feel like I didn't have any of Audi's ‘Vorsprung durch Technik' on the few occasions when I stalled or mishandled the clutch on narrow cobblestone streets. We arrived on Via della Vigna Nuova 17 outside our regular Airbnb hostess Ilaria's palatial granny-flat and, treasuring my Florentine illegal parking skills, I was hoping Anton could briskly unload the car while I stayed in it in the one-way street adjacent to the bus station that was conveniently located outside this Medici-era building. Mea culpa. Within seconds my nightmares of being cursed had shifted from Francophobia to Italophobia. The blinding high-beam lights of the local bus quickly snuck up on my back, I waved Anton goodbye and emerged on a labyrinthine search for a way to asymmetrically ‘go around the block' and return with our bags. This took fifteen minutes. Eventually, we managed to unload on the corner, and I gave up my search for street parking and amazingly found Garage Europa, courtesy of Ilaria who graciously had arranged an Airbnb discount for us. The journey from the chalet at Le Jorat in the Rhône-Alpes to the Renaissance building in old-town Florence was complete. This odyssey hadn't been entirely without seams, and while enjoying a dinner consisting of burrata, spaghetti, truffles, spinach and a nice bottle of Brunello red, I engaged in sleepy, philosophical discourse with Anton about how everything in life is either a physical or mental journey. Very deep and meaningful I know.
The journey is the destination
A magnificent saying holds that the journey is the destination; the point is not about arriving at your destination but rather about who you become — your transformation — as a result of undertaking the quest. We can all remember a personal growth journey we have undertaken, where the destination might have been rewarding, but we also knew that as a result of undertaking the journey we would never return to our previous life, or to the standards, values, income, shallow depth of relationships or fitness standards of the person we were before we set out on the path. Now I am not going to pretend that Anton or I changed paradigmatically during our little trip down from the mountain to fashionable Florence, but one of the things I did reflect upon is how an enjoyable journey can build glue, trust and mutual empathy. This is true not only of compatriot nomads on their way to Pitti Uomo (see figure 12.2, overleaf, for a photo of me at the end of the journey), but also of anyone in the business of curating or designing customer journeys.
Think about it: you as a business leader, as a visionary, a misfit or entrepreneur are in the business of helping mentally or physically move people toward your brand, your way of thinking, or a specialised line of products or services. But have you ever deliberately considered whether the transformational journey is enjoyable for your clients and prospects? Have you sat down and designed a journey that would help them grow into your brand's personality, and engage with you as a co-pilot, trusted advisor, squire or caddy? It is clear from our journey, which you have just followed vicariously, that while many aspects were seamless and well-designed (like the toll payment systems, border crossings and world-class infrastructure), others (like the closure of all bricks-and-mortar restaurants from 2.57 pm on a Sunday) were more frictive. Now, while no–one, other than ourselves, set out to design the specific journey for Anton and Anders from Le Jorat to Via della Vigna Nuova, we were able to enjoy a journey that was nonetheless fairly well designed by architects and thinkers who had empathy for travellers and had thought systematically about how to move people through various phases of that 654-kilometre quest. Are you doing the same when you reflect on how to attract people to mentally or physically travel to and with you into the future?
Figure 12.2: rubbing shoulders with the empire at Pitti Uomo
Seamless or frictive journeys?
During a recent cold winter's evening with my girlfriend Nicole, at our place in Elvina Bay, Sydney, I thought about the shifting sands when it comes to customer journeys and storytelling as customer service and marketing. Nicole was still soundly asleep and I had gotten up early to make some hot lemon and herbal tea, which is a bit of a morning tradition here. Particularly in winter. Having grown up in Sweden, I am quite used to it being cold outside, but even after spending nigh on twenty years in Australia, I still cannot get used to how cold it can be inside Australian houses. I am firmly of the view that no colder place exists on the planet than being indoors during Australian winters. Houses in Australia are simply not built for sub-10°C nights. In Sweden, we are spoilt by triple glassing and sustainable insulation. Each year, the Australian winter seems to surprise 23 million Australians, who during their ten months of summer forget that their cold snaps can last for a few weeks or even months south of the Queensland border.
So, on this particular morning, the cold got to me, and because we had gone to bed quite early the night before, the fire in the stove, the only source of heat in the house (in true Australian-winter-ignorance), had burnt out. We are in the habit of always getting the analogue weekend papers (just because the ink looks so great when left on your face because of blackened fingers), but because I had spent a lot of time at Elvina Bay on this book project during the preceding few days, last weekend's paper had already gone up the chimney. So I would have to use the current weekend's papers — presenting a big moral dilemma and a case for prioritisation and rational decision-making. Which pages to burn? Which pages would you choose? Advertisements, right? Advertisements were the first to go, and then the gambling odds, sporting tables and eventually the share-market data. I then carefully ripped out all advertisements from the other pages, because they have the very least editorial and cognitive value. And, of course, as humans we screen this stuff all the time. Why? Because advertisements are the opposite of great content and inbound marketing. They are rented attention, and while occasionally they can be useful for brand-building, when they are not in context or adding value on someone's customer journey, they go up the physical or mental chimney.
Text, textiles and the importance of seamlessness
So, let us take a look at how the brand of Pitti Uomo entices people from every corner of the world to make the pilgrimage to Florence. It being world-leading and the premiere menswear show globally helps. Getting the thought leaders and rock stars of sartorial flair like Lino Ielluzi, Luca Rubinacci and Nick Wooster to think of this as a must-attend event in their annual calendars is another way of ensuring that the event's brand becomes firmly burnt into the imaginations of every aspiring fashionista. Getting bloggers and photographers like Scott Schuman, aka The Sartorialist, and Instagram paragons like Karl-Edwin Guerre to the piazza ensures that peacocks and professional poseurs think it is worthwhile to be seen, to boost their social value and provide them with the social proof they desperately need (remember David Brooks' idea of the human cycle of loneliness and the need to belong?). Pitti also has a certain unspoken rule: being there, having travelled there and being accepted into this exclusive club of designers, cognoscenti, literati and buyers bestows upon you certain qualities. You are suddenly someone, and a certain air of respect and sophistication covers the attendees like fairy dust for four days. Similar to gatherings like TED, Aspen Institute, World Economic Forum, Burning Man and South by Southwest, the pilgrimage in and of itself removes certain social barriers, and people are left to their own devices to ascertain whether they want to continue the Medici merchant spirit of Florence with each other. It's good to be King, and Pitti Uomo has achieved indisputable alpha-male status among the world's dandies.
The result of this branding effort and design of client journeys was that in January 2016, 1219 companies attended the trade show and the total number of visitors was 36 000. According to Pitti Immagine, the organisation behind the trade show, the success in terms of attendance was mainly driven in 2016 by the double-digit growth of almost all European markets. But, as figures available on the Pitti Immagine website show, even attendees from markets further afield grew in number compared to previous years, including those from the United States, Australia, Brazil, United Arab Emirates, Russia, China and Turkey. Pitti Uomo has become a true fashion pilgrimage and odyssey for sartorialists who have a passion for both the interweaving of ideas and physical form, and the seams between them.
Text, textiles and transformation
In Roxette's classic 1980s song ‘Dressed for Success', we learn that clothing can be transformational. At least on the surface. The textile industry certainly are enablers of potential success and, as we have seen throughout Seamless, textiles play a huge role in every stage of Maslow's needs hierarchy including, of course, self-actualisation.
This contrasts to some degree, but also highlights the magic of clothing in our transformational journey, with the idea of The Emperor's new clothes, which is the fairy-tale by Hans Christian Andersen about an emperor who pays exorbitant prices for new magic clothes that can only be seen by the cognoscenti — in this case, wise men. The clothes don't, in fact, exist, but the Emperor, in his vanity, won't admit that he cannot see them out of fear of seeming stupid. Equally, the Emperor's ministers cannot see the clothes either, but pretend to out of fear of being unfit for their positions. Proudly, the Emperor wears his clothes in front of his subjects, all of whom pretend to see the clothes, until one child exposes him by calling out, ‘But he isn't wearing anything at all!' Legend has it that Andersen was inspired to make the exposé the climax of his fairytale based on his experience of standing in a crowd with his mother to see King Frederick VI. When the king made his appearance, Andersen cried out, ‘Oh, he is nothing more than a human being!' Among other themes, this satire illustrates the vanity and social status often imbued in clothes. Nonetheless, the fashion industry has played a crucial role in both embedding social strata and enabling personal transformation. And brands, whether in textiles or not, can learn from the emergence of a new type of economy — the economy of transformation, or the Transformation Economy.
For some time, brands have been focused on providing great experiences. Degustation menus, branded events, café milieus and tough mudders. Joseph Pine II and James Gilmore described this phenomenon in their 1999 publication The Experience Economy, where they argued that a progression of economic value occurs as products move from commodities to experiences. They hold up Starbucks as the old-school example of this progression. A coffee bean is a commodity; as it is roasted the ‘Starbucks way', it becomes a product, while a barista making the coffee is a service, and providing a ‘European café milieu' is an experience (which most Europeans would take offence at, given their general disapproval and independent fighting off of Starbucks' expansionism). Starbucks can charge a premium for the experience, and customers derive more value from it than just buying a coffee bean from Colombia. This is the basic idea (and builds on my futurist mentor Alvin Toffler's earlier work and prediction around the emergence of the ‘experiential industry' in Future Shock).
In The Experience Economy, the authors foresaw the emergence of a new type of economy, which would morph the game even further: The Transformation Economy. In other words, in the future (which, as noted by William Gibson, is unevenly distributed and already here), brands need to curate, coach and nudge their clients along transformative odysseys. This is not just a marketing idea, but needs to be central to a company's brand, products and services. While an experience business, like Starbucks, charges customers for the feeling they get from engaging with it, hypothetically transformation businesses charge for the benefit clients or customers receive from spending time there (or with the transformation business). Of course, the business model for transformation businesses can vary. Examples of transformation businesses include yoga teachers, gyms, management consultants, psychologists, life coaches, business coaches, advertising agencies, branding experts, architects and designers — and, of course, Thinque/Thinque Digital. Increasingly, though, product brands beyond these services, like Nike and Lululemon, are starting to metamorphose into transformation brands.
This phenomenon taps into the fact that we are now, more so than ever before, living in an abundant age. Consider this fact. In 2012, more people worldwide died as a result of obesity than because of malnutrition. Both are severe problems, but these rates mean more people are overeating themselves to death than undereating themselves to death, according to the WHO. In her Business of Fashion article (‘Is the new luxury a better you?') author Lauren Sherman quotes Pine, who cites a 2014 Boston Consulting Group report that reveals that of the 1.8 trillion spend on ‘luxuries' in 2013, nearly 1 trillion, or 55 per cent, was spent on luxury experiences, analysing this by claiming that a ‘large part of that trillion is luxury transformations: people looking to recharge, revitalise, or to improve well-being in some way'. According to Sherman's insightful article, the market for wellness tourism — like yoga and meditation retreats — grew to US$493 million in 2013, a 13 per cent stretch from the previous year. Equally, transformational festivals like Burning Man, which I attended in 2012 and wrote about in Digilogue, and Further Future Festival, are mushrooming and expanding around the world. Again quoted in Sherman's article, Pine says that ‘brands must remember that consumers are looking to become better people. If they're buying physical goods, it's to achieve aspirations, whatever they might be'.
District Vision, an eyewear brand specifically developed for runners, doesn't see its meditation and running programs as mere marketing exercises. The co-founder, Max Vallot, points out that events, improvement processes and congregations like Nike's running club, Lululemon's yoga classes, or our client insurance firm AIA's Vitality Health app, could eventually be packaged and productised too. B2B brands like HubSpot with their Inbound conference, Amex's Small Business Saturday, the financial professionals' Million Dollar Round Table (which I spoke at in 2013), and Salesforce with Dreamforce are other examples of brands that stage transformational events. These give a business angle to the hype of more traditional motivational or inspirational events from self-styled gurus like Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra and Robert Kiyosaki. Self-improvement is big business, and while some might have been sceptical of the execution and style of big motivational conferences, more established brands are realising the value in the transformation economy, and my view is that being able to package and deliver on positive transformation is a huge opportunity for the future, and one that hopefully delivers good.
Thus it is perhaps no wonder that the founder of a ‘religion' (a term you may or may not use, depending on your point of view) and science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard once said, ‘You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.' According to a 1986 Forbes article (‘The prophet and the profits of Scientology') the treasurer of ASI (Author Services, Inc), which existed to manage both Hubbard's financial affairs and those of the Church of Scientology, revealed that in 1982 Hubbard was pulling in US$1 million a week, and Hubbard's net worth had risen by US$30 million in a nine-month period in 1982. Clearly, Hubbard realised the money wasn't in the product — the book — but in the re-packaging of those ideas into services, experiences and ‘transformation'. By no means am I encouraging you to go out and start a religion; I am just saying that religions, which sell the idea of personal transformation, riches and spiritual enlightenment, were probably early adopters and pioneers in the transformation economy (while also ensuring tax-exemptions). But let us go back to more evidence-based and scientific analyses of the transformation economy.
Take Nike as an example. They are now selling a way to be different. They think of themselves as a player in an economy that is about the exchange of value that could transform the quality of life of the consumer — for the long term. Advertisers would have you believe that we have always lived in this space, but often the Mad Men-esque misrepresentation of weight loss, whiter teeth, younger skin, longer life, happier children and so on is qualitatively different. I'm talking here about brands that are genuinely a transformation economy partner with you, for a particular phase in your hero's journey, and don't only push products, which you may or may not use correctly. They provide an ecosystem in which you can be a better version of yourself. This also means they are invested in your transformation, which forces brands to stick their necks out. And while consumers and clients cannot blame Nike for their being overweight or not having that sixpack after a certain duration of time (thanks to extraneous circumstances such as diet and genetics, for example), the transformation economy could be a scary place for brands with products that actually don't deliver value or results. Nike's belief for a long period of time has been that ‘if you have a body, you are an athlete' and in its own transformational journey, Nike has stopped just peddling ‘books', and is instead starting to focus on building a transformational ‘religion'.
Nike's hero's journey has been about turning the tables, and moving the attention away from the egomaniacal swoosh logo and to enabling you as the hero. Undifferentiated shoes metamorphosed into a branded product with a futuristic waffle sole. Nike then peddled their products and apparel for many years, and I remember profoundly the status anxiety when my teammates could afford the more expensive Nike shoes (like the celebrity endorsed Airs) in the 1990s, while I was running around in inherited and oversized hand-me-downs from my cousins in England. It wasn't until the 2000s that Nike went through a paradigm shift, however, with the advent of mobile and contextual data. In Digilogue I tell the story of my digitised/quantified self running the New York Marathon courtesy of Nike+, the ecosystem and service launched by Nike in the mid-2000s. Nike believed in the philosophy of what can be measured can be monitored and managed, and applied this to its consumers as well.
Meanwhile, according to Pine (quoted in another Business of Fashion article by Lauren Sherman — ‘Nike taps the transformation economy'), for the consumer, ‘with every level, [they] gain new aspiration. Whether that means becoming more fit, from the physical, emotional, or spiritual (experience), increasingly it's about how everything we buy affects us in some way'. The Nike+ app straddled services and experiences, as all of a sudden athletes (human beings) could start not only improving themselves but also engaging with new friends and old friends via Nike curated events and experiences. Between the analogue and digital interfaces, and the increasingly intelligent apparel like the HyperAdapt (which enables hyper-personalised running experiences and tailored cushioning for users), the 2016 update for the Nike+ app provides a tailored online shopping experience, and nudges members to sign up for local running and training classes. A gamified interface also offers perks for healthy living and active lifestyles, rewarding positive behaviour and enabling transformation.
At the same time, Nike collects critical transformation pattern data, such as data showing that people who work out with a partner tend to stick with a workout program for longer. This then empowers Nike as a transformation brand to constantly iterate its offerings to clients. Combined with a future of artificial intelligence–powered personal trainers, you might soon find yourself doing CrossFit with a robot singing your favourite motivational classics (‘Eye of the Tiger', perhaps?), and then telling you to drop and give it twenty. For Nike, the dollar transaction is still in the products, not in the religion, so it remains to be seen whether they will be able to shift into a space where consumers will want to pay for the end result — the outcome of the transformation. Would you rather pay for the shoes, or the sixpack?
These brands, in a non-paternalistic way, encourage positive change through nudging. AIA Australia, which we have advised over the last few years, licensed the Vitality app to deliver rewards and perks for its clients for living a healthier lifestyle, like giving up smoking and reducing other risk factors, and adopting fruitful habits like exercising regularly and eating more healthily. As a result of users of AIA's insurance products taking these steps, valuable points and rewards and other forms of currency ensue, but the risk to AIA is also reduced as they are less likely to pay out claims. Imagine the implications for insurance companies in the transformation economy driven by self-driving cars, cranes and trucks, or the human drivers still insisting on driving. A personalised defensive driving coach/Tamagotchi? Airlines have understood the engagement and adherence driven by gamification and our attraction to rewards for years (with frequent flyer points at one stage the second largest currency in the world behind the US dollar). And if you think that this transformation economy is only for people at the top of Maslow's needs hierarchy, think again. Nudging, designing for transformation and enabling transformation may have even greater impacts when enabled for consumers who are seeking to climb the societal ladder and reap the concomitant health and financial benefits.
Georg Sörman and transformation
Rather than being a mere purveyor of clothing, Georg Sörman is in the transformation industry. As we saw in chapter 1, Georg Sörman provides textiles for each level of Maslow's needs hierarchy, including for the top level of self-actualisation. This requires a total mindset shift in a brand's thinking about its role in the value chain — a similar mindset shift that occurred during one of my early summers at my grandparents' rented summerhouse at Färingsö outside of Stockholm, where my parents now reside. I remember vividly how each autumn we would be sent on a work mission by my grandfather to pick all the apples in the apple orchard and take them to market or sell them. These apples, in hindsight, were very ‘organic' looking before that was a trend. Together with my mum, my brother and I would entrepreneurially take the apples up to the big road, and construct posters to entice passers-by to engage with us commercially. On this one occasion we didn't have much luck. And so Mum gave me an important lesson in marketing and communications, which continues to spur my interest in a transformational strategy career twenty-five years later.
I had created a poster that featured, in large red writing, ‘billiga äpplen', Mum pedagogically told me that billiga (which translates as ‘cheap' in English) is not a good word to use when marketing a brand or product. She advised me that we could instead package these fruits (which were fall frukt, meaning they had just fallen off the trees) as bio-apples and organic from the local island of Färingsö. All of a sudden, the branding penny dropped for me. We had transformed the value of what we were selling. Now, twenty-five years later, I dream that Mum will accept the transformational story I have been telling her — that if her mindset about what she sells transforms, she can transform her life and the lives of her customers — and, ultimately, she can find the elixir to her business woes. I would love to repay her for this lesson I learnt in the epicentre of the organic apple-farm district in Sweden. I imagine how transformational a brand Georg Sörman 100 could be for every generation of gentleman as they pass on traditions, wisdom and personal style, and how transformational the clothing, curation, education and services Georg Sörman can provide could be at each milestone in a gentleman's life. The future will tell us whether Mum is ready to transform, or if transformation seems like ‘too much hard work'. And the future will tell us whether the brand will successfully cross the abyss and move from the troubles of the third generation to the success of the fourth (see figure 12.3), when a family business turns into a crown jewel. And who knows, maybe the only way for tradition to remain alive is for you to transform, adapt and evolve! Now is not too soon to embark on your hero's quest.
Figure 12.3: can this fourth generation turn Georg Sörman into a jewel?
Anders & Gustaf Sörman-Nilsson (4th Generation Georg Sörman in 1985)
The important question for now is, what is the transformational challenge for you? Is it in the ‘too hard' basket or is it a call for you to fully immerse yourself in your hero's journey (see figure 12.4)?
Figure 12.4: start mapping your own transformational hero's journey