Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Colenso, Collegues, Creative Brief, Creative Development, Creativity, Perspective, Planners, Planning, Point Of View, Process, Provocative, Relationships, Resonance, Respect, Strategy, Technology
A few months ago, the lovely James Welch [stupidly] invited me to have a chat about my perspectives on creativity, technology and process.
Why? I have no idea … maybe he was being charitable.
Whatever the reason it ended up – surprise, surprise – being a ramble about why I’m a nightmare to work with, an ‘acquired’ taste and absolutely not an idea megalomaniac.
The good news is only one of these character evaluations came from James … which, on second thoughts, may not be such good news after all.
Anyway, I thought I’d post it …
Not because I have a career death wish, but because if someone out there is finding it hard to sleep, listening to it will help them drift off in no time … albeit having to endure some horrific nightmares along the way.
Not because of what I say – even if some of the perspectives are pretty bleak – but because you’ll hear my dulcet tones saying it.
You can watch it here.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you …
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Agency Culture, Apathy, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Confidence, Content, Context, Corporate Evil, Corporate Gaslighting, Curiosity, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Egovertising, EvilGenius, Experience, Facebook, Influencers, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Marketing Science, Perspective, Planning, Point Of View, Popularity, Relationships, Relevance, Reputation, Research, Resonance, Respect, Ridiculous, Strategy, Stubborness, Technology, Toxic Positivity, Trust, Truth
When I was growing up there was a newspaper cartoon called ‘Andy Capp’.
Andy was a cliche of the working-class – albeit he never actually works – and lives in Hartlepool in the North East of England.
Andy is married to his long suffering wife, Flo – and despite her working – they are almost on the verge of poverty because apart from Andy being unemployed, he lacks any motivation and thinks he can ‘beat the system’ because of his smarts.
By that, think early stage manosphere but replacing the sexualization of women with more pure sexism.
Anyway, the reason I say this is because I remember one cartoon where Flo told Andy that they were in debt to the tune of £1000.
To which Andy replied something like:
“I told you Flo, if you owe £100 you’re a failure. If you owe £1000 you’re an entrepreneur. If you owe a £10,000 you’re a businessman and if you owe £1,000,000 you’re a government. So what this means Flo, is we’re on the way up!”
I don’t know why I remember that cartoon among the millions of things I’ve seen over the years – but it has always left a lasting impression on me, which may explain why I’ve tended to only seek – or listen to – the advice I’ve got from people who either failed trying or succeeded by doing. Sounds obvious doesn’t it? Yet everyday I read/hear/watch people spouting unsolicited advice about subjects they have almost zero right or credibility to do – mistaking opinion as fact, interest as knowledge, knowledge as expertise or ego as cleverness.No wonder a famous football manager once told me to always learn from winners, not players.
Look, I get we all do this to some degree, but there’s a big difference between spouting an opinion or perspective and acting like you’re the indisputable, all-knowing, God-of-all.
The point is, regardless what Andy Capp says, we would not take his proclamations as fact.
We might accept it’s what he thinks is fact, but not what is true for all.
And yet, more and more, I’m witnessing business blindly follow the statements and proclamations of people who are the real-life, modern version of Andy Capp.
Kinda.
Because while they DO have jobs … and while they have even been successful in them … they are now telling people how to succeed in areas they have absolutely no right to talk about.
Not just because many have never worked in those areas, but they have a track record of making terrible choices when developing ideas outside of their core area of knowledge.
Enter Mark Zuckerberg.
I’m not doubting he’s smart.
I’m not doubting he loves technology.
I’m not even doubting his successes.
However, why are so many people listening [and investing] in his version of the future when not only is it designed around his ego and need for power and control – not to mention his desperation to be talked about in the same breath as Steve Jobs – this is a person who spent/blew/lost US$80 BILLION on the Metaverse??
EIGHTY. FUCKING. BILLION. DOLLARS.
I get innovation is expensive.
I appreciate all technology needs time to evolve.
I acknowledge that I have two of their Quest headsets.
But 80 billion?
To put it in context, the iPhone is said to have cost anywhere between $150 million and $3.2 billion. The creation of Google Maps is said to have cost around $1 billion to initially develop. Even the A380 aircraft – the biggest passenger aircraft in the history of aviation – ‘only’ cost around $25-35 billion to build.
And to add even more context …
80 billion dollars is the equivalent of being the 90th placed country in the World by GDP.
OK, so Zuck’s 80 billion was spent over a long period of time compared to how GFP figures are calculated, but still …
In fact, this suggests Zuck is someone who stubbornly believes he is always right.
Or at the very least, refuses to acknowledge where things aren’t working or where things need improving.
Sadly, we see this same sort of arrogance in our industry …
Where someone is successful in a particular disciple or with a particular agency or with a particular piece of work or with a particular promotion… and then suddenly, they believe they are more knowledgable, more successful and more authoritative than every other person in every other industry regardless of their actual level of experience and expertise.
And what is worse is they get away with it …
Because like Zuck, too many people hang onto their words like gospel, even though in many ways they’re speaking the same delusional clap-trap as Andy Capp, which suggests 2 uncomfortable truths.
1. The real problem with ego is not the person spouting the nonsense, but the people who choose to believe loud confidence over real experience.
2. Andy Capp may have been right because it does seem in business. ‘the more you lose, the more people believe you’re a success’.
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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: A Bit Of Inspiration, April 1, Comment, Reputation, Resonance, Strategy, Stupid, Television, Wieden+Kennedy
God, that’s a heavy title for a post isn’t it.
Especially when it’s not about the state of the World, but the fact it’s April 1.
A day – like International Women’s Day – where brands put out work in an attempt to show another side of them.
The human side … as defined and written by the AI system they outsourced thousands of people’s jobs too.
Anyway, with all the shit going on around the world, I don’t know if any joke is suddenly going to make humanity feel better … unless of course, they reveal we’ve all been living in a real-life version of that episode of 80’s TV show Dallas, where – after a whole series exploring ‘who shot JR Ewing’ – they revealed it was all just a bloody dream.
[Look it up, it’s wild]
Soooooooo … instead of going through the effort of trying to write an April Fool post that won’t fool anyone and certainly won’t make anyone care, I thought I’d just point you to the best one I ever wrote.
A post that not only fooled a few people – who obviously didn’t read it all the way through – but was picked up by some international media as a ‘new methodology to the planning discipline’. Hahahaha.
It was even more pleasing than the time The Times newspaper in the UK quoted the fictitious research company we set up – Halibut Fisher – to highlight how badly Chinese society was being represented and understood by Western media. You can read some of the ‘insights’ we wrote about on Asian Yang – the blog we set up to commemorate how blinkered, gullible and lazy so many organizations are when dealing with cultures outside of their own.
Anyway, with that, have a great April Fool Day and enjoy reading about Leon and his introduction to Method Planning™ …
For the record, Leon still – amazingly – talks to me.
Even more amazingly, he has an important gig at a tech company.
Which means [1] even my best efforts couldn’t undermine his talent and [2] tech companies don’t check all the data they steal from everyone. Haha.
Oh, and if you’re so inclined, you can waste even more of your time reading some of the other April 1st posts I’ve written which some people also fell for … which I’d love to think was due to my brilliant writing, but was likely due to the fact I was in a totally different timezone to them so it wasn’t April 1 for them. Damnit.
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.