The year 2020 will, in all future Histories, have a universally shared entry. After all, like a stone in water, the pandemic of the new coronavirus cast waves in every direction, with no discriminatory logic attributable to its particular nature. Today, at the dawn of the new year, while lessons are being rehearsed and conclusions rushed, but above all while uncertainty reigns over an unfinished chapter — a chapter that will be written, make no mistake, well beyond the pandemic — it is precisely the old idea of globalisation, already worn out in theory, that is viscerally confirmed. The singular individual, who, consciously or unconsciously, retreated into the growing privatisation of life, compulsively rediscovered their place in the planetary scale and order of the human species. Paradoxically, in the most intimate daily life of private confinement and in the public exercise of social distancing. What is certain is that, if doubts remained, 2020 exposed an irredeemably interconnected world.
However, if it is inevitable to apply a geographical scale to the (hyper)connectivity of contemporary life, failing to see beyond it is to ignore the true reality that the experience of the new coronavirus laid bare. The invisible web that surrounds us — the relational fabric that ties us to others and to the world — extends geographically, but deepens at every corner of society. Like an archaeological brush, the pandemic revealed hidden or ignored bonds, urgently reminding us that social, economic and political agents, individual citizens, corporate bodies and public institutions are all pieces of the same game. A game of ties, dependencies and chains. A game of action-reaction, cause-effect, continuous. A game that, ultimately, places us all between the butterfly and the hurricane.
(...) Like an archaeological brush, the pandemic revealed hidden or ignored bonds, urgently reminding us that social, economic and political agents, individual citizens, corporate bodies and public institutions are all pieces of the same game.
It is this awareness of a world not merely shared, but built upon balances — and jointly with the other — that pressures and makes each of us responsible for assuming an active role in the destiny of society and of humanity itself. Whether as an individual citizen and private consumer, or as a unit integrated into a broader social and professional ecosystem. This pedagogical dimension of the pandemic, which ties the collective future down to the scale of individual action, is a full affirmation of the profound potential for change that is granted to us when we begin this march we call life. But if the pandemic helped to recentre the influence of the human-citizen in the universal equation that governs the world, converting that influence into an effective force requires, first, breaking free from the corset of passivity. To act. Something to which we at Estúdio João Campos are also not immune.
In 2019, we began speaking openly about positive brands, suggesting that it is the happiness of the consumer — if worked genuinely and with genuine interest — that draws the most consistent and human path towards the economic sustainability of organisations. We were seeking to recover a purer version of capitalist logic, based on the transparent idea of mutually beneficial exchange. Economy and well-being progressing symbiotically. We were far from imagining, however, that just a few months later, the force of circumstances would come, precisely, to prove the positive potential we had so firmly argued was intrinsic to brands. But we seized that exceptional conjuncture — one that, among so many other rarities, compelled brands from all quarters to place concern for the public ahead of immediate profit — to underline it. We were troubled by the fear that shock would give way to forgetting. And so we reinforced our advocacy for positive change in the traditional conception of brand management. In doing so, and perhaps inevitably, we were also compelled to look at ourselves. Were we living up to the bar we were setting for others? The answer we obtained was clear: not yet. We can still do better.
It is, therefore, with this awareness that we look towards the future that begins, now, in January 2021. We are moved by the renewed desire to openly affirm a simple idea that we have long embraced — the wish to leave the world better than we found it — and to uphold it intransigently, from the smallest detail to the broadest gesture, in our practice. But to realise such an idea, we are aware, we also need to surround ourselves with people who share the same aspiration. Organisations, institutions — brands! — committed to creating what we understand as positive value. Value that reveals itself not only in what is done, but equally importantly, in how it is done. Value rooted in legitimate profit, but that projects itself benignly into society. Value that, ultimately, builds — rather than merely extracting. The other brands — those excessively centred on themselves, who forget their audiences and ignore the world — we are unequivocal: they do not interest us. And that is, we suspect, a bold resolution for the new year (perhaps suicidal!). Especially for a company like ours, irredeemably exposed to the whims of the market. But it is a risk we gladly accept. After all, we too live between the butterfly and the hurricane. It is, therefore, in the presumptuous hope that our resolution might serve as inspiration — that a hurricane might be born from our humble flap of wings — that we make it public. A manifesto for a shared future.