AKA Self Plagiarism

GUEST POST from Pete Foley

This morning I came across a wonderful piece of music by one of my guitar heroes, Robert Fripp, of King Crimson fame.  It was a duet with Andy Sommers (The Police).  You don’t need to listen to it to connect to the insight it gave me, but if you are interested, you can watch it here. It’s interesting and innovative music

I’m a fan of Fripp, in part because of his technical expertise with the guitar, but mostly because of his innovation and restless creativity.   King Crimson are not a top 40 band, but they’ve enjoyed a long and successful career going back to the late 1960’s.  Their longevity derives, at least in part from their ability to completely reinvent themselves, and challenge their audience on a regular basis.  But they do so while also retaining a loyal following and owning a unique space in music.  They have, over 50 odd years, managed to walk the tightrope between constant change and ongoing familiarity.  

The Novelty-Familiarity Dichotomy:  Stepping back, that tightrope is one of the biggest challenges we all face as innovators.  Hitting the sweet spot between novelty and familiarity is key to both trial and repeat. If we don’t offer something new and interesting, then people have no reason to try us, and are better off staying with their existing habits and behaviors.  But make it too different, and we create a barrier to adoption, because we ask potential users to take a risk by straying from the proven and familiar, and to put effort into trying, using and understanding us. 

This reflects the somewhat schizophrenic, or at least dual personality of our collective human behavior.  We are drawn to familiarity, but have also evolved to crave novelty.  Our desire to experiment and explore is key to why we are the dominant species on the planet, and have expanded our presence to just about every habitat on the planet.  But the lower cognitive demands of the familiar mean much of our life is still dominated by habits, comfortable repetition and familiar activities.  Whether we an artist, a brand, work in an office, or are simply in a romantic relationship, we all have to navigate this dichotomy.  

Self Plagiarizing:  That brings me back to Robert Fripp.  Given his history of continuous change, and much as I enjoyed the track, I was surprised that the core riff sounded very, very similar to a King Crimson song Thela Hut Ginje, released the year before.  They are both Robert Fripp co-compositions, so he was effectively ‘stealing’ his own ideas, or self plagiarizing. 

Initially that seemed odd for someone who has for decades been a formidable change agent.   But I often learn a lot about the innovation process via analogy from music and fine arts.  So I started thinking about self plagiarism, and if it is a tool we could or should use more in innovation in general, as a potential way to maintain familiarity while also driving change  

Transferring our own signatures into multiple new executions ensures familiarity and hence reassures to our ‘loyal’ users.  But in parallel, putting those signatures in new contexts also provides a way to draw in new ‘fans’, or safely break monotony for our ‘regulars’.   Of course, at one level, the reassurance element is exactly what branding does.   But the concept of self plagiarism is potentially a way to achieve this on a more subtle, implicit level.   

Name that Band!  The arts community are masters of this.   It’s amazing to me how often we almost instantly recognize an artist, even if the painting or song itself is not familiar.  Maybe it’s a unique voice, a unique style or sound, or perhaps a signature motif.  Whether it’s David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Pablo Picasso,  Salvador Dali or Taylor Swift, we intuitively and largely unconsciously recognize their ‘style’.   Of course, explicit continuity and consistency is also important.  The wall of color in a supermarket acts as both a signpost, and reinforces important popularity cues.   Even in more dispersed digital environments, more ‘explicit’  cues provide important and cognitively simple cues that tie individual innovations to over-arching brands.  

But self reference, or self plagiarism is an additional tool that I think is worth exploring.  It allows us to leverage (implicit) sensory cues to reinforce brand consistency, and is one potential way to reinforce continuity in the face of evolutionary or even disruptive change. And just as you may intuitively recognize a song by your favorite artist without having to ‘think’ about it, it can operate very quickly, and help an innovation to ‘feel’ right.

Bob Dylan Goes Electric: And having more implicit tools can help with some of the inherent constraints of consistent branding.  Chasing familiarity can be both a blessing and a curse; ask any classic rock band on a greatest hits tour.  Or for any of you who saw the excellent “A Complete Unknown’ movie about Dylan, that culminates in the outrage he created with his core fan base by ‘going electric.  Maintaining familiarity ‘talks’ to a loyal audience, but can also be quite constraining, especially for the most innovative amongst us. And this can be especially challenging if, as in Dylan’s case, the outside world is changing quickly and we need or want to respond.  But there are numerous examples of artists who have done this quite successfully.  For better or for worse, Dylan still sounded distinctly like Dylan after he ‘rebranded’ as electric.  David Bowie, Madonna, or the different ‘periods’ that describe Picasso’s catalog are good examples of dramatic change and reinvention that still maintain some familiarity and consistency.  

What taking this kind of approach looks like for us will of course depend upon the area in which we are innovating.  But sensory cues, shapes, or relative design elements are all cues we can self-plagiarize, that add layers of familiarity, and are often difficult for competition to copy without evoking as, and hence increasing the ‘mind-share’ of their competitor.     

Of course, this is not to suggest replacing brand (visual) language and brand first design with subtle, implicit cues.   But the journey of a brand is complex, and in today’s world of rapid change, we are likely to increasingly need ways to manage ever greater changes within a ‘familiar’ context.  Thinking about different, potentially complementary ways to do this is never a bad idea. 

Image credits: Pixabay

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