Rose Herceg: “The Only Thing That Will Inhibit This Country Is Imagination”

WPP president Rose Herceg and chief strategy officer Katie Rigg-Smith are optimistic about the future for Australians, urging the industry to run fast and chase “stupendously insane” ideas.

“You can rein a horse in. It's very hard to make a horse run faster,” Rose said, speaking at SXSW. 

“We need to run faster, and if we need to be reined in, because the ideas are stupendously insane, I'm okay with that, but you need to think them up in the first place.” 

Rose and Katie were discussing WPP’s report, "Hopes, Fears, Aspirations, Desires. Australia, 2035, and Beyond.” Katie noted that “one of the positives of the report, [was] that people want change and radical change.”

Change is only possible through a strong imagination, Rose said. “The only thing that will inhibit this country is imagination,” she said, examining the 77% of Australians who feel that the current education system is failing Australian society in the future.

“We have an agrarian education system. I believe, for a technology world, our education system needs to be transformed,” Rose said. 

“We need to teach serious subjects like deductive reasoning, critical thinking, and judgement … I think that the things that our children need the most, they have the least.” 

Katie acknowledged the hard work of Australian teachers, but also noted that, with a rise in technology and AI deep fakes, the education system needs to be reformed. 

“The technology around us has changed our ability to understand what senses we can trust,” Katie said. 

Despite concerns surrounding technology, the benefits do not go unnoticed by WPP. The report found Australians are living, on average, 30 years longer than we used to. 56% of Australians under 70 years or younger avoid thinking about how and where they will live once they turn 70. 

Much like schooling, the ageing process needs to be supported by technology, the pair said. Katie said ElliQ, an AI robot developed by Intuition Robotics, has been designed to accompany the elderly during their twilight years. ElliQ has reportedly resulted in a 95% reduction in loneliness amongst users.

Katie argued no amount of AI development will replace human connections, but tech like ElliQ can make living well into one's 90s smoother. 

“I've seen great technology where they put a sensor on the pantry door and they they see how often the person opens the door regularly during a day, and they program that, and then they have a variable that if that pantry door doesn't get opened, that much, it alerts family members that something's not right,” she said. 

Katie added that intergenerational living is under-explored by businesses and tech. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there are only 335,000 people living in multigenerational homes, while the WPP report found 64% of Australian citizens said that intergenerational living would make economic sense. 

“Back to Rose’s use of wild imagination, I don’t think we’ve begun to imagine what intergenerational living could look like,” Katie said.

“What would that look like for utilities? What would that look like for bank accounts, for insurance or car sharing or electricity grids? How could you reimagine the entire ecosystem of an intergenerational home?”

The discussion ended with a plea for the audience to use their imaginations and avoid “living in an echo chamber.”