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It was the winter of 2021, in the foyer of the Society for Macedonian Studies in Thessaloniki. National Theatre of Northen Greece has invited the famous playwright and director, Thomas Edward Bond, on the occasion of the performance of his emblematic play, “Saved”.

As Bond was sitting at the central table waiting for the lecture to begin, people were settling into their seats and just before the noise died down, the author, took his jacket from the back of his chair and threw it to the empty space between the table and the theater seats in front of him. We all froze. The remaining members of the audience, still standing, immediately sat down and there was an abrupt silence.

“The theater is an accident. This is what just happened now,” he said, introducing an exceptional speech.

What he wanted to highlight with this act was what is, in fact, interesting. The throwing of the jacket in the central area of the hall was not only about the unpredictability of the act per se, but also highlighted the -literal- happening – something that actually takes place and works within its environment, authentically; that is, the event, itself.

20 years have gone by, but I still think of that scene whenever I’m faced with an issue or a creation. Because what Bond meant in essence about whether something is interesting, does not only apply to theater, but also, to communication, marketing, and storytelling.

All in all, life is an accident.

More to the point, in Communication and Advertising we notice that everything tends to look the same! In the trends, the copy, the emotions that they cause, even… in the photo direction. It is completely comprehensible, understandable, respected even, the fact that the brands need to find eyes, ears, and ideally mouths! That’s why they resort, oftentimes, to desperate painful similarities – painful even for the professionals who create them. Bond said about his most famous work: “The thing that makes “Saved” most painful to watch is the fact that the characters, who won’t listen to other people’s desperate voices, are in despair for lack of a listener themselves.”

I sometimes follow the publications of communication gurus who, as experts, “reveal” as experts the secrets of successful communication, content production and storytelling. Their posts, which are as if dictated to them by the most boring, predictable, generic GEN AI, suggest and analyze the most common trends to effectively ride the wave, but, in essence, lead you down the road of sameness, invisibility, of absence of being. And maybe this is not brand communication.

And so, most brands rush to heap up behind trends, struggling to stand out while doing the exact opposite, without the strategy being organic with their brand, devoid of meaning; barren imitation. Once again, I will resort to the theater: We say that good actors steal; bad ones imitates. Which means that the former take the gist and the function while the latter just the form. They pretend. The same should apply to the – really useful- trends, every time we refer to them in the case studies: take from their essence, from what they add to the communication of the brand.

If I had to come up with an analogy to the prevailing situation, I would describe it…

as if the brands strive to stand out in a masquerade party, while dressed in carnival costumes. No one will recognize you like this!

This is where, all too often, I am reminded of Douglas Holt’s unsurpassed Harvard Business Review, March 2016, op-ed “Branding in the Age of Social Media” where he wisely noted, among other things: “Today, in pursuit of relevance, most brands chase after trends. But this is a commodity approach to branding: Hundreds of companies are doing exactly the same thing with the same generic list of trends. It’s no wonder consumers don’t pay attention.”

When “interesting” isn’t an accident (in the sense we’ve been talking about), then, exposure to something that screams banality, is a fatality.

Edward Bond was one of the main representatives of a whole generation of creators in Britain and by extension of the European theater scene. He is considered a forerunner of the “raw” Sarah Kane, and, precisely because of the harshness of the scenes in his plays and the social aspects that it highlighted on stage, there were not a few times that he was persecuted, tried and censored.

After all, what is the trend towards more and more sameness, and by extent conformity, if not a form of censorship?

Edward Bond died a few days ago, on March 3, 2024, at the age of 90.