Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Childhood, Confidence, Culture, Cunning, Dad, Daddyhood, Embarrassing Moments, Empathy, EvilGenius, Family, Fatherhood, Jill, Love, Nike, Otis, Parents, Resonance, Social Commentary
So I’ve been doing this advertising job thing for 30 years.
THIRTY.
And in that time, I've had the huge honour and privilege to work with amazing people around the world and do work that has achieved a certain level of fame and notoriety.
Because of that, I have been invited to speak at conferences all around the World … rubbing shoulders that frankly, I should have no right to.
The point of all this is that I've done quite a lot and achieved quite a lot.
Believe it or not, this is not a humble brag, in fact it's about to be a public humiliation.
You see a few weeks ago, while working from home, I was on video conference with a very senior member of NIKE's global team.
They were talking about some stuff, and realising I didn't have a notepad, I nipped downstairs to get a notepad.
When I came back, my client told me Otis had came in, done an impromptu naked bum dance at the screen, then ran out giggling.
To top it off, they said, “… and your son is still more professional than you”
Fortunately this client has known Otis since he was born so he found it funny – as would anyone really – and the meeting carried on as before.
Anyway, as I found this amusing, I put it on Twitter and LinkedIn as ‘the perils from working from home with a 5 year old’.
Within 3 days … THREE … it had achieved more views and shares than literally any conference, presentation, talk, blog post or tweet I’ve ever written.
In fact, it probably comes second to all of them combined.
ALL. OF. THEM.
Doesn’t matter if a talk of mine had been online for 10 years.
Beaten.
Didn’t matter if I’d written an occasionally topical blog post or tweet.
Beaten.
In 3 days, my sons naked bum dance had trounced all of them.
As of the time of writing, on LinkedIn alone, that single post has been read over 190,000 times, been shared 347 times, had over 3000 people approve it, had 100 comments and ignited over 220 different people – from big CEO/CMO’s to law firms – to ask to join my ‘network’.
Yes, my sons naked bum encouraged people to want to connect to me.
What sort of weird bastards are they?
[Of course I said yes, beggars can’t be choosers]
And while I can use this story at every birthday or celebration that Otis has for the next 30 years, nothing has highlighted how utterly futile my career has been than this.
Parents are said to always want their kids to go further than they have achieved.
Well he’s done it already.
At age 5.
Good job I love you with all my heart Otis.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Audio Visual, Childhood, Content, Creative Brief, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Daddyhood, Design, Fatherhood, Health, Home, Imagination, Love, My Fatherhood, Otis, Peace, R/GA
When Corona happened and we were all asked to stay at home, the first thing I thought about was the impact it would have on Otis.
It was bad enough he wouldn’t be seeing his friends for god knows how long, so the last thing I wanted was for him to start thinking the outside and people in general were dangerous.
All this led to an idea about creating a storybook to help kids understand the situation … help parents talk about it in a way that wouldn’t be scary and maybe let everyone ask questions or talk about things without freaking each other out.
A small team, predominantly Ed, James, Igor, David, Dre, Becs and Anna came up with the story, the design, the visuals and the animation – while all in individual quarantine – and 10 days later, From My Window was born.
To be honest the inspiration for all this came from the way Sesame Street handled the death of Mr Hooper – one of the human lead characters.
When he died the producers didn’t know what to do.
Do they recast the role? Do they explain his departure as the character moving away? Do they say he quit or just retired?
Instead the writers and producers decided to create an episode that taught their young audience about the difficult topic of death – not just because they felt that was the best way to respect the character, but because they assumed many kids in their audience may have experienced a loss of a loved one and this could help them better understand what it means and find some inner peace.
The episode was written by the shows head writer and aired on Thanksgiving, 1983. Even now it is regarded as having set the standard for dealing with difficult topics on children’s television and remains the highest rated episode in the shows history.
You can read more about it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Hooper
While ‘From My Window’ obviously is not Sesame Street, we hope it can help kids maintain their love for the outside and help parents deal with a situation they never could have imagined would ever happen to them.
From My Window is available for parents to read with their kids [on a smart phone or tablet] at www.frommywindow.rga.com and includes a colouring-in book. The animated version – like the one below – is also available to enjoy here.
I have to say the animated one – below – is my favourite because all the voices are from kids of parents from R/GA London.
And yes, Otis is in it … he makes his debut at the end, when he takes the story on from the beautiful rainbow … which is appropriate because he drew the one at the top of this post.
I’ve got to be honest, I love we did this. I hope in its own small way, it helps. We know it won’t change the world but it may help your kid to keep looking out the window and see wonder and excitement.
No posts till Tuesday because of the Easter holidays. Enjoy the break. Stay safe.
Filed under: Attitude & Aptitude, Dad, Daddyhood, Embarrassing Moments, Family, Jill, Otis, Parents
A while back it was ‘Book Day’ at Otis’ school.
I’d never heard of it before … but apparently it’s a day where the kids dress up as a character from their favourite book.
Of course, what it really is, is the commercialisation of yet another event … a chance for companies to get even more money out of people, but as it’s for books and for kids – all parents nod and hand over their cash.
For the record, Otis went from the dinosaur from ‘Dinosaurs Don’t Eat Tacos’.
Anyway, in an apparent prestigious move, Jill was invited to go and read a book to the class … so wanting to get in the spirit she looked for a book character outfit to wear.
Below proves the evil geniuses of the internet …
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Childhood, Comment, Dad, Daddyhood, Family, Fatherhood, Jill, Love, Otis, Parents
OK, so now we have got over the fun and frolics of yesterdays April Fool post, I want to bring it back to something serious.
Recently we decided we would have a day where Otis could make all the decisions.
He immediately went for it big time by asking to go to a local builders cafe for breakfast, where he ordered chips, drank a Coke Zero and watched Paw Patrol on his iPad.
You can see him in the photo at the top of this post.
Living the dream.
Anyway, I mentioned this on Facebook when someone I’ve not met but vaguely know wrote:
“We practice ‘good choices’ day, you should try it”.
Now while I was sure it had come out more condescending than intended – this person does have form in being judgemental from their self-appointed pedestal – and Jill decided to inform him of this.
She replied:
“You don’t know me or my son.
Your comment comes across as judgmental and condescending and makes me uncomfortable because it implies my son was making ‘bad’ decisions.
Perhaps if you did know us you would understand our parenting style more and that we aim not to use words like ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because of their unfortunate side effect of creating shame.
Decisions are just decisions, and I believe that kids need space to make a whole variety… nobody makes ‘good’ decisions all the time and I want him to grow up knowing that that’s ok, normal and part of life.
Perhaps your comment really was just about sharing what you see as a fun idea, but your way of expressing it missed the mark…”
As I am sure you will all agree, that was a pretty awesome response.
But more importantly, it highlights how we are attempting to bring up Otis.
Coming back to England has been wonderful, but the one thing that has surprised us is the pretty draconian approach to instilling certain qualities into our kids.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it’s being done for good reason, but the overt shame/reward approach bothers us. A lot.
There are many reasons for it – and of course, each to their own – but this poster sums up the one we fear the most.
This situation applies to all.
Not just kids … but family members, friends and colleagues.
What’s worse is this tends to stick with people.
It is one of the elements that has driven so many of the Corporate Gaslighting stories.
I get situations can make us angry.
I get people can do stupid things.
But when your approach to correction is shame, you’re trying to improve the outcome of one thing through the destruction of another.
You might not mean it.
You might not want it.
But you are doing it.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Family, Home, Jill, My Fatherhood, Otis
So I have to admit that I am loving being in quarantine with my family.
I appreciate a big part of that is that I’ve been impacted far less than many.
I fortunately continue to have a job and where we live has a small backyard for Otis to play in. I also know that with no elderly family members around, the worry and fears are limited to just our situation which is why, even though I would rather no one had suffered through this time, this period has been a revelation for me.
There’s many reasons for that. I am saving two and a half hours a day on commuting … so I’m get an hour a days more sleep. I get to be here and see Otis when he wakes up and goes to bed every night. And dinner time is now family dinner time … every single day.
All those things are wonderful based on the fact I just love being with my family.
We’ve never spent so much time together in our lives and I have to say, it’s great.
Yes, we would love to go out and see friends, but in terms of sacrifice, it has actually had some upside – though I would never want anyone to have had to pay the price they’ve had, to experience this.
The main reason this has been so impactful to me is that I was previously of the opinion being in the office every day was important.
Not ‘to be seen’ by management, but because as a boss … I felt it was important to spend time with your gang and be there when/if they need you. I still feel that, but now realise I can spend one day a week at home and it won’t do any damage … even more so when I assume many of the team will want to do the same.
That said, working from home has revealed some interesting situations.
As I wrote a while back, Otis’ naked bum dance to a very important member of the NIKE global management was an interesting one. While he has fortunately not done a repeat performance, he has revealed what he really thinks of me.
Just recently, this was our interaction while his Mum had popped out to buy some groceries …
As burns go, that’s pretty awesome … though as my colleagues gleefully told me when I told this story to them, “He’s not wrong”.
Assholes.