A couple of days ago, a New Zealand research company – one used by a huge array of big business here – gave a speech to a broad marketing audience and said the concept of ‘tall poppy’ was dead.
They had the audacity to say this the day after Jake Millar committed suicide. The arrogance to say this when they reside in a country that continues to have one of the worst – if not the worst – youth suicide rates per capita on earth.
There are many reasons that contribute to the terrible suicide rate, but ‘tall poppy’ is, without doubt, one of them.
A significant one of them.
The biggest open – yet oppressed – secret in the country.
So to that company, I want to say this.
You are not just complicit to the problem, you are playing an active role in it.
By making statements like that, you’re placing all the blame on the people who felt they had no other choice. You’re telling parents their kids situation & context didn’t exist. You’re telling NZ, they can continue to look the other way. You’re telling the friends, family and colleagues of 26 year old Jake Millar, pictured at the top of this post, that the media who revelled in getting the nation to celebrate his business failure – and then attached all manner of additional negative personal narratives to his name = are blameless.
Do you realise what you’ve done?
Do you understand the implications of your actions?
You’ve just told the nation they can carry on as they are. That their perpetual and persistent judgement and abuse is simply ‘banter’.
How fucking malicious of you.
Be grateful I’m not calling out your name because what you did is shameless.
But let me reassure you, we will be chatting and I’ll be reminding you of your responsibility to the truth, not to making money from reinforcing a cultural narrative of denial.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Anniversary, Attitude & Aptitude, Colenso, Comment, Death, New Zealand, Otis
I can’t believe we have hit December.
DECEMBER!
More than that, I can’t believe we’ve hit December and I’m still in lockdown … albeit in a totally different country to the one I was in last year.
Madness.
Given the last 365 days have basically been Groundhog Day, I’m amazed how quick this year has gone.
You’d expect it to have felt slow … but far from it.
For us, it’s been a huge year filled with huge changes – and I’ll be writing a huge post all about it in the next few weeks [don’t roll your eyes, ha] – but before that, we have Otis’ 7th birthday to celebrate and we need to find a way where he can feel the love and attention of his friends and family, as this will be the second year he’ll be experiencing it on his own.
I remember when birthdays were such a big thing.
A sign of growth … independence … power.
Of course, when you’re my age, you tend to look at them as indicators of getting old, irrelevance and impending death [hahahaha!] which leads me to something I read recently from Tom Goodwin.
It was this:
I have to say, it stopped me in my tracks.
Yes, it’s obvious, but when you see it written like that, you tend to re-evaluate what you’ve done and what you still want to do.
I am increasingly becoming aware of my mortality.
I’ve written about it before … but while I am not in a depth of depression, there is a part of me that acknowledges I am approaching the final 1/3rd of my race, despite having the hunger, energy and ambition to go a lot further.
It’s quite unnerving.
You look at everything with fresh eyes.
You ask yourself if you’ve done enough or are doing enough.
I don’t mean in terms of career – though there is a bit of that – I mean in life in general.
I look back on what I’ve done – and I acknowledge, I’ve done a bunch – and sometimes wonder if it was all a dream.
So much of it seems like it belongs to another person’s life.
Or another version of mine.
China. America. Singapore. Australia. Japan. Hong Kong. London.
So many places over such a long period of time.
Each one filled with experiences, stories and memories that defined who I am.
You’d be amazed how often I have to remind myself these happened to me. Seriously.,
The life I’ve lived is beyond anything I could ever have wished for … and while I appreciate my privilege, seeing that quote from Tom made me think about what I’m going to do with what I have left. What I want to do with what I have left.
On one hand I don’t want to sit back … I want to chase after the things that intrigue me with even greater speed and determination. But on the other, I want to make sure I am making time to enjoy and embrace all that’s going on. I don’t know if I’ve been as good at that second bit as I should have.
The problem is, the more you do, the more things you discover you want to do and – as has been the case with me – you find yourself on a track, travelling 100mph without having the ability to really enjoy the journey and the experiences you’ve had because you’ve seen something else you want to investigate.
I guess I’m living proof it’s not just millennials with short attention spans, ha.
That said, I’ve got a lot of expectations for 2022.
I did for 2021, but apart from NZ, that did not work out that way at all.
But now – with vaccinations and a world opening up – there’s a chance things could really change. A chance to embrace and explore what the world has to offer.
And I must admit I can’t wait.
Having been on only one plane in the last 18 months – to get us to NZ – has been very strange. I love travelling and exploring and have spent the last 25 years doing a ton of it. Hell, I did 100 flights in 2019 alone.
So as we enter the last month of 2021, I can look at next year with a different sense of optimism than I’ve had in a long time. A year where I want to learn how to balance ambition with enjoyment … because nothing makes you value the possibilities of the future like the acknowledgement you don’t have as much of it left as you probably would like.
A 26 year old Kiwi killed himself yesterday.
That’s him in the photo at the top of this post.
His name is Jake Millar.
Of course the press refer to Jake’s death by saying ‘he died’ … due to some twisted logic about not wanting to encourage more people to die by suicide when that strategy has obviously failed given NZ continues to have one of the highest death by suicide rates for youth per capita in the world.
And what was the probable cause of Jake’s terribly sad decision?
The joyous pile-on the press did on him for having his second business fail.
They accused him of terrible things.
Theft. Arrogance. Exploitation. Purposefully ignoring – or devaluing – the amazing success this young man had achieved prior to this situation.
Hell, he felt he had to move to Kenya to be able to get away from the judgement and sniggers.
And even that wasn’t far enough away for him.
NZ is in danger of robbing kids of their right to try. To fail. To explore. To dream.
The ramifications on the future of NZ for acting this way is huge. But not as much as it is on the youth of the country.
For a nation that loves to talk about being ‘pioneers’, we are openly and actively oppressing that spirit under the guise of ‘staying humble’. It is nothing of the sort. It’s control and fear.
New Zealand is a brilliant, amazing, beautiful country.
I feel truly honoured and grateful to be able to live here with my family.
But this continual situation, is nothing short of a national disgrace.
In March, Colenso bring out a book about the lack of hope youth feel living here, following interviews with kids all across NZ.
It’s utterly terrifying … scarier than pretty much all the places I’ve lived before and done this work before.
But what makes it even worse is it won’t come to a surprise to anyone.
Not really. Not if they’re honest, rather than being culturally complicit.
I’ve been in this country 8 months and it has been as clear as day to me.
A lot of people don’t like me saying that. They think I should shut up and be grateful to be here. In fact I’ve faced a bunch of abuse for talking about it.
Yep … rather than be angry at this terrible, on-going reality, some have chosen to be angry at me for talking about a situation everyone knows but few talk about. Especially in public.
I’ve been told I should keep quiet. That I don’t know enough about the situation. That I am unaware of all the things contributing to the situation or the ways the country is trying to change the situation.
And they’re right, I don’t know enough.
I’m trying to learn as fast as I can, but I don’t know enough.
But I tell you what I do know …
This country has a terrible youth suicide rate.
This country has a terrible Maori suicide rate.
This country has a terrible farmer suicide rate.
And for all the solutions in place, they are either not enough or not working well enough.
I’m not speaking out because I want to cause offence.
I’m not speaking out because I think it makes me look smart.
I’m speaking out because I am thankful to this country for the generosity it has shown me and my family and I want to repay that gift by actively trying to help address a situation that cannot continue to be overlooked or brushed under the carpet as some sort of inconvenience.
Thankfully there are a great many people in this country who are speaking up. Who are doing things to try and ensure no kid will feel they have no other choice they can make. Who listen rather than judge.
But we need more.
We need the government to deal with the situation, not be political about the situation..We need the media to write about the situation, not be complicit to hiding it – or worse, igniting it. And we need companies in NZ to stop demanding conformity and encouraging individuality.
That’s not going to solve the issue, but it will likely help it. Because the youth are amazing when they’re backed, encouraged and supported.
Yes they will make mistakes – like we all make mistakes – but they’re not trying to destroy anything or hurt anyone so why the hell are we doing exactly that to them?
It may not be intentional.
It may not always be overt.
But it’s happening. Jake Millar is living proof of that..
There will be a lot of people talking and writing about the tragic loss of Virgil Abloh.
Please don’t let that drown out the name and loss of Jake Millar.
You can read more about him here and I offer nothing but my deepest condolences to Jake’s family, friends and colleagues – past and present.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Australia, Creativity, Distinction, Emotion, Experience, Marketing, Positioning
Brand experience.
An exciting and new discipline in the brand building space.
Except …
Before some of you had started work.
Before some of you were even born.
SRVT – better known as Sargant Rollins Vranken Tereakes – were not only talking about it, but also doing a ton of stuff with it as well.
Now they were an agency ahead of their time.
An exciting, creative and progressive agency.
One of the very best I had the pleasure of working at.
But still, 23 years have passed since the slide at the top of this page was part of their credentials, so can we stop banging on about experience like it’s the newest, new thing in marketingland?
All we’re really doing by talking about it in these terms is highlighting how slow we actually are.
Especially as many brands – especially in the luxury space – were doing it decades before even SRVT … and certainly better than the ‘lowest level of consistency’ format seemingly favoured and promoted by so many.
God, this week has got off to a positive start hasn’t it, hahahaha.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Agency Culture, America, Attitude & Aptitude, China, Colenso, Comment, Communication Strategy, Crap Products In History, Creativity, Culture, Deutsch, LaLaLand, London, Love, Loyalty, Management, New Zealand, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, R/GA, Shanghai, Teamwork, Wieden+Kennedy
For some reason, I like having badges made for my colleagues.
Or anything a bit daft.
Of course, it started with the stickers I had made when I left Wieden.
600 of the buggers, hidden throughout the office – and buildings of interest – which they’re still finding to this day.
Then there was the packing tape of Jorge and the guy who is in Love Actually – which is a massive compliment even though he thought it was a huge pisstake.
Then there were the Zaid badges, made and bought on a snowy night in Boston.
Then my leaving Deutsch badges.
Followed by the pencils for Mike and Sam.
And the ‘don’t mess with me’ badge for Meg … after watching how disgusted she was at a presentation she had to attend.
Thanks to COVID, apart from the ‘you’re a twat’ sexual harassment badges we had made and sent to men who had made inappropriate comments to women in the workplace, I’ve been nothing but mature.
Until now.
Lizzie is in my team.
She has many qualities.
She’s fiercely smart. An incredibly talented, multi-instrument playing, musician. Community soup maker.
Basically, she is everything I’m not … but there’s one quality that she has that shines above even those bright lights.
She can see a dark side in everything.
I don’t mean in a depressing, mean, nasty way …
Nor do I mean in a hurtful, inconsiderate, selfish way …
I mean that in certain circumstances, she sees the worst case scenario in things.
Of course, she will claim she is simply being a realist – and there is a lot of evidence to suggest she’s right.
For example, when lockdown happened, we were having a bet on when we’d go back to work.
Most said early October, a few early November … but Lizzie swooped in and said,
“We won’t be going back till the new year”.
We laughed at her, until we didn’t and realized she was right.
Again.
Damnit.
Which is why I decided to commemorate her insightfulness with this ….
And while some may say this is not the nicest thing a boss could do for a colleague, I see it a bit differently. To me, I see it as an investment in my team – an investment at the price of my sons inheritance – which means I’m basically boss of the year.
Sadly, that year in 1953.
Happy weekend.