The most crucial link in the communications chain is the one you can’t see

The Executive Creative Director, in his signature black roll neck sweater, has just presented his proposed campaign to the senior client; and the client is silent.  Eventually she says, ‘Thank you, Alonso.  As I’m sure you’ll remember, when we signed off on the creative brief we agreed that our core proposition should be that we are the caring company.  Yet – and correct me if I’m wrong – I don’t believe the word ‘care’ occurs anywhere in the work you’ve just shown us?’

Alonso rolls his eyes.

‘Perhaps I could just step in here,’ says Gideon.  Gideon is the agency’s Chief Strategic Officer.  ‘You’re right, of course – and that’s precisely why this campaign is so powerful.  As you may have noted, Alonso and his team, entirely intuitively, have drawn on the work of the 19^th century Austrian art historian Alois Riegl. It was Riegl who first articulated an important truth: that art is incomplete without the perceptual and emotional involvement of the viewer.  This insight was later popularised by Ernst Gombrich who...