Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Childhood, Comment, Context, Dad, Daddyhood, Emotion, Empathy, Experience, Family, Innocence, Jill, LaLaLand, London, Love, My Fatherhood, Parents, Sentimentality
Tomorrow I’m on holiday.
For over a week.
I am also turning 50.
Both of these pieces of news are no doubt going to fill you with happiness.
[Though there is a post tomorrow, so don’t get too excited]
Well, that is good, because this post is about just that.
Happiness.
One of the best things that has ever happened to me is Otis.
I loved the idea of kids – and at 18, I actually tried to adopt, hahaha – but after that, the idea was put on the back burner because frankly, I always thought I was too young.
I swear part of that is because Paul, my best mate, also didn’t have kids … so I was in some form of arrested development.
Anyway, one day Jill – who had been very patient – pointed out I wasn’t getting any younger so we decided to go for it.
Of course we then discovered the only we would pull this off is if we had IVF.
ARGH!
But then we got 2 pieces of luck.
First was being able to have the treatment in Australia. This was important because the process in Shanghai was so unbelievably weird, complicated and confusing, that we’re not sure we would have ever stood a chance there.
Secondly, the treatment worked first time. We are under no illusion how fortunate we were … though there was some sort of cosmic comedy karma in the fact we discovered Jill was pregnant on April 1.
Now I don’t regret being late to the Dad party.
The reality is I didn’t feel ready before.
OK, so I don’t know if men ever feel ready, but that’s probably less to do with being a Dad and more to do with the fear of the responsibilities associated with being a Dad.
And even though we are 5 years down the road, I still feel that.
Sure, maybe we could have had a brother or sister for him if we’d done it sooner. Sure, there’s a part of me that would have loved to do that. But apart from the fact I worry I may not get to see him grow old given my age, I can live with the fact I am soon to be 50 and I have a 5 year old bundle of beautiful mischief.
And what a bundle of beautiful mischief he is.
Kind. Compassionate. Emotional. Creative. Curious. Imaginative. Cheeky. Full of energy.
He is a loving son who wants to see the best in everything.
Part of me worries a bit about that.
I’ve already seen how some kids try to take advantage of that generosity, but in the end – all we can do is prepare him for how to deal with things that are sadly going to happen in his life and he is generally handling those tougher situations pretty well.
The main thing for me is for him to be able to enjoy his childhood.
I get that’s an incredibly privileged way to live … but I also think that’s something every parent would want for their children.
The fact is life passes so fast, we want to try and ensure he is given the chance to enjoy the present.
Be silly.
Try different things.
Resist placing pressure on him to do things he doesn’t like.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love him to like playing football as much as he likes doing acting, but he knows to support Nottingham Forest, so I’m OK with it.
Which leads back to the point of this post.
Happiness.
When we lived in LA, we bought Otis a trampoline for his birthday
As you can see, he was very happy to get one.
In fact, he was so happy, he would want to do it all the time. Including at night, where he would go into the garage with a torch [where the trampoline was kept] and just bounce up and down.
For hours.
And hours.
And hours.
When we left America, I wanted to sell the trampoline and get another when we worked out where we were going to live. But Jill had other ideas. And as usual, she was right.
Because while the weather in London is not the same as the weather in LA, that trampoline was a guarantee of happiness for Otis.
Not just because it was a treasured possession from another place, but because he still loves to bounce on it.
For hours.
And hours.
And hours.
Which is a very long winded way to get to the point of this post.
As the weather is nicer, Otis likes nothing more than bouncing on his trampoline while being sprayed with water.
Yes, I know this sounds like the sort of torture the US government subjected inmates at Guantanemo Bay to, but he adores it.
Recently we captured a photo while he was doing it that, for me, sums up what happiness is.
As a feeling.
As a look.
As a parent.
As my son.
Which is why I hope this is one thing that never changes as he gets older.
Not just because I doubt it can be topped – regardless what he does – but because, for me, it is the definition of perfect.
Stay happy Otis.
You make your old man giggle with pride and delight.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Audio Visual, Authenticity, Black Lives Matter, China, Comment, Confidence, Content, Creativity, Culture, Diversity, Emotion, Empathy, Equality, Experience, Fatherhood, Food For Thought, History, Hope, LaLaLand, London, Minimum Wage, Perspective, Planners, Police, Presenting, Racism, Relevance, Resonance
So last week, I was invited to talk at GroupThink’s planning conference.
I like the people there and said yes.
Originally I was going to take people through an old presentation because I didn’t really have much time to write something specific for you. They were OK with it and so wrote it into their program.
Then the situation with George Floyd happened.
Following so shortly on the heels of other racist motivated murders, like Ahmaud Arbery – who was murdered in cold blood by a father and son while out jogging.
At this point, quite frankly, the idea of doing a presentation on strategy seemed so utterly pointless.
So 2 days before the day of the event, I wrote something new.
Something that was about why Black Lives Matters is the only thing that really matters to me right now.
How the ad industry HAS to change.
How the ad industry may talk a lot about diversity and inclusivity but its actions are racist.
I’m not saying that is their intention or that they even realise it, but it’s racist.
And I’ve been complicit in that.
Again, not intentionally, but still done it.
Anyone who is white has … because we’ve let our privilidge create a gap between our actions and our self awareness.
Finally, I talked about 6 things people could do TODAY to make a positive difference to any person of colour … whether that’s through education, responsibility, judgement or action.
Now I must admit I was scared to write this presentation.
Not because I was worried it would make people feel uncomfortable, but because I’m a white male who has had every privilege going and the last thing I wanted to do was come across as if I was claiming to be an expert on this matter or whitesplaining anything.
Which is why I didn’t write the presentation.
I co-wrote it.
In addition to capturing some of the lessons I learned from the brilliant people of colour I’ve worked with and known over the years [which is a lot given how long I spent in China and Asia], the main bulk of the presentation was put together – after seeking their permission – with the irrepressible, wonderful and take-no-shit-from-anyone-especially-me … Maya Thompson, Breanna Jones and Chelsea Curry.
I’ve written and talked about them a lot.
They changed my life.
Literally.
I genuinely believe I can never thank them enough, but one way I try is to take on the issues I should have taken on years ago but thought not being racist was enough.
It isn’t.
So here it is … it’s my usual picture rubbish, but hopefully the bits that are there will make sense to everyone.
The real presentation starts at page 28, the previous slides were linked to the talk I was going to give so I could lull people into a false sense of security so they would get comfortable before I talked openly, emotionally and plainly about an issue that should be the focus of every human right now, but isn’t for a whole host of unimportant or self-serving reasons.
Should anyone want to know more about the presentation, please get in touch.
But most importantly, please act.
Black. Lives. Matter.
Slides 1-5: Just introducing me and why I am happy to be invited to present.
Slides 6-10: How the standard of work being created is generally very poor and how we are all contributing to it in terms of the things we are talking about. Which isn’t the standard of the work and sounds more like us trying to be clients than people valuable to clients.
Slides 11-23: Insights matter because people matter and if you want to make work that is intriguing, interesting, provocative and fresh, you have to care about people, culture and subculture or you’ll get nowhere.
Slides 24-27: I talk about how I was going to talk about the wonderfully crazy project we’ve recently done in China and how understanding sub-culture made building something specifically designed to look like ‘future Mars’ was perfectly sensible but ….
Slide 28: I need to pause the topic of the talk because frankly, the events of the past week have really upset me – specifically the reaction of many agency leaders – and I want to talk about something that matters more to me.
Slides 29-31: Black Lives Matter. There’s many lives that matter, but right now – for me – Black Lives Matter is the only one that matters.
Slides 32-34: Lived around the World, eventually moved to America and then met 3 brilliant women who changed my life. Maya Thompson. Chelsea Curry. Breanna Jones.
Slides 34-39: This is how they fundamentally changed my life for the better by helping me see how blind, stupid and complicit I’d been and then [with some values my Mum taught me] the journey we went on – and still go on – together.
Slides 40-49: Announce this deck has actually all been co-written by Maya, Breanna and Chelsea. Three main reasons for this. I don’t have credibility, I don’t want to come across as whitesplaining and I want any advice I give to be genuinely valuable to people of colour, not a white persons interpretation of what is valuable.
Slide 50: How my industry is racist. Doesn’t want to be. But is. And I use a recent ‘challenge’ put out by Cannes as an example. For the record, they launched a competition on how to attract more diversity into the industry and gave a media budget of £100,000. That’s right they were committing an amount of money most agencies would spend for dinners during Cannes for a topic that they claim is hugely important to them. They don’t intend to be racist but they – like the whole industry – is acting in ways that are.
Slides 51-58: What we have to do to stop being a racist industry including letting go of everything we thought we knew and starting again.
[Please note slide 54: Lots of people say they’re ‘colour blind’. By which they mean they claim they treat everyone the same. The point of this slide is that while we should absolutely treat and value everyone the same, we should do this in a way that acknowledges individual backgrounds and beliefs. Not doing this can result in one of 3 things. [1] We treat everyone the same but based on our definition of what ‘same is’. Which is often white, which means we expect people of colour to adapt to us and our standards. [2] We generalise groups for our convenience, so we call [for example] everyone who is black, “black” … ignoring the vast range of backgrounds, beliefs and nuances they could have BECAUSE PEOPLE OF COLOUR DO NOT ALL COME FROM THE SAME PLACE!!! Or [3] because of being ‘colour blind’, you see everyone the same [which we don’t, let’s be clear on that] so you end up making the same work for everyone thinking it will be resonant with everyone. It isn’t. See how Rihanna highlighted this when she launched her Fenty cosmetics and simply added colours for African American skin, fucking up the big cosmetic companies who had ignored this for decades]
Slide 59-60: Highlighting when you start from scratch it can work, because my son Otis is living proof of it. He has lived in 3 countries and loves them all equally, while accepting and respecting their individual differences.
Slide 61: If you need a commercial reason for why Black Lives Matter [and if you do, you’re a prick] it’s because people of colour can make this industry great again because on top of all influential culture being born from black culture, people of colour understand nuance, values, struggles and humanity better than anyone as they have to deal with this shit every day.
Slide 62-63: Thank you to all the people of colour who helped co-write this presentation – especially Maya, Chelsea and Breanna – and justice for George Floyd.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Anniversary, Attitude & Aptitude, Birthday, Childhood, China, Comment, Confidence, Context, Culture, Dad, Daddyhood, Death, Emotion, Empathy, Family, Fatherhood, Football, Goodbye America, Goodbye China, Grand announcements, Health, Home, Hope, Innocence, Italy, Jill, LaLaLand, Love, Loyalty, Mum, Mum & Dad, My Fatherhood, Nottingham, Nottingham Forest, Otis, Parents, Sentimentality, Shanghai, Shelly, WeigelCampbell
So today is June 1.
In 11 days, I wave goodbye to my forties and enter a decade that seems impossible for me to fathom.
50.
FIFTY.
Seriously, how did this happen?
I still remember sitting on the hill outside Erica’s newsagent with my best mate Paul around 1978, when we worked out that in the year 2000, we would be turning 30.
But here we are, 11 days from 50.
[Though it’s 15 days for Paul, who will LOVE those 4 days where he can bang on about how he is a decade younger than me … though he will also moan that my present for him isn’t like the full page newspaper ad I got him when he was 40, but a Forest shirt signed by all the members of the 1980 European Cup team. Asshole. He knows about this present as I bought it for him years ago so I’m not ruining anything for him. But I still have a surprise for him. Oh yes.]
Turning 30 bothered me a bit.
I was totally fine with becoming 40.
But 50!
I’m both bricking it and utterly casual about it.
And while there are some practical reasons for the shitting myself part – health, work, life in general – the fact of the matter is the older I get, the better my life has become.
I totally get the privilege of that statement, I don’t take it for granted at all, but it is definitely true.
Personally, professionally, emotionally …
Sure there have been some bumps along the way – some terribly hard and emotionally destructive ones – but looking at the big picture, the reality is my life has generally been on an upward trajectory.
Now even I know that it can’t keep going like that forever … but it doesn’t mean I have to stop trying.
The fact is, the older you get, the more you discover …
From what you like, what you don’t … to what you didn’t know and what you want to know.
And what makes it even more amazing – and annoying – is that every step you take, in whatever direction, reveals a whole host of other possibilities you would like to explore and investigate.
The problem is time is now officially, not on your side … so there’s a point where you have to accept you won’t get to try, play, experiment with all you want to do, so while that might put some people off, it kind of makes me want to try and pack more in.
And I am … because on top of work, Metallica, the school with Martin, I’ve already agreed to do a couple more projects that are intriguing and – frankly – ridiculous.
But there’s another reason for this attitude and it’s because my Dad died at 60.
Death is something I’ve talked a lot about over the years – mainly due to both my parents passing away.
I’ve talked a lot about the importance of taking about it, but I must admit, I’m scared of it.
I’m in generally good health, but fifty is still 50 and my Dad still died just 10 years on from this age.
Now of course it doesn’t mean I will … and I’ve come to this completely unscientific view that I should live till I’m at least 71 because if you take away my Dad’s age of dying [60]from my Mum’s [83] … that leave 23 years. Halve that … add it to Dad’s age … and voila, I will live till at least 71.
But then that means I only have 21 years left.
TWENTY ONE.
That’s nowhere near enough.
My wonderful little boy is only 5 for fucks sake. 26 is way too young to lose your Dad … hell, that’s even younger than I was when I lost mine.
Years ago, an old boss I looked upto said that if you can’t feasibly double your age, that is when you know you are – at best – middle aged or – at worst – the last stage of your life.
Well I suppose I can still feasibly double my age – even if it’s against the average age of death for a man in the UK [79.2] – but the reality is where I’m going is shorter than where I’ve been.
But shorter doesn’t mean less interesting.
And arguably, I have more exciting things in my life now – both personally and professionally – than I have ever had.
It also helps I am insanely immature with a desire for mischief, experimentation, creativity and adventure.
And I intend to fill it up with even more.
Fortunately I get that from a number of sources.
My wife.
My son.
My job.
My other jobs.
My friends.
My mind.
A while back, Pete said something I found pretty profound.
He said the narrative of strategy tended to focus on the importance of curiosity when discovery is far more valuable for driving the standard of the work you create and the adventure you go on.
Now I’ve written a lot about how I hate when planners talk about curiosity – as if they’re the only people who have it – but I really, really like that idea of the hunger for discovery.
I absolutely have that.
I owe so much of what I have to that.
The countries I’ve lived in. The people I’ve worked with. And most importantly, the family I am fortunate to have.
So while I enter a new decade, I will continue to live like it’s the old one.
Not in terms of dressing like I’m younger than I am – mainly because I have always dressed like I live in 1986 – but with the hunger, ambition and desire I’ve always had.
I genuinely believe my best work is still ahead of me.
Truly believe that.
And the goal of this decade is to achieve some of that while discovering new things that make me believe even better work can still lie in my future.
Filed under: America, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Culture, Emotion, Empathy, Family, Jill, LaLaLand, My Fatherhood, Otis, Parents
I recently was in LA for work.
Being a sentimental sod, I couldn’t help find the time to go visit some of the places that became so important to me – and us – when we lived there.
Hell, I even went to the house of the man who bought my car just so I could see it again.
But of all the places I’ve revisited in LA, visiting Otis’ preschool is the one that made me the most emotional.
This is a place he loved.
Where he met his beloved Elodie.
Where his Mum connected to people who will be life long friends.
Where they were both made to feel they mattered from the second they arrived.
Leaving LA was hard. Not for professional reasons, but for personal.
Yes I was sad to leave people I’d met who had grown to become very important to me, but hardest was taking my wife and son away from a place they had thrived in.
Even though we were only there for approx 18 months, we wanted Otis to always know there was a time this was his home … that leaving didn’t mean he’d disappeared. So we wanted to do a few things for the school of which one of them was ask if we could donate a park bench in Otis’ name, so generations of future kids could play on it and – in some way – get to know the little boy who loved that place so much over 2017/18.
By pure chance, when I was driving past the school – it was a Saturday – I saw they had an event on, so being a cheeky sod, I went in hoping they’d let me see the bench we made.
They welcomed me with absolute open arms and as they let me see the seat we left for Otis, I realized – for the first time – that I’d also left a bit of myself here as well.
Filed under: America, China, Comment, Dad, Daddyhood, Emotion, Empathy, England, Family, Fatherhood, Jill, LaLaLand, London, Love, Mum & Dad, My Fatherhood, Otis, Parents
In many ways, this was a big year for Otis.
While he had moved from Shanghai to Los Angeles, he was so young that he probably didn’t take it all in.
But by the time we left Los Angeles for London, he had made some deep connections.
His friend Jack.
His love Elodie.
His school mates and adventurous life in the sun.
And yet he took it all in his stride.
Sad to say goodbye, but happy to explore somewhere new, boosted by the fact he would get to see his ‘Oddparents’ – Paul and Shelly – a lot more often.
And within days, he was a Londoner.
Sure he had a strange American accent.
Sure he kept talk about dollars rather than pounds.
But for all the upheaval he was going through, he embraced it all.
New home.
New school.
New friends.
New way of living.
It was here he started to identify what he loved.
We wanted him to experience a range of things so he could discover what he liked.
And while he liked being a ‘ninja’, he didn’t want to do martial arts.
And while he enjoyed watching football with his dad, he didn’t like organised sport.
Instead he loved acting.
LOVED IT.
Watching him practice his lines was a bloody delight … the focus, the commitment.
And while he would get a bit shy at the point of performance, you could see how much his whole being lit up when he was doing it.
I have no idea if he will continue to love acting or performance.
Right now, he’s into video games in a big way.
But whatever path he chooses in the future … as much as I don’t want him to have a life of struggle, the thing I want most for him is fulfilment.
Not comfort.
Not content.
But fulfilment … as my parents always drilled into me.
To be honest, I didn’t really understood the difference between fulfilment and contentment till I was in my 30’s. But now I realise it has a totally different imputes when you go from the ‘receiver’ of that intent to the ‘giver’.
I hope I can help Otis understand it.
But more than that, I hope I can witness Otis embracing it.