Filed under: America, Attitude & Aptitude, Australia, Authenticity, China, Content, Context, Corona Virus, Creativity, Culture, England, Environment, Government, Perspective, Social Media, Technology
So I’m back.
I had a lovely time and Croatia is proper beautiful.
I know that’s a big call given I spent 2½ days there, the rest travelling, but it was.
God I miss travelling.
You’d think after almost 20 years of basically living on an airplane, I’d be over it … but there’s something so magical visiting new places and meeting new people.
Of course the environment is even more important – and COVID has shown we can do a lot without having to be in the same room – however being in another country and culture is a powerful and important experience. Especially given all the nationalistic bullshit going on … so having people engage with each other in different environments and geographies – rather than just stay in their own bubble – is probably better for the state of the World than just keeping to your own shores.
Nothing highlights this more than the paranoia regarding TikTok.
All apps are harvesting data, but because the parent company of TikTok is Chinese, governments and business are telling their employees they can’t have the app on their phone.
And yet TikTok, unlike other social media firms, have not – as far as I understand – been caught using the data in illegal ways. And even if they have, I am sure it’s no where near to the level of other companies that have been caught.
But here we go … the classic racism and prejudice towards China.
I know I’m biased.
I also know China has many issues.
But as I’ve said many times, the actions of other governments are equally as bad … they just hide it better, package it better [if that’s what you can call something as sick as Guantanamo Bay] or use the focus on China to distract people more convincingly.
Then there’s the fact some of the stuff the Chinese Government do get away with – and they do – is other politicians wet dream. Specifically the Republican and Tory parties.
Anyway, I don’t know what the problem is because as you can see from the photo above, if TikTok thinks I’m 15, then the data they’re harvesting is nothing to worry about.
Oh hang on, unless that’s my mental – not physical – age, and then we have a lot to worry about indeed.
Sorry for the rambling, jet lagged, post.
I wish I could say tomorrow will be better, but we all know it won’t be.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Content, Creativity, Culture, Perspective, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless
So tomorrow I am off to Croatia to do my Jerry Maguire talk.
That means there will be no posts from me until the 26th.
You lucky, lucky people.
I’ve never been to Croatia, so I’m looking forward to it.
Or I should until I checked the website of the festival and saw the names who will be in attendance and felt massive imposter syndrome … only cranked up to 11 when I saw I was a key note speaker.
Oh jeez.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, I’ll be presenting slides like this:
I know … I know … it sounds like the sort of inner-monologue you’d hear on an episode of Peep Show.
Worse, it sounds like the inner monologue of Mark AND Jez.
I’m doomed … but not a much as the audience in Croatia. Boom Tish.
Have a lovely time without me, see you – very jet-lagged – on the 26th.
[Unless I discover Zdravo doesn’t mean ‘hello’ in Croatian and I’m arrested for indecency]
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Culture
There have been a few times in my life where I have felt my brain was full.
Literally.
That to fit anything new in, meant I had to tip something out.
Obviously I now realise that the occasions I felt that way, my mental health was suffering.
Except I didn’t know about mental health back then.
No one did.
Oh I accepted I was stressed.
I appreciated my workload was out of control.
But I thought the only way to deal with it was to deal with it.
Late nights.
Over-consumption of bad food and cans of Diet Coke.
Pretend everything was OK.
Except it wasn’t.
My girlfriend at the time, Jill – now my wife, saw it and told me it was madness. I had to stop.
But I was in a job I didn’t feel I deserved to have … with a new company … in a new country that had zero understanding about work/life balance … in a new relationship where I had taken her from her home country to somewhere totally new where she knew no one … so I felt I needed to show my commitment and ability.
To Jill. To my new colleagues. To myself.
And the worst thing is, I managed to do just that.
I got through it.
Which meant I wrote the episode off as ‘stress’ and ‘workload’ and believed if it happened again, I could deal with it.
Which is exactly what I did.
Or should I say, I thought I did.
Because as I got older, I have felt the scars it left.
Sometimes hidden. Sometimes in plain sight.
And what I came to realise was it was so much more than stress and workload … but burnout.
Not just in terms of physical tiredness.
But mental and emotional.
I was cut adrift from who I was … where living was surviving.
No one should think they can’t take any more new information in.
No one should finish work at 3am and think it’s OK to be up 2 hours later.
No one should think a weekend without any work is uncomfortable.
No one should feel it’s wrong to say, “I need some help” or “I just can’t do this”.
Doesn’t matter if it’s for a month or a week … it’s just stupid.
Ironically, I owe a great deal of thanks to one of the worst clients I’ve ever worked with.
They worked for a major technology company and basically were a total prick.
Treated me like shit.
Demanding things. Expecting things, Dismissing things.
And while all my other clients were great and we were doing great things … this one sucked all the light out of everything. Almost revelled in doing it.
The breaking point came when he asked me to write up some things we had discussed and agreed on, then wrote an email saying it didn’t make sense and I wasn’t paying attention to his requirements … EVEN THOUGH IT WAS WHAT HE HAD SAID WORD FOR WORD.
Bear in mind, this was also the same person who asked me to present to a room full of his team only to tell a colleague of mine that no one spoke English – so it was simply for their amusement.
I had words with them then.
But this time I snapped.
I rang Jill and told her to pack a bag for us, grab our passports and meet me at the office.
I then met Jill downstairs where we went straight to the airport and boarded a plane to Australia where we spent 5 days away from everyone and everything.
I didn’t even tell work until we landed in Sydney and even then it was via an email – including a bunch of evidence of how I, and the agency, had been treated.
Now you may think this is where I tell you I was sacked.
But I wasn’t … because the CEO was – and remains – an absolutely brilliant human.
He was pissed off … but at the client for acting that way and at me for not telling them about it.
And he dealt with them so I felt OK to come back.
What’s interesting is while you may think I would feel embarrassed by my response, I didn’t.
If anything, I felt euphoric.
Oh I’m sure people were talking behind my back, but I didn’t care … because I’d survived.
It had taken too long.
I’d suffered more than I knew.
But I’d survived.
Ironically, it is only relatively recently that I grasped how terrible it was that I felt good about ‘surviving’, when no job should ever make you feel that way.
The only positive of this whole situation was it had such a profound affect on me that I vowed I’d never allow it to happen to me – or others who work with me – again. And I haven’t. Whether a company or client … receiving money for a service doesn’t equate to ownership of your opinions, self-worth or life, it equates to doing what you have been paid to do in a respectful, conscientious, considerate and honest manner.
That’s it.
And if anyone thinks differently – and there’s a lot of those who do – then they’re wrong, regardless how much they try to shift the blame.
Last year I wrote about depression.
I said that while I appreciate the privilege I have being able to talk openly about this – mainly because I am an old white man so any ramifications will still be far less than if I was a woman, a person of colour, non-binary, a member of the LGBTQ+ community or just younger in age – I hoped by doing it, it may normalise it in some way.
That’s why I’m writing this.
No one is immune from mental health challenges.
To have people feel they can’t acknowledge or discuss their situation doesn’t make it go away.
In fact it makes it worse.
There’s countless stories on Corporate Gaslighting that show that.
Which is why if anyone out there feels they’re in a situation where they don’t know how or who to talk to … or suspect they may be entering this cycle and want to talk it out … or are in a situation where they can’t afford to leave their job but their mental health can’t afford to stay … please drop me a line. I am not qualified to help. But I would be very happy to listen.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Audio Visual, Brand, Comment, Confidence, Context, Craft, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Experience, Legend, Loyalty, Management, Metallica, Music, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance, Respect, Trust, Truth
Late last year, Metallica launched a new song called LuxEterna, from their upcoming new album, 72.
While it is a brilliant return to their roots, the choice of ‘yellow’ as a key colour was met with some negative commentary from ‘brand purists’.
I don’t mean fans, but brand and design folks.
This was amazing for 2 reasons.
The first is our job is to keep things moving evolving rather than continually replicating what’s gone before, so if anyone should be open minded to change, it’s brand and design folk.
[It also highlights my problem with people who keep banging on about ‘brand assets’, because they are confusing recognition with interesting. Or worse, thinking recognition beats being and doing interesting stuff for audiences]
Secondly, the album was designed – as many have been – by the brilliant folk at the wonderful Turner Duckworth … and given their body of work, if anyone knows about designing modern iconography, it’s them.
But overall, I just found the whole debate amusing.
Metallica have always approached albums as a way to express their current frame of creative mind … and given they always look to inject something new or challenging into their work, the choice of yellow seems the perfect way to communicate ‘next chapter’.
In the case of 27 Seasons – also known as the first 18, and arguably, most significant years of your life – James said this …
“There’s been a lot of darkness in my life and in our career and things that have happened with us … but always having a sense of hope, always having the light that is in that darkness, keeps us moving. Without darkness, there’s no light, and being able to focus a little more on the light instead of how it used to be and how horrible it is, that can only be a good thing. There’s a lot of good things going on in life — focusing on that instead helps to balance out my life. And there’s no one meaning to it — everyone has some sense of hope or light in their life, and, obviously, music is mine.“
When you read that, it’s not hard to work out that the use of yellow is part of a bigger idea around the album rather than a desire to build a one colour brand which some have claimed.
Unsurprisingly, they’re the same people who talk about brand assets like you can just buy them off the shelf rather than make them a byproduct of what you do, so that they have value in them that you also keep building.
By pure chance, I was asked by people connected to the band to do a talk to a music publishing company.
While not specifically related to Metallica, I was asked by someone in the audience for my opinion on their ‘new image’ and whether it risked upsetting their core audience.
I had thought this question may came up, which is why I had prepared an answer.
After informing them I had never known a brand – let alone a band – who knew their audience as well as them … and if you listen to the track, I doubt any of their fans would mistake a revitalised Metallica for Ed Sheeran … I said this.
“If Rock n’ Roll is about rebellion, then surely there’s nothing more rock n’ roll than Metallica using yellow rather than the category norm of black?”
It was met with applause.
And some disgust, hahaha.
But here’s the thing …
Brands – and bands – don’t move forward if all they do is give audiences the same thing over and over again. Nor will they if they just give audiences exactly what they want over and over again. Longevity is as much about keeping people on their toes as it is satisfying their passion and curiosity and you only stand a chance of achieving that by following what interests you, not what interests everyone else.
Metallica get this more than most.
It’s part of the reason they have stayed at the top … because by doing things that interest them, they do things that interests more people rather than just the same people.
As I wrote for MTV years ago, brands can learn a lot from bands … because while brands may think finding shortcuts or disguises allows them to optimise their efficiency, everyone else can tell it’s because they’ve run out of ideas or energy.
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By the way, 72 Seasons comes out tomorrow. This is not a sponsored post. Well, not directly anyway, hahaha.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brilliant Marketing Ideas In History, Comment, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Marketing
Welcome back.
Hope you didn’t vomit too much with all the chocolate eating.
I didn’t eat any.
No seriously.
I fell ill on the Thursday with a virus and basically spent all the time in bed.
No food. Just feeling sorry for myself.
But of course I felt better just in time to come back to work. Bloody karma.
So with that, shall we get on with things …
Over the years I’ve written about the hilarity of naming strategies.
Specifically those from consultancies who sell their process as a proprietary system and then talk about how they start with 10,000 possibilities and then use their filtering algorithm to whittle it down to 3 bland or meaningless options.
Except they don’t say that last bit, obviously.
I still remember working with a client who had paid for this ‘expertise’ only to end up with a name recommendation that [1] wasn’t actually a word and [2] sounded like a cheap water brand than an international digital services company.
This is also the company that tried to charge the client for a ‘signage’ strategy.
By that, I mean they wanted to be paid to help the client know where their signage should placed on their building to achieve maximum effectiveness.
I almost caused World War 3 when I said,
“In my experience, placing signage outside – at the top of the building – works best”
Anyway, the reason I’m saying this is Briar, one of my colleagues came to work with a new set of glasses recently and the company behind them had the best name ever …
How brilliant is that?
Of course it’s provocative … risqué … challenging … but it’s also hilarious, fun and memorable.
The thing is, I doubt most of the consultancy naming processes would even come up with it as an option to dismiss.
In addition, Happy To Sit On Your Face put their glasses in a custom made case that folds flat. This might not sound much, but it means you don’t end up with your drawer or bag filled with a bulky, odd-shaped lump.
While I appreciate the name of this brand may not travel easily … it’s also a brand name that has made glasses memorable and if you can do that, then you are already doing better than 95% of brands.