Emotion by Design

emotion by design: the ability to create stories, images and experiences that make people feel that even their most audacious dreams are possible to achieve... It can be practiced by and applied to all types of organisations, teams, and leaders [Greg Hoffman]

How do you find insights within your sector to express a truth about society in a profound, emotionally provocative, and bonding way?

Greg Hoffman spent his storied 28-year career at Nike leading some of the most famous campaigns in history. Using his passion for design and intuition for storytelling, he drew insights from the world of sport to create compelling narratives about society that spark deep emotion, by design.

His recent book Emotion by Design is "... a celebration of creativity and a call to arms for brand builders to rediscover the human element in forming bonds."

In an age characterised by individualism, difference and division, the ability to authentically and emotionally connect with your audience, and empower them to connect with each other, is a kind of superpower that builds movements.

Hoffman was adopted and raised by two white parents in a small, nearly all-white suburb of Minneapolis. As a mixed-race child, he experienced direct racism in school and used drawing to escape from reality; it allowed him to momentarily escape the world as it is, and envision a world as it could be.

Many years later, Hoffman was sat in a weekly Nike brand-marketing staff meeting as Nike's Chief Marketing Officer. Completely unannounced, the great Mike Krzyzewski (Coach K) walked in with an impromptu team-talk for the team:

"Your advantage is your eyes", he said; brand marketers take the insights and truths that others miss and "reveal those insights and truths to audiences through the means of images, films, campaigns, architecture, an products."

All organisations have brands, whether they are from the private sector, public sector or civil society. But few organisations fulfil their own potential to create emotion among their audiences through revealing insight with creativity and storytelling.

This is particularly true in the age of social media where algorithms incentivise organisations to produce high volumes of average quality content to secure momentary attention in the form of social media reactions, rather than building movements built on stories and high quality insightful content.

We all have imaginations, we can all be creative, and I think there is much we can learn from storytellers like Hoffman to unleash the potential of our own organisations to create emotion and lasting bonds.

The creativity that empowered Hoffman to envision a different world when he was racially abused at school is the same power that enabled him to lead one of the greatest brands in history to tell insightful stories, that incisively cut through in moments of deep societal pain to create movements - not just moments - for societal change.

Back to the opening question... How do you find insights within your sector to express a truth about society in a profound, emotionally provocative, and bonding way? There are two parts to this. The first is the discovering the insight part, and the second is about expressing insight in a profound and emotionally provocative way.

Discovering insight

"Moving people on an emotional level starts from a sharp insight" - Greg Hoffman

Discovering insight requires your team to see something others miss.

Discovering insight therefore requires diverse and inclusive teams with an intuition for empathetically understanding others.

Building diverse teams takes humility because the logic is based on a belief that people who are different to you can offer something you do not. Sounds obvious, right? But it is amazing how reluctant we can be to bring the outside world into our own - this complacency "is the enemy of creativity."

Once a diverse team is built, the skeleton is there, but for the skeleton to be functional, it needs fleshing out with an inclusive culture. Inclusive cultures are a precondition to unleashing the power of diversity. There is no point having a diverse team if voices are overlooked or excluded: "empower the quiet voices to speak the loudest, embrace the daydreamers... create a culture where the left and right brains multiply each other".

Lastly, discovering insight requires empathy because empathy is what you need to "uncover deeper insights beyond what you see directly in front of you". Without empathy, you might find information, but it is impossible to discover insight because that takes a deeper level of understanding, and it is sharp insight that creates emotion.

Expressing insight

Go visual. And tell a story.

One of Hoffman's most powerful campaigns followed the Police shooting of two Black Americans, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. The campaign was driven by the insight that in sport, the ball bounces the same for everyone. There are rules which are applied and enforced equally to ensure fairness. Should this not be the case in our communities too?

The Equality campaign was born. It did not just focus on one shooting, but on a story that stretches centuries into America's history.

Take a look...

Most of our organisations do not have the resources to pull off something like that, but Nike's Equality campaign nonetheless demonstrates how insight, empathy, creativity and storytelling can create emotion by design. And while resources help, Hoffman is clear to point out that time and budget pressure can unleash ingenuity; there are plenty of examples of this, especially in Nike's earlier days. So don't let that stop your organisation from discovering insights and expressing them through stories that create emotion by design.

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You can find Emotion by Design here, and you can find the Emotion by Design website here. There is not much on it, but the design is, as you'd expect, very cool.

My next blog is inspired byThe Ride of a Lifetime by Disney CEO, Bob Iger.