On the Shoreditch agency and the strange industry of meaning
For The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine, I write from the heart of Shoreditch’s creative industry, the agencies and studios where we do not make anything, exactly, but make brands, an activity I have spent years engaged in and still cannot entirely explain. My other dispatches from the industry of meaning are at my page.
The Industry of Meaning
Shoreditch is home to a vast industry that produces nothing tangible, the creative agencies, the branding studios, the marketing consultancies that make not products but the meanings attached to products, not things but the stories about things, not goods but the brands that surround them. This is the industry of meaning, and it is enormous, employing thousands, generating fortunes, occupying the converted warehouses and the members’ clubs and the comfortable chairs of working Shoreditch.
I work in this industry, have worked in it for years, and I still struggle to explain what, exactly, I produce. I make brands, I tell people, and they nod as if this means something, as if making brands were a comprehensible activity, a tangible production, a real making. But what is a brand? It is a meaning, a feeling, a story, a set of associations attached to a product, and I make these, conjure them, craft them, in the strange industry that produces meaning rather than things.
The Strangeness of the Work
The work is genuinely strange, when one steps back from it, the crafting of meanings, the conjuring of associations, the production of feelings to be attached to products. We sit in our meetings, in our converted warehouses, and we discuss the brand, its values, its story, its feeling, its meaning, treating these intangibles with the seriousness of engineers discussing a bridge, producing, at the end of our deliberations, not a thing but a meaning, a story, a brand to be wrapped around someone else’s product.
This strangeness is invisible from within the industry, where the production of meaning feels as real and serious as any other work, where the brand is treated as a tangible thing to be made, where the conjuring of associations is a craft with its own skills and standards and seriousness. It is only from outside, or in moments of stepping back, that the strangeness becomes visible, the realisation that one’s work produces nothing tangible, that one makes meanings rather than things, that one is employed in the industry of attaching feelings to products.
The Value of Meaning
And yet the meanings we make have genuine value, command genuine prices, perform genuine functions. For products, in a crowded market, are distinguished not by their tangible qualities, which are often identical, but by their meanings, their brands, their stories, and the industry that produces these meanings is producing something of real commercial value, something that genuinely affects how products are perceived and purchased. The intangible meaning is, commercially, as real as any tangible thing.
This is what justifies the industry, what explains the fortunes it generates, what makes the production of meaning a real business rather than an elaborate pretence. The meanings matter, commercially, affecting perception and purchase, distinguishing products, creating value, and the industry that produces them is producing something genuinely valuable, even if intangible, even if strange, even if difficult to explain to people outside it. The data on the creative industries’ economic contribution, tracked by bodies like the Greater London Authority, confirms the scale of this value.
The Emptiness and the Craft
There is, I will admit, an emptiness at the heart of the work, a sense that producing meanings rather than things is somehow less real, less satisfying, less substantial than making something tangible. The brand, however valuable, is not a thing one can hold, point to, take genuine pride in having made. The work produces meanings that evaporate, brands that change, associations that shift, nothing solid, nothing lasting, nothing one can show one’s grandchildren and say, this I made.
And yet there is genuine craft in it too, real skill in the conjuring of meaning, real artistry in the crafting of brands, real satisfaction in doing it well. The production of meaning, however strange and intangible, is a craft with its own excellences, its own standards, its own satisfactions, and I take genuine pride in doing it well, in making good brands, in conjuring effective meanings, even as I cannot quite explain to anyone what, exactly, I have made.
The Brand I Cannot Explain
So I will continue in the industry of meaning, making brands, conjuring associations, producing the intangible meanings that surround the tangible products of others, employed in the strange and lucrative business of attaching feelings to things. I will do it well, take pride in the craft, generate the value, and remain unable to explain to anyone outside the industry what, exactly, I produce, what a brand is, what it means to make one, what I have made at the end of a working day in the converted warehouses of creative Shoreditch.
The Pitch
The central ritual of the industry of meaning is the pitch, the presentation in which the agency proposes its conjured meanings to the client, performs its crafted brand, sells its produced associations, in a theatre of creativity designed to convince the client that the intangible meanings are worth the considerable fee. The pitch is where the industry’s strangeness peaks, the performance of selling something invisible, the theatre of presenting a meaning, the elaborate ritual by which the conjured brand is offered for sale. I have given many pitches, performed many brands, sold many meanings, in the theatrical ritual that is the industry’s defining performance, the presentation in which the intangible is made to seem valuable, the invisible made to seem worth the fee. The pitch requires its own peculiar skills, the performance of conviction, the theatre of creativity, the art of making a meaning seem substantial, and I have developed these skills over years of pitching, become proficient in the performance of selling the invisible, skilled in the theatre by which conjured meanings are sold for real money. It is, like all of the industry of meaning, strange and lucrative and difficult to explain, the pitch, the theatre of selling the intangible, the performance at the heart of the business that makes, of all things, brands.
We do not make anything here, we make brands, and the brands are valuable and intangible and strange, and the industry is enormous and lucrative and difficult to explain, and I am part of it, a maker of meanings, a conjurer of associations, a worker in the industry that produces not things but the stories about things. It is strange work, and empty and crafted and valuable all at once, and I cannot explain it, and I do it well, in the heart of the Shoreditch that makes, of all the things one could make, brands.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
