WTF Is Going On?
I co-authored ‘WTF is going on?’ a comprehensive ethnographic report on the mood of the nation during the hard winter of 2022.
Richard Huntington, Guy Reason, Gail Anderson-Brown, Alice Flanagan & Mark Hadfield — May 2023
Introduction
In the dying days of 2022, a year of yet more unprecedented change for the UK, we took a tour of these four nations. Escaping the metropolis and the metropolitan we journeyed into the heart of the UK from Kinross to Bristol and Belfast to Maidstone, to meet people in their own homes.
It’s not just London that we left behind, we also went beyond quantification of the crisis. Beyond the horrific statistics that chart the perilous state of our economy, the data that records the decline in our trade, the prices that leave the stain of inflation that, while starting to decrease, has sent prices spiralling out of control, and the charts that show the sinking standard of living in the UK.
Because, while all these metrics are knowable from behind a screen in our offices and agencies, they are not truly felt. And understood even less.
Quantification of the crisis alone renders us too cold, too calm, too collected. Too divorced from the lives of real people, relying on averages and assumptions for our decision making and not the lived experience of the people that we all serve.
So, our journey was to connect in a real and meaningful way with those people. To understand them, to respect them and to love them. To see their lives in the most raw and visceral way possible and answer one simple question.
What the fuck is going on?
It’s the only question worth asking right now whether you manage the country, a business or a brand. And it’s the one that’s so hard to see from the data.
What is happening in and to people’s lives? How do they feel? What are their hopes and fears? Are they optimistic for the future of their families and country?
In short, how do we as business leaders and marketers make sense of the swirl around us? And if we can’t solve the problems people face, and by and large we can’t, how do we at least play a positive part in their lives and what clues are there that might help us navigate the situation?