THE FUTURE IS FERAL
In convo with one of the world’s most well-respected brand-building thinkers, Richard Huntington, on the state of consumer culture, the future of brand strategy...and his new book.
Look up brand strategist in the urban dictionary and you might just find a picture of Richard Huntington. Everyone who’s passed through the halls of a creative agency - or the marketing dept of a major consumer brand - over the past 20 years has surely heard his name.
Chairman and CSO of Saatchi+Saatchi, he’s also the writer behind one of the legendary 1.0 blogs on brand-building: Adliterate. Which is turning 20 this year, so I feel decrepit having read it almost all of that time.
Richard has now built on all of this by (self!) publishing a book that feels perfectly timed for our strange cultural moment.
In Feral Strategy, Richard argues that much of the thinking driving modern brand-building has (like much of wider culture, maybe) become enshittified…toothless, too tamed and formulaic…just when brands need to behave in ways that feel more unruly, more unexpected, more feral.
Ofc the marketing industry is no stranger to an expert with a neat-sounding theory/school of thought.
But Richard is not just anyone. And this is not just any theory.
I spoke with him about the book, what's happening in the industry right now, and why feral thinking might be our only way out.
What do we talk about?
The origins of this book. Richard’s been building brands for 35 years, so what finally drove him to write this book? Was it a slow burn or was there a breaking point…in my head he flipped the table and stormed out of a client meeting, but what really happened?
HOW he wrote it. Where he found the time, and the connection between his online writing and an actual book.
The impact he wants the book to have. Feral Strategy reads like a call to arms, but what actually needs to change, amongst who, and why?
Next I road-test a couple of the big themes/theories we’ve been talking about here on Pattern Rec lately against Richard’s Feral Strategy philosophy….
How can his way of thinking help us better understand/navigate the forces of cultural flattening, sameness and meh-ification we’re seeing and feeling right now?
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How being more feral can help us better understand/navigate the terminal risk aversion a lot of us are feeling right now at work, particularly in the fashion system + creative industries.
He has some zingers for brand leaders, and for brand strategists/creatives/any other brand-building practitioner: ignore the middle, get your telescope the right way round, and if you want new ideas, read old books and weird sh!t. And watch Blackadder.
He doesn’t sugar the pill, but he does leave us with hope:
“There is an infinite market for imagination.”
“I want people to feel a greater sense of freedom.”
I hope that you enjoy listening to him.
Feral Strategy is available here.
And thank you to
and for asking me about my chaotic media diet in today’s
Until next time/thanks for reading (or listening).
bb