Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Audacious, Authenticity, Comment, Cynic, Devious Strategy, Differentiation, Distinction, Planning, Point Of View, Process, Relevance, Reputation, Resonance, Respect, Strategy
I’m back.
And – as usual – I found my heart in China.
I love that place so much. Literally love it.
It is arguably the only place in the World – and certainly the only place I’ve lived – where I feel I am able to breathe.
Obviously I mean that metaphorically [though they’ve sorted out the air, big time]… but the energy, the craziness, the extremes and the constant change bizarrely makes me feel calm, settled and at peace.
I don’t understand why – I get that’s bonkers – but it does and always has, and while I won’t ever live there again, I will find any excuse under the sun to keep going back.
For me, it’s more than a place I once had the honour and privilege of living … it feels ‘home’.
That does not mean I do like – or am not grateful – for all the other countries I’ve had the incredible opportunity to live in, but there’s something about China that I connected to on a level that is incomparable to anywhere else I’ve been. And while it is getting a bit too smooth, slick and convenient for my liking [haha] the people keep it real.
Amazing. Interesting. Dramatic. Smart-as-fuck.
I met some incredible people on this trip.
Not just old mates [who I kept bumping into on the street, which is something I’ve never done in Auckland, despite being a fraction of the population size and geography – haha] but some brilliant new people who I hope will become long-term new mates. And nothing sums this up more than the fact I was out all night.
ALL NIGHT.
TWICE!!! [Admittedly once was so I could listen to Forest play in Europe with the worst manager since Megson, Ange]
Jesus Christ, I’m 55 … I should be in bed with a Hot Chocolate by 8pm shouldn’t I?
But that’s the effect China has on me. I absofuckinglutely adore every single bit of it.
No doubt that statement will have my NZ/Australia/Singapore/HK residencies revoked, so we better move on … haha.
Not that long ago I wrote about a campaign we’ve just done for Delivereasy that reminds me of my beloved Viz ‘adult’ comic.
Well recently I got sent 2 photos of real-life businesses that seem to have adopted a similar approach …
First the most genuine ‘health and fitness’ ad in the history of health and fitness ads:
Quickly followed up by this masterpiece by a global – yet local – painter and decorator:
I love them.
Their magical and memorable.
Arguably more magical and memorable that many campaigns that have had millions and months of time spent on them.
Way back in 2007, I wrote about the power of ‘unplanned thinking‘.
Unplanned is when you go directly at the truth of a product – or audience perception – rather than play into the marketing hype machine. The point was that so many brands had stuck their head so far up their own pretentiousness arses, that rather than create aspiration with audiences, they were creating revulsion.
Unplanned killed that.
More than that, it killed it in a way that was refreshing, invigorating, distinctive and differentiated which – as a byproduct – meant it became more aspirational than an ad claiming a can of sugary fruit juice was in fact, a statement of discernment in a world of choice. Or some other bollocks.
And while I accept the examples above are one-offs, both are delivered in a way where I not just see the truth in them, I see the human in them as well – and as I’ve written a million times – the idea of interacting with real humans is far more interesting and enticing to me than engaging with yet another corporate monotone of a contrived mission statement.
Filed under: Chaos, Colleagues, Cynic, Death, Life, Love, Loyalty, Respect
Earlier this week, I – along with the rest of the cynic mob – received some terribly sad news.
Billy … known as Billy Whizz, and an old cynic colleague and prolific insulter in the early days of this blog … passed away.
He was 45.
He was a brilliant, talented, infectious maniac.
Writer.
Partier.
Trouble maker.
Mischief conductor.
Failed philanderer.
He was the storm that whipped up the best trouble.
And as much as he would do his best to hide his smarts behind his dumbass chic, he never could quite contain it.
Of course not, it was brigher than the sun.
Now 45 is far too young an age but to be fair to him, he used to tell us all he was shocked he was still here when he was 21.
Part of that was because he was always lived like he was driving at 100mph.
Along a narrow road.
On a sheer cliff
At night.
With the lights off.
In the rain.
And while he knew he was being dangeorous – always on the cusp of having a crash – it was also where he was his happiest, the beautiful idiot.
In many ways he was the glue that made the chaos of cynic produce infectious harmony … and while the photo above is not the typical ‘in memory’ pic, I know if anyone would approve of it, it would be Billy.
Taken at the cynic Christmas party in 2003 … it will be forever be known for being the precursor to what we called the infamous ‘vomit bucket’ incident.
He was so proud of causing that, which sums up every part of his manic, foolish brilliance.
I hoped I could be at his funeral in Rome this Saturday, but sadly my eye has put paid to that. I am devastated I will not be able to pay my final respects and say my last goodbyes, but I’m so glad so many of the cynic mob will be there to do it for the rest of us.
Which is why I want to leave this post with this.
Hey Billy. You asshole. Why did you go and die?
Well you have so I need to tell you something.
Some of my best ‘terrible memories’ revolve around you and your wild ways.
I hope that makes you happy and proud. It should, because the best lives have the stupidest stories and you were the author of more than a few of mine.
They say “you only live once but if you do it right, once is all you need”. Well, you definitely did it right … which helps me come to terms with why you left so soon.
I’m so sorry and sad you’ve gone my friend. I’ll think of you in every storm.
Till we meet again … probably in the back alleys of hell.
Love you.
I saw this post recently about the importance of having someone believe in you.
Ultimately, it’s about the impact that can have on what you do, how you do it and what you go and achieve.
Amazing eh?
But it’s important to know how it works.
Because it’s certainly not by having people pander to you. In fact, in my experience, it’s the opposite.
But it’s never expressed with distain or abuse… it’s always through questions designed to better understand what you want to do.
Or make you think about where you want to go.
Not because they disagree with you – they always remember this is about your choices, not theirs – it’s just because they wish to witness whatever they see in you, go as far as it can go.
I’ve been very fortunate to experience this.
Not just with my parents, but with different people over the years.
Lesley. Lee. Simon. Mark, Rupert. Charlie. Paula. To name but a few.
For me, that is what real mentorship is …
Wanting the best for you rather than telling you what to do.
But what I particularly liked about this clip is that it reminded me of Bazza – who, in his early teens – wrote to Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton, Steve Jobs and Nelson Mandela. [I think that’s who it was, I may have added/missed one. Baz?]
And over a period of years, he somehow got to meet every one of them.
Then asked them for a reference.
Which they gave him.
Not because he was a cheeky bastard, but because they saw something in him that they believed in.
A desire to do something good with whatever they thought was special about him.
And while ‘good’ is personal rather than – as many think – universal, the role of their encouragement is to increase the odds in your favour a little.
It’s a generous gift.
Of course, what happens next is up to you and luck.
But for all the ‘thought leadership’ being shoved down our throats, maybe the most valuable thing we can do is let someone know we believe in them.
In who they are so they can see, where they can go.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, China, Cliches, Clothes, Comment, Communication Strategy, Complicity, Consultants, Context, Craft, Crap Products In History, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Cynic, Delusion, Distinction, Equality, Fake Attitude, Imposter Syndrome, London, Perspective, Planning, Point Of View, Professionalism, Relevance, Reputation, Resonance, Respect, Wieden+Kennedy
This is a post about naming strategies.
Yes, I know I’ve talked about this before.
A lot of times before.
The processes.
The considerations.
The complications.
… but mainly it’s been about how certain branding consultancies charge an absolute fortune to come up with some utter nonsensical bullshit that they back up with 1000’s of pages of self-serving pseudo-science bullshit and still end up creating something pants. Kind of like the explanation of the Pepsi rebrand from 15 years ago. Or most Linkedin ‘guru’ pontification.
But the other side of this is when people choose to put no effort in whatsoever.
Hiding their recommendation behind terms such as ‘colloquial context’ or ‘cultural vernacular’.
Don’t get me wrong, there are times where a stripped back approach can be powerful.
A way to connect to society by taking their cultural references and contexts head-on.
Hell, cynic used to embrace an approach that we literally called, ‘unplanned‘.
However, while this was about removing any element of pomposity, it still had to elevate how people saw or connected to what we did. Any fool can churn out lowest common denominator stuff … but it takes a certain amount of skill and flair to develop something that not only connects and engages the masses, but does it in a way where the value of the product/brand is increased and improved to all.
We used to call this ‘massperation’ … which still makes me feel sick even today, hahahaha.
I say all this to justify something I saw recently.
Or should I say something Otis saw recently.
You see down the road from us there’s a house being built.
It’s in full-on construction mode and as it is on the way to Otis’ school, he passes it every day.
Anyway, one day he came and told me he’d seen the building site loo and was shocked with its name.
It was this:
That’s right, it’s called the ‘Shitbox’.
To be honest, I’m not sure if Otis should have been more surprised at the name or the fact it proudly states it’s a ‘high viz’ toilet box.
HIGH FUCKING VIZ!
Is the toilet going to be walking along the street late at night? Do builders have such bad eyesight they can’t find a 6 foot high toilet without it being painted bright orange? Are construction workers such bad drivers they need to be warned of where the portaloos are so as not to hit them?
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?
Anyway, I digress.
The point is that while calling the portaloo a ‘shitbox’ may make sense … I can’t help but feel it is also playing into the builder cliche. Sure, cliches happen because they represent a common behavior or attitude that is played out over a sustained period of time … but often this is only a ‘perceived’ behavior or attitude [usually promoted by an individual or organisation who have found a way to monetise the acceptance of this view] that victimizes anyone who does not live upto the cliche.
I appreciate you may think I’ve gone full-on woke … but apart from the fact I don’t think considering others is a bad thing, I see this behaviour over and over again.
Hell, even Jaguar – with their ‘interesting’ rebrand did it by revealing their new concept cars in pink and blue.
PINK AND FUCKING BLUE.
They made such a big deal about how they ‘delete ordinary’, ‘break moulds’ and ‘copy nothing’ and then they actively, loudly and proudly reinforce the most basic of gender stereotypes. On the World fucking stage!
I totally appreciate you can go over-the-top with this stuff – especially given this whole post was inspired by a building site portaloo. I also get people may think I am suggesting we should name products/brands with words that offer no defining characteristic to avoid any potential stereotype. But neither of those are what I’m trying to say.
All I am attempting to point out is that words matter. And while I fully appreciate naming is a difficult task, I find it fascinating companies spend millions on ‘solutions’ that tend to fall into either pompous, basic or made-up.
Or said another way, names that define, limit or pander rather than celebrate those who use them and the reasons they do.
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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.