Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Comment, Communication Strategy, Complicity, Context, Corporate Evil, Crap Campaigns In History, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Egovertising, Food, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Marketing Science, Mediocrity, Meetings, Perspective, Relationships, Relevance, Reputation, Research, Respect, Strategy, Systems, Wieden+Kennedy
It’s been a while since I’ve had a real rant, but this is going to be one.
So if you need a peaceful start to your week, look away – otherwise strap yourself in.
One of my real worries for the future o f our industry is not AI … it’s our lack of seriousness.
Before I go on, there’s a couple of things I need to clarify.
First, I am not advocating we add even more process, systems, data and/or logic in what we do – frankly, they’re increasingly becoming an obstacle to both creativity and commerciality as they increasingly view audiences [or worse, ‘consumers’] as walking wallets and the only aim is to bombard them at the moment of potential transaction.
Neither am I suggesting we should be treating all we do like we’re saving the planet with high-concept art. There may be cases where this approach is the right approach … but when I say a lack of seriousness, I mean it in terms of how we think about what we do, more than what we actually create.
For years, the ad industries ‘piece de resistance’ – The Super Bowl – has been a car crash for advertising and marketing. An endless stream of contrived, unsubtle – and often, unfunny – sponsored jokes that feature a production line of celebrities who are all willing to destroy their legacy for a dump-truck of cash being poured into their retirement pension plan.
It’s so depressing.
Sure, every year there’s one – maybe two – ads that really stand out. This year, for me, it was Manscaped … an ad that didn’t feature a celeb, had an actual idea and was actually related to the product they make. But even then, was it up there with 1984 … or Born of Fire? Probably not, but it was fun, memorable and – while not related to the Super Bowl per se – was made for the Super Bowl audience’s entertainment. As was Coin Base’s ‘karaoke’ spot … which, in terms of understanding the Super Bowl ‘ad break’ context they were in and the typical US audience mindset in that context … was a clever idea.
Look, I get how much pressure is in a Super Bowl spot. I’ve been there. It’s a fucking nightmare. There’s an almost endless amount of pressure placed on the work as every-man-and-their-dog adds more judgement, demands and mandatories … fearing their multi-million-dollar investment will be negatively judged by a global audience. And they’re right to worry about that … except the one thing they all seem to forget is the ad agency knows how to write and craft a spot better than all the C-Suite execs put together, so maybe if they let them get on with it, they’d have a higher chance of their work being loved rather than [at best] ignored or [at worse] openly mocked for how bad, contrived and/or embarrassing it is – thanks to either a terrible story/idea, endless and meaningless product features being crammed into the spot and/or the huge pointers in the script to make sure audiences get the gag, because they think people may be too stupid to get it. [When it’s more because they just won’t care]
All this data. All these systems. All this marketing science. And we’re actually getting worse.
And while I appreciate ad agencies have a lot to answer for, they’re not the only reason for this decline – but we’re not allowed to say that are we? Oh no.
We’re not allowed to talk about the impact of procurement departments.
We’re not allowed to talk about the lack of respect for marketing in companies.
We’re not allowed to talk about the dehumanization of people in the research.
And while you may think my tone is being influenced by it being a Monday morning, you’d be wrong – because it has nothing to do with it being the start of the week and everything to do with this:
What the fuck?
Seriously, what the actual fuck!?
And no, it is absolutely NOT an April Fool joke … which would still be bad, but make some sort of sense.
I thought the Ritz Cracker ad at the Super Bowl was possibly the worst thing I had ever seen [and if you haven’t seen it, I am so envious of you] … but I was wrong.
Who came up with this?
How the hell did it get through the endless committees, hierarchies and research?
And why – given the big PR announcements – are they so bloody proud about it?!!
Hell, even the infamous Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad had the good grace to only be tone-deaf and stupid for 40 seconds … but this? THIS???
It actually makes me angry. Properly angry.
Angry our industry is associated with it – even though it smacks of something an internal group at the client came up with or an outside agency who wanted to pander for more business. Angry they will claim this shows how much they ‘understand their customers’. Angry they think they’re sooooo clever and smart for it. Angry that an agency either came up with this or didn’t speak up about this. And angry this is what marketing has become.
Sure, we’ve all suggested some radical [read: daft] ideas down the years.
Name changes.
New product variants.
New category extensions.
But more often than not, they’ve either been killed or they’ve been done with a lot more care, craft and reality than this.
Maxwell Apartments?!
Maxwell fucking Apartments?!
What I find even more confusing is that the owners of Maxwell House – Kraft Heinz – have been so bloody good with their communication over the past few years – or at least Heinz have – which is why whoever sold this [or mandated this] should be both promoted and fired all within the same meeting.
And while I’m sure there’s some people out there that think I am being a snob … I have 5 things I want to end this post with.
1 I understand there may be reasons for this work only those involved would know and – if made public – may help explain why this approach was undertaken. [see: Mouldy Whopper]
2 I understand good intentions don’t always turn into good work for of a million different reasons. [So while I get my hatred may sting, it’s because I know no one intended this to happen]
3 I understand different cultures/audiences have different tastes and maybe I’m not either of them. [Though I did work on Maxwell House at Wieden, so I am aware of the brand and its audiences]
4 Ideas tend to represent the standard of creativity, company, colleague and agency that you’ve been exposed to in your life, and this one smacks of people blinkered by data, inhibited by corporate politics and/or residing in an echo-chamber bubble.
5 And finally – if you think I’m being an asshole – maybe if I tell you how I found out about this idea, you’ll realise I’m trying to encourage us to aim higher, because not only does our industry need it, I know we are more than capable of doing it. You see, I learned of this work – which has been in market since Sept 2025 – from watching a ‘news blooper’ … a news blooper where the TV presenters found it so fucking stupid, they couldn’t stop laughing at it. On air. That’s right, people who are paid to keep a neutral face – whether announcing the best or worst of humanity – couldn’t keep a straight face about this. Not because they loved it, but because they were openly mocking it.
Maybe it made sense at the time.
Maybe everyone involved was suffering an unknown illness.
Or maybe they need better people or a better work culture where this sort of thing can be stopped because people can speak up without being put down so you don’t make newsreaders and the World think you’ve left them with the worst possible taste in their mouth.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Ambition, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Corporate Evil, Corporate Gaslighting, Creative Brief, Creative Development, Creativity, Effectiveness, Planning, Process, Strategy
I come from a family of lawyers.
My Italian Uncle was a prosecutor against the Mafia and my Dad was a Human Right’s barrister who specialized in fighting corporations and governments who chose to label certain groups/people as ‘irrelevant’ or ‘unimportant’.
I – on the other hand – am not a lawyer. I neither had the brains or the patience … though I did get a distinction in law at college, albeit because my Dad helped me massively – hahahaha.
But the thing is, you can’t be around that level of legal brain without it having some influence over you and one of the things my Dad and Uncle really shaped for me was how ‘details matter’.
Now I appreciate law and advertising are VERY different, but one of the areas where they are very similar is the ability to make complexity, simple.
Unfortunately, a lot of our industry seems to have forgotten that … preferring to either celebrate complexity or make things embarrassingly simplistic, but when we do things right, we do things really right.
Of course it takes a lot of hard work to make things simple.
You have to read.
You have to explore.
You have to go down rabbit-holes.
You have to chat, challenge, and consider.
But not only does this approach mean you get to the core of issues, problems, understanding and opportunities … you are more likely to put something out that makes a real difference to people and the business. So I find it fascinating how more and more companies are giving less and less time for this hard work to be done.
Wanting the process to be at a ‘sprint’.
Wanting costs and people to be ‘trimmed’.
Wanting the agency to accept what ‘they say’.
But we don’t push back on this to be awkward, we push back on this because we give a shit about their wellbeing. We want to do things that add value to what they do, rather than open the door to challenges or questions. And while I appreciate there is a narrative that ‘the general public don’t really care about advertising’, the reality is a bit more nuanced than that.
1. They don’t care about SHIT advertising, but they do care about, what they care about.
2. They definitely care about not being fucked over by companies who try to fuck them over.
And if there’s one thing companies should know by now … social media often finds the stuff they want to hide. The stuff that challenges the narrative they like to project and profess. And while I appreciate that may have led to many companies making ads that basically say nothing – in the twisted belief that if they bore audiences to death, they’re protected – the reality is there will always be someone out there who delves into the details.
I’m not talking about conspiracy theorists.
I’m not talking about the populists and non-conformists.
I’m talking about individuals who want to make sure the companies who want them to give a shit, give a shit in return.
And you know what should scare companies even more?
AI allows everyone to do this quickly and easily. Suddenly the tool some companies have adopted as a way to ‘slash costs’, is the tool that allows society to work out if they should give them any time, let alone money.
And why am I talking about this?
Because in the last few weeks, there’s been a couple of posts that show the importance of ‘the details’.
A couple of posts that show a company that loves to claim they care about what you need, care more about what they need.
A couple of posts that are fucking breathtaking in their ‘findings’.
Who am I talking about? Uber.
Cars and Food delivery.
Now I appreciate what is detailed below may not be entirely accurate – different markets operate by different needs and requirements – however if you use Uber in any way, and I do, it’s something worth reading.
Because at the very least, if the information is not completely right, Uber can then tell us and show us how good they really are. And if the information is correct, then it will force Uber to change or face the consequences.
Details matter.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Content, Context, Creative Brief, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Planners, Planning, Research, Resonance, Respect, Status, Strategy, Success
Without wishing to sound like a stalker – or a pervert – but I recently spotted this couple walking down Ponsonby Road …
I don’t know who they are.
I never saw their faces.
I only was behind them for a matter of seconds.
But in that time, they made a huge impression on me.
The togetherness.
The lazy pace of synchronicity.
The fact they were heading somewhere only they knew.
So much of our industry is focused on what we want people to do or think … and so little time is spent on where people are at in life. Everyone has their issues, concerns, hopes and ambitions – and yet, too often, that’s seen as unimportant or inconvenient.
We – and by that, I mean research companies as much as advertising agencies – talk about ‘understanding people’, but what we really mean is we understand what clients want to hear. So we churn out an endless stream of characteristics that both say everything about anyone as well as nothing.
Robots more than humans.
The thing is, one of the greatest things about the creative industry is are ability to emotionally impact millions.
How to make them feel … not just think.
And yet every model, system and process I see being promoted on platforms and websites doesn’t talk about this.
In fact, it actively filters this sort of thing out … instead, it talks about ‘identifying the optimum trigger and moment to drive the purchase decision’.
What. The. Fuck.
We wonder why our industry is not as influential as it once was?
We wonder why influencers can impact audiences more than a multi-million media plan?
We wonder why artists can reach and impact audiences without any marketing budget, knowledge or skills?
There’s a simple reason.
We don’t spend enough time caring about this couple.
Who they are.
What’s important to them.
What they’re working towards.
What people misunderstand about them.
When was the last time they felt happy. Or helpless.
All we care about is how we can reach them with ‘efficient and convenient sales messages that convey the key functional reasons for purchase consideration. Never once realizing the real problem is they don’t give a fuck about what we’re saying because all we’re doing is shouting what we want them to care about rather than understanding what they actually care about.
Or need.
So next time you get a brief – or write one – that describes an audience as, ‘urban dwelling, white collar employees who take what they do seriously but don’t take themselves seriously’ ask yourself one thing.
Are you about humanity or commercial landfill?
Which just leaves me with a message to the people in that photo.
Thank you for being an important reminder of what we’re brilliant at and what we’re here to do.
May you have a brilliant life together. Whoever you are. Wherever you go.
Here’s to you continually walking towards wherever you want to go together.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand Suicide, Brilliant Marketing Ideas In History, Clients, Clothes, Comment, Community, Consultants, Context, Corporate Evil, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Devious Strategy, Disney, Effectiveness, Egovertising, Empathy, Honesty, Innovation, Luxury, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Membership, Netflix, Perspective, Planners, Planning, Popularity, Process, Relationships, Relevance, Reputation, Research, Resonance, Respect, Social Divide, Social Media, Strategy, Stupid
Once upon a time, I was asked to help a client based in Thailand.
They were very successful – having made Thailand the most profitable market in the World for their particular brand.
Anyway, part of the project involved a workshop and part of that workshop was about identifying new variants for their product.
So far, so good.
Until I realized they weren’t looking at this to expand who could become a customer of theirs, but how to get existing customers to buy more of what they make.
Even that was OK, until it became apparent they believed their product was so loved, their customers would continually fill their shopping baskets with 3 or 4 different versions of the same product because they just liked the ability to consume it in more places at more times.
In short, they believed the more versions of their product they made, the more volume of products their customers would buy.
Every time.
Forget that people have a finite amount of money.
Forget that people have other bills, items, people to look after.
They believed, if you made it … people would just blindly buy.
It’s the same blinkered approach that some sales organizations have.
Where they believe if one salesman brings in a million dollars of revenue a year, hiring 11 more will mean they achieve 12 million dollars of revenue.
It’s both blinkered thinking and wishful thinking.
Or – as my father used to say – “the expansion of logic without logic”.
I say this because it feels companies are viewing the subscription model in a similar way.
Once upon a time, subscriptions were seen as the exciting new thing for business.
A new way to charge for your products and services … regardless that ‘direct debit’ payments had been around for years.
There were 3 key reasons why repositioning cost as a subscription was so appealing:
1 It lowered the barrier to entry, so it could appeal to more/new customers.
2 They knew that while customers ‘could’ cancel at any time, data showed most wouldn’t.
3 It could, in theory, allow them to charge more per month than their old annual fee.
And they were right, it proved to be a revelation … until it wasn’t.
Right now, everything is seemingly a subscription model.
Food.
Clothes.
Streaming.
Gym and health.
Car purchasing.
But the one that really is making me laugh, are phone apps.
It’s almost impossible to download anything without it being a subscription service.
And that would be OK, except the prices they want to charge are getting out of control.
I recently downloaded a recipe app that wanted $14.99 A WEEK. A FUCKING WEEK.
$60 a month just so I could send it healthy recipes I see on social media and have them all in one, easy-to-access place.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Sure, it had some features that would make it more convenient than just putting it into a saved folder on instagram … but it sure-as-shit isn’t worth me paying more than it costs me for Netflix, Disney+ and Spotify PUT TOGETHER.
I appreciate everyone thinks their product is the best product.
I acknowledge it takes a lot of hard work and money to make a new product.
But the removal of any ‘human reality context’ – ie: how much money do people actually have available to spend, and the hierarchy of importance they place on the things they spend – is not just stupid, it destroys the potential of good ideas.
Of course, part of the reason for this is because of how tech investment works.
Basically investors want big returns, very fast … so this pushes developers to build economic models based on a ‘perfect scenario’ situations.
For perfect scenario, read: not real life.
So they show things like:
The economic value of the health industry.
The impact of social media on diet choices.
The rise of health-focused products and services.
And before you know it, they’ve extrapolated all this ‘data’ to come up with a price point of $60 per month and said it not only offers good value, but will generate huge returns on the investment in collapsed time.
Except …
+ All this is theory because they haven’t talked to anyone who would actually use it.
+ They probably haven’t identified who they need to use it beyond ‘health seekers’.
+ And they absolutely haven’t understood it costs a lot of money to be healthy and so an additional $60 subscription for the average person is a cost too far … especially when things they use ALL THE TIME – like Netflix [which they already think is too expensive] – is a quarter of that cost FOR THE MONTH.
I get no one likes to hear problems.
I appreciate anyone can find faults if they really want to.
But being ‘objective’ is not about killing ideas – when done right – it’s about enabling them to thrive, which is why I hope business stops looking at audiences in ‘the zoo’ and starts respecting them in ‘the jungle’ … because not only will it mean good ideas stand more chance of becoming good business, it also means people will have more access to things that could actually help them, without it destroying them in other ways.
As perfectly expressed by Clint, the founder of Corteiz …
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Agency Culture, AI, Ambition, Attitude & Aptitude, Billionaire, Brand, Brand Suicide, Business, Comment, Communication Strategy, Community, Complicity, Confidence, Conformity, Consultants, Creative Development, Creativity, Delusion, Details, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Experience, Innovation, Insight, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Mediocrity, Professionalism, Relationships, Relevance, Reputation, Resonance, Respect, Strategy, Success, Tactics, Technology
A few weeks ago, Jack Dorsey – ex-Twitter and now Block – laid off 40% of their staff.
They say this was not because they were doing badly, but because it allowed them – thanks to AI – to be even better positioned to take advantage of future opportunities.
He also said that he suspects most organisations will follow suit in the near future.
He’s not wrong … for many, reducing headcount is the ultimate commercial dream. Which got me thinking …
What will happen when every company is ‘AI’ led/driven/managed and there’s no more employees who can be ‘restructured’ to satisfy the C-Suite and/or share market?
How will companies exist when the people they once sold to, no longer have an income to keep buying their goods? How will companies compete when they all follow the same AI-led protocols, all learned from the same aggregated models and practices? How will companies build value when they’ve turned everything into a commodity? How will companies exist with ‘access per user’ business models, when AI removes the need for users? How will companies justify their price premium when they keep promoting their use of AI lets them do things for less? How will companies build trust and loyalty when everyone knows they’re being outsourced and managed by an algorithm?
One possibility is employees will suddenly be back in vogue … allowing companies to talk about how their products and/or services are now much more personal, hand crafted, and/or curated than their AI competitors. The other is – as many tech bros have suggested – we enter a world of ‘universal credit’ … except no one talks about where that money will come from and who will control the amount of money given to people.
Given there’ll be a lot less money available to be raised from taxes – as there won’t be enough people earning money from jobs – and the wealthy have an incredible ability to avoid governments taxing them appropriately, are we going to be reliant on the ‘generosity’ of the tech companies and should we feel good about that given they value power and control over a healthy society?
However none of this is AI’s fault. We’re now in a world where the obsession for short term results and/or PR headlines means everything is tactics, not much about strategy.
AI is incredible – as is its possibilities and potential – which is why when companies make a big song and dance about how they’re using it to ‘fast track’ growth and efficiencies [read: efficiencies] I can’t help but think it reveals far more about their narrow and limited thinking than the technologies.
What makes it even crazier is how the share market rewards companies for dismantling their operational structure and knowledge …
Oh I get it if you look at it in a vacuum, but not only is this behaviour often a short-term reaction – designed to boost share price at a time where bonuses or evaluations are due to take place … but why are these so called shit-hot analysts not questioning the leadership who put their company in the position of having so many alleged ‘excessive’ staff in the first place.
Because they don’t really care about anything other than the illusion of radical action.
Actions that allow them to say to themselves, ‘we were right’.
Remember Citibank back in 2008?
Forget condemning the leadership who encouraged their people to engage in a level of economic recklessness that contributed to the global financial crisis, and instead, congratulate them for firing 72,000 employees in the name of ‘efficiency management’.
As I said, I am not blaming AI for this, nor am I saying Jack Dorsey is the poster child for this attitude in management. At least in Jack’s case, he is in tech and recognises his own self interest in what he’s doing/publicising. That doesn’t make what he’s doing any better, but it at least explains his actions with more clarity than a lot of companies who have jumped into AI without seemingly realizing [or choosing to be deliberately ignorant] to the longer term implications they’re creating their own company, category and individual role.
Of course not all company leaders are like this – or doing this with AI – and I obviously appreciate it’s a competitive world out there … but to see them viewing efficiency and speed as the only levers that matter [and that is what AI is for] is pretty tragic. Add to that, many seem to have forgotten this technology is still in its relative infancy, so are basically buying into the ‘dream’ of what AI can do – as being heavily pushed by its creators/investors … which helps companies justify their heavy adoption of it, even though many of the C-Suite in those companies don’t have a clue what it is or how it works but just see the financial rewards of pretending they do … and we’re facing the very real prospect of organisations discounting or ignoring the ‘small stuff’, even though that’s what will determine if the ‘finish line’ is positive or destructive. [For more info on this, see my post about the ‘O Ring’]
As a friend of mine said, “it’s like buying a jet to do the school run”.
Mind you he also said, “beware of people selling promises they’ll never be accountable for, but will always benefit from”.
Unsurprisingly, he’s a lawyer.
In a technology firm. Haha.