Filed under: Advertising [Planning] School On The Web, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Confidence, Corporate Evil, Culture, Perspective, Planners, Planning, Relationships, Strategy
Late last year, this chart was doing the rounds on social media:
Bloody hell.
I mean … seriously, bloody hell.
Don’t get me wrong, strategy is important – but the amount of people who continue to think it is more important than what it makes happen, is insane.
Almost as insane as this chart.
Because as much as there are nuances in strategy … and as much as they’re are a vast amount of frameworks you can follow … the basic premise remains.
+ Where are you?
+ Where do you want to be?
+ What’s stopping you from getting there?
+ What is your strategy to achieve that?
That’s it.
It’s been pretty effective for more years than anyone doing strategy has been alive and has worked successfully across every category – from adland to zoo management.
I worked at an agency who LOVED making strategic frameworks.
It’s not that they were bad, but they were basically the same 4 things I’ve listed above – just given different headings and placed inside a nice box so it looked like it was some sort of academic approach.
It wasn’t.
Oh I get why companies do it.
They love the idea of having their own proprietary strategic system.
Not only does it let them pretend they have a truly unique offering for the market – which enables them to charge clients a premium for following – it also ensures that if employees leave, the impact is lessened because the emphasis is on the proprietary strategic system rather than the talent of the individual.
In essence, it exists to lessen the importance of the employee.
It’s the same approach that McDonald’s have for their kitchens.
And the same reason Din Tai Fung manage the process of staff compliments.
But here’s the thing …
Clients who truly get strategy can see what they’re doing.
It’s not that they won’t – or don’t – value what these companies can do for them, it’s just they don’t blindly believe all the claims of uniqueness they say.
Which is why when clients ask me “what’s your strategic approach to solving problems?” … I respond pretty much the same way every time.
That there is nothing really that different between the process we follow and the process everyone else does. The key difference is the people we hire, the questions they ask and the people they ask them to.
Still stand by that.
Because even if there was a framework that was an amalgamation of all the strategic approaches listed on the photo above, all it really does is ensuring you’re achieving a minimum standard … because the most powerful strategies are developed by individuals who see where they can be, not where a box tells them to go.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Advertising [Planning] School On The Web, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Empathy, Insight, Perspective, Planners, Planning, Point Of View, Prejudice, Relevance, Resonance
So finally we have the feedback on the latest APSOTW assignment.
First of all I owe everyone an apology.
This has taken way longer than it was supposed to.
I’d like to blame the time it took to get the judges feedback, but I can’t … because it was all down to me.
Of course I can point you to moving to a new country, finding a new house and starting a new job, but that’s still pretty pathetic even though it’s true.
So this submission got the most that I think we have ever had.
This is brilliant and I’m so glad so many people decided to have a go.
Of course, part of that is because it seemed relatively simple, but as you’ll read from the feedback below – you’ll soon learn it wasn’t.
But that aside, the fact you had a go is something to be celebrated.
It means you wanted to get better … put yourself out there … try something that makes you vulnerable and for that I say a huge congratulations.
I meet too many people who think that because they have a job, they have ‘graduated’.
The thing is, this job is one that is always developing because people are changing … so actively wanting to improve is something that should be celebrated and for that I – and all the judges – applaud you.
So as we had so, so many entries, we are going to find it almost impossible to write a review on every one. If you want specific feedback on your submission, drop me an email [on the same address as the assignment submission] and I’ll get back to you.
[Promise it will be quicker than this feedback has taken]
As I mentioned earlier, I think a lot of people thought this was an easy task … the reality is it wasn’t.
In fact, in some regards, I would say this was one of the toughest assignments we had set over the 10+ years APSOTW has been going.
In truth, post-rationalising is always a very difficult – if not impossible – task.
We tend to focus on the obvious elements when in truth, so much of the work we make is shaped by smaller little tweaks.
Not only that, but narrowing an issue as complex as this into a single sentence is always going to be super hard … so hard, that some of you went over the limit.
But the really interesting about this assignment is how many people basically wrote a headline for the campaign rather than an insight that could allow other work to be developed from it.
For example there were a lot of submissions that talked about ‘mirrors’.
Now I get why – because the execution focuses on that – but this wasn’t about mirrors or reflections, it was about identity and how you define yourself or let others define you.
In essence, you let the execution get in the way of your point of view.
Overall, the submissions tended to fall into one of four different groups:
1 A headline that summed up the execution. Not the idea behind the execution. The execution.
2 A fortune cookie/pseudo Confucius-style statement about being a man. Any man. Or skin.
3 A smart – but generalist – insight how men define themselves in the World today.
4 An overly complex description of how culture is formed which just felt like an attempt to show how smart you were.
Now don’t get despondent with that list of crimes, I see highly paid planners do it all the time.
The irony is our job is to make the complex simple, not make things even more difficult and yet time and time again the discipline tends to forget this.
If you want proof, just read 90% of effectiveness award submissions where the ‘insight’ is about half a page long.
ARGH.
But back to this …
When looking through the submissions, the judges agreed that to catch our eye, an entry had to have 3 things.
+ Recognition of the cultural tension underpinning the campaign. [This is about black culture, a lot of the statements could have been about anyone coming of age, so to speak]
+ A clear and concise point of view that makes us look at the potential of the idea in a bigger – or different – way.
+ The ability to provoke a reaction … whether that would be with creatives, clients or culture as a whole.
Sadly, we didn’t find that many that did, however there were some that caught our eye.
Divyanshu Bhadoria:
“More than a grooming regimen, shaving is a ritual to preserve the story of our identity”.
Wayne Green: :
“Don’t let a beard hide your pride of who you are and where you are from”.
Andy Wilson:
“Shaving reveals the dignity that is embedded in your skin”.
If truth be told, they could all probably be sharper … but not only did they all capture the tension between identity and conformity and the role shaving has in it, they were favoured by the creative judges as points of view that made them excited about looking at a category in a new way, but a true way.
And that was the point of the task … to take something and capture it’s essence in a way that would provoke a tighter – yet bigger – idea to come to the fore.
It’s tough … it’s very fucking tough … and as I said in the assignment, it’s all pretty subjective, but the judges were weirdly pretty much all in alignment from the beginning, which is why we got to our decision.
So a huge thank you to everyone for taking part.
I hope, after reading the feedback, if you look back at your entry you will see where you could have improved it.
As I said, if you want specific feedback on your entry, send me a mail and if Wayne, Andy and Divyanshu could send me their addresses, I’ll be sending a small prize to you as acknowledgement of your work.
Hopefully this has been a fun and useful exercise. Whatever the feedback, the fact you did it is important … to you, to us and to the industry at large … so I hope you will continue when the next APSOTW assignment comes out early in the new year.
A special thanks to the wonderful Maya Thompson who brought this assignment to me and changed the way I will look at the world forever [in collaboration with her collective of Chelsea and Bree] and a big happy holidays/new year etc etc to all of you who took part. [God, that feels weird to write in only November]
Till next time …
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Advertising [Planning] School On The Web, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, China, Confidence, Crap Campaigns In History, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Embarrassing Moments, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Nottingham Forest, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning
So today was supposed to be the APSOTW results, but I’m still waiting on one more bit of feedback. I really, really hope that will come in soon so we can put everything out next week.
Sorry.
Fortunately, I can fill this post with something else …
Not as good – or as wanted – as the APSOTW feedback, but pretty mind blowing all the same.
When I lived in China, there was an unspoken rule that if a company did something successful, there would be hundreds of copycats in the blink of an eye.
I wrote about this a bunch of times with possible this one being the finest example of it.
Well, while it hasn’t happened quickly and it’s only been copied once, it has come to my attention that a planner in China has paid me the ultimate compliment by blatantly copying my old blog header [designed by Jill] for their own thing … including the name of it.
Take a look at this …
I suppose I should be offended but I think it’s bloody fantastic … though I do worry about the ramifications for this persons career.
Not because someone who is paid to have original thought has shown they would rather steal, but because to openly and publicly associate with Queen, Birkenstock, Nottingham Forest and me is basically ruinous.
This is not the reason why I haven’t mentioned their name in this post – though if you work in advertising in Shanghai, you might recognize this senior positioned, big named agency planner by her face – it’s because their posts are way better than mine [even they draw the line at copying them] and I don’t want to lose the last 3 people on here who come along to insult me.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Advertising [Planning] School On The Web, Agency Culture, America, Attitude & Aptitude, China, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Empathy, England, Experience, Family, Happiness, Home, Imagination, Innovation, Insight, Love, Mum & Dad, My Fatherhood, Perspective, Planners, Planning, R/GA, Resonance, Technology
So it’s 2 months since we’ve been back in England and I have to say it’s been great.
Sure, the weather isn’t like LA.
Sure, finding a home and unpacking was a pain-in-the arse.
Sure, catching the tube is not like driving my beloved Audi to work.
Sure, I’m shocked at how bad the service is in restaurants and how many people smoke.
But all that aside, things are great.
There’s a bunch of reasons for that …
The first is my family are all together and well. Even Rosie, the moaning cat.
Seeing how brilliant Otis has adapted to his new environment [again] is inspiring, even though it has highlighted how much of an American twang he picked up in our time in the US.
To move home is a traumatic experience for anyone.
To move countries is often too much for people to even contemplate.
So to have moved home and country, 3 times when you’re only 3 years of age – and still be happy, positive and curious – is an incredible achievement and one that makes me even prouder of my wonderful little boy.
That said, we’re very mindful he is still trying to find where he belongs … find other kids he can form a connection with … so our job in these early months is to help him feel as settled and secure as we can, but so far, he’s handling it far better than we could ever hope, even though he did exactly the same when we landed in LA after Shanghai.
What a kid.
Another reason we’re enjoying things in England is that there’s an incredible familiarity to how things work.
Sure I’ve not lived here for 24 years and Jill is Australian … but we both have spent a huge amount of time here over the years so there’s a comfort in knowing how to make things happen. It’s allowed us to acclimatise to the new environment far quicker than we have in other nations while still feeling the buzz of excitement of being somewhere new.
Sure, there’s nervousness about some things we’ve never/rarely had to deal with before.
The school system and how insane that is here.
The inability to be confident a tradesman will turn up as promised.
The high price of public transport [which is still low, but comparatively high to say, China]
But all that is offset with the incredible culture that surrounds us, the friendliness of the people we’ve met and just being in a place where we can see ourselves for a good length of time.
Oh, and chips, mushy peas and gravy.
God, that’s magic right there.
But one other thing that has made things so great is work.
I’m really enjoying myself.
I have an incredible team full of smarts and opinions.
I have a huge array of colleagues full of creativity and provocation.
I have a bunch of clients full of fascinating challenges and ambitions.
I’m learning.
I’m being challenged.
I’m [hopefully] contributing.
There were a bunch of reasons why we moved countries – both personal and professional – and while no place will ever be perfect, I’m pretty shocked at how much I am enjoying being back in England given I never thought I’d ever move back.
I still wish I could nip up to Nottingham to see Mum and Dad.
I still wish Paul and Shelly lived down the street not 2 hours away.
But as much as I’ll always be a cynical bastard, I’m pretty happy right now and I’m sure that is as shocking to you as it is to me.
So on this bombshell of positivity, I wish you a good weekend and let you know that the APSOTW results will finally be out next week.
Ta-ra.
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Yes, it’s Friday.
And yes, it’s the first of May.
But neither of those things are as incredible as this …
You see, on Sunday, it will be 20 years since I started this blog.
TWENTY BLOODY YEARS!
That’s before the iPhone.
And Android.
And Facebook.
And the Kindle.
And the financial crisis.
And before Pluto lost its planet creds.
AND BEFORE WI-FI WAS PUBLICLY AVAILABLE … so a very long time ago.
I still remember why I started it …
It wasn’t for any attempt for notoriety or popularity, it was more to do with survival.
You see I’d got a job that – frankly – I was woefully under-qualified for, and because it demanded so much of my time and energy to make sure I didn’t completely fuck it up, I needed an outlet for all the ideas and thoughts that were going around my head that I just didn’t feel were right for what I needed to do at that time.
Not because I was sure I was going to use them later … more because I needed to feel I was still connected to the stuff I loved while also believing that if I didn’t find a way to get them out of my head, they’d maybe be no more space left for anything new to enter my head.
And so this blog was born.
Reading through the first few posts not only reveals the times we were living in, but also the headspace I was in.
Trying to balance making sense of stuff happening around me while also needing an outlet for stuff I was feeling or thinking … which, in many ways, set the tone for how this blog has been for over 2 decades.
Which George recently described as, “the blog version of TK Maxx”.
He’s not wrong … and in some ways, I really like that.
Sure, among the almost 5000 posts I’ve written, there’s a lot of [to keep the TK Maxx analogy going] cheap and nasty shit in there … but there’s also a few ‘designer label’ gems hidden amongst it all.
At least for me.
Stuff that made me think, challenge or question stuff in ways that I had not imagined or considered before.
Stuff that ended up impacting how I did things and how I still do things.
Stuff that forced me to articulate what I believe, not just what I feel.
Maybe those posts meant nothing to anyone but me. Hell, maybe no one even read them. But while every post I’ve written reflects something about who I was – or am – those ‘self-defined gems’ have a special place in my heart because they represent a moment where I felt I was growing and learning.
It’s why I always enjoyed the comment section, because for all the overwhelming piss-taking I received, the vast majority always ‘encouraged’ me to look deeper, wider or longer at issues I’d written about. And I loved that. I loved how the people who commented always kept me on my toes … which is why one of the unexpected pleasures of writing this blog for so long has been seeing how my opinion on certain subjects has changed or evolved over the years. It’s served as a great reminder about the importance of always exposing yourself to others perspectives, opinions, experiences and standards, even if the goal of it is simply to be really sure about what you think or believe.
In many ways, that’s the biggest surprise of 20 years writing this blog.
I never expected anyone to comment on anything I wrote, because I started it just for me.
A private place to express my thoughts and idiocy.
But then Andy discovered it and he sent an email to everyone at Cynic and some of our clients announcing it and then the mayhem started.
At that point, blogging had become a big thing. A good thing. A community of people who wanted to help and contribute to what others were doing. A lot of this was down to the great Russell Davies and his iconic blog … a place that not only brought people from all over the world together, but inspired others to start writing their own as well.
It was a place that not only exposed me to a lot of brilliant people I’d never have known about without his blog – people like Gareth Kay, Paul Colman, Northern Planner, Rob Mortimer, Marcus, John Dodds, Lauren, Age to name but a few – it also brought people to my blog who helped add to the texture, lessons and perspectives I was writing about.
I will forever be grateful to Russell for that … especially as most of the people he inadvertently introduced me to, not only still exist in my life but I have met them all IN THE FLESH.
Alas the blogging community, like most things in life, has moved on with maybe only Martin and I still churning stuff out via that platform. [Well, he curates, I churn] And while technologies advances allows strategists to be even more connected in even more ways, the energy of the community is not the same as it was back in the early days of blogging.
Now it feels more aggressive.
More sharp elbows and self publicizing.
Wanting the spotlight on them rather than the work they do.
But then, the industry seems to value those who talk about the work more than those who actually make it … which kind-of highlights why the industry is in the state it finds itself in but refuses to acknowledge.
Emperor’s New Clothes anyone?!
Screenshot
That this blog is 20 years old blows my mind. I never thought it would last that long, mainly because I never gave much thought about how long I’d be writing the thing. It’s not always been fun – when I was receiving a lot of anonymous hate that resulted in me deciding to stop allowing comments was definitely a low point – but all in all, the whole experience has been pretty glorious.
In many ways, this is one of the longest committed relationships I’ve ever had.
And one of the most successful, hahaha.
The fact there are some people who have been reading it for almost as long as I have been writing it, is madness.
Have they no taste?
Have they got nothing better to do?
Or maybe they’re stuck in prison and this is part of their ‘sentence’.
The good news for them is there’s no way this will still be a ‘going concern’ in another 20 years … at least not in terms of how regular I’ve been writing posts for the past 2 decades. Not because I am running out of things to say [albeit Andy said I have only ever written 3 posts and just keep re-writing them in different ways] but because I’ll be – hopefully – doing other things with my life.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll always be grateful to advertising … it has given me a life I never could have dared to imagine … but I am increasingly spending more and more of my time working and collaborating with artists and I feel that’s where my future may be. Not because I don’t love what I do, but because I find their definition and expression of creativity even more interesting, challenging, open, provocative and progressive than where our industry is choosing to head.
But that’s not going to happen yet. Hell, it may not happen at all – I could get fired by all the artists tomorrow for all I know – which is why for the time being, I’ll keep happily juggling my two ‘lives’ while churning out daily blog posts at the same time.
Sorry, hahaha.
That said, the point of continuing this blog is different to what you may think and why I originally started it.
Because while it has helped me grow, learn, make new friends and even help build my professional reputation [which is hilarious when you read some of the stuff I’ve churned out, like this!] … it delivers something that is even more important to me.
Connection to my family.
I know … I know … that sounds weird-as-fuck, but what I mean is this:
A few years ago, Jill said that while she rarely ever reads my blog, when she does – she can hear my voice because of the way I write.
Put simply, how I write is how I talk … so when she reads my posts, it feels like I’m with her.
And she liked that.
Add to this that I’ve shared deeply personal and important moments in my life – from getting engaged to getting married, to Mum dying, to becoming a Dad, to getting Rosie – and Bonnie – to saying a tearful goodbye to Rosie, to moving from Singapore to HK to China to America to London to New Zealand [so far] … which means moving from cynic/WPP to Sunshine to Wieden+Kennedy to Deutsch to R/GA to Colenso [not to mention all the other highs and lows that have impacted or been introduced to my life over this period, be it death, covid, friends, family, health, books, chaos, and/or multitudes of weird, wild, crazy shit] … and this blog is no longer just a place where I rant rubbish, it’s a place my family can have me close even when I’m no longer here.
That means a lot to me.
Not because I want them to need me, but because I like knowing they can access me should they ever need me.
Or if Otis ever wants to introduce me to whoever becomes important in his life.
It’s why I’m going to keep writing it and why I’m going to move it to a free domain again, to make sure it always stay up … because what originally was a place just for me, has become a place that offers connection to the most important people to me.
And with that, I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has ever visited or commented.
Whether you meant it or not, you’ve given me far more than I ever imagined or hoped for.
Thank you. Love you. Grateful for you.