A NEW STEP ON THE NOUVELLE VAGUE'S PATH.

New Wave has turned for several years towards the Narrative and the quest for a Blue Response. In the logical continuation of this path, the agency advances with the idea that it has become a part of the culture of brands and territories : from cultural identity to its own transformative culture.

We have all felt something in our gut, something deep, like a tectonic shift that moves slowly but surely. We understood that this Covid-19 episode would certainly be etched in the history books. New Wave decided to draw conclusions for itself and its mission with companies, brands, and territories.

The world of communication from which we come and are still part of is often seen as part of the problem. We must clearly become part of the solution.

Why does the culture of companies and brands seem more essential than ever with Covid-19? Why are we convinced that only a common and strong culture makes transformation possible?

COVID-19 IS A PIVOTAL MOMENT BETWEEN TWO TIMES OF THE SAME CYCLE.

Apparently, the world is in an accelerated transition between a before and an after. In reality, there is no linear reading such as a before and an after that can account for what we are experiencing.

We need to adopt the long-term lens to better understand this Covid-19 episode, which is in fact just a very brief moment.

On the scale of humanity's long history on Earth, we have constantly experienced a cyclical alternation of life with abundance and life under constraint. These cycles meant that our ancestors, up to homo sapiens, alternated between prosperity and decline, sometimes risking being wiped off the map.

Today, we are experiencing the beginning of the end of a time of abundance and we are entering a time of new constraints:  reduced availability of raw material resources, scarcity of water resources, energy, a more hostile environment due to climate change, accelerated repetition of viral episodes, … with all the consequences we now know.

Obviously, abundance is so pleasant and comfortable that no one willingly wishes for its end. The abundance of water, food, as well as consumer goods, broad access to healthcare and education, has made the average quality of life better than ever for humanity. This is a historical fact that obviously does not ignore that there is still unbearable poverty.

It is natural that everything that can resist will do everything to last:  consumption reflexes, habits, tastes and appetites for objects or services, systems of representation of the world, and even the imagination. This is why the world to come for now closely resembles the world of before.

WHAT IS THE LINK BETWEEN BRAND CULTURE AND COVID-19 ?

The world to come will not eternally be the world of always more. We can no longer be content to participate in what resembles a rush forward. We must participate in improving the situation and building new paradigms, more responsible and resilient.

This is what the brand Gucci, for example, has just done, announcing that it will give up its five annual fashion shows to settle for two, abandoning the idea of ephemeral spring-summer and autumn-winter collections to give a more sustainable life to its creations. In his Notes from the silence, Alessandro Michele, the creative director of Gucci, writes:  “On my small scale, I feel an urgent need to change the way I work. Because of my profession, I have always had an inclination towards change, a natural and joyful restlessness in creativity. But this crisis has somehow amplified this urgency for transformation that can no longer be postponed. […] I have decided to carve a new path, away from the deadlines set by the industry and, above all, away from this hyper-productivity that, today, has no reason to exist. It is a founding, bold but necessary act, aimed at building a new creative universe.” Who would have dared imagine such a paradigm shift possible? It is not enough to think that Gucci would have more luxury to adopt such a position than others. It is a perfect example of adaptive resurgence that now needs to become a culture.

THE CULTURAL LINK IS THE BEST WAY TO EMBRACE CHANGE.

To successfully enter happily into a world under constraint, to avoid spending our time lamenting what would have been lost, we need to adapt.

And to succeed in adapting, we must know how to take a new direction that demands cultural changes.

How often in companies have intentions for change been ineffective? An audit with a battery of consultants, a new strategic direction, a new organizational grid, team-building activities to spoon-feed the pill, and then… nothing. It is hardly a caricature:  the art of imposing a new system on an unchanged culture, or even a frozen one. Guaranteed failure.

The strategic idea that sets a new meaning only becomes transformative if it is culturally adopted.

For it to be effective, everyone must absorb the culture that goes with it. One must intimately understand its origins, reasons, colors, gestures, experiences, representations, virtues, and even the difficulties. And to understand this culture, it must exist! It must be born, be known, be cultivated, and create a common space to which everyone wants to contribute.

HOW IS NEW WAVE USEFUL?

Our job is precisely to produce a cultural identity adapted for tomorrow, with the genes of today.

A culture inspired by a proper understanding of the coming world and supported by the original foundations of organizations, to create:  

reference points, signs, messages, stories, 
cultural markers.
Which in turn produce behaviors.
Which in turn enrich the culture of brands or territories.

We practice this profession dynamically. With a sense of the necessary continuous adaptation.

We are convinced that one cannot enter a world under constraint with the culture of the world of abundance. To succeed in their adaptation, to strengthen their resilience, all organizations have the duty to spark the desire for a cultural change that prepares individuals and collectives for this new reality.

In this sense, our role with brands is threefold. It is about helping them to:

• Clarify their strategy and prepare to operate in a more constrained world.

• Engage in all possible actions today to reduce tomorrow's constraints and their level of exposure to them.

• Develop a life-friendly culture, understood by their teams as well as all citizens, directing towards actions and lifestyles compatible with the trajectory of the world.

THE GREATEST CHALLENGE ADDRESSED TO BRANDS AND TERRITORIES.

It is to convert the constraint endured - which has just begun - into chosen lifestyles and societal projects. Only this conscious choice can guarantee real efficiency and the essential pleasure of its sustainable character.

It is no longer just about consumers and consumption. It is no longer just about doing a little more or a little less simple, qualitative, emotional, sober, made in France, ecological, CSR, local, ethical, … even if all this is TRUE! We no longer just buy products, arguments, and goldenpromises, even if we are still sensitive to them.

It falls to brands and territories to declare what lifestyle they want to be actors of? what culture they want to be sponsors of?

It is about establishing a resolutely life-friendly course of which we are a species. This course must be described in all its truth, the only one capable of really making citizens understand what culture we need to adapt, and say:

• its taste : that of experience for us;

• its meaning : anthropological, biological, living, ethical, social, economic;

• its direction : for what intent, what resilience, what perseverance in our being, what quality of life, what happiness of being.

You know from experience that the strongest marker of an adoption is when you adopt the culture.

Not just the external signs.
Not just the codes.
Not just the rituals.
Not just the gestures.
Not just the founding stories.
Not just the language.

But all of that at once. The whole culture.

That is the most important thing and that is what we do. We produce brand and territory culture. We help our clients create and adopt cultural transformations that lead them towards sustainable successes.

This is why we say about ourselves, New Wave, Brand Culture agency.

WHY IS NEW WAVE GIFTED TO MAKE THE NECESSITY OF CULTURAL CHANGE THE OCCASION FOR A COLLECTIVE AWAKENING?

• We ourselves have already repeatedly evolved : from light advertising to strategic ideas, from solid to liquid, from the vertical world to the horizontal world, from unconsciousness to consciousness, from consumption to attention, from entertainment to the meaning of a culture… and this is not the end, there will be others.

• We cultivate our native sensitivity every day. It allows us to understand and anticipate what will be a driving current or not.

• Our originality comes from creative culture. This culture has nourished in us a sense of stepping aside, of the unexpected. Being creative means making things emerge. Surprising. Provoking an amazement that is not gratuitous but a revelation.

• Our job is to decipher desires, to better understand what people are sensitive to. Our job is to have an intimate understanding of what moves them. What we do is an art of probing reason and hearts.

• Our talent is to know how to choose the right words and images to speak to them.

• Our art is to know how to narrate our clients' world so they can create stronger bonds with their environment. The narrative is very important. Without it, ideas have no power over the real world.

• To this, we add a sense of our responsibility and our debt to the territory that welcomes us and the ecosystems in which we navigate. That is why we have chosen to systematically seek for ourselves and with our clients, a Blue Response.