Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Age, Agency Culture, Ambition, America, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brands, Colenso, Colleagues, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Curiosity, Cynic, Distinction, Emotion, Empathy, Environment, Experience, Fulfillment, Individuality, Innovation, LaLaLand, Love, Luck, Metallica, Miley, Mr Ji, Mum & Dad, Music, My Childhood, Nottingham, Parents, Perspective, Play, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance, Respect, Rick Rubin, Rockstar Games, Standards, Talent
A few weeks ago, I found myself wandering around Marina Del Ray, in LA.
It’s an area I know well given I both worked and lived relatively near the place a few years ago.
Anyway, as I was strolling around, I was looking at the boats moored along the marina. Be under no illusion, you need a bunch of cash to own a boat in LA and even more to be able to afford to keep it in a shared dock – but that’s the thing about Los Angeles, it’s a place of financial extremes.
There were all manner of boats in all manner of shapes and sizes … but the thing that grabbed my attention was their choice of names.
I love hearing what people call things.
Years ago, with cynic, we did a project with a video rental company [told you it was years ago] which included us exploring the ‘passwords’ people had on their account.
We didn’t know whose account it was – or the details of the recipient – it was just a list of random passwords. Anyway, it was pretty fascinating.
No random letters or numbers.
In fact, nothing approaching any level of security protocol whatsoever.
Instead, it seemed to be words that reflected a family ‘trait’, an individual’s alter-ego or something mischievous that the creator forgot would have to be said out loud to the store assistant every time they rented a film.
I say this because as I looked at the boats, there seemed to be a similar approach to its naming protocol.
Of course a boat name is very different to a password, but for all the choices you have, many seemed to fall into certain groups.
+ Reference to life on ‘the high seas’.
+ An individual persons name.
+ A sea-reference pun.
+ Or a mark of achievement …
… of which, none was better than this.
For those who can’t read it properly, it’s called, ‘Dream Worked’.
I have to say, I bloody love it.
Of all the names I saw, this was arguably the most honest.
A statement that whether through hard work, luck or other means … their ambition to own a boat in LA had come off.
They’d done it.
Hit the goal.
I wanted to meet the owner. To hear their story. To understand their journey.
Was the boat the prize or a byproduct of it?
Maybe my interest in the boat was because we all like a good news story. Or because I like learning how – and why – people do stuff. Or maybe it’s simply because I’m approaching that point in life where you’re running out of time for dreams to work and so you’re questioning what you’ve done or still want to do.
This is not in any way trying to say I’ve suffered.
If I’m being honest, the life I live is beyond anything I could ever have imagined or hoped for. Probably more than my teachers imagined for me too.
But despite being 54, I still have a lot of ambitions.
Things I want to do.
Things I want to try.
Things I want to see.
Things I want to achieve.
However – as I’ve mentioned many times – the older you get, the more you realise not only will you not be able to do all of them, you won’t even be able to pursue all of them. You have to be more focused with your energy and time. You need to prioritize rather than chase down every rabbit hole.
Frankly, that part of growing older is shit especially as I’m someone whose entire bloody life has been chasing the intrigue, the possibility and the creative opportunity. But whether I like it or not, I’m slowly learning how important it is to be more measured in my choices if I want to keep moving forward rather than standing still.
Sure I’ve had to accept I’ll be working at a different pace than before.
Sure I’ve had to accept I’ll be working from a different place than before.
But it means I don’t have to accept what others expect me to do and frankly, that’s all the motivation I need.
However despite all this, growing older in your career does ask questions of you.
Uncomfortable questions.
You realise your relevance in the industry you work in is reducing.
Your abilities haven’t – quite the opposite – but their desire to hear or work with it has.
And it can feel like you’re being left behind when you’ve got so much still to give.
Like you’re screaming in a vacuum that no one gives a shit about, hahaha.
A while back I saw a quote from an ex-footballer than summed this up perfectly …
I get it. We all will at some point …
It really forces you to question who you are and what you’ve done.
And how you deal with it defines where you can go with it.
So while it was more luck than judgement, I consider myself very fucking lucky that I fell into a new chapter of my life … where I have got to learn, express and discover how my creativity can be used in new ways with incredibly talented new people … the best and most successful of the best and most successful … who, despite all they’ve achieved, value what you do and bring far more than who you are and what you have.
I’m under no illusion it could all end tomorrow, but it’s going great right now and the stuff I’m getting to do and be a part of is not just creatively exciting, it’s allowing my creative ambitions to flex and be pushed.
To be able to do that at any age is awesome, but to do it at 54 – alongside rockstars, fashion gods and creative legends – is fucking incredible.
Which is why I realized – as I walked around those boats in Marina Del Ray – that if I had a boat, I wouldn’t call it ‘Dream Worked’ … it would be ‘The Dreams Working’ … because to be at this point of life and still be able to look forward and see exciting possibilities rather than just look back at what you’ve done, feels like the greatest achievement of all.
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As an aside, today is the 3rd annual ‘Fuck Off And Pie’ Colenso Planner Bake-Off competition.
A time where, contrary to this post, I am reminded I’m the biggest failure of all time.
Or should I say the ‘silver medal’ biggest failure.
I’ll let you know if I maintain this standard or – god forbid – achieve gold loser status.
Given this years theme is ‘birthday cake’ I’m in with a shot and to be honest I like what I’ve done.
Not just in the fact it tastes pretty good – no, seriously – but because I’ve created a design and theme that will never be forgotten. Especially by our HR department. And probably by my colleagues and team mates who run the risk of spending Christmas with gastro. The gift that keeps on giving. Cue: Evil laugh.
Filed under: Advertising, Airports, Attitude & Aptitude, Chocolate, Corporate Evil, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Environment, Honesty, Marketing Fail, Reputation, Respect
A lot of companies think ad agencies lack business credibility.
We’re self-indulgent, selfish, and should serve … not challenge.
To be fair, there are some agencies that prove that but – and it’s a big but – you can point the finger of failings the other way around.
Nestle have recently proved that size doesn’t equate to smarts.
Having seen the impact of Tony’s Chocolonely – both in terms of sales, share and corporate responsibility – they have come to the party by creating their own product.
A sustainably sourced, eco-conconious chocolate.
Now normally I would say this is a brilliant thing, because the more brands who embrace ethical production, the better things will become for everyone.
Except given Nestle’s history, you know the reason they’ve chosen to do this is far more about exploitation and profit than doing the right thing.
And nothing shows that they don’t really get it than their distribution model.
Because while I appreciate chocolate sales at airports are big – because they’re either a last minute present or a quick personal treat – the last place … literally the last place a sustainably sourced, eco-conconious chocolate should be sold … is a fucking airport.
Seriously, what the hell were they thinking?
Of course the reality is the only thing they were thinking about is cash.
I swear to god, if they thought they could make an extra $2 a year, they’d sell it at Fossil Fuel Power Stations. And probably still not see the irony in their actions.
Which is why for all the shit companies throw at agencies about their business naiviety, we can throw it right back about their blinkeredness towards human understanding.
Filed under: Agency Culture, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Black Lives Matter, Comment, Complicity, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Diversity, Environment, Prejudice
Robin Bonn recently talked to me about what I’d learned about diversity from having lived in so many countries.
To be honest, I was quite apprehensive to do it as I wouldn’t want to suggest I have all the answers or I’m doing it well … however the issue of talent diversity, or more specifically, hiring, championing and elevating People of Colour is nowhere as prominent as it was – or it should be – which is why I agreed to do it.
Not because I have any influence over the industry, but I have real anger about it.
More than that, I feel I have a responsibility for making up for not doing enough, sooner.
And while there’s stuff I am continuing to learn – and stuff I believe – there’s 3 things that I’m absolutely certain about:
1. When you open your eyes, you will see talent literally everywhere.
[and if they don’t come, that says more about how you operate and have acted than them]
2. You need to be impatient and stubborn about making things happen
3. Take personal responsibility for stuff rather than wait/rely on a corporate policy to do it.
As I said, I feel very conscious that as a privileged white male who has not had to suffer to be given chances or taken seriously, I do not and cannot claim to be an expert on issues my lived experience has shielded me from ever having to deal with – even with the honour of living in countless countries around the world.
However I can say the claims of companies wanting DEI is not working – not as it should – and I believe a big part of that is the attitude we have going into it, the policies we create to manage it and the overall approach to why we need it – and all those issues are down to white leadership not People of Colour.
And, to be clear, we need their talent and way of looking at the world.
Not just for relevance but creative possibility, influence and impact.
Personally I think they should just come together and leave us in the dirt.
We deserve it.
But they’re more generous than that. They’re also more dynamic given everything interesting in modern culture originates from them and their creativity.
So while I don’t normally ask you to listen to anything I say, this time I do.
Not because I want it to be about me, but because what you might be able to recognise and change.
And the irony of it all is we all win if we do it.
All of us.
Especially our increasingly stale and out-of-touch industry where we continue to use acronyms like BAME without thinking for a second what we are doing, what that is saying and we are defining.
You can listen to it here and if you want to hear more stuff I’ve learned from the journey I’ve been on, then these posts may be of interest … acknowledging they were born from the lessons from the brilliant and generous people I met rather than anything specifically from me.
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Your perspective is not everyone’s perspective.
[you could also check this one out or this]
The odds are not fair.
It’s not enough to hate racism, you have to fight it.
Agencies are still trying to colonise.
Why we should be more like The Blues Brothers.
Whose house are you asking people to come in?
Don’t let your ego fool you into thinking you know stuff.
Convenient excuses to keep things the same.
Own your own shit don’t ask those you have held down to help you clean it up.
Make space, or we die alone.
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And if you want more, let me know.
I have a bunch of stuff … from our books America in the Raw, China Misunderstood and Dream Small … through to other people, stories and resources I’ve been lucky enough to find or be a part of.
As I said, I don’t have all the answers.
And I certainly make a lot of mistakes.
But I am committed to making up for lost time because I hate that some of my actions of the past – while never intentional – will have added to the situation.
And I owe that to a lot of people for the faith they showed in me. And my hope for what I want to help enable for others.
It’s down to us. Not down to others creating HR policies for it.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand, Campaign Magazine, Colenso, Colleagues, Context, Creativity, Culture, Design, Environment, Wieden+Kennedy
Yes I’m back.
No, I can’t tell you what I did.
Or who for.
Or even where I went.
And I won’t ask if you missed me because I wouldn’t hear a response.
Not because I don’t allow comments anymore, but because no one reads this blog anymore.
If they ever did anyway, given any visitor was here to either insult me or read the insults.
Anyway … let’s get on with it, shall we?
Every home has a room that’s a bit of a disaster.
The one that doubles up as a storeroom.
The one that you never got round to unpacking.
The one that just seems more trouble than it’s worth.
The same happens in offices.
The meeting room no one really likes.
The meeting room that feels claustrophobic.
The meeting room that no one uses for client meetings because it’s a bit shit.
But in an open plan office world, meeting rooms are at a premium … so those ‘happiness sucking spaces’ often end up being used as a last resort, even though it is literally the last place you want to be.
We have one of those spaces.
A room that makes dentist waiting rooms feel exciting.
It’s called ‘the attic’ … because, quite frankly, it’s out of the way and uninviting.
But recently we had a client video call in that room and we’ve never felt more self-conscious, so we finally decided to change it.
However rather than try and change the feel of that miserable space, we chose to own it.
Welcome to the most boring room in Colenso. Literally.
I know … I know … you may be thinking, ‘why would you do such a thing when you could have changed everything’?
And I get that, but there’s 2 reasons …
First, as Eminem taught us in the movie 8 Mile, when you own your truth, no one can own you.
Second, the great irony of being self-aware – even when it’s about something dour – is that you can end up being more interesting than those places you know are trying their hardest to be interesting.
That’s not dissing the importance of physical space because it’s real and it’s important.It can play a huge role in influencing and shaping how people engage, interact and explore shit.
But at the heart of great working environments is that they have been shaped by the culture of the org rather than a byproduct of it.
As I said years ago in Campaign …
And so while this might be the most boring room in Colenso – and it is – by owning that fact, it’s weirdly become a place we’re OK with being in rather than trying our hardest to avoid.
God humans are weird aren’t we!?
But not as weird as that room.
Filed under: 2025, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Death, Emotion, Empathy, Environment, Holiday, Home, Jill, Love, Loyalty, Management, Miley, New Zealand, Nottingham Forest, Otis, Professionalism, Resonance, Respect, Strategy, Stupid, Success, This Blog, Toxic Positivity
Happy 2025 and welcome to year 19 of my rubbish.
I trust/hope you had a good break … even if that is simply because I didn’t write a blog post for a few weeks.
I had a great one.
Not just – as I’ve written before – because New Zealand does the ‘holiday season’ better than anywhere on the planet, but because this year was so different to the year before.
And just to reinforce how much better it was, the day I landed back in NZ I was rushed to hospital as my ‘good eye’ decided to basically stop working.
I say ‘good eye’ because when I was 21, my right eye got a detached retina [from picking up a bag of bloody coal, like some cliched Northerner from the 1800’s ] and while they managed to reattach it – which was touch and go due to some complications – it resulted in it having very bad vision out of it. However, thanks to my left eye being good, I’ve never had to worry about my sight beyond how much it costs to have for lenses that don’t look like I’m wearing beer bottles on my face plus the general protection of my head and eyes.
Even though it has been like this for 33+ years, I’ve never taken my sight – or the protection of my eyes – for granted, so you can imagine how freaked out I was when suddenly my good eye basically stopped working a day before we flew back to NZ from Asia.
Now it’s not totally sorted, but I have been assured it will over the next couple of months [which is handy as you can see from the photo below, I look bloody weird with different sized pupils which means people are even less inclined to look at me] and yet despite all this, I STILL CONSIDER THIS HOLIDAY BETTER THAN LAST YEARS.
Let me explain why …
You see back in December 2023, I started work with a new private client.
They had asked me to do a big project for them with a first check-in date of mid-Jan.
I knew it would take a couple of weeks or so to write things up but stupidly, I decided I’d do it over the holidays rather than before.
There was some rationale for that decision …
+ I had a bunch of stuff to finish before the holidays.
+ I had a bunch of reading to do relating to who this client was as a person/artist.
+ I was exhausted and wanted a break before I got stuck into things.
+ It was the bloody festive season and that’s a time I wanted to spend with family.
But the problem was that even though I had a plan for when to do the work, my brain wouldn’t let me forget about it.
So each day, the thought of the work I had to do would nag and niggle at me.
Slowly upping the volume and pressure.
So as each day ended, all I could think about was how I had even less time to relax before I had to start work, which resulted in me not being able to fully enjoy or relax until – in what felt like the blink of an eye – it was time to get started.
When that happened, the annual break I was so looking forward to, wasn’t just over … but never even had a chance to properly start. So instead of being relaxed and ready, I was tired and anxious.
Add to that, that the holiday season the year before had also been rather a traumatic – with Otis and I both ending up in hospital and my dear friend Chelsea, passing away – I was a shattered, emotionally not just physically.
The result of this was that the first 3 months of 2024 were, in all honesty, one of the most stressful times of my life. Not necessarily because the project was hard – though it was certainly demanding, albeit incredibly exciting – but because I had not allowed myself the break I needed to be ready for a completely new challenge.
The good news – if you can call it that – was the impact of these choices and decisions was very obvious to me and I knew I would never, ever let something like that happen to me again. Which is why before the most recent holidays started, I wrote to all my clients – both my private ones and Colenso’s international ones, who don’t have the same holiday duration as our local clients – telling them I was out.
Not ‘out unless you have an urgent requirement’ … but out.
Nada. Zilch. Gone.
And you know what?
No one minded. Not one.
Now, you could say that’s because they find me an absolute pain-in-the-ass to deal with, but I think – or should I say, hope – I believe it is because they respected my time and respected the efforts I’d put into their business over the past 11 months.
I get not everyone has that opportunity.
I get being able to have a break of this duration is a privilege.
But the reality is a break is the greatest investment you can make in yourself or your people.
It gives them a chance to decompress. To think. To let shit go. To get excited again.
Doesn’t matter if you’re a checkout operator or an old bastard, advertising strategist.
It’s why I hate how some companies treat ‘holidays’ like it’s a gift … something you can only have if it suits the organisations needs, timelines and ego.
Fuck that.
For all the talk companies say about ‘our staff being our greatest asset’, the second best demonstration of that – after being paid fairly – is valuing, encouraging and protecting their rights to a break.
And by that, I mean respecting their people’s right and need to have ‘proper holidays’ rather than attempting to hide their toxicity under the guise of bullshit like unlimited holidays … which not only aren’t ever true, but are something they actively go out of their way to ensure can never be realised.
And don’t get me started on the US attitude to vacations, with their 10 days a year allowance … meaning many people can’t have any break of significance without either years of sacrifice or days of unpaid leave.
It’s why I’m eternally grateful for Colenso’s attitude to holidays.
And why I’m eternally grateful for how NZ values and protects their ‘festive season break’.
[Though one unfortunate side-effect is people often don’t take a break in the rest of the year so they can save it all up for the end of the year, which can also contribute to people feeling and experiencing burnout]
And why I’m eternally grateful to my clients for appreciating and encouraging it for me.
Of course part of the reason for their generosity is because it’s in their interests … because a holiday increases the odds great things will happen for them thanks to your renewed energy, focus and inspiration. But hey, I respect they get this because we all win from it rather one person feeling indebted to the other for having what is their god-damn given right to have.
So hello 2025 … let’s see what you’ve got in store for me.
Or should I say, look out for what I’ve got in store for you.