Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Communication Strategy, Complicity, Corporate Gaslighting, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture
So here we are, the final week of blog posting for the year.
Last week was a lot of reasonably heavy posts but this week will be different.
Not just because it’s the holiday season, but because I’m in full-on scrape-the-barrel mode for content.
I know you probably think that has been the case for the last 10 years, but trust me, it’s even worse than you have previously experienced, exemplified by this:
This is an ‘adult store’ in Melbourne, Australia.
They’re probably in more cities across the country, but I passed this one on my way to the airport a few weeks ago.
I must admit, I burst out laughing when I saw it.
Not because ‘adult stores’ are funny, but because the name and the environment couldn’t have felt more opposite.
Maybe it’s just me … but a beige box, located on a miserable-looking industrial estate, near an airport, doesn’t scream SEXY to me.
Especially when that beige box displays a logo that looks like it came straight out of 1990’s UK kitchen or bed retailer.
It’s very much like those ‘experts’ on Linkedin who show they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about by expressing their misguided opinion with blinkered and blind conviction and confidence.
Hence, we see people who are closer to insurance salespeople acting like they’re business liberators. We hear people who’ve never made anything great talking like they’re the ultimate educators. And we have adult retailers promoting themselves like the authority on expression.
We seem to forget there’s a major difference between those who exploit a category for profit and those who evolve the category through what they add and do … but in this world of quick wins, easy answers and justifiable delusion, quality of work plays a distant second to quality of ego.
And that’s why I hope for one major difference between 2025 and 2024 … which is we stop blindly following people based on popularity and start getting back to valuing what people have actually done. Because as the old adage goes, anything is easy when you’ve never had to do it and so the only way we can all be better is if we get back to focusing and valuing those who create the change, rather than those who simply offer their own self-serving commentary about it.