RECLAIM HORROR. MAKE BEAUTY & HOPE. MARKETERS: THIS MEANS YOU.

Dear #brand owners & #marketers. I know you are trying. Fishing plastic bottles out of the sea to help make more bottles and scooping up bits of rubber from the factory floor to incorporate into new trainers. Waste is bad. Sea plastic is appalling. Recycling this stuff makes consumers feel slightly better. SLIGHTLY.

There’s SO MUCH horror in this world, we have it in our power to perform absolute magic by taking tools of war, and all kinds of instruments of sadness & pain, and transforming them into completely new objects that bring nothing but beauty, joy, hope and even cuteness & a sense of humour.

I took this photo at the Cute exhibition at London’s Somerset House https://lnkd.in/eHBfHSYK It is probably the most provocative object in the whole collection. The extraordinary artist who made this work is Jimmy Cauty, formerly of the band KLF. His website is here: https://jamescauty.com/ There’s also a shop (the riot shields are sold out). Cauty has repainted and refinished 400 of these shields since 2013. Some have yellow smiley faces and some faces are rendered in gold glitter. They are all real riot shields, formerly used by the UK police in riots and riot training. Thank you, Jimmy, for your tender & hopeful imagination.

Marketers: THIS IS WHAT RECYCLING COULD LOOK LIKE. Let’s aim high, then higher. Take something frightening or ugly & reinvent it as an object that people will cherish and want to have in their home for ever.

#semiotics #art #design #jimmycauty #cute Somerset House #beauty #hope #makelovenotwar #recycling #plastic #sustainability #marketing #sustainability #innovation

Kogan Page, Market Research Society (MRS), Lawes Consulting Ltd, Dr Rachel Lawes, Joe Lawes 

@Everyone-needs-to-see-this