Panegyric

The Concept Department’s first workshop of the new year went brilliant as expected. I’ve found these sessions to be so useful and the team loves them as well. Without boasting I could probably say that as a whole, we’re the most intellectual department of Keen (no offense all you other guys – but don’t lie, we can see you rolling your eyes every time we mention deconstructionist philosophy… again).

For those who don’t know, Keen – especially the Concept Department – tends to hire the young and bright. The ‘kids’ always say that these workshops bring them back to their Ivy League college days.

Topic of Workshop 2009 #1 was the “Panegyric” (or  Πανηγυρικ for you other nerds and linguists who prefer to see it in the original Greek). It’s a literary and oratory form of the ancient Greeks and Romans. (And quite similar to the ????? for any Arabic scholars out there.) The goal was to praise someone as highly as possible, without going over the top and losing credibility. The speeches were judged by how close they could get to the threshold, how amazing and desired and wonderful you could make someone appear while still coming across as completely authentic. Which is really exactly what copywriting and marketing and branding is all about.

Full Disclaimer: No, we didn’t look at any real panegyrics. We are a commercial enterprise after all, but we did use the basic notion of the artform to explore how we could praise our clients in their branding and communications while simultaneously infusing the messages with credibility. Just in case you think three hours of this sounds interminably boring, we also took the opportunity to watch plenty of YouTube clips of ridiculously horrible advertisements.

This one below was probably our favourite.