Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Australia, Community, Corporate Evil, Creativity, Culture, Delusion, Education, Egovertising, Food For Thought, Imposter Syndrome, Individuality, Influencers, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Mediocrity, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning, Professionalism, Reputation, Strategy, Sydney, Yahoo
A few weeks ago, I went to Sydney where I had the very real honour of spending a few days mentoring a bunch of talented people who were all relatively new to the industry.
One of the things that I heard from quite a few of them was the pressure they felt to build their reputation as a ‘thought leader’ on platforms like LinkedIn.
After telling them that a good 90% of what you read on there is nothing more than ego landfill [of which I am perfectly placed to make that statement given I’ve been spouting rubbish on the internet for over 20 years] … the reality is the best reputations are built on what you do, not what you say.
But I get it.
When you’re starting out, you’re desperate for professional acceptance and/or validation so you can find yourself blindly following whatever or whoever is currently popular amongst your peers – even more so if you’re based outside of the big cities where so much of the industry focus is concentrated.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying there is anything wrong with expressing your thoughts and ideas.
Frankly, it can be a brilliant way to learn, evolve and grow.
Hell, one of the best things about doing this blog for so long is seeing how some of my opinions have changed or been honed through the feedback/commentary/abuse I’ve received from so many people on here.
Of course, it helps that most were/are very smart and talented, but I fully acknowledge their input to my output has had a huge impact on what I do and how I think. But – and it’s a very big but – you only get real value out of expressing your thoughts and ideas if you’re doing it because [1] you want to – rather than feel you have to – and [2] you never adopt a tone of self-righteous, condescending, smugness.
If you do that, you may as well have a blinking neon sign over your head that screams, ‘Delusional, egotistical, blinkered dickhead’.
[I say ‘dickhead’ because, sadly, 95% of these sorts of people are men. White men.]
And yet, despite this, there’s still a hell-of-a-lot of people out there who adopt a tone that suggests they believe everything they do – and I mean EVERYTHING – is ‘unquestionably and undeniably right’ and anyone who dares to have a counter point of view, regardless of their experience, success or knowledge of their industries history, is automatically wrong.
A certain academic is a poster child for this sort of behaviour.
With these people, I always remember something my old man used to say, which was: “if someone needs to let others know how smart they are, they’re not that smart” – or said another way – if you meet someone who wants to be seen as a thought leader, they’re probably not and they probably won’t be.
Which is why the best advice I can give is to say ‘be you and no one else’.
I get the desire to feel like you belong.
I appreciate popularity has seemingly become more important than experience these days.
But if you ever feel pressured into writing on Linkedin because that’s what ‘thought leaders do’, remember this quote from Dennis Thatcher and save your energy for when you do have something to say or explore.
“It’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt”.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Context, Creativity, Culture, Dad, Education, Effectiveness, Emotion, History, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning, R/GA, Wieden+Kennedy
In his iconic Ted Talk speech, ‘Do Schools Kill Creativity’, the great Sir Ken Robinson wondered what Shakespear was like …
When he was a child …
At school …
In English class.
I still remember how it felt when I heard him say that, because frankly … I never had thought of Shakespear as a kid.
Hell, in many ways, I didn’t even think of him as a real person, as my only exposure to him had been through books and films … which all reinforces what the great Bob Greenberg, co-founder of R/GA, used to say, which was:
“People know you how they’re introduced to you”.
It seems obvious, but we continually forget it.
It’s why there’s a whole generation who know Jordan as a shoe brand more than an iconic basketballer … know Wieden+Kennedy as a brilliant ad agency rather than the outcome of two brilliant – but spotlight-reluctant – humans coming together to make anything but ‘ads’ … and know the Mona Lisa as a painting, rather than a portrait.
This last one is especially pertinent because I recently saw this …
… and yes, like Sir Ken’s comment on Shakespear, I was faced with the realization that the Mona Lisa was a person before a painting.
Too often we base our viewpoints on the mistaken belief that history only starts when we discover it … which may explain why there’s so much stuff spouted on Linkedin that suggests a person has just created something radical, when in reality it’s just a new take on an old lesson.
Which is why it may be useful if we all followed the advice my Dad always encouraged when exposed to something new.
In essence he asked himself – or others – 3 questions.
What do you know about them?
What do others know about them – that you don’t?
What can you know about them that will tell you who they are or how they got here?
It ensured he was always able to talk from the context of history and present … ensuring his viewpoint was grounded in truth but wrapped in modern contexts and perspectives. Which means, for someone who wasn’t a strategist, he was a fucking brilliant strategist.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, China, Colleagues, Content, Context, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Distinction, Diversity, Emotion, Empathy, HHCL, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Mum & Dad, Perspective, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning, Point Of View, Police, Professionalism, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance, Strategy, Stubborness, Truth, Wieden+Kennedy
When I started in this business, 10,000 years ago, I was a pain-in-the-ass.
OK, I admit … I still am, but for different reasons these days.
Because back then, my annoying trait was driven my eagerness to learn.
Not just from the people around me, but anyone who I thought had – or was – doing something interesting.
It meant I had no boundary as to who I spoke to.
Not just in the agency, but out of it too.
It resulted in me talking to all manner of different people – regardless of their role or level – the only requirement being they had to doing something I thought was interesting.
Not because I was trying to gain favor.
Not because I wanted to earn ‘social clout’.
But because I was, as my Mum had taught me, interested in what other people were interested in … and I thought who better to look at than the people who had, or were doing, something that interested and intrigued me.
What this meant was I not only built up my context and breadth of knowledge pretty rapidly, it also meant I built connections that I may otherwise not ever get to. Not that, my goal was that, it was just a byproduct of it.
And while I definitely got this trait from my parents, at the time I just thought it was normal … something everyone did. Until I realised it wasn’t.
One day I got called into one of my bosses office and asked what the fuck I was doing.
A client had mentioned to him I’d been in touch [in a nice way] and my boss couldn’t work out for the life of him, how – or why – that had happened.
As he started telling me that I need to spend my time focused on my job rather than interrupting people from doing there’s … I told him that I was doing my job. That I’d not let anything fall through the cracks and it was at that point he inadvertently gave me one of the best lessons I’ve ever had in my career.
You see, when he realised I was meeting/chatting to all these people but still fulfilling my responsibilities, he knew he didn’t have a leg to stand on. Worse, he knew I knew.
And that kind-of liberated me to go after anyone or anything I found interesting.
It’s how I met Paul Britton, the Forensic Profiler who brought the discipline to the UK.
It’s how I met Clotaire Rapaille, the author of The Culture Code – which has had a huge influence on my work.
It’s how I met Lee Hill … who I am incredibly grateful is still in my life as my mentor and friend.
And despite all that being decades ago, I have continued to do it throughout my career – resulting in me getting to learn and understand perspectives from International Football Managers to Sex Workers.
Or said another way …
By following what interests me rather than what is expected of me, I’ve ended up with a wonderful range of wonderful people who continue to inform, educate and advice me on what I do and how I do it.
The reason I say this is that I am pretty surprised how many people only want to engage with people of a similar level to them. Not all, admittedly … but far too many.
I don’t know if it is nerves, respect, the fear of looking like a social climber or even the bloody class system but what I can honestly say is that my ‘informants’ [as I called them in Heather Lefevre’s great book, ‘Brain Surfing’] still provides me with more insight and creativity than all the frameworks, systems, social listening tools and focus groups – put together.
Which is why when people ask me what they can do to develop their skills, I tell them to not follow the words of the Linkedin pundits and gurus, but wherever their curiosity takes them or intrigues them. Because if you only play where you’re comfortable, you’ll never see everything you want is on the other side of it.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Brands, Creative Development, Creativity, Differentiation, Distinction, ECommerce, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Perspective, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning, Point Of View, R/GA
When I worked at R/GA, they got very excited about D2C brands.
Part of this is because they got a lot of business from brands who wanted their help to design the infrastructure for their D2C ambitions. Part of it was because they loved to talk about transformation and saw this as a major shift in brand development. And part of it is because a lot of their work – especially with NIKE – revolved around this type of thinking.
[Though I did laugh when a couple of their senior people in NY tried to convince me ‘Fuel Band’ was more valuable and important to NIKE than ‘Just Do It’ … and hated the fact I refused to buy their logic]
Look, I really liked R/GA – specifically the first year I was there – but I always felt the whole D2C approach was flawed. Didn’t have to be, but the way people/brands/companies saw it, made it that way.
When I at Wieden, P&G asked our opinion on the Amazon dash button.
They were massively excited by it as they saw it as a way to drive sales while being able to massively cut their marketing costs.
For those who don’t know what the dash button was, it was a piece of tech – connected to a specific item – that allowed customers to order from Amazon at the press of a button.
So if you spotted you were running out of washing powder, you could press the dash and within a day or so, you would get a new box delivered.
All good in theory except the only real winner would be Amazon.
And we told them that. Because the moment you let your brand become a commodity, your value is destroyed as is all the work you’ve put in to get into that position.
But that didn’t stop every man and their dog seemingly bang on about the virtues of D2C.
Nor did that make companies who had previously talked about the importance of brand, jump on the bandwagon.
And while some went on to achieve great success with this strategy – albeit, having to spend millions on building the brand value of their D2C org – the vast majority crashed and burned after, at best, a small moment in the spotlight.
That’s not to say new ideas are wrong – far from it – it’s to say that too much of the industry, despite what they may claim, are obsessed with the quick wins and short-term gains.
Worse, the reason for this is often less commercial and more egotistical.
A desperate need to look like they’re ‘in the know’ to those around them. A desire to be part of the cultural clique rather than risk being left behind by those who are skeptical, cynical or closed-minded.
I get it … no one wants to look slow or old or out-of-date and everyone wants a shot to elevate themselves up in collapsed time.
But as much as new ideas require a leap of faith – and that leap often takes a degree of courage – when it also requires you to let go of all you know and believe, then it says more about what you want to be than who you are.
Now of course, we all have our egos and ambitions – and that’s natural – but when your strategy to get where you want to go is chasing trends rather than following your values, that’s when you can find yourself in a whole heap of trouble.
Because following the pack without objectivity, values or context doesn’t make you an entrepreneur – it makes you an ambulance chaser – and once you have that reputation, you end up doing to yourself what D2C did to many companies … and that’s a position no one who claims to be ‘an expert in brands and brand building’ should ever find themselves in.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Context, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Dad, Design, Jill, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Paula, Perspective, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning, Women
I know it’s Halloween, but how I’m choosing to ignore it because I wrote this post ages ago and I can’t be arsed to write a new one to celebrate the ghosts and ghouls.
Hey, at least I’m being honest.
So anyway, I love design.
In fact, I would go one further …
I think design can see opportunities most strategists could never pull off.
This is not because my wife is one.
And some of my closest friends.
It’s because design can make the impossible, happen.
It can make a teetotaler buy alcohol.
It can make static images move.
It can make you want to pick up a specific product on an aisle of identical products.
It can open possibilities to people who have been denied for years.
And it can make you pay a premium for something that does exactly the same thing as everything else.
This last one is exemplified by something I saw when I was recently in China. Specifically this:
How lovely is that?
Yes, I really am talking about IT and mathematical equipment.
And while I assume the manufacturers are trying to attract a female skewed buyer – given its lipstick pallete inspiration [Don’t shout at me, I said skewed, not exclusively women because I totally appreciate the role cosmetics play across culture] – it’s such a refreshing change from the old, lazy, sexist and conformist ‘just make it pink’ bullshit that so many marketers used to think was the most efficient and effective way to engage the ‘female customer’.
Like this.
Or this.
Or this.
Or this.
Or this.
But it’s not just because it’s an update on the lowest-common-cliche we’ve seen – and still see – from brands. No, what I also love is the craft and consideration that has obviously gone into all of it.
It’s wonderful.
It’s refreshing.
It’s something I bet few planners would ever come up with, because one of the biggest problems we have as a discipline is our desire to reveal our self-appointed ‘intellectual superiority’ and frankly, creating a set of IT equipment that has been inspired by lipstick palettes is probably something the vast majority of us would see as ‘beneath us’.
And that’s problematic for a whole host of reasons.
From the fact we prefer to give answers rather than gain understanding right through to our motivation seems to be more about impressing our peers than doing things that actually change outcomes. Not in reality, but theoretically. Hence we read so many ‘hot takes’ about what’s wrong with work from people who have never made anything of note whatsofuckingever.
It all reminds me of something my Dad used to say, which – because I love the Lucille Ball quote about the same issue – I’ve paraphrased to this:
A person who wants others to know how intelligent they are may be smart, but they’re not very clever.
And that is why I adore what my wonderful and brilliant friend, Paula Bloodworth, recently spoke about at a conference when she said, ‘the smartest thing a planner can be, is stupid’.
Happy ‘trick or treat’.