Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Creativity, Culture, Daddyhood, Imagination, Innocence, Insight, Otis
Recently I bought Otis a Viewmaster.Yes, the old-school, red plastic, binocular thing where circular slides transport you to different places and Worlds.
When I was a kid, I bloody loved it.
I remember traveling around the World via Viewmaster.
The first time I saw the Taj Mahal was on there.
The first time I visited America was on there.
The first time I watched wild animals in their natural habitat was on there.
Of course this was a very long time ago, so it was probably more because of nostalgia than anything else that I wanted Otis to have one.
And you know what … he loved it.
Despite being a fully fledged member of the digital age, that piece of old school – with no virtual reality, moving pictures or interactivity – captured his imagination.
He told me stories about all the fish he went swimming with.
Who all the dinosaurs were and what they were doing.
And how all the wild animals were friends and liked playing in dirt.
Don’t get me wrong, the technology of today is an amazing thing to help kids learn and explore, but the beauty of Viewmaster – like the beauty of all great igniters of imagination, from books to even the odd ad – is that it allows people to impose their own will on the images and stories they see and hear … allowing them to go to places only they could ever imagine.
In essence, igniting others imagination allows them to ignite possibilities in things that are all around us and for me, that’s super exciting and why I’m so glad a toy created in 1942 still has a valuable role the lives of kids in 2018.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Chaos, Comment, Confidence, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Empathy, Imagination, Innovation, Insight, Wieden+Kennedy
So next week, I’ll be in Hong Kong.
For the whole week.
Yes, that means absolutely no posts whatsoever for the next week.
But to make sure you don’t get too happy, I’m going to leave you with one final post.
This is about the importance of mistakes.
Now I appreciate the word ‘mistake’ is often viewed as a negative, but I have a very different perspective on them.
Mistakes create standards.
Mistakes open opportunities.
Mistakes reveal who we can be.
OK, so depending on the mistake, some people may feel very differently about the positive effects of them, but in my experience big, small, life-changing or just momentarily ridiculous … they all have a benefit as long as you go into them and come out of them with the right attitude.
In short, if you’re making mistakes for any other reason than trying to do something great, you’re wasting everyones time and effort.
Making mistakes out of laziness or stupidity doesn’t help anybody, especially yourself. But doing it because you went for awesome … had a desire to push boundaries … wanted to see what other possibilities are possible … then each one of those mistakes should be celebrated and embraced by all.
Unless, of course, you’re just doing things for personal and selfish reasons then you’re a bit of a dick.
But that aside, this attitude is especially important in relation to being able to come out of your mistake with dignity and sanity intact.
Dignity and sanity are big words.
You can’t bullshit those.
For me, the only way you can walk out with either is if you went go your mistake with a clear reason for doing it and come out with a real learning from having done it.
That’s it.
And while others may never understand your reasoning, if you are clear on your motivations going in and your learnings coming out, then what others may call a ‘mistake’ may be one of the most important and valuable things you can ever do … something that has the power and potential to change, shape, reveal and create every new path you take from here on in.
Dan Wieden used to call this ‘fail harder’, he was right because whatever anyone says, mistakes matter.
See you in a week …
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Confidence, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Empathy, Fulfillment, Innovation, Insight, Planners, Planning
Many years ago, I spoke at a conference in Australia called, Circus.
At the end of my presentation, I made a point that the things I’d talked about weren’t new and weren’t even from Wieden+Kennedy, but views I had held for many years.
I did this because when people from Wieden speak at conferences, audiences tend to think anything said is gold and I wanted to ensure they knew the presentation had come from my mind, not Dan and Dave’s.
I didn’t do this – as you may think – because I’m an egomaniac [OK, I am an egomaniac, but on this occasion, this wasn’t the motivation] but because my presentation had gone down a storm and I wanted to highlight that 7 years earlier, despite saying pretty much the exact same things that got me a job at Wieden – and had got a rousing applause – no agency in Australia would hire me.
Not one.
I was regarded as idealistic.
Or daft.
But whatever it was, no one was hiring me and in the end, I left Australia.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying Australia is bad – far from it, there’s a whole host of amazingly talented people there – but at the time I was looking for a job, they seemed to only want people who followed their rules not someone who wanted to challenge them.
At the end of my speech, I said to the audience that if there was anyone out there who had thoughts/ideas that had been knocked or mocked, to either find someone who will listen to them or try it on their own.
Now I know not every idea is a good idea … but I get very frustrated when something that someone has obviously put a huge amount of objective thought into, is immediately met with distain, for no other reason than people don’t actually like new as much as they claim.
Especially in adland.
The reason I say this is that I recently came across a clip I wrote about years ago.
It’s about a scientist who – after 30 years – was finally proved right.
Of course science and advertising is about as different as Birkenstocks and fashion, but the point is he persisted because he believed. Not because he was a fool. Not because he was blind to the facts. But because he saw something others didn’t and just kept looking to find ways to prove his theory.
Fortunately, he was backed in his belief by an amazing University, but you can tell by the look on his wife’s face when she realises her husbands 30 years of work was not in vain, that proving this was more important than just having people support your theory.
Watch it and remember we’re all just winging it until we’re not.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brilliant Marketing Ideas In History, Comment, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Design, Innovation, Insight, Marketing
So I’ve seen something that – to me – is one of the best bits of innovation I’ve seen in ages.
Admittedly, it’s something that has kind of been done before.
And has a limited audience.
And probably a short shelf life.
But I love it because it shows innovation is not just about what you do, but what you see is possible to do.
What am I talking about?
This …
Or, more specifically, this …
What you’re looking at are the handlebars to a Micro scooter, the sort of scooter favored by my 3 year old son Otis and wannabe-hipsters who really should know better.
Now normally these handlebars have some ‘grips’ on them like this …
… but recently I saw they offered an alternative range and it’s this that I’m blown away by.
You see someone saw that the Micro Scooter handlebars are made of a hollow metal tube.
So far, so boring.
But what someone realised was that with a hollow tubular handlebar, they could make a grip that looked like this …
For those who can’t quite tell, it’s a grip that turns the handlebars into a horn, like this:
I know it seems a small thing and I know you might not be as impressed by it as me, but I think it’s bloody genius … both for the fun it adds to the scooter and – more impressively – for someone seeing possibility in something most people would ignore.
And that’s my problem with a lot of what adland regards as ‘innovation’, because in many cases the starting point is to do something totally new rather than to see the possibilities in our everyday World.
Which explains why our industry often comes up with bullshit like Peggy while other people/companies/brands come up with brilliantly simple but effective handlebar grip horns.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Business, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Experience, Innovation, Insight, Management, Marketing, Meetings, Perspective, Planners, Planning, Presenting, Relevance, Resonance
Yes I’m back.
If anything will help you be excited about the oncoming weekend, it will be that.
So the picture above is from a presentation I give to planners.
The reason for it is because I find it fascinating when ad folk try to be like their client.
Exactly like their client.
The way they speak. The way they dress. The way they think.
Of course, I understand the importance of knowing your client, their business and their challenges, but the problem with mirroring your client is that you end up looking at the World in the same way as them … and as much as some people may think that’s a good thing, it’s not.
You see when you focus on being like an insider, you ignore the benefits of thinking like an [informed] outsider. You know, the perspective the client actually hired you for in the first place.
As one of my old senior Nike clients once said to me …
“Senior management need and want to be challenged because that’s how we keep things moving forward. If you’re not doing that, then you’re not doing anything for us”.
Now I appreciate not every client thinks this way, but this shift to client mirroring is – in my opinion – another thing that has undermined our industry.
I swear the reason for it is an attempt to be taken seriously as a client partner when the easiest way to achieve that is to do work that shows we are a serious client partner.
Do the people who say, “we’ve lost our seat at the boardroom table” seriously think this approach will change that?
Maybe … but then they will be wrong because there’s only 3 things that will do that.
1. Talk about the things that are important to the client rather than important to us.
2. Know their audience/culture better than they know their audience/culture.
3. Solve their business challenges in creatively imaginative, distinctive, culturally resonant and sustainable ways.
Oh, and there’s a 4th point … prove it.
Not just in the short-term, but in the long … where client can see the economic value of investing in their brand voice. Not just through ‘brand campaigns’, but in how they approach everything they do.
Now I know some of you may think this whole post is my attempt to justify wearing shit t-shirts and birkenstocks to client meetings for the last 25+ years – and maybe it is – but if we are to get back to where we belong, I passionately believe it’s not going to happen by behaving more like clients, but by getting back to the things they need and no one else can do.