Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Airports, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Children, Embarrassing Moments, Experience, Marketing Fail
So I was recently in Baltimore and when I was heading back, I found myself at the airport with time to kill.
Given my new healthy regime, I thought I’d take the opportunity to get my steps in, so I started just walking all over the airport.
Eventually I came across a kids ‘play area’ which stopped me in my tracks.
Not just because it was tucked down a pretty depressing corridor.
Not because it felt a bit like a ghost town of a time gone past.
But because it had this …
Now I don’t know about you, but that looks awfully like the plane – which is not just any plane, but AIR FORCE ONE – has crashed into the ground!!!
Putting aside no one – especially kids – needs to have that sort of image in their head before they fly, I guess – depending on your political persuasion – it is either a perfect example of brand experience gone wrong or brand experience gone brilliantly.
Guess it is fun for the whole family. That is if your family are maniacs.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Agency Culture, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Content, Craft, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Innovation, Management
Early in my career – albeit I’d been doing it for quite a while by then – I was given the book Eating The Big Fish.
I cannot tell you how much is spoke to me. A mixture of feeling seen, taught and inspired.
Even now – 12,000 years later – it is still one of the only marketing books I rate as highly today as I did when I first read it. But then books from Adam Morgan – the author – tend to do that.
Adam is – to me – one of my professional hero’s. I do not say that lightly. Or often. But he has not only done it all, he’s also done it in a way that helps others learn how to do it without ego, self-interest or arrogance.
I mean … what sort of idiot does that? Hahaha.
While I’ve interacted with Adam over email over the years, I recently got to meet him – and Olivia, his equally brilliant colleague – in the US.
I got to hear him talk.
I got to be part of one of his workshops.
And I got to spend some time with him and Olivia just chatting and getting to know each other.
They say don’t meet your heroes but I did and they were everything I hoped for and more – even when their talk featured similar themes and a few specific examples that I had planned to use in mine.
[Fortunately I had the chance to change them as my talk was the day after Adam and Liv’s – though my motivation for changing them wasn’t duplication, but the knowledge I would have come across as a Temu Adam]
The point of this post is five-fold.
First …
Follow people who have made great things rather than just talk about it or – worse – just talk about what others have done.
Second …
Don’t get so lost in theory you forget it’s all meaningless unless you do something great with it.
Third …
Put effort into continually exposing yourself to the best in the world, not just what’s best – or easy – in your World.
Fourth …
Always judge the creativity, not the age or background of who is behind it.
Fifth …
Read everything from Adam and the Eat Big Fish crew. It will not just change your life, the lessons with help and last your whole career. Even if/when you change industry
Bloody hell, I may have written a useful post for once.
Or should I say, Adam and Liv have helped me write one.
Either way, have a great weekend – and if you read any of their stuff, I assure you it will be.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Childhood, Children, Chocolate, Comment, Complicity, Conformity, My Childhood
Recently I saw a photograph that reminded me how I grew up in crazy times.
OK, ‘crazy’ is a bit over-the-top given it was Nottingham – but how else can I describe this:
For those wondering what the hell that is, it’s carpentry tools.
Made of chocolate.
No, that’s not AI … it is the sort of twisted-as-fuck shit you would get back when I was a kid.
As a gift.
That you would then eat and be ridiculously happy about.
And while ‘novelty chocolate’ may not seem the most left-field thing … why the hell would anyone want to make chocolate in the shape of everyday household tools?
I tell you what, whoever came up with that concept either possessed the most brilliant creative mind of our generation, or the worst.
Why tools versus – say – a toy car?
Or a bicycle?
Or a fucking coal mine for that matter.
And yet I both love it and wish they still did it. I mean – maybe they do – but I’ve not seen any for decades and I know I definitely would not of forgotten it if I’d seen it.
But more importantly, I wish I knew why they’d done it.
Was it a chocolate manufacturer who loved carpentry?
Was it a chocolate manufacturer who thought it would make kids like carpentry?
Was it a chocolate manufacturer who was a lunatic?
Whatever the answer, it is more interesting and arguably, more memorable than all the parity shit our over-reliance on frameworks and systems are producing. Not that I’m anti any of that, just anti the blinkered adoption and outsourcing to all that.
But lets leave it there so the chocolate keeps a nice taste in your mouth.
Till tomorrow … hahaha.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Comment, Consultants, Corporate Evil, Egovertising, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Technology
Following on from yesterday’s post, I thought I would leave this here without comment.
Well, I say ‘without comment’ but it does reinforce this post I wrote a while ago. And if you can’t be bothered to read that – you lazy bastards – the point is basically this:
Why does business revere ‘leaders’ who have a history of failing at breathtaking scale?
Is it the breathtaking scale that turns them on, or the idea they reframe their choices as ‘innovation’?
Which raises another question:
If Mr Zuckerberg can’t make AI work with his almost endless resources and investment in the technology … why the fuck does every legacy company think they can create an AI product – from scratch and with tech people who are NOT leaders in their field – that will?
God bless the egotistical delusion of old men who think creating their own AI platform makes them look young and relevant.
Hey, at least it makes a change from ‘sports car and having an affair with their secretary’.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Apple, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Corporate Evil, Crap Campaigns In History, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Technology
Years ago – 2006 to be precise – Apple did an iconic set of ads about Mac vs PC.
Here’s some of them. Because they were so unbelievably good at what they were designed to do – that is make Microsoft look a well-intentioned, but ultimately out of touch, out of date, faceless corporate monolith – they made loads of them.
In many ways, these ads cemented Apple’s persona into societies mind, presenting technology as something we could use for life, not just work … which sounds mad to say now, but was a big deal back then.
Anyway, recently when I was in the US, I saw this …
Yep, that’s the Mac vs PC guys except they aren’t promoting Apple, they’re advertising – drumroll please – Ozempic!
FUCKING OZEMPIC!
And while I can imagine there is some research that states people who can remember the Mac vs PC ads are now at an age where they have the money to help with their weight control, the reality is this all just felt tragic as fuck.
Not just because it’s the most borrowed of borrowed equity.
Not just because it feels they think this makes them ‘just like Apple’.
Not just because they’re using characters from TWENTY FUCKING YEARS AGO.
But because when you look at the ads, you don’t just think of Apple more than Ozempic … but when your brain finally gets around to working out these people are being used to promote a weight control drug, all you think is ‘Ozempic may help you lose weight but it sure as fuck doesn’t stop you looking old or desperate for cash’.