Business Domains

Advertising

Consulting

Retail Solutions

We are in the business of understanding customers and using this understanding in the areas of Advertising, Consulting and Retail Solutions. We believe our business domains require the simultaneous use of two very different ways of thinking where one needs to combine logic with imagination and analysis with intuition to be effective.

This is why we see a core challenge in our business domains as being the ability to approach issues in a manner that blends the softness of Art with the rigour of Science.

The Two Cultures: Science and Art

Science lays emphasis on repeatable results, predictable outcomes and the use of logic. Art is anything that touches us deeply in a manner we cannot fully explain. This could be in the form of a word, a picture, a song or just a glance, that appeals to our more imaginative side.

CP Snow in his seminal essay, The Two Cultures And The Scientific Revolution (1959) has described Art and Science as two different mindsets, two parallel streams. The implicit assumption is that they are mutually exclusive. While this may be true in some cases, our business domains require a grasp of both streams.

The different business domains we operate in and the disciplines within them may require different proportions of the two elements but the essential challenge is to develop a degree of comfort and skill in both ways of thinking.

Our Heroes

Some of our 'heroes', people who have achieved this blend in their life and work, include Leonardo da Vinci and Bertrand Russell.

A true Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci's achievements span the fields of fine art and pure as well as applied science. Among his works is the Mona Lisa, perhaps the single most well known masterpiece of Western Art. He was also an architect, an engineer and a weapons designer and made a significant contribution to the study of human anatomy.

Bertrand Russell was a genius whose intellect spanned a variety of concerns. He was a philosopher, a mathematician, a social critic and an activist. He made significant scholarly contributions to philosophy and logic and is credited with being one of the founders of analytical philosophy. And when he won the Nobel Prize in 1950, it was for Literature!

Our Quest: Combining The Two Cultures

Our endeavour is to embrace and synthesise both these streams in our attempt to master the Art and Science of our businesses and to contribute to the body of knowledge in our field. We strive to do this both at the individual level and even more importantly, as an organisation.

If the left brain is the seat of logic and reasoning and the right brain is the wellspring of creativity, our businesses require their practitioners to use the whole of their brain. We also believe that the complete human being will develop her abilities to be equally at home in both the streams and revel at the meeting points between the two.