Johnnie Walker’s iconic Striding Man was flipped, literally, to point him in the direction of the future rather than the past. Johnnie Walker’s manifesto cleverly reached into the brand’s history to map its future. This trick is best illustrated by a new logo that heralded the brand’s transformation. Initially sketched on a restaurant menu in the early 1900s, the brand’s iconic Striding Man was flipped, literally, to point him in the direction of the future rather than the past. “The bracing wind of transparency has blown through corporate corridors in a way that defies resistance.” Where the protagonists of culture have been less successful is turning their views into a system for working. Culture as something to tap into can be magical; culture turned into a “model” is a death trap. It either produces “step processes”, which become pedestrian, or results in briefs of the “please design me a provocative cultural expression as a counterpart to the rise of ‘Trumpism’”: interesting clothes for a brand to borrow, perhaps, but not rich as a brief to a creative team. It’s an ingredient of the brief, and it might be the intent of the work, but it’s not a brief any creative would understand.