Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.”
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It’s Better Not Knowing.

It’s likely that a number of people reading our survey spent their childhoods in awe of a seemingly supernatural Magic 8 Ball or a Ouija Board. Perhaps we wanted to know if our grammar school crush would one day be our spouse. Or, maybe we just wanted to know if we’d find career success.

“I don’t want to know. It’s all about surprises. If we knew what was coming it wouldn’t have the magnetism.”

Mark Liney, Group CEO
DesignStudio, a London-based agency

These novelty toys provided entertainment for our fresh minds, but they also pointed to a question that even adults obsess over: what will the future be like?

But this obsession becomes a bit of a paradox when we put a similar question to the adults in our study. Asked if creativity would drive the future of culture, our respondents often paused, chuckled and even implied that they’d look away from a crystal ball into our future (if crystal balls were indeed crystal balls).

“I don’t want to know. It’s all about surprises,” says Mark Liney, the group CEO at DesignStudio, a London-based agency. “If we knew what was coming it wouldn’t have the magnetism.”

Liney’s point about magnetism struck us, and it seems to be the lynchpin that most respondents felt would be missing if clairvoyance were indeed a sixth sense.

Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.”
Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.”

Who's really driving?

The creatives we spoke to suggested that culture and creativity aren’t mutually exclusive in creating the future. Each has their own role, but there is disagreement on which is truly at the wheel. What there was agreement on was the notion that both creativity and culture are hugely responsible for one another, and our future.

“Creativity has always shaped culture. I see that being a continuation of what has happened. I think that it will respond to culture and be incorporated in culture,” says Nick Marshall, designer director at Made Thought, a London and New York-based agency. “Creativity is really about sharing ideas with people. It will help the bravest minds and the biggest ideas actually be heard and taken on by other people in culture.”

What frequently emerged across our study was the theme of enabling the bravest minds to help their ideas be heard. This rang true where discussions around DEI, corporate governance and generally creating more equitable commercial and social outcomes were concerned. What resounded clearly was the belief that creativity will push us to evolve culture.

“Creativity is a huge cultural driver and creativity is what inspires people,” says Jolyon Varley, co-founder at OK COOL, a London-based social media agency. “Culture is in a total state of flux, so inspiration and flux is the future, as it always has been in the past, nothing's going to change.”

THE

METAVERSE

IT’S

ALREADY

HERE

In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom wrote a rather intriguing (read: slightly terrifying) paper titled “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” In it, he argues that we’ll 1) “go extinct before we reach a ‘post-human’ phase,” or 2) “we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.” That was more than twenty years ago, before Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et al.

Let’s face it, the Metaverse is here whether we believe we’re already living it. Those leading the most impactful brands of today and tomorrow would be remiss to not ask their creative agency partners how this emerging digital world might shape their strategy. But do those partners even know how to respond?

We put this and a few other questions to New York City-based agency Matte Projects. Here’s a conversation between AUFI and Matte Partner and Chief Creative Officer Matthew Rowean (MR), and Matte Director of Partner Development Jenna Trinchini (JT). They help us make sense of the Metaverse and its effect on humanity, economy and the creative services industry.

Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.”
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Outdoing wealth

What will inspiration and flux, derived from the current cultural moment, manifest for us? This is perhaps where the change that Varley is talking about comes in. Some of our respondents suggested inspiration and flux will undermine what we’ve been made to believe is the biggest indicator of a successful post-industrial economy: the accrual and display of wealth.

“I think we're probably going to move away from a world where culture is about wealth or wealth displaying,” says James Greenfield, CEO at KOTO, a London-based agency. “As we move closer and closer into these smaller groups of cultural importance where we're no longer all the same culture all the time, I think creativity will be incredibly important for identity within the tribes with which we position ourselves.”

This mention of tribes or positioning ourselves within groups that have shared sets of values indicates an almost tacit reverence for humankind’s origins. Where creativity has been used for the accrual and cultural proliferation of wealth, we’re now at a crucial moment. The creatives we spoke to suggest that creativity should be pointed at that which ails or vexes us, such as endemic social, environmental and economic issues. A few respondents even made it clear that the very survival of early human culture depended on one brilliant, seemingly impossible creative act.

“I know it’s cliché, but what was one of the first major creative acts? It was fire. That has shaped the way that everything in the world has evolved.”

Emily Jeffrey-Barrett, Founder
Among Equals, a London-based agency

Much like our forebears who somehow had the brilliance to create and harness a flame, we have to use creativity to create a place for culture to carry on.

Still, Jeffrey-Barrett suggests that asking how creativity will shape culture is a bit like trying to hold smoke. “It has always shaped culture and culture has always shaped creativity, because creativity is a response to demand,” she says.

Yes, demand — even a need for something as fundamental as warmth.

Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.”
Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.”

Conclusion

So much of our discussion about the future came down to this question: Can our culture give us enough freedom to suspend our disbelief and believe in things that may, at first, seem unbelievable? It has in the past. There were moments in history where humankind thought that it would require magic to harness fire, cross oceans, walk on the moon or achieve real-time video chat across tens of thousands of miles.
“We look for systems and processes that maximise room for magic.”

Charl Laubscher
Founder of Love+Money, a Melbourne-based agency

Will creativity be the very thing that helps us make room for magic; to believe in the unbelievable so our culture will always find a way? Perhaps that’s better to believe than it is to know.
Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.”
Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.” Part (2): “It’s Better Not Knowing.”
See what we do
Edition 01.2022

We turned 10 last year, and whilst considering what we could do to mark the occasion, a sub-title stood out on the office wall, reading: ‘creativity is the last competitive advantage’.

A discussion circled around that idea for some time — we run a business that effectively trades in the stuff, connecting brands looking for the best creative thinking with agencies who are able to offer it. We see, more than anyone, the resources market-leading businesses are putting behind partnering with the best creative minds — it's clearly recognised that harnessing it properly will bring real value, that it's now a must-have vs the nice-to-have it once was.

Some of the most in-demand agencies are booked up for 6 months at a time — the cost for top talent is at an all-time high — tech giants are offering banker-like six-figure salaries to designers and product leads who just a few years ago would be biting the hand off anyone who would pay them a comfortable five figure wage. And the management consultancies are even on board, buying up agencies and publishing thought-pieces titled 'The Business Value of Design' and 'Creating Creativity: A Leader’s Guide' (yikes).

It’s gold dust basically, yet ask someone to define what it is, exactly, and the conversation pings in a thousand different directions. Conscious of the fact the world doesn’t need another white paper - we’ll leave that to the aforementioned consulting groups - we’ve instead tasked ourselves with a mission to seek out and better understand how the world’s best creative minds think about the subject (creativity as a currency) and begin to explore what we can learn from their thinking. We’re keen to know how can we measure it, how it is evolving, how it impacts the world we live in and how it can be leveraged beyond business to address critical questions on race, culture, economy and the environment…

These are huge topics, of course, and whilst very much not wanting to over-claim, we believe we are a business that is truly best-placed to unpack them. Not because we believe we have the answers, but because the people we champion do. We sit at the intersection of the world’s most forward thinking businesses and a globally minded set of the creative 'top 1%’ — a sort of gateway to creative excellence — with relationships that afford us the simple but rare luxury of being able to ask the questions.

And that’s exactly what we’ve done. Through extensive surveying and countless hours of interviews with 50+ of the creative industry’s finest, we’ve started to paint a qualitative and quantitative picture of the current creative landscape. We used bleeding-edge AI tools to evaluate a myriad of different responses and a team of editors to extract themes and form takeaways that, we hope, will be useful to anyone who values creativity in the way we do; as the last true competitive advantage, and something we, and the world, could all do with more of.

Thank you to everyone involved in the making of this, we’re humbled by the time and energy people have been willing to give, and very much hope this inspires you in the way it has us.

Celebrating 10 and seeing this as very much the start,

The AUFI team