Rigorous Magic

One of the most beautiful buildings in the American Mid-west is theMilwaukee Art Museum. It is a fantastic piece of modernarchitecture, and from a distance with its winged roof, it lookslike a great bird perching on the shores of Lake Michigan. Insideit's no less impressive. Walking around it you get thedistinct feeling that you're entering into another world, aworld combining both rigour and magic. The picture of the corridorshown on the front cover, taken inside this amazing museum byphotographer Kieran Negoda, brings this to life. But to Steve and Jim the picture is more than just a visualmetaphor for the name of the book. It's also a place in whichthey've experienced a lot of the issues that are dealt withinthis book as it's here that they've run several ideaworkshops for SABMiller - the global brewer that has itsNorth American headquarters in Milwaukee. And in many ways, thebuilding represents the business of creating ideas -inspirational, visionary and yet, at times, utterlyfrustrating. Steve and Jim both have both spent their careersworking separately - Steve at BMP and PHD, Jim at McCann,Ogilvy and Nota Bene - but they have now both have found anatural home for themselves at the WPP media agency, Mediaedge:cia- Steve as joint Managing Director of Mediaedge:cia in theUK, and Jim as Global Director of Communications Planning and alsoRegional Director of Retail for Europe Middle East and Africa. Theyhave increasingly overlapped in their careers on the SABMillerbusiness; a business which has taken them all over the world. Thisjourney hasn't been one of sterile airports and hotel rooms,rather it's been one in which they've reallyexperienced the different markets...from working at the Prahahotel in Prague, a bastion to communism designed to be the placefor 'the last stand' (with the tanks on the lawn) whencapitalism came rolling into town, to going to saunas in theRussian countryside in -30 degree conditions, to talking to hosteldwellers in the townships of Johannesburg to arguing withunscrupulous cabbies at 2am in Bucharest. Most importantly, it hasafforded them some of the most interesting planning work that youcan imagine and given them a huge experience in the world of ideas.As a result, they've become fervent believers in the rolethat communication ideas play at the heart of modern marketing.