Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Confidence, Creativity, Effectiveness, Egovertising, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Perspective, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning
It’s not that long ago that advertising award submissions would talk about how many Facebook ‘likes’ a post got as proof of effectiveness.
As I wrote a few years ago [even though I can’t find the post, haha] that’s the equivalent of claiming someone is your fan simply because you asked them to pass the salt in a café and they did.
And while many were quick to try and blame Facebook for suggesting this as a metric, the reality – similar to those who blame Powerpoint for writing bad presentation – was it was the people who wrote the submission who were to blame.
For all the talk and conversation about effectiveness, it’s amazing how we continue to try and reframe what it is and how you achieve it.
Hell, even those who literally make a living out of it, do it with one eye on serving their own needs and wants – resulting in methodologies that, while not wrong, tend to be more about not failing than liberating.
But hey … they’re way smarter, objective and valuable than so much of the stuff we’re seeing being peddled left, right and centre.
Some things to note.
Having 100,000 followers on Instagram is not a demonstration of your strategic effectiveness.
Having 10,000 subscribers to your newsletter is not a demonstration of your strategic abilities.
Having clients write you a letters of thanks is not a demonstration of your strategic skills.
They’re all lovely.
They’re all things you should feel proud of.
But they are not a demonstration of your strategic chops.
Christ … I have 17,000 instagram followers and do you know how I got them?
Well, as much as I’d like to say it was down to the 18,000 excellent images I’ve posted over my 14 years on the platform, the reality is it was an accident.
Metallica linked my insta to one of their photos and overnight, I gained about 20,000 followers.
Literally overnight.
Now I know what you’re thinking …
“How come 20,000 people followed you but you only have 17,000 followers now?”
Well, it’s easy …
Once people realised I was not going to furnish them with insider knowledge of their hero’s and instead, would be bombarding them with photos of my cat, they left in droves.
Almost 10,000 people.
So those 17,000 people on my insta consists of about 10k who find me so insignificant they can’t even be arsed to stop following me and 7k of people I’ve overshared into submission.
To paraphrase Lee Hill who once told me, “turnover is sanity, profit is vanity” … we can say the same about followers/readers and happy clients.
Sure, having a lot of people like what you do is good … but it doesn’t mean you’re strategically effective.
It doesn’t even mean you’re even strategic … and yet so many seem to be mistaking their volume of insta/newsletter/client letters as proof that they are.
All that means is – at best – you’re good to the people who have chosen to follow/work with you and as good as that is, it’s worth remembering a lot of people think Donald Trump is the messiah which highlights many people don’t know what the fuck they’re doing or talking about.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Awards, Content, Contribution, Creativity, Culture, Effectiveness, Emotion, Empathy, Experience, Happiness, Leadership, Legend, Loyalty, Management, Reputation, Respect
A few weeks ago, I received a bouquet of flowers.
That’s unusual enough, but it’s who sent them to me and why that’s the interesting part.
Let me take this opportunity to say that I will not be telling you who it was or the specific reasons why … but there is a point to me telling you this story.
You see, the bouquet was sent by someone pretty famous.
As in, globally pretty famous.
And they did it because they wanted to say ‘thank you’ for some work I did for them a while ago.
Now, I am under no illusion that [1] they will have done the same thing for a bunch of people and [2] it was no doubt organised by someone in their management team … but the fact they did it is amazing.
Let’s be honest, most wouldn’t.
Let’s be even more honest, even the one’s who should, still don’t.
Now I appreciate I have somehow ended up being the exception to the rule with things like Green M&M’s … a Wayne Rooney Man Utd shirt … a custom built cigar box guitar … a signed Rick Rubin and Beastie Boys photograph … a years supply of Coke Zero … the Metallica x Rimowa suitcase, as seen above … but while they are all amazing [and there’s others, including the best reference I’ve ever received], this is different.
You see with all those other things, they came from people/organisations I had long-standing relationships with.
Measured in years.
But this wasn’t.
This came from a couple of weeks work I did for them over maybe a period of a month.
Now I appreciate I wasn’t paid for it [I was asked to help them by someone else I work with, who paid my fee instead] but it was a joyful experience and I was glad they were glad with what I helped do.
Which leads to the second reason why these flowers are amazing.
Because while they were in relation to the work I did – which was pretty small and well over a year ago – it was kind-of giving me some credit for them winning a major award … which, frankly, is utterly preposterous.
I’m not humble bragging.
OK, I am, but I don’t mean to be.
Not am I trying to act all coy.
My involvement was only related to distributing their work, not creating it.
It’s like Spielberg giving me a gift because I told some friends ET was a good movie and they went to see it.
OK, maybe that is a bit too humble [haha] but the reality is their award was about their talent, hard work and quality of work, so for them to even consider others at this time, is testimony to how brilliant a human they really are.
And they are.
Proper brilliant.
Even more so given the first time we spoke, they asked why I didn’t like them, because the people who’d got me involved had told them that, ‘for a laugh’.
Pricks.
Which gets to the point of this post.
I know my role in their work was important, but – in the big scheme of things – insignificant.
But they don’t want me to think that way.
More than that, they won’t let me think that way.
They want me to know they see what I did. That they acknowledge and value it … and that’s amazing.
They have so many people in their life, but they looked out for someone they met a few times.
Talk about making me want to do more for them.
Talk about making me want to do all I can for them.
Talk about making me feel ten feet fucking tall because of them.
I get this may have come from their management more than them, but even then that’s amazing. Plus they signed the card so it’s not like this happened without their awareness … even if they have a million cards with their signature on it available to be used
Now I am not walking around expecting them to dump a pile of cash in my bank account.
I’m not even expecting to do any more work for them.
But I am thinking I want them to win.
Win in life. Win in their career. Win in everything.
They have a cheer leader for them, in me, for life.
Now you could say they’re pandering for popularity … that this is all some sort of ego trip.
And I get why you’d say that. But you’d be wrong.
Because they were tough and demanding.
Not just on people like me, but also on themselves.
Because this work was more than just ‘putting something out’, it was putting themselves out.
There’s a lot of backstory I could talk about to explain this, but that’s not my place … but what I will say is that there’s a lot of talk about leadership, but this may be one of the best examples I’ve ever seen or experienced in my life.
I’m glad they won that award.
They deserved it.
For their work. For their talent. For their vision. For their character.
And when was the last time you could say that about someone in a corporation?
So thank you to this person. You didn’t just restore my faith in humanity, you surprised it … putting aside that when I told Andy, he said if I got a ‘particpation award’, what did the people who actually played a real role in their success and achievement get.
Which is why if there’s an award for asshole, he would win every time.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Complicity, Corporate Evil, Corporate Gaslighting, Diversity, Inclusion, Management, Politics
I’m old. So I’ve heard companies talk about their ‘culture’ a billion times.
And in all but 3 cases, what they actually meant was company complicity.
Where the expectation was never to challenge or question.
That doing that – even with the best of intentions – would result in you being labelled ‘a bad fit’ where you would then be sidelined or undermined. Destroying people’s potential and confidence while spouting contrived statements such as “our people are our greatest asset”.
What’s worse is that this behaviour often makes victim – and they are a victim – feel compelled to stay in a bid to prove they are worthy.
In essence, taking endless amounts of abuse to try and win over the very people trying to destroy them.
And what makes it even worse is that if they succeed, they’ve ultimately lost because they’ve had to deny who they are to be who they aren’t.
There’s loads of stories about this on Corporate Gaslighting … with many talking about how they felt paralysed to leave their toxic job because on top of everything else, they feared if they made a sideways move, they’d look like they’d failed to others in their community and profession. [Which is why I loved the picture at the top of this post]
That’s how messed up a lot of ‘company culture’ really is.
Which is why the older I get, the more some words my Dad once told me ring true.
“A company with a positive culture is one where their beliefs are expressed by their people in a million different ways. It’s never rules where everyone expresses them in exactly the same way”.
You may be asking how a Human Rights lawyer would have such insight about company culture. Well it was simple, a lot of his success came from working with the people who were once labelled the ‘bad fit’.
Culture is a salad never a smoothie – as someone I can’t remember once told me.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Airports, Attitude & Aptitude, Creativity, Culture, Leadership, Management, Marketing Fail, Mediocrity, New Zealand, Planes, Relevance, Reputation, Singapore
This may be the most privileged posts I’ve ever written.
So for the last 19 odd years, I’ve spent a lot of time on planes. Mainly flying long haul. And because I’ve moved countries a lot, I’ve got to experience a whole bunch of different airlines.
As an aside … when we moved to NZ, I genuinely thought it would be the end of my plane habit, without realising that when you live on the other side of the planet – and have clients in Europe, the US and Asia – you’re going to spend a fuck load more times on planes, not less.
Yep, I’m an idiot.
Anyway, in the time I’ve been travelling, I’ve experienced it all.
Good airlines, bad airlines, questionable airlines.
I should point out that when I say bad or questionable – it’s never about the safety of the plane [bar one occasion in China and one in Portugal] it’s more to do with the service and/or the passengers on it. I mean, who can forget the time I woke up on Air Canada, flying to Toronto from Shanghai, and found a 7 year old pissing on my blanket while his Mum watched and did absolutely nothing. No, that is not a joke.
But one airline that has consistently been great has been Singapore Airlines.
Excellent planes. Excellent service. Excellent facilities.
Now, I don’t fly them as much as I obviously did when I lived there – so I was quite excited to be flying with when returning from a trip to Amsterdam.
The first leg was up to its usual quality, but the Singapore to NZ leg was a bit weird.
First of all they changed the gate at the last minute to a totally different terminal, which meant I ended up being 3 minutes away from missing my flight – which would have only been the 2nd time I’ve ever failed to get on my plane. Then, on boarding, I discovered it was possibly the oldest plane I’d ever seen Singapore Airlines fly. Admittedly not as old as the one I flew with Air Koryo – the North Korean state airline – but proportionally, the same.
So not a great start.
But what really got me was the service.
The people on board were their usual brilliant self, but when it came to lunch, this is what they gave me to eat my food with.
Jesus Christ, were they serving me a 4957 course lunch?
Now I appreciate I sound like a privileged prick here – and I did acknowledge that at the very beginning of the post – but while this may sound the epitome of ‘first world problem’, when you’ve experienced almost 20 years of attention-to-detail perfection from Singapore Airlines, these things stand out.
Worse, they get remembered.
Which is why companies need to remember that the service they offer creates the minimum standard for the experience customers expect and the more they try to cut corners, the more all that hard work and effort goes to waste.
I get some routes are less profitable than others.
I get there’s only a certain amount of planes available.
But as the father of a friend once told me, “the sooner you see your reputation as a cost, the sooner you lose your reputation.”.
Hopefully SIA work that out faster than it has taken adland.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Effectiveness, Empathy, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Mediocrity, Planners, Relevance, Strategy
So the good news for you all is this is the last post for 2 weeks.
Yep, you’ve guessed it – I’m on a holiday, I mean a work trip.
Or should I say trips. Plural.
First to Europe. Then Australia. Then LA … I know, I know, I’m a prick.
Now given I pre-write my posts [for example today is the 25th Jan] I appreciate I could still cover this period, but let’s be honest – after 18 years, I’m running out of things to say so we could both do with the break from each other.
What that means is this is the last post until March 4.
MARCH!!!
How the fuck have we got there so soon? Oh, I suppose we haven’t yet have we … but anyway, March 4 is a Monday, so you get to have multiple weekends before I ruin your week again.
You’re welcome.
So now what do I do after writing that long-winded introduction?
Fuck knows.
But recently I saw a couple of things that I thought were particularly good and both revolve about intelligence in marketing rather than the egotistical commodification of it.
As I’ve written a few times before, I’m a bit fed up of the ‘hustle culture of commentary’ that our industry has got itself into. Where everyone seems to speak like they’re gods and gurus who have invented or reinvented the World.
That doesn’t mean they’re idiots – many say stuff that is genuinely interesting – but so much of it has an air of self-interest. Hijacking topicality for self-capitalisation.
Though the ones who claim they’ve got the answers to everything make me laugh – especially when they do nothing with it other than pedestal spouting. I mean, how stupid is that if they think it’s going to change the world. But maybe its because somewhere along the way, they’ve realised what they’re claiming is not ‘new’, just new to them and all they’re doing is reinforcing how little they know about their industries history or life outside their bubble.
That’s not wrong, we all do that to a degree, but it tends to lead to people changing their ways rather than doubling-down on their ego.
But even those people aren’t as annoying as the ones who claim some sort of ownership over something someone has actually done, because they spouted something vaguely associated with the topic on Twitter/X about 6 years earlier.
As I said a while back, it will only be a matter of time before someone makes a paper plane and claims they’ve invented flight.
Look, I’m all for thinking out loud – hell, I’ve been doing it on here for almost 2 decades – but when it’s conveyed with the confidence of a mediocre white man [copyright Chelsea] then that’s where the problems start. At least for me.
There are some brilliant people out there … genuinely brilliant. People who do stuff or try stuff with what they think and say. And a lot of them aren’t even on social media. But unfortunately there seems to be a lot more who are camped out on social platforms … churning out an endless stream of strategic myths, obviousness or bullshit … using a tone that suggests they’re innovators and anyone who dare challenge them, is a luddite.
It’s kind of the Trump strategy and sadly, like Trump, it works with many.
Which makes me wonder, ‘what if I’m wrong?’.
And you know what … I could be. And I’m open to be.
But popularity is not a sign of originality … or accuracy … or smarts … and I think those things are pretty important too.
That said, if we’re going down this imitation intelligence path, at least make people think rather than try to demand how they should think. And recently I saw two things that did just that.
The first was this:
Now I appreciate a strategist supporting a message of not getting lost in planning may sound a bit weird … but apart from everything else, it makes a welcome change from the overly complex schtick we seem to be celebrating and advocating for right now.
Of course thinking things through is important. But one thing we don’t seem to talk about a lot is the importance of knowing when to stop. So you can put things into motion rather than putting them into an endless loop of consideration.
I got given a piece of advice once I’ve held on to for a long time.
“Be rigorous as hell until you find something exciting …
… then stop and protect it at all costs.”
Now I appreciate the person who told me this was very successful so could afford to say that, but their point was that it was this approach that had got their position. In essence, they advocated for planning to show them the way not obscure it.
I like this view.
When I was starting out, strategy was valued when it was powerful simple … delivering a path to the bigger, better places with sharpness, potency and focus.
But now it seems we’re not like that.
The general narrative appears to be ‘we live in different times with different considerations’ and so we need a completely different approach to the work we do.
And while they’re not wrong about a lot of that … we’re forgetting what strategy is for so now we’re at this weird place where it appears the value is in the complexity rather than the potent, fierce, simplicity.
Please note I say simplicity, not simplistic – which is another thing some people do in an attempt to look like Einstein, when all they’ve done is reduce Liquid Death’s success to “a can that looks different to all other water cans”.
But I digress …
The reality is strategy that is all about complexity is harder to execute, easier for people to hide and more focused on what is done rather than why we’re doing it in the first place.
And that’s why I liked the clip above … because it was a reminder we need to protect what we want to do rather than only care about where the process will lead us.
Which is why I also liked this:
Sure, I get it’s a retrospective, observational view … but it’s interesting and simple.
And funny.
Plus if it was true, it would be a piece of fucking amazing reframing strategy.
Not that people would say that or see that.
Or at least not as simply as the originator articulated.
Which reminds me of the image we used in our Cannes Strategy Is Constipated, Imagination Is The Laxative talk with the image of all the different strategic frameworks that say the same thing in ever more complicated ways.
My Dad once said that people who want to show how smart they are, aren’t that smart.
That their need to demonstrate their brain is a demonstration of their insecurity.
I wonder what he’s say if he was alive today and saw how a lot of my industry was behaving.
Because I think he’d have a different view.
That their talk is not about insecurity, but distraction.
It’s why I loathe when I hear people say ‘we’ve done all the work so you don’t have to’.
Oh my fucking god.
But I appreciate this post is getting so long that I’ll be back by the time you’ve finished reading it. That is if anyone did read this, so I’ll just leave you with this …
There is no ‘secret’ to being good.
Even the most talented people work hard at developing it.
In a world promoting hustle, we need to give more value to graft.
I get that’s not a popular thing to say, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
So stay open to different views but be cautious of definitive claims.
Especially from people who can’t point to what they’ve done beyond how many people follow them. Because you just might find they value speed over substance and you don’t want their ego to be at the expense of your growth.
Huge apologies for the epic rant, a bit like old time – ha.
See you in March.