The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

In general there’s two kinds: the ‘local’ and the ‘international’ … and while both are a wonderful places to browse and get a bit of an understanding of the people who go there, I must admit I find the ‘international’ ones especially fascinating – if only for the picture it paints of who the supermarket wants/wishes to shop there.

Without doubt, expats have a privileged life – they earn a great salary, pay a low level of tax, tend to live in nice apartments in nice parts of town, have good jobs – but you know what, even with all that I reckon you’d be hard pressed to find even Jamie ‘mockney’ Oliver happy to spend such an enormous amount of money on this:

OK … OK … for those of you who haven’t got the faintest idea how much almost HK$4,000 is, it’s:

AU $556.02
SG $707.00
US $515.08
UK £337.94

THREE HUNDRED AND THRITY SEVEN QUID ON VINEGAR!!!

VINEGAR.

Fucking vinegar … the sort of stuff you get free down the local takeaway.

Seriously, would that bottle really make your packet of chips taste that much better?

Apparently it’s been brewed [or whatever you call it] for EIGHTY YEARS.

Vinegar. 80 years. Three hundred quid.

Am I the only one who thinks this is all fucking mental?

I know Asia is obsessed with status – driving sales of everything from watches and bags through to cars and apartments – but you know it’s all gone a bit far when someone wants to charge the GDP of Wales for a bottle of bloody vinegar.

What happens if you’ve bought a bottle and have people over for dinner?

You couldn’t enjoy a single second of the evening as you’d be watching your guests with hawks eyes as they pour 5 bucks away every time a little drop touches their food … but you’d have to let them use it or they’d be no point owning the bloody thing given you’d be the sort of person that has no self esteem and instead has to fake it through the aquisition of items that serve no value other than to show other meaningless individuals you have cash.

The World’s gone mad, but not as mad as the person who stocked it or bought it.

BTW – and I know this is going to sound uber-pathetic – does anyone know who was the first person to refer to a market as a ‘supermarket’?

It’s just I’m doing something for a client about marketing ideas/positioning that have now become part of the general landscape, and it appears to me that once-upon-a-time, someone decided to refer to their market as a ‘supermarket’ in a bid to position themselves as being ‘bigger, better & cheaper’ than their competition and yet because they didn’t invest in directly linking that term to their brand, it has now just become a general descriptor for the entire category.

Yes I know, stating the obvious … but I do find it quite interesting to try and isolate the point where specific term/definition lost its ability to relate to the person/brand who dreamt it up.

Right enough of this bollocks, time to go and shove some Sarsons on my chips … it’s only a couple of quid a bottle and tastes fucking lovely.

I love her so much that I’d be here forever if I had to explain all the reasons why she’s so wonderful.

I’m sure you all think the same about your own Mum’s … and that’s understandable because you’ve not met mine.

Anyway a week ago she sounded very down because whilst out, she lost one of her earrings from a pair she got on her wedding day … way back in 1964.

My Mum – like her son – is quite a sentimentalist, except where I can feel emotionally connected to a calculator, my Mum is moved by things that matter. Like earrings. Earrings that represent the day she married her beloved husband, a husband who passed away 11 years ago and yet remains in her – and her sons – heart and thoughts each and every day.

Anyway a couple of days ago, she was going home – still desperately scanning the pavement she had walked over countless times in the last 72 hours – when she saw a glint in the sun and you guessed it, there was her earring.

Sure it was a bit battered and bruised as god knows how many people had trod on it but she had found it and the joy in her voice when she told me she found it was magical.

I’ve never tried any drugs [unless Strepsils count] but if its anything close to how my Mum’s happiness made me feel, I can understand why it’s addictive.

My Mum is 77 and yet the joy in her voice made her sound 17 … it was infectious … suddenly everything became good, happy and possible.

In a World where we mistakenly associate happiness with material possessions, it’s important to remember there is nothing greater than hearing people you love being happy and nothing greater than knowing their happy because of things that matter, not things that are new.

Thank you Mum. Seems Dad is still watching out for us.

Apart from making him feel loved and wanted, it’s bound to pull in the babelicious marketing director chicks. The babelicious Smiths loving, marketing director chicks.

… for all the nice messages regarding me, Andy and the cynic gang.

Means more than you’d know.

We didn’t really know what we were doing or what was going to happen … but armed with some beliefs, some people who believed in us and some anger, we gave it a go and 7 years later, we can look back and feel a real sense of pride.

Pride because we worked with some of the best people in the biz and – possibly more importantly – helped some of the most talented people we’ve ever met move onto bigger, better and more important things.

Pride because we helped develop mopeds, early warning systems and airline interiors as well as contribute to a whole bunch of ads – many multi-award winning – not to mention being mere inches away from getting a new word into the Oxford Dictionary [Boringe].

Pride because we started a film company [an unmitigated disaster], a research company [a very interesting failure] and a cultural research lab [wonderfully tops & exciting] as well as created strategic alliances/joint ventures with Google, Virgin, WPP & M&C.

Pride because we never borrowed a penny and never lost a dime.

Pride because we started with 3 people and through our various associations etc, ended up with over 100.

Pride because we managed to stay mates and enjoy the whole wonderfully weird adventure.

As some of you may have noticed, I’m using the past tense in that list and that’s because it’s time to now say goodbye.

No one has lost their job, no one has fallen out – it’s just we’re turning into something else … something exciting, challenging and possibly even more of a social experiment than it was ever before … the only difference being we won’t be called cynic and Andy and I will no longer be directly involved in the business.

As I said, we’re incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved and even more excited about what we can still achieve … but distance, time and curiosity has resulted in us making a decision we genuinely believe is in the best interests of all the guys in the company – both personally and professionally – so whilst emotionally it’s been quite a wrench for us to say goodbye, the reality is the only thing that’s really changing is the name, the core focus of the company and the degree of involvement from a couple of the guys. Oh, and the now huge R&D budget.

I know that sounds like quite a lot of difference, but it isn’t really – not when you look at what we’ve spent so much time doing in the last 18 months and for whom.

I can’t really talk much about the specifics of it all, because there’s still a couple of little things that need to be ironed out … horrible ‘legal’ things … but its genuinely very exciting and I’m sure it doesn’t take a computer engineer to work out what’s going on.

🙂

So where does that leave Andy and I?

Well Andy is a big boy [a very big boy! Ha] so I am sure he will tell you – probably with a big dollop of fuck, fuck, fucking swearing thrown in – when he’s good and ready but as for me, well it represents quite a change.

Even though I [and Andy] will occasionally be involved in cynic 2.0 [so my cynical-world email is maintained] and I’ll remain engaged in a certain bearded billionaires adventures [got to protect my perks, ha!] … I have another set of things I want/need to challenge myself with – some personal, many professional – which is why apart from my wife and cat, I am basically starting over.

What I mean is that on top of saying goodbye to cynic, I’m also saying goodbye to SUNSHINE [a company we started at the worst point of the financial crisis and yet still managed to win some great biz against some agencies great across the region] … goodbye to my wonderful friend and inspiring boss, Chris Jaques … and goodbye to Hong Kong … because from July 12th, not only will I be studying part-time to become a teacher [my longer-term life change, god help education!] but I will be living in Shanghai and starting my new job as the [regional] head of planning here.

Finally, I’d like to say a huge thank you to all the people who have contributed to making my last 7 years more exciting than I could ever of imagined – you know who you are and you know I’ll always be your biggest fan – plus I’d also like to say a big thank you to the guys who gave me/us advice on my/our decision, despite us [well, me] changing my mind every 2 minutes … namely Lee, Gareth, Jill, Mary, Mary, Linda, Jonathan, Chris, NP [who won’t have reaslised he did] Leon, Freddie, Iain and Tricky Dickie.

Oh, and to George & Andy ….