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, AC/DC, Advertising, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Bands, Before Fame, Brand, Brand Suicide, Business, Career, Collaboration, Colleagues, Comment, Communication Strategy, Complicity, Consultants, Content, Context, Corporate Evil, Creative Brief, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Delusion, Distinction, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Egovertising, Emotion, Empathy, Entertainment, EvilGenius, History, Honesty, Interviews, Leadership, Legend, Loyalty, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Mediocrity, Meetings, Music, Perspective, Prejudice, Process, Relationships, Relevance, Reputation, Resonance, Respect, Standards, Status, Stories, Stupid, Success, Teamwork, Trust, Truth
Once upon a time, a man – who lived and worked in Newcastle, England – got a phonecall.
When he picked up, he heard a woman with a German accent on the other end, who asked “Are you Brian Johnson?”
He replied in the affirmative, to which the mystery caller said,
“You need to come down to London for an audition next week”.
Now Brian was a singer. In fact he’d once had a hit record with his band Geordie – but now he had his own business fitting car windscreens so it was a pretty left-field call to receive. Still, he was intrigued to which he asked the caller, “Who are you and who is the audition for?
There was a pause before the German voice informed him they worked for a music company – who had to remain nameless, just like the band he was told he had to audition for.
Brian was getting a bit fed-up at this point so pointed out in his thick accent,
“I’m not going all the way down to London for an audition unless you tell me who it is”.
Immediately, they were told that was not possible.
“Can you give me a clue … even if it’s just the initials of the singer or band?”
There was another pause – as if the caller was weighing up which would get them in more trouble: giving them a clue or not having Brian come to the audition – before they said,
“OK … here are the initials of the band, but I can give you no more information whatsoever. The initials are A, C, D, C”
The rest is history.
Brian did go to London and he did audition to replace the recently deceased Bon Scott, as the singer of AC/DC.
He got the gig and the first song he wrote – in fact the first song he EVER wrote – was You Shook Me All Night Long.
Then he wrote his second ever song, Back In Black.
Then his third, Hell’s Bell’s.
And not only did all these songs appear on the first album he recorded with the band, it went on to be the best selling album of the bands career. In fact it get’s even better than that, because the album, Back In Black, sold so many copies it become the best selling album OF ALL TIME [at that time] and even now – 46 years later – still ranks the 2nd best ever seller, with 50 million albums sold.
All this because Brian – through luck and persistence – got a key piece of information that made the difference between him choosing to go down to London or telling some random German female caller to “Fuck Off”.
Now it’s fair to say AC/DC were a known quantity at the time. A relatively successful quantity at the time. But who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t done the audition.
We wouldn’t have those 3 songs for a start … 3 songs that are not just iconic for AC/DC fans, but iconic fullstops.
The point being, one of the most important things you can do, to increase the odds of success is be transparent.
Transparent on where you are.
Transparent on what is needed.
Transparent on who is involved.
Transparent on the facts, timing and money.
Transparent on roles, rules and responsibilities.
Transparent on what the definition of success is.
I say this because there is not enough transparency right now – if anything, we operate in a world of opaqueness, which not only fucks up the potential of what can be created together, but breeds distrust and unhelpfulness.
Sure, things can change.
Sure, not everything may be known at the time.
But the more you hold things back, the more you’re not just fucking others over, you’re fucking yourself.
The greatest demonstration of respect in any partnership is transparency … so if your ego, need for control or fear stops you from doing that, then it doesn’t matter what you claim or who you blame, you’re the problem.
That doesn’t mean everything will fail, but it does mean you’ll never create history.
Or said another way …
If that German woman who rang Brian Johnson way back in ’79 had refused to give him any information on the name of the band she wanted him to audition for – as were their orders – then AC/DC may be a band few people would remember and Brian Johnson would be the graveliest-voiced car windscreen repairer in the North of England.
Of course, there will be some who say if that had happened, we’d never know what we’d lost.
And they’d be right, but they’d also be something else: someone incapable of creating or achieving anything truly significant.
In fact it’s worse than that … they’d be someone incapable of even aspiring to something truly significant and would actively goes out of their way to stop others from achieving it, claiming they’re ‘just looking out for the business’ when really it’s about their fear, ego, power and/or control.
No wonder my dear and clever friend George calls them, ‘commercial assassins and happiness vampires’.
Don’t stop someone finding your Brian Johnson because you think transparency is weakness.
It’s not, it’s rocket fuel.
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: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Apathy, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Auckland, Community, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Emotion, Empathy, Environment, Experience, Humanity
I appreciate that in the first month of 2026, I have enjoyed 2 national holidays … which is on top of the almost ONE MONTH Festive Holiday than many in NZ get to enjoy.
Which leads to the title of this post.
The good [for you] is I don’t get any more national holidays for almost 6 whole, bloody months … so you can revel in my obvious pain and discomfort.
Which leads to the Bad News, again for you.
As I don’t get any more national holidays for almost 6 whole, bloody months, there’ll be no break from blog posts.
See, be careful what you wish for.
Talking of what you wish for, recently I stopped in a small town and and saw this:
I have to say, not only did it catch my attention, it made me feel quite emotional.
Given I had never been to this place in my life, that might sound a bit weird – it IS a bit weird – but it was also lovely to see a community looking out for its greater good.
For someone who feels he can only breathe – and find peace – in the chaos of big cities, I’ve increasingly come to appreciate the value, importance and warmth of community.
Maybe it is the relatively small size of NZ, but I’ve really come to understand it – and its role – here than anywhere else I’ve ever lived … including the very small village we moved to in England during COVID, a place so small that it consisted of 2 pubs and an [in]convenience shop – so named, as it never had any fixed opening times so it was always a lucky dip.
Don’t get me wrong, people looked out for each other, but you knew that their needs always came first.
Maybe that’s the same in NZ, but it doesn’t feel like it. Not with everyone, anyway.
And that’s why I liked this sign – or what this sign was trying to do.
To help the town evolve, innovate and be more useful to more people.
Both in terms of those who live in the town and those who could come visit.
At a time where it feels governments and business are increasingly seems out-of-touch with people’s reality – or worse, actively not giving a shit about it – it was just a nice reminder that ‘hope and optimism’ is born as much from feeling you’re not out on your own, as it is about seeing a path forward.
Maybe certain ‘marketing science experts’ would be better encouraging practitioners to see audiences and communities on their terms rather than as walking wallets who are waiting to hand over their money as soon as you have exposed them to the same efficient distribution of formulaic brand assets that they’ve told every brand to blindly bombard them with.
Just a thought, especially on Super Bowl day … where we will see tens of millions spent on sponsored [Dad] jokes and celebs-for-hire appearances.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Business, Colenso, Colleagues, Comment, Complicity, Conformity, Content, Context, Craft, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Curiosity, Delusion, Differentiation, Distinction, Diversity, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Emotion, Empathy, Focus Groups, Inclusion, Insight, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Marketing Science, Planners, Planning, Point Of View, Process, Professionalism, Relationships, Relevance, Reputation, Research, Resonance, Respect, Standards
Recently I had to interview a relatively well known singer songerwriter.
While their major successes were in the 90’s, they’d always had a place in popular culture – albeit British culture.
I went into the call only knowing what I had read up about them and what I had thought about them when they were making hits … so while I was intrigued to chat, I wasn’t exactly sure how it was going to go.
Fortunately for me, I had a secret weapon and that was a Mum who had instilled in me to ‘always be interested in what others are interested in’.
What this means is your job is simple: listen to them and follow where they take you.
That doesn’t mean you can’t ask questions.
Nor does it mean you can’t challenge them when you feel their answers contradict each other.
However, rather than go into it looking for faults or specific answers, your focus is simply to understand how they think and see the world.
And I am so grateful for that because the conversation was amazing.
Not just in terms of what was discussed, but how much I understood and – even related – to many of the choices and decisions they made on their journey.
A reminder that whoever you are … whatever plans you have … or wherever you’re from … we’re all bumbling along trying to make sense of the stuff we experience and are exposed to, while trying to keep on some sort of path we feel we can manage or hope to navigate.
I came out of our chat with a totally different perspective of this indivudual – both as a musician and as a human.
More than that, it allowed me to look back on my perceptions and realise how much I had let prejudices, associations and media [mis]shape my point of view. Or said another way, how I had chosen to ‘tune out’ their reality and ‘tune in’ to the noise surrounding them.
Noise created by people who often didn’t know them and certainly didn’t know what they were going through.
We all have experienced a version of that in our life. Now imagine it on a national and international scale?
Which is why that chat not only helped me see their choices and career through an entirely different lens … it made me feel deeply ashamed of myself.
Of my prejudice.
Of my judgement.
Of my wasted energy.
And I told them and they were incredibly kind and gracious about it. Far more than I deserved, let alone expected … but I can honestly say, I now look at who they are and what they have done – and do – with deep respect rather than judgement or ridicule.
That doesn’t mean I suddenly love their music – I don’t – but I do now completley understand where it came from and what it represented. Especially to them. And that – ironically – has allowed me to connect to them as an artist and a human far more than I ever imagined was possible … amplified by their openness, warmth and willingness to be vulnerable about moments in their life that were most definitely not easy.
I say all this because I think where I started prior to the interview represents what our industry is doing day after day.
Relying on cherry-picked data points, shortcuts and convenient answers, rather than going out their way to truly understand the textured lives, perspectives and challenges of the audiences they want and need to connect and engage to.
What’s making this even worse is how many research companies are now outsourcing ‘data gathering’ to AI driven bots … reinforcing that business increasingly values speed, convenience and efficiency over depth of underrstanding.
And the result of all this?
False perceptions.
Self-interest driven solutions.
Increased category convention advertising.
Or, to sum it up even more devastatingly … Maxwell House idiocy thinking.
It’s why I’ve always seen strategy as an outdoor job more than a desk job.
It’s why I’ve put-out books about what society is thinking over what marketing is claiming.
It’s why I’ve always favoured working with people like On Road and Ruby Pseudo over the conglomerate research companies.
And finally, it’s why – when told by planners they don’t have time to go out and talk to people – I’ve said that even if they talk to 3 people in the streets, that’s likely 3 more than anyone else. Because as much as it is always the right thing to make time for more understanding, the point isn’t about scale of opinion, it’s about scale of the nuances you will discover … because when you’re open to that, you’ll not only learn how much you never knew, but see how much your creativity can now impact and achieve.