BRAND CORPS operatives are constantly exploring, engaging, and discovering. Check back often for the latest in BRAND CORPS ideology, rhetoric, polemics, and diatribes. We'll share our thoughts on brands we love and hate, social and cultural trends, and corporate courage, among other things. trend THE NEW CREATIVE The unstable economy and resulting sea change in our industry have led to the rise of a new class of creatives, people that live by their wits, not their talent. People that understand systems as much as outcomes. We all have at one time or another become enamored if not fixated on some thing, some physical object or artifact that is either the product of our work or just inherently cool. But a focus on ends over means rarely satisfies. Eventually the thing is seen for what it is: a mere ghost of what it purports to represent, a spectre. What really matters is how it came into being, for this is where its cultural meaning begins to take shape. Was the process collaborative, richly informed, and human, or hierarchical, uninformed, and dehumanized? The journey is more important than the destination. The new breed of creative wants to remake the world by engaging it, not rebuilding it.