I absolutely love what Kristen Cavallo, Global CEO of MullenLowe, posted to LinkedIn this week, tying her company’s modernized logo to an ethos that actually means something.
An excerpt:
Say hello to the octopus, with a life span of 330 million years - since before the dinosaur. Why? How?
Octopi are only species to routinely edit their own DNA. That ability to self edit is their superpower. They exist not because they are smart or formidable. There have been other smart and formidable species. They died.
Octopi still exist because they change.
Turns out the most innovative brands grow at 2x the pace of the peers. And the ones that continue to change pick UP the pace - they grow 7x faster than their competitors. (Kantar)
Shouldn't that impact how we measure brand health? Why build KPIs around brand recognition, linkage etc. I can recognize you and still not care. When it comes to growth....Interesting > Familiarity ; Elasticity > Consistency.
After reading this, I got to thinking about why octopi are super evolvers. For anyone who’s watched My Octopus Teacher, you know that an octopus — without a protective shell — floats about as a soft delicious entrée for many other sea creatures. So they evolve because their whole survival relies on intelligence and inventiveness (each of their eight arms has a mini brain, for God’s sake).
Let’s come out of the ocean for a sec and move onto land. Those who evolve most here are also those who’ve had to. Caitlin Moran’s excellent book “More Than a Woman,” explains how women have taken pages out of the male playbook and learned from them. And they’ve done that on top of their own inherent skills and gifts. Yet men rarely do the same. Why learn from other genders when you’re sitting on top? And it is this posture of completeness — of incuriosity — that has caused so many men, and the companies they lead, to stagnate. Anywhere that women are lapping men (hello, college admissions) tracks back to status quo stasis.
Status Quo’nt Leadership
The more that those leading at the top don’t represent the status quo — women, Black leaders, LGBTQ leaders, differently abled leaders (who my friend Liz Jackson calls “the original life hackers”), the more the entire ecosystem of a company shifts. From comfort to courage. From default to innovative. From devolution to… evolution.
Until next time, remember that culture is the new creativity.