Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Career, Collaboration, Communication Strategy, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Empathy, Grifting, Metallica, Perspective, Resonance, Respect
This is a photo of Metallica’s road crew for their current 72 Seasons tour. I say that, but it doesn’t include the entire team who makes it happen … which totals around 500 people.
Five Hundred!
To allow 4 guys to play their songs to people around the World.
From stage riggers to wardrobe people to caterers to production crew to personal roadies to management to the 92 truck drivers.
Then there’s the people who are part of the tour but not on the tour …
From logistics people to fanclub project managers to lawyers to each and every one of the bands families.
It’s a lot.
Now the reality is the band are not just aware of this, but are deeply grateful and protective of everyone who is part of this … but the point of this post is not only does our industry love to place the spotlight on individuals – crediting them and them alone for whatever product, project or theory that is being celebrated – but too many of those individuals like to project the view that is entirely justified and as someone who has been in this industry longer than dinosaurs, the amount of times I’ve genuinely seen that, can be counted on one hand.
Don’t get me wrong, I have the ego of Bono.
And I appreciate everyone loves being told they’re good at what they do.
But there’s a difference between being celebrated and taking all the credit. And there’s a fuckload of people who – at least on social media – are happy to take all the credit.
Presenting themselves as some sort of comms Jesus.
Look, I’m not saying what they do isn’t good.
And I’m not saying what they do doesn’t have value.
However I am saying that in 99.9% of cases, they didn’t do it all on their own.
[Even though there’s more than a few you could possibly have that argument with, especially those who’ve never made work to back up their self-proclaimed genius or judgement]
Sure, maybe some of the help they received was people simply creating the conditions for them to be able to do whatever it is they do … but by the same token, ‘creating the conditions’ is exactly what those 200 people in the photo above do, and the band are very grateful they for that because otherwise no one would get to experience what is possible. Including James, Kirk, Lars and Robert.
My reason for writing this is because, as I said a few months back, too many people entering this industry are being subjected to a perspective that is inadvertently robbing them of what they could achieve if they didn’t fall into the ‘thought-leadership shortcut trap’.
That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t express their opinions and ideas.
That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be ambitious in their aspirations and goals.
But it does mean they shouldn’t think working with others is a sign of failure … because not only is that a recipe for disaster, it’s also why the industry is becoming less and less of a community and more and more an ego battlefield.
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Also, today is the 1st anniversary of our dear Rosie passing.
On one hand it feels longer than that, on the other only it feels just a few weeks.
Despite being small, she’ll always have a big place in my heart and life and I’ll be thinking of her and ‘her ways’ even more today.
Miss you Rosie.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Cannes, Context, Craft, Creativity, Culture, Distinction, Emotion, Fashion
There were a lot of stylish people at Cannes.
There were also a lot of try-hard people at Cannes.
But of all the folks I saw over the days I was there, one stood out.
Not just for how they looked, but for the statement they made:
About Cannes …
About the people at Cannes …
About the attitude and behaviour of the industry at large.
I don’t know who you are.
I don’t know what you do.
But if it were up to me, you’d be walking away with a Grand Prix Lion for owning a look I’ll never forget – which, where our industry is concerned – is what we once were brilliant at creating before we sold out the value of creativity in favor of making cash off process and being complicit to a set of rules developed by people who [1] have never actually made the stuff we’re brilliant at and [2] claim the rules for effective marketing are things like emotion, distinction and consistency as if that hasn’t been the case for 200 fucking years.
I suspect, that’s the emotional baggage she’s carrying with her.
It’s the same emotional baggage anyone who cares and creates work is dealing with as we watch certain individuals get wild applause from the broad industry despite the fact they continually demonstrate they either don’t know their history or are choosing to rebadge it so they can flog it off as a ‘proprietary systems for success’ despite the fact all their blatantly bloody obvious lessons have come off the back of the hard work the creative industry has been creating and making for decades.
Seriously, we’re in full-on, corporate Emperor’s New Clothes territory these days … and while there’s a lot of fools being taken in by it, we’re the biggest idiots for having let it happen and then standing by as they do it.
Happy fucking Monday. I’m up for a fight this week … Hahaha.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Cannes, Colenso, Creativity, Culture, Paula, WARC
I was talking to a friend of mine recently about the ad industry and the challenges it faces.
Specifically about how we are now bathed in for-profit processes and research methodologies that promise us access to ‘risk free success’ and yet we continue to struggle.
Why?
Well of course there are a lot of reasons for it.
+ Costs.
+ Technology.
+ Restructuring.
+ Holding companies.
+ Tech company power.
+ Procurement departments.
+ The rise of social influencers.
+ A lack of ongoing, formal training.
+ Underinvestment in hiring/keeping talent.
+ Too much one-size-fits-all outsourced training.
+ The lack of influence marketing has within organisations.
+ The devaluation of experience in favour of social popularity.
+ A lack of understanding about how creativity works at a client level.
+ The gullibility of organisations that think there is a ‘risk-free success’ model.
But on top of that, there was another thing we touched on – how the amalgamation of all these issues is increasingly robbing the joy out of what we do.
Yes, I appreciate our job is about helping clients achieve their commercial goals so you may ask, “who cares if you enjoy what you’re doing”, but here’s the thing, joy creates commercial and creative possibilities.
I don’t mean that simply in terms of effort, I mean in terms of what comes out at the other end.
The stuff that people feel even if they can’t explain why.
Like this.
Or this.
Or even this this.
Now I should be clear that when I say ‘joy’, I don’t mean happy-clappy-hippy-shit … I mean a sense of fulfilment of doing something really well.
Not because you followed a ‘for profit’ dot-to-dot methodology by someone who has never actually made the work, but because of your vision and ambition that was shaped, crafted and influenced through the blood, sweat, tears, belief and laughter of what you – and other talented souls – made together.
And it was at this point I realized I’d made a terrible mistake with the presentation Paula and I did at Cannes for WARC.
Because while those 150+ slides [as seen above] claimed to be about ‘The Secrets Of Strategy From Artists Who Only Live Creatively’ … it wasn’t.
It was a talk on how to be creatively fulfilled …
Maybe we all need to talk a little more about that.
Not just because fulfillment can keep – and attract – the best talent to stay in the business for longer … not just because it actively drives and encourages commercial success for the clients we work for … but because for all the brilliant things AI can do, it can’t compete with the infectious, limitless, power and potential of fulfillment.
Because it will never understand it, let alone be able to do it.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, AI, Attitude & Aptitude, Communication Strategy, Crap Campaigns In History, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Empathy, Humanity, London, Technology
While I was in London, I saw this:
What the actual fuck?
The worst thing is I can imagine they’ll get lots of enquiries … probably from companies who are very vocal on saying ‘their staff are their greatest asset’.
But as we know, the companies that shout the loudest about their people are often the ones who are the worst offenders of them. Like some supercharged gaslighting trick, except everyone knows what they’re doing.
The bit I find confusing though is who do these companies think will be their future customers if they are shedding jobs in favor of AI?
Who is going to have the money and why the fuck do they think those who do, will spend it with them when there is a distinct lack of customer care, craft or consideration?
AI has incredible possibilities, but the scary thing is most companies like it because they see it as being able to do the same things they’ve always done, just cheaper or faster.
That’s it.
What these companies fail to realise is that if their products and operations can be replicated this easily, then they may not be that good in the first place.
I’m seeing this everywhere – especially in advertising.
Agencies and clients banging on about how they have used AI to create an ‘ad’ that would have cost millions before – without once stopping to realise that not only is it something we have seen millions of times before, but while the ad may be visually rich, it is also fucking shit.
Sure, it’s early days … but that so many people are focusing on the optimization of the technology rather than the possibilities of it is tragically sad. But then – as I’ve talked about a bunch in the past – I have always been more alarmed by the people behind the tech than the tech itself.
Maybe this is why my client – the biggest investor in luxury and street culture fashion on earth – believes the future of luxury will be built around personal service. Not the illusion of personal service … but the engagement and interaction with real humans.
Highly trained, highly experienced, specialists.
That doesn’t mean they don’t see the value and power of AI … they do. It’s just they recognize that you can’t claim value when you’re doing everything you can, on the cheap. And yet so many brands forget that … mistaking a premium price for a premium product. Until they find out by the actions, choices and behaviours of the people.
Technology is amazing and nothing is possibly more amazing than AI.
It has the power to liberate opportunities we’ve never imagined.
It can enable and facilitate whole new ways of working and creating.
It will provide an outlet for people who have been overlooked for decades.
This is all incredible and important stuff.
But if companies increasingly see it as a way to cut costs to drive short-term gains … then frankly, not only do they deserve all they will get, they need to realise they are the embodiment of Artificial Intelligence.
So to the people behind Artisan … go fuck yourself.
Said with love. Human love.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Complicity, Confidence, Corporate Evil, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Process, Systems
I recently saw this quote from Rick Rubin:
While he is referring to band dynamics, what he is really talking about are the conditions needed to create something special.
The reason I say this is there’s not enough talk about this.
What I see being continually pushed is a focus on processes, systems, models and tools – and while they are very important, they are far more about delivering consistency or amplification of something special rather than the actual creation of it.
Because that tends to come much earlier in the piece.
Something born from humans rather than systems.
Because the most powerful path to creating something special comes from working with people you trust.
Not necessarily like, but trust.
People with taste, ability and a willingness to hold each other to account to standards while also taking shared responsibility for helping achieve and deliver it.
It’s as true in organisations as it is in bands.
And yet many companies to ignore this because they don’t want to ask themselves the tough questions … face the hard truths … so they create an environment of co-dependency, where no one questions each other because they don’t want to be questioned themselves.
It’s a slow walk towards mediocrity … and yet that is often preferable because consistency is more valued than possibility.
That’s not entirely the leaderships fault, because that’s also what shareholders want, so we end up in this crazy situation where
‘good enough’ is preferable to trying to create something truly good.
On one level I get it.
Truly good is hard.
It can cost a fortune.
And after all that work, you still may not make it happen.
However, while there are no guarantees what you make will be truly special … the one thing I know is the more you create an environment where talented people are with others they trust, the more likely you are to create something even a ‘proprietary process’ never will.
And if we don’t aspire to that, what’s the point of doing anything?