Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Conformity, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Martin Weigel, Relevance, Reputation, Research, Resonance, Respect, Retail
So I’m back and let’s start the week as I intend to go on. Kinda.
With the obsession of marketing practice, our towns and cities are increasingly being wrapped in advertising that all looks the same – just in different colours.
Doesn’t matter if it’s an ad for a bank, a car, a holiday destination or a cold and flu medicine … everything feels interchangeable, which results in people – ironically – being able to ‘tune them out’ rather than being attracted to how they stand out.
It’s why the thing that is increasingly capturing the attention and creating some sort of differentiation are the ‘walk-in’ signs designed by the people who either own the shops we walk past, or run them.
One of them I saw recently was this:
Is it brilliant? Not really.
It it it clever? A little, but not much.
Does the store have anything to do with Christopher Walken? Not at all.
But I tell you what, it caught my attention, made me smile and made me pay attention to it – and the store it was for – far more than I do with many of the dot-to-dot, paint-by-numbers ads that have been tested to within an inch of their life to ensure the message achieves maximum comprehension, does not – in any way – offend or alienate audiences and hits every category cue, brand ‘asset’ and ‘purchase driver’ to ensure the people behind it can tell their bosses it ‘achieved all the metrics’, even if no one in the real world paid the slightest bit of attention to it whatsoever.
Now don’t get me wrong, I know there’s a world of difference between developing the communication for a major, national/internation brand and doing a ‘walk-in’ sign for a local suburb – but somewhere along the line, we seem to have forgotten the point of ads is to stand out, not blend in which is why it might be a good time to end this post by dusting off this quote by the great Mr Weigel,
‘You can be as relevant as hell and still be boring as fuck’.
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Yes, it’s Friday.
And yes, it’s the first of May.
But neither of those things are as incredible as this …
You see, on Sunday, it will be 20 years since I started this blog.
TWENTY BLOODY YEARS!
That’s before the iPhone.
And Android.
And Facebook.
And the Kindle.
And the financial crisis.
And before Pluto lost its planet creds.
AND BEFORE WI-FI WAS PUBLICLY AVAILABLE … so a very long time ago.
I still remember why I started it …
It wasn’t for any attempt for notoriety or popularity, it was more to do with survival.
You see I’d got a job that – frankly – I was woefully under-qualified for, and because it demanded so much of my time and energy to make sure I didn’t completely fuck it up, I needed an outlet for all the ideas and thoughts that were going around my head that I just didn’t feel were right for what I needed to do at that time.
Not because I was sure I was going to use them later … more because I needed to feel I was still connected to the stuff I loved while also believing that if I didn’t find a way to get them out of my head, they’d maybe be no more space left for anything new to enter my head.
And so this blog was born.
Reading through the first few posts not only reveals the times we were living in, but also the headspace I was in.
Trying to balance making sense of stuff happening around me while also needing an outlet for stuff I was feeling or thinking … which, in many ways, set the tone for how this blog has been for over 2 decades.
Which George recently described as, “the blog version of TK Maxx”.
He’s not wrong … and in some ways, I really like that.
Sure, among the almost 5000 posts I’ve written, there’s a lot of [to keep the TK Maxx analogy going] cheap and nasty shit in there … but there’s also a few ‘designer label’ gems hidden amongst it all.
At least for me.
Stuff that made me think, challenge or question stuff in ways that I had not imagined or considered before.
Stuff that ended up impacting how I did things and how I still do things.
Stuff that forced me to articulate what I believe, not just what I feel.
Maybe those posts meant nothing to anyone but me. Hell, maybe no one even read them. But while every post I’ve written reflects something about who I was – or am – those ‘self-defined gems’ have a special place in my heart because they represent a moment where I felt I was growing and learning.
It’s why I always enjoyed the comment section, because for all the overwhelming piss-taking I received, the vast majority always ‘encouraged’ me to look deeper, wider or longer at issues I’d written about. And I loved that. I loved how the people who commented always kept me on my toes … which is why one of the unexpected pleasures of writing this blog for so long has been seeing how my opinion on certain subjects has changed or evolved over the years. It’s served as a great reminder about the importance of always exposing yourself to others perspectives, opinions, experiences and standards, even if the goal of it is simply to be really sure about what you think or believe.
In many ways, that’s the biggest surprise of 20 years writing this blog.
I never expected anyone to comment on anything I wrote, because I started it just for me.
A private place to express my thoughts and idiocy.
But then Andy discovered it and he sent an email to everyone at Cynic and some of our clients announcing it and then the mayhem started.
At that point, blogging had become a big thing. A good thing. A community of people who wanted to help and contribute to what others were doing. A lot of this was down to the great Russell Davies and his iconic blog … a place that not only brought people from all over the world together, but inspired others to start writing their own as well.
It was a place that not only exposed me to a lot of brilliant people I’d never have known about without his blog – people like Gareth Kay, Paul Colman, Northern Planner, Rob Mortimer, Marcus, John Dodds, Lauren, Age to name but a few – it also brought people to my blog who helped add to the texture, lessons and perspectives I was writing about.
I will forever be grateful to Russell for that … especially as most of the people he inadvertently introduced me to, not only still exist in my life but I have met them all IN THE FLESH.
Alas the blogging community, like most things in life, has moved on with maybe only Martin and I still churning stuff out via that platform. [Well, he curates, I churn] And while technologies advances allows strategists to be even more connected in even more ways, the energy of the community is not the same as it was back in the early days of blogging.
Now it feels more aggressive.
More sharp elbows and self publicizing.
Wanting the spotlight on them rather than the work they do.
But then, the industry seems to value those who talk about the work more than those who actually make it … which kind-of highlights why the industry is in the state it finds itself in but refuses to acknowledge.
Emperor’s New Clothes anyone?!
Screenshot
That this blog is 20 years old blows my mind. I never thought it would last that long, mainly because I never gave much thought about how long I’d be writing the thing. It’s not always been fun – when I was receiving a lot of anonymous hate that resulted in me deciding to stop allowing comments was definitely a low point – but all in all, the whole experience has been pretty glorious.
In many ways, this is one of the longest committed relationships I’ve ever had.
And one of the most successful, hahaha.
The fact there are some people who have been reading it for almost as long as I have been writing it, is madness.
Have they no taste?
Have they got nothing better to do?
Or maybe they’re stuck in prison and this is part of their ‘sentence’.
The good news for them is there’s no way this will still be a ‘going concern’ in another 20 years … at least not in terms of how regular I’ve been writing posts for the past 2 decades. Not because I am running out of things to say [albeit Andy said I have only ever written 3 posts and just keep re-writing them in different ways] but because I’ll be – hopefully – doing other things with my life.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll always be grateful to advertising … it has given me a life I never could have dared to imagine … but I am increasingly spending more and more of my time working and collaborating with artists and I feel that’s where my future may be. Not because I don’t love what I do, but because I find their definition and expression of creativity even more interesting, challenging, open, provocative and progressive than where our industry is choosing to head.
But that’s not going to happen yet. Hell, it may not happen at all – I could get fired by all the artists tomorrow for all I know – which is why for the time being, I’ll keep happily juggling my two ‘lives’ while churning out daily blog posts at the same time.
Sorry, hahaha.
That said, the point of continuing this blog is different to what you may think and why I originally started it.
Because while it has helped me grow, learn, make new friends and even help build my professional reputation [which is hilarious when you read some of the stuff I’ve churned out, like this!] … it delivers something that is even more important to me.
Connection to my family.
I know … I know … that sounds weird-as-fuck, but what I mean is this:
A few years ago, Jill said that while she rarely ever reads my blog, when she does – she can hear my voice because of the way I write.
Put simply, how I write is how I talk … so when she reads my posts, it feels like I’m with her.
And she liked that.
Add to this that I’ve shared deeply personal and important moments in my life – from getting engaged to getting married, to Mum dying, to becoming a Dad, to getting Rosie – and Bonnie – to saying a tearful goodbye to Rosie, to moving from Singapore to HK to China to America to London to New Zealand [so far] … which means moving from cynic/WPP to Sunshine to Wieden+Kennedy to Deutsch to R/GA to Colenso [not to mention all the other highs and lows that have impacted or been introduced to my life over this period, be it death, covid, friends, family, health, books, chaos, and/or multitudes of weird, wild, crazy shit] … and this blog is no longer just a place where I rant rubbish, it’s a place my family can have me close even when I’m no longer here.
That means a lot to me.
Not because I want them to need me, but because I like knowing they can access me should they ever need me.
Or if Otis ever wants to introduce me to whoever becomes important in his life.
It’s why I’m going to keep writing it and why I’m going to move it to a free domain again, to make sure it always stay up … because what originally was a place just for me, has become a place that offers connection to the most important people to me.
And with that, I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has ever visited or commented.
Whether you meant it or not, you’ve given me far more than I ever imagined or hoped for.
Thank you. Love you. Grateful for you.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Corporate Evil, Corporate Gaslighting, Leadership, Management, Mediocrity
I was recently in a conversation with someone who is old school successful.
By that, I mean they built a business to success, rather than optimized it through short-cuts and re-orgs.
He’s pretty scathing towards the way many modern CEO’s run their business, especially those who have been ‘dropped in’ rather than built it themselves … thinking they’re both selfish [ie: doing things for their short-term gain, not the long-term benefit of the company they lead] as well as egotistical in belief they’re better than everyone around them and so everyone around them is disposable.
He’s always had the view you judge the quality of a CEO over decades, rather than financial quarters … but he also accepts those days have pretty much gone given too many CEO’s work for the needs of the market rather than their customers.
And it was here he said something that really hit me:
“When companies can only drive growth through ‘re-orgs, consolidation or buy-to-kill takeovers’ … they’re operating a Ponzi scheme more than a business plan”.
It reminded me of something I wrote about ages ago, when Frank Oz – film director, voice of Yoda and countless muppets and expert puppeteer – talked about how he felt Disney had completely failed to appreciate what they’d bought when they acquired Star Wars because it was negotiated by money men rather than artists and as such, would end up being a more superficial … less crafted … less influential … more commercialized expression of the Star Wars story and world.
Or said another way: They would ruin the very thing that made them want to spend billions on it in the first place.
Is he wrong?
Probably not … especially as some say their ‘strategy’ after acquisition was to churn out as much as possible in as short a time as possible so the market can be flooded with all manner of stuff so they can profit as quickly as possible from the hunger and good will of fans before they stop, step back and say, “what is this shit?”.
And if that isn’t scary enough, let’s remember this is coming from Disney who – whether you like them or not – are at least built on being a creative company who appreciates the importance of craft, emotion and story. So imagine what other companies are like where they don’t share any values beyond wanting to exploit as much cash as possible with as much outsourcing as possible.
Which all leads to a question the CEO I interviewed replied with, “Exactly!”.
“What happens when the CEO’s who are obsessed with outsourcing, optimizing, reorganizing discover they have no one else they can buy, fire or kill?
Or, even more terrifying [for them] … sell to?”
I know life goes fast, but maybe it’s time we recognize the best leaders are the one’s who look to the future rather than look down to maximize their pwn, personal present.
Filed under: Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Colleagues, Confidence, Contribution, Creativity, Culture, Easter, Leadership, Management, Mischief, My Fatherhood, Parents, Perspective, Privilege, Process, Professionalism, Provocative
Today is the last post until the 7th April, thanks to Easter.
As many of you know, I’m not religious in the least – but if there’s a holiday in it, especially a holiday with a justification to eat the stuff I don’t allow myself to consume at any other point of the year, I’m all in on it.
So before I get on with today’s post, I wish you all a happy chocolate eating period … let’s be honest, with the shit going on in the World right now, we deserve whatever can make us happy for a few minutes.
Right … so let’s get on with things shall we>
There’s a term that states:
“Ask for forgiveness rather than permission”.
I get why … because however open minded a company may claim they are, most only want to operate within the narrow guidelines they’ve always followed.
That’s why, if there’s something you want to do that you know challenges convention – it’s better to do it and apologise later [regardless of the outcome] than ask first and likely lose the chance forever.
I have decades of experience of doing this – and have the written warnings to prove it [haha] – but what enabled me to get away with it was this:
1. I always had/have a logic driving my actions. Even if others didn’t/don’t quite agree with it – there is a reason that drives my desire to do something commercially and creatively original, interesting and/or different.
2. Whatever I did never crossed any legal, moral, financial or commercial line. I may be a nightmare at times, but with a family of lawyers, I’m not a total idiot.
3. Regardless of the outcome – good or bad [and more often than not, it was good. Eventually – haha] I always came clean to my boss. The reality it I knew they’d always find out eventually and it was far better to own it than be owned by it.
4. For most of my career, I’ve worked with/for bosses who I deeply respect and who I knew not only understood who I was – and had hired me because of it – but shared a similar belief of pushing things to explore new things. Not for wreckless or egotistical reasons, but out of pure creative, cultural or commercial curiosity. [Albeit they tended to be more considered, deliberate and discerning in their choices than me]
And it’s this last point that I’ve come to realise is one of the most important and valuable things any employee could ask for. In fact I’d go one further, I’d say I regard it as one of the most important factors when looking for a job.
Right now, it appears too many managers are more focused on managing up rather than lifting their people up. Caring more about how they look to their bosses than enabling their teams to develop, grow and lead in such a way that their worth to the organisation is blatantly apparent.
On one level, I get it.
Times are tough out there and you don’t want your future placed entirely in the hands of others actions and behaviours – except that’s the whole point of being a manager. Or at least in my book it is.
As I’ve said many times over the years, I believe the role of a manager is to help their people embrace and grow their talent in such a way that when they leave – as we all do at some point – they have more opportunities than they ever imagined having and that when someone wants to hire them … its as much for who they are and what they do as it is there’s a role that needs to be filled.
Does that always happen? No.
Has it happened more often than not? Yes.
Now I should point out I am not claiming any credit for what people have gone on to achieve – they did it with their own talent, experience and work – but I am saying that is the driving force behind how I approach my job … how I’ve always approached my job … and how I hope my colleagues see me approaching my job.
Put simply, working towards what they’re working towards or putting them in positions of opportunity where they have the right to say “no” to something rather than it being decided for them by someone else.
And if that sounds selfless, it’s not.
Because fundamentally, if they do well, I do well.
It’s how I demonstrate my worth to the people who are evaluating my worth. Because I believe there’s more value in liberating my teams potential than supressing it so only I look good to the powers-that-be.
To be honest, I’m worried this is all coming out the wrong way. I’m not trying to big-up my management skills – at the end of the day, the only people who can evaluate if I’m any good are the people who work with me. The point of this post is more about the commercial and professional importance of elevating people’s potential rather than simply focusing on elevating their productivity.
Sure, everyone has a job they have to do.
Sure, everyone has standards and ‘quotas’ they have to hit.
But my view is you achieve much more than that if you let your team grow rather than just makie them work more. And faster.
It’s why I passionately believe my job is far less about giving the team permission, and far more about giving them protection.
Protection from others judgement.
Protection from others attempts to control.
Protection from others formulaic approaches that never led to anything great.
All underpinned in the knowledge you’ve set the right values, standards and rigor that will guide their choices and decisions for every challenge or opportunity – even if things don’t end up going quite as anyone hoped or planned.
In some ways, it’s a bit like being a parent.
Where your role is to teach your kid how to think about handling a situation, rather than what to specifically do.
Or said another way … trusting their judgement, rather than trying to control it, even if they do something differently to how you would have approached it.
Of course people need to earn that trust – as I need to earn it from them – but believing in their ability has to be the starting point, because if you don’t, not only are you failing to create the conditions where they will even ask for permission, you’re creating the conditions where they’ll be too frightened to do anything different in the first place.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Agency Culture, Apathy, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Confidence, Content, Context, Corporate Evil, Corporate Gaslighting, Curiosity, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Egovertising, EvilGenius, Experience, Facebook, Influencers, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Marketing Science, Perspective, Planning, Point Of View, Popularity, Relationships, Relevance, Reputation, Research, Resonance, Respect, Ridiculous, Strategy, Stubborness, Technology, Toxic Positivity, Trust, Truth
When I was growing up there was a newspaper cartoon called ‘Andy Capp’.
Andy was a cliche of the working-class – albeit he never actually works – and lives in Hartlepool in the North East of England.
Andy is married to his long suffering wife, Flo – and despite her working – they are almost on the verge of poverty because apart from Andy being unemployed, he lacks any motivation and thinks he can ‘beat the system’ because of his smarts.
By that, think early stage manosphere but replacing the sexualization of women with more pure sexism.
Anyway, the reason I say this is because I remember one cartoon where Flo told Andy that they were in debt to the tune of £1000.
To which Andy replied something like:
“I told you Flo, if you owe £100 you’re a failure. If you owe £1000 you’re an entrepreneur. If you owe a £10,000 you’re a businessman and if you owe £1,000,000 you’re a government. So what this means Flo, is we’re on the way up!”
I don’t know why I remember that cartoon among the millions of things I’ve seen over the years – but it has always left a lasting impression on me, which may explain why I’ve tended to only seek – or listen to – the advice I’ve got from people who either failed trying or succeeded by doing. Sounds obvious doesn’t it? Yet everyday I read/hear/watch people spouting unsolicited advice about subjects they have almost zero right or credibility to do – mistaking opinion as fact, interest as knowledge, knowledge as expertise or ego as cleverness.No wonder a famous football manager once told me to always learn from winners, not players.
Look, I get we all do this to some degree, but there’s a big difference between spouting an opinion or perspective and acting like you’re the indisputable, all-knowing, God-of-all.
The point is, regardless what Andy Capp says, we would not take his proclamations as fact.
We might accept it’s what he thinks is fact, but not what is true for all.
And yet, more and more, I’m witnessing business blindly follow the statements and proclamations of people who are the real-life, modern version of Andy Capp.
Kinda.
Because while they DO have jobs … and while they have even been successful in them … they are now telling people how to succeed in areas they have absolutely no right to talk about.
Not just because many have never worked in those areas, but they have a track record of making terrible choices when developing ideas outside of their core area of knowledge.
Enter Mark Zuckerberg.
I’m not doubting he’s smart.
I’m not doubting he loves technology.
I’m not even doubting his successes.
However, why are so many people listening [and investing] in his version of the future when not only is it designed around his ego and need for power and control – not to mention his desperation to be talked about in the same breath as Steve Jobs – this is a person who spent/blew/lost US$80 BILLION on the Metaverse??
EIGHTY. FUCKING. BILLION. DOLLARS.
I get innovation is expensive.
I appreciate all technology needs time to evolve.
I acknowledge that I have two of their Quest headsets.
But 80 billion?
To put it in context, the iPhone is said to have cost anywhere between $150 million and $3.2 billion. The creation of Google Maps is said to have cost around $1 billion to initially develop. Even the A380 aircraft – the biggest passenger aircraft in the history of aviation – ‘only’ cost around $25-35 billion to build.
And to add even more context …
80 billion dollars is the equivalent of being the 90th placed country in the World by GDP.
OK, so Zuck’s 80 billion was spent over a long period of time compared to how GFP figures are calculated, but still …
In fact, this suggests Zuck is someone who stubbornly believes he is always right.
Or at the very least, refuses to acknowledge where things aren’t working or where things need improving.
Sadly, we see this same sort of arrogance in our industry …
Where someone is successful in a particular disciple or with a particular agency or with a particular piece of work or with a particular promotion… and then suddenly, they believe they are more knowledgable, more successful and more authoritative than every other person in every other industry regardless of their actual level of experience and expertise.
And what is worse is they get away with it …
Because like Zuck, too many people hang onto their words like gospel, even though in many ways they’re speaking the same delusional clap-trap as Andy Capp, which suggests 2 uncomfortable truths.
1. The real problem with ego is not the person spouting the nonsense, but the people who choose to believe loud confidence over real experience.
2. Andy Capp may have been right because it does seem in business. ‘the more you lose, the more people believe you’re a success’.