Linkedin is kinda-of like reality TV for me these days.
Tears.
Drama.
Fantasy.
Competition.
Blatant self promotion.
It’s amazing … making an episode of Love Island look tame in comparison.
Of course, ‘professional’ is the last word the platform should use, because it’s anything but … promoting all sorts of bad behaviour – from anger and division to judgement and big talking.
And while normally this sort of behaviour is toxic as shit [and still can be to be honest], once you realise the people acting or reacting this way are tragically trying to be a version of stupid peoples, clever people – like Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson or even Trump – it’s hilarious.
I say ‘hilarious’, but that’s only because the level of delusion that’s being spouted on there has reached such bible-standards, that you expect them to claim they can part the sea.
My friend Armando Potter wrote about these people not too long ago – with some incredible examples. No wonder Andy once said of the claims of the people on LinkedIn,
“I’ve seen less fiction in a library”.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brilliant Marketing Ideas In History, Comment, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Marketing
Welcome back.
Hope you didn’t vomit too much with all the chocolate eating.
I didn’t eat any.
No seriously.
I fell ill on the Thursday with a virus and basically spent all the time in bed.
No food. Just feeling sorry for myself.
But of course I felt better just in time to come back to work. Bloody karma.
So with that, shall we get on with things …
Over the years I’ve written about the hilarity of naming strategies.
Specifically those from consultancies who sell their process as a proprietary system and then talk about how they start with 10,000 possibilities and then use their filtering algorithm to whittle it down to 3 bland or meaningless options.
Except they don’t say that last bit, obviously.
I still remember working with a client who had paid for this ‘expertise’ only to end up with a name recommendation that [1] wasn’t actually a word and [2] sounded like a cheap water brand than an international digital services company.
This is also the company that tried to charge the client for a ‘signage’ strategy.
By that, I mean they wanted to be paid to help the client know where their signage should placed on their building to achieve maximum effectiveness.
I almost caused World War 3 when I said,
“In my experience, placing signage outside – at the top of the building – works best”
Anyway, the reason I’m saying this is Briar, one of my colleagues came to work with a new set of glasses recently and the company behind them had the best name ever …
How brilliant is that?
Of course it’s provocative … risqué … challenging … but it’s also hilarious, fun and memorable.
The thing is, I doubt most of the consultancy naming processes would even come up with it as an option to dismiss.
In addition, Happy To Sit On Your Face put their glasses in a custom made case that folds flat. This might not sound much, but it means you don’t end up with your drawer or bag filled with a bulky, odd-shaped lump.
While I appreciate the name of this brand may not travel easily … it’s also a brand name that has made glasses memorable and if you can do that, then you are already doing better than 95% of brands.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Australia, China, Corona Virus, Dad, Daddyhood, Emotion, England, Family, Hong Kong, Jill, LaLaLand, Mum, Mum & Dad, My Fatherhood, New Zealand, Nottingham, Otis, Parents
The above photo was taken back in 2020.
We were living in Fulham.
Everyone was working from home.
And we suspected Otis may have had COVID.
As it turned out, he didn’t – thankfully.
But I love that photo.
The closeness.
The intimacy.
The caring Mum and the curious kid.
A shared moment ruined by me coming in and taking a pic – as usual, hahaha.
But who can blame me? Those two are everything to me.
And the older I get, the more I realise how much time I didn’t spend with them.
That realisation started with COVID.
While the pandemic was so devastating to so many – it was very good to me.
I got to be with my family for longer than I’d ever been in our time together.
Waking up together.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner together.
Putting Otis to bed and then going to bed with Jill at the same time.
EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
Now I know for so many that’s a regular thing but for me it wasn’t and the experience was wonderful and confronting.
Wonderful for how it made me feel. Confronting for how I had allowed that to happen.
Don’t get me wrong … I love work. Or should I say I love parts of work.
And as much as it may not be cool to say anymore, but I loved the travel.
Not being on a plane for the COVID years – bar, moving to NZ – felt like a genuine loss.
Not at first – initially it felt amazing, given how regularly I had been travelling – but after 2+ years, I was ready to hear those engines whir into life. Just not so regularly as I had before … because flying internationally at least once a week, every week for years was just plain idiotic.
And while I don’t want to let all of it go, I have been changing big parts of how I am choosing to live and it all came from something my Dad once said to me.
You see, my Dad had quite an eclectic early professional life.
Not just changing jobs, but whole industries.
I remember asking him why he had done it and he said this:
“I love you and your Mum. So if I’m going to be away from you both for most of the day, I better like what I’m doing because nothing would be so disrespectful as being away for something I hate”
Now I appreciate the privilege in that statement.
There are many who don’t have the opportunity to chase after things that interest them.
And for my Dad, that was enabled by the stability of my brilliant Mum – similar to what Jill has done for me in allowing me to uproot us every few years for an adventure in some other far distant part of the world.
But while I’ve generally enjoyed what I have done … as I get older, it’s becoming more and more apparent that I want to ensure my family is given even greater prioritisation in what I do. That doesn’t mean they weren’t before … but I realise they could have been prioritised a fuck load more.
In some ways, it’s a perfect time for this to happen.
I’m approaching a point in life where some decisions will have to be made regarding my future.
What do I want to do?
Who do I want to do it with – and for?
What do I want to explore, experience and achieve?
Where is the best place for us to be located?
What are the conditions we need to protect what we have?
For me, these are revelation questions.
Previously, I just went with whatever excited/scared me/us the most.
And while this doesn’t mean we’re now happy to settle – because let’s face it, I suck at it, thanks to my only-child inspired, competitive, curious and annoyingly ambitious energy – it does mean these questions ensure my/our decisions are focused on ensuring my family get the best of me, not just what is left of me because the one thing covid taught me is nothing is as important as being together.
It’s pathetic I needed a global pandemic to really drive that home.
But to paraphrase my dad, nothing would be as disrespectful to my family than ignoring what became one of the most precious times of my life with my family.
Thanks to Easter, I get to spend the next 4 days with them … hopefully eating chocolate.
So wherever you are and whoever you’re with, I hope you get to spend it with someone that matters.
Even if that’s just yourself.
Happy holiday … and I apologise for the indulgent, happy-clappy post of today.
Every October in Nottingham, we have something called Goose Fair.
Goose Fair is as massive attraction with food, games and rides. Its history stretches back to 1541 which means it may be the oldest fair in Europe.
OK, so what it is today is very different to what it is now … but for me, it’s something filled with brilliant memories.
In many ways, it was as exciting as Christmas.
Not just because it was an annual event, but it was a life so different to my normal life.
Lights, colour, sound.
It was a trip into another world.
So many moments of my childhood are connected with Goose Fair.
From going with my Dad in my earliest years … winning my first ever ‘pet’ [a goldfish] … falling down an incredibly muddy hill because Dad thought he saw a short-cut to the car park … the hilarity of bumping into everyone on the dodgems … taking the ever-beautiful, Danish Mia there … then, when older, getting given a bag of 10 pence pieces from my parents, so I could go with Paul and spend it on rides, slot machines and food.
Oh the food …
Burgers, hot dogs and mushy peas.
The mushy peas stand out the most because you didn’t ever get them anywhere else.
A polystyrene cup, filled with piping hot mushy peas that you would then coat in mint sauce.
I know … it sounds disgusting, but it tasted like heaven.
And I know for a fact that is not my memory talking because this is what I bought last weekend …
… and it was delicious, even if Otis thought I was an insane animal.
Him aside, I will always be grateful to Goose Fair.
For the memories, the experiences, the moments and the history it has given me.
One day I will return, until then, I’ll just have my questionable food choices to comfort me.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Audio Visual, Brand, Comment, Confidence, Context, Craft, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Experience, Legend, Loyalty, Management, Metallica, Music, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance, Respect, Trust, Truth
Late last year, Metallica launched a new song called LuxEterna, from their upcoming new album, 72.
While it is a brilliant return to their roots, the choice of ‘yellow’ as a key colour was met with some negative commentary from ‘brand purists’.
I don’t mean fans, but brand and design folks.
This was amazing for 2 reasons.
The first is our job is to keep things moving evolving rather than continually replicating what’s gone before, so if anyone should be open minded to change, it’s brand and design folk.
[It also highlights my problem with people who keep banging on about ‘brand assets’, because they are confusing recognition with interesting. Or worse, thinking recognition beats being and doing interesting stuff for audiences]
Secondly, the album was designed – as many have been – by the brilliant folk at the wonderful Turner Duckworth … and given their body of work, if anyone knows about designing modern iconography, it’s them.
But overall, I just found the whole debate amusing.
Metallica have always approached albums as a way to express their current frame of creative mind … and given they always look to inject something new or challenging into their work, the choice of yellow seems the perfect way to communicate ‘next chapter’.
In the case of 27 Seasons – also known as the first 18, and arguably, most significant years of your life – James said this …
“There’s been a lot of darkness in my life and in our career and things that have happened with us … but always having a sense of hope, always having the light that is in that darkness, keeps us moving. Without darkness, there’s no light, and being able to focus a little more on the light instead of how it used to be and how horrible it is, that can only be a good thing. There’s a lot of good things going on in life — focusing on that instead helps to balance out my life. And there’s no one meaning to it — everyone has some sense of hope or light in their life, and, obviously, music is mine.“
When you read that, it’s not hard to work out that the use of yellow is part of a bigger idea around the album rather than a desire to build a one colour brand which some have claimed.
Unsurprisingly, they’re the same people who talk about brand assets like you can just buy them off the shelf rather than make them a byproduct of what you do, so that they have value in them that you also keep building.
By pure chance, I was asked by people connected to the band to do a talk to a music publishing company.
While not specifically related to Metallica, I was asked by someone in the audience for my opinion on their ‘new image’ and whether it risked upsetting their core audience.
I had thought this question may came up, which is why I had prepared an answer.
After informing them I had never known a brand – let alone a band – who knew their audience as well as them … and if you listen to the track, I doubt any of their fans would mistake a revitalised Metallica for Ed Sheeran … I said this.
“If Rock n’ Roll is about rebellion, then surely there’s nothing more rock n’ roll than Metallica using yellow rather than the category norm of black?”
It was met with applause.
And some disgust, hahaha.
But here’s the thing …
Brands – and bands – don’t move forward if all they do is give audiences the same thing over and over again. Nor will they if they just give audiences exactly what they want over and over again. Longevity is as much about keeping people on their toes as it is satisfying their passion and curiosity and you only stand a chance of achieving that by following what interests you, not what interests everyone else.
Metallica get this more than most.
It’s part of the reason they have stayed at the top … because by doing things that interest them, they do things that interests more people rather than just the same people.
As I wrote for MTV years ago, brands can learn a lot from bands … because while brands may think finding shortcuts or disguises allows them to optimise their efficiency, everyone else can tell it’s because they’ve run out of ideas or energy.
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By the way, 72 Seasons comes out tomorrow. This is not a sponsored post. Well, not directly anyway, hahaha.