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

A MONTH!!!

How about that for making your 2013 awesome?

You see next week is Chinese New Year so the entire country shuts down to allow 1.3 billion people to fire off firecrackers from 12:01am [+1 second] till 11:59pm [+ 59 seconds] for 7 whole fucking days straight.

[Given it’s the year of the snake, I’m assuming 2013 will prove to be a fantastic year for bankers, lawyers and 1970’s BBC television presenters]

Then almost immediately after, I go to the other extreme where I take my Mum to North Polesville so she can [hopefully] see the Northern Lights.

How my birkenstocked toes will cope in –50 is anyone’s guess, but we’ll give it a go.

What this means is that I won’t be writing any more rubbish until March 11th … but before you get the celebrations under way, spare a thought for my poor wife who will have to cope with me 24/7 for over 28 days straight.

So as my last post for Feb, I thought I’d talk about something I’ve been seeing more and more of and that’s what I call, irrational assumption.

Irrational assumption is where people assume a person has a lot of additional values/talents/skills simply because of one defining accomplishment.

God, that makes no sense does it.

Does it?

OK, let me give you an example.

In China, you often hear people characterising anyone that has gone to university as Worldly, sophisticated and successful.

Why?

University doesn’t mean you’re Worldly.

Nor does it mean you’re automatically – or even guaranteed to be – successful or sophisticated.

And in China, where the education system is based more around ‘memory’ than ‘application’ [If only for the sheer volume of people it has to cater for] it arguably means it even less.

Not only that, but with so many people now going to university in China, we have started seeing – from a white collar employment perspective – supply outstrip demand.

Please don’t read into this that I’m saying people who go to university in China aren’t smart or capable of achieving great thing – that is, hopefully quite obviously, not the case at all – I’m just saying that it is wrong to assume that because someone achieves one thing, they must also have/embrace/adopt a whole host of other characteristics.

Of course this situation is not exclusive to University graduates or China … I am continually bombarded by shit that is totally irrelevant, just because a company assumed a person of my age and travel commitments must like golf, wine & BMW’s … but the point is, while adland has to – to a certain extent – segment people into groups, if we continue blindly making additional assumptions to their character, interests and achievements simply because of something else they’ve done/achieved, then we’re going to spend even more millions of our clients dollars alienating, rather than attracting.

Given I’m gone for a whole month, if anyone would like to point out any other irrational assumptions, I’d be very interested.

And can we try and avoid the usual cliché on this blog such as:

+ All planners are twits.

+ All Queen fans are stupid.

+ All Birkenstock wearers are lesbians who like German folk music & hairy underarms.

Cool?

Good.