The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

And – as usual – I found my heart in China.

I love that place so much. Literally love it.

It is arguably the only place in the World – and certainly the only place I’ve lived – where I feel I am able to breathe.

Obviously I mean that metaphorically [though they’ve sorted out the air, big time]… but the energy, the craziness, the extremes and the constant change bizarrely makes me feel calm, settled and at peace.

I don’t understand why – I get that’s bonkers – but it does and always has, and while I won’t ever live there again, I will find any excuse under the sun to keep going back.

For me, it’s more than a place I once had the honour and privilege of living … it feels ‘home’.

That does not mean I do like – or am not grateful – for all the other countries I’ve had the incredible opportunity to live in, but there’s something about China that I connected to on a level that is incomparable to anywhere else I’ve been. And while it is getting a bit too smooth, slick and convenient for my liking [haha] the people keep it real.

Amazing. Interesting. Dramatic. Smart-as-fuck.

I met some incredible people on this trip.

Not just old mates [who I kept bumping into on the street, which is something I’ve never done in Auckland, despite being a fraction of the population size and geography – haha] but some brilliant new people who I hope will become long-term new mates. And nothing sums this up more than the fact I was out all night.

ALL NIGHT.

TWICE!!! [Admittedly once was so I could listen to Forest play in Europe with the worst manager since Megson, Ange]

Jesus Christ, I’m 55 … I should be in bed with a Hot Chocolate by 8pm shouldn’t I?

But that’s the effect China has on me. I absofuckinglutely adore every single bit of it.

No doubt that statement will have my NZ/Australia/Singapore/HK residencies revoked, so we better move on … haha.

Not that long ago I wrote about a campaign we’ve just done for Delivereasy that reminds me of my beloved Viz ‘adult’ comic.

Well recently I got sent 2 photos of real-life businesses that seem to have adopted a similar approach …

First the most genuine ‘health and fitness’ ad in the history of health and fitness ads:

Quickly followed up by this masterpiece by a global – yet local – painter and decorator:

I love them.

Their magical and memorable.

Arguably more magical and memorable that many campaigns that have had millions and months of time spent on them.

Way back in 2007, I wrote about the power of ‘unplanned thinking‘.

Unplanned is when you go directly at the truth of a product – or audience perception – rather than play into the marketing hype machine. The point was that so many brands had stuck their head so far up their own pretentiousness arses, that rather than create aspiration with audiences, they were creating revulsion.

Unplanned killed that.

More than that, it killed it in a way that was refreshing, invigorating, distinctive and differentiated which – as a byproduct – meant it became more aspirational than an ad claiming a can of sugary fruit juice was in fact, a statement of discernment in a world of choice. Or some other bollocks.