Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Context, Culture, Customer Service
OK … so the posts so far this week have been pretty serious – at least by my standards – so to make sure no one thinks this is going to become the norm [and let’s face it, no one thinks that] I thought I’d end the week on a low.
Near my office is a cafe.
It’s very similar to Jamaica Blue, the cafe I used to go to daily when I was at Wieden+Kennedy … in so much as it sells food that looks OK but basically tastes like boiling hot cardboard and – despite me going in there every day, eating the same thing every day – the staff never remember what I have and have all the warmth of a limp salad.
You may be wondering why I go in there then?
And the answer is because I’m lazy and pathetic.
However there are 2 other reasons … reasons that even the mighty shite that was Jamaica Blue couldn’t muster.
One is that they charge me a different amount for the same thing every single day.
EVERY SINGLE DAY.
It’s not a huge amount different, but it’s different and the only reason I don’t tell them is that I get quite excited wondering what it will be each day.
Not only that, it’s still not as shit as my last week at Wieden, when I went into Jamaica Blue and discovered that they had been overcharging me for my breakfast for 7 years.
SEVEN FUCKING YEARS.
But the other reason is that my local London cafe has food combinations that even the weirdest experience in China couldn’t match. And I’m talking about a country that once put a piece of broccoli on some ice cream as they couldn’t find a leaf of mint.
What am I talking about?
I’m talking about this …
Watercress.
WATERCRESS.
Not only is it the most pointless, tasteless accompaniment to the delicious carbs of pasta and cheese … you have to wonder who the hell would want it as a tasteless accompaniment to the delicious carbs of pasta and cheese.
Maybe it’s like my old Diet Tango campaign … created to offset the guilt of your bad food weaknesses … but surely, if that’s the case, they could have offered something more comprehensive.
A whole salad perhaps?
Whatever the reasons, the fact is that regardless what prices they charge … whatever mouth-melting temperature they serve their food at … whatever alternative cardboard simulation they have on display … I’ll still find myself going in there, handing them my money and then hating myself for it while also feeling strangely comforted by it all.
Which means the post I wrote about brand loyalty a while back missed one vital characteristic.
Because while I stated that true brand loyalty is when you have an almost irrational connection to a brand so you do whatever you can to have it or be associated with it [regardless of cost, access or competition] there is an alternative situation when someone feels they are not worthy of having something decent so actively make choices to choose things they don’t really like or value because they feel that is all they deserve.
Let’s call this self spite loyalty … and given my love of Jamaica Blue, Birkenstocks, Queen and countless other rubbish things, I seem to have it in droves.
Happy weekend.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Creativity, Culture, Embarrassing Moments, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning
Let’s be honest, I’m a prick.
Especially if you have the misfortune of working with me.
I know all the things I do wrong as I’ve had them told to me 10,000 times.
I distract people from their work.
[But get pissy if they distract me]
I take a steady stream of horrible instagrams of colleagues.
And revel in posting them. On EVERY social media platform ever created.
I buy stupid, passive-aggressive, humiliating gifts.
I have opinions on seemingly everything. And everyone.
I can get needy and emotional.
Basically, I am a liability and yet – despite this endless stream of work violations – I have been blessed with amazing colleagues and team mates who, despite all I do to them, give me nothing but support and their talent back.
Idiots.
But every now and then they fight back.
A photo of my stupidity here.
A shitty/wonderful present there.
And while they think it teaches me a lesson, the fact is I love it.
I love it for a bunch of reasons …
I love it because of the effort they put in to it.
I love it because it means we have an openness that allows it to happen.
I love it because it means we see each other as humans, not one dimensional robots.
Which is all a convoluted explanation of the picture that heads up this post … created and given to me by one of the R/GA strategists – Divya – who felt it was the scariest thing she could produce for Halloween and – lets face it – she was right.
I still stupidly hope that one day in the future, all the people I have worked with can come together and chat – not because I want them to compare notes of what a prick I am – but because I’ve been very fortunate to have brilliant people in my life and I would love to see them all together and witness the magic they could create together.
As long as it’s not a class action against my professional exploits.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Audio Visual, Authenticity, Brilliant Marketing Ideas In History, Communication Strategy, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Family, Happiness, Internet, Marketing, Parents, Research, Technology
When I was younger, I discovered the ‘Argos’ catalogue.
It was at my Grandparents house and it was a bloody revelation.
For those who don’t know what Argos is, imagine Amazon.com before Amazon.
A place where you can buy a huge array of products, all of which were featured in an annual catalogue which you could take home and peruse at your leisure.
[It’s also famous for little pens – now pencils – that you would have to use to fill in the forms to get the products when you went into the store. Pens/pencils that I would say everyone in England has ended up keeping at some point in their lives]
But for me, it only had 2 uses …
1. To get a glimpse at the future of technology.
2. To choose what I really, really wanted for my birthday/christmas.
Every time I visited my grandparents, I would run to where they kept the Argos catalogue and spend hours going through all the pages, gazing lovingly at digital watches, calculators, the emergence of hand held ‘electronic’ games and – eventually – computers.
Every year the catalogue came out, I would be see the advances of tech in front of my eyes.
But more than that, for the right money – I could have it.
Of course I – nor my parents – had the right money except maybe at Christmas, but a boy could dream … and boy did I.
I still remember the excitement the first time I saw Astro Wars … a handheld version of the video game Galaxian
It was like the impossible dream.
A full sized video game shrunk into a small box.
What sort of weird wizardry was this???
I still remember how a bunch of us at school saw it at the same time and we all knew it was the ‘must have’ present for the year.
I was incredibly lucky to get it that year … and while it was a bit crap, I still utterly loved it because to me, that was cutting edge tech.
[As an aside, I just discovered it cost £28 in 1980 – the equivalent of £100 today, so I am utterly gobsmacked I got it given my parents would have had to have saved up for months to afford that. So thank you Mum and Dad, I never realized it was that pricey]
Anyway, the reason I say all this is that Argos have recently digitized all their old catalogues.
And while you may ask yourself, “why?” and “why would anyone care?” you’d be wrong … because if you’re a person of a certain age, the Argos catalogue was not a book of products available for purchase, it was a place of imagination and possibilities and while the stuff inside the late 70’s/early 80’s catalogues are full of the sort of tat even a ‘Everything for £1’ store, would turn their noses up at, looking through them all again, I can honestly say it ignited the excitement I had back then.
Truly.
And yes, that means I really have spent hours trawling through them all.
Again.
And what’s more, I don’t care how sad that makes me.
It was a magical journey down nostalgia lane.
More specifically, nostalgia that was specific to my life, not just everyone else’s.
America may have had Disneyland.
But us kids in Britain had the Argos catalogue.
You can explore the history of 40+ English imaginations, here and you can see why I think the Argos Christmas campaign – which links to the nostalgia theme of the old catalogues – is already the winner of 2019, below.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Content, Context, Craft, Creative Brief, Creative Development, Creativity, Design, Differentiation, Digital, Emotion, Empathy, Experience, Innocence, Innovation, Insight, Marketing, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning, Point Of View, Positioning, Relevance, Resonance
I am getting fed up of hearing strategy talked about in terms of a process.
Of course, there is one, but it seems people seem to value the process more than what it is supposed to deliver.
Which is clarity and direction.
Something that will change the behaviour of the brand/business from the very next day.
Something that will help create a clear position in culture, not just in the category.
Something that will contribute value, loyalty and appeal to the audience that will move them forward.
Something that is focused on the long-term, not just the next quarter.
That’s it.
That’s all strategy is.
And yet, I am meeting so many people who are getting lost in the process or worse, getting lost in the word ‘strategy’ … saying nothing can be done without it being deeply involved at every step – and I mean ‘every’ step – of the process.
Now don’t get me wrong, thinking and expertise is important – but to imply that only someone with the word ‘strategy’ in their title can do it, is wrong.
Actually, it’s insulting … especially when you consider that so much of the magic happens when you invite people who see the World differently to the party.
But it’s happening.
I’m seeing it everywhere.
And what it’s doing is creating so many strands to the strategy discipline, they’re getting in the way of each other.
That might be good for the agency fee, but not great for the work.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying these strands of strategy don’t have value – of course they do – but in many areas, it’s not actually strategy … it’s not delivering on any of the 4 areas listed above … it’s simply helping push along the process of the output to get to a [allegedly] more effective result.
In other words, it’s short-term tuning rather than long term creating.
Adding obstacles rather than taking them away.
Or said more cynically, it’s more tactics than strategy.
Doesn’t have to be.
Not everyone is doing that.
Not everyone thinks like that.
But my god, it seems there is a lot of it about … and when you look at the amount of work that is being produced because of it, you have to admit that while there’s a lot of optimization, there’s not a lot of distinctive, magnetic energy.
Filed under: Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Communication Strategy, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Marketing
A few weeks ago, I met Nils Leonard, one of the founders of Uncommon.
While I had definitely encountered his agencies work before, I had not encountered him.
I wish I hadn’t.
Not because he’s an arrogant dick.
Not because he cares more about money than creativity.
Not even because he has let all his success go to his head.
But because he’s good.
As in really good.
Not just in his talent – which is obvious – but as a person.
He’s a charming, smart, funny and – wonderfully – self depreciating.
He has built, arguably, the most exciting agency in London right now and yet the prick is still generous, open, passionate and welcoming.
I have achieved 0.2% of what he has and I’m a miserable, egotistical dick …
Hell, even my partner-in-crime, Mr Weigel, fell under Nils spell … which means he’s either a witch, a hypnotist or just one of those absolutely talented wankers who you are genuinely happy for the success they are achieving because they’re building and earning it the right way.
With the work.
That said, I’ve heard there are some in the industry who hate him.
As in really, really hate him.
I can only assume they’re jealous about what he [and Lucy and Natalie] have created and are creating and – more importantly – how they’re actually going about doing it …
I don’t blame them, I want to hate him too … and while I could focus on the fact his laugh is a bit like David Brent’s and I’m not as keen on their Guardian work as most of their other stuff [though, to be fair, it’s more the line than the work]… the fact is, there are people you meet in this life – and I’ve been fortunate to have met and worked with a few – where you realise all their achievements aren’t because they’re political, self-publisiising, manipulative, ego-driven, cold and calulated assholes, but because they’re extremely talented and hard-working in a way that means they were always destined to exist at a different altitude to the rest of us.
No wonder he called them Uncommon.
Bastard.