Campaign Fiction – a foresight method from Z_punkt [Digital Workshop]

Speculative Futures Berlin is initiated by Ellery Studio www.ellerystudio.com
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Everyone thinks about the future – what we need to do is talk about it.

Design fiction aims at exploring possible futures by creating speculative, and often provocative scenarios narrated through designed artifacts. But the lack of structure when talking about futures can be frustrating. Often, this calls for an employment of existing techniques such as the development of advertising campaigns to provide focus. Advertising campaigns, as controversial parts of society, can be integrated in approaches of design fiction and speculative futures. This mixed approach is what we call Campaign Fiction.

The approach was first presented at the PRIMER 21 conference and tested with participants from all over the world.

More details about the speaker and topic below.

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Access to the zoom conference:

Date: 17.11.2021
Digital doors open at 18:25.
Begin is at 18:30.
From 18:40 you won't be allowed to enter the event anymore.

As part of providing a safe experience you need to RSVP with a valid meet up account. On the day of the event we will send an email with the zoom link. Please join the event with a valid zoom account and your full name. In case we need to launch a new event due to zoom bombing or other technical issues it would be really helpful if you could provide your email address to avoid the new link being sent to your spam box.

The workshop is in English. By joining the event, participants give their consent that we may use the recording for potential social media purposes. The workshop is limited to 100 participants.

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Society has mixed feelings about advertisement. However, it is a fact that advertisement often captures core socio-economic relationships in a condensed way. That is why it has the potential to be valuable for futures thinking techniques. Present narratives of people, gender roles, social clichés, media usage patterns, humour, and values are all parts of a consumer's zeitgeist which are captured in advertising. When thinking about the future, these issues also source societal expectations about what may come and can be useful to conduct future-oriented storytelling in a structured way.

In this session we will give a brief insight into how to use the worldbuilding potential of advertising campaigns. Unfortunately, due to the short time available, it is not possible to experience the whole process in practice. However, there will be working groups in "sprint mode" to work along the Campaign Fiction approach.

The overall approach is clustered in three steps which makes it possible to converge the desirable futures from a micro to a macro perspective.

Step 1: Prototyping
→ Micro perspective: The product or service

Step 2: Campaigning
→ Meso perspective: People, technology and markets

Step 3: Visioning/Worldbuilding
→ Macro perspective: The society

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Christian Grünwald is from Z_punkt The Foresight Company. At Z_punkt, Christian is responsible for the Public Foresight division. His work focuses on scenario planning and vision development as well as trend projects in the public sector and industry. He explores the consequences of technological change for politics and society, the future of work and the innovative application of foresight methods. Before joining Z_punkt, he studied political science and religious studies, followed by a doctorate, and worked for eight years in a large German communications agency. He also works as a part-time lecturer at Leuphana University Lüneburg.

Z_punkt is an internationally active consultancy for strategic future issues. Z_punkt designs strategic future dialogues in the public sector and supports companies in developing sustainable future markets.

www.z-punkt.de