Filed under: Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Colleagues, Context, Craft, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Cynic, Friendship, Music
I recently read an interview with the members of 80’s art-pop band, Soft Cell.
Sure, I liked their song ‘Tainted Love’ but that was about it.
I thought they were try-hard and much preferred my heavy metal bands.
But as I’ve got older, I’ve realized how blinkered I was … how judgmental … and this interview rammed it home.
I love so much about it.
Their attitude to music.
Marc’s phenomenal and ferocious attitude to the frankly, horrific homophobic rumours that I remember hearing way back in my college days.
And their approach to their working relationship.
It’s funny with bands … you expect all the members to love each other. Have deep bonds that last a lifetime.
Of course part of that is cultivated by the record companies, but you still want them to be mates who hang out together … but often, they’re not.
It’s not that they don’t like each other – though that can happen too – it’s more their chemistry works in one environment and they’re good with that.
It was funny seeing it in print because it kind-of captured how I felt with Cynic.
While Andy, George and I talked every day … we weren’t close friends.
We didn’t socialize much together. In fact, we probably do it more now we’re not in a business together than we ever did then.
But it worked.
We liked each other.
We trusted each other.
We valued each other.
But it never really extended beyond the work environment.
And this probably helped us because unlike family – where the focus is not to cause upset – this situation allowed us to always tell each other the truth.
We would be considerate. We cared about each other. But we would never hold back.
And when I think of the best work experiences I’ve ever had, this has been the constant dynamic.
Blunt truth wrapped in visceral respect.
Where you felt you were better at your job when you were together, but had other enjoyable lives when you were apart.
And the joy of the working experience meant you kept coming back.
Not because you had to, but because you wanted to.
Or to paraphrase David from Soft Cell, a creative relationship rather than a creative marriage.
I didn’t realise how special that was.
It certainly doesn’t happen often.
And while you may ask why some of those relationships still end, the bigger question is why do so few ever begin?
For me, it’s all about trust and belief.
That you got together because of how you all see the world, not because you found yourselves in the same room or office.
And while you may share the same philosophy, you have different ways of embracing and executing it.
And that’s thrilling.
That’s the tension that drives both of you to be better.
That lets you say stupid stuff because it’s part of the trust you have of each other.
Part of the standards you hold each other to.
While I have some of that still, I miss some of the stuff I had.
And why I still feel a great privilege for having lived it .
But here’s the good news … because while many of those relationships are no more, the experiences, lessons and ambitions that were born from them remain and blossom.
So thank you to all of you who had – and have – that impact on me.
You know who you are.
And thanks to Marc and David for waking me up to it. Again.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, America, China, Colenso, Communication Strategy, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Cynic, Dad, Daddyhood, Death, Deutsch, Embarrassing Moments, Emotion, England, Family, Grand announcements, Jill, LaLaLand, London, Love, Marketing, Mum, Mum & Dad, Nottingham, Otis, Paul, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, R/GA, Relationships, Stubborness, Sunshine, The Kennedys, Uncorporated, Wieden+Kennedy
I’ve written this blog consistently for 15 years.
FIFTEEN!!!
My god …
But it gets worse.
Because bar a few weeks of holiday, it is something that has been written every single Monday to Friday.
That means there has been over 3,900 posts of utter gibberish for over 780 weeks.
And as tragic as that all sounds, there’s an awful lot of people who comment on here who have been here pretty much all that time.
LOSERS!!!
Now, I have to say there are some lovely benefits to long term blog writing.
In some ways it’s like a diary … capturing what I was thinking or doing at any given time.
It also is a lovely way to see how my opinions and thoughts have evolved over time.
Plus there’s the hope that when I’m gone, Otis will still feel his Dad is close.
OK … OK … there are some posts I definitely DON’T want him to read, but there’s others I’d be glad for him to keep going back to.
Putting aside I basically write the same 3 or 4 posts over and over again … there is a lot of my life contained in these pages.
From getting married to losing my Mum to having my son.
Proper life-changing stuff … and that doesn’t even cover the moves to different countries, jobs and homes.
The best and worst of my life is detailed here which is why – despite all these big life events being sandwiched between endless amounts of shit – I still like it.
Occasionally I randomly click on a date and just see what I wrote.
Recently I did this and was reminded what a little shit I was.
OK, can be.
It’s this.
Yep, it’s the time I tried to auction off Martin Sorrell’s business card so people could send him stupid messages or texts.
On the plus side, I was offering to give any money to charity.
On the negative, I was working for WPP at the time.
If you think that’s stupid, there was the time I wrote a post featuring a photo of Sir Martin with a picture of Toad of Toad Hall under the caption ‘Spot The Difference’.
And the weird thing is that while I don’t agree with his approach to creativity, I do respect him. I have met him on a number of occasions and he was very, very impressive.
Though it’s fair to say that respect was only one way, Especially when there was an agency Q&A and I asked him ‘what do you spend all your money on?’
So Sir Martin … even though I know you would never read this blog [more proof you’re clever] I would like to take this opportunity to apologise for my stupidity. It was ridiculous … but if it’s any consolation, at least it wasn’t as bad as this.
I know … I know … this was a terrible post even by my standards.
So celebrate in the fact that tomorrow is Good Friday so I’m off till next Tuesday and you’re not going have to deal with any more of this shit till then.
I don’t know about you … but it’s the sort of news that makes you almost believe in God, doesn’t it.
Happy Easter, enjoy the sugar rush.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand, Brand Suicide, Business, Comment, Confidence, Content, Context, Craft, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Cynic, Differentiation, Distinction, Emotion, Empathy, Experience, Finance, Fulfillment, Honesty, Hope, Imagination, Immaturity, Innocence, Innovation, Insight, Loyalty, Management, Marketing, Perspective, Planning, Point Of View, Positioning, Premium, Professionalism, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance, Respect, Standards, Wieden+Kennedy
When I was at cynic, I wasn’t allowed to talk money with clients.
The main reason for this is that while I like money, I like doing weird and wonderful things more … so I used to agree to terrible terms just because I wanted to make sure we didn’t miss out on doing something we were really excited by.
Now I get we like to think there’s some sort of logic to this approach, but as George kindly told me – while punching me in the head – what I was doing was undermining our position.
For a start, your relationship with the client is impacted. That doesn’t mean they don’t value you, but it means they don’t value you as much as they should. They see you as a ‘cheap problem solver’ rather than a valuable problem solver.
Then there’s the fact all your additional time and passion will never be rewarded to the level it deserves. The worst part is this is your own fault as you already set the precedent for how much you are worth by lowering your fee to such a great degree.
And then there’s the dilution of the projects importance.
In essence, when something is made much cheaper, the effect is its value goes the same way. Going from something significant to just another thing being done. From having a strong focus within the company management to being delegated to people who don’t really have the same decision making power.
Before you know it, clients start questioning other things you’re doing.
Asking why certain things need to be done. Challenging the time or expense on the elements that show the real craft.
Leaving the end result a lesser version of what it should have been.
Now this doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens a lot.
And while I get we are in a highly competitive time, where everyone is looking to save cash – the ease in which we undermine our own value is both astonishing and debilitating.
George’s brilliance was his ability to have us walk away.
I have to be honest, we had many arguments about this over the years … but in the main, he was right.
His point was ‘why would someone value us if we’re not valuing us?’.
It’s a pretty compelling argument.
This doesn’t mean we weren’t open to negotiation, but George’s position was ‘never forget we have something they want because we’ve shown them something they need’.
Another pretty compelling argument.
And while this approach helped us not only win all manner of great creative projects – but helped us be a profitable, sustainable company – I still found it hard to deal with.
Hell, on the occasion we didn’t win a project because somebody said they could do it for cheaper, I was a bloody nightmare. George used to say it was because I am an only child – which may be right – because I hated not getting what I really, really wanted.
And even then, George was the voice of reason.
“Why are you upset about losing a project with a client who wants to go down to a price point rather than up to a standard?”
ARGHHHHH!
What makes it worse is he meant it.
He, more than any of us, knew our value and wasn’t going to let us let go of something we had worked so hard to earn.
He’s right of course.
It’s the reason the best work comes from people who share the same goal.
To aim high, not cheap.
Sure, money comes into it … but the focus is always the quality of the output not just the price.
It’s why Cynic was so exciting.
It’s why Wieden+Kennedy are so special.
It’s why Metallica’s management are so influential.
It’s why all the work I’m doing right now is so fascinating.
George taught me so much.
While I appreciate I’m in a much more privileged position than many, nowadays I am totally comfortable with walking away from a project if I feel the vision, ambition and value for a project is not shared.
And what’s weird is that while that approach has resulted in me walking away from a lot of potentially interesting projects that were worth a lot of money to me – especially over the last 6 months – it has brought me a range of fascinating clients and projects [and cash] that most agencies would kill to have a chance to work on.
I’ve written about knowing the value of your value in the past.
I’ve talked about how that lets you play procurement at their own game.
And while it feels scary to stick to your standards when someone is threatening to take away something you really want, it also makes you feel alive.
Butterflies of excitement. A taste of power and control. Nervousness of being in the game.
And while it might not always come off and while you may be able to justify why it would be easier to just take whatever they want to give you … it’s a beautiful feeling to feel you matter. That your work matters. That the way you look at the world matters. That what you want to create matters. That you won’t allow yourself to do something simply because you’re the cheapest. Or allow a bad process to force a diluted version of what you were hired to do. Or let yourself be evaluated by someone who doesn’t care about what you’re creating, just that it’s done. That you matter enough to not allow others to negatively judge you for terrible conditions they put you in.
It can take time to come to terms with this.
It took me almost 20 years to really get it.
And while some may call you a pretentious or stubborn or commercially ignorant, the reality is dismissing the value of your value simply to make things commercially viable for everyone else is simply the most stupid thing you can do.
Because to paraphrase something Harrison Ford once said, when you devalue the value of something you’ve spent your whole life working at, you’re not just being irresponsible, you’re not valuing the value of the time, experience and expertise it has taken to get you to that point.
George knew this.
George helped me benefit from this.
George eventually got me to understand this.
And I’ll always be grateful for that gift.
________________________________________________________________________________
I’ve removed comments. Not just because I’m scared of the mountain of abuse the ex-cynic alumni who comment on here may/will give me. But because I’m even more frightened they may bathe George in even more praise and that would be too much for me to deal with.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Colenso, Comment, Culture, Cynic, Emotion, Empathy, Experience, Happiness, Luck, Marketing
So as last week was all about Otis – who had an amazing birthday – I thought I’d get back to normal by writing my usual shit this week.
The good news is it’s the last week of me writing posts for this year, so you only have 5 days to go before one of the horrors of 2020 disappears.
Only for it to start in the early weeks of 2021.
Cue: Evil Laugh.
Anyway, this post is about luck.
That thing where great outcomes seemingly appear from nowhere.
And while that is true for some … like lottery winners … the reality is there’s something very few people seem to talk about, and that is our own role in increasing the odds of it happening.
The golfer Gary Player once said, “The more I practice, the luckier I get”.
That’s a nice line, but he is also saying something important, and that is ‘what are you doing to make it happen?’
I think I have written about how I met Baz – who comments on here – but just in case, let me say it again.
We were interviewing for an entry level job at Cynic.
Andy comes out to find me, tells me I have to meet this kid and ask him about his references.
So in I go and ask him who his references are, to which he replies:
“Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela and Steve Jobs”
My favourite bit is his reaction when I asked if they were real.
The disgust on his face at being asked such a thing will live with me forever.
The reality is, they were his references. Over the years he had written to them – and others – to say he wanted to meet them to see if they had his generations best interests at heart.
And while that’s ballsy, he wasn’t doing it in some precocious, self-serving way.
He cared and had concern for his generation.
He wanted to know if these people who were very influential in culture at various moments in his early years, viewed his generation as friends or foe.
And maybe it’s this earnestness that led to those 4 agreeing to meet him at various periods of his life … but I bet they weren’t prepared for what he did next, which was ask them to then write him a reference. Hahaha.
Of course we hired him. Then he got hired by Steve Jobs. Then he went on to do a bunch of wonderfully entrepreneurial things while acting as a consultant for a bunch of companies from Apple to Zuji.
Literally the A to Z of creative tech.
Now, as much as it pains me, I have to admit Baz is incredibly sharp and smart … but the reality is there’s a lot of people like that who haven’t had the breaks Baz has enjoyed.
But was it all down to luck or was it down to him helping increase the odds of it?
I say this because I recently read an interview with the music producer Giorgio Moroder.
In the interview, he reveals how one person created their own piece of luck that changed their life forever.
Moroder had just been hired to write a love song for a movie coming out.
He knew exactly what sort of thing he wanted to create so he got on with it.
However the dirty little secret about Moroder is that while an amazing musician, he was a terrible lyricist.
Anyway, Moroder owned a Ferrari that he parked at the studio.
It was a beautiful car except it suffered from brake trouble.
One day a guy called Tom Whitlock came by and said he was a mechanic and could fix it.
So he did.
When it was all fixed, Tom told Moroder, “Oh and, by the way, I’m also a lyricist. If you ever need some words …”
Now it’s fair to say, Moroder probably had some of the best song writers at his fingertips, but he decided to give Tom a shot for no other reason than he asked.
He handed over the demos and Tom came back writing the lyrics for this.
Not a bad way to legitimise your ‘musical lyric’ career.
Interestingly, as much as it was ‘luck’ that got Tom the chance to write the lyrics for one of the most well known songs in music, it was also ‘luck’ that Berlin got to perform it.
You can read why, here … however while putting yourself out there is no guarantee of success, there’s a lot more chance of it happening than if you don’t.
Yes, it requires confidence, stupidity or delusion.
Yes, it’s as much about why and how you ask as what you want.
Yes, if things work out, you’ll be labelled ‘lucky’ rather than talented.
And all those together can act as pretty big barriers to wanting to put yourself out there.
But there’s a hell of a lot of people in our industry who have done more than they imagined or [maybe] deserve, simply because they spoke up or acted at the very moment most would quiet down.
I’m one of them.
Not to the extent of Baz or Tom or a whole host of others … but I’ve definitely gone after things that were important to me that I didn’t think I’d stand a chance of having if I didn’t speak up.
Sure, they all were things I felt I had something valuable to offer as opposed to just wanting to take … but I’ve gone for it.
And while a bunch of these acts never worked out for me – including the time I was about 10 and saw my first ever really fancy car in the flesh so I cycled up to the driver to ask they did for a living because I couldn’t believe anyone in Nottingham could ever have a job that would allow them to own such a wonderful thing – I look at my career and realise a bunch has.
Maybe they’re not big or shiny things, but they’ve all contributed to the luck I’ve enjoyed.
Hell, the reason I am going to get to work at wonderful Colenso is because they saw my ‘I’ve been made redundant’ post on the very day they were looking for a new CSO.
It happens.
It’s not always obvious.
It’s not always going to work out.
But it happens … especially if you find ways to encourage it, conscious or not.
Which is why I hope 2021 is the year people fight for their luck rather than just hope for it.
Because after the year we’ve had, we all deserve a bit more of it.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Black Lives Matter, Confidence, Creativity, Culture, Cynic, Diversity, Emotion, Empathy, Equality, Experience, Honesty, Insight, Perspective, Planners, Planning, R/GA, Relevance, Resonance, Shanghai, Wieden+Kennedy
My last day at R/GA was great.
That might sound weird, but it was.
Part of it was because I started the morning with the brilliant Brixton Finishing School listening to a bunch of students answering a brief I gave them with passion, mischief and possibility and part of it was because I got to spend significant time with my brilliant planning gang to say goodbye.
But there was another reason, which is that the first thing I did when my life at R/GA was over – literally within 30 minutes of being officially made unemployed – I was doing an interview with Faisal Ahmend about diversity and inclusion in adland.
And while it is an issue I am very, very passionate about …
And while I continue to feel the industry only gives a superficial response to it …
And while my headphones and wifi makes me sound like I’m Darth Vader speaking from a tin box with intermittent wifi …
…. even I’m slightly suprised how upbeat I sound on such a significant day in my career.
But then, as I said in the post that announced it, not only was I glad this happened to me rather than a person of colour, a woman or a youngster starting out in their career – who are often the first victims in these situations – the reality is the last time this happened to me, it led to the most exciting and creative time of my career and so I felt no reason to feel anything other than optimistic about the future.
Now I admit with hindsight, that may have been naive of me – especially with all the shit going on in the World with pandemics and political fighting, not to mention my old, old, old, old, age – however based on all that has happened to me since that I announced I’d been made redundant, my hunch has been proved to be right.
So far. Hahahaha
Normally I hate listening or reading things I say.
I spend the whole time slapping my head either muttering, “why did I say that?” … “why didn’t I say that?” … or “why am I jumping about and rambling like I’m a loon?”
However this one is a bit different.
Sure there’s things I wish I rephrased.
Sure there’s things that I might have got slightly wrong.
But at the end of the day, I say the one thing that I feel had to be said … the one thing to counter the excuse I continually hear why there is not more diversity in adland today.
When asked how do I find the people to add diversity to my team, I respond …
“You don’t have to ‘find them’, they’re everywhere … you just have to want them.”
You can listen to it here.
You can listen to far more intelligent and articulate people here.
And, as usual, I huge thank you to all the people who have – and continue to – help me on my journey to being a much, much better human. Especially Maya, Breanna, Chelsea, Lani, Hannah, Amar, Omar, Erika, David, Sue, Jorge, Karrelle, Jason, Tahaab, Charinee, Leon, Debi, Tina, Kate, PQ, Rodi, Jay, Akua, Yaya and Bayyina.