Adobe Summit EMEA: Failure Is A Key Ingredient, Says Blumenthal

“In your creative world you need to celebrate failure. You don’t learn without,” said celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal at the Adobe Summit EMEA today.

“Question everything” and “celebrate failure” if you want to create, said celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal at the Adobe Summit EMEA today.

In a session looking at the essential role creativity plays in creating great experience, Blumenthal stressed the need for digital marketers to embrace imperfection.

“When you have an operation with a creative and a manufacturing side, you always have problems because it’s two languages, it’s a delicate balance to mix [them],” he said, referring to the slick front-of-house experience in his restaurants and the behind-the-scenes kitchens where inspiration is an essential ingredient for creativity.

Not finding that balance, however, leads to a fear of success or failure and inhibits creative thinking. “Production is perfection and has to be consistent, but in your creative world you need to celebrate failure. You don’t learn without.”

The notion of how you define your own success was explored by actor Colin Farrell in an onstage interview with Adobe executive vice-president and chief marketing officer Ann Lewnes.

Asked how he personally measures success, Farrell said: “I find myself more embedded in the important things in my life, and identify with my external world less. The idea of failure and success has become more subjective. One man’s failure is another man’s success.”

Farrell’s fascination with human stories makes him a firm believer in the power of storytelling. “The ability to tell stories has to be given to every human being, the more young people can express themselves in any way, whether aesthetically, musically, or through film, is a good thing.”

While it’s this democratisation that is causing disruption in the film industry, Farrell also highlighted the importance of change. “Evolution can take place in a moment, not just over a thousand years. Change is a certainty, and taking that out into the world is a beautiful thing.”

For digital marketers, these are views that resonate. As session host John Mellor, Adobe’s vice-president, business development and marketing, noted, marketers are today tasked with changing systems that have been in place for decades. To achieve this, marketers need to “turn data into meaningful stories to drive emotion and help people make the personal change that is needed for organisational change.”