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

While I appreciate why someone would think that’s the way to approach the task, I have to say I think it’s the wrong way to go.

Sure, there are some agencies that are built on very strong values and principles – BBH, W+K, Mother etc etc – however that still doesn’t mean it’s the place for you which is why I would always advocate finding the boss rather than finding the company.

That might sound much more difficult to do – not to mention be much harder work – however given this would be someone who you would be spending the majority of your time working for/with, surely you’d want to make sure they’re someone who can inspire you, educate you & push you?

For me, a boss should be someone who leads and inspires by example … someone who has been-there, done-that … someone who wants to give you exposure and focus, not just problems or workload … which is why as much as working for one of the ‘cool agencies’ might sound great, it’s never as good as having a boss who will take you to places you didn’t even know existed.

OK, imagine you’re a magazine publisher and have decided – for reasons only you can fathom – to start a monthly ad mag … apart from having lot’s of photos of yourself in it [thanks for that Rafik] what would you actually like to see/read in it and, possibly even more importantly, what things – based on the current mob of titles available – would you absolutely insist of having chucked out from the very start.

In just 7 odd years, it now has a global “membership” of between 500-600 million people and a line of companies desperate to hand over tens of millions of their dollars for some sort of marketing association.

Who cares that a significant proportion of their audience are seemingly very casual – if at all – users, or that [arguably] the most significant and influential country on earth has almost 3 times the population of Facebook and yet they never access it, mainly because they can’t.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Facebook, but that is what I think is it’s ultimate downfall.

OK, not because I like it personally – but I’m sure that doesn’t help – but because if the average age of people who originally signed up were say, 18 – they’re 25 now and in ten years time they’ll be 35 and then 10 years after that, 45 [see how good at maths I am] and let’s be honest, as the younger generations come online [literally and metaphorically] it’s pretty unlikely they’re going to want to hang where their embarrassing parents are socialising.

Yes I know there are ways around it and that many people are doing it now … plus to claim Facebook will disappear is wrong, because I can see them being around in some form for decades [so that’s the headline of this post screwed] … however as with many things in life, as the user base gets older the appeal to the younger generations gets weaker [which is dangerous for Facebook as many marketers like it because they think it’s the playground of youth, regardless of how accurate this is or not] and so unless Facebook manage this very well [which will be additionally difficult given the massive base of 30+ people who will be camped out there] I foresee a time where we will have a totally new ‘holy grail’ social hub, which is why if I was a company investing hundreds of millions of dollars into Facebook advertising, I’d be holding some back and trying to invest it into the creation of Facebook 2.0 rather than just adopting a passive attitude and waiting till someone else makes billions from it.

MET.
ROB.
MORTIMER.

Rob was, I think, the first fool to start commenting on my blog [apart from some dodgy colleagues] so it was wonderful to finally be able to meet up with him after over 5 years.

Of course, it was slightly weird that we did it in HK, given he lives in Manchester and I live in Shanghai – but despite that, sitting down with him and his good lady wife left me feeling in a similar way as to when I met Lauren: normal.

I don’t mean that in a disparaging way, I mean it in the sense that it felt like we were old friends just catching up after a while and that we’ll be catching up again very soon.

Now of course I do hope we will catch up again very soon – however as much as Rob and I have conversed many, many times, the reality is I don’t really know him, I certainly don’t know enough about his life, and yet the feeling I had when we were chatting is some weird American dineresque bar, was this is an old mate.

That’s testimony to how nice he and his wife are, but it’s also another example of [in the positive sense] how friendship is evolving or [in the negative sense] the illusion blogging can create.

I’ve said for a long time that while I am a massive fan of technology, there are dark sides.

When I was growing up, you had to make friends with whoever lived near you or you’d be Billy-No-Mates and so, even if you had massive differences of opinion on stuff [best band, football team, flavour of crisps] you would work your way around them.

Nowadays it’s different.

You don’t have to worry about being a loner or a loser – at least not in the same way – you can find people who share exactly the same views and thoughts as you and while that is great in making you feel like you belong, it also stops people having an ability to debate or accept other people’s points-of-view and that is something I find very concerning and yet, every time I mention it, I get looked at as if I am advocating banning technology and going back to a quill and ink.

Technology is awesome, it has allowed me to make contact and friendships with a whole host of people – but personally, I am old school and think the term friendship can only be used when you know the bad sides of a person as well as the good.

That said, I was talking to a mate last weekend about how friendship has lost elements of its spontaneity.

That could be because I’m an old fucker or the fact I don’t actually know that many people in Shanghai – but I kind-of miss just knocking on a mates door unannounced and seeing if they want to go out.

Sadly that doesn’t seem to happen anymore – at least to me – possibly because we all have technology that allows us to see if a person is ‘up for it’ without actually having to make any effort though to be fair, even if they did, I’d probably end up grumbling under my breath about how my precious personal time had been invaded by someone being nice and spontaneous.

I am seriously only weeks away from turning into the grumbling old men off the muppets!

Saying that, one thing I kind-of-like about this blog is that we don’t always agree.

Of course you’re always wrong [ahem], but I like the fact we can have differences of opinion without either [at least in the main] character assassinating the person with the alternative view or writing spiteful anonymous comments and that’s why meeting Rob for real was so great, because while we didn’t really disagree on stuff, I got to know more about him – the person – and that’s why I can say we’re moving from online friends, to friends, even if the thought of that will quite rightly, horrify him.

Ahhhhh, I’ve just worked out why Northern has cancelled his trip to Singapore.

Yes, even those of you who normally quaff fine wine and read the Guardian.

Sure, it’s a fairly provocative headline, but the fact is, it’s grabbed your attention and pulled you in.

While I am not suggesting you need to be so dramatic to get people’s interest, I would say that I am given far too many documents and presentations that have about as much immediate appeal as a Sunday plastering the walls of the house in woodchip.

Of course it would be nice to think that the quality of the work would be enough to draw people in – but in a competitive World, you need to be seducing from the get-go, and that means framing your presentation or document in a way that makes your audience want to pick it up, not pass it by.

Again, I am not suggesting you suddenly start using titles like …

“Why Facebook Users Have Bigger Cocks Than MySpace Users”

or

“Television Makes People Horny”

… but I am suggesting you need to remember a title is incredibly important and to just write some blandom is [sadly] potentially going to undermine all your hard work.

The best analogy I can use is this:

For years, women have said [when looking for a man] that a sense of humour is much more important than looks.

Hahahahahahaha!

Let’s be honest, the reality tends to be [I say ‘tend’ because I am obviously one of the exceptions] that a woman will only want to find out if the guy has a sense of humour if they find him a bit attractive to look at in the first place.

In other words, the headline is the ‘physical appearance’ and the document is the ‘sense of humour’.

Yes, that is a shit analogy but it’ll have to do for now.

Anyway, think of titles that make your audience want to know more.

Think of what they are looking for in and write it around that. Or look at your solution and write something relating to that. Maybe you used a different approach to the normal process? If you did, think about basing it around that. There’s millions of ways you can approach it, just don’t be dry or overly rational because as much as we all like to pretend differently, in most cases, the good looking ones tend to get the first focus of attention.

And don’t even get me started on how important it is to make sure the document/presentation looks good …