Filed under: Attitude & Aptitude, Corporate Evil, Culture, Empathy, Family, My Fatherhood, Parents
After the revelations of yesterday, I thought I’d add one final nail in the coffin of optimism by showing you an answer Desmond Tutu gave in an interview from 2007.
I have to be honest, these 2 questions have had a profound affect on me.
The first is because I absolutely relate to the feeling of joy about having a son.
Full disclosure. When Otis was born, I wasn’t at my happiest.
To be absolutely honest, it took me 5 weeks to truly emotionally connect with him. Before that, I was spending all my time trying to get my head around the situation.
But now … oh my goodness.
That boy is everything to me.
The love I have for him is impossible to describe.
A few weeks ago he gave me his first unprompted kiss.
While it was more sound effect than tenderness, it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever experienced.
And seeing him try to copy things I’ve done just melts my heart.
Yes, I know the last thing he should do is copy me if he wants a fulfilling life, but when you see a 16 month old kid try to match his steps to yours, I defy anyone to not be moved.
Which leads to Desmond Tutu’s second answer.
An answer that is devastating in it’s description.
Not just because he talks about the risk of us destroying each other, but he underlines the severity of the danger by adding …
“… and the whole of creation”.
He said this in 2007.
When I think of 2007, the World seems a softer, safer, happier place but now I am worried.
We have religious extremists actively trying to create armageddon.
We have political leaders focused more on the rich, than the masses.
We have incredible inequality in society, where millions literally have no hope.
We have an social attitude focused on ‘me’ not ‘we’.
We have Donald Trump running for President on a platform of hate and fear.
I have a son.
A beautiful, wonderful son.
I don’t want his future to be bleak.
I don’t want his hopes to be dashed.
I don’t want his innocence to be destroyed.
And I fear for all of those things, especially as I know they will all happen in some way … I have to just hope they won’t happen as badly as they could.
Sure, some of these feelings are because I have a son, so I look at the future differently now. Actually, to be more precise, the way I look at the future now is acknowledging there will be a time I won’t be there to protect him.
I hope that time is a long, long time away, but it will happen and all I can do is prepare him to deal with the trials, tribulations and joys of life with grace, positivity and compassion.
Maybe these are the same sort of worries my parents had when I was young.
Maybe these are the same sort of decisions my parents made about raising me.
Maybe these are the things every parent thinks about … just the names of the protagonists change.
But what worries me about that is it implies I should shut up because it will all sort itself out eventually … and while that might happen, my worry is ‘who will be doing the sorting’ and ‘do I trust their approach in doing it’?
There’s so much I don’t know but what I am sure of is that parenthood is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever experienced, but it doesn’t half fuck with your brain.
Ten years ago today, I started this blog.
TEN YEARS.
That’s longer that 99% of Hollywood marriages!!!
Now while I’ve experienced a huge amount of things in that time …
I’ve lived in 4 countries.
I got married.
I got a cat.
I had a baby.
My mum passed away.
I sold both my companies.
I got to travel the World.
I qualified as a bloody teacher.
I bought countless amounts of tech rubbish.
I managed to still stay employed.
Got to do some of the best work I’ve ever done.
I had the best holiday of my entire life.
I had the most needed holiday of my entire life.
… and so has the World …
Global economic collapse.
Olympic Games in China and London.
The re-emergence of global terrorism.
The first black President.
[Yes, I know there’s a ton more, but my memory isn’t what it used to be]
… the fact is, the standard of my writing and my posts subject matter have remained pretty much the same.
Want proof?
Here’s the very first post I wrote.
Now you might think that I’m dissing myself by highlighting this fact, but when you take into account I’ve written TWO THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED POSTS [I know, mad eh!] I think it shows a level of consistency and reliability than Volkswagen would be jealous of.
According to the stats, there’s literally been millions of idiots who have supposedly visited this blog – but the fact is, the majority of comments have come from pretty much the same small group of people as it always did.
Sure, some have come, some have gone … some have even gone and then come back … and even this blog supposedly closed down only to start up again because I’m a sad, sadomasochistic fool … but the fact is I have to admire their commitment and industriousness because they’ve managed to write over SIXTY FOUR THOUSAND comments between them.
Or should I say 64,000 insults.
OK, of that 64,000 … at least half are by me trying to protect my honour, but that’s still impressive.
Of course, it could be argued that the reason so many people now check out my rubbish is because there’s less blogs now than there used to be.
Back in 2006, every man and his dog had one … but in the past 10 years, it appears people have grown up and decided it’s better to live a life rather than write about one. Or they simply moved all their complaining over to Twitter.
While some may say the reason I have continued writing when everyone else has left is because I am always a few years behind the times, I prefer to think of it as me winning the ultimate game of [blog] survivor.
Except by me winning, it means humanity has lost.
But despite everything … despite all the good, bad and indifferent stuff that has happened on this blog … I feel this blog has made a powerful difference in my life.
Not because of the rubbish I write – though it has been interesting to debate and learn from people as well as see how my viewpoints have evolved/changed in the past decade – but because it’s introduced me to a whole host of wonderful and interesting people.
The reality is there’s now a bunch of people in my life that are here because of this blog.
Sure, some of them I knew already.
In fact some of them I worked for – or with.
However there’s a bunch that I only know because of this thing I write every day.
I’ve been fortunate to meet many of them – but there’s still a few who have managed to stay away [well done Northern and Marcus] – but the fact is I’m super grateful to have them in my life and despite their cheek and mischief, I know that when the shit hits the fan [as it did last year when Mum passed away], they are watching out for me.
That’s pretty wonderful for anyone, even more so when it’s the byproduct of starting something simple because I wanted a place where I could release – or store – my brainfarts.
God knows if this blog will have another 10 years in it – I know you hope it doesn’t – but the first decade of it ended up being pretty damn awesome. At least for me. So thank you.
Filed under: Comment
You might be wondering what the title of this post means.
OK, you’re probably not, in fact I’d go as far as to say you probably don’t care … which is good, because I’m not going to tell you.
All will be revealed tomorrow.
Alright, I accept that’s hardly making you a quiver with anticipation, but humour me a little bit.
Please?
Pretty please?
Oh screw you … I’ll just let you know it’s ANOTHER PUBLIC HOLIDAY IN CHINA today so I’m not at work. I know … again! God bless communism.
That will teach you for not humouring me.
And with that, I’ll leave you with a little video clip to watch … it’s very apt for tomorrow’s news and especially apt for a Monday morning.
Filed under: Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Creative Development, Cunning, Marketing, Standards, Wieden+Kennedy
I don’t really write much about ads we – as in Wieden – do.
Not because I don’t like them, but because I like them too much.
Of course, there’s been the odd exception where I’ve not been able to stop myself – like one of my all time faves, Born of Fire for Chrysler at the Superbowl a few years back – but all in all, I tend to keep the work we do to myself.
Well, today that changes.
I’ll admit one of the reasons is because I literally don’t know what to write about today and this is my ‘get out of jail card’, but the other reason is there’s been a bunch of work from us recently that I think it just wonderful and I just want to put it out there.
Sure, a couple of the spots are from NIKE … and while many people may think thats easy for us to do, the reality is that when you have worked with a brand for 30 years and manage to still do work that feels fresh and energetic, that’s a testimony to the people involved. From both sides.
But there’s also some work that you may not know of.
Work from Milka, Samsung and Southern Comfort.
Work that covers the whole spectrum of tonality and style.
But there’s two things that unite them all.
The idea. The craft.
When I see this stuff, I get excited. Not just because it’s lovely work, but because standards are being maintained and pushed.
Where many agencies have to resort to scam to get stuff like this out, we make it.
And for the record, I haven’t written this post because my annual review is coming up soon. That’s entirely coincidental. Ha.
So sit back and enjoy some of the work I feel excited to be connected to, even if in some cases, it’s purely because I work for the same company.
Let’s start with an epic singalong for Kobe’s goodbye …
Next up is the charming story of a little boy and a strongman for Milka …
From fairytale we now make turn, what may seem a small, incidental, functional feature into something interesting and – dare I say it – potentially valuable …
… and then we do it again, turning a mobile phone ‘low light camera’ into a badge for a night life well lived. Lovely stuff.
The last 2 – for some reason – I can’t add on the blog, so I’ll just give you the links.
The first is the magically farcical ad we did for Southern Comfort.
Check it out. Seriously, just check it out.
It’s so incredibly mental and I’m so incredibly jealous of it. And it worked its ass off … probably because it’s so ridiculous that it was exciting and refreshing for an audience who are bored to death of being spoken to [or should I say ‘at’] with contrived, patronising and self-serving messages of meaningless blandom.
And the last one is our LunarEpic Flyknit spot for Nike China … even though the link will take you to the English edit of the film.
Of course I’m biased but I love it.
I love it for a whole host of reasons, but most of all because it is something that is visually rich and interesting and feels more like a music video than an ad … and in a world of overly-worthy ‘manifesto’ style communication, it’s refreshing and intriguing – ESPECIALLY as there is some really great insight work that led to this execution.
That’s it … if this post doesn’t keep me in a job then nothing else will.
So enjoy them all and be rest assured, I’ll find something to talk about tomorrow.
[Sorry]