The (C)overstory

The story of the Space Shuttle's massive rocket boosters reveals how the arbitrary decisions of an ancient civilization can dictate the limits of modern technology.

The story goes that the width of every American railway track, set at a seemingly random 4 feet 8½ inches, became the maximum possible diameter for the boosters, which had to travel by rail. This railway gauge traces its lineage directly back to Britain's industrial wagons, which in turn mimicked the wheel spacing of European carts designed to fit into rutted Roman roads—roads whose width was originally determined by the simple space needed for two horses pulling a cart.

The diameter of the peak of human technological advancement was, therefore, ultimately constrained by the width of two Roman horses' asses, a wonderful example of the "historical overstory" that shapes our world in unseen ways.

Briefly, the overstory is an ecological term for the upper layer of tree canopy in a forest; the leaves and branches high above the forest floor, which indirectly influences everything below by its presence in terms of light, shade and moisture.

The overstory can also refer to a common narrative, cultural‑environment, or collective assumption that shapes what a community believes, how it behaves, and what factors can become “contagious”.

There has been a prevalent overstory in our world of business that is starting to fracture. Big trees are rotting and falling, giving way for new growth to emerge way below the canopy.

Heinz, Unilever, Diageo, WPP, Omnicom and Publicis were all considered too big to fail (or fall in this case) but their grip on the commercial narrative is beginning to show signs of stress.

We can attribute every one of these companies’ perilous situation to the absolute, undiluted pursuit of profit over people.

And it’s not just the blue chip overstory that’s opening up the rainforest. It’s happening to any company that fails to prioritise humans over profit.

One of the best examples I unearthed has been the argument about the return to office (RTO).

In 2021, when I launched The Fuel Podcast, in the heat of the pandemic, some of the first guests I had on the show were talking about missing the office culture, hating using video calls and being confined to home offices.

Phrases and words like “new normal” and “empathy” grew in the word cloud – not just from us, but from our corporate leaders too.

Bosses made grand gestures of equipping us with laptops, personal time, weekly Danish pastry deliveries and coffee shop gift cards.

Then bosses began to experience a form of collective cabin fever. Hours and hours spent trying to get to grips with new remote working software, paranoia from remote keyboard monitoring, annoying spouses, flatmates and children, all piled on to the narrative that something was missing from all this remoteness.

Something like teamwork.

I had guests on the show like the office whisperer Gleb Tsipursky who debunked corporate Britain and America’s myths about loss of culture with a strong push back. He argued for the role that new technology can play in liberating our time and creating a working world where hybrid working was possible for many businesses.

But we had to give it time for us to get familiar with it; to fit it into the new way of working.

There were experiments around the 4-Day Week and Flexible Work Trials (2022–2023), and Civil Service Working from Home Experiment (2021–2024) and ONS and BEIS Studies on Remote Work – all of which concluded that there was no drop in productivity; some even reported higher output per hour worked; stress and burnout decreased substantially and people slept better, felt healthier; staff turnover dropped and revenues or productivity either remained stable or rose slightly.

I covered them all on the podcast and was convinced that this was the future.

And yet the largest firms in most sectors (including creative and advertising) rejected it.

WPP, Publicis and Omnicom all rallied together with a convincing menu of reasons why this shouldn’t happen – from working together in person being essential for creativity, collaboration and mentoring, to “stunted creativity” or even the loss of an office-centric culture.

So we largely listened to these leaders because, well, we needed the money.

But then there’s this overstory.

The overstory was – as many on the podcast spotted, an alternative agenda. An agenda driven by financial commitments to building leases, or paranoia of weak management, or loss of status. The demands of unreasonable shareholders, eager for annual dividends, performance-related bonuses and golden parachutes.

The reason we now know the five-day week mandate was a straw man was thanks to one of the greatest proponents of the RTO movement – Elon Musk, whose AI engine Grok eliminated thousands of jobs in one fell swoop.

Many in the advertising world followed suit. They cut tens of thousands of jobs because they had just invested in a shiny new AI that can think faster, 24 x7 with no personal time off, maternity and paternity leave or sick days.

Cut.

Cast-off, like giblets at Christmas.

You see, “teamwork” wasn’t the real reason; The overstory was greed and profit. Keep the status quo running for as long as possible, until the office lease runs out and we can use AI.

I cover this topic in two different podcast interviews with people I consider to be great observers of the creative world – David Meikle author of ‘How to buy a Gorilla’ and ‘Tuning Up’; and Tim Lindsay – Chair of the D&AD.

In my conversation with David in ‘Two Pints and a Puppy’, we discussed how we can trust those who lead us and those we work with, which is inevitably going to be a very different creative marketing world to the one we are used to. We also wondered why in the 80s and 90s, we were committed to working late, at weekends and holidays without pay to get the job done.

Commitment I covered in my chat with Tim; the way that teams used to work tirelessly, striving to deliver the very best piece of creative work, not just A piece of creative work. Commitment that built the foundations of the large advertising networks that are now coasting on their past glories.

Perhaps there’s now a new overstory for the world of advertising and creative marketing. One built on agility, where large advertising networks become the switching and rerouting gear of the business, enabling creative work to be transferred, reproduced, resized and adapted while the rest of us get on with the creative things.

Where independent-thinking boutiques comprised of the very smartest brains work directly with clients, brainstorming and imagining, plotting and making campaigns ready for the sausage factory of social, OOH, TV, streaming, radio, pod and vodcasts (no cinema, obviously).

Smaller revenues, wider distribution. Many agencies, like restaurants catering to millions of different needs, using similar ingredients but in specific ways. Creative freedom for innovative thinkers, shopping ideas around and being signed up like music, visual and written artists to agents.

Maybe the overstory of the next decade will be one of micro-business, not macro institutions.

And if this comes true, those who canned so many workers because of one overstory, will inevitably take credit for another, and history will be rewritten by them.