Experimenta

“The cobbler’s children have no shoes,” right? Hmmm… Kind of. Experimenta, a Co-lab Creative Consultancy, is a brand-new business. In it, I offer my consulting services as a Fractional Creative Design Leader (which means titles like executive creative director, brand design leader, head of design strategy, you name it). I also take select Branding, Design, and Creative projects through a hyper-human approach devoid of another “proprietary process” - and generate kick*ss work in the end. And I offer workshops, training, and other mediums to reignite the creative center in teams doing creativity for a living. And… For now, I’m also the content creator, business development, copywriter, editor, you name it. My positions are various in this new business of mine. Not to mention all the other functions I’m taking in through my latest personal project I’ve been collaborating with Brandi Parker on (to be announced next week!). Do I do a perfect job creating content for it? Absolutely not. I try my best to write and engage on LinkedIn (despite it not being perfect, as you all know), and I’m also doing my best to keep my Instagram alive. On LinkedIn, I post mostly from my profile pointing to my business because a) it’s me, and b) I don’t feel right talking about “we do this, we do that” unless the context is real about being more than me. But for this post, I must say “we”. We — Derek Hollister, Madeline Pellman, Sarah Kostyal, and Kristi-Lynne Dahlgren have been working on my brand for a few months. Sarah Anne Ward is jumping in to bring it to life through experimental and playful photography (I'm so excited) and thus is a clear example of what a Co-Lab means: separate creative entities, united through a shared purpose and aligned in our humanity, creating from a place of sustainable creativity that is leading to a magical universe Experimenta is bringing to life. Curious? Follow Experimenta’s Instagram account for more!

Personal announcement: I figured it all out. I know absolutely everything there is to be known about running my own business at Experimenta, a Co-lab Creative Consultancy. And that's one 🙈 big 🙉 lie 🙊 . But I did learn to be very clear about a few very important things in these past 6 weeks since going on my own: 0️⃣ The truth I'm working from is very relatable from all the conversations I've had: a lot about the way the creative industry and business models run is f*ck*d (for clients, agencies, creatives, everyone involved) and we all know it (even though we might not talk openly about it). It can be daunting and overwhelming. By learning how to save myself from burnout, depletion and nearly leaving this industry altogether — no hacks included — I saw I could create something I wish existed before. 1️⃣ Many don't believe me when I say Experimenta doesn’t have a “proprietary process”. On purpose. But there is non-negotiable: empathy. Not just a fluffy word, a user or consumer thing — we practice it towards our project team first. Experimenta is powered by teams called roundtables that create project team culture while working on the thing we’re working on. It's not proprietary, but it isn't easy to do. It takes a lot of practice. *That* is the secret sauce toward better work (for real). Empathy in; empathy out. 2️⃣ I was ‘burying the lead’. I've become more and more clear that in the creative project work method, we learn, roadmap and prototype concurrently from day 1. Words on decks don’t paint a picture. And I've spent AGES in VERY long processes to get a deck together. Want a huge 8+ month long brand architecture, or creative idea deep-dive, or positioning work that gives you a deck? Well, sorry, that’s not our jam. Are you willing to get uncomfortable to get theory matching a creative expression at the end? Cool, we’re in! We want to make things that can be used! That’s a must: roadmap and prototype while building team culture. To… Make work. Not decks. 3️⃣ I have zero hacks here. And people love hacks. Shortcuts. They buy the 30-day protein-muscle-monster thing to skip lifting weights toward building muscles for months and years. We need our humanity to make creative choices; we need our humanity to empathize with other humans using the stuff we make. No hacks. No magic ta-da moment. All humans, to humans. The funniest part for me? None of this is exactly groundbreaking. It's often quite simple to explain. But in the sea of process-in-process-wrapped-in-proprietary-processes, it's amazing what simplicity can do in breaking through the noise.

In today’s edition of “WTF is happening in marketing”, let’s have a look at Kellogg Company’s CEO Gary Pilnick during a live interview at CNBC: “Advertising cereal for dinner" is a way to deal with the steep cost of groceries right now," Pilnick said. "If you think about the cost of cereal for a family versus what they'd otherwise do, that's going to be much more affordable.” As a fluent English speaker who is *exhausted* of corporate dialects, I’m a big fan of translating marketing English to plain human English. And as the founder of Experimenta, a Co-lab Creative Consultancy, a business born out of my values, with Expanded Empathy as one of the key principles-in-action, I’m a big fan of humanizing what we use in these insane corporate dialects. Rephrasing Pilnick’s remarks: Human beings (not consumers or users: HUMAN BEINGS) we see everyday on the street, in our jobs, in real life, are living with much less money and resources than what they need to make it. They are lacking the means to purchase basic groceries, they’re struggling to pay their basic bills, and this leaves the average American consumer often helpless — as we already know they struggle to make good nutrition habits stick in food deserts and nutrition-less grocery aisles. A CEO goes on autopilot and says what Gary said... Not good. He probably truly didn’t mean any harm, but it wasn’t good. Imagine not having enough money to pay for rent AND groceries and having to choose one. Imagine fearing you’re the next on the layoff choopping block. That feeling is called FEAR. Humans are living with it everyday. We can allow ourselves the feelings of sadness for those who can’t make a real meal happen and have to resort to highly processed grain cereal - so they can eat SOMETHING instead of NOTHING. And we should use our anger and frustration toward this even being a reality as an engine for change, so that instead of seeing “an opportunity to expand usage occasion” (read: sell more of the stuff you make) out of “a shift in consumer purchasing power” (read: real humans struggling to make ends meet), we can move towards finding real ways to solve the problem. Connecting on a human level with what’s going on is uncomfortable - what’s going on is uncomfortable. Nobody wishes they had to eat cereal for dinner because they don’t have enough money to buy food. I genuinely appreciate the fact that the word Empathy is more commonly seen in corporate environments, the term “empathetic leadership” exists in those places and that (regardless of it’s understood or not) the idea of “empathizing with the user and consumer” isn’t completely alien. It’s time for us to actually practice empathy. Feel empathy. There are pros and cons. Pros: you will truly allow yourself to put yourself in someone’s shoes. The cons: it will feel really shitty sometimes to feel that reality punching you in the face.

Are you reading your screen? Congrats! You’re a very fancy-looking mammal looking at a very fancy-looking painting on the cave. I guess this means I’m a fancy-looking mammal painting said cave, in this scenario. Consumers? They’re humans. Your remote team? They’re humans. Your boss? Human. Customers? Also humans. That buyer from that retailer? Mmm… human. The people attending Expo West, SXSW and other events? You might have guessed: humans!* Humans are mammals in fancy-looking caves (look around you) looking really sharp in wearables, clothes and jewelry. Deep inside, you and I are still all pre-programmed with instincts that the technological evolution of the last few centuries didn’t overwrite: two of them are survival and need for belonging. You might have clicked on this because someone you know reacted and liked (need for belonging). You might have been numb-scrolling through LinkedIn because you feel emotionally exhausted this week at work (survival instinct: flee is a threat response). You might have a different or similar opinion to someone’s comment or post, but you might also filter how you express it because LinkedIn is where all your professional network exists (need for belonging). Regardless of what you do, I hope you have a beautiful rest of your week. And I also hope you remember this while interacting around your caves with your fellow mammals - or should I say your environments with other human beings? — *Unless they’re robots with AI consciousness, in which case we have bigger problems to care about. 🤖