Your video background is your brand

What does your working space, and what you choose to reveal about it say about you?

We are in the business of brand building, we know how crucial it is to consider what is on show as well as what is said or done.  You will be judged on your appearance whether or not this is even fair.  And now, you will be judged on your background (this might not be conscious but is an instinctive System 1 thinking judgement,) whether or not this is fair too.

Most people I speak to on video call reveal their actual background.  In my own case this is a disorganized but very wide-ranging collection of books that actually don’t belong to me but to other family members, and a mantelpiece cluttered with mementoes.  My colleague Claudine has been in front of a steely wall all week this week, and my CEO Kate’s collection of cookery books, which she frequently appears in front of in our weekly Town Hall meetings, has sparked curiosity about her favourite chefs.

The decision to use a fake background speaks volumes too of course.  I was on one call where the background of an office façade was so realistic that I assumed that the participant was a key worker – but he just hadn’t wanted to reveal his room.  If you do want a fake background then there’s a rich assortment here from the BBC.  Then there are people whose living space just make you envious.  I have been told of one CEO whose palatial home is so aspirational (there are statues, obviously expensive real art and pillars) that his team recommended that he relocate to a smaller room in the house to stay empathetic with his more junior staffers.    There is a new dimension to bringing your whole self to work, as we now get to nose around each other’s homes on a daily basis.

Anecdotally there seems to be some gender difference as well as the obvious difference between those people in a one bed flat or sharing space with others and people fortunate enough to be able to settle in a regular make-shift office area or a fit for purpose study.

More women than men (however senior they are) seem to be working from bedrooms.  More mums than dads seem to be interrupted by young children.  Many mums have disclosed their worry and guilt about letting home schooling standards slip.  This additional mental load is documented in the Economist’s briefing on the 90% economy that they are calling the “new ‘nearly normal’” where they write: “Women are more likely to take care of home-schooling and entertainment of bored children, meaning their careers suffer more than men’s.  Research finds that the productivity of female economists has fallen relative to male ones, as measured by the production of research papers, since the pandemic began… the growing gender divide in productivity points to the final big problem with the 90% economy: that it is unfair.”

Although it is difficult to complain that the current way of working is harder than before (given that the comparisons with ICU workers leave us with nothing to complain about) it is true that day long video calls are tiring.  It may be true that it is easier on introverts than extroverts as introverts don’t need so much stimulus from others.  However Direct Line Group MD of marketing and digital Mark Evans pointed out to me recently: “There’s extra ‘cognitive load’. Your brain is having to work much harder to interpret the reactions of other people in the many mini screens in the meeting since you don’t have the usual cues from face-to-face mannerisms and micro-gestures. Simultaneously your brain is constantly interpreting your own image staring back at you. It’s no surprise that it’s exhausting”

There are some upsides to video conferencing.  There’s no geographical barrier, I have relished calls with colleagues in China and San Francisco being the norm.    For those whose emotions are an open book, you can hide your immediate reactions by turning off your camera which sometimes, as we point out in The Glass Wall book, can be helpful when you need a balanced perspective to the emotional CoronaCoaster of the working week.

This tactical fall back might be necessary, but what is needed above all is openness, looking each other in the eye, reaching out to each other, and authentic leadership through these most difficult times.

We are going through a very large jerk.

There are roughly two theories about how evolution works.  Charles Darwin, who wrote the book on evolution, was a believer in gradualism, slow change over millennia.  For many years this was regarded as scientific fact.  But if this was the case you would expect to see a record in fossils of small incremental change within a species.  But fossil records don’t always back this theory.  Darwin explained this by saying that there were gaps in the records.

One hundred and so years later, in 1972, evolutionary scientists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge suggested that Darwin had got this wrong.  They considered that the gaps in the records werent’ gaps but were real.  That not everything evolves gradually but that long periods of little change are disrupted by sudden huge change.  They termed this mode of evolution “punctuated equilibrium.” This means that species are generally stable, changing little for millions of years.  This leisurely pace is “punctuated” by a rapid burst of change that results in a new species.

After a huge scientific row, this was resolved by most experts into an understanding that both gradualism and punctuated equilibrium were true.  This became known as the theory of creeps and jerks.

We are going through a big jerk now in business.  Many business practices that might have changed over a period of months or even years have changed and changed suddenly.  Change that might have taken 5 years to bed in is happening fast, over a period of weeks.

One obvious example of this is the way we are all now conducting meetings.   Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Hangouts have all been available for meetings for years.  Conducting a global meeting used to mean jumping on a plane.  Now any of us could be in a meeting with colleagues anywhere in the world in the next half an hour.  Now we are all working globally.  One senior exec has said that he is having more meetings now than he ever has because the team are usually at airports, out to dinner or on a plane.  Now, with everyone working from home, its easier to arrange meetings and in some ways its easier to get closer to colleagues and team members than ever.

It is now well recorded that in some respects media behaviours and attitudes are changing at a widespread and unanticipated scale and speed.   Some commentators are saying this is human evolution turbo-charged.

Darwin also said that it’s not the strongest or the most intelligent that survive, but those most responsive to change.  The ability to pivot, to react and to take advantage of the opportunities of this crisis is currently crucial.  This is easy to say. No-one currently knows when or how we are going to come out of this.  It isn’t going to be easy or quick for economies to recover, for new business models to stabilise.

This isn’t like previous crises.  We are living through history being made.  What happens next isn’t about returning to normal any time soon.  A new normal will emerge, but for now we are operating in the new abnormal.

Now is the time to begin to re-imagine what the new abnormal means for your business.

As industry expert and WPP global president of business intelligence Brian Wieser says: “Now is a time to re-invent, to rethink, to optimise the forest not just the trees, a moment of reset the growth agenda to come out stronger than ever.”

The goal, tough as it might seem right now, must be to frame the new developments, and tech and digital adoption as an opportunity for the business and to get closer to customers.   This is what leaders need to focus on – what can we do to reframe and re-imagine and not just what must we cut.

Jerks are painful, more painful than creeps, but teams that are resilient enough to navigate them will get through these difficult times best.

The long and the short needs some additions: the medium term and the very long.

The ad industry and marketing is familiar with the collective wisdom of the IPA best practice papers summed up by Binet and Field’s paper The Long and the Short of It where the importance of balancing short term tactics with long term strategy is emphasized.  (Initial findings recommended balancing 40% short term with 60% long term in terms of budget, although later findings are more nuanced by industry, recommending that some sectors, for instance retail, long term effort should take up 70% of spend.)

In 2020, in current circumstances, these rules of thumb are tested to the limit.  The necessity of short term measures may well over rule carefully laid plans.  Longer term branding activity, planned for months, will, in some cases, be replaced with brands communicating how they are doing their bit, with messages reflecting the current crisis or by CSR.  Short term activity may focus on ecommerce as discussed in this assessment of the current circumstances in Campaign last week.

One senior marketer has reflected that it is relatively easy to plan for the short term.  In this quarter, maybe next quarter, you do what you must.  Equally it is relatively simple to write strategies for the long term, for when things get back to some kind of normal, for next year.  The tricky issue is planning for the medium term.  For later in Q3 and Q4.  When the unknown unknowns are dominant factors and for which there is no precedent.  Despite what some opinion formers are saying this is not like a recession.  It is not like Sars.  It is unprecedented in our lifetimes.  So a focus on scenario planning for the rest of this year, is crucial.  The relative certainties that managers are accustomed to are impossible to count on.  But businesses that only focus on the short term can be expected to suffer more than those that can find the opportunity to think medium term.  Now is the time to ask questions that include what the balance of brand versus performance media spend should be;  the medium term outlook for the sector; whether the brand should respond directly to the pandemic and how this should look.

So as well as the long and the short of it, current planning should include the medium term.

There is also the very long term to consider.  Many businesses are focused understandably on surviving 2020 and the current unprecedented pressures.  At this time however there is another crucial consideration.  It isn’t just about the balance sheet for 2020.  It is about the shape of the business for the very long term, about preserving jobs, about caring for people, about putting people first.  Now is a testing time for leaders.  Now is the time not to lose sight of humanity for the sake of short term kpis.  Edelman and LinkedIn have just published a new guide to building consumer trust in uncertain times.  In this, Rob Norman comments:  “If we fight to only minimize investor losses, the consequential loss in other parts of the business and eventually to the underlying assets, will be catastrophic”.

This is an important opportunity for businesses and brands to build affinity and earn loyalty for the long term.  Empirical decision making has a flaw at a time like this.  There has never been a time like this before.  We are in the midst of a black swan event.  Brands should think medium term and longest term now and put people, their employees, their customers and the nation at the heart of their decision making.

We’re in survival mode.  And this affects each of us in different ways.  A recent assessment of how consumers are feeling includes this list: Anxiety; Isolation; Loneliness; Boredom; Thankfulness; Community spirit; Slow Living; Personal growth.  And, of course, it describes how we are all feeling too.

There’s been a faster transformation in how we work than anyone in charge of transformation would have imagined possible in normal times.  As the weeks go by we can expect more change, and more necessary adjustments.  Some of these will be professional.  Some personal.

This week on the MediaCom Connected Podcast we heard from Rupert McPetrie, ceo of our China office.  They shut the office on January 23^rd for the Chinese New Year, and then could not re-open.  Now, eight weeks on, the restrictions are gradually relaxing: offices are re-opening as too are restaurants, bars and shops.  Rupert told us, live from the Shanghai office, that the first two weeks of the lockdown were about managing short term issues. During the closure the transformation in use of tech has been huge. At the same time as technology has become much more vital, contrastingly, so too the importance of human connections has become more clear.

Everyone who works in an office normally is adjusting now to the very new normal of running business and their lives literally at the same time.  Many working mums are familiar with this, its one of the shocks, in fact, of returning to work after maternity leave.  It is now something that everyone is experiencing who has children or a parent or even their partner at home.  Rupert said that there were three phases of the virus.  Anxiety, Analysis and Action.  We’re constantly going through the loop of these three phases with each new bit of news.  We are all coping with it differently.

Brian Cox was on Desert Island Discs this week.  (One of the ways that I cope with anxiety is listening to the shows on radio 4 that I have been hearing all my life).  The award winning actor talked about how important it is to stay in touch with yourself when you are in survivalist mode.  He tells young actors to keep a picture of themselves as a child with them as they work, as “really that’s who you are”.  I’d add to this, you’re all the ages you have ever been.  So sometimes you’re the frightened child who wants a parent to set everything straight, sometimes you’re the rebellious teenager who wants to break all the rules and sometimes, sometimes you’re the grown up professional, or the leader of your community at work or at home.  Be prepared to switch randomly from state to state during this current crisis.

One powerful woman has told me that she has found much more time for herself during the last few days.  She normally lives for work and is ruled by her head.  In recent times she’s found time to breathe, to connect with her whole self, and with her children.

Others have said the same, parents have noted that they have been able to have lunch with their young children every day, which normally only happens when they are on holiday.

Others are connecting with nature, grateful for the sunshine and sky visible out of their windows.

None of us expected this level of stress and worry.  Perhaps empathy has become easier for us, the divides of Brexit forgotten for the time being, as we are all much more in the same boat.  Our gratitude for those in the front line in the NHS demonstrably pulling the nation together in each week’s Clap for Carers.  (And let’s hope that this continues in the longterm).

We will all have different ways to find the serenity to survive these difficult circumstances.  As the famous prayer says: ““Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”.

International Women’s Day is a very important milestone in the year.  And this year the executive director of the United Nations Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka has said that this is a massive year for gender equality.

On the days around the official date I am reminded of the issues that women face worldwide.  That for many women in the world problems about equality in business are very low on the scale of their worries.  Millions of girls worldwide do not have the equal right to education.  Many women do not have the right to work outside the home.  And violence against women and girls is one of the slowest of the UN’s Millennial goals in terms of progress.  It affects one in three women worldwide.

Violence against women and girls of course is also a problem in the so called first world, in the “WEIRD” nations (Western, Educated, Internet enabled, Rich and Democratic), everywhere in the UK, possibly affecting someone you work with.

When we talk about gender inequality at work, we usually don’t mean violence.  And that is good, but the unrelenting prevalence of violence outside the workplace highlights how much there still is to do for women and girls to feel safe.

According to government statistics in the UK, 1 in 4 women will experience domestic abuse and 1 in 5 sexual assault during her lifetime.

The Crime Survey of England and Wales estimates 20% of women and 4% of men have experienced some type of sexual assault since the age of 16, equivalent to an estimated 3.4 million female victims and 631,000 male victims.  An estimated 3.1% of women (510,000) and 0.8% of men (138,000) aged 16-59 experienced sexual assault in the last year.

So the first reason that I am not writing about equality for women in the workplace this IWD is because I think it is important to highlight that we should be thinking beyond the inequalities of the workplace.

The second reason is inclusiveness.

Much of the publicity that is generated at this time of year is focused on what men are still getting wrong at work.  There’s new, and undoubtedly valuable research into what men and women find acceptable at work from King’s College London.  Headlines include the finding that one in ten men think that it is OK to display material of a sexual nature at work.   Hideous.  These headlines will make many good men shudder with the association and indeed feel either guilty on behalf of men they haven’t even met or condemned by their gender.

For my next book I (and my co-authors) have been interviewing lots of them.  They refer frequently to feeling as though there’s a “witch hunt” or that being a straight white man is being part of an endangered species.  (It’s worth pointing out that there isn’t and it isn’t of course.  The victims of the actual witch hunts were those who didn’t fit contemporary gender norms and often were middle aged women who wouldn’t conform).

Whilst some of you might not have much sympathy for those who can be characterised as “male, pale and stale”, or a “diversity disaster zone” (as the awesome Richard Huntingdon puts it), there are many men in the workplace who might look like they’re riding high but in fact are not.

There are many who feel displaced or who don’t fit or don’t approve of patriarchal masculine norms.  The under 25s, those from disadvantaged backgrounds, BAME, GBTQ+, with disabilities, with neurodiversity, with mental health issues.  Feminists of every gender.

The final reason for not blogging on IWD is that there were a multitude of great points of view including this one from Shelly Zalis on the role men can play in driving equality in the workplace.

his is not a time for more divisions, for finger pointing.  It is a time for inclusiveness.

IWD’s theme this year is each for equal.  It should, and must go both ways, indeed every, way.