Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Colenso, Colleagues, Confidence, Conformity, Respect, Si Vicars, Wieden+Kennedy
One of the most overused words in advertising is ‘confidence’.
It’s a characteristic that tends to fail in 2 key ways:
First, it tends to represent who the brand wishes was their customer, rather than who is.
Second, too often its presented in superficial, contrived and over-the-top ways … as if the brand is scared their audience won’t be able to tell what they’re trying to convey unless overt.
Thirdly, a lot of the time it ends up reeking of a brand insecure in who they are and what they believe.
The result of which is that the work often ends up bring a repellent to audiences, rather than a beacon.
There’s an obvious reason for this and that’s real confidence is expressed – and felt – in the small stuff, not the big, which is why one of the best true expressions of confidence was this brilliant Southern Comfort spot from WKNY back in 2012.
I still remember seeing it for the first time.
I was visiting WK Amsterdam and Martin Weigel showed it to me.
Didn’t need any explanation.
Didn’t need over-the-top behaviour.
Didn’t even need any bloody words.
Confidence oozed out of every moment, by nature of it not trying to.
Now, I appreciate being half Italian, I saw these men on the beaches of Pescara, every year that I was growing up – so it could be argued I was ‘pretuned’ to comprehension. But truth be told, whether you’re from Italy or Iceland … everyone got it.
Not just intellectually, but emotionally.
And that line, ‘Whatever’s Comfortable’.
How good was that? The embodiment of confidence, without having to say it.
Just a way to acknowledge some people are at ease with who they are. That they have a belief in who they are. That they are accepting of who they are, regardless of comparison or competition.
No delusion.
No arrogance.
Just a comfort in who you are, rather than pretending to be who you’re not.
And frankly, there hasn’t been anything that has come close to that piece of work since that piece of work, because all I see these days is either more blatant try-hard shit – which reveals a brands lack of confidence, rather than an abundance of it – or manosphere, toxic bullshit.
That was until recently …
The photo above is Simon Vicars, our CCO – also known as the nicest man in advertising.
He is the living proof that ‘good guys’ don’t always come last. He is also proof that being a good human doesn’t mean you’re not talented. Because he is, sickeningly so.
But as I wrote before, he is also a bit of a cheeky bastard. Never with malice, but with a slight mischievousness that somehow, you can’t help finding endearing.
And how does he pull this off?
Well, because he may be the most confident man since the Southern Comfort man.
Sure, he’s whiter than the Dulux Dog.
Sure, he has a nose that Concord would be jealous of. [and I’m hardly one to talk!]
Sure, he has the upper torso you would imagine a slight gust of wind could knock over.
But this just proves my point because how else can you explain him going to a pub [with me] to interview a potential job candidate … asking if they were hungry [it was lunchtime to be fair] and despite them and me saying ‘no’, goes ahead and orders a fucking massive Chicken Parm before proceeding to scoff it down in front of both of us.
To be fair, he looked a bit sheepish as this photo captures – but he still did it – and frankly, it may be one of the most incredible and understated acts of confidence I’ve ever seen.
Partly because he is so nice that I know he did it because he was starving with hunger and was going to be starved of time. Partly because I got a kick of staying quiet at different moments of the interview so I could watch him have to swallow massive pieces of chicken so he would be able to respond to the questions with no massive pause. And partly because – where so many would deny their truth so that they ‘fitted in’ – he did what was good, right and comfortable for him … which, when you come to think of it, is one of the greatest acts of self-respect and transparency you could receive from someone.
So here’s to Si Vicars. He may not look it, but he may be the most confident man in the World.
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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: Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Colenso, Health, Si Vicars
A few weeks before I left for Cannes, Colenso Towers experienced a dose of gastro that took half the agency out.
I don’t know who was patient zero, but I have my suspicions [Augustine, cough cough] but after bravely fighting against the virus, I too was eventually taken down – resulting in me feeling utterly terrible at home for a few days.
But not as terrible as the plumbing system in Auckland must have experienced that week.
Or my local supermarket, where I went to buy some fruit, and then – to my utter mortification – start vomiting as soon as I walked in. Whether I can ever show my face in there again is in question, but it does show how utterly ill I was.
How everyone at Colenso was.
But the thing that is special about the place is that it’s full of great humans who happen to be creativly talented. So rather than everyone trying to be some macho, toxic bullshit – people are genuinely compassionate about others. Even towards me, which is bordering on bonkers.
No one sums this up than Simon Vicars, our CCO.
What can I say about the man that I have not written before?
Put simply, Si is horrifically talented … disgustingly brilliant and outrageously decent.
OK, so he can also be a mischievous bastard, but he does it with such a warm smile you find yourself thanking him for his abuse – which now I come to think of it, is next-level toxic manipulation. But let’s put that aside for now as it ruins the rest of this post … but the fact is, when I was at home feeling like death, Si checked in on how I was.
More than that, he checked in on the weekend when he could/should have been spending it with his own family.
OK, it was just a text.
In fact it was just a text comprising of 4 words.
But as he is one of the industries most awarded writers, you know those 4 words really conveyed compassion, concern and care.
Or that’s what he will likely argue at the HR tribunal.
Love you Si … you delightful freak.