Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Birthday, Emotion, Love, Mum & Dad, Nottingham
As people who know me will know, I can be a sentimental old fart.
And nothing sums it up more than this …
That shop you are looking at is in Nottingham.
A few weeks ago, I was there and had some time to just walk around the streets.
It’s weird being in a place you identify so strongly with, but feel such a stranger.
Given how many countries I’ve lived in, there’s a bunch of places around the World that ignites this feeling in me, but Nottingham takes it to another level.
This is where I was born. Where I was raised. Where so much of my identity was forged.
So where many people may walk past that bubble tea shop and not give it a second thought, I remember it as the jewelers where my parents bought me my first ‘good’ watch.
A watch that cost over 100 pounds … which was beyond anything I could ever imagine, both in terms of how much a watch could cost or that my parents would – or could – spend that much on me.
I remember it very clearly.
I was about to turn 18 and – after the watch I wanted turned out to be ‘shite’ – my parents decided that as this was going to be their present to me, we should go to a place where the people knew what they were doing and could ensure I got what I wanted.
So we went there …
And while I can’t remember the name of the shop, I remember the experience of being in it.
They were so helpful and kind. But more than that, they were excited for me.
They were seeing a boy with his Mum and Dad getting a watch for what was a very significant moment in his life
Significant because it meant I was officially an ‘adult’.
Significant because this was my first ‘proper’ watch.
Significant because my parents were acknowledging their only son enter the next stage of life.
Significant because this shop was the one we chose to help be a part of all of this.
It’s why – despite the fact he subjected me to one of the weirdest, wildest and most amazing professional experiences of my life – I have a deep respect for Clotaire Rapaille … the French [if you hadn’t worked it out already by his name, haha] consultant.
Part of his approach is to identify the first memory or exposure people have towards a brand or product – believing it plays such a pivotal role in how they will see that for the rest of their life – it provides the most powerful and meaningful foundation for how to engage them.
For example …
He was the guy who got Jeep to make their headlights round, reflecting horses eyes.
He was also the guy who helped Nestle turn Japan – a traditional tea drinking nation – into one of the biggest coffee drinking places on the planet, by getting them to spend 20+ years introducing ‘coffee flavours’ into all manner of their food products.
He was also the guy who – having been paid an OUTRAGEOUS amount of money – presented me, on behalf of the client we were both working for at the time, a single piece of A4 with half a page of writing on it.
To this day, I’m still not sure if it was the work of a genius or the greatest rug pull ever … but we adopted a lot of his viewpoint and, I have to admit it worked. In fact, it had such a profound effect on me, I adopted his approach as part of mine from there on in … and still do it to this day.
Which may all help explain why people in Nottingham might walk past that shop and see a place selling Bubble Tea – and may think it has only ever sold Bubble Tea – I, on the other hand, see a place that represents coming of age.
A place that provides me with warmth, love and family … and if that doesn’t explain why I’m a sentimental old fart, nothing will.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Communication Strategy, Craft, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture
Nothing shows how cooked our industry is than the emphasis on media.
Don’t get me wrong, media is vitally important, but to think that means we can relegate what we say and how we say it is utterly insane.
Last year, our industry spent ONE TRILLION DOLLARS on behalf of our clients on media.
A TRILLION!
And what did it do for anyone other than create a mountain of cultural landfill?
Has there ever been a time where invisibility has cost so much fucking money.
But what really messes with me is how the art of copywriting and storytelling has been eroded to nothingness.
Where once, it was respected as a powerful form of emotional engagement and persuasion, now it’s all 3 word flippant headlines that say nothing, evoke nothing and come across as a Temu-version of Nike’s Just Do It.
For all the talk of AI destroying our industry, maybe we should look at how our industry leaders and clients are contributing to it given their blinkered and obsessive focus on optimization, automation and media spend.
And yet, for all that investment …
For all those brains and frameworks …
Hardly any of their work has emotionally engaged me and stuck with me like this story from some random stranger about their childhood.
Sure, I get I’m a sentimental fuck.
Sure, I appreciate I ‘found’ this story, rather than the story finding me.
But, not only does it capture and convey love, family, childhood and the significance of small acts better than any researched-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life ad campaign … it has a last line that’s a cross between a punch in the face from Mike Tyson and an emotional rug pull from the World’s best magician.
Just to reiterate … I am not saying copywriting is more important than media.
But it does attempt to say it sure as shit isn’t less important.
The industry – by that I mean EVERYONE – needs to invest and fight for the art of craftsmanship over speed … because if we don’t, all we’re doing is showing the public why they shouldn’t care about what we do and what we say.
That is if they even notice what we’ve churned out for them in the first place.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Clients, Colenso, Collaboration, Colleagues, Comment, Communication Strategy, Corporate Evil, Creativity, Culture, Delusion, Emotion, Empathy, Equality, Harmony, Honesty, Hope, Inclusion, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Relationships, Reputation, Resonance, Respect, Trust, Truth
Let’s be honest, when we want something we often show an ‘unnaturally good side’ of ourselves in an attempt to win someone over.
Doesn’t matter if it’s dating, business, or even getting someone to take out the bins … we are all capable of turning on our manipulation skills when it suits.
Nothing embodies this more than the agency pitch …
Where they bring out the most senior of senior leadership to the meetings …
Where they promise access to ‘the best of the best across the whole network’ …
Where they talk about developing specialised processes, systems and tools …
Where they discuss building a dedicated agency arm just for their service …
Where they say they’re open to new financial remuneration models and approaches …
And while I am in no way suggesting they’re lying about this, it rarely turns out like this.
There’s many reasons for that, of which one of them is prospective clients are also playing the same game …
Talking about the groundbreaking work they want …
Promising to provide good budgets, access and timelines …
Reinforcing how much they want a long-term partnership …
Championing the importance of debate and discussion …
Suggesting openness to new ways of working …
Again, not lying … but also not being entirely honest either.
If I’m being generous, a lot of this is because life and business is constantly changing and evolving so promised need to keep changing … however at the end of the day, the real problem isn’t that things change, it’s that we’re frightened of being transparent.
The irony of which is the greatest demonstration of respect – and arguably, the greatest way to build real trust – is being transparent.
By that I mean telling those around you, what is happening, when it’s happening.
Sure, I get there can be implications in doing that, but there’s far more if you delay speaking up …
It’s why I love Angela – Colenso’s CEO – attitude that ‘honesty trumps harmony’.
She’s right …
And while I appreciate it may not always be a comfortable conversation at the beginning … if you do it in a timely and transparent way, it always ends up being better than the alternative. That being people discovering the reality of the situation because of the disaster of the situation.
And yet so many still think that is a better way to deal with things … believing they can either overcome the situation or can hide the situation.
So why am I saying all this?
To be honest, I just wanted a way to justify posting these 2 photos because while the sum up the point of this post, the reality is they just made me piss myself laughing …
Because they’re true.
Oh so true.
The pitch …
The reality …
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Airports, America, Emotion, Empathy, Human Goodness, Humanity, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance
Despite being a sentimental bastard, I’ve always looked forwards.
I love the possibilities of what is ahead of us.
The new. The unknown. The what-if-we-could-do-this sort of stuff.
But when I was in NYC, I came face-to-face with a few things from the past that reminded me how their impact on me remains in the present.
I’ll be writing about a few of these over the next few weeks but the first was this …
Yep, a bank of payphone at JFK.
In a smartphone driven world, I have no idea why they’ve left so many of them there – but even accepting some people must choose to use a payphone over a mobile device, there was something lovely about seeing them all sat there.
A reminder of a time where the darkest corridors in the oldest airports were possibly where the most pure expressions of humanness could be experienced
People queuing up to talk to loved ones … friends … colleagues … or companies.
A rollercoaster of conversational emotions …
Happiness, Sadness. Curiosity. Despair. Hope. Calmness. Longing. Love.
Every payphone, a different story …
Each one interpreted by the voice, words and mannerisms of the person in front of you.
So even though airports send and bring millions of people to every corner of the globe each and every year, that row of payphones reminded me how rarely we now glimpse others lives in their raw and unfiltered state.
Social media certainly isn’t that.
In fact, I can’t think of many current situations where we witness masses of people all crammed into the same space, trying to live and deal with their individual lives in public.
Maybe that’s a good thing, but for all the convenience and freedom that tech gives us, this bank of payphones made me think that maybe the cost of this convenience is our ability to empathize and relate to the realities each of us lives in the shadows.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Business, Conformity, Corporate Evil, Corporate Gaslighting, Culture, Delusion, Humanity, Management, Perspective, Professionalism, Relationships, Relevance, Social Media, Technology, Toxic Positivity, Transformation
I’m back. I know, how terrible.
Which is why I have some good news for you, because I’m going to be away again in a few weeks. So you only have to endure the pain a little longer before you get ANOTHER reprieve. I know, I’m a Saint.
That said, I had a wonderful time, especially at State of Social in Perth.
Meg – the founder of the conference – has created a truly special event and like StratCon in Berlin, there’s a bunch of stuff other conference organizers could learn from them that would benefit audiences and the industry at large.
Anyway, I’ll be writing about that later, so shall we get the pain of me being back over as quickly as possible?
So as many of you know, I love tech.
Not just the practical stuff, but the ridiculous.
Robot dogs.
Robot rabbits.
Robot balls.
Robot guitars.
Hell, I even bought a, errrrrm, robot mother once.
My house is almost fully automated.
My car is filled with the sort of optional extras the engineers only come up with as a joke.
And don’t get me started on my history with smartphones.
And yet, despite my addiction to stupidity … I totally appreciate there are downsides to technology.
The scrolling,
The timewasting.
The interruption.
The distractions.
And that’s before we get to the blood-pressure inducing annoyance of hearing every fucking company try and claim they’re in the tech/AI space just because they use ChatGPT to write their Linkedin ‘thought leadership’ social landfill bollocks.
So, it’s no surprise we’ve started to see the backlash …
People fighting against companies outsourcing jobs to AI.
Society pushing back on the serving of AI slop.
Companies balking at the prices being charged for AI access.
Investment firms questioning the long-term viability of AI industries.
And then – at a much lower level – shoppers increasingly choosing dumb-tech over high-tech.
You know what I’m talking about …
Products that strip back their functionality to their bare essentials:
Cameras that only allow you to point and click.
Tablets that only allow you to read your books.
And phones that only allow you to make and receive calls and texts.
Will this result in bringing the tech giants down?
Probably not … but as I’ve written before, if the Tech Bros carry on their current path and hoodwink companies into outsourcing their entire operations to AI under the guise of increased profits and efficiency, who the hell will be around to buy the products they make or advertise?
But I’m going off on a tangent because when I was in NYC, I saw this …
Now, I don’t know about you, but a phone that gives you whatsapp, maps, uber ‘and more’ … is the opposite of a dumbphone.
Maybe it could be defined as the ‘night-out phone’.
Or – at a push – the ‘bare essentials’ phone.
But it sure-as-shit isn’t a dumb-phone …
That is unless the term ‘dumb’ is being used to describe the people they want to buy it and then maybe they’re onto something. Except, one look at their website and you realise they really believe what they’re peddling … which suggests whether it’s the tech bros or the idiots, we’re doomed either way.
Have a great day. Hahahaha.