Mark is a recovering adperson who now writes and talks and works independently under the banner of HERD Consulting, helping people and organisations and their collaborators come to terms with our social or HERD nature. Prior to HERD Mark held senior positions at Ogilvy Group Worldwide and the radical creative co-operative St Luke’s. This interview is extracted from an interview with Mark for our publication ‘Defining Sponsorship’.
When I first visited Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project at London’s Tate Modern back in 2003, I remember thinking how delighted the artist must be to have so many people engaging so directly in the experience of his art – one small child next to me insisted on taking his clothes off, so convinced was he that he and his family were now on some sun-drenched beach. But I suspect that the sponsors of the series, Unilever, were even more delighted: their long-running support of commissions for the huge space of the Turbine hall has been an excellent example of how sponsorship might evolve into a more powerful tool in the next few years.
First, it illustrates how sponsorship can work inside and outside the company: it’s not merely a matter of the board inviting a few investors and advisors to the opening and then hoping that the public will be grateful for the patronage. Indeed, the efforts by Unilever to use the investment as a springboard for a massive internal cultural change have been rightly rewarded by the Arts sponsorship world.
Second, it demonstrates how sponsorship can be so much more than ‘badging’, ‘associationbuilding’ or ‘messaging’: The Unilever Series provides what leading-edge marketers are calling a ‘social object’. That is, something around which people can interact with each other – which is what people really want to do, rather than interact with brands and businesses.
Most tellingly, the Series enhances our interactions with each other through the quality of the content and the ingenuity of its presentation. Who can forget Carsten Höller’s slides from ‘06/7 and the glee with which humans of all ages flopped out of the bottom, having experienced what the artist calls their own personal ‘inner spectacle’.
Third, it’s clear there is no short-term opportunism behind the plan: this has been a significant commitment over many years, with many different artists, so many participating visitors and so many Unilever staff members interacting with each other.
The future of marketing is not about doing things to people, but about providing means for them to interact with each other: to create experiences and interactions that touch their fundamentally social or ‘HERD’ selves. Sponsorship can and – I believe – should be a big part of this but to do so it has to drop the cliché and rights-obsession that dominates current discussions and recognise that to be effective the sponsor has to do more than badge stuff.
Most tellingly, the Series enhances our interactions with each other through the quality of the content and the ingenuity of its presentation. Who can forget Carsten Höller’s slides from ‘06/7 and the glee with which humans of all ages flopped out of the bottom, having experienced what the artist calls their own personal ‘inner spectacle’.
Third, it’s clear there is no short-term opportunism behind the plan: this has been a significant commitment over many years, with many different artists, so many participating visitors and so many Unilever staff members interacting with each other.
The future of marketing is not about doing things to people, but about providing means for them to interact with each other: to create experiences and interactions that touch their fundamentally social or ‘HERD’ selves. Sponsorship can and – I believe – should be a big part of this but to do so it has to drop the cliché and rights-obsession that dominates current discussions and recognise that to be effective the sponsor has to do more than badge stuff.
