Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, China, Culture, Differentiation, Empathy, Insight, Planners, Relevance, Resonance, Sentimentality, Wieden+Kennedy
Hello … I’m back.
It was amazing.
OK, it was more for being with the family than the physical place … but that’s because I’m not a ‘stay-down-on-the-farm’ kind of person, though I appreciate some of you may suggest it’s more because I’m not a ‘pay-for-my-own-holidays’ kind of person.
Pah.
Anyway, I wanted to return with a post that matters a lot to me.
To be honest, all of them matter to me … but as of late, I’ve been writing stuff that matters more than most.
Things like female leadership, prejudice and when work tries to kill you
Well, while this isn’t connected to the industry I work in, it is about an issue very dear to me.
Living overseas is one of the greatest privileges you can have.
Sure, there are things you give up and miss – but what you gain more than compensates for it.
Case in point. I recently had dinner with Rodi and David in San Francisco.
The photo from the evening is at the top of this post.
None of us live here. None of us work here. None of us are from here.
In fact all of us live in totally different countries and come from different parts of the world.
Rodi is Australian/Ukrainian, David is Taiwanese and I’m British/Italian.
To make matters even more random, we all met in China.
Yet despite having all moved on from our time at Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai, we remain connected … not because of the company we worked at, but because of the generosity of the country we experienced.
This dinner represents what England has voted entire generations never to have.
It’s an act of utter selfishness.
Utter, utter selfishness.
So many in society like to bestow that label on the youth of the UK, but it’s not them.
It’s the Daily Mail reading, over 55’s who have enjoyed good fortune in their life but don’t want anyone else to have it. Who don’t want anyone else to evolve and grow because they don’t want to be left behind and feel less important.
Selfish, egotistical, bigoted and blinkered pricks.
The reality is my ability to live around the World has made my life unquestionably bigger, better and fuller.
Almost everything I have and treasure is because of my life outside of England.
That is not in any way meant to say life in England is bad – far from it – but anyone who thinks there is greater value staying isolated versus expanding the possibilities of life through adventures, experiences and friends that exist beyond the borders of our shores has either never done it or is frightened of it.
May I have dinners with friends in countries none of us come from for many years to come.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand Suicide, Comment, Confidence, Corporate Evil, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Emotion, Empathy, Equality, Experience, Management, Marketing Fail, Money, Perspective, Prejudice, Relevance, Resonance, Unfair Life
I know I said there’d be no posts while I’m away, but this is important.
As many of you know, a few weeks ago I wrote about a management style where the goal appears to be to systematically destroy the confidence and self-worth of their employees.
While I suggested a few possible reasons for their approach, the reality is – intentional or not – what they’re doing is abuse, pure and simple.
I am well placed to say this because – as I also wrote in the post – I had once been a victim of it.
Well that post hit a big nerve because within 72 hours, it had been shared thousands of times on Twitter and I received over 250 stories of abuse from people who previously thought they were alone in facing this cruel and debilitating experience.
I must admit I was initially shocked how many people had been affected until I remembered the reason this topic is so rarely talked about is because one of the ways the abusers get away with it is they make the victim feel so worthless, they believe it’s all their fault and so keep quiet out of shame for their supposed inadequacies.
Reading so many stories of pain made me both very sad and very angry and I knew right them that I wanted to do something about it, but the reality is I didn’t know what I could do.
Then I got an email from someone I used to work with …
Rather than tell me they had gone through a similar situation at work – or even their thoughts on my post – they asked if what I’d written was about them.
After telling them that if they feel guilt, then maybe they needed to take a look at how they conducted themselves [because at no point had I mentioned any names or places in my post] I then realised there was a way I could try and help stop this situation happening to others.
Let me introduce you to a site I’ve set up called Corporate Gaslighting.
Corporate Gaslighting [available at TheyTriedToKillMeButI.Live] is my attempt to try and stop this slow, systematic abuse from bad management while also hoping to help those who have been victims of it.
The goal is simple, but hard.
Simple because all I want to do is fill it with people’s [anonymous] stories of their abuse.
Hard because I know how damaging these experiences are and how survival often means burying them deep down inside and kidding yourself they don’t exist … even though you know very well they do and they’re eating you alive.
But the benefits will hopefully be worth it for two key reasons.
For management … my hope is they come and read the stories to be reminded of the responsibility they have for the people they manage. And if they end up reading something they think is specifically about them … then maybe it will force them to look at their actions and behaviours and – for their sake – start to change them.
For victims … my hope is that by either writing their story or reading others, they’ll not only realise they’re not alone in this slow, viscous destruction of self-confidence, but the reasons for it happening have absolutely nothing to do with them and all to do with their managers. If I achieve this, my hope is it helps removes the stigma of guilt and failure we are all made to feel we brought on ourselves … because then it will remove the power abusive managers have over us … allowing us start to valuing ourselves again and [hopefully] giving us the strength to take action rather than only take the abuse
But none of this can happen without stories which is why this post is directing people to the site where they can learn how they can get involved to help themselves and help others.
Corporate Gaslighting isn’t about revenge. It’s about change, help and encouragement.
With that in mind, it has been designed to be a safe place to be vulnerable.
No names. No comments. No judgement.
What happens next is up to you.
I am just here to help.
Thank you.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, BBH, Comment, Communication Strategy, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Innovation, Insight, Planning, R/GA, Resonance, Technology, Wieden+Kennedy
Today is a great day.
Not just because it’s a day where mischief is actively celebrated, but because throughout history, there have been a number of great things that happened on this day.
For example today is the day Dan Wieden and David Kennedy officially opened W+K.
Yep, the best communication agency in history opened on this day, which means April 1 should be a day we’re all thankful for.
Then there’s the rumour that BBH started on the same day, but having heard about some Portland ad agency starting on the same day, they decided to say theirs started on the 2nd.
Again, BBH are one of the World’s best which is another reason why we should all be thanking the calendar gods for this day.
And remember, when I say ‘best’ … I don’t mean it in the past tense. Both Wieden and BBH’s brilliance is, as I wrote here, that they have been setting standards for over 30 years. Given we’re an industry that seems to celebrate ‘hype today, gone tomorrow’, that is definitely a reason to celebrate April 1st.
But it’s not all ad agency starting … there’s the fact that today is the day I wrote one of my favourite blog posts.
The one about method planning.
The one lots of planners and industry media seemed to think was real, which not only made me very, very happy … it also proved they don’t read all the way through my posts because I admitted it’s fakeness in the very last line.
So let’s acknowledge that April 1 is epic … but the reason to celebrate it today is because it’s the day the brilliant – but evil – Amelia, launches WorldWideWeird, a compendium of where culture, tech and creativity come together in the most beautifully mad ways.
There’s a bunch of reasons for this.
One is because it’s awesome.
Another is because there’s stuff going on in the shadows that deserves a much bigger audience.
But thirdly, it’s because too many agencies still fail to understand technology is a tool of creativity and in the right hands, it allows creativity to be expressed and wielded in ways traditional creativity could only dream of.
This is certainly not meant to discredit the traditional craft of communication – of course not, that can be utterly amazing in the right hands – but the reality is there are incredible possibilities when creativity is allowed to thrive outside the usual boundaries of adland and we want to celebrate those doing it … regardless of the scale, regardless if it fails and regardless if they’re just doing it for themselves.
WorldWideWeird will come out every month, but there’s an instagram that will be updated more regularly with any weird and wonderful that catches our eye … and as Amelia is the editor of it, rather than me, you can be sure it will actually be worth reading.
I’m excited what this could do … because my hope is it won’t be just be a place where people go for dinner party fodder, but a place that both inspires and scares people to get off their arses and start pushing the boundaries of what creativity can be … because frankly, as much as I love a lot of the stuff we as an industry put out there, I get quite annoyed when agencies are credited for innovation when all they’ve really done is slightly adjust the way they make the thing they’ve always made.
Sure, there is an argument that is innovative but for me, innovation is when you do something fundamentally different … try something utterly new … fail while attempting to do something groundbreaking … and I for one would like the industry to be more associated with that than simply reframing tradition with fancy PR.
That said, today is the end of my probation period at R/GA … so depending on how my review goes, World Wide Weird might be my swansong and Amelia’s platform for even greater glory.
You can subscribe to World Wide Weird here.
Our instagram can be found here.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand Suicide, Comment, Confidence, Corporate Evil, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Emotion, Empathy, Experience, Management, Marketing Fail, Money, Perspective, Prejudice, Relevance, Resonance, Unfair Life
So as you read this, I’ll be on a plane to NY.
Which means there’ll be no blog posts for a whole week.
Better yet, when I’m back, there’ll only be some rubbish for a few days because I’ll be going back to America for 10 days.
Seriously, I don’t know why I moved given I’m spending so much time there.
Oh hang on, yes I do …
Anyway, while I’m gone I hope to set up my response to the post I wrote regarding the systematic destruction of employee confidence and optimism by bad managers.
As I mentioned a while back, when I wrote that post, someone wrote to me asking if it was about them.
I told them that if they feel guilt, then maybe they need to take a look at how they conduct themselves because I mentioned no names or places in my post.
Which led to the idea of setting up a blog of corporate gaslighting.
I would love to fill it with anonymous stories of systematic corporate abuse so that anyone who goes there and thinks a story is specifically about their actions, they will be forced to look at their attitude and behaviours and hopefully change them.
As much as I was tempted to name names and destroy careers, the reality is that would just make me as bad as them.
I know that sometimes good people do bad things – often influenced by issues going on in their life we have no knowledge of – which is why my hope is that if they go to this site and recognize some of the behaviors that are being described, it might help jolt them back into the right frame of mind and actively work on changing their approach to their role.
And if it doesn’t?
Well then they’re not a good person and they deserve all they get … which, I hope, will happen more because this site will give the people subjected to this abuse the confidence and reassurance they’re not alone and can take a stand against it, with our backing.
Ultimately, I just want to try and change a situation that is happening much more than people seem to think. Part of this is because the people who subject others to this abuse, make them feel so worthless, they believe it’s all their fault and so reporting it would ultimiately be like advertising their own inadequacies.
Being told you’re wrong is fine when it’s done by people that you feel genuinely care about your improvement. But being told you’re wrong by people who are doing it to protect or further themselves – especially at the expense of someone elses self belief – is abuse, pure and simple.
I recently registered the domain for the website …TheyTriedToKillMeButI.Live
I hope people will help me populate the site and spread the word.
See you in a week.
Filed under: Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Chaos, Creativity, Culture, Management, Metallica, Packaging, Relationships
So a few weeks ago, I came home to find a Metallica album.
Not just a Metallica album, but a special edition – box set album.
And not just a special edition, box set Metallica album … but one personally signed by each member of the masters of metal themselves.
Now while that would be nice to think this was an act of love and generosity, the reality is it was an act of cheeky bastardness because for reasons I don’t understand, the band and their management have decided to bestow the nickname ‘St Anger’ on me and by sending me an album of the same name, this was their way of rubbing it in.
I admire their evil genius.