Filed under: Advertising, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Cannes, Colleagues, Communication Strategy, Content, Context, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Effectiveness, Egovertising, Experience, Fake Attitude, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Perspective, Point Of View, Professionalism, Relationships, Resonance, Respect, Standards, Toxic Positivity | Tags: om
Obviously I have a soft spot for Google.
From cynic to Colenso, they’ve been a constant in my professional as well as personal life.
They are intimately involved in so much of what I do every single day and I appreciate the possibilities they have enabled me to embrace because of them existing.
I know … that sounds unbelievably gushing doesn’t it.
That doesn’t mean there’s not stuff that drives me nuts …
From the way some of their products work [Google Slides, I’m looking at you] through to the passive behaviour they are increasingly showing in the face of challenges that their smarts/money/tech could fundamentally change for the benefit of millions – if not billions – of people. However even with all that, it pales into comparison to this:
What. The. Hell?
Not only is it an absolutely terrible attempt to make a terrible pun, I still don’t know what ‘the new way to cloud’ is. Or means. Or why I should give a second of attention to it.
For a company so full of smart people, how can this happen?
Seriously, this sort of work does the absolute opposite of what Google want.
It makes people question how smart the company is.
It makes people ask if Google know how to talk to people.
It makes people wonder if Google know how to make tech that understands our needs.
It makes people ask if this is the sort of organisation we should trust to shape our future.
Sure, it’s just a random billboard … but for a brand that once represented humanities hope for ensuring technology enabled and empowered a better, brighter, more equal future for all, this work feels more like a politician pretending to smile while they’re busy oppressing us.
I know this isn’t the case, but bloody hell, it’s rubbish.
Which leads me to this.
I don’t know who is behind it. I don’t know if it’s an agency or an internal group. But I have to believe this was made because senior people mandated it or influenced it. Either directly, or indirectly. Which serves as a really good reminder about the dangers of corporate structures.
As Martin, Paula and I said in our Cannes talk, toxic positivity is ruining brands and people.
The idea that ‘team’ is now interpreted as blind complicity and conformity is insane.
But it’s happening. We all see it or have experienced it.
Worse, there’s an underlying attitude that the only way to get ahead is manage up. What I mean is that rather than do the right thing for your audience, you do the right thing by your boss. Doesn’t matter if it makes no sense. Doesn’t matter if it actively confuses the people it is actually designed to communicate to. As long as it hits the ‘cues’ your boss likes, you’re good.
As I wrote recently, toxic positivity is leading to the systematic destruction of knowledge and experience. Great ideas and people are literally being moved out of organisations to be replaced by conformists and pleasers.
Yes, company culture is important.
It has an incredible power to achieve great things.
But here’s the thing too many companies just don’t seem to get.
If you’re mandating it, you don’t have it.
Because real company culture is born from the people within the company. Yes, the people at the top shape and influence it – often through beliefs and a way to look at the world – but the moment you try to dictate or define it, you lose it.
But here’s the thing …
Even when a company gives you something to believe in, they know the real key is to give every employee the power to feel they can be themselves. That they trust them to want to make things better, rather than break things apart.
Which is why they encourage debate.
They value different opinions and ideas.
Because as long as it’s not in a self-serving, divisive manner … it’s almost the ultimate demonstration you want to help make things better.
There are a lot of companies who get this.
There’s sadly far more who don’t.
And everyone loses because of it. Because if companies stopped thinking of company culture in-terms of efficiency and optimisation – and more about standards and quality control – we would all get to better places faster.
Or at the very least, less ads that say everything by saying absolutely nothing.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Complicity, Culture, Daily Fail, Daily Mail, Diversity, Dysgraphia, Education, Empathy, England, Fatherhood, Hope, My Fatherhood, New Zealand, Otis, Perspective, Relevance, Resonance, Respect
OK … so yesterday I said the posts this week were all superficial shite, but that was until I read an article that has pissed me off.
Have a look at this headline:
On one side, it’s from the Daily Mail – so this sort of divisive headline is to be expected – but what made me especially angry is the daughter in question is not ‘rebellious’, she has dysgraphia and dyscalculia … so she finds writing, reading and maths incredibly difficult.
NOT because she isn’t smart or capable, but because she has a neurological condition so she learns in a different way to the one the education system is set up to teach.
To be fair to the school in this article, it sounds they tried to help … but it also sounds they were so stretched that the way they approached it was more about giving them time off school rather than adapting their approach to schooling.
I’ve written about this in the past given Otis has dysgraphia and his school has been active in trying to adapt to help. Even then it’s not been easy – or perfect – but at least Otis knows he’s seen, heard and valued … which is more than the woman in this article probably feels.
Imagine being neurodivergent and having a national newspaper refer to you as rebellious and having your own Mum be OK with that.
Worse, the Mum makes it all about her and ‘her struggles’.
Yes, it can be hard … and yes, it can be stressful … but it’s a fuck-of-a-lot worse for kids going through this sort of thing. They feel stupid. They feel left behind. They feel discarded and useless. So the last thing they need is a parent – and an education system – labelling them rebellious or lazy when what they’re dealing with is neurological. To make matters worse, this neurological challenge doesn’t impact their capacity to learn, just the way they do learn … so they have huge amounts of potential but with too few people wanting to see it, recognise it and liberate it.
This article could have been about the need to relook at how we educate. It could have been about the importance of needs rather than standardisation. It could have been about progress rather than judgement. Instead this ‘newspaper’ decided to write a piece that shows they view compassion and encouragement as weakness and unfairness.
Shame on them.
Shame on the mother for allowing this headline.
Shame on the people who commented negatively without understanding.
You have to be pretty fucking vile to be jealous some kids need special attention from their schools.
It’s not elitism you pricks, it’s dealing with an issue not of their making and helping them stand a chance of having a life that is bigger than the one people like you want for them.
Fuck you. All of you.
You’re welcome.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand Suicide, Business, Comment, Complicity, Confidence, Consultants, Context, Corporate Evil, Corporate Gaslighting, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Fake Attitude, Imposter Syndrome, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Mediocrity, Prejudice, Professionalism, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance, Respect, Succession, Toxic Positivity, Trust, Truth
I appreciate that at my age, the title of this post may suggest I’m going to whine about companies overlooking people of a certain age for younger, cheaper, hungrier individuals.
I’m not. I get it.
Not only that, while age and knowledge have some level of interconnectedness … I’ve met countless young people who are bloody brilliant [not relative to their age, just bloody brilliant] as well as plenty of people with ‘experience’ who, frankly, aren’t.
What I’m talking about is the blinkered confidence some companies place in their people simply because they’re their people.
On one hand I suppose I should celebrate it, given its not that long ago that companies overlooked internal capability for the external shiny and new.
And while this post does not reflect any of the clients I specifically work with directly, I am seeing and hearing more and more companies go to this other extreme and worse … enabling a level of arrogance in their people that results in any objectivity they face – regardless of the knowledge and expertise of the person delivering it, let alone the desire to help make things more successful – as a threat.
Complicity is the name of the game these days.
Blind acceptance that whatever the person ‘in charge’ says, is right.
A belief internal employees are better informed about every topic than people who are experts in specific topics … so companies can feel great about themselves.
Of course, the issue with this approach is that when things go wrong – or don’t go right enough – everyone else gets the blame. Not just by the person in charge [which you almost expect] but by the company they work for, despite the fact the only reason they gave this employee the project is because they knew a bit more about a subject than senior management, so they saw them as [1] an expert in the field and [2] a cheaper option that bringing in external expertise.
Now you’d think the fear of this outcome would ensure people would stand up for what they believe is right.
Not because they’re arrogant, but because they know their experience and knowledge can disproportionally benefit the end result.
And some do. At least the really good ones …
But even they are under increasing pressure to go along with the whims and wants of certain people/companies … because the whole industry is seeing more and more work being handed to people and companies who simply say yes to whatever is wanted.
Or said another way, convenience and fawning is more valued then expertise, knowledge and standards.
Now of course, it’s human nature to believe we can do more than we actually can.
We all like to think we are ‘special’.
We all like to be acknowledged as important.
We’ve all heard the ‘fake it till you make it’ philosophy.
But the truly special are the ones who know that however good they are, having people around them who are better than them – in different fields – can make them even more effective.
It’s why the World’s best athletes have coaches.
It’s why the World’s best musicians have producers.
It’s why my brilliant ex-NIKE/FFI client, Simon Pestridge, said: “middle management want to be told they’re right. Senior management want to know how they can be better”.
The reason I say all this is that I recently reached out to one of the best organisational psychologists in the World. They work with the CEO’s of some of the most respected and successful companies in the World including Apple, NIKE, Ferrari and Electronic Arts to name a few.
This is what they said when I talked to them about what I was seeing:
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“I call them professional imposters and the reason so many succeed in corporations is because they target other imposters. It becomes a co-dependent relationship where they ensure their ego, status or promotion opportunities won’t be challenged.”
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
To be honest, I was not shocked by their view, I was more shocked by the acknowledgment.
Of course, I probably shouldn’t be. It’s hardly a new phenomenon and we also had one of the most successful shows in TV history shine a light on it …
Succession was a celebration of the role of co-dependence and complicity within organisations.
As I wrote recently, Tom was the epitome of it.
But this post is about Tom before he ‘won’ [even though he is still a pawn to the real power] … this is about Tom when he just wanted to please to win favour. Where he thought nothing of being vicious and vindictive to those beneath him because he knew that didn’t just please the people above him, it let him feel he was above everyone around him.
And so Tom eventually gets promoted beyond his capability …
Where the illusion of power and external fawning is more important to him than pay checks.
Where his belief is he is superior to all, regardless of knowledge or experience.
Where his understanding of situations is the only understanding of a situation.
Yeah, it’s bleak. It’s fucking bleak. Because while Tom was fiction, Trump got to be President of America. And what makes it worse is we all see it. Hell, we’ve probably all been exposed to it. And yet it goes on.
If companies truly want to be great, then they’ve got to kill and stop rewarding toxic positivity … because value will be revealed when they allow more people to say no to them and they say yes to more people.
It’s Monday.
In NZ, it’s also winter,
In other words, it’s pretty depressing.
However, never fear this blog is here. Ahem.
I’ve decided to shake those Monday blues away for all of us with this post.
Think of it as blog prozac. Which makes me your Doctor.
Oh god, this has turned into something even more depressing than Mondayitus, so let’s just get on with it shall we? OK, here it is:
Though now I look at it, I relate to it.
Especially on a Monday morning.
In winter.
Having just written the biggest bust this blog has ever seen.
And its seen a lot, as we all know.
Tomorrow will be better. Hopefully.
As if Monday wasn’t bad enough already, I’ve gone and made it worse.
Sorry.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Consultants, Context, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Marketing, Marketing Fail
Once upon a time, there was an ad for John West – a canned food company – that said:
“It’s the fish that John West rejects that makes John West the best”.
And at our recent talk at Cannes, I quoted this from the brilliant Janis Joplin.
And yet, when I look at my industry – an industry that is quick to call out the failings of clients – we’re not really living up to that.
Now of course I appreciate we are in economically challenging times.
And I also appreciate money makes the World go round.
But the decline of our industries power and influence was going on long before this and one of the reasons was because we chased money more than standards.
Or said another way, we sold the value of creativity and cultural understanding for the illusion of importance and association.
On one hand I get it …
As an industry, we have always been paid a fraction of what some others have got, despite – arguably – doing a lot more, or at the very least, the same amount.
But our desire to be seen as a ‘corporate insider’ has destroyed our value as a ‘corporate outsider’.
Where we have the clarity to see where society is going and what they’re valuing. Where we have the objectivity to understand what are the real issues, not what companies wish them to be. Where we have the creativity to know how to connect to people in ways they may actually give a shit about.
But more and more, we are walking away from this.
Complicity is valued more than questions.
Acquiescence is valued more than a point of view.
Toxic positivity is valued more than honesty and transparency.
Now don’t get me wrong, there’s a reason for all this …
Some of our own making, some of clients making.
But for all our talk of believing in creativity … how many really are demonstrating it?
What makes it worse is the creative talent out there is arguably better than at any point in our history.
And that’s why this is not some ‘rose-tinted-looking-backwards’ bullshit – especially as there was a whole host of shit that went on back then – this is a ‘what the hell do we value’ rant.
Once upon a time I was having a bit of a hard time at work.
A lot of it was because of the issues I’ve just written.
I went home and told Jill what was going on and what I was being told when I asked questions … to which she said something that has stuck with me.
“There’s always a reason why they’re not going to do something”.
She was right.
She still is.
Despite being in the incredibly fortunate position to work with highly successful creative people who reside outside of this industry, I still love this industry.
More than that, I still believe in what this industry can do and create.
Hell, it has given me a life that is beyond anything I could have ever imagined for myself.
In fact, almost everything that is in my life is because of what
But right now it seems we’re better at talking good things than doing good things.
And so when things get worse – not just for us, but those who use/dictate to us – we better not complain about who is eating our lunch, because quite frankly, we are doing it, and have been doing it, to ourselves.
Making decisions of convenience not of standards and excitement.
A circle jerk of blinkered and blind complicity.
The good news not everyone is like this.
The even better news is it’s not too late for us all to change.
But the muscle memory may be too old for some to remember. Or worse, care.
Don’t let the financial crisis be another excuse for apathy. That didn’t get us in this mess.
We did.
We all did.