Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Audiences, Business, Childhood, Context, Culture, Food, Food For Thought, Happiness, Mum & Dad, My Childhood
Recently, I saw this article on Linkedin …
While I appreciate their point, it felt like another example of someone who only sees the world through their own perspective.
And while that’s common – which is why I normally ignore it – the slight diss towards strategists made me bite.
Hence I responded with this …
While I hope it didn’t come across too judgmental or condescending, I also hope my point is made …
Not just in terms of planners being the last people in marketing who are deliberately ignorant, but that one persons ‘reliably not shit’ is another persons ‘taste of the good life’.
As I said in the post, when I was growing up, we would only go out for dinner once – a max – twice a year.
Either to Trattoria Antonio – an Italian Restaurant on Trent Bridge.
Or the Berni Inn, which was called – for added attempt at sophistication – ‘The Chateau’.
Here’s a pic of the place that – sadly – is no longer there. Knocked down to be turned into another faceless shopping industrial estate.
In fact, it was The Chateau where I experienced a lot of my ‘firsts’ where certain foods are concerned …
Steak.
Broccoli.
Onion Rings.
Knickerbockerglory.
My god, I thought it was fancy-as-fuck and to a young kid from Nottingham, it was.
Hell, I still remember being confused by how they advertised their ‘2 courses for 5 quid’ promotion … because they made it sound like it was a bargain when for me/my folks, that was still pricey. Strangely though, I never associated it with lower quality food – such was my lack of exposure to what steak cost or was supposed to taste like, hahaha.
Maybe that’s why I still prefer eating the ‘cheaper-end’ of food rather than the fancy stuff I’ve since been exposed to and experienced … and why every marketer, planner, creative or suit needs to remember if you base audiences on who you want them to be or what your personal perspective and context is, then you may find you’re not just talking to yourself, but that might be the only person you’re talking to.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Agency Culture, AI, Attitude & Aptitude, Brands, Business, Conformity, Consultants, Context, Corporate Evil, Corporate Gaslighting, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Crap Products In History, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Empathy, Technology
I appreciate the commercial benefits of being associated with technology – especially technology that’s at the forefront of change – but I’m getting fed up of companies shoving the letters A and I ahead of everything they do in a desperate attempt to look cutting edge.
Do they realise they’re not fooling anyone – except, maybe themselves?
Have they forgotten what happened to WeWork when they persisted in their claims to be a tech company when even Stevie Wonder could see they were nothing more than an office space rental firm.
But it’s happening everywhere with everyone claiming everything they do is now ‘AI shaped/influenced/enabled.
AI project management systems
AI consultancy services.
AI home theatre systems.
AI photocopiers.
AI toilets.
AI. Ai. AI.
And even if I accept all these things now have some element of AI in their process and product, how come so much of them operate exactly as they did before?
All that advanced tech and everything still operates the same way as it always has.
That can’t be very good can it?
Surely that means the people behind it are either idiots, attempting to gaslight their customers or they have used AI to remove employees roles so they can squeeze out the last remnants of profit before they scraper and enjoy sitting on their millions.
While I’m at it …
Why is it the worst offenders of this sort of behavior tend to be the most conservative and traditional companies and industries?
[You can tell who they are as they tend to use images like the one at the top of this post because they think that proves they’re all about the ‘future’, haha]
On one hand I appreciate their desire to modernize, but the problem is – if the only thing that changes is the speed they can do things or the price they can do them for … then arguably, they’re proving they haven’t got the faintest idea what AI could do for them if they’re limiting its use to efficiency and productivity.
So to all brands jumping on the AI bandwagon …
Using Claude to speed up your manufacturing process doesn’t mean you’re an AI company.
Using ChatGPT to write articles about your products does not mean you make AI tech.
And positioning any form of automation as AI does not mean you’re a cutting-edge tech company.
Am I exaggerating?
Yes. But not nearly as much as you may imagine …
Every day I see ads and articles from companies claiming AI is at the centre of all they do.
Products.
Service.
Systems.
Manufacturing.
Marketing.
You name it, someone is saying it … which is why the best way to tell ‘who is trying’ versus ‘who is claiming’ is to embrace the same evaluation criteria as used to judge strategy, which is:
Can customers, employees and competitors notice a fundamental difference between how things were and how things now operate and behave?
If they can’t, it’s hype or self-serving commerciality. You’re welcome.
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.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Business, Community, Consultants, Corporate Evil
Big business increases prices/loses people for profit protection.
Small business increases prices/loses people for survival.
One gets grudgingly accepted. The other gets openly criticised.
And at a time where we ‘welcome’ humanities first ever trillionaire, maybe this is the wake-up call to start questioning both where we’re heading and what big business – and many of the Linkedin crowd – view as aspirational.
As one of my great mentors, the brilliant Lee Hill, told me when I was new in the industry and disliking/not trusting anyone who was wealthy [and he was/is exceedingly wealthy], “there’s nothing wrong with people or companies making money, it’s how they do it and what they do with it”.
That’s a question we should be asking a lot more …
… both of ourselves and most definitely of others.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Ambition, Brands, Business, Creative Development, Creativity, Planning, Relationships, Strategy
So a few weeks ago, I spoke at StratCon in Berlin.
I had known about the event because I knew one of the organisers – Fran, from Jung von Matt – but it was my first time ever going.
I knew it was going to be good because the brilliant Paula Bloodworth told me how much fun she’d had when she spoke there previously – delivering a presentation that went down so well that I discovered it was still being talked about TWO YEARS LATER – but even then, I wasn’t prepared for how much I was going to enjoy it.
Part of this was because of the variety of ‘strategy speakers’ they had talking …
Rather than having people from the same discipline all through the day, they had strategists that covered a broad spectrum of the discipline.
Advertising,
Branding.
Research.
Consultancies.
Media.
It meant the audience not only heard a broad spectrum of thinking, it meant they understood the different issues, approaches and contexts that go into those specific areas of strategy … something that is sadly missing from many of the other conferences out there.
Another thing I loved was there were almost zero ‘agency/product pitches’ from the presenters …
We’ve all been to those talks that feel more like a ‘timeshare sales meeting’ than a place where you hear interesting opinions and perspectives … but there was none of that here. In fact, for a conference that had a very focused topic for the day, it was amazing how many different viewpoints we heard, aided by the fact there were a variety of strategists, from a variety of different disciplines of strategy in attendance.
And that range of speakers went one further …
Because not only were they different to the usual suspects at these sorts of events – bar me, obvs – they represented different lengths of time in the industry. In fact for Vinzenz – a young planner from Mother Berlin – it was their first ever industry talk and so not only did we have the privilege of learning what they felt was interesting and important for the development of his strategic career, he got to experience and grow from the experience.
More conferences should do this.
And finally, the thing I loved about StratCon was the audience.
Unlike in other markets where there will be some strategists who slag off every speaker because they think they’re better, smarter and more experienced than them [plot twist: they’re not] this felt like a real gathering of a community.
People coming together to share, learn, connect and hopefully be better.
It felt tangibly different to other conferences I’ve attended … and while that may be because it’s organized by the community rather than outsourced to a company who seek to monetize every element they can from every person and company in attendance or because German strategy is – as more than one attendee told me – ‘starved of inspiration’ so everyone went in with open minds and attitudes, the result was that StratCon was a lovely place to be.
Our discipline is in a weird place right now and as I said in my talk, for it to get better requires more than another fucking framework, an optimistic mindset or a sense of intellectual superiority. Which is why I liked StratCon so much, because it was where honesty – rather than sales pitches – prevailed … and if anything is going to help us get out of this small box we’ve walked ourselves into, it’s dealing with the issues that are holding us back rather than hiding from them with the deluded belief ‘the framework will set us free’.
A huge thank you to everyone who attended and the organizers of the event …
Not just for inviting me – which was amazing – but allowing me to spend time in a city that was hugely important to my Dad.
Walking around that first day let me feel I was close to him again and for that alone, I can never thank you enough.
I can honestly say while I was only in Berlin for a short time, I leave with memories, moments, people, stories and an amazing pre-event dinner, that will last a fucking long time. And given how many incredible things I did and saw on that trip, there’s no higher compliment I can give than to say you were one of the true highlights.
An extra hug of appreciation to Fran, Heleen, Vinzenz, Achim and ‘Hamster’.
Auf wiedersehen …
