Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Context, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Experience, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail
A few weeks ago, I posted this on Twitter …
Quite a lot of people liked it for one reason …
It’s kinda true.
For all the shit people throw at the younger generation for chasing the next shiny thing, the same can be said for business.
Worse. In my experience, the younger generations are far more committed to what they think is the right thing and stick with it, even in the face of other things coming up.
OK, so there may be some subjects where they are quick to switch, but it’s not the stuff that costs tens of thousands of people their livelihood just because someone at the top wants to look like they have their finger on the pulse.
Seriously, the way some companies behave is like watching a massive game of Hot Or Not … just with billions of dollars riding on every decision.
Once upon a time, a planning colleague – Rodi – once said the biggest problem with business is they remain interested but never want to commit.
He was – as usual – bang on.
And while there are many schools-of-thought that suggest that because of the speed of change ‘those who commit, lose’ … they’re really missing the point.
Because while you have to know what is happening and shifting, it’s only those who commit to what they believe in who can create something that leads culture to them … rather than continually chasing where they’re going.
It doesn’t mean it will always work out, but we know the alternative achieves that even less.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Emotion, Empathy, Experience, Jill, My Fatherhood, Otis, Parents
First of all, I know Otis is 8.
But he said this to me when he was still 7 so deal with it.
As I have written previously, Otis was diagnosed last year with dysgraphia.
Dysgraphia is a form of dyslexia – specially writing and some motor skills, like holding a pen.
It doesn’t limit the capacity for learning, but it does affect how you do it.
I also wrote how amazing his school has been in helping him deal with this … letting him use technology for written assignments [text to speech] while very gently helping him keep practicing writing with a pen.
The effect has been remarkable.
He is happier, more expressive and even cheekier than before.
It genuinely feels like he has been freed from a feeling of oppression. Of not being good enough. And now he recognises his ability and his possibility. It’s so, so beautiful and I can never thank his school and teachers enough.
Of course, this is something he’s going to have to live with for the rest of his life. But thanks to his school – and technology – he doesn’t have to fear dysgraphia, he just can get on with it.
And get on with it he is.
A few weeks before the end of the year, he proudly showed us some work he had written.
As in, written with a pen, not technology.
That he showed us was incredible – because previously he did all he could to hide his writing from us. Whether it was because he was ashamed by it or simply believed it couldn’t be good as his classmates as he wasn’t as quick as them is open to question, but it is not hard to imagine that may be the case.
But here he was, showing us what he’d done.
I said to him, how good it was to which he replied with an viewpoint that was not only incredibly mature … but is a valuable lesson for anyone and everyone facing challenges in their life.
He said:
“Just because you struggle with some things doesn’t mean you can’t improve”.
How incredible is that?
He was seven when he said it. SEVEN!
That’s better advice than anything you hear from professional life coaches.
So to my dearest Otis …
I’m so, so proud of you.
Your attitude towards life is wonderful and inspirational.
And of course, you’re right.
You can improve.
You can always get better.
It’s not about glory, it’s about improvement.
Thank you for reminding me that life isn’t all black and white.
That how we evolve and improve and engage and embrace life is all done in the grey.
You’re such a brilliant human and we’re so proud to be your Mum and Dad.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Black Lives Matter, Brand, Communication Strategy, Corporate Evil, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Creativity, Culture, Disney, Embarrassing Moments, Experience, Inclusion, Individuality, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Packaging, Perspective, Relevance, Resonance, Respect
Good news. Bad news.
Good news: Given I had yesterday off, that means you only have 4 days of this blog to deal with. Seriously, this is the slowest ‘easing you back into my rubbish’ that I may have ever done. What a Saint.
Bad news: There’s no more holidays for ages so prepare for a lot of it. That is if anyone reads this any more. Or if anyone read it, more like. Especially given the lack of comments which was – let’s admit it – the only reason people popped along. Damnit.
Anyway, I thought I had posted this a while back only to discover it was still in my ‘to post file’. The good news is 99.96% of my posts fail to hit the ‘topical sweet spot’ so I can still post it and no one will bat an eyelid.
I have a strange relationship with the Disney organisation.
I appreciate their history.
I appreciate their creativity.
I appreciate their craft and film making.
But they can also be a bunch of assholes.
This is not just based on the 3 years of weird shit – good and bad – I experienced with them when we were launching their park in Shanghai at Wieden [only for them to take the business off us at the last moment and hand it to Ogilvy simply because as the first park in the digital age – we wanted to use digital to bring the story of the characters journey to China to life] but because they have a history of putting their name to anything if they’ll get paid for it.
Now I have to admit they’re very successful at doing that … but it just reinforces there’s two groups the organisation. The craftspeople and the greedy exploiters.
OK, that’s like every company I suppose, but they just don’t even try to hide it … which is almost impressive if it didn’t rob you of the hope of someone good to believe in.
I know … I’m a sentimental idiot.
So you can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was with how Disney decided to handle the merchandise for Black Panther Wakanda.
Rather than sell the rights to Kmart to be shoved on as many t-shirts as possible, they partnered with Actively Black.
Actively Black is a community-first, black owned and run company committed to advancing representation of Black creatives, designers, and brands and they actively invest in the health and wellness of Black communities worldwide.
They’re an amazing organisation and so it’s no surprise the merchandise proceeds would be put towards educational programs and resources that promote physical, mental and emotional health, HBCU athletics, social justice initiatives and DEI advocacy.
It was a great move, especially given the importance and significance of Black Panther in the Black and African American community. Not to mention honouring the tragic loss of Chadwick Boseman.
It seemed Disney understood that of all the characters in the Marvel universe, this was one that had an even more significant role and position in culture and should be treated as such.
I say ‘seemed’ because then I saw this …
And to give you more details, there’s this …
What the absolute fuck?
A screwdriver set.
A FUCKING SCREWDRIVER SET!
I know Disney have form pimping their icons out, but a Kmart screwdriver set?
All that good will.
All that consideration.
All that sense they actually understood.
Let’s hope the reason is as my friend John stated:
“Calm down Rob … don’t you get that you need some serious power tools to dismantle the capitalist white supremacist patriarchy”.
We all know it isn’t.
But I wish it was.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Colleagues, Comment, Confidence, Context, Creativity, Culture, Experience, Management, Perspective, Planners, Professionalism
I once interviewed a young planner who spent the whole time confidently telling me how ambitious they were.
The whole conversation was literally about how far they were going to go.
And that’s admiral … except they never once talked about their rise in relation to the work they would do, but simply the objective they had.
I told them that while I love their ambition, I felt their priorities were different to what I valued.
They seemed to be focused on speed of progress whereas I cared about standards.
Of course they argued that’s what they wanted to, but by then we were done.
I’m not doubting they were good, but the quality of work was secondary to the speed of promotion and in my experience, that is never a good scenario.
I say this because I recently saw this:
I’ve got to admit, this triggered me.
Don’t get me wrong, everyone is a ‘magpie’ to a certain degree.
Taking things they’ve learned and heard and incorporating it into their thinking.
But this is not that. This is laziness.
Oh I know some will call it ‘smart’.
Or an example of hustle culture or some other bollocks.
And maybe the person in question just said it to be provocative.
But whatever the reason, it’s parasitic behaviour. Literally feeding off the talent of others.
It’s why I always favour people who have done interesting stuff rather than just know interesting stuff. It means they have skin in the game. It means they were willing to explore and experiment. It means they were willing to fail in the quest to do something good. It means they’ve learned stuff.
It’s a major reason why I believe in going down rabbit holes rather than playing to be precise.
It’s why I believe in graft not hustle.
It’s why I believe in standards, not just speed.
Don’t get me wrong, I apperacite we all want to progress.
I totally accept there are massive benefits gained from promotion and I don’t want to stop anyone from achieving that. I also think it’s outdated thinking to only give substantial payrises when attached to promotion. I understand why companies do it, but it means people often get promoted before they’re ready, and then aren’t even helped in learning how to be good at it.
But while speed of progress may appear attractive from the outside, it can be limiting on the inside.
Because promotion can get you many things, but it doesn’t automatically get you respect.
Oh you may think it does.
Or you may not give a shit either way.
But if you want a career or the ability to use your talent in other ways you find interesting … then at some point, you’ve got to have done stuff that goes beyond simple career progression. Stuff that is known and noticed for what it did and how it did it. Stuff that is for people and brands of repute, not just people or brands who pay your invoice.
Because without that … well, you may find your career starts like an Olympic sprinter but ends like the slowest of tortoises.
And as I said, maybe some are fine with that.
Or maybe some – as I’ve met a few times – are genuine freaks of brilliance who were seemingly born to go to the very, very top.
But the thing to remember is the latter is both rare and defined by what others think your capabilities are, rather than what you think about yourself.
Which may explain why the planner I interviewed all those years ago has not achieved their goal of being the King of the Universe.
On the positive they are a head of planning.
But it’s for a small agency in Seattle.
A sales promotion agency.
Where there appears to be only one other planner in the place.
And while there’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of that – I did it for a short time, and learnt a ton of stuff I still use now – it’s quite different from what they told me their ambition was. Maybe their circumstances changed. Or their ambitions changed. And maybe they’re happy as can be. But I can’t help but feel they could have fulfilled their aspirations if they’d just valued standards a bit more than they valued speed.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Audio Visual, Brand, Comment, Confidence, Context, Craft, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Experience, Legend, Loyalty, Management, Metallica, Music, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance, Respect, Trust, Truth
Late last year, Metallica launched a new song called LuxEterna, from their upcoming new album, 72.
While it is a brilliant return to their roots, the choice of ‘yellow’ as a key colour was met with some negative commentary from ‘brand purists’.
I don’t mean fans, but brand and design folks.
This was amazing for 2 reasons.
The first is our job is to keep things moving evolving rather than continually replicating what’s gone before, so if anyone should be open minded to change, it’s brand and design folk.
[It also highlights my problem with people who keep banging on about ‘brand assets’, because they are confusing recognition with interesting. Or worse, thinking recognition beats being and doing interesting stuff for audiences]
Secondly, the album was designed – as many have been – by the brilliant folk at the wonderful Turner Duckworth … and given their body of work, if anyone knows about designing modern iconography, it’s them.
But overall, I just found the whole debate amusing.
Metallica have always approached albums as a way to express their current frame of creative mind … and given they always look to inject something new or challenging into their work, the choice of yellow seems the perfect way to communicate ‘next chapter’.
In the case of 27 Seasons – also known as the first 18, and arguably, most significant years of your life – James said this …
“There’s been a lot of darkness in my life and in our career and things that have happened with us … but always having a sense of hope, always having the light that is in that darkness, keeps us moving. Without darkness, there’s no light, and being able to focus a little more on the light instead of how it used to be and how horrible it is, that can only be a good thing. There’s a lot of good things going on in life — focusing on that instead helps to balance out my life. And there’s no one meaning to it — everyone has some sense of hope or light in their life, and, obviously, music is mine.“
When you read that, it’s not hard to work out that the use of yellow is part of a bigger idea around the album rather than a desire to build a one colour brand which some have claimed.
Unsurprisingly, they’re the same people who talk about brand assets like you can just buy them off the shelf rather than make them a byproduct of what you do, so that they have value in them that you also keep building.
By pure chance, I was asked by people connected to the band to do a talk to a music publishing company.
While not specifically related to Metallica, I was asked by someone in the audience for my opinion on their ‘new image’ and whether it risked upsetting their core audience.
I had thought this question may came up, which is why I had prepared an answer.
After informing them I had never known a brand – let alone a band – who knew their audience as well as them … and if you listen to the track, I doubt any of their fans would mistake a revitalised Metallica for Ed Sheeran … I said this.
“If Rock n’ Roll is about rebellion, then surely there’s nothing more rock n’ roll than Metallica using yellow rather than the category norm of black?”
It was met with applause.
And some disgust, hahaha.
But here’s the thing …
Brands – and bands – don’t move forward if all they do is give audiences the same thing over and over again. Nor will they if they just give audiences exactly what they want over and over again. Longevity is as much about keeping people on their toes as it is satisfying their passion and curiosity and you only stand a chance of achieving that by following what interests you, not what interests everyone else.
Metallica get this more than most.
It’s part of the reason they have stayed at the top … because by doing things that interest them, they do things that interests more people rather than just the same people.
As I wrote for MTV years ago, brands can learn a lot from bands … because while brands may think finding shortcuts or disguises allows them to optimise their efficiency, everyone else can tell it’s because they’ve run out of ideas or energy.
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By the way, 72 Seasons comes out tomorrow. This is not a sponsored post. Well, not directly anyway, hahaha.