In Praise Of ‘Idling’: Why Every Business Needs A Flaneur

Why on earth would a business strapped for time, money, and margins pay someone to wander and explore?

Taking the long road to discovery is intrinsic to science, art, mathematics, history, and spirituality.

And yet many organizations overlook the value of deep, contemplative thought in favor of hastily chasing better mousetraps and quick, superficial fixes to serious business problems. Marketers are especially guilty of this.

It’s no secret that the internet has torpedoed our ability to think deeply. Nicholas Carr, author of “The Shallows,” dubs this a “Google ideal of the mind,” which has led to a society in which “thinking isn’t as important anymore. It’s viewed as inefficient.”

All too often, we skip reflection and contemplation in favor of bite-sized information and fast processing. The former tends to inspire eureka moments that informs brilliant creative problem solving; the latter often leads to superficial and predictable solutions. Many marketers seem to be overinformed and stuck on the hamster wheel of predictability.

Enter the flâneur.

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, the celebrated Russian ballet dancer, actor, and choreographer Mikhail Baryshnikov was asked his favorite occupation. His answer? “Flâneur. Look it up. It would be a great way to live.”

According to an English dictionary, a flâneur is a dawdler or loafer. In French, a flâneur is more of a wanderer or casual stroller and observer of “street mores.” The 19th century French poet Charles Baudelaire described the perfect flâneur as “the passionate spectator,” who takes “an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite.”

Why on earth would a business, especially agencies, strapped for time, money, and margins, pay someone to wander and explore? Because it’s money well spent and because sometimes you need to slow down to move fast.

Last June, our agency created the formal role of flâneur. We define it as someone who wanders with a purpose, who is curious, and who knows how to gather useful information and merchandise research to drive outcomes.

The flâneur serves as intelligence collector, strategic producer, and cultural anthropologist. She is a pop-culture and consumer culture intelligence officer who provides agency-wide support with things like ethnography and inventive research methods. She stimulates the collective creativity by simultaneously pulling people out of the agency and drawing the outside world in. Her sole and massive responsibility is to help people plunge deeper into the world of the business problem at hand, forcing them to constantly engage with the real world as it relates to the client challenge du jour.

For example, our flâneur has taken us to trendy and offbeat workouts to explore bourgeoning athletic culture in America; she’s connected us to scientists who study the bicameral mind; and she’s helped us explore the complicated and fascinating relationship between clowns and democracy.

Working across all disciplines, the flâneur operates like an in-house journalist, muse, and gadfly, bringing healthy doses of inspiration, skepticism, and critical thinking to the work. She also curates the agency’s internal website, its strategic and cultural watercooler of information and inspiration.

Defending The flâneur

At the October ANA Masters of Marketing conference, P&G’s Marc Pritchard told marketers that the industry, in general, is spending too much time on measuring ads and not enough time on creating quality ones.

“Advertising is a skill. It requires mastery, technique, and imagination to make brand ideas meaningful and memorable,” he said. “Craftsmanship is visual artistry, verbal poetry, design aesthetics, and it’s the work of masters.”

Real flâneurs exist to address this shortfall.

Supporting such a position must include some form of measureable results to client business and the agency. For example, the agency must be able to draw a direct line from the flâneur’s innovative methods to new business momentum and wins, organic growth, agency reputation, client satisfaction, creative effectiveness, and internal engagement.

If you look back at history, even more than solely a “wanderer,” a flâneur ran contradictory to capitalist ideals. In the 19th century, being a flâneur was a form of intellectual protest against an increasingly capitalistic time.

Oddly enough, economics is prompting the return of the professional flâneur. Somewhere, Karl Marx is laughing.