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In anticipation of our tenth anniversary next year, the Cambridge Strategy
Centre has been having a few small get-togethers with some of the people
who helped us with our very first jobs.
After the irresponsible-yet-zeitgeisty binge drinking, we have often
ended up thinking and talking about what has really changed in Britain
during the ten strange years since 1995; not so much the big political
and economic stuff, but more the gradual changes in attitude, spending
and business that give our lives their texture.
Just for fun, we’ve decided to try identify as many of the latter
type of changes as we could, in a series of ongoing lists. We thought
that you might like to share our musings, and so – here’s the
first. Please feel free to send disagreements, denials and threats of
libel action back to us by e mail – we’ll include them next
time round.
The Cambridge Strategy Centre team
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MIDDLE CLASS REVOLT
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Our
first change really began before 1995, but it informs so many of
the other shifts and phenomena that we had to include it. We’re
talking about the early 90s recession; the forgotten slump that
has never had sufficient attention paid to it, because the bit of
society worst affected was the traditional middle class, and the
middle class a) lacks drama and b) is not likely to complain loudly
about its poverty for fear of what the neighbours might think.
Looking back, don’t you reckon that the managerial
redundancies of that time were what finally broke the old contract
between company and middle-class employee – ie the promise
that if you worked hard and kept your head down, you were guaranteed
a job until it was time to collect your carriage clock and pension?
Once we’d been repossessed or had negative equity, we were
never going to think the same way about that mortgage burden. And
once the managerial job for life and the attendant securities had
gone, no one was ever going to think about the long term in the
same way again.
It meant that loads of us began looking at our lives
and asking what it was all actually for; not exactly a social
revolution, but surely something that made some employers think
about how they did, or did not, motivate their staff. In the late
1990s and early 00s merger-culture and the pensions crisis were
codas to all this, and the old suburban middle class went the same
way that the old traditional working class went in the 1980s. How
many really mourned its passing? That’s another question…
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IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT
THE TIME
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NOW |
| dot.com entrepreneurialism |
Public sector consultancy |
| Finding new markets |
Empowering your people
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| One minute silences |
Two minute silences (Except
at football matches where they last 20 seconds) |
| Brand |
Service |
| Vision |
Honesty |
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IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT
THE TIME II
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| THEN |
NOW |
| Leading The Revolution
by Gary Hamel |
From Good To Great
by Jim Collins |
| Nike, Sony, Virgin |
Nike, Apple, Easy |
| Wondering if you could vote Labour |
Wondering if you could vote Tory |
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KEEPING UP APPEARANCES
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We
know it’s important to make an outward show of dynamism and
all that, but could we be making some mistakes in the realm of corporate
identity? Two questions we have asked ourselves:
A. If uniforms are meant to express an identity,
what does is say about the brand if the uniform is cheap and badly-fitting?
B. Aren’t those slogans only a good idea if
your business has something original to say about itself? Surely
a logistics company boasting that it is “Delivering value”
is stating the obvious? And even more surely, a postal company saying
“We deliver!” is just making a really crap pun. “Just
do it” is inspired. “Working to do the very best we can”
is bollocks, and we all secretly know it.
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IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT
THE TIME III
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| THEN |
NOW |
| Finding new markets |
Saturating your existing
market |
| Blue sky thinking |
Delivering sales |
| Sun and Mirror |
Star and Mail |
| Drugs |
Drink |
| Bosnia |
Iraq |
| Michael Jackson |
Beyonce |
| OJ |
Jacko |
| The exclusive department store |
The little shop offering an edit
of choices |
| Terrorism*** |
Terrorism |
***The year of the Sarin
attacks in Tokyo, Oklahoma bombing, first NATO bombing
in Bosnia and the alleged discovery of secret missiles in Iraq? 1995. |
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MENTAL ECOLOGY
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Predicted phenomenon
for the 2010s; organised protest against constant media noise, and
a concern for mental wellbeing as we are confronted with ever more
mass media and blare from internet enabled phones, PDAs and TV screens
in public places. Think of it as an information-age take on the
idea of environmentalism. If you like the idea, you’ll love
the people here:
www.adbusters.org
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| ©2005 The Cambridge Strategy Centre www.camstrat.com |
