Launching After Eight in France

I was given the task of persuading our French colleagues to launch After Eight mints in France and, what’s more, to adapt and adopt the British TV campaign.

You remember the scenario? Upper class British dinner party. Everyone in evening clothes (tuxedos, black ties, long frocks, tiaras etc). Silver candelabra on a groaning table. Plum-in-mouth accents. Horsey laughter. After Eights being passed.

JWT at their most posh.

The French thought this quite impossible.

First of all, chocolate and mint together? Absurd.

Then, all those ridiculous clothes. Nobody in France goes to dinner dressed like that.

“Nor do they in England,” I responded. “It’s a… joke.”

Long pause…

“Why would anyone want to go to dinner dressed as a waiter?” they enquired.

Game. set and match.

Creative problem-solving in Paris

When it comes to collaborative creativity, there are indeed many ways to skin a cat.

I started teaching a group of young French managers in Paris as usual, by asking them how they normally went about it. They looked puzzled.

“Well, when you want to brainstorm or problem-solve, what do you do,” I asked.
Silence.
“Don’t you do it at all?”
“We do it all the time.”
“Yes, but what do you do? How do you go about doing it?”
Another pause.
“We go into a room together.”
“Yes, and…”
“We shut the door.”
“And…”
“Er, we argue with each other for a while.”
“And…”
“Then someone decides what we’ll do about it, and who will do it. And we leave the room.”

Job done.

Does every culture have its own default way of problem-solving?

Le Fair Play

Shortly after the bombing of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour in 1985 – I was there and heard the blast – I was having lunch in Sydney with my then boss, regional director Jean-François Lacour.

“What’s the French for fair play?” I asked provocatively.

The French government of the day had decided that interference in their atomic testing programme had gone far enough and had sent secret service agents to deal with Rainbow Warrior.

Their action appalled New Zealanders. And I myself was outraged and thought it a clear breach of the unwritten rules of fairness.

Lacour thought for a moment. “Le Fair Play,” he responded.

Of course, the concept of fairness does not rank high in the value system of the French, whereas for Australians and New Zealanders it comes right at the top of the pile.

Now, some twenty six years later, I’m much less clear as to how to understand the notion, nor how to know it when you’ve got it.

Will Hutton has recently published a book entitled Them and Us: Politics, Greed and Inequality – Why we need a Fair Society. If you decide to read it, do let me know if he gets anywhere useful in defining fairness.

Is it the same as “win-win”? Or something else entirely?