Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, China, Chinese Culture, Comment, Context, Creativity, Culture, Dad, Health, Management, Pollution, Relevance, Resonance
Once upon a time, a creative friend of mine rang me up.
He had been offered a job in China and wanted to hear my perspective on being there.
During the conversation, he asked if the pollution was bad.
When I asked why he was asking, he said he was pretty susceptible to asthma and while on his visit to the agency there, he had felt a bit ill, despite the weather being good.
He had asked some of his prospective workmates if they felt the weather was ever bad for breathing and they all said no and he wanted to know my take on it.
I laughed.
Not just because it’s pretty well documented the air there is not great, especially for an asthmatic – despite the government being the biggest investor in green technology in the World – but because it reminded me of something my Dad had told me while watching the Tom Cruise movie, A Few Good Men.
I know this is going off on a tangent, but hang in there.
You see, at the scene where Jack Nicholson spouts his immortal “You Can’t Handle The Truth” line, my Dad burst out laughing.
When I asked why, he said this:
“There are occasions where people will openly deny truth. Not because they hold a different opinion, but because to accept it means they would have to accept their complicity in a situation truth has revealed. Sometimes, the simple act of acknowledgement means people are forced to face and question the motives and values they conveniently chose to hide away”
His point was literally what my friend had experienced.
The prospective colleagues he asked about weather conditions knew full-well there is pollution in the air. However, their mind had almost forced them to forget it. Not because they were liars or bad people, but because if they admitted the truth, then they would be forced to ask themselves why they were there when they knew it was likely to be doing them harm.
We experience this every day.
Deliberate ignorance.
From people hired to purchases made.
Not because people are bad, but because we don’t want face the questionable decisions we’ve chosen to make to benefit our personal circumstances over health, values or friendship.
Which is why my mate decided not to go to China.
The moral of the story.
Remember people sometimes don’t tell you what they think, they tell you what protects them from you knowing what they think.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Awards, Brand Suicide, Cannes, Colenso, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Crap Campaigns In History, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Distinction, Embarrassing Moments, Innovation, Insight, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Relevance, Resonance, Technology
Being old, I’ve done more than my fair share of judging awards.
I enjoy it.
Yes it’s a major investment in terms of time, but when you come across an absolutely devastatingly good submission, it’s worth every second.
However it is also fair to say that over the years, there have been some real painful experiences. Either in terms of average papers being seemingly entered into every category in a bid to increase the odds of winning something or papers that have such a strong scent of scam, even Ray Charles can see how suspect they are. [Sorry Mr Charles]
I always laugh when I come across those. Specially at the agencies submitting them … because while they obviously think they are geniuses – or the judges are idiots – the reality is they’re wrong on both counts.
But here’s the thing, people can slag off awards all they like, but they matter.
For Colenso for example, they’re important.
We’re a small agency on the other side of the planet and being able to show our creativity and effectiveness is vitally important to keep demonstrating our validity to attract global clients.
But – and it’s a big but – it only works if its real.
And that only works if all the winners around it are also real.
Now I appreciate that different clients have different needs and budgets.
I appreciate different markets have different cultural traits, behaviours and media.
I absolutely appreciate some entries use a language that is not their native tongue.
And I think that is all brilliant – though I also think none-native English speakers are at an immediate disadvantage and the award organisers should be looking at ways to change that.
However, if you need to write 8456738585463 words to explain your problem or your idea or your insight or your results … you’re not helping yourself.
Nor are you if you are using the pandemic as your strategies main adversary – often followed up with the words, ‘how do we grow in an era of the new normal?’.
Of course I am not doubting the pandemic has caused havoc among categories of business all over the world. It’s definitely happened to me too. But if we don’t explain what the challenge is – how it has affected behaviour or values or distribution or competition or anything other than it ‘made things more difficult’ … then it’s as lazy as the time I judged the Effies in the US when Trump came to power and the opening line of 85% of all submissions was:
How do we bring a nation divided together?
[My fave was when a whisky brand used that as their creative challenge. HAHAHAHA]
I take the judging seriously because I want the awards to be valued.
I want the awards to be valued because I want the industry to be valued.
And I want the industry to be valued because I want clients to win, creativity to win and the people coming up behind me to have a chance of taking us all to better and more interesting places that we’re at right now.
And I believe they can if we don’t fuck up the chance for them.
I get awards are nice to have.
I get they can drive business and payrises.
But if we keep allowing bullshit a chance to shine – and let’s face it, we have time and time again – then all we’re doing is fucking ourselves over.
I’m fine with failure.
In fact I’m very, very comfortable with it.
Especially when it’s because someone has tried to do something audacious for all the right reasons … because even if it doesn’t come off, it’s opened the door to other things we may never have imagined. There’s even real commercial value to that.
But when agencies create, hijack or exploit problems to just serve their own means – then fuck them. Maybe – just maybe – if they did it at a scale that could make a real difference, you’d be prone to encourage it. But when it’s done to achieve just what is needed to let the creators win an award … then frankly, the organisers and judges have a moral obligation to call it out.
Asia gets a bad wrap for this. And over the years that has been deserved, but I can tell you no market is immune. Hell, I’ve even seen some in NZ recently – or one in particular – and what made it worse was it wasn’t even any good.
But as rubbish as that example was, at least it didn’t stoop to the levels we have seen previously.
Let’s remember it’s only 4 years ago an agency WON MAJOR AWARDS for an app they said could help save refugees on boats by tracking them in the sea … only for them to then claim – when later called out – that the app was in beta testing hence the information being sent back to users was not real.
Amazingly ignoring the fact they didn’t say that in any of their entry submissions and if they had, they wouldn’t have been eligible for the awards they entered in the first place.
Creativity can do amazing things.
Advertising can do amazing things.
But we fuck it up when we put the superficial on the podium.
Of course, this is not just an agency problem. Clients are also part of this. Because if they let agencies do what they are great at rather than treating them as a subservient production partner … maybe we’d not just see more interesting work, but even more interesting and valuable brands.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Business, Colenso, Comment, Confidence, Corporate Gaslighting, Creativity, Culture, Distinction, Emotion, Empathy, Equality, Honesty, Management, Marketing, New Zealand, Point Of View, Relevance, Resonance
This is Angela.
Her official title is the Managing Director of Colenso.
But actually she’s the boss.
Not just because of how she is sitting, but because of how she operates.
Leading without dictating.
Encouraging without patronising.
Liberating without restricting.
The great, great thing about Angela is that for all the experience and success she’s gained, she is open and hungry to let the energy, ambition and values of youth to keep shaping and changing where we are going.
Angela’s strength is she wants everyone to win.
She opens the door to opportunities for talent to run in and do their thing rather than closing it behind her so she can have all the power.
But then female leadership has always seen winning differently to a lot of men.
Progress for all rather than power for one.
And before certain men start spouting their sexist shit at me like they did when I wrote about how more female leadership will give the industry a real chance to grow, I appreciate not all male leaders are like this.
But a hell of a lot are.
And – if you look at Corporate Gaslighting and/or read Zoe Scaman’s brilliant, brave but totally unsurprising Mad Men and Furious Women – many of them are doing stuff … and are being allowed to get away with stuff, often by companies that talk about their commitment to their staffs wellbeing and mental health … that is a fuckload worse.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Consultants, Culture, Empathy, Management, Relevance, Resonance
It’s August.
Month 8 of 2021.
Month 17 for so many of my mates working from home.
It’s quite interesting sitting in New Zealand and reading all these companies releasing reports about ‘the future of work’ when they are doing it from a position of semi-blindness.
Yes, there are many, many benefits from working from home.
For a lot of people, the hours saved on commuting are incredible.
And there’s definitely a lot of benefits for companies having people work of home.
The savings on office space alone do that.
But the reality is after a year of that, being back in an office – albeit in a country that has dealt with COVID better than anyone – the impact has been huge on me.
It reminded me of the thrill of working with other people.
Debating ideas.
Discussing issues.
Talking bollocks.
There’s a camaraderie that you don’t get on a video conference.
In addition you don’t have to always be ‘on’.
Always look like you’re busy.
Always look like you’re paying attention.
Always look like you’re on top of everything.
That doesn’t mean you can be a slack bastard in an office, but it means the pressure of ‘being on’ reduces. That may seem counter-intuitive in an environment where you are always seen, but it is because of that you let your human side come out. The different forms of your energy and presence.
What all these companies banging on about having fixed ‘the future of work’ are actually saying is what is the future of THEIR work. What they want THEIR environment to be. What THEIR individual category allows them to do.
They can put out as many survey monkeys as they like to their employees, if doesn’t mean they know the future of work.
It’s also laughable these organisations are proclaiming they have all the answers when they were often the ones who encouraged/forced people to come to their offices every day … and would then actively fight against anyone who wanted to operate under slightly different terms.
If we want to learn what the future of work is, we’d be far better off listening and learning from companies or organisations who operated this way since before COVID forced change than anyone else. Which means I’d trust Mary Kay Cosmetics or even Anonymous more than many of the big talkers out there right now.
The reality is people can adapt more easily than companies have ever given us credit for. But what the future of work is for them and us is going to dependent on many factors … of which one is remembering what it is like to be in an office again.
At the end of the day it will likely be a balance – something that works for the 3 main parties of people, clients and company – but what I’ve found interesting from the people I’ve spoken to who don’t want to go back to the office, is they’re not just saying it for financial/commute reasons, but because they hated how the company made them feel constantly oppressed and judged when they were inside their 4 walls.
In fact, having spoken to a number of people on Corporate Gaslighting … many have said that working from home would have saved them from the worst of bad management.
Which is the real lesson about the future of work for companies post covid.
Do you have a culture people want to be a part of or want to stay away from?
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Communication Strategy, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Empathy, Experience, Imagination, Innovation, Insight, Loyalty, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Point Of View, Relevance, Resonance, Technology
As funny as the photo above is, the reality is it’s still a better brand experience than much of what passes for good brand experience these days.
Hell, if I was shopping there and saw that sign, it would make me smile, which is more than a lot of brands and their experience strategies achieve.
I’ve said it before but too many companies mistake basic interaction as brand experience. Or worse, think that by simply removing friction from the purchase process, they’re building a good brand experience.
Seriously, how boring and self-centred must their lives be to think that?
If done well, brand experience can be a huge thing.
And by well, I don’t mean making bad, average – or creating a consistent base-line standard across the company – I mean making the things that actually matter to audiences, personal and valuable … or focusing on the key things audiences think you actually do well and pushing that so the experience can become something that is almost seminal so people want to share, repeat and shout about.
I wrote about this a while ago [here and here, for example] … but it still blows my mind how many companies and agencies approach experience in terms of not getting left behind when they should be seeing it as an opportunity to move ahead … a chance to leave their competition looking slow, rather than themselves.
And before people say this approach would cost more money, it doesn’t. Or it doesn’t have to. It’s all about defining the experience you want to create.
Given a badly placed store sign next to some condoms gave me a better brand experience than so many of the systems, processes and strategies brand experience promotes, it’s safe to say the discipline may need to start understanding what people give a shit about rather than what they wish they did.