Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Authenticity, Comment, Confidence, Content, Context, Creative Brief, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Empathy, Home, Honesty, Insight, Mischief, Planners, Point Of View, Pretentious Rubbish, R/GA, Relevance, Research, Resonance
When I was at R/GA, I hired this brilliant planner called Joel.
It was weird how we met because it all started at a Google Firestarter meeting I was talking at.
At the end of my presentation, it was opened up to the audience for questions.
I couldn’t see who was asking anything as the lights from the stage were shining straight into my eyes. Anyway, there was one question that shone out from the rest of the questions of the night – basically challenging the London bubble of planning – and while I didn’t know who asked it, I wanted to find who did to say I liked it.
Alas I never found out who did.
A few days later, I got a message on LinkedIn from the person who asked the question.
His name was Joel.
I invited him for a coffee later that week and suddenly the person who asked the best question of the night was asking the best questions of the day.
But what made them extra good was he wasn’t doing it to show off or stand out, he was doing it because he was interested in the topics and interested to hear my perspective.
We talked about his background, his ambitions and then he did the one thing that almost guaranteed I wanted to hire him.
He called comprehensive school, ‘big school’.
BIG SCHOOL.
I hadn’t heard that since I was a kid in Nottingham and immediately I loved Joel for it. Because for all the time he had spent in London, he had not lost his Bradford realness … and then it became clear why he asked the question about the London bubble, why he was asking questions why culture rarely reflected how marketing department express it and why was the ad industry more interested in convenience than authenticity.
How could I not hire someone like that?
So I did.
And he never disappointed because apart from being culturally, creatively and strategically talented – with an obsessive focus on what life is really like for people, especially outside of London rather than the cliched, London bullshit a lot of marketing likes to portray – his greatest trait was he always wanted to learn.
Always.
Now don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t always the model student … he would push back, he would challenge, he would question … but what he doesn’t know is that was when I was the happiest working with him, because it meant he was believing his words rather than just following others.
And while we always have to be careful we don’t blindly think whatever we believe is the right answer, having confidence and conviction in your gut and your talent is an often underplayed, undervalued, under-encouraged skill in a strategist … which is why I was so happy to see when I left R/GA, Joel had a mug made with my face and my words on it.
Not because he missed my ugly face and lack of vocabulary, but to remind him to trust his smarts, his instincts and his authenticity … but never to be a prick about it.
If I was proud of him before. I am even prouder of him now.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Brilliant Marketing Ideas In History, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Context, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Devious Strategy, Differentiation, Entertainment, EvilGenius, Experience, Innovation, Luxury, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Packaging, Positioning, Pretentious Rubbish, Toilet, Wash Your Hands You Dirty Pup, Women
The fragrance industry is fascinating.
I’ve written a bunch about this in the past [here, here and here for example] but nothing reinforces my view than the new fragrance bottle from Moschino.
Have a look at this …
On one hand I admire how the industry uses creativity to design distinctive bottles and packaging – mainly because the smelly liquid inside has little value – and I love the fearlessness they tend to embrace all they do, but there’s few industries as pretentious as the fragrance industry. Hell, they’re even more pretentious than a Swiss finishing school run by a Victorian father.
Now I accept some are being ironic – or have evolved to be that way, like Gucci for example – but the vast majority continue to have their heads so high up in the clouds, that even the biggest dope smokers couldn’t reach them.
I’m not sure which side Moschino are on, but anyone who makes a perfume bottle to look exactly like a disinfectant spray and proudly puts the words ‘toilette’ on it, suggests either the biggest misstep or act of fragrance genius I’ve seen in years.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand, Brand Suicide, Comment, Confidence, Context, Corporate Evil, Culture, Experience, Innovation, Loyalty, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Money, Positioning, Pretentious Rubbish, Resonance
A while back, I wrote about WeWork.
Or more specifically, how the Messiah complex of one of the founders led to him ultimately screwing the company up with an ill-advised planned IPO.
Of course, as is the way with corporate-insanity – especially when you label your company a ‘tech’ company, even if it isn’t – he walked away for failure with a huge pay-cheque, which means being a start-up founder is even more lucrative after the job than it is for a football manager, which blows my mind.
[Though apparently it was not enough, because one of the founders, Adam Neumann, is suing Softbank for ‘abuse of power’ … when in reality, the only case they really have is Softbank giving them so much cash and praise, it led to Adam gaining a Messiah-complex]
Full disclosure, I did some work for WeWork when they first started.
I met Miguel – one of the ‘normal’ founders – and found him, and his ideas for the company both interesting and exciting.
And for a while it was.
They were tapping into a need that wasn’t being met by traditional office lease companies.
They invested in building a WeWork community because they recognised the commercial attraction of it.
They identified ways to profit from giving ‘start ups’ and ‘independent workers’ the sorts of benefits only people in more traditional employment enjoyed.
But then three things happened:
+ They realised the flaw in their business model because they signed long term property leases but had short term tenants.
+ To get long term tenants, they had to appeal to corporates who could screw them down on price, adding further pressure to their position.
+ To counter corporate price negotiation, they re-positioned themselves as ‘masters of igniting corporate culture and efficiency’ – which, at best, was marginally true and at worst, was plainly rubbish … because ultimately they were a contemporary office space leasing company.
Sure they offered more than some of their competitors.
Sure they were incorporating logistics into their offering.
But fundamentally, they sold space in buildings for others to work in.
I’m not knocking that, there’s a lot of very successful businesses who do it.
And I genuinely think the original WeWork idea was a good one – albeit with commercial flaws – but when ego, ambition and cash-flow pressure come together, they can make a pretty deadly combination, which the World – and employees of WeWork – discovered when the IPO forced them to open their books to the World.
However, I can’t help but think if Adam Neumann had waited just 6 months longer before announcing the IPO, he may have discovered WeWork was so in demand by companies wanting to reimagine their office approach post COVID-19, that investors may have overlooked all of his blatant exploitation and delusion.
I’m so glad he didn’t.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand Suicide, Comment, Communication Strategy, Corporate Evil, Crap Campaigns In History, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Differentiation, Imagination, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Planning, Point Of View, Positioning, Pretentious Rubbish, Relevance, Resonance, Wieden+Kennedy
Once upon a time, endlines meant something.
They were distinct, explained a brands value or purpose.
And more often than not, were packed with personality.
Then Dan Wieden fucked it up for everyone.
You see his famous JUST DO IT became the benchmark for all brands.
Marketing Directors craved a line that summed up who they were in 3 words.
The number of words was more important than what it said … which is why you now get this …
What a pile of shite.
Bland, contrived, sameness …
Literally doing the opposite of what it is supposed to do.
Designed to appeal to the ego of the board rather than the hearts of the audience.
All because we have fallen into the trap of believing simplistic equates to effectiveness.
It doesn’t.
Simple might do … but simplistic is the lowest common denominator that requires zero thinking because it makes zero impression.
It’s why I sit here and can remember endlines from my childhood more easily than end lines I watched 10 minutes ago.
Handmade by Robots … for Fiat.
Refreshes the other parts other beers can’t reach … for Heineken.
Do you love someone enough to give them your last Rolo … for, ahem, Rolo.
Of course there’s a few modern endlines that work … GoPro’s ‘Be A Hero’ for example [though they went and fucked it up by changing it to utter blandom] … but in the main, companies seems to like endlines that sound like they know what they’re doing but don’t really say much at all.
At cynic we used to call these ‘Yoda Statements’, but what is even scarier is consultants are being paid a fortune to come up with this sort of twaddle.
That’s right, companies who claim to know how to help business grow are coming up with statements that literally make companies blend into everything else.
And yet they still are valued more highly by clients that companies who know how to push, provoke, inspire and capture the imagination of culture through creativity.
If anything tells you how mad the World is, surely one of them is that.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Consultants, Crap Campaigns In History, Creative Brief, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Empathy, Honesty, Imposter Syndrome, Innovation, Insight, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Money, Perspective, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning, Point Of View, Positioning, Pretentious Rubbish, Purpose, Relevance, Resonance, Social Media, Stubborness, Unfair Life
Of all the blog posts I’ve written over the years – and let’s face it. there’s been loads – there’s been a few I have constantly referred to.
One is Harrison Ford’s the value of value.
The other is Michael Keaton’s if you’re an employee, you’re still a business owner.
If you hadn’t worked it out by now, both are about ensuring you are not just paid for your creativity, but paid fairly.
You’d think that was obvious, but so many people seem to have forgotten that … including the creative industry, who have decided their value is better placed on the process of what they do rather than what they actually create and change.
Insanity.
But underpinning this is the creative person’s insecurity.
Somewhere in our psyche is the belief that if we charge money for what we create, we’re not being truly creative.
That we’ve sold out.
That we are imposters … capitalists in creative clothing.
Now there is an element of truth in all of this – because the moment you are working for someone else’s dollar, that someone has some influence over what you create. But that’s not unique to the creative industry. Nor does it mean you are selling out on your creative integrity by accepting payment for what you do.
Please note I said ‘payment for what you do’.
That does not mean we should be ignoring the needs, ambitions and goals that our clients want us to help them achieve, but it is acknowledging we should also be paid well for the creativity, craft, experience – and unique way of looking at the World – that goes into creating the work that allows us to achieve their needs in ways others can’t.
The reality is as much as many – especially in the creative industry – like to suggest money is the enemy of creativity, it’s not.
It can allow us to do amazing things.
Break new ground.
Explore new possibilities.
But more than that, while it may be differing amounts, we all need money.
And – to a certain extent – we all want money.
There is nothing wrong with that, just like there’s nothing wrong with being paid for what we do.
The real question should be how did we earn it and what did we do with it when we got it.
That’s how you can judge a persons integrity, not the fact you got paid for what you did and the talent you invested in it.
Sure, struggling may sound romantic in a Hollywood movie, but few of us want a lifetime of that and who can blame them!?
I still remember when Lars Ulrich of Metallica copped all manner of shit because he was the face for recording artists fighting against the role of Napster on the recording industry.
The insults he copped.
The distain he was thrown.
And all he was doing was trying to protect the value of his – and millions of other bands – creativity.
Why was that wrong?
Was it because, at that stage, he was already wealthy?
Is there some sort of rule to say that there is only so much you’re allowed to make before creative people need to shut up and be grateful for what they’ve got?
And what is that amount? No doubt, somewhere between ‘enough to live but not more than the rest of us’.
However somewhere along the line, society has decided to reposition creatively minded people as idealists … naive or even weak. Ignoring reality so they can wank-off on some self indulgent project that only interests them.
Which is total bollocks.
Apart from the fact I’ve never met a creative who isn’t insanely focused on the challenge they’ve been given – even if they have a very different opinion on how to get there to the client or the rest of the agency – the fact is we’ve now surrounded them with 10,000 different types of ‘strategist’, with 10,000 different opinions and agendas … which forces the conversations to be more about the importance of a discipline than the actual potential of the work.
And don’t get me even started on the fact a lot of these new forms of strategy are either [1] not really new or [2] not doing actual strategy, but executional management!
However all that aside, the reality is in all this, creative people have to take a responsibility for the situation they find themselves in.
Or, potentially even more specifically, the people who are training and developing them.
Because they are complicit in maintaining the belief your creative value and integrity is somehow linked to not being ‘diluted’ by payment. Which, when you think of it, is utterly ridiculous given value is created by what others will pay for it.
Schools … universities … agencies … everyone has an obligation to change this.
Not just for the future of their students or employees, but also for their own value.
Appreciating the economic value of what you create and what that creates is not dirty … it is the opposite of that.
It’s purity.
It means you have power in the conversation.
A right to fight for what you believe rather than what is convenient.
Creativity comes in many forms but right now, the form of ‘engineering’ is winning.
Where it’s less about what could be created and more about how you create something that has already been defined. Worse, something that has already been done.
So if you’re in the creative industry or thinking about it or know someone already in it.
Or, alternately, if you’re a teacher involved in the arts – or any subject for that matter – or careers advisor or a parent of someone who is in, or wanting to be in, the creative industry … then please read this article by Alec Dudson [the founder of Intern] because in it, he explains why ‘the economic value of creativity’ skill still remains largely absent from creative education … the impacts of that omission and, most usefully, how you can change it.
Creativity can change outcomes, possibilities and culture.
It has played a pivotal role in every great brand, product, idea and invention.
To devalue that is insane.
But not as insane as the people capable of creating it, also being complicit in it.
Know your worth. Charge your worth. Build your worth.