Welcome to a series on the business implications of great landmarks in the arts and popular culture. As a team, we continually share our thoughts about all the books, films and TV we’re watching and reading. It dawned on us recently that we’re often seeing parallels between all these cultural things and our day jobs. So, we’re joining the dots in this series and actively thinking about what we can learn in our lives, in business, branding, research and marketing from the cultural events that we’re immersed in.

Second in the running are Natasha and Tam, and their top musical of 2024….

The set up

Picture the scene. It’s 1943, the Allies need to gain crucial ground in Europe – fast – and the lives of hundreds of troops hang in the balance. As plan after uninspired plan is floated and dismissed, it’s clear that the same old thinking just won’t cut it. Enter, Operation Mincemeat.

Operation Mincemeat was the codename of an ambitious deception plot to move German troops out of Sicily. Resting the fate of the nation on a stolen cadaver, armed with a fake military alias and misinformation, Allied forces ultimately fooled Hitler and changed the course of the war. Shocking? Yes. Morally questionable? Absolutely. True? Entirely. And with rat poison, an unscrupulous coroner, and Ian Fleming (yes, that Ian Fleming) thrown into the mix, it’s no wonder the story has ended up on the West End.

Far less tense than the original mission, the musical navigates audiences deftly through the outlandish tale, combining silly yet shrewd lyrics with unexpected moments of heartrending emotion. Equally impressive is the display of skill (and memory) from the five strong cast, as they seamlessly bring to life around 50 characters between them. It’s a triumph of a show and garners far more laughs than a story about a corpse ever really should. Add to that the fact that it’s the troupe’s first ever musical, and you’re left wondering how such a feat was even possible.

Two things unite mission and musical, beyond name and narrative. First, the sheer creativity it took to dream up such scenarios at all. And second, the bravery to take an improbable idea and allow it to play out, however uncertain the outcome. In both cases, we can all be very grateful that they did.

Luckily, for those of us involved in brand and marketing, we’re not charged with the fate of the nation in our day to day work, but it can still be a challenge to embrace out of the box thinking. What if no one likes the idea? What if we try it, and it doesn’t go to plan? What if it makes us look daft? In an industry that often demands fresh thinking, innovation and excitement, comfortable just doesn’t cut it and we need to push ourselves further. But how?

The big takeaway

In improvisation, there’s a technique called ‘yes, and’, which encourages artists to accept and build on thoughts and ideas, without inhibition or judgement, however left field they may be. Similarly, in qualitative research, we have a technique called 10 times bigger, where we ask people to inflate their thoughts as far as they can go – no rules, no limit. With permission to stretch beyond the boundaries of what’s probable, people’s true needs and desires surface, leading to powerful insights and ideas. What these approaches have in common is an attitude of open-mindedness and an ethos of being ‘in it’ together; they foster the kind of environment that allows creative thinking to safely thrive.

Undeniably, there’s risk involved in taking creative leaps, and that should always be weighed up. But if we learn one thing from Operation Mincemeat it should be that improbable doesn’t mean impossible. After all, as our late founder, Wendy Gordon, would have said – what’s the worst that can happen?

Natasha & Tam