Welcome back. Did you eat lots of easter eggs?
Let’s be honest, even if you didn’t – as long as you had a long weekend, it was all good. Haha.
So to welcome you back I thought I’d write a wholesome post. No really. Maybe the sweetness of all the chocolate eggs I almost ate, got into my blood stream?
Anyway, a couple of days ago, it was a year since Bonnie came into our lives.
As people who have followed this blog for a while, you’ll know it was quite a big event for us because:
1 We had lost our beloved, very well-travelled, loveable-but-grumpy cat, Rosie the year before.
2 Jill had wanted a dog for as long as we had been together, but we’d resisted as we had moved countries so much and so often.
However, the loss of Rosie had shown just how much we missed having an animal in our house and lives.
Sure, Otis his budgie Sky … who, despite being very small, is louder [and grumpier] than a Brexit voter on twitter … however it wasn’t the same and it got to a point where the silence in the house was amplifying the loss of Rosie.
The thing was, having another cat felt wrong. I know that sounds mad, but it felt – at least to us – that doing that would be almost disrespectful towards Rosie. As if we were saying she could be replaced as quickly and easily as the average Hollywood marriage.
But I must admit I was still cautious about a dog. I’ve always loved them – and Jill, up until she met me, had always had them – but we live in a treehouse and so I felt we needed to give real consideration as to whether we could give it the life it deserved.
But three things – much to Jill and Otis’ delight – tipped me over to ‘yes’.
Firstly, I realized how good a dog would be for Otis.
Not just in having a ‘companion’ but in helping him manage/overcome some of the issues he was dealing with thanks to his dysgraphia.
Second was we found a breeder who specialized in dogs who were especially good at helping kids with issues of anxiety and confidence – not just in terms of parentage, but training.
And finally, was the fact I’d got healthy … so the idea of walking a pooch a lot was a positive rather than a negative.
So, with those 3 positives we took the plunge – which pleased Paula Bloodworth immensely after her 10+ years of lobbying for me to get a dog as she unashamedly prefers them to cats, hahaha – and then waited until the breeder informed us of a litter she felt contained puppies who could be very good for us.
And how right they were …
In a perfect world, we wanted a female dog, with a dark brown coat. And we got her. But more importantly, we wanted a dog who would be loving, gentle and – beyond the odd ‘zoomie’ calm for Otis. And we got that too.
In fact, from the moment she came into our house, Bonnie – named after a bourbon biscuit, as my tattoo celebrates – has been brilliant.
Sure, she ate all the zippers off cushions, has an unnatural love of socks and barks at her own reflection… but apart from those little quirks, she is a kind, loyal, caring dog.
And the impact she has had on Otis has been remarkable.
I won’t go into the details as that’s his story to own, but literally within weeks – the positive impact on Otis was unmistakable.
In many ways, she has changed his life and the trajectory of his life in immeasurable ways and I don’t say that with any sense of hyperbole whatsoever.
So Bonnie, thank you.
I cannot overstate how grateful we are to you for all you have done for us.
You’ve brought laughter, love and colour into our lives – especially to our brilliant boy Otis.
Seeing how you are together literally makes my heart smile.
Always by each others side, whether that’s for cuddles or mischief.
Even Rosie would approve … albeit through slightly pissed-off eyes.
So thanks for an epic first year and here’s to a shitload of them to come.
Filed under: Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Colleagues, Confidence, Contribution, Creativity, Culture, Easter, Leadership, Management, Mischief, My Fatherhood, Parents, Perspective, Privilege, Process, Professionalism, Provocative
Today is the last post until the 7th April, thanks to Easter.
As many of you know, I’m not religious in the least – but if there’s a holiday in it, especially a holiday with a justification to eat the stuff I don’t allow myself to consume at any other point of the year, I’m all in on it.
So before I get on with today’s post, I wish you all a happy chocolate eating period … let’s be honest, with the shit going on in the World right now, we deserve whatever can make us happy for a few minutes.
Right … so let’s get on with things shall we>
There’s a term that states:
“Ask for forgiveness rather than permission”.
I get why … because however open minded a company may claim they are, most only want to operate within the narrow guidelines they’ve always followed.
That’s why, if there’s something you want to do that you know challenges convention – it’s better to do it and apologise later [regardless of the outcome] than ask first and likely lose the chance forever.
I have decades of experience of doing this – and have the written warnings to prove it [haha] – but what enabled me to get away with it was this:
1. I always had/have a logic driving my actions. Even if others didn’t/don’t quite agree with it – there is a reason that drives my desire to do something commercially and creatively original, interesting and/or different.
2. Whatever I did never crossed any legal, moral, financial or commercial line. I may be a nightmare at times, but with a family of lawyers, I’m not a total idiot.
3. Regardless of the outcome – good or bad [and more often than not, it was good. Eventually – haha] I always came clean to my boss. The reality it I knew they’d always find out eventually and it was far better to own it than be owned by it.
4. For most of my career, I’ve worked with/for bosses who I deeply respect and who I knew not only understood who I was – and had hired me because of it – but shared a similar belief of pushing things to explore new things. Not for wreckless or egotistical reasons, but out of pure creative, cultural or commercial curiosity. [Albeit they tended to be more considered, deliberate and discerning in their choices than me]
And it’s this last point that I’ve come to realise is one of the most important and valuable things any employee could ask for. In fact I’d go one further, I’d say I regard it as one of the most important factors when looking for a job.
Right now, it appears too many managers are more focused on managing up rather than lifting their people up. Caring more about how they look to their bosses than enabling their teams to develop, grow and lead in such a way that their worth to the organisation is blatantly apparent.
On one level, I get it.
Times are tough out there and you don’t want your future placed entirely in the hands of others actions and behaviours – except that’s the whole point of being a manager. Or at least in my book it is.
As I’ve said many times over the years, I believe the role of a manager is to help their people embrace and grow their talent in such a way that when they leave – as we all do at some point – they have more opportunities than they ever imagined having and that when someone wants to hire them … its as much for who they are and what they do as it is there’s a role that needs to be filled.
Does that always happen? No.
Has it happened more often than not? Yes.
Now I should point out I am not claiming any credit for what people have gone on to achieve – they did it with their own talent, experience and work – but I am saying that is the driving force behind how I approach my job … how I’ve always approached my job … and how I hope my colleagues see me approaching my job.
Put simply, working towards what they’re working towards or putting them in positions of opportunity where they have the right to say “no” to something rather than it being decided for them by someone else.
And if that sounds selfless, it’s not.
Because fundamentally, if they do well, I do well.
It’s how I demonstrate my worth to the people who are evaluating my worth. Because I believe there’s more value in liberating my teams potential than supressing it so only I look good to the powers-that-be.
To be honest, I’m worried this is all coming out the wrong way. I’m not trying to big-up my management skills – at the end of the day, the only people who can evaluate if I’m any good are the people who work with me. The point of this post is more about the commercial and professional importance of elevating people’s potential rather than simply focusing on elevating their productivity.
Sure, everyone has a job they have to do.
Sure, everyone has standards and ‘quotas’ they have to hit.
But my view is you achieve much more than that if you let your team grow rather than just makie them work more. And faster.
It’s why I passionately believe my job is far less about giving the team permission, and far more about giving them protection.
Protection from others judgement.
Protection from others attempts to control.
Protection from others formulaic approaches that never led to anything great.
All underpinned in the knowledge you’ve set the right values, standards and rigor that will guide their choices and decisions for every challenge or opportunity – even if things don’t end up going quite as anyone hoped or planned.
In some ways, it’s a bit like being a parent.
Where your role is to teach your kid how to think about handling a situation, rather than what to specifically do.
Or said another way … trusting their judgement, rather than trying to control it, even if they do something differently to how you would have approached it.
Of course people need to earn that trust – as I need to earn it from them – but believing in their ability has to be the starting point, because if you don’t, not only are you failing to create the conditions where they will even ask for permission, you’re creating the conditions where they’ll be too frightened to do anything different in the first place.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, April 1, Comment, Reputation, Resonance, Strategy, Stupid, Television, Wieden+Kennedy
God, that’s a heavy title for a post isn’t it.
Especially when it’s not about the state of the World, but the fact it’s April 1.
A day – like International Women’s Day – where brands put out work in an attempt to show another side of them.
The human side … as defined and written by the AI system they outsourced thousands of people’s jobs too.
Anyway, with all the shit going on around the world, I don’t know if any joke is suddenly going to make humanity feel better … unless of course, they reveal we’ve all been living in a real-life version of that episode of 80’s TV show Dallas, where – after a whole series exploring ‘who shot JR Ewing’ – they revealed it was all just a bloody dream.
[Look it up, it’s wild]
Soooooooo … instead of going through the effort of trying to write an April Fool post that won’t fool anyone and certainly won’t make anyone care, I thought I’d just point you to the best one I ever wrote.
A post that not only fooled a few people – who obviously didn’t read it all the way through – but was picked up by some international media as a ‘new methodology to the planning discipline’. Hahahaha.
It was even more pleasing than the time The Times newspaper in the UK quoted the fictitious research company we set up – Halibut Fisher – to highlight how badly Chinese society was being represented and understood by Western media. You can read some of the ‘insights’ we wrote about on Asian Yang – the blog we set up to commemorate how blinkered, gullible and lazy so many organizations are when dealing with cultures outside of their own.
Anyway, with that, have a great April Fool Day and enjoy reading about Leon and his introduction to Method Planning™ …
For the record, Leon still – amazingly – talks to me.
Even more amazingly, he has an important gig at a tech company.
Which means [1] even my best efforts couldn’t undermine his talent and [2] tech companies don’t check all the data they steal from everyone. Haha.
Oh, and if you’re so inclined, you can waste even more of your time reading some of the other April 1st posts I’ve written which some people also fell for … which I’d love to think was due to my brilliant writing, but was likely due to the fact I was in a totally different timezone to them so it wasn’t April 1 for them. Damnit.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Complicity, Creativity, Cunning, Management, Scam, Systems, Technology
A few weeks ago, I received this email.
I know it’s small – and blurry – so out of the kindness of my heart, let me replicate what it says:
Hi Rob, I hope this message finds you well.
My name is Thomas and I am a recruitment consultant working on behalf of a large marketing firm.
I found your Linkedin profile and was impressed by your background and professional experience.
We are currently recruiting for several positions and would like to know if you a opportunities with us. We are looking for innovative and forward-thinking people who are passionate about building the future.
I think you would be an excellent fit for this organization, It you’re ready to take the next step in your career, we’d love to hear from you.
Please apply directly through our Careers portal.
Warm Regards.
Thomas Ryan
Recruitment Consultant
I’ve got to be honest, it really pissed me off.
Not just because it was speculative.
Not just because it was unsolicited.
Not just because it was ambiguous.
But because it was also presumptuous – exemplified by the ‘book a call’ link at the bottom.
I am fed up of how lazy some recruiters are – especially as some poor company is paying them for their ‘expertise’ in finding talent – so this time, instead of ignoring them, I decided to reply to them.
So I sent this:
Hello Thomas, thank you for reaching out.
I hope you will forgive me, but I receive many of these emails so to ensure we’re both on the same page, could you let me know what it is about my experience you feel is especially relevant for the opportunity you represent?
In addition, it would be good if you could tell me a bit about the actual opportunity – from industry, to geography, to level of position.
Thank you so much.
I know, polite eh?
And why – given I was so pissed off?
Well, because I wanted Thomas to respond so I could prove he hadn’t actually read my profile and was just ‘talent farming’ … by that I mean sending out copious amounts of emails to all and sundry to see who bit so they could tell their client about their extensive search and charge their fee.
And did I get a reply?
Not exactly. A few hours later I got an email saying my response had not been sent as the email it was sent to didn’t work.
I should have known given so many of these type of emails are sent out with the sole goal of ensuring they don’t have to deal with any direct contact … however I was still pissed at the lazy and impersonal approach, so I went back to the original email to see if there was any way to contact them.
Having looked again, I realized there wasn’t any except that link to ‘book a call’.
At this point I’d decided to write a blog post about Thomas and how horrid and presumptive his approach was – so in a bid to try and find out more info on how to reach him for the content of the post, I clicked on the link and …
Well, at this point I should be showing you an image of what I found, but I forgot to take a photo, so instead … maybe this will give you a good idea of what I discovered:
Yep, I was caught in a phishing scam. Except they weren’t trying to steal my data, they were ‘teaching me’ that I needed to be more careful before I click on links sent on email because this ‘scam’ was from our own IT department.
Now I appreciate I work for an Omnicom company. And I appreciate security is rightfully very important to them and they understandably want all their people to take security seriously too. And I acknowledge I’d just demonstrated that I need to be extra vigilant because these things can – and do – happen all the time, even though it was the first time I’d fallen for something like this in my 5 years with the company. Which I will. And finally, I also acknowledge that on closer inspection, the email was riddled with little tell-tell spelling mistakes that I should have noticed … though the reality is not only did I miss them, I only saw them when I replicated the email above for legibility and corrected them for ease of reading this post.
However – and maybe it’s just me – the way they approached this ‘lesson’ feels a bit yucky.
Not because I was caught out – it was definitely an effective way to remind people to keep on their toes where company internet security is concerned – but because their approach could be read by some as a way to scare people into fearing – or staying clear – of any genuine recruitment enquiry they receive from any outside party.
Now you might think who cares, it was effective. And that’s fair.
Or you may think that couldn’t happen … but imagine you’re new to the business and have never experienced dealing with a recruiter before? Add to that the endless rounds of redundancies they’re hearing about – and most probably fearing – and let me tell you, I can absolutely see this sort of thing potentially putting someone off who is young in the industry from responding or replying for a long time.
As I said, I get why they do this sort of thing and I hold my hands up in acknowledging I was caught out by it – albeit for reasons they probably hadn’t anticipated which is namely some bloke with a blog suddenly wanted name and shame the sender for their lazy and sloppy professionalism. And it’s because of that I would like to take this opportunity to genuinely congratulate the Omnicom IT department for their devious and – all credit to them – creative way to teach an important and valuable lesson.
[As an aside, I wonder if they send similar sorts of things to different CEO’s of different Omnicom companies? Except instead of Thomas being a fictional recruiter with ambiguous job openings, he’s now a potential client with a billion dollar advertising budget he wants to talk to them about, via a ‘book a call’ link]
But for any younger person who has never been in the position of being approached by a headhunter and was caught out by this exercise – and looking at Reddit and Fishbowl, there were – let me ease your paranoia by saying should you ever end up wanting or needing to explore new opportunities and don’t know where to start, who to turn to or what to do, seek out Lea Walker or Lesley Cheng, who are both based in Australia but work internationally.
Not just because they’re brilliant humans who happen to be incredible, smart and deeply knowledgeable experts in talent, careers and roles … but because they will never send you an email that could be an Omnicom IT phishing test in disguise.
I will now never be responding to any email, let alone make the stupid mistake of clicking a link … even if its in the quest to write a scathing blog post.
Consider myself properly ‘chastised’.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand, Brand Suicide, Comment, Consultants, Corporate Evil, Crap Campaigns In History, Creativity, Culture, Kickstarter
I know I work in marketing.
I know everyone likes to think their ‘thing’ is a ‘unique’ thing.
And I know people like to ‘big up’ whatever it is they do to sound even bigger than it is … like claiming a solid marketing 101 course is a ‘mini-MBA’, which is made even more amusing by the fact the person behind it has developed a caricature of being ‘no nonsense’ … but the problem with this ‘blinkers on, always look straight ahead’ attitude is that while you’re spouting your ridiculousness, we don’t see the people around us laughing and pointing.
Self-awareness is increasingly becoming one of the most important and valuable attributes in business – and yet, too often, anyone who points out a problem is met with distain, as if they are trying to destroy an organization when all they’re trying to do is protect them.
At this point, I could point to that utterly horrific Ritz Cracker Superbowl ad … or that Maxwell House/Apartment abomination … but no, I found something even more potentially insane.
This.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate people have favourite notepads. It may be influenced by paper stock quality, design or number of pages … but selling a notebook on its ability to lay perfectly flat?
It’s a notebook for fucks sake, not a bloody Toblerone.
This is up there with the sort of bullshit hype you see on most Kickstarter pages … except on Kickstarter, they at least try and claim they’ve added some sort of innovation that marks it out from traditional approaches, whether true or not.
But a notebook that lies flat?
That’s where we’ve got folks.
That’s where the marketing industry is.
Where it is no longer good enough to simply be good at what you do, everything needs to have some sort of hype ingredient … even if it induces ridicule more than aspiration.
It’s not even fucking targeted to a particular audience who may – just may – value the aesthetic of multiple notebooks placed together more than what they put in the notebook.
If you take away the fact this ad is desperately and blatantly attempting to suggest it’s for a premium product with an innovative feature … this may actually be the most generic piece of generic communication ever created.
And before someone says, ‘but you noticed it and wrote about it’, I would remind people the opposite of good isn’t bad, it’s apathy and there’s more of that being triggered than ever before – driven by systems, processes and ego’s that care more about elevating the self-importance of the creator than addressing the realities, needs and contexts of the recipient.
What we do can be important.
Not life-changing important, but important all the same.
Let’s not forget we can emotionally move people, impact economies and categories and create different futures for millions in ways few other industries could ever dream of achieving.
But if we carry on with our blinkered, arrogant, tick-box, Emperor’s New Clothes attitude, we will eventually discover – as will the clients, pundits and peddlers who either buy into this approach, encourage it or flog it – that the only people who are listening, is themselves.
Of course, as an industry, we should always be open to the new and the next.
But that should never be at the expense of forgetting, ignoring or devaluing what we do and how great we can be at doing it.
Sadly, somewhere along the way, it appears we have … and are now our business model appears to be chasing whatever we think makes us look relevant to the procurement department in business rather than doing things that are valuable to the actual business.
Resulting in us having more tools but making less valuable stuff with it.
Or said another way, we’re increasingly becoming a division of Temu.