Let's hear it for a bit of old-fashioned craft
So I was washing the dishes a while back and the radio was on – no wait, let me provide some context ...
My boss sent me to Applied Green two weeks ago. What? You know, green things (they're the new black if you're the kind of person always in search of the next black) done practically. Basically, this was a conference where a bunch of business doers and thinkers – David Hieatt from Howies, Marc Sands from the Guardian, Eugenie Harvey, conference stalwart Russell Davies and others – told delegates that thinking green as a business wasn't good enough any longer. We drones in firms need to act green and – this is the bad news – do it yesterday.
I won't preach at you or bore you with stats (something the Applied Green speakers avoided), but I will say that the conference was scary. Scary terrifying. You see the climate change debate is over. Green is not just about global warming or damage to the planet. It's about sustainability. About what we're going to leave behind for future generations. Take cod. In the North Sea overfishing has caused a perilous decline in stocks to the point where many scientists say it will never recover. No more cod in the North Sea. Yet the fishermen resent, complain about and get around the few restrictions which ensure there are some stocks left for them to fish in years to come. Madness? Then what about the rest of us. Throughout the 20th century we've been treating the world like we treat our cod (I don't mean covering it in batter and lobbing it in the deep fat fryer - mmm ... planet and chips) – I mean plundering it in expectation that it will forever renew itself as if it was some magical porridge pot. Everyone from me and you to global publishing houses are soon going to have to act in a way that does not have a deleterious effect on tomorrow. (Okay, I lied about the not preaching, but really once you look into this stuff you'd have to be some kind of nincompoop petrolhead not to get evangelical.)
What I liked about this conference was encapsulated in a line from – and I don't quite believe I'm going to write this – Leonardo DiCaprio's new film The Eleventh Hour. ‘What a great time to be born. What a great time to be alive. Because this generation gets to completely change the world …’ Why? Because, whether we like it or not, we are about to reverse half a millennium (in the west at least) devoted to MORE: more choice, more product, more power, more consumption, more us. Because more can't continue indefinitely. We all need to change. We need to think about LESS. Less plunder, less product, less consuming, less waste. Of course, in any sales department less is a very dirty word.
Which leads me back to washing my dishes and the radio. I was listening to Radio 4's In Business. The programme was devoted to the subject of craft. They were talking about how companies in pursuit of profit and pleasing their share holders can easily forget the very people their business aims to serve i.e. those who provide its income: the customer. They cited M&S in the '90s as an example of a firm that forgot it was supplying good quality merchandise to its customers and instead focussed on profitability and share price. The result? It's customers deserted in droves and the company had to spend several years rebuilding its reputation. Richard Sennett argued that firms had to return to the old-fashioned idea of craft. Craft means being creative, being very good at something and this satisfies two key groups: the staff and the customers. The staff enjoy the creative challenge of producing their best work (instead of being mere money-drones) while the customers will queue up to enjoy the fruits of their labours.
Applied Green got me wondering whether better craft might just mean fewer but better books. (The book industry continues to churn out year on year more new books than ever before.) Which means the old book trade mantra of pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap isn't going to cut it in a green future. Publishers are now printing books on FSC accredited paper i.e. the trees cut down are from well-managed forests. But it would be preferable not to be carting around the world so many bits of dead wood. Among the various madnesses that possessed the human race in the 20th century, our rampant consumerism is perhaps the one that future generations will look back on with most perplexity. Why did they need so much low-quality stuff? Why didn't they demand less stuff that was simply better-made and longer-lasting?
Aren't the best books the ones that we re-read or lend to our friends?
Colin Brush, Senior Copywriter
..........................................................................
..............................................................................
Comments