,
You speak of building culture, slowly. But the question remains: Does a brand build culture, or does a culture shape a brand?
It’s a mixture of both. Brand is able to build culture, but the brand is always informed and shaped by the culture that surrounds it. It’s a constant feedback loop between the two – which is why it’s so important for brands to be founded on clear insights and observations.
The brands that we help create are really informed by their context. We don’t impose anything that doesn’t belong, and will drop anything that feels irrelevant to the brand or the region – there’s an art to understanding and responding to context – history, heritage, behaviours, dynamics, macro trends and even Governmental strategies – to define the seed of a brand and its purpose.
Once this context has been established, we can then help shape and guide the direction of the business within it. We look to the future, and then carry this end goal back through – making brand the lens through which everything is viewed. Brand is able to inform culture, by steering everything towards a central aligning purpose. When the culture within a brand is united, then the brand can transform the world around it.
For example, when working with the Louvre Abu Dhabi, we didn’t want the project to feel like a spaceship landing from France with no sense of belonging in the region. We worked closely with internal and external audiences to find where it fit within the social and cultural makeup of Abu Dhabi. As a result, we created a brand that was not only strong, but one that encouraged a wider cultural shift that helped to build a museum-going nation.
You’ve worked with clients in the Middle East for a number of years now. The region is a very rich tapestry of different tribes, histories and heritages, how can you keep working consistently under one parasol when the goalposts are shifting and diversified?
The Middle East is such a melting-pot of ideas, nationalities, locals and expats, and the region has become great at maintaining a clear set of values as a result – those of tolerance, a pioneering attitude and agility.
No matter who we’re working with in the region, whether that be with the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi,guiding Etisalat from national teleco to international techco e&, building entirely new cities, or partnering with governments to define the positioning of the entire region, these overarching values must be evident and fundamentally drive the narrative.
Agility, decisiveness and the ability to make big decisions very quickly are central to the region. It’s why highly ambitious projects are made possible, and growth is so supercharged. The structure we have at Wiedemann Lampe lends itself well to the responsiveness and dynamism needed with these projects.
We’re incredibly lean, so we’re both deeply involved in every project. There are no bottlenecks caused by layers in management. We’ve found our working relationship with teams in the Middle East to be a very successful one in this regard, as shifting goalposts are something we’re always prepared for, and have the agility to navigate.
You seek to help organizations fulfil their “cultural purpose” to make a bigger impact on the world around them. How do you define cultural purpose, and how can organizations in the region find and actualize theirs away from formulaic Corporate Social Responsibility actions?
Cultural purpose is both internal and external. It’s the internal compass that guides how an organisation connects with culture and communities on every level, and then how that translates to the changing outside world.
We think about what the organisation would look like once all the monetary transactions have been deducted – the spiritual essence. How does it act on the global stage, strengthen and engage local communities, and even connect person-to-person?
And it’s more than just writing a lofty purpose statement that is never realised, we work to ensure organisations understand how they’re relevant to people at every stage working towards that goal – so all stakeholders can really feel that cultural purpose, from the top-level ideals all the way down to their day-to-day tasks and habits.
For example, when working with IMI,we helped them create a new vision, positioning, identity and HQ experience for a company that was full of optimism, drive, empathy and understanding. We wanted to strive for a more connected world, with greater compassion across borders, cultures and viewpoints – using media to open minds, unite people and enrich lives.
This vision laid the foundation for us to support IMI’s underlying organisational culture and expression, integrating these principles across all levels of the company – enabling the different businesses and people under the IMI umbrella to maintain their individual identities while also sharing a wider culture.
The quote goes: “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” You talk about building for the future, instead of focusing on transient trends in your work. Why bother? And for which upcoming generation?
Something that drives us as a business is the question: if you can solve it in a lifetime, are you thinking big enough?
There is a risk when focusing on innovation that you’ll become trapped in chasing short term goals or jumping on trends that may actually be destructive to the long-term vision of an organisation. That’s why, for us, it’s so important to look ahead to the next 50 or 100 years and see these brands (and the people working for them) as the stewards for the future.
Our goal isn’t to just build a profitable brand or organisation, it’s to help build prospering societies and nations. We’re currently working on cities that won’t be completed until 2050, and being part of that larger narrative is both very exciting and humbling for us and our team – using our skillset to build and support the structure and design of the future, unpicking what it could be and what it could look like.
Businesses in the Middle-East have grown at a staggering pace. Several of them were family-owned. How can multi-generation businesses grow, and still remain focused on familial and societal values?
We define culture as the handing down of values and beliefs from one generation to the next. In an increasingly dynamic global landscape, businesses, technology and society are changing at a rapid pace.
So, that’s why it’s now more important than ever for us to preserve these values. We call this intangible heritage. A lot of brand awareness comes from the moments when you can clearly demonstrate the value a brand or company can bring to the local community. This could be anything from acts of kindness, the creation of facilities for locals, or just driving in-country value.
Building these values into the organisational culture is where we can help multi-generational businesses grow, while maintaining these cultural narratives and their relevance to the Middle East.
For businesses to grow while still maintaining their cultural narratives, the first step is to articulate who they are and what they want the next generation to think of them. What do they want them to connect with, and equally, what do they want them to leave behind?
That means creating the space for that discussion with a variety of voices from all levels – not just the C-suite, but the customer-facing staff, admin workers, researchers, designers, strategists.
