Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Business, Corporate Evil, Dad, Egovertising, Fake Attitude, Grifting
This is old … published when Trump was trying to win the Presidency for the 2nd time.
And while I am willing to accept he maybe meant it when it was posted, his recent behaviours has pretty much destroyed it.
But the lesson here, isn’t that changing circumstances can change your promises …
It’s that in the world of politics and business, convenience trumps all.
Especially when there’s money to be made.
Or from winning political favor.
Or boosting profits.
It’s why FIFA can give Trump their ‘peace prize’ all while they watch him attack countries and people without justifiable reason.
Funny how it’s only a few years ago we were supposedly living in a ‘brand purpose’ era …
A time where – supposedly – everything a company did, was in service of a higher purpose.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha!
Mind you, I suppose that could be true if the brand purpose is ‘do whatever you need to do to get whatever you can want’.
It’s why strategy is becoming increasingly difficult to do well.
Because at its heart, to do it well requires truth and clarity to make things happen … but right now, too many organisations act in opaque ways. Behaving like a chameleon who can – and will – shape-shift to whatever suits their purposes at any given moment.
And I am OK with that if we were honest about that, but too often, we see too brands approach their positioning in the same way Trump approaches his promises … the result of which is short-term gain, long term pain and mistrust.
But hey … who cares when the people driving those choices can get out with a bunch of cash before society catches up – or catches on – with the rug that’s just been pulled on them.
It’s why my Dad’s words ring especially true to me right now:
“Pay attention, because someone out there is banking on you not”.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Comment, Communication Strategy, Complicity, Context, Corporate Evil, Crap Campaigns In History, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Egovertising, Food, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Marketing Science, Mediocrity, Meetings, Perspective, Relationships, Relevance, Reputation, Research, Respect, Strategy, Systems, Wieden+Kennedy
It’s been a while since I’ve had a real rant, but this is going to be one.
So if you need a peaceful start to your week, look away – otherwise strap yourself in.
One of my real worries for the future o f our industry is not AI … it’s our lack of seriousness.
Before I go on, there’s a couple of things I need to clarify.
First, I am not advocating we add even more process, systems, data and/or logic in what we do – frankly, they’re increasingly becoming an obstacle to both creativity and commerciality as they increasingly view audiences [or worse, ‘consumers’] as walking wallets and the only aim is to bombard them at the moment of potential transaction.
Neither am I suggesting we should be treating all we do like we’re saving the planet with high-concept art. There may be cases where this approach is the right approach … but when I say a lack of seriousness, I mean it in terms of how we think about what we do, more than what we actually create.
For years, the ad industries ‘piece de resistance’ – The Super Bowl – has been a car crash for advertising and marketing. An endless stream of contrived, unsubtle – and often, unfunny – sponsored jokes that feature a production line of celebrities who are all willing to destroy their legacy for a dump-truck of cash being poured into their retirement pension plan.
It’s so depressing.
Sure, every year there’s one – maybe two – ads that really stand out. This year, for me, it was Manscaped … an ad that didn’t feature a celeb, had an actual idea and was actually related to the product they make. But even then, was it up there with 1984 … or Born of Fire? Probably not, but it was fun, memorable and – while not related to the Super Bowl per se – was made for the Super Bowl audience’s entertainment. As was Coin Base’s ‘karaoke’ spot … which, in terms of understanding the Super Bowl ‘ad break’ context they were in and the typical US audience mindset in that context … was a clever idea.
Look, I get how much pressure is in a Super Bowl spot. I’ve been there. It’s a fucking nightmare. There’s an almost endless amount of pressure placed on the work as every-man-and-their-dog adds more judgement, demands and mandatories … fearing their multi-million-dollar investment will be negatively judged by a global audience. And they’re right to worry about that … except the one thing they all seem to forget is the ad agency knows how to write and craft a spot better than all the C-Suite execs put together, so maybe if they let them get on with it, they’d have a higher chance of their work being loved rather than [at best] ignored or [at worse] openly mocked for how bad, contrived and/or embarrassing it is – thanks to either a terrible story/idea, endless and meaningless product features being crammed into the spot and/or the huge pointers in the script to make sure audiences get the gag, because they think people may be too stupid to get it. [When it’s more because they just won’t care]
All this data. All these systems. All this marketing science. And we’re actually getting worse.
And while I appreciate ad agencies have a lot to answer for, they’re not the only reason for this decline – but we’re not allowed to say that are we? Oh no.
We’re not allowed to talk about the impact of procurement departments.
We’re not allowed to talk about the lack of respect for marketing in companies.
We’re not allowed to talk about the dehumanization of people in the research.
And while you may think my tone is being influenced by it being a Monday morning, you’d be wrong – because it has nothing to do with it being the start of the week and everything to do with this:
What the fuck?
Seriously, what the actual fuck!?
And no, it is absolutely NOT an April Fool joke … which would still be bad, but make some sort of sense.
I thought the Ritz Cracker ad at the Super Bowl was possibly the worst thing I had ever seen [and if you haven’t seen it, I am so envious of you] … but I was wrong.
Who came up with this?
How the hell did it get through the endless committees, hierarchies and research?
And why – given the big PR announcements – are they so bloody proud about it?!!
Hell, even the infamous Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad had the good grace to only be tone-deaf and stupid for 40 seconds … but this? THIS???
It actually makes me angry. Properly angry.
Angry our industry is associated with it – even though it smacks of something an internal group at the client came up with or an outside agency who wanted to pander for more business. Angry they will claim this shows how much they ‘understand their customers’. Angry they think they’re sooooo clever and smart for it. Angry that an agency either came up with this or didn’t speak up about this. And angry this is what marketing has become.
Sure, we’ve all suggested some radical [read: daft] ideas down the years.
Name changes.
New product variants.
New category extensions.
But more often than not, they’ve either been killed or they’ve been done with a lot more care, craft and reality than this.
Maxwell Apartments?!
Maxwell fucking Apartments?!
What I find even more confusing is that the owners of Maxwell House – Kraft Heinz – have been so bloody good with their communication over the past few years – or at least Heinz have – which is why whoever sold this [or mandated this] should be both promoted and fired all within the same meeting.
And while I’m sure there’s some people out there that think I am being a snob … I have 5 things I want to end this post with.
1 I understand there may be reasons for this work only those involved would know and – if made public – may help explain why this approach was undertaken. [see: Mouldy Whopper]
2 I understand good intentions don’t always turn into good work for of a million different reasons. [So while I get my hatred may sting, it’s because I know no one intended this to happen]
3 I understand different cultures/audiences have different tastes and maybe I’m not either of them. [Though I did work on Maxwell House at Wieden, so I am aware of the brand and its audiences]
4 Ideas tend to represent the standard of creativity, company, colleague and agency that you’ve been exposed to in your life, and this one smacks of people blinkered by data, inhibited by corporate politics and/or residing in an echo-chamber bubble.
5 And finally – if you think I’m being an asshole – maybe if I tell you how I found out about this idea, you’ll realise I’m trying to encourage us to aim higher, because not only does our industry need it, I know we are more than capable of doing it. You see, I learned of this work – which has been in market since Sept 2025 – from watching a ‘news blooper’ … a news blooper where the TV presenters found it so fucking stupid, they couldn’t stop laughing at it. On air. That’s right, people who are paid to keep a neutral face – whether announcing the best or worst of humanity – couldn’t keep a straight face about this. Not because they loved it, but because they were openly mocking it.
Maybe it made sense at the time.
Maybe everyone involved was suffering an unknown illness.
Or maybe they need better people or a better work culture where this sort of thing can be stopped because people can speak up without being put down so you don’t make newsreaders and the World think you’ve left them with the worst possible taste in their mouth.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, AC/DC, Advertising, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Bands, Before Fame, Brand, Brand Suicide, Business, Career, Collaboration, Colleagues, Comment, Communication Strategy, Complicity, Consultants, Content, Context, Corporate Evil, Creative Brief, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Delusion, Distinction, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Egovertising, Emotion, Empathy, Entertainment, EvilGenius, History, Honesty, Interviews, Leadership, Legend, Loyalty, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Mediocrity, Meetings, Music, Perspective, Prejudice, Process, Relationships, Relevance, Reputation, Resonance, Respect, Standards, Status, Stories, Stupid, Success, Teamwork, Trust, Truth
Once upon a time, a man – who lived and worked in Newcastle, England – got a phonecall.
When he picked up, he heard a woman with a German accent on the other end, who asked “Are you Brian Johnson?”
He replied in the affirmative, to which the mystery caller said,
“You need to come down to London for an audition next week”.
Now Brian was a singer. In fact he’d once had a hit record with his band Geordie – but now he had his own business fitting car windscreens so it was a pretty left-field call to receive. Still, he was intrigued to which he asked the caller, “Who are you and who is the audition for?
There was a pause before the German voice informed him they worked for a music company – who had to remain nameless, just like the band he was told he had to audition for.
Brian was getting a bit fed-up at this point so pointed out in his thick accent,
“I’m not going all the way down to London for an audition unless you tell me who it is”.
Immediately, they were told that was not possible.
“Can you give me a clue … even if it’s just the initials of the singer or band?”
There was another pause – as if the caller was weighing up which would get them in more trouble: giving them a clue or not having Brian come to the audition – before they said,
“OK … here are the initials of the band, but I can give you no more information whatsoever. The initials are A, C, D, C”
The rest is history.
Brian did go to London and he did audition to replace the recently deceased Bon Scott, as the singer of AC/DC.
He got the gig and the first song he wrote – in fact the first song he EVER wrote – was You Shook Me All Night Long.
Then he wrote his second ever song, Back In Black.
Then his third, Hell’s Bell’s.
And not only did all these songs appear on the first album he recorded with the band, it went on to be the best selling album of the bands career. In fact it get’s even better than that, because the album, Back In Black, sold so many copies it become the best selling album OF ALL TIME [at that time] and even now – 46 years later – still ranks the 2nd best ever seller, with 50 million albums sold.
All this because Brian – through luck and persistence – got a key piece of information that made the difference between him choosing to go down to London or telling some random German female caller to “Fuck Off”.
Now it’s fair to say AC/DC were a known quantity at the time. A relatively successful quantity at the time. But who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t done the audition.
We wouldn’t have those 3 songs for a start … 3 songs that are not just iconic for AC/DC fans, but iconic fullstops.
The point being, one of the most important things you can do, to increase the odds of success is be transparent.
Transparent on where you are.
Transparent on what is needed.
Transparent on who is involved.
Transparent on the facts, timing and money.
Transparent on roles, rules and responsibilities.
Transparent on what the definition of success is.
I say this because there is not enough transparency right now – if anything, we operate in a world of opaqueness, which not only fucks up the potential of what can be created together, but breeds distrust and unhelpfulness.
Sure, things can change.
Sure, not everything may be known at the time.
But the more you hold things back, the more you’re not just fucking others over, you’re fucking yourself.
The greatest demonstration of respect in any partnership is transparency … so if your ego, need for control or fear stops you from doing that, then it doesn’t matter what you claim or who you blame, you’re the problem.
That doesn’t mean everything will fail, but it does mean you’ll never create history.
Or said another way …
If that German woman who rang Brian Johnson way back in ’79 had refused to give him any information on the name of the band she wanted him to audition for – as were their orders – then AC/DC may be a band few people would remember and Brian Johnson would be the graveliest-voiced car windscreen repairer in the North of England.
Of course, there will be some who say if that had happened, we’d never know what we’d lost.
And they’d be right, but they’d also be something else: someone incapable of creating or achieving anything truly significant.
In fact it’s worse than that … they’d be someone incapable of even aspiring to something truly significant and would actively goes out of their way to stop others from achieving it, claiming they’re ‘just looking out for the business’ when really it’s about their fear, ego, power and/or control.
No wonder my dear and clever friend George calls them, ‘commercial assassins and happiness vampires’.
Don’t stop someone finding your Brian Johnson because you think transparency is weakness.
It’s not, it’s rocket fuel.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand Suicide, Brilliant Marketing Ideas In History, Clients, Clothes, Comment, Community, Consultants, Context, Corporate Evil, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Devious Strategy, Disney, Effectiveness, Egovertising, Empathy, Honesty, Innovation, Luxury, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Membership, Netflix, Perspective, Planners, Planning, Popularity, Process, Relationships, Relevance, Reputation, Research, Resonance, Respect, Social Divide, Social Media, Strategy, Stupid
Once upon a time, I was asked to help a client based in Thailand.
They were very successful – having made Thailand the most profitable market in the World for their particular brand.
Anyway, part of the project involved a workshop and part of that workshop was about identifying new variants for their product.
So far, so good.
Until I realized they weren’t looking at this to expand who could become a customer of theirs, but how to get existing customers to buy more of what they make.
Even that was OK, until it became apparent they believed their product was so loved, their customers would continually fill their shopping baskets with 3 or 4 different versions of the same product because they just liked the ability to consume it in more places at more times.
In short, they believed the more versions of their product they made, the more volume of products their customers would buy.
Every time.
Forget that people have a finite amount of money.
Forget that people have other bills, items, people to look after.
They believed, if you made it … people would just blindly buy.
It’s the same blinkered approach that some sales organizations have.
Where they believe if one salesman brings in a million dollars of revenue a year, hiring 11 more will mean they achieve 12 million dollars of revenue.
It’s both blinkered thinking and wishful thinking.
Or – as my father used to say – “the expansion of logic without logic”.
I say this because it feels companies are viewing the subscription model in a similar way.
Once upon a time, subscriptions were seen as the exciting new thing for business.
A new way to charge for your products and services … regardless that ‘direct debit’ payments had been around for years.
There were 3 key reasons why repositioning cost as a subscription was so appealing:
1 It lowered the barrier to entry, so it could appeal to more/new customers.
2 They knew that while customers ‘could’ cancel at any time, data showed most wouldn’t.
3 It could, in theory, allow them to charge more per month than their old annual fee.
And they were right, it proved to be a revelation … until it wasn’t.
Right now, everything is seemingly a subscription model.
Food.
Clothes.
Streaming.
Gym and health.
Car purchasing.
But the one that really is making me laugh, are phone apps.
It’s almost impossible to download anything without it being a subscription service.
And that would be OK, except the prices they want to charge are getting out of control.
I recently downloaded a recipe app that wanted $14.99 A WEEK. A FUCKING WEEK.
$60 a month just so I could send it healthy recipes I see on social media and have them all in one, easy-to-access place.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Sure, it had some features that would make it more convenient than just putting it into a saved folder on instagram … but it sure-as-shit isn’t worth me paying more than it costs me for Netflix, Disney+ and Spotify PUT TOGETHER.
I appreciate everyone thinks their product is the best product.
I acknowledge it takes a lot of hard work and money to make a new product.
But the removal of any ‘human reality context’ – ie: how much money do people actually have available to spend, and the hierarchy of importance they place on the things they spend – is not just stupid, it destroys the potential of good ideas.
Of course, part of the reason for this is because of how tech investment works.
Basically investors want big returns, very fast … so this pushes developers to build economic models based on a ‘perfect scenario’ situations.
For perfect scenario, read: not real life.
So they show things like:
The economic value of the health industry.
The impact of social media on diet choices.
The rise of health-focused products and services.
And before you know it, they’ve extrapolated all this ‘data’ to come up with a price point of $60 per month and said it not only offers good value, but will generate huge returns on the investment in collapsed time.
Except …
+ All this is theory because they haven’t talked to anyone who would actually use it.
+ They probably haven’t identified who they need to use it beyond ‘health seekers’.
+ And they absolutely haven’t understood it costs a lot of money to be healthy and so an additional $60 subscription for the average person is a cost too far … especially when things they use ALL THE TIME – like Netflix [which they already think is too expensive] – is a quarter of that cost FOR THE MONTH.
I get no one likes to hear problems.
I appreciate anyone can find faults if they really want to.
But being ‘objective’ is not about killing ideas – when done right – it’s about enabling them to thrive, which is why I hope business stops looking at audiences in ‘the zoo’ and starts respecting them in ‘the jungle’ … because not only will it mean good ideas stand more chance of becoming good business, it also means people will have more access to things that could actually help them, without it destroying them in other ways.
As perfectly expressed by Clint, the founder of Corteiz …
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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.