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, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Empathy, Human Goodness, Innocence, Insight, Marketing, Perspective, Point Of View, Relevance, Resonance, Respect, Wieden+Kennedy
When I hear people say ‘TV ads are dead’, I laugh.
Especially when – in the same breath – they talk about the importance of content.
But what makes me hysterical is when they talk about content in terms of volume rather than emotion.
How many different ways it can be cut. How many different platforms if can be carried on. What it allows you to say and show.
That sounds even worse than a bad TV ad to me.
And as much as I love technology and what it is allowing creativity to do and impact in marketing, a great piece of film still has the power to have more impact on what people think, feel and do than 10,000 eco-systems that have all been designed to remove every possible element of friction rather than ignite it.
What’s also amusing is that while the industry loves to focus on the new, new thing – even though in many cases, the new thing is simply an old thing, albeit with a new name – it’s the same, arguably ‘older’, agencies who use creativity in the most consistently powerful, thought-provoking and emotionally igniting ways.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking them – quite the opposite actually – and I bloody love them all, however while everyone justifiably talks about the Wieden’s, Uncommon’s and Mother’s of the world, I think we should all take a moment to acknowledge the incredible work AMV is doing right now.
Of course they’ve always been one of the best but right now … they’re coming out swinging.
Not only did they make the best Christmas ad ever written for Plenty paper towels – yes, a bloody paper towel brand – and the incredible Wombstories for Bodyform, they’ve just launched this masterpiece for MacMillan Cancer Support.
Amazing isn’t it?
Almost 2 ½ minutes long and yet it never feels it.
In fact, you watch it over and over again.
Even though it makes you cry.
Properly sob.
Maybe it’s because in this repetitive life of isolation, it lets us feel human … connected to someone or something in a way that we’ve not had for a long time. Or maybe it is a reminder of how fragile life is or how lonely it can be.
Whatever it is, this is more than just ‘an ad’, and so, so much more than the contrived content designed to work across multiple platforms that so many people in the industry seem to think is the way forward … because this incredible piece of film allows us to glimpse the fine line that exists between life and death and the amazing souls who do their absolute best to try and keep them as far apart for as long as possible.
It had a huge impact on me.
Because like AMV did with Plenty – albeit from a VERY different perspective – their eye for detail was immense.
You may not notice all of them.
You may only notice them if you’ve lost someone.
But they’re there and they’re real in all their beauty and tragedy.
The exaggerated happiness to try and disguise the worst situations for the sake of those who don’t quite understand.
The need to be strong for those who know their reality but don’t need that being brought into their reality.
The joy of giving someone a second of happy distraction in a life surrounded by bleakness.
The despair of seeing a child come to terms with their parents mortality.
The elation and gratitude of victory.
The intense fear you think this may be the end and you are petrified you may be alone during your final moment.
But it’s the last scene – where the family say their final goodbye to a woman they obviously love so much – that truly ripped me apart.
From the hand reaching out, struggling and desperate to find the hand of the person they love – a final touch before they slip away – to the intense, shocking loneliness that engulfs you when you realise they’ve taken their final breath.
It reminded me so much of my Mum.
As I sat next to her, after she had come out of her operation, only to see everything collapse in front of my eyes.
The attempt to make sense of something that made no sense.
The shattering of life as someone I loved with all I got went away.
A death that was as unfair as it was untimely.
And what’s strange is I keep watching the ad to relive that feeling.
To be reminded of that final moment with Mum. The sadness and the pain.
Because while it makes me cry deeply every single time … taking me to a place I never want to relive … it has this weird effect of letting me feel closer to her.
A moment where we are together again.
Some kind of private moment.
So I look at it again and again and again. Not just that final scene, but the whole thing … watching events unfold in front of me as if it was for the first time seeing it. Being moved, uplifted and devastated at the exact same moments every single time.
Until that final moment.
Where even though the music reaches its crescendo, everything feels silent.
Where I gasp for air while wanting to scream to try and break the reality of what’s happening in front of me.
Where I feel my whole body is tightly wound in a futile bid to hold things together.
It’s a tragic feeling of familiarity that I wish wasn’t.
And yet I am grateful for it. I truly am.
Because despite all this raw emotion, I never feel the ad exploits.
Yes, it challenges and confronts, but it never ventures into shock while also – somehow – never feeling like it is keeping anything back either.
It is an extraordinary piece of film that reminds us the people who try to keep the thin line between life and death as far apart as possible for each and every one of us, are also people.
Doing whatever it takes to help the people suffering and the people watching, move forward to wherever a better place exists.
It didn’t just make me send it to people, put it on social, look up the team behind it and write this post – it made me sign up to make regular donations to MacMillan Cancer Support.
Don’t tell me TV ads don’t work. When they’re like this, they can change the world.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Confidence, Context, Creativity, Culture, Design, Distinction, Emotion, Empathy, England, Goodbye America, Imagination, Innocence, Innovation, Insight, Legend, Love, Marketing, Martin Weigel, Metallica, Paul, Perspective, Planners, Purpose, R/GA, Relationships
When I first started working in London – just as I was starting out in this industry – I commuted about 5 hours a day.
A DAY!
To be fair, that was of my own making because the company thought I lived in London because I’d given them my aunts address when I applied and got hird.
When they eventually found out I lived with my parents in Nottingham, they were livid.
And they had every right to be.
But as they were giving me the first of my long history of written warnings, I asked the question: “would you have hired me if you knew I lived in Nottingham?” … and didn’t hear a word back.
And while I knew I deserved it, what pissed me off was that I generally was always the first person in and last out. Driving up and down the M1 in my shitty Ford Fiesta with one wing mirror and a radio that couldn’t drown out the sound of my engine. But the fact was, I was a bloody idiot and as much as they probably wouldn’t have hired me if I’d be honest with them from the start, I was fortunate not to be kicked out of an industry I still love.
Well. Most of the time.
And while I was young and having a car felt amazing … even then I knew 5 hours a day – 25 hours a week on a good week – was too much.
Winter was the worst.
Bad weather meant it could take almost double the time to get there and back and many a time I slept on a friends couch or a motorway service station, in my car under a mountain of coats and blankets I kept in the boot ‘just in case’.
My parents were not happy about it, but I think because my Dad’s brother-in-law was travelling 8 hours per day [he was head of traffic control at Gatwick airport] it somehow made them feel a bit better about it.
What’s interesting is that after that job, I vowed never to be more than 30 minutes from work.
And I wasn’t.
Until, of course, I came back to London.
Even though I was in a much better position personally and professionally than I was the last time I worked – and eventually lived there – no one drives into Central London anymore. And while I genuinely enjoyed catching the tube or the bus – helped by the fact that the stations I got on at meant I generally always got a seat – it still was a 80+ minute journey each way, each day.
Given our house was only 7 miles from work, that made my old 2+ hour journey over 120 miles, look positively effective.
And this was life for me.
Out the house before the family woke up.
Back at home as the family – or at least Otis – was going to bed.
And while we made it work and weekends were sacrosanct, the fact I was spending a minimum of 13+ hours a week going to and from work was – and is – ridiculous.
So when COVID started and we all started working from home, I was – for the first time in my life – able to have breakfasts, lunches and dinners every day with my family and I can honestly say I found it pretty confronting.
You see I loved it.
Absolutely loved it.
It was – and still is – one of the most wonderful times of my life.
And while I enjoy working, I started to question what the hell I was doing spending so much time away from them just to get to and from work.
Then R/GA did the nicest thing they could do for me.
They made me redundant.
And while there are things I could say about how they did it and why they did it, the fact is, I’ll always be grateful to them for the opportunity they gave me to come back to England, develop the team I got to work with and then – at the end – hand me my redundancy so I could rediscover and reclaim my priorities, passion and creativity.
Right now, I feel more fulfilled and excited than I have in a long time.
I’m spending more time with my family than ever before while working on a range of global projects that are some of the most creative I’ve ever been involved with.
Mad, mental stuff – from ads to products to art installations – which involve some of the most talented creative people in their field … from an icon of dance/electronic music to the most notorious developers in the gaming category and a bunch in-between.
Then, of course, I have the brilliant excitement of NZ and Colenso to look forward to, too.
It’s all simply amazing.
While I appreciate I am in an exceptionally lucky and privileged position, I can’t help thinking about this quote:
“The problem with life is we sacrifice what we really want to do with what is available right now.”
We all do it.
We might have different reasons causing it, but we all do it.
And while there are many considerations, situations and expectations that push us down these paths, I hope if anything comes out of the craziness of 2020, it’s that we think why we’re doing it rather than just blindly following it.
Because it’s only when we question our choices can we start seeing where we’re going.
And then we have a little more control. Or choice. Or even peace. We all deserve that.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand, Comment, Confidence, Content, Context, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Distinction, Emotion, Empathy, Imagination, Innocence, Innovation, Insight, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Planners, Planning, Prejudice, Relevance, Resonance, Respect, Standards, Wieden+Kennedy
Once upon a time, Dan Wieden was giving a presentation to a bunch of executives from one of Wieden’s big, global clients.
Dan was talking about the power of failing and asked if anyone in the audience had ever been fired from their job.
Nothing.
Not one person raised their hands.
Dan surveyed the scene for a moment before leaning into the microphone and saying:
“Cowards!”
There was a nervous ripple in the audience before some people laughed … but Dan wasn’t saying it to be nasty – or to be funny – he was saying it because he truly believes in the mantra of ‘fail harder’ and the positive impact it can have for both creativity and commerce.
Fail harder is not about seeing how bad you can do something.
Fail harder is about …
+ the quest to push yourself.
+ the desire to challenge limits.
+ the goal to provoke change through complete openness.
And while many people get the concept of it … even agree with it … not everyone can bring themselves to participate in it.
Now that’s totally fine until you start criticising or judge others who are doing it.
Especially if the only reason you’re criticising or judging them is because they’re doing something you didn’t do.
Then that’s a dick move. An insecure, dick move.
I say this because lately there seems to be a lot of people doing exactly that … especially on twitter and especially in the planning/marketing groups.
Judging … dismissing and insulting people who are trying different stuff.
Not because they think it’s wrong.
Not because they think it isn’t valid.
Not even because they don’t think it’s clever.
But because they’re cowards.
Sure, some will have valid reasons for it.
Family.
Mortgage.
Others relying on them.
But what is disappointing is – like the people in that conference – many of these people throwing shade are seasoned, senior individuals.
People who have the experience to push boundaries.
People who have the smarts to challenge the status quo.
People who have the knowledge to be more than capable.
People who have the voice to champion change.
And while it is absolutely their prerogative to not do it, sending our snide comments or subtweets about those who are, is pretty pathetic.
Ridiculing the way someone talks about their colleagues.
Questioning the ability to be taken seriously by clients.
Looking down on what they’re trying to do and what they’ve done.
Hell, some of these people have actually started their own company, so you’d expect them to be a cheerleader for the new … but instead it seems they see them as a more interesting competitive threat, so keep throwing out their barbs.
Oh they probably think they’re being so clever.
That the people can’t see what they’re doing.
But it’s so transparent you could grow plants in it.
However here is where it all goes wrong …
Because not only are many of these people pioneering a great business out of what they’re doing … everyone can see these insults are simply a way to distract thems from the fact they didn’t do what someone else has had the courage to try. That someone is trying to create their own story rather than simply follow someone else’s.
Personally, I think that is an incredible thing to do.
And thank fuck we have people willing to do that.
Not just because the old way isn’t working that well, but because the definition of ‘Fail Harder’ is the realisation that even if you fail in your attempt to do something audacious, you’re already further ahead than those who simply have followed the path of ‘achieving safely’.
There’s a few people I know who are victims of this.
They say it doesn’t bother them, but it obviously does.
Of course it does … it’s shit … especially when coming from people in the industry who are supposed to be ‘senior voices’.
So fuck those guys [and it is nearly always men]
Make them cry tears of regret, because regardless what happens next, you’ve already gone further them most of them could reach.