We recently noticed something profound about ourselves at North. Something we’ve been doing for decades, but didn’t realize or otherwise articulate or seek credit for. It’s an undercurrent that has always inspired the creative work we do for brands, and also an insight that arguably comes out of our agency’s deep love for art, music, and culture in general.

That something is our obsession with what’s real in the world.

In a world that increasingly asks how it can calculate, manipulate, and even fake its way into our lives, we have always chosen to ask a different question: How is this person, this product, or this brand already beautiful? Just as it is. No calculating, manipulating, or faking. That's where we start our creative process.

And now, looking back, our experience demonstrates that authenticity has always slayed audacity. Genuineness earns more attention than gregariousness. And truth not only trumps trickery, it gets your brand invited into the room. You know, the real room your audience lives in.

The Beatles / Get Back — Doesn't get more real than the world's greatest band fight inertia, boredom, writer's block, heroin addiction, a famously cold and damp studio, and their own history to dig in deep and make something beautiful.

Upon further reflection, we realized that this concept of real is beautiful even embodies how we currently operate. We hire real people, our strategic process uncovers what’s real about a brand, our media projects real to the world. To be different in today’s manufactured, manipulated world, a brand must strive to be real.

So it turns out North has always believed real is beautiful. And now we want to lift that belief out of our unconscious minds and make it plain for all to see.

Analogue / Catalogue - A recording studio in West Ireland working solely to analogue tape.  The engineer/producer Julie McLarnon has shaped her whole life and values through the lens of ‘Analogue’ proving out that real and authentic is beautiful.

But what is real? Is your real the same as ours? We’ve found it’s easier to spot fake than it is to spot real. Which brings us to the purpose of this blog.

Cheryl Strayed's Dear Sugar columns give us a very real sense of a complicated, painful life behind the advice.

Welcome to the #RealIsBeautiful Blog. Here, we will transparently explore together the concept of real. We’ll talk to experts. We’ll uncover research studies. We’ll point out real when we see it and then ask if you agree. We’ll explore how media choices affect the perceptions of real versus fake. We will get real with the concept of real.

We don’t have a lot of answers right now. And we may never have them all. But we invite you to join us in our pursuit.

Because we do know one thing: Real is beautiful.

 

Here is a sampling of how Real shows up in our work.