Filed under: Comment
There is a chance that by the time this post comes out, the issue I am about to write about is over, but even if it is, the underlying bollocks of it all is still very, very relevant.
I’ve written tons about my hatred of Qantas in the past, however their latest action is something to behold.
For months, the airline has been in a battle with unions over pay, conditions and the possibility of moving jobs to Asian countries.
In some respects I understand this.
The airline business is incredibly competitive and if you don’t evolve and change, you are dead – and Qantas is in a situation where it’s international business is currently losing AU$200 million dollars a year and things need to be done and done now.
This sort of thing is hard at the best of times but it becomes especially difficult when you are regarded as a national airline, because anything involving giving local jobs to people in other countries gets seen as unpatriotic – adding more pressure and emotion to an already volatile situation.
That said, this issue has hardly just come on to Qantas managements radar.
These circumstances have been a ticking time bomb for literally years and the fact Qantas senior management decided to turn their collective backs on it – including refusing to take action in other areas of their business that could have helped stem the impending situation [beyond just outsourcing jobs or cost cutting services] means they can’t hold up their hands up and claim to be blameless.
Which is why their decision last week to literally stop all Qantas flights and lock Qantas staff out from the company is remarkable in it’s mentalness.
Apart from the fact they’ve left paid passengers all around the World without a means to get home [suggesting they should “club together” with other stranded passengers and share a hotel room while the situation waits to be resolved] they have tried to put all the blame on the unions … attempting to paint them as the bad guys while they are simply innocent corporate victims.
Couple of problems with this.
1. People might not trust unions – especially unions representing the mafiaesque ‘baggage handlers’ – however their view of many corporations is just as questionable.
2. At the end of the day, the decision to stop all the airlines was with the Qantas CEO … meaning he was the one that decided that it was just ‘tough luck’ if any of their passengers were left stranded.
Regardless of the reasons why, this is a mad situation to put your brand in – especially a brand that makes such a big fucking deal of saying they’ll always bring Aussies home. Hell, it’s even the theme of their bloody advertising ‘jingle’ – “I Still Call Australia Home” – the most myopic, bordering-on-prejudice, tune you have ever heard.
Unsurprisingly, the King Of Opportunity – Richard Branson – has jumped at the chance to leverage this opportunity by offering stranded passengers super-low discount fairs to get them home and of course that is very smart, because at the end of the day, regardless of comfort or entertainment or food or hot hostesses, one of the key reasons you choose an airline is because you believe they’ll get you where you want to be, when they say they’ll get you there and Qantas have just destroyed one of the most important ingredients a brand can have … an ingredient that takes years to develop. Trust.
Act in haste. Regret in leisure.
Filed under: Comment
Today is a great day, because today is my Mum’s birthday.
Amazingly – for her and for me – she will be 79.
SEVENTY NINE.
How the hell did that happen?
The thing with any age ending in a ‘9’ is that no one really celebrates it.
What I mean is that despite it being your special 9th, 19th, 29th, 39th, 49th, 59, 69th, 79th etc birthday, everyone focuses on the following year, the one that ‘clicks’ over to a new decade, the one that is supposed to signify something, even though in most cases, it does nothing of the sort.
That’s a bit rubbish if you ask me … even though I’m not just doing the same, I’m planning what to do for her on her 80th.
We’re all getting a bit ahead of ourselves aren’t we.
Today is my Mum’s birthday. She is 79. And she is bloody awesome.
I’ve written so much about her on this blog over the years.
Her kindness, generosity, inspiration, cleverness, strength of character, unconditional love and overall spirit … she is one of the genuinely good people on this earth and I am amazingly lucky to have her as my Mum.
I love how she maintains her sense of adventure and openness.
I love how she speaks up for what she believes in.
I love how she is accepting of all.
I love how she has the desire to keep on learning.
I love how she doesn’t blame and doesn’t complain.
I love how she wants to be part of this society, not live her life by ‘how it used to be’.
It’s kind of amazing that despite being her son, I have so few of these fantastic traits in my own character – at least in terms of how she embraces and lives with them.
When I’m her age, I’ll be the grumpiest, grumpy bastard alive.
I’ll be muttering under my breath. Complaining about everything. Watching daytime TV and saying how it used to be so much better when Jerry Springer fronted Jerry Springer.
I’m going to be a nightmare.
But not my Mum.
She gently goes on with her life, not wanting to burden anyone with anything … fighting for her independence and her ability to contribute to this society and her life.
And she does.
In more ways that she could ever know.
Whereas so many people dance through life with hardly a care in the World and yet act as if everything is conspiring against them, my Mum has had it tough.
I don’t mean because I’m her son – though that can’t have helped – but because of a whole heap of situations and scenarios … situations and scenarios that started almost from the day she was born.
And yet despite this she is full of love and support … kindness and consideration … it’s amazing and inspiring.
I wish she would let me take more care of her.
I wish she would stop trying to do everything on her own.
I wish she started thinking of herself rather than others.
But she doesn’t … and at 79 I have to accept it’s unlikely she will change, so my job is to let her know I love her and try and be a good son, husband and person as a demonstration of what she and Dad taught me.
I don’t know if I am pulling that off, but if I’m not, it’s not because of her because her approach to life all but guarantees you’ll be a wonderful person.
Anyway, even though I did this for her last year, I want to leave her with something that sums up how I feel about her, because at the end of the day, I can’t put into words just how much I love her, adore her and am grateful for her.
Happy birthday my wonderful dear Mum. I love you.
Rx
Filed under: Comment
When I started in adland, Steve Henry once barked something at me that still stays with me to this day:
“If you want people to do something, you have to entertain them. That’s the trade”.
He was right.
I am seeing way too much advertising – whether it’s new age digital experiential shit or old fashioned TVC’s – that has had all the energy and life sucked out of it, replaced with contrived seriousness or the illusion of luxury.
Please don’t confuse what I’m saying as validation for the other type of communication being made … the sponsored [shit] joke.
Oh no.
Spending a fuckload of cash to bring some bad joke to life just so you can put your logo on the end and pretend you’re popular isn’t right either.
[Are you hearing me beer companies!? Jesus, at least do something original]
As I’ve said many times, we’re in the ‘commercial creativity’ business.
That’s 2 words, not one … and they have to be read together, not with a fullstop inbetween.
That means what we do has got to fulfill a bunch of criteria.
At it’s heart it has to encourage people to want to do what your clients brand needs them to do … but rather than brainwash, bore or bully them into it … it has to be done in a way that not only makes them think, be interested and excited – it has to done in a way that makes them want to be part of something.
Sure it’s difficult. Sure it doesn’t always work. Sure it doesn’t mean everything has to be over-the-top. But as people only do stuff that is in their interests, not the brands [which is why we are supposed to have planners!] we have to make sure we do things they notice, are interested in and will care about … and that is the power of entertainment.
Few people want to watch ads – at least those not in the industry.
Few people want to be treated like an idiot or a child at school.
Few people care about helping a companies shareholders.
But part of our job is to make people give a damn.
Wake them up.
Get them interested.
Encourage them to think and hopefully do something different.
And that is why entertainment [with purpose] is so important because as Steve said [read: shouted] if you’re going to interrupt people’s lives, you better do it in a way that makes that interruption worth while … make that moment stay with them for far longer than the specific interaction … and that’s not going to happen if you approach every interaction with either the overt seriousness of a companies ego or the contrived silliness of a company that has nothing meaningful to say.
We need to take leaps.
We need to push boundaries.
We need to press cultural buttons.
Not for creatives sake, but for commercial effectiveness’ sake … and any planner, suit or client who fails to get this is fundamentally missing the point of what we do, what we can do and what moves a huge proportion of society.
Wow, all this just to justify showing the best wrestling video of all time …
Filed under: Comment
So over the last couple of weeks, there has been a lot of international press coverage about the tragic – and quite simply horrific – story of a little girl who was run over in a Chinese city and then ignored by multiple passers-by, despite writhing in agony and suffering from obvious serious injury.
Quite rightly, the press has been scathing about the people who didn’t run to her aid … it’s a disgraceful and unfathomable thing … however rather than report the situation neutrally, I can’t help but feel the press have extended their judgement of who is to blame to more than just the people involved in the incident, but to China as a whole.
Almost every report reads like China is full of cold and heartless bastards … a bunch of unemotional, uneducated, unsophisticated savages who care for nothing other than their own well being.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a total and utter tragedy and there’s no excuse for it whatsoever – a view, I should add, that is shared by all of China as well – however I can’t help but feel the way the international press have latched on to this incident with such vengeance highlights how scared the West is of China’s growing wealth and influence when they should be promoting how we should/could be working closer together.
China is a lot of things … good, bad, ugly and weird … but to imply over a billion people are heartless and cruel is unbelievably heartless and cruel.
And wrong. Very, very, very wrong.
But the thing that really fucks me off is how the international press are basically acting like all their own examples of social disgrace didn’t exist.
In the last few years both the UK and the US have had episodes that have been equally – if not more so – horrific and yet there’s this “tone” being presented in the media that the West is civilised society and China is this raw and ugly beast that cannot be trusted.
Please don’t think I am trying to make an excuse for the horror that happened last week – I’m not and neither is anyone in China – but I still find it incredibly hypocritical and disgraceful that the foreign press are acting as if their own society is perfect.
What they’re doing is basically stoking up the fires of prejudice and if that means exploiting a horrible and tragic act to justify it, so be it. The absolute total bastards.
I hope people are smarter than to believe all they read in the press, however judging by the comments I follow on the articles being written, it would appear that there’s quite a lot that do.
This is the shame we should also be highlighting.
Filed under: Comment
Remember a few months ago I wrote about the lessons I’d learnt regarding a presentation I wrote called ‘How To Be A Bitch’?
Well if you do, that’s more than I did.
So I’m about to go to Sydney to talk at the NINEMSN Digital Summit and as part of that, I was asked to speak to a journalist about my presentation.
Me being me, I was happy to talk about how I’ve seen some digital marketing that is – in my mind – developed for the wrong reasons or for the wrong purposes … however when I saw the article in print, I was shocked to see that it basically took my comments and made me sound like I was questioning the validity of the whole digital medium, let alone digital marketing.
Now while my presentation will allow me to put that right on Wednesday, the fact is that article will last a lifetime and without context, it would be easy to get a completely inaccurate view of what I am saying and what I believe and that bothers me.
Bothers me a lot.
Not because I work for a company that proudly and passionately believes in the power of digital.
Nor because a digital company has kindly decided to fly me out to speak at their event.
It’s because it’s wrong.
While I’m no digital expert – I have been involved in it for 18 years and have seen it metamorphosize from ‘new media’ to ‘media’ to ‘a part of life’ and I have been very vocal about how pervasive, persuasive and powerful it can be.
Hell, it’s infiltrated our lives to such a degree that it is the only medium that can get around the ‘personal firewalls’ we have put up to filter out all the unwanted messages and noise around us.
That’s power and influence.
That’s wonder and amazement.
The issue I have – and the issue I was talking about – was bad digital marketing.
The stuff that doesn’t reflect the audience.
The stuff that doesn’t add value to people’s lives or clients commercial objectives.
The stuff that is trying to brainwash rather than engage, delight, inspire and motivate.
The stuff that feels like it was done with the same approach as banner ads in the mid-90’s.
Digital is a part of life and it’s a major part of my life and while I question how some people approach it, there’s a ridiculous amount of stuff that gives a glimpse of what it is and what it can be … and given some of that stuff are things that I have been lucky enough to be directly part of or through the wonderful company I work for, I’m very proud of that.
Being sensationalized – accidentally or not – doesn’t feel nice.
I know they will say “but you said that” … but the thing is, when you only hear part of the story, the impression it conveys means what you said is pointless, because the message being heard is completely counter to what you intended.
As a comms person I know that.
As a comms person I should have known better.