Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Anniversary, Australia, China, Dad, Death, Family, Jill, Love, Mum, Mum & Dad, My Childhood, My Fatherhood, Otis
I think my Mum would be strangely happy that I almost forgot to write this post today.
And I did … only realizing last weekend today was the 11th anniversary of my Mum dying.
It’s not even the first time this has happened …
So how come I nearly forgot today – one of the worst days of my entire life – and why do I think Mum be happy about it?
Well, let’s do the practical reasons first …
I write this blog weeks in advance and so sometimes I don’t even think about the date they will appear, I just load them up to be automatically put out. That said, I’ve never nearly forgotten when it is Dad’s anniversary … however that’s a bit different to Mum’s in so much as he died in mid-January and so that tends to be one of the first posts I write every year, coming out the festive holiday season.
But that’s more of an assumptive rationale …
The fact is both my parents blessed me with an amazing childhood and upbringing. I’ve written so much about them over the years – from their endless encouragement to their demonstration of what love really means – and the loss of them was, without doubt, the hardest and biggest challenges I’ve ever had to face and deal with in my life.
But Dad died first – 16 years before Mum – and while I’d experienced the death of people close to me before, that was the one that was the most direct in terms of impact, importance and shock. It meant it took me years before I could think of Dad as the Dad I grew up with … rather than the person he became after his stroke robbed him of who he was and how he was.
But Dad’s passing opened up the ability for Mum and I to talk about death … and we did. A lot.
Not in an ‘impending doom’ kind-of-way … more in terms of the reality of what we’d faced and had to accept and learn.
It meant this was very much top of mind when Mum was going in for her operation. Maybe not spoken about openly, but definitely something that was in eachother’s minds. In fact, it was only after Mum had died – when the operation to extend her life, sadly failed due to a childhood issue that had gone undiagnosed – that I discovered just how much Mum had been thinking about it.
That she had written me ‘notes’ in case the worst happened – featuring information I’d need to make organizing her estate easier – is still one of the most powerful demonstrations of unconditional love I’ve ever seen. Though it still breaks my heart how she must have felt writing them – knowing that she was having to face her own mortality, on her own, while I was on the other side of the planet.
That said – as I wrote the morning she died – we’d found a lovely rhythm in the final few years.
We’d always had a wonderful relationship but there was a period where a few niggles had entered our interactions … nothing much, just a little tension caused by me wanting to take care of her and her wanting to fiercely protect her independence and have me look after myself and my future more. But we’d got past that by realizing both us were coming from a place of love … so we made allowances for each others needs, which meant she let me put money in her bank account every month and I didn’t mind that she never spent a penny of it. Haha.
And while the days leading up to her death will be forever burned in my mind, my memory of Mum has never been stuck in that period, like it was for Dad for all those years. I don’t know why but I’m grateful for it.
Maybe it’s because I became better equipped emotionally after Dad died?
Maybe it’s because Otis was born 3 months before Mum passed and so that period was consumed with happy thoughts throughout that time?
Or maybe it’s because I’d seen Mum a lot before she died – every month for 6 months or so – and so saw the impact of her heart condition on her health – meaning it was less of a surprise to me, even though I thought the operation was going to make things better?
Who knows … but while today will always be significant in my mind, it’s not the main thing that immediately comes to mind. Instead I think of the conversations we had when I came to visit … the pasta she would lovingly make for me … the look of happy surprise on her face when I turned up unannounced from Australia … the tennis she’d play with me on the patio in the back garden in summer when I was a small kid … the joy on her face when she learned she was going to be a Grandma … the stories she would tell me of the films or comedians or concerts she’d gone to see … the quiet contentment we felt when we were in the same room together, even if nothing was being said.
I think of those things WELL before anything to do with her dying.
I think of her grace, her kindness, her love, her curiosity, and her compassion.
I think of how much I wish she could see the grandson she never met, but adored.
I think of how she will never know I lived in America and back in England and now NZ.
I think of how she would react to Bonnie. [And the news of Rosie]
I think of how she would react to ‘healthy me’.
I think of how lucky I was – and am – to be able to call her my Mum.
And that’s why, I am sure Mum would be happy that I almost forgot to write this post …
Because it means her memory is alive and present in my life and that means she achieved what she hoped for most in her life.
That she was a good Mum.
And she was. And still is.
I miss you Mum. I hope you’re with Dad, holding hands.
I love you.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Anniversary, Colenso, Comment, Family, Home, Jill, London, Love, New Zealand, Otis, Rosie
5 years ago today, we landed in Auckland.
FIVE BLOODY YEARS!
That’s the 3rd longest I’ve ever lived in a single place.
NZ was never on the plan, but Colenso was a place I’d always loved and so when they reached out post-R/GA redundancy [which came about by the then ‘shocking’ way I promoted my redundancy, which was covered by The Guardian Newspaper], it was suddenly a real option – made even more desirable after Jill told me [having mentioned they’d got back in touch] that “it would be nice to be closer to my Mum”.
Up until then, I thought we were going back to the US, but not only did I feel I needed to do something for the woman who I’d dragged all over the World after telling her we’d only have be away from Australia for a max of 2 years [Ahem!] both NZ and Colenso offered us things that were much more where we were and what we needed in our lives and work right then – from being cool with letting me continue doing my private projects through to giving us an escape path from Covid-ridden England … that is until it arrived in New Zealand and put us back in bloody lockdown, hahaha.
[That said, our immigration hotel – The Ibis – was in Hamilton, and as people from NZ will know, it was good prep, ha]
That said, it took a lot for us to get there.
First was getting approval to travel to NZ … then there was getting a spot in the quarantine hotel … that had to also align with the insanely limited flights to NZ … which was made harder by needing to find an airline that would also take our cat … plus the endless COVID tests we had to provide to different government departments, up to 24 hours before leaving …
And that’s before we talk about organizing the visas for me, the family and the bloody cat to enter the country … telling our bank that we were off to live on the other side of the planet on the very day we moved into the house we’d just bought in the UK … through to organizing a bloody coach to get us to Heathrow Airport, to ensure there was enough distance between us and the driver so there was no last minute COVID fuck-ups.
[The photo at the top of this post is from us getting on the plane and getting ready to take off]
And while moving across the world during a global pandemic is something I would never, ever recommend – and this is coming from someone who has moved countries into the double digits – we made it and were grateful for all NZ – and Colenso – has done [and does] for us.
That doesn’t mean NZ is perfect …
In many ways, it’s position as a ‘global utopia’ is worthy of a Grand Prix for PR given there’s a whole host of things that are fucked up that people outside of NZ rarely know about, let alone see … from deeply entrenched racism, a youth suicide rate that is proportionally – and continually – one of the highest in the world plus an overall lack of economic investment and youth opportunity to name but a few … however compared to many other places, it’s still a whole lot better in a whole lot of ways.
That said, we won’t be here forever.
Don’t know when that move will happen, but it will.
That we’ve been here 5 years is already incredible to us, given bar China, our usual tenure in a country is about 2-3.
But that’s how good the place is. And Colenso.
So why can I say we will leave at some point in the future?
Well, there’s a bunch of reasons why – of which one is the idea of living in one place till the end of my days fills me with dread – but the fact this place is already the 3rd longest place I’ve ever lived proves NZ is somewhere I regard as very special and why I’ll always see my time here as a chapter of true significance. It’s also why I hope when the day comes for us to leave, the people who matter feel I/we contributed at least as much as we were lucky and grateful to receive from them and the country as a whole.
And let me tell you, I haven’t felt that way about all the countries I’ve lived in, hahaha.
So to everyone in NZ – well, 98.46% of you – and everyone at Colenso …
Thank you.
For all you are and all you have done.
It’s been 5 pretty fucking awesome years. At least speaking for us, ha.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Anniversary, Dad, Death, Family, Love, Parents
OK, so we got to the end of the first week of 2026.
Or should I say the 3rd week … but you know what I mean.
Anyway, I started the TWENTIETH year of this blog with a couple of nice posts.
Then I followed it up with a couple of things that were frustrating-the-fuck out of me.
And now I am going to end it with something deeply personal to me.
Today is the 27th anniversary of my dad dying.
That not only means he has been out my life for just under half my life, but in just 5 years – I’ll be the age he was when he died.
As I’ve written before, when I turned 50 I went through a real emotional wobble believing that meant I only had 10 years before I too died … and while I’ve thankfully got past that, it increasingly shocks me how young he was when he passed.
Now I’ve written a lot about how much my Dad meant to me … how much he means to me … so this time I’m going to post something else altogether. Not because I don’t want to celebrate my Dad, but because I think this celebrates him in a way he would both want and respect.
To do that, you need to watch this …
This not only hit me, it made me really think hard.
And I get it and I think my Dad would have loved it.
Don’t get me wrong, I wish my Dad was still alive with all my heart and soul.
I miss him every single day and I hate I haven’t been able to share any of the past 27 years of my life with him.
But while he is still in my life and still relevant in my life, I know he would want me to refer to him as dead rather than ‘passed away’… not just because he wasn’t religious in any way, but because the word ‘death’, honours him and acknowledges him with greater dignity and love than any of the more ambiguous terminology that is often used to soften the reality rather than respect it.
Put simply, ‘passed’ sounds temporary and death represents permanency … and the reason that is so important is – as Labi Siffre so brilliantly articulates – the permanency of death not only justifies, but enables the full expression of grief because ultimately, grief represents the deep love you had for someone and the importance they played in your life.
And my god, did I love him.
So here’s to you Dad.
Dead, missed but absolutely not forgotten.
Filed under: 2025, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Anniversary, Attitude & Aptitude, Career, China, Colleagues, Creativity, Friendship, Love, Loyalty, Management, Planning, Professionalism, Relationships, Resonance, Respect, Shanghai, Wieden+Kennedy
One of the most special times of my life – not just career – was working at Wieden+Kennedy.
Specifically Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai.
Of all the adventures and experiences I’ve had in my life, it stands out highest simply because I feel a deeper sense to China and its people than any other place I’ve ever lived.
It helped that I was there during a time where the World needed China more than China needed the World – so I found myself invited into meetings and situations that frankly, few people – let alone strategists – would ever get to experience.
Wieden were amazing to me personally and professionally but I paid them back in droves.
But that said, leaving was very difficult.
They wanted me to stay.
A big part of me wanted to stay.
But I’d been there for a lonnnnnng time, I’d done pretty much everything that could be done – including starting and running The Kennedys – plus I had a young boy who needed a different environment to grow up in.
So with very bitter sweet tears, I said goodbye to a magical place in a magical country. Except I said it in a way where they would forever remember me. Specifically as the pain-in-the-fucking-arse I’d been to every single person in that place for seven fucking years.
You see about 6 weeks prior to leaving, I had 600 of these stickers made.
I then proceeded to spend the next 5 weeks hiding them everywhere.
From the – then – refurbished Shanghai office to all the local W+K hangouts, like Baker & Spice, Jamaica Blue, Little Catch and, of course, Nike HQ.
It made some people furious. Specifically one person. Which made me especially happy because in terms of making a final decision whether to stay or go, they were the determining factor on why I left.
And over the years, people would send me a photo where they had come across one or two.
And despite it now being 8 years … there’s still some there.
In fact, there’s now more than just some.
You see a few weeks ago, I was in Shanghai and was invited to visit the office.
I had not been in the place since I left … but given I’d now been away longer than I was there, it felt OK to go in.
And it was lovely and familiar.
But then it was a place where I did a lot of growing up.
And made a lot of friends … friends who are with me for life.
Which is why it was extra special for me to see some familiar faces from my time there.
And because of this, I wanted to honour the place and give them something new to show my gratitude and love.
So I gave them this:
That’s right, I made a new sticker to accompany the old ones.
“But how many stickers?” I hear you cry.
Well I couldn’t possibly divulge that information because it would ruin the fun of finding all of them, but in the interests of friendship, here’s a clue:
Now I fully appreciate this act of ‘love vandalism’ may result in them never inviting me back, but I do hope they see it as my own special way of showing my deepest and sincerest respect to a place and country I truly love.
Because Wieden Shanghai and China wasn’t just a place I lived and worked …
It was where I was reborn.
Filed under: 2020, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Advertising [Planning] School On The Web, Agency Culture, Anniversary, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Australia, Authenticity, Bangkok Shakes, Bank Ads, Bassot, BBH, Billionaire, Birkenhead, Birkenstocks, Birthday, Black Lives Matter, Bonnie, Brand, Brand Suicide, Brian Clough, British, Business, Campaign Magazine, Canada, Cannes, Career, Cats, Chaos, Charinee, Childhood, Children, China, Chris Jaques, Clients, Clothes, Colenso, Collaboration, Colleagues, Comment, Community, Complicity, Confidence, Conformity, Content, Context, Contribution, Corona Virus, Corporate Gaslighting, Creativity, Culture, Curiosity, Cynic, Dad, Daddyhood, David Terry, Death, Deutsch, Din Tai Fung, Disney, Distinction, Dog, Dolly, Dream Bigger, Dream Small, Dysgraphia, Education, Egovertising, Embarrassing Moments, Emotion, Empathy, England, Entertainment, Experience, Family, Fatherhood, Fear, Football, Freddie, Freelance, Friendship, Fulfillment, Gaming, Goodbye America, Goodbye China, Goodbye England, Goose Fair, Government, Grand announcements, Happiness, Harmony, Headers, HHCL, Holiday, Home, Hong Kong, Hope, HSBC, human_2, Imagination, Immaturity, Important Birthdays, India, Innocence, Innovation, Insight, Internet, Interviews, Italy, Japan, Jaques, Jill, Jillyism, Jorge, Katie, Kev, LaLaLand, Leadership, Linkedin, Logic, London, Love, Loyalty, Luck, Luxury, Management, Marcus, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Marketing Science, Martin Weigel, Maya, Mediocrity, Mental Health, Metallica, Michael Jordan, Michael Mann, Miley, Mr Ji, Mum, Mum & Dad, Music, My Childhood, My Fatherhood, Netflix, New Zealand, NHS, Northern, Nottingham, Nottingham Forest, Nurses, olympics, OnStrategy, Otis, Parents, Paul, Paula, Pearl Jam, Perspective, Photography, Planes, Planners, Planning, Point Of View, Police, Popularity, Prams, Prejudice, Pretentious Rubbish, Pride, Process, Professionalism, Queen, R/GA, Relationships, Relevance, Reputation, Research, Resonance, Respect, Rick Rubin, Rockstar Games, Rodi, RoObin, Ros, Rosie, RulesOfRubin, Shanghai, Shelly, Si Vicars, Silvana, Singapore, Sport, Spotify, Starbucks, Steve Jobs, Strategy, Stubborness, Stupid, Success, Sunshine, Sydney, Taboo Categories, Talent, Tattoo, Technology, The Kennedys, The Kennedys Shanghai, Toxic Positivity, Uncorporated, Virgin Atlantic, Viz, Wedding, WeigelCampbell, Wieden+Kennedy
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.