Filed under: Advertising [Planning] School On The Web, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Confidence, Corporate Evil, Culture, Perspective, Planners, Planning, Relationships, Strategy
Late last year, this chart was doing the rounds on social media:
Bloody hell.
I mean … seriously, bloody hell.
Don’t get me wrong, strategy is important – but the amount of people who continue to think it is more important than what it makes happen, is insane.
Almost as insane as this chart.
Because as much as there are nuances in strategy … and as much as they’re are a vast amount of frameworks you can follow … the basic premise remains.
+ Where are you?
+ Where do you want to be?
+ What’s stopping you from getting there?
+ What is your strategy to achieve that?
That’s it.
It’s been pretty effective for more years than anyone doing strategy has been alive and has worked successfully across every category – from adland to zoo management.
I worked at an agency who LOVED making strategic frameworks.
It’s not that they were bad, but they were basically the same 4 things I’ve listed above – just given different headings and placed inside a nice box so it looked like it was some sort of academic approach.
It wasn’t.
Oh I get why companies do it.
They love the idea of having their own proprietary strategic system.
Not only does it let them pretend they have a truly unique offering for the market – which enables them to charge clients a premium for following – it also ensures that if employees leave, the impact is lessened because the emphasis is on the proprietary strategic system rather than the talent of the individual.
In essence, it exists to lessen the importance of the employee.
It’s the same approach that McDonald’s have for their kitchens.
And the same reason Din Tai Fung manage the process of staff compliments.
But here’s the thing …
Clients who truly get strategy can see what they’re doing.
It’s not that they won’t – or don’t – value what these companies can do for them, it’s just they don’t blindly believe all the claims of uniqueness they say.
Which is why when clients ask me “what’s your strategic approach to solving problems?” … I respond pretty much the same way every time.
That there is nothing really that different between the process we follow and the process everyone else does. The key difference is the people we hire, the questions they ask and the people they ask them to.
Still stand by that.
Because even if there was a framework that was an amalgamation of all the strategic approaches listed on the photo above, all it really does is ensuring you’re achieving a minimum standard … because the most powerful strategies are developed by individuals who see where they can be, not where a box tells them to go.
A while back, I received an email from someone at Queen’s Medical Centre.
The QMC is a hospital near where I lived in Nottingham.
It was once the biggest hospital in Europe, but its real significance is it is the hospital that saved my eyesight, saved my Mum’s life, saved my Dad’s … until they couldn’t.
It’s a place that ignites an insane amount of emotions in me.
I obviously haven’t been in it for a long time, but the last occasion I was there – when I went with Mum to see her specialist to try and delay her op as it was going to coincide when Otis was going to be born – so much came flooding back.
It smelt the same.
It had the same bustle and noise.
It had the same cafes and newsagents.
It had the same corridors, doors and places of eery silence.
I have spent too much of my life in that place.
It may be a place that saved me and the most important members of my family … but it also subjected me to feelings that I never want to experience again.
Fear. Worry. Pain. Confusion.
So it was strange to receive this email from a medical student [QMC is also a medical training and research hospital] saying they had found this blog and discovered the posts I had written about my Mum and Dad dying.
They told me they were doing a project where they were reaching out to people who had suffered great loss to see if they would be willing to write about their experience and how they came back from their darkest points – so that it could help others going through a similar thing.
I was both flattered and terrified.
Flattered to be asked. Terrified what it may reignite.
Because despite Dad having been gone 23 years and Mum 7, I can still be affected by their loss with the most random of triggers.
And it was then I realised why I had to do it.
Because while Anthony Hopkins eyes can make me think of my Dad … or random elderly women in Thai Restaurants in Manhattan Beach can make me feel compelled to give them a hug … the rush of emotion they ignite has gone from drowning to reconnecting.
I know that might sound strange.
And I can assure you that isn’t how it feels when you’re in the moment of it.
But after – when the moment has been allowed to overwhelm – it is exactly how I feel.
Which is why I sent them this. I hope it does someone good, somewhere.
I hope it lets Mum and Dad know even though their loss can stab me with pain.
I’m OK.
And so is the pain.
Shadows
And then there was no one.
He was on his own.
An adult who still felt like a child but had no other choice than to grow up.
This was not part of the plan.
Yes, he had some vague notion of the concept of death.
But they were going to live forever.
But silence reinforced truth.
They had both gone.
And despite the decades of life he’d lived.
And despite the family he’d raised.
He never felt so alone.
Abandoned.
An orphan.
Drifting in a sea, with no life jacket left to protect him.
And as truth took hold
He entered a black hole of time.
Not knowing if he would be able to cope.
Not sure if he wanted to.
But somewhere deep inside there was a will that was starting to take hold.
And while the first days and weeks made him a slave to his tears.
Bit by bit he crawled his way back.
Out of the darkness and back into the light.
Still struggling to make sense of anything.
But out and alive.
But despite all the years
A shadow still remained.
In the background.
Far enough to be out the way.
Not far enough to fully escape it.
And it stays there, waiting to pounce whenever it pleases.
Waiting to drag you back into its darkness.
They say time is the great healer.
But that’s not exactly right.
Because time doesn’t heal, it reframes.
And while you never know when it will happen, you know when it does.
Because one day the shadow will strike.
Envelop you to drag you down.
Take you to a place that feels like a prison … except of being locked in, emotions escape out.
But the tears now have a different role.
They’re no longer about what you don’t have.
They’re for memories of what you did.
The silly, the ridiculous, the bland and the majestic.
Each tear becomes a memory of what those two meant to you.
The people you would give all you have to see again,
But now you realise they’re not completely gone.
Because the shadow is no longer a sign of loss.
But a reminder, they’re still there.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Apathy, Apple, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Comment, Corporate Evil, Creativity, Culture, Digital, Egovertising, EvilGenius, Fake Attitude, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Politics, Relevance, Social Commentary, Social Divide, Technology
OK, I should point out I actually think the Metaverse has incredible potential.
It could revolutionise education, medicine and ignite the creation of industries that don’t even exist yet. Which is why I am still utterly baffled why Zuckerberg thought the best way to sell the technology was by putting out that utterly shit video … where you saw him and his ‘mates’ not only do things that are all possible right now, but were worse in terms of quality, creativity and interactivity.
And then I saw this picture and everything became clear …
Maybe Zuck doesn’t give a damn about the Metaverse.
Maybe he doesn’t want to help humanity evolve and develop.
Maybe the only reason he’s doing it is for the same reason a lot of conmen do things …
Because when you can distract your target, you can rob them when they’re not looking.
Now before Mr Z’s lawyers try and sue me for every penny I’ve got for saying that, I would like to point out two things.
1. I said ‘maybe’ …
That means I am absolutely not suggesting Mr Zuckerberg is a conman or only doing Metaverse for conman purposes. I am only suggesting that could be possible, however unlikely that is. Similar to me saying I could be a catwalk model.
2. Be honest. That photo is very, very creepy.
Whoever allowed that photo to get out at Facebook … I mean Meta … was either an idiot or a hero. Because when I look at that photo, I can’t help but think of this ad … except with a totally different ending.
Rather than everyone being saved in the nick of time – thanks to the hero coming in at the last moment and destroying the screen that is hypnotising and blinding the audience so they follow the words of evil – no one comes to save them, so evil walks past all of his hypnotised and blinded victims, smiling to himself that’s he got them exactly where he wants them.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand Suicide, Comment, Communication Strategy, Content, Context, Corporate Evil, Crap Campaigns In History, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Crap Products In History, Embarrassing Moments, Marketing, Marketing Fail
Way back in 2007, I wrote a post called, Should Ink Stink?
It was how Mont Blanc had gone into fragrance and I found the whole thing a bit bizarre.
Then in 2008 I wrote about how Ferrari had licensed their name to a bloody memory card … in some very loose nod to how fast the 4gb SD card could save and upload files.
You’d think things couldn’t get worse, but over the years we’ve seen more than a few candidates for the title of ‘what the fuck were they thinking’ but in 2021, we finally got a winner.
To be fair, the brand in question is old, so you could imagine the license owner thought they may as well say yes to anything if it will make them a few extra bob.
But – and it’s a big but – late last year they released a special edition ‘reunion’ of the brand, and the clamor to get access to it from people and press all around the world was immense … which makes the decision to lend their name to this product ‘extension’ even stranger.
What am I talking about?
This.
Yes, that is a Friends manicure set and carry case.
Why???
WHY???
Yes, the cast of Friends were young and beautiful … but I don’t know if anyone in the history of the show ever commented on their nails.
And why a carry case?
How many people use their manicure set so often, they need a case to transport it?
Hell, how many people need a new set of nail scissors and nail file anyway?
Hell, they even had to say ‘The Television Series’ on the package, because they knew no one would naturally associate the TELEVISION COMEDY WITH A MOBILE MANICURE SET.
Does it even have the Friends logo on the actual manicure case?
What if it doesn’t? What is the fucking point of it then?
Actually, what is the point of it whether it’s on or off.
Frankly, if someone pulled out a manicure suitcase I’d already be concerned.
If that suitcase then had the Friends logo on it, I’d be bloody petrified.
How much did this license cost?
How many products did they end up actually selling?
Who was behind this utter insanity?
The only good thing about it is that when I saw this product, I laughed more than I laughed at any episode of the last 2 seasons of the show.
The theme song sings the words, “I’ll be there for you”.
Well, if it means they’re there with a Friends manicure set in its own case, I’d rather you didn’t thank you very much.
Filed under: Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Culture, Fear, Love, Valentine's Day
Valentines Day.
The day of fear, disguised as love.
The day where society has been culturally bullied into making excessive expressions of adoration at hugely inflated prices.
OK, I appreciate I sound a total bastard … but I just find the whole thing ridiculous.
Maybe in the days where it was supposed to be anonymous, it had something going for it – though maybe these days, that qualifies as stalking – but now it’s just the worst example of marketing exploitation.
Oh I can hear the arguments …
“It makes sure there’s at least one day in the year where people feel loved and appreciated by others”.
It’s the same excuse that created Fathers Day, Mothers Day and god knows what else the flower/card industry came up with.
I remember when Earth Hour started to great fanfare.
For just one hour, turn off all power to save the planet.
And people did do it.
Literally.
An act of symbolism that achieved absolutely fuck all in changes of behaviour or changes to the climate. It was the ultimate act of convenience activism.
But to be fair, Earth Hour did want to change that.
They wanted to a bigger impact than simply awareness.
And can you remember what they did?
They added a + sign to their name.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Having Valentines Day on a Monday is perfect because both are days you generally wish didn’t exist but you have to deal with.
The sad thing is love is a wonderful thing.
Yes – as Joy Division once sang – love can tear us apart.
But it is such a beautiful force of power.
It makes you giddy with joy, it makes you feel invincible, it creates safe environments, it gives you the confidence to take risks, it helps overcome barriers, it makes it OK to reveal emotions, it inspires songs and poems and stories …
Love deserves so much more of a celebration than a bunch of $100 flowers and a shitty card.
On a Monday.