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

I don’t mean in terms of being ‘the boss’, but in terms of being confident you can handle whatever life throws at you.

In essence, every challenge becomes a task – something that requires your attention but will never put you in a position of panic.

And that’s when you know you need to put yourself in some sort of career danger.

While no one likes the feeling of being out-of-control or scared shitless, the ‘comfort zone’ is equally as dangerous.

I wrote something about this a while ago, but I recently caught up with a friend who took this advice in a pretty extreme way.

Justin was a successful trader.

He’d been a successful trader for 7 years and then one day, he decided to become a surgeon.

Yes, A SURGEON!!!

He basically walked away from a great career, salary and lifestyle and put himself in a situation where he was paying a huge amount of money to feel inadequate.

And here’s the thing. He hated feeling that way … loathed it … but he is sticking with it for 2 key reasons:

1. He hasn’t felt he was learning so much in decades.

2. He knows/hopes, that one day he’ll not feel so helpless and that feeling of triumph over adversity will give him a sense of achievement he cannot comprehend.

I think Justin is awesome.

Not to mention inspirational.

And while I don’t think you have to go to such extremes to feel alive, I do think it’s important you find ways to maintain that sense of ‘nervous energy’ in your day-to-day job.

“I want to work at W+K, are there any jobs?”

2. Send me a long email telling me you’re the best thing since sliced bread and that I “need you” in my team.

3. Say you know all about China/Asian culture. Worse, say you know all about China/Asian culture despite having never even visited there.

4. Blame your company &/or clients for not having anything interesting you can show me.

5. Take all the credit for the work you’ve been a part of.

6. Tell me “you have learnt everything you need to know” in your current job, despite having only been in the industry 2 years.

7. Only talk about planning. Or advertising. Or planners. Especially planners.

8. Say you blend science with creativity despite having never studied science.

9. Talk about all the cool shit you know.

10. Act like you are entitled to work at W+K.

11. Say you’re not looking for a job and that you’re really happy and successful where you are – despite writing to me saying you want a job.

12. Never ask me to introduce/endorse you to one of my friends/colleagues at another agencies when I’ve never worked with you or seen anything you’ve done.

13. Please don’t ever – and I mean NEVER – use the term ‘digital ninja’ or ‘Rockstar’ in my presence, unless for ironic reasons.

14. Don’t show me a wonderful strategic presentation that ended up having absolutely zero influence on the final work.

15. Act like we’re best pals when I’ve never even spoken to you. I know I’m a fairly casual person – but my friends have earned the right to be cheeky bastards to me. You haven’t.

I hope that’s cleared up things because I know many of you live in total fear of accidentally ending up working with me.

In all seriousness, while I know I come from Nottingham, like Queen and wear Birkenstocks, the reality is I quite being treated with a bit of politeness and respect. That doesn’t mean you have to be subservient or overly formal … but if you act like your shit doesn’t stink, then you can be pretty sure I’ll inform you that it does.

But more than that, if you approach me in any of the ways I’ve listed above, then you’re demonstrating you don’t have – or at least aren’t showing – any of the attributes I hold most highly in a planner which means you will have basically failed the interview before I even had the chance to turn you down.

I know this post might make me look like a cock, but quite frankly, I don’t give a fuck.

I will happily try and help whoever I can.

I will happily spare the time for whoever wants it.

But as I believe the foundation of good planning is all about empathy, humanity & communication [mischief, ingenuity, opinion & action being the other traits] … then if you don’t relate to that, I’m the last person you should be talking to, let alone working with.

Rant over.

In it, I called into question their whole ‘Here For Good’ positioning – not because they were a bank, but because their communication just asked a bunch of philosophical questions rather than talking about any single thing they did that was actually ‘for good’.

At the end of the post, I said they were more likely to ‘be here for their own good’ than others.

Well, if reports from the US are to be believed, I was right.

Is it a surprise?

Not really … it’s more a surprise that a financial institution wasn’t suspected of bending the rules for so long.

I particularly like how the media have decided [allegedly] dealing with Iran is worse that systematically destroying the lives of millions of people around the World with false promises and hidden fee mortgage offers.

Of course, it’s not entirely their fault – every shareholder and account holder that demands ever increasing dividends or interest have to shoulder some of the blame, but still, it’s not all bad news for Standard Chartered’s senior execs … after all, in the financial industry, what they’ve done is probably viewed as ‘heroic’ so they can probably expect to receive a massive end of year bonus as an industry thank you.

“Don’t listen to anyone’s advice”.

I wasn’t being facetious, I meant it.

Adland is a mad career.

Sure it’s fun and exciting and volatile but it’s also utterly, utterly stupid.

We talk about systems and processes and professionalism and testing but I don’t think there has been one genuinely epic – and effective – brand idea that has come from it.

Not one.

Sure there are a bunch of things that have achieved a certain level of success – big levels of success – but epic?

Nah.

Don’t think so.

The thing is, all the ideas that have infiltrated and shifted culture have come from the minds of the pleasantly mad.

Whether that’s Bernbach or Hegarty … Wieden or Kennedy … every last one of them achieved glory for who they are and how they think, not what system they followed or proprietary tool they created.

But now adland is trying to filter that all out.

The weirdos, the interesting, the opinionated and the mad are being consigned to the ‘where are they now’ dustbin, to be replaced by suit wearing sycophants, whose greatest achievement is resilience and persistence within their corporate structure.

And we’re letting that happen.

In our bid to try and find ‘shortcuts to success’, we’ve forgone trying new things – except for the odd experiment that’s done more for PR hype than intrigue – and we’re following a post–rationalised ‘system’ that is inherently flawed because we’re attempting to deconstruct what someone once successfully pulled off without ever realising so much of it had to do with who they were, the life experiences they’d had and where the world was at that given time.

Of course it’s not just us contributing to this situation, it’s also the clients.

The one’s who want an easy life … the ladies and gentlemen whose career strategy is to not deviate from the pre-existing corporate process so they can get promoted in 2 years as opposed to doing something amazing and reach greater heights even sooner.

The one’s who look at the price rather than the return.

The individuals who focus on what their board want rather than their audience.

The frightened sheep.

The tragic thing is whether it’s on the agency or client side, this passive progressive attitude gets results – at least in terms of career.

But what happens if you achieve success following someone else’s system?

What happens if you get a top job because you simply walked in another persons footsteps?

Sure, it might feel good for a while.

Sure, it might get you a bigger job within the next few months.

Sure, you can enjoy the lifestyle the money brings you … but what about when you look in the mirror and ask yourself, “did you deserve it?”

Without doubt there’s people out there – in that very situation – who would say “yes, I do”, but I’m not so sure that’s true.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that for a lot of people, that’s what they say to protect themselves from the truth, which this quote sums up:

“The reward for conformity is everyone likes you, except yourself.”

For me, the best job in the World is when you are hired for who you are, what you believe, what you’ve created or done.

It’s not about filling a seat or performing a role … it’s when you are asked to do what you do, regardless of the system or the process that surrounds the company.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think a lot of people feel this way – especially in adland – so the fact so many of us end up endorsing the results from whichever proprietary tool we are forced to use or that we subdue our personal beliefs and personalities in an attempt to ‘be accepted’ is only doing us – and the industry – harm both now and in the longer term.

Look, I’m not saying you can be a prick or blatantly ignore whatever you think is wrong – however I am saying that amazing rarely happens following someone else’s rules – so if you want to stand a chance of getting ahead, fuck anybody else’s advice and just go with what you believe is right because someday, you’re going to get fired anyway and you’ll feel much better if its because of something you did wrong than something someone else told you to do.

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