Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Colenso, Colleagues, Confidence, Conformity, Respect, Si Vicars, Wieden+Kennedy
One of the most overused words in advertising is ‘confidence’.
It’s a characteristic that tends to fail in 2 key ways:
First, it tends to represent who the brand wishes was their customer, rather than who is.
Second, too often its presented in superficial, contrived and over-the-top ways … as if the brand is scared their audience won’t be able to tell what they’re trying to convey unless overt.
Thirdly, a lot of the time it ends up reeking of a brand insecure in who they are and what they believe.
The result of which is that the work often ends up bring a repellent to audiences, rather than a beacon.
There’s an obvious reason for this and that’s real confidence is expressed – and felt – in the small stuff, not the big, which is why one of the best true expressions of confidence was this brilliant Southern Comfort spot from WKNY back in 2012.
I still remember seeing it for the first time.
I was visiting WK Amsterdam and Martin Weigel showed it to me.
Didn’t need any explanation.
Didn’t need over-the-top behaviour.
Didn’t even need any bloody words.
Confidence oozed out of every moment, by nature of it not trying to.
Now, I appreciate being half Italian, I saw these men on the beaches of Pescara, every year that I was growing up – so it could be argued I was ‘pretuned’ to comprehension. But truth be told, whether you’re from Italy or Iceland … everyone got it.
Not just intellectually, but emotionally.
And that line, ‘Whatever’s Comfortable’.
How good was that? The embodiment of confidence, without having to say it.
Just a way to acknowledge some people are at ease with who they are. That they have a belief in who they are. That they are accepting of who they are, regardless of comparison or competition.
No delusion.
No arrogance.
Just a comfort in who you are, rather than pretending to be who you’re not.
And frankly, there hasn’t been anything that has come close to that piece of work since that piece of work, because all I see these days is either more blatant try-hard shit – which reveals a brands lack of confidence, rather than an abundance of it – or manosphere, toxic bullshit.
That was until recently …
The photo above is Simon Vicars, our CCO – also known as the nicest man in advertising.
He is the living proof that ‘good guys’ don’t always come last. He is also proof that being a good human doesn’t mean you’re not talented. Because he is, sickeningly so.
But as I wrote before, he is also a bit of a cheeky bastard. Never with malice, but with a slight mischievousness that somehow, you can’t help finding endearing.
And how does he pull this off?
Well, because he may be the most confident man since the Southern Comfort man.
Sure, he’s whiter than the Dulux Dog.
Sure, he has a nose that Concord would be jealous of. [and I’m hardly one to talk!]
Sure, he has the upper torso you would imagine a slight gust of wind could knock over.
But this just proves my point because how else can you explain him going to a pub [with me] to interview a potential job candidate … asking if they were hungry [it was lunchtime to be fair] and despite them and me saying ‘no’, goes ahead and orders a fucking massive Chicken Parm before proceeding to scoff it down in front of both of us.
To be fair, he looked a bit sheepish as this photo captures – but he still did it – and frankly, it may be one of the most incredible and understated acts of confidence I’ve ever seen.
Partly because he is so nice that I know he did it because he was starving with hunger and was going to be starved of time. Partly because I got a kick of staying quiet at different moments of the interview so I could watch him have to swallow massive pieces of chicken so he would be able to respond to the questions with no massive pause. And partly because – where so many would deny their truth so that they ‘fitted in’ – he did what was good, right and comfortable for him … which, when you come to think of it, is one of the greatest acts of self-respect and transparency you could receive from someone.
So here’s to Si Vicars. He may not look it, but he may be the most confident man in the World.
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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.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Colenso, Comment, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Effectiveness, Efficiency
That’s right … creativity helps business make money.
I know there’s a bunch of people who like to claim otherwise, but they’re wrong.
More than that, creativity can help business make money in ways traditional approaches can’t.
Be it distribution, market share, heritage, price-point, tradition, routine, apathy, complexity and god knows what else … creativity always finds a way because – as Martin Weigel and I explained at Cannes back in 2023 – creativity can do what logic can’t.
This blog has literally thousands of examples of it.
From making me, a teetotaler, buy alcohol to making a print ad, produce sound waves to making pasta look even more beautiful than it tastes to making drinking beer from a bottle, an act of love … to helping shelter dogs become adoptable dogs, creativity is a beautiful and powerful thing.
But here’s the thing …
Creativity may always start with the mind, but it needs to be turned into something for it to change something.
I’m fed up of hearing people talking about creativity rather than doing something with it.
Or about it.
Sure, you can argue talking can also bring change … but to me, that’s a cop out.
Creativity needs to be allowed to make an impact.
It needs to be allowed to grow into something powerful and interesting.
Because if you inhibit that, you’re not ‘being safe’, you’re taking the biggest gamble of your life.
History is littered with examples of success that could never of happened or imagined without the influence of creativity.
Creativity helped make hundreds of millions want to become an athlete.
Creativity helped make Americans try sushi.
Creativity helped make the best selling calculator of all time.
For all the consultants out there, flogging their self serving, one-size-fits-all systems, frameworks and models … the inconvenient truth is this.
Business needs creativity more than creativity needs business.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Christmas, Colenso, Creativity, Culture, Management
I’m back.
Actually I didn’t go away, as the meeting was postponed at the last moment.
I know … I know … that means I could have written posts through all of last week, but the plans changed so last minute that – to be honest – I just couldn’t be arsed and I knew anyone who does still come visit here, wouldn’t be exactly complaining, haha.
In some ways not going was a good thing because it was going to be in Shanghai and I am still filled to the brim on the energy and dumplings from my last visit there a few weeks ago.
Despite having not lived there for 10 years and it still evolving at a speed ‘brand transformation consultancies’ could only wish for, it still feels like home … still feels where I am at peace … still feels where I belong … even if in its continual evolution, it has arguably become too slick and too easy so some of the magic that makes the country so unique, has gone.
But I’ll take it as I continue to be transfixed by it.
And seeing so many friends and eating so much Din Tai Fung didn’t hurt either, haha.
It was strange seeing so many people I knew as I walked around. A decade away and yet I still bumped into more people in those few days than I have ever in NZ.
Or anywhere else for that matter.
I think part of it is the time I lived in China was a pretty unique, magical and mad time … and so I shared experiences that you would never have anywhere else. It’s the sort of thing that creates deep bonds with the people you’re doing it with … something probably similar to soldiers or police officers, albeit without the same dangers, obviously. Whatever, it was both personally and emotionally wonderful for me … especially when you compare it to the photo below – hahaha.
Let me start by saying I love my partners.
Angela Watson and Simon Vicars are two of the very best.
Not just as creative partners, but as humans.
Great people who happen to be very talented – which means our context is life rather than simply ads.
It makes a huge difference.
Not just to the work we make, but the conversations we have.
We have a genuinely good relationship – based on shared values, ambition and trust – which is handy, given we share a desk and nothing would reveal any cracks between us than that, especially the way Ange and Si ‘spread’ far beyond their space – hahaha.
But what I value most is our ability to have the hard conversations … safe in the knowledge it’s always coming from a place of wanting the best for Colenso … so if we ever hold each other to task about standards and expectations, we don’t see it as a sign of a toxic relationship, but a healthy one.
Which is handy, given this photo clearly shows Ange and Si’s inability to hide their feelings towards me … hahaha.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Business, Colenso, Colleagues, Comment, Complicity, Conformity, Content, Context, Craft, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Curiosity, Delusion, Differentiation, Distinction, Diversity, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Emotion, Empathy, Focus Groups, Inclusion, Insight, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Marketing Science, Planners, Planning, Point Of View, Process, Professionalism, Relationships, Relevance, Reputation, Research, Resonance, Respect, Standards
Recently I had to interview a relatively well known singer songerwriter.
While their major successes were in the 90’s, they’d always had a place in popular culture – albeit British culture.
I went into the call only knowing what I had read up about them and what I had thought about them when they were making hits … so while I was intrigued to chat, I wasn’t exactly sure how it was going to go.
Fortunately for me, I had a secret weapon and that was a Mum who had instilled in me to ‘always be interested in what others are interested in’.
What this means is your job is simple: listen to them and follow where they take you.
That doesn’t mean you can’t ask questions.
Nor does it mean you can’t challenge them when you feel their answers contradict each other.
However, rather than go into it looking for faults or specific answers, your focus is simply to understand how they think and see the world.
And I am so grateful for that because the conversation was amazing.
Not just in terms of what was discussed, but how much I understood and – even related – to many of the choices and decisions they made on their journey.
A reminder that whoever you are … whatever plans you have … or wherever you’re from … we’re all bumbling along trying to make sense of the stuff we experience and are exposed to, while trying to keep on some sort of path we feel we can manage or hope to navigate.
I came out of our chat with a totally different perspective of this indivudual – both as a musician and as a human.
More than that, it allowed me to look back on my perceptions and realise how much I had let prejudices, associations and media [mis]shape my point of view. Or said another way, how I had chosen to ‘tune out’ their reality and ‘tune in’ to the noise surrounding them.
Noise created by people who often didn’t know them and certainly didn’t know what they were going through.
We all have experienced a version of that in our life. Now imagine it on a national and international scale?
Which is why that chat not only helped me see their choices and career through an entirely different lens … it made me feel deeply ashamed of myself.
Of my prejudice.
Of my judgement.
Of my wasted energy.
And I told them and they were incredibly kind and gracious about it. Far more than I deserved, let alone expected … but I can honestly say, I now look at who they are and what they have done – and do – with deep respect rather than judgement or ridicule.
That doesn’t mean I suddenly love their music – I don’t – but I do now completley understand where it came from and what it represented. Especially to them. And that – ironically – has allowed me to connect to them as an artist and a human far more than I ever imagined was possible … amplified by their openness, warmth and willingness to be vulnerable about moments in their life that were most definitely not easy.
I say all this because I think where I started prior to the interview represents what our industry is doing day after day.
Relying on cherry-picked data points, shortcuts and convenient answers, rather than going out their way to truly understand the textured lives, perspectives and challenges of the audiences they want and need to connect and engage to.
What’s making this even worse is how many research companies are now outsourcing ‘data gathering’ to AI driven bots … reinforcing that business increasingly values speed, convenience and efficiency over depth of underrstanding.
And the result of all this?
False perceptions.
Self-interest driven solutions.
Increased category convention advertising.
Or, to sum it up even more devastatingly … Maxwell House idiocy thinking.
It’s why I’ve always seen strategy as an outdoor job more than a desk job.
It’s why I’ve put-out books about what society is thinking over what marketing is claiming.
It’s why I’ve always favoured working with people like On Road and Ruby Pseudo over the conglomerate research companies.
And finally, it’s why – when told by planners they don’t have time to go out and talk to people – I’ve said that even if they talk to 3 people in the streets, that’s likely 3 more than anyone else. Because as much as it is always the right thing to make time for more understanding, the point isn’t about scale of opinion, it’s about scale of the nuances you will discover … because when you’re open to that, you’ll not only learn how much you never knew, but see how much your creativity can now impact and achieve.