Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Age, Agency Culture, Apathy, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Delusion, Distinction, Diversity, Emotion, Inclusion, Love, Loyalty, Management, Marketing, Mum & Dad, Planners, Politics, Prejudice, Provocative, Relevance, Reputation, Resonance, Respect
I can’t believe next week we enter the final month of 2024.
How the hell did that happen?
My god, it’s been a whirlwind and while I’ll write my annual ‘wrap-up’ post in a few weeks, I have to say – bar three truly tragic events for me – a pretty good year.
I don’t take any of that for granted.
I know it could all fall apart in an instant.
Which may explain why I follow certain theories/behaviours/beliefs that – despite knowing they’re likely utter nonsense – help me feel I’m doing things that encourage ‘good stuff’ to happen for me and my family.
Or should I say, ‘extend’ the good stuff that my family get to enjoy.
That’s right, I’m talking about certain superstitions that I follow.
I won’t go into them in detail for fear of the men in the white suits popping around to put me in a jacket with no sleeves, but on top of working hard, doing what I promise and staying interested and open to stuff … they heavily influence and drive my actions and behaviours in equal measure.
Now I should point out the driving force of this is less about maintaining an income [though that is there, of course] and more about satisfying my curiosity and hunger.
You see, despite being 54, I’m still fiercely ambitious and hungry to do new, exciting and good things. In fact – given the stuff I’ve been fortunate to do over the past few years with moving countries and working with artists in the music, fashion and gaming industries – even more ambitious and hungry than I’ve ever been.
Of course I appreciate I’ve done a bunch of stuff but as I’ve written before, the more I do … the more I discover things I want to do. The problem is, the older you get, the more you know you won’t be able to do everything and so you want to try and ensure your time is spent on the stuff that fulfils you rather than drains you.
I get some people may read this and think I’m a fucking idiot. And I get it … because the basic narrative that is pushed out is the older you get, the less passion you have.
Hell, companies have used that as an excuse to get rid of experience for decades.
Worse, for a long time I believed that view too …
But what I’ve learned is that in many cases, it’s not the passion that gets tired, but the tolerance for bullshit.
The politics.
The processes.
The procedures.
The shiny-new-things.
The hang-on-to-the-old-things.
Corporate bullshit is endless.
And while I’m not suggesting people actively enjoy subjecting you to it – nor am I claiming all of it is pointless – I understand why so many people choose to walk away from it.
Which is all my way of saying how fortunate I consider myself …
Because while I have faced a bunch of bullshit in my time, the vast majority of my career has been working for – or with – people/companies and brands who value the work more than the politics. Who choose creativity over complicity. Who value what you do rather than devalue how old you are.
And that means at 54, the bullshit hasn’t won.
It may one day, but it hasn’t yet.
And that means I don’t just get to keep working with talent regardless of age, heritage, geography or discipline. Nor just get to learn, collaborate and create with people from all walks of life and from all fields of creativity – united by our desire to make something really fucking good, rather than something ‘good enough’. It means I get to keep enjoying it … being inspired by it and bringing my own energy and creativity to it.
So while there’ll be people out there who’ll make more money, have more things, possess bigger job titles or career positions than I’ll ever have … and while there may well come a time where the possibilities I see will be possibilities someone else has to realise … I can feel I beat the bullshit.
And while many won’t understand that.
Or even agree with that.
For a kid whose parents instilled in him the importance of living a life of fulfilment rather than contentment, it means that should I ever get to meet Mum and Dad again, I can thank them for teaching me stubbornness isn’t a fault, when done right, it’s an enduring gift.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Brands, Creative Development, Creativity, Differentiation, Distinction, ECommerce, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Perspective, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning, Point Of View, R/GA
When I worked at R/GA, they got very excited about D2C brands.
Part of this is because they got a lot of business from brands who wanted their help to design the infrastructure for their D2C ambitions. Part of it was because they loved to talk about transformation and saw this as a major shift in brand development. And part of it is because a lot of their work – especially with NIKE – revolved around this type of thinking.
[Though I did laugh when a couple of their senior people in NY tried to convince me ‘Fuel Band’ was more valuable and important to NIKE than ‘Just Do It’ … and hated the fact I refused to buy their logic]
Look, I really liked R/GA – specifically the first year I was there – but I always felt the whole D2C approach was flawed. Didn’t have to be, but the way people/brands/companies saw it, made it that way.
When I at Wieden, P&G asked our opinion on the Amazon dash button.
They were massively excited by it as they saw it as a way to drive sales while being able to massively cut their marketing costs.
For those who don’t know what the dash button was, it was a piece of tech – connected to a specific item – that allowed customers to order from Amazon at the press of a button.
So if you spotted you were running out of washing powder, you could press the dash and within a day or so, you would get a new box delivered.
All good in theory except the only real winner would be Amazon.
And we told them that. Because the moment you let your brand become a commodity, your value is destroyed as is all the work you’ve put in to get into that position.
But that didn’t stop every man and their dog seemingly bang on about the virtues of D2C.
Nor did that make companies who had previously talked about the importance of brand, jump on the bandwagon.
And while some went on to achieve great success with this strategy – albeit, having to spend millions on building the brand value of their D2C org – the vast majority crashed and burned after, at best, a small moment in the spotlight.
That’s not to say new ideas are wrong – far from it – it’s to say that too much of the industry, despite what they may claim, are obsessed with the quick wins and short-term gains.
Worse, the reason for this is often less commercial and more egotistical.
A desperate need to look like they’re ‘in the know’ to those around them. A desire to be part of the cultural clique rather than risk being left behind by those who are skeptical, cynical or closed-minded.
I get it … no one wants to look slow or old or out-of-date and everyone wants a shot to elevate themselves up in collapsed time.
But as much as new ideas require a leap of faith – and that leap often takes a degree of courage – when it also requires you to let go of all you know and believe, then it says more about what you want to be than who you are.
Now of course, we all have our egos and ambitions – and that’s natural – but when your strategy to get where you want to go is chasing trends rather than following your values, that’s when you can find yourself in a whole heap of trouble.
Because following the pack without objectivity, values or context doesn’t make you an entrepreneur – it makes you an ambulance chaser – and once you have that reputation, you end up doing to yourself what D2C did to many companies … and that’s a position no one who claims to be ‘an expert in brands and brand building’ should ever find themselves in.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Canada, China, Colleagues, Context, Culture, Empathy, Friendship, Happiness, Jill, Otis, Paul, Relationships, Relevance, Respect, Travel
I’ve written a lot over the years about the gift of living overseas.
I’ve talked about how I totally understand why people worry about what they’ll miss … but they should also think about what they’ll gain.
I’ve highlighted how I owe everything in my life – bar my relationship with Paul – to me living and working overseas.
Everything.
My wife.
My son.
My cat.
My career.
My whole life.
I don’t say that lightly … and I don’t ignore the fact I’ve also faced things I’ve missed and miss … but overall, it’s an amazing gift the World has given me.
Recently I was given another reminder of how wonderful it is.
I was in Edmonton, in Northern Canada.
It’s the most northern city in the World with a population of 1 million.
I’d never been there before. I’d never even heard of it before. But there I was … in a wonderful restaurant called Ridge Rd, with some clients … when I received this:
It’s a message from someone I knew in China. Someone I last spoke to probably 10+ years ago. But here I was, in a city I’d never been to – far from pretty much every other city I’d been – having an old friend say they were there too. I can’t tell you how lovely that was. How wonderful that an isolated city had brought me closer to someone from my past.
Now you may think that’s kinda-crazy, and I guess it is … but it’s happened before.
It happened when I took my Mum to the North Pole to see the Northern Lights.
It happened when I was in a small town in Brazil.
It happened when I was in Russia.
It happened when I was in Finland.
It has happened a lot because I’ve lived in a lot of countries … and every single time, it’s made me feel incredibly fortunate for the experiences, places and people it has brought into my life.
I get it’s a privilege and I don’t take that for granted.
But that privilege is far more than simply being able to live in different countries or earn different amounts of money – if you’re lucky. It’s about the ability to connect to different people, cultures and contexts. Their backgrounds, their viewpoints, their ambitions, their fears, their issues, their opportunities, their hopes, their references, their perspectives … that’s what the privilege is really about.
It makes you a bigger and better person for it.
Not just in terms of your own knowledge, but your own place in the world.
Which is why, when I got that random SMS from someone I knew in China while sat in a small restaurant in a small city in Northern Canada, I was so happy. Because that could only happen because I said ‘yes’ to opportunities when arguably, it would have been easier to say no.
I get it’s hard. I get not everyone has that chance.
But if you do, grab it. Because nothing lets you feel you’re living life than hearing from people you would have otherwise never met in places you never imagined you would ever go.
Given the sad news I wrote about yesterday, I am going to shift the tone.
Not because death is something we should shy away from, but because the people involved were such joyous beings – they’d likely welcome the silly rather than the subdued. With that …
So I know today represents less than a month before Christmas day, but that’s because I wrote this post ages ago but forgot to put it up.
You see I took this photo back in September.
And what photo am I referring to? This.
What the absolute fuck.
Some people would think this is still too early given it’s not even December, but September!
Now I get retail is down right now.
And I understand money is tight for everyone.
But selling Christmas in September? Worse, selling Christmas shitty sweaters in September?
The great irony of all this is that rather than put me in the festive mood, it kinda just put me in a mood … even though I bought the one on the bottom right, hahaha.
And anyone who thinks I wrote this post because I had nothing else to write about, you can feel pretty smug with yourself right now. Unfortunately.
Filed under: Auckland, Australia, Authenticity, Colenso, Colleagues, Creativity, Culture, Death, Friendship, Loyalty, Marketing, Relationships, Relevance, Reputation, Resonance, Respect
This last week, I lost 2 brilliant people in my life.
While one was, sadly, expected – due to their long battle with cancer – the other was the result of a terrible, terrible accident.
I had spent the day with them last Monday and even though we’d not known each other too long, we clicked. It’s rare enough to find that connection with someone at the best of time – even more so when that person is a client.
But they were special and everyone felt it.
Supportive, encouraging and deeply committed to doing the best thing, not the easiest.
I actually wrote to her last Wednesday to tell her the huge impression she had made on her team, our team and me. I don’t know why I did it, I just felt compelled to … and she responded the following day with genuine shock and gratitude.
Shock that people felt that way about her. Grateful that someone had told her that they do.
We were due to catch up later this week and talk about her impending trip to NZ to visit us at Colenso but then on Sunday, we heard the worst possible news and we – like many others in the industry – were left shaken, upset and very, very sad.
While I’d do anything to change the outcome of this tragic story, I am incredibly grateful I sent that note to her.
That she saw it and understood what we saw – and felt – in her.
While both people I lost last week were very different people, there were some similarities.
Both were called Lisa for a start and both were like those comets you occasionally see flying across the night sky. Burning so brightly, but for all too brief a time. But boy … so, so bright.
My deepest sympathies go out to their families, colleagues and all those people impacted by their remarkable, talented, infectious spirit. Of which I am one of them.
Rx