Hallucinations

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL

2012-01-23T06:27:00.002Z

What the Leveson hearing should be mentioning is not just the hacking which is very naughty but the pall of gloom journalists have been trained to exude as this is criminal. Like Death Eaters they are none of them capable of raising a smile or a flicker of joy.But isn’t joy for chic flicks or romantic novels? Did any of the great military commanders of history feel joy? Isn’t rage, ambition and determination what matters? Would Churchill have talked about joy? (Actually yes.)That simple little word most brilliantly distinguishes the truly human from the oppressed or cynical. When Juliet says “I joy in thee” in Romeo and Juliet she reaches a higher plane by far than love or fancy; a simple unfettered emotion of unconditional delight. CS Lewis’ Autobiography of his early years is called “Surprised by Joy” which vividly describes the emotions of children on their voyages of discovery.Joy is what’s missing in most jobs, most cities, most countries and most people. Without joy we shall never find the capacity to create and unite. Our joy in living should be like the emotions unleashed by the feel-good movies of the 80’s and 90’s (Pretty Woman, Four Weddings and so on). Joy like oil keeps human machinery working. I was talking to Jason Brooks, an Associate of Leaders Quest, who identified China’s need to discover joy as well as success. Joy would engage their souls not just their minds.I heard this on Radio 4 on Saturday. Jo Wilding created something called Circus2Iraq and took her troupe of clowns to occupied Iraq to bring joy to children. A similar group has gone now to Palestine and Beirut. Her book is called “Don’t Shoot the Clowns”.

That is active joy, an inspirational strategy to change (for a while) the way people see and think about things.They made play of it which was apparently a let-down but who needs a play when the real thing is so great? My own joy was in hearing the story. Initiatives like Carmel McConnel’s Magic Breakfast (providing breakfast at schools for children in poverty), The Big Lunch - getting communities to get together and have lunches of friendship and joy and the Clowns in the Middle East are creative ways of promoting the legitimacy of unalloyed joy.A lot of reasons to be cheerful.www.colourfulthinkers.com

THE WISDOM OF CROWDS AND OTHER MYTHS

2012-01-16T06:00:00.000Z

This week I was on a train to Brighton that braked sharply at Gatwick where we sat waiting for 45 minutes with no announcement.Eventually the driver said:“I’m so sorry about the delay. The reason is someone forced open a carriage door on the wrong side of the train and then ran off. We had to fix the door. We’ve done so now and we’ll leave very shortly. Thanks for your patience.”A guy behind me said “he’s lying”. I asked why he thought that and he replied he’d been on Twitter and “someone” had tweeted that a person had opened the door on the “right side” and run off down the platform.“So there you are. The driver is a liar”.Let me get this straight. The driver (who also wanted to get home) told his story - credentials? A trained, experienced employee into whose hands we’d trusted our lives.But he was worsted by someone we don’t know and can’t see yet whose credibility is he tweets and claims to be an eye-witness.Imagine if Twitter had existed when Kennedy was shot or when Princess Diana’s car crashed.Caroline Flint MP said recently that she “lived on Twitter.”Why would you? What makes Twitter better than real people and real conversation?In a week where Dianne Abbott was incautious and nearly lost her job by tweeting with a “racial bias”….what a palaver that was….and in which Ed Miliband who on Twitter (a bit like a mini-Tesco at present because Ed can’t put a foot right) described the late Bob Holness’ show as “Blackbusters” we need to examine what this medium is doing to us all.Ed says he’s on it to show people the “real Ed”. The trouble is it makes him look a bit boring, trivial and self-obsessed. It would be far better for him to spend the time on his presentational skills instead.We live in a strange world where the use of e-mail is rapidly reducing, where I’ve seen it claimed that “no-one reads anymore” and where Waterstone’s (for whom such an assertion is bad news) changes its name to Waterstones because “in a digital world of URLs and e-mail addresses, a more versatile and practical spelling (is needed)” … viz. no apostrophe.

In fact it’s, anyway, a long hard word which could be better abbreviated to WastoBosto – ie. Waterstone’s Book Stores. I must tweet someone about that and say James Daunt (CEO) is seriously thinking of doing this. After all, everyone would believe me, the tweeter, and not him, the man in charge, and his denials.

HOW MANY PEOPLE DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE THE WORLD?

2012-01-09T06:00:00.000Z

Answer – none because it’s changing so fast without any help from us.The Christmas “break” with all the connotations that has of disintegration allows us to lounge about, get colds, put on weight, see some old films and read a bit more.It was whilst doing the latter I rediscovered that great line about the unreliability of market research by David Ogilvy, he who said of research “most people use it much as a drunken man uses a lamp post – more for support than illumination”. Here’s his other quote:“Consumers don’t think how they feel, they don’t say what they think and they don’t do what they say”.This explains in part the increasing popularity of neuro-marketing, the application of neuroscience to determining what’s really going on inside people’s heads. But what neuro-marketing can’t do is understand the profoundly changing context in which people feel, think and talk.We live in a world where most of us assume things will (always) get back to normal….and they never do because normal is history.So, back to old films, well actually not so old.First from 1998 “You’ve got Mail” with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. The story of a cyber-relationship created via e-mail in parallel with the story of chain store Fox Books driving an independent bookstore out of business.E-mail seemed like a black art 13 years ago and book stores seemed like big business. In little over a decade e-mails are normal and books are out of business. So this film seemed more out of touch than “Casablanca” which I saw a few days later.And then (cold kicking in and mental faculties barely able to cope) I watched Harry Potter “The Philosopher’s Stone” from 2000, featuring some children (Radcliffe, Watson and Grint) who are now relatively mature adults. Some 4000 days gone in a flash. And, finally, from 2008, “Mamma Mia”. Oddest of all in a way because it was filmed on a Greek island when Greece was still an OK place rather than the disreputable gambler of an idle cousin it now seems. This was the Greece of laughing holidays rather than the place described around Christmas as “somewhere that feels carpet bombed”.This is a world where we’ve gone from the magic of e-mail to the banality of a tweet in a flicker and where good old ordinary normal has gone forever. Maybe films will be the only way we’ll be able to feel the scale of change in the future. Imagine seeing “Minority Report” or “Avatar” in a few years and thinking….is that all?

LOVE, LAUGHING, LISTENING AND LUNCH

2011-12-31T08:01:00.000Z

I have predicted that 2012 will be the year of lunch, of that forgotten art of eating together, playing with ideas and feeding the mind and soul as well as the body. For too long Gekko’s words from Wall Street have coloured our lives. “Lunch is for wimps” he said and sales of Prêt sandwiches soared. We now, typically, stare at screens and don’t talk. We are prepared to embrace the philosophy of the Valley of Austerity just as the prohibitionists embraced moral austerity in America in 1919.My first picture defines that neatly. Although this is a finely wrought spoof it manages to capture the world we could create if we chose this path. No love, no listening, no lunch.

In the party time of the ‘80s we went the other way, as we see, in the “Feast of the Gods” by the wonderfully named Renaissance painter Johann Rottenhammer. This reminds me of the legendary parties we had at the advertising agency FCO when we were producing our most creative work. Odd coincidence that. Lots of love, lots of listening (and talking), lunch never stopped and the work was courageous and alight.

The joy of lunch was best epitomised by Roy Jenkins who revered the ceremony. Our best ever Home Secretary and one of our best writers, he’d down a large amount of claret, captivate conversationally and stroll home to write 5,000 words on Asquith, Baldwin, Churchill, Gladstone, whoever. Without lunch Roy Jenkins would have been a lesser person. So here is a vision of lunch in the sun about to happen. Eighteen people about to sit and eat, laugh, love and listen. And do one other thing. Think.

I give you the lunch party as an altogether better way to run the world than the introspective structures we currently have. And if you believe creativity is what really makes the difference (”the last legal way to gain an unfair advantage” as Maurice Saatchi put it) start filling the 1230-230 slots in your diary.It may make you a little rounder and a lot more cheerful; it’ll also, make you a better person.Bon appétit or if you prefer mahlzeit, pofta buna or smaklig måltid.

HAVE YOURSELF A VERY TERRY CHRISTMAS

2011-12-26T07:57:00.001Z

Racial abuse is big news right now. Luis Suarez, the Liverpool footballer, has been banned for eight matches for calling Patrice Evra “negrito” (a neutrally factual term in Uruguay he claimed). John Terry has been charged with racial abuse by the Crown Prosecution Service for calling Anton Ferdinand a “black c***” – but note it’s not the “c” word that’s provoked the storm.Be very careful not to argue with the Times leader on Thursday which said “Kick racism out – racial abuse cannot be countenanced”. Look at Sepp Blatter’s battering (battering Blatter though is fair game) for downplaying the whole concept. A post-match handshake would sort out any misunderstanding he suggested. Flogging, crucifixion, disembowelling would not be too bad for thoughts expressed so vilely.And now Aidan Burley Tory MP is going to be prosecuted in France for going to a party where people dressed as Nazis. What a prat. Why bother the lawyers?I want to describe the two occasions when I was racially abused.The first was when I played cricket for a team where I was one of only two white guys playing for my team. We played against another team that I think was totally Afro Caribbean and Asian. I batted three. As I walked out early to bat the mutter went round “watch out for dat honky bastard”. As a succession of quick, short pitched deliveries peppered me accompanied with cries of “murder de whitey” and so on, something strangely powerful happened to me igniting my competitive instincts. It was one of my better innings because I had fun, irritated them and I felt I’d been put on trial and survived. Bruised and laughing.The second was in Osaka when a colleague and I were unceremoniously ejected from a “no-gaijan” bar. He being South African was especially outraged and described my phlegmatic response as being “Uncle Tom-ism”. I felt slightly irritated but glad to know what it felt like being discriminated against for having a big nose and smelling of cheese.We need to be intolerant of racism but careful not to let words change our world. The 1955 film “The Dam Busters” still earns plaudits apart from Richard Todd’s final words addressed to his Black Alsatian “Come on Nigger”. My uncle, Walter Mycroft wrote the screenplay. He’d be sent to gaol if he wrote that now, unless of course he was black.Happy, diverse, tolerant and racism-free Christmas…oh and make that New Year and forever too. Ice Cold in AlexMan Friday

DING DONG MERRILY - ASK NOT FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

2011-12-20T06:23:00.000Z

I sent a Christmas Card this year produced by Private Eye which had a group of snowmen sitting around a boardroom table one of whom was gloomily intoning “Gentlemen I think we’re heading for a meltdown”.Thus we read in the Sunday Times article “Nightmare before Christmas” all about the retail bloodbath with rucksacks and thongs in the news…..Black’s Leisure and La Senza apparently on the brink. Meanwhile the Foreign Office is working on advanced plans to evacuate over 1 million Britons living in Spain and Portugal who may have their savings frozen in failing banks and be thrown from their mortgaged villas on to unswept and potholed streets because yes, the end of the Euro-world is nigh.Tragedy was heaped on tragedy as the rumbustious polemicist and contrarian Christopher Hitchens handed in his dinner pail and got two double page spreads in the Times. The Queen Mother didn’t even get that.Hitchens was quoted “The four most overrated things in the world are champagne, lobster anal sex and picnics”. All of them are highly rated here in Brighton – although it’s agreed here that lobster is, perhaps, a bit over hyped.None of this is very Christmassy all this is it?Yet I’ve heard more good singing in the past few weeks than for a long time and I’ve laughed more. I laughed at the story in Stephen Pile’s story in his Book of Heroic Failures about an opera in Wexford thirty years ago on a sloping stage covered in marbled formica. This proved so slippery that the first singer slipped fell and slid rapidly towards the orchestra pit but hung on to be swiftly joined by another singer who suffered the same plight. Locked in embrace on the brink of the stage (not in the script) they carried on singing. The moral of that story which made me laugh out loud was their professionalism was not daunted by the minor mishap of a stumble. The show went on.As our show will.And I realised as I was laughing why the whole Euro farce has been pissing me off so mightily. No sense of humour. Have you ever seen a Belgian laugh? Name a comedian from Luxemburg or Lithuania. And satire’s role in France died with Voltaire.The last words, as they should, belong to Christopher Hitchens.“Alcohol makes people less tedious and food less bland and can help provide what the Greeks call ‘entheos’, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing”.Cheers and Happy Christmas.

SPLENDID ISOLATION

2011-12-15T20:07:00.001Z

Presumably this shows why the debate in Brussels was so important….incidentally Paris came 24th
The top twenty financial centres in the latest index (GFCI 10) which was published in September 2011 are:

	GFCI 10 Rank	GFCI 10 Rating	GFCI 9 Rank	GFCI 9 Rating	Change in Rank	Change in Rating
London	1	774	1	775	-	-1
New York	2	773	2	769	-	+4
Hong Kong	3	770	3	759	-	+11
Singapore	4	735	4	722	-	+13
Shanghai	5	724	5	694	-	+30
Tokyo	6	695	5	694	+1	+1
Chicago	7	692	7	673	-	+19
Zurich	8	686	8	665	-	+21
San Francisco	9	681	13	655	-4	+26
Toronto	10	680	10	658	-	+22
Seoul	11	679	16	651	-5	+28
Boston	12	678	12	656	-	+22
Geneva	13	672	9	659	+4	+13
Washington DC	14	670	17	650	-3	+20
Sydney	15	669	10	658	+5	+11
Frankfurt	16	667	14	654	+2	+13
Vancouver	17	661	22	626	-5	+35
Melbourne	18	656	24	621	-6	+35
Beijing	19	655	17	650	+2	+5
Montreal	20	652	26	615	-6	+37

HOW SPLENDID IS ISOLATION?

2011-12-12T06:00:00.000Z

We all get a warm feeling being elected to a club or being picked to play in a cricket or football team. It’s good being wanted. Winning the struggle to get a good job because they prefer you to the other guys or quite simply being a popular person matters.

Don’t be embarrassed.

We all want to be liked.

So what happened in Brussels last week was very uncomfortable. We were cast out. Like Judas. We were the lonely 1 out of 27 - although I do wish that David Cameron had swaggered more instead of looking apologetic and sorry for himself. He needed to look as though he was right and they were wrong which for month after month they have been.

Trouble is it keeps on happening to us. A few months ago it was FIFA kicking dust in our face with Sebb Blatter asserting his corrupt right to rule and now this.

But the 5th biggest economy in the world is Germany, followed at joint 6th by the UK and trailed by France at 9th and Italy at 10th. Yes we are that important.

So the real tragedy here is for the EU who, in not wooing and, yes, making concessions to the UK, the second biggest economy in greater Europe, and thereby persuading us to play a big front of stage part in solving the Euro-crisis, has now almost certainly led to the crash of their doomed currency. Especially as France who seemed pretty pleased about (as they saw it) seeing off Britain, are rumoured to be likely to lose their triple “A” credit rating this week.

It’s important to realise that Europe contrived to exclude us not vice versa.

You will gather I am not an entire fan of France but to be fair their President has just four more months before elections that look likely to unseat him and he’s tried to play the “see how I beat Britain” card as a desperate political stratagem.

But it still feels lonely and rancorous for us today. It’s not nice being blamed and being told, as Paddy Ashdown did, that forty years of foreign policy had gone down the plughole in a single night and being told off by the Lithuanian Prime Minister.

But how isolated will we be in the end?

The last words on that go to Terry Smith CEO of Tullett Prebon the broker…
“…as isolated as somebody who refused to join the Titanic just before it sailed”.

ISN'T IT TYPICAL?

2011-12-05T07:16:00.001Z

From time to time I sound off about negative thinking and that idiotically masochistic desire for failure. Austerity Britain’s icy fingers beckon us towards the lost decade of misery. At least that’s what the media says. Great headline – “Lost Decade”….

But it was a friend who’d been so ill she’d spent a week in bed to make me realise Radio 4 has to go or just has to be sorted out (Chris Patten are you listening?) She said she had to switch to the cheerfulness of Radio 3 to escape the sneers and sardonic pessimism of the Today programme. And it’s contagious. I listened to the Archers the other day. They’re all candidates for Dignitas.

Yet the rest of us are fine.

The News of the World’s used to claim “all human life is here”. Apparently not, nor in the Sun, Mirror, Mail, Express and the rest (all being daily spanked in the Leveson enquiry with worse to follow for them) because the office for National Statistics have just published “life satisfaction” figures for April-October 2011 of 7.3 out of 10 (with a slightly higher score for a sense of “what I do (overall) being worthwhile”) and for “satisfaction with personal relationships” being a quite storming A* 8.3.

Either these figures are being cooked, which I doubt, or a tranche of would-be opinion formers are doing what they do best “whingeing”. And to borrow from Jeremy Clarkson what we should do is shoot them because such doom-mongers are dangerous.

But as they whinge we are all pretty cheerful. And here’s how to get even better.

Swear.

Not a lot (too much swearing is self-neutralising) but do it with emphatic rage when you do. Research at Keele University proves swearing (in moderation) is a “stress-induced analgaesic” – so every time you say the “f” word equates to taking a Nurofen.

Another reason to be cheerful, I’m told, is the long overdue reduction in University applications – down in England by 15% - but also down in Scotland where it’s still free - by 16%. So it might not just be a fee related decline then whingers ? Prod, prod!

It’s time to stop the complainers confusing us with their misery and time to enjoy our personal relationships and the joy of reflecting on how to simplify our lives, spend a bit less and a bit better.

THE FENTON EFFECT

2011-11-29T06:05:00.001Z

You'll know by noy about Fenton that black dog – a Labrador I think – chasing deer in Richmond Park pursued by his despairing owner shouting “Fenton! Fenton!! Oh Jesus Christ!!!”

This was videoed by a 13 year old out with his dad, they thought it was quite funny, posted it on You Tube and it’s gone viral. Well over 1 million hits including spoofs from “Jurassic Park” to “Lost” to Hitler’s last days in the bunker. Fenton has become the name of today. Babies all over the world are being named Fenton. The Fenton film-makers are bemused by their success and are getting richer as we speak.
Why the excitement?

First of all it isn’t the filming…sorry guys.
Secondly it isn’t the subject which is not a bit PC…poor deer, bad dog, terrible master.
Thirdly it isn’t the best joke ever.
But it spoke to millions.
That name is a key….how many Fentons do you know?

Shane Fenton and the Fentones (later he became Alvin Stardust), Graham Fenton footballer, Fenton House a National Trust property in Hampstead. OK a few but Fenton is a silly name.
And it’s the way it is pronounced by the basso profundo slightly overweight owner clearly having one of the worst days of his life.

Suddenly Fenton became a swearword.

And it touched people because the situation had run out of control and the dog had gone deaf…Fenton!
Phenomena like Fenton and the boy whose baby brother kept on biting his finger are not particularly funny but they are true. In them we recognise something of us and in Fenton a rather upmarket dog who, if he were a human would probably be a right wing Tory.

The speed it has gone from a dog disobeys master to T-shirt, ringtone and parody is fascinating and instructive as to what we want marketing to do for us today. We want our marketing message to spread like a pandemic. We want to be spoken about in pubs and by water coolers. We want to be known in as few words as possible.

“Fenton! Fenton!!! Jesus Christ!!!!” is the anthem for marketing and the dying days of 2011.

IS IT GOING TO BE LIKE THIS ALL MY LIFE?

2011-11-21T06:05:00.001Z

This was a 16 year old to his mother after being persecuted repeatedly by friends on his i-Phone when he didn’t instantly reply to his voice mail and texts. It’s worth considering in this techno-age. Bryan Appleyard author of “The brain is wider than the sky” did just that at the RSA this week. Bryan writes for the Sunday Times. There were many questions - has technology made our lives better? Are “they” out to control our minds? Is the progress to thinking machines inevitable?

He was uneasy. In his research he spent time in Silicon Valley where employees at Microsoft confessed “we are not whole people here” and everyone described what they did as “transforming” and “life changing”.
Technology is responsible for one of the things people hate most – call trees on phones where a computerised voice tells you to “press 1 or 2 or whatever” (www.gethuman.org advises you how to beat this system, by the way.)

Check out Facebook updates to discover what “seeing inside our minds” is coming to. Bryan reckons if they have your date of birth and postcode you are nailed. So, if they don’t control our minds yet but that’s where it’s leading.

The Turing Test comprises putting a computer and human answering service to see if you can tell the difference. My advice is to tell the computer a joke.

Science has moved from human experiments to human observation to computer modelling to neuro-experiments. Put “neuro” in front of anything and it certainly sound uber-cool. (“I’m on the new neuro-diet. We do laboratory neuro-research instead of focus groups now.”) Science and its bastard offspring “singularity” and “scientism” are worrying signs of making information neutral and fact defined…a world of “if you can’t count it, it isn’t there.”

Then Rod Liddle Spectator and Sunday Times who looks like an out-of-condition bouncer who’s very clever laid in to Bryan calling him a “bourgeois escapist Leavisite” – in other words anti-science and reactionary. “Can robots think?” “Yes” asserted Liddle. “Celebrities today are our most successful robots.” Well done Rod. “I’m a robot get me out of here”.

The rush of technology as with all trends is excitingly undiscriminating. Lives are generally improved but the bearers of tech banners (to get back to my comment on jokes) have this in common. No irony. No sense of humour. Utterly self-obsessed. Consider the late Steve Jobs. Genius is not always a good companion or right. Except when he’s called Einstein and says “not everything that that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.”

A MANDATORY ODE TO JOY

2011-11-14T06:22:00.001Z

Itseemed a normal enough Wednesday with Prime Minister's Question Timebeing run by Nick Clegg (again), the Prime Minster having been calledto an emergency G20 meeting in Brussels to discuss the Spanishcrisis. England had lost to South Korea in a friendly at Wembley.Inflation was rising as was unemployment. The Coalition Governmentwere described in the Times as “doing an excellent job in thecircumstances.”

It wasin the wine bar “Four Green Bottles” that a few us decided thesewere weird times and rather sad ones too. Private Eye had just beensuccessfully sued for libel by Rupert Murdock and suddenly was nomore. Mervyn King had suddenly resigned for personal reasons and beenreplaced by Michael Sherwood head of Goldman Sachs UK as Governor ofthe Bank of England. John Humphrys had been killed in a hit and runoutside Broadcasting House and Police Chief Bernard Hogan-Howe sayingit was suspicious, apparently warned BBC newscasters to be carefulabout what they said. BBC responding announced as a duty of care theywere appointing a temporary Director of Screening – AlistairCampbell to oversee all news coverage. And sterling was weakeningdaily. “We’re doomed” I laughed as I ordered four more Riojas –“blimey!” I said when this came to £35 “we won’t be doingthis too much longer”.

Laterthat evening a news flash appeared on the giant Siemens flat screenabove the bar. It was David Cameron. We paused laughing about WayneRooney’s three missed penalties the previous night to listen. “Ispheak to you from Paris” he said – “he sounds drunk”whispered Ian. He went on about partnership and looking after theinterests of the world and never succumbing to tyranny and why beingtogether represented strength and being alone was lonely anddangerous. “Very drunk” muttered Ian.

“Whichis why tonight we are joining the Euro – sad to lose the pound butreally no choice and I shall be standing down as Plime Rinster andgoodnight”.

A BBCnewscaster appeared and soberly said “in a move welcomed throughoutEurope and the world Britain has joined the Euro. A new Euro-Councilof three ex heads of their respective states will handle alltransitional arrangements. They are Angela Merkel, Nicholas Sarkozyand Anthony Blair.”

Myfriends looked at me and said as one “get another two bottlesfast.”

This workof fiction is provoked by the increasing appointment of unelectedbankers to run our affairs and a sense of being led down a path of noone’s choosing.

This piecehas not been passed by the newly appointed Director General for UKMedia (DGFUKME).

Please delete after reading.

WHAT GRANDPARENTS DO

2011-11-09T06:01:00.000Z

My grandsons are 5 and 3; my great nieces are 6 and 2. I’ve learned more from them than from most of my colleagues at work. Mostly it’s to do with the speed at which they learn, their refusal to be patronised and their need to be amused. But bad jokes don’t get asked back.

The job of mentor is not so different.

The task is unconditional support, help and the provision of sunshine when it all gets too much. CEOs have tears before bedtime too. So it was with interest I saw young David Cameron had appointed Lords Young and Heseltine both old Tory stalwarts (when I say old I mean both are approaching 80 – great grand-dad age) to do some work for him in revving up the economy.

I think he needs the comfort of two guys who’d done a lot but also made mistakes. A mentor’s biggest contribution can often be a laughing admission that in a similar dilemma to those currently encountered by their mentee they’d done ‘x’ which didn’t work…”wished I’d done ‘y’ instead…still no point in crying over spilt Petrus.”

The balance of youthful energy and excitement in young executives sprinkled with a wonderful sense of naivety – much like seeing my grandsons or great nieces crashing to earth by taking risks on a bicycle no one sane would take; then followed by the energy blended with judgement – sort of 40-50 year old senior executive but still untrained in skating on corporate black ice. Then we have the mentor who’s been there, seen plenty and is covered in scars but if he or she is any good has three qualities

Good at listening and better still hearing
Brilliant at empathising
Full of good humour and a sense of perspective

It’s when I see young Sarkozy getting so incredibly grumpy and I think that none of the current players are likely to be in power for much longer I feel impelled to say “take a longer view of things. Be strategic rather than fixated on the next quarter which when you think about it is a rather childish habit”.

Mentoring is rewarding because you get to see so much talent flowering and surviving winds of change. So I hope Lords Young and Heseltine persuade David Cameron to lighten up a little. With Sarkozy the other side of a table things can’t be that bad.

LET ME TELL YOU A STORY...

2011-11-07T06:00:00.000Z

Why presenting well is worth more than an MBA today

We are declaring “death to boring” in presentations wherever they happen – whether to the public, to employees, to colleagues or to investors. Dull is dead. Welcome to world of engagement and entertainment.
This new world of presenting involves a series of realisations. That the audience is always right and they’re all that matters. That jargon is out. That conversation is in and rhetoric is out. And that the long-fangled speech has been replaced by the 12 minute chat.

TED has been a major influence on this. TED as you probably know and if you don’t (www.ted.com/) is an American not-for-profit dedicated to having good guys standing up and spreading ideas worth spreading. It has inspired some of the best speeches/presentations I’ve seen.

But it doesn’t stop here. We had that great “pitcher” of new products, Steve Jobs. We have 5x15 in the UK.(a similar concept to TED.) All over the place we’re seeing “keynotes”, conferences and debates.

Speaking in public is big news right now.

Vivid opinion and engagement is in. Dull ideology and company policy is out. We’ve created a world where people are standing up and talking. But that’s really, really hard to do well. You need coaching. You need confidence. And you need to be great. The word “competent” doesn’t exist in this tough world. You are brilliant or you’re forgotten.

It really is just a fifteen minute opportunity.

My new book Brilliant Presentation (now in its 3rd Edition) published by Pearson (the one with the BLUE cover) describes this world and how to win in it. It takes you through the world of presenting and concludes:
Slides still work – if done really well. Bullet Point is a problem unless you are a bully and want to be seen as such. The big message is about storytelling. In the rush to PowerPoint (of which I remain a fan –when it’s used well) we forgot the primal art.

2011 and beyond will demand an ececutive doing more than just standing up there spouting numbers. He’s expected to have a strong narrative flow, lots of colour, anecdotes (research is not enough), what people want to know is what really lies behind the numbers, how the heartbeat of the business feels. In short he’s expected to be an engaging – no more than that - an enthralling teller of the story he’s directing.

The art of presenting has never been more important.
It’s really much more important than that MBA.
It’s career defining.

Brilliant Presentation 3rd Edition (Blue Cover – just out)
www.colourfulthinkers.com

THE STEVE WAY OF LOOKING AT THINGS

2011-10-31T06:16:00.000Z

As I spent my week puzzling over the disadvantages of democracy – all talk and no action – the idiotic spectacle of the Italians with their trousers round their economic ankles - the last writhings of capitalism furtively displayed by that shameless increase in pay of senior executives in the UK of 49% year on year and the split in the church over how to handle St Pauls from the Bishop of London’s robust approach “onward Christmas soldiers marching as to war” (viz torch the tents) to the more pacifist “turn the other cheek” - the view (yet again) is the Anglican church has made itself an idiot (together with the Catholic church in those leafy avenues of paedophilia Ealing).

What would Steve Jobs have done? Steve the hero of our generation, and undoubtedly a genius techno-artist.

He’d have simplified everything.

He’d have taken Greeks, Portuguese, Italians and Spanish into his legendary lift and fired them, reduced Angela and Nicolas to torrents of tears by, as Jonathan Ive said, identifying their sensitivities and weaknesses and ruthlessly attacking them where it hurt (which being so sensitive himself he was adept at doing), disbanded all the committees in Brussels and created the greatest currency ever - the iPo.

Trouble is it would have led to war because countries are disparate cultures which can’t be conformed like Apple and because people just aren’t as perfect and clonable as things like the iPad and the Mac keyboard can be, so beautiful that Steve wanted to lick it. Steve himself was clearly not a very nice man. He seems to have been a sadistic bully and full of anger and contempt for others. He was the sort of person who wouldn’t say “after you” as you stood by a lift together (but wouldn’t need to as the thought of being “Steved” in a lift should have been enough to make you flee.)

But he taught us a lot of things and sometimes genius maybe forgiven its bad table manners. He taught us bullshit is bullshit, mediocre isn’t good enough so try again, obsession with detail is good and small is beautiful. Apple always felt small and focused.

Unlike Shell, CitiGroup, Kraft, BA and the EU which I always see as big and sluggish, process-driven, old fashioned and vulnerable. Out-of-condition Goliaths (“Sorry Mr G you need a life style change.”) So when I kept hearing through the week “does Britain want to become a second class power?” it was like hearing “does Leeds United want to be a second class football team?” But we are and it is.

We need to be the best we can be at what we can excel at. Steve turned a bankrupt Apple into one of the most successful companies in the world in 20 years just by focusing on that. If he’d been an average UK businessman he’d have sold to Microsoft years ago. Or he’d, as Britain, have become a fully- fledged member of the EU.

But if you give up your independence you can’t live your dream.

Now get into that lift and let’s talk.

COOKING THE CAT

2011-10-24T06:00:00.000+01:00

This was James Delingpole in the Spectator speculating on how bad this recession could be and he summarises the potential bankruptcy dilemma we may face thus – when we have to survive we need to be creative in our culinary choices. The trouble is he doesn’t know how to do it to his podgy moggy. A stew, a roast or fried in butter?

Cats I like. They seem to know where they are going. They are aloof, superior-looking creatures. A bit like economists. Although they’re very clever they’re not terribly useful with anything other than small things like mice. Economists are good when it comes to mice-like problems but get very wobbly when confronted with dog-like or bigger issues.

Which brings me to Lord Wolfson who runs the retail chain Next. He’s a Eurosceptic who has offered £250,000 for the economist coming up with the best solution for smoothly exiting countries from the EU who need to be exited, like Greece. To be fair he hasn’t specified that the prize will go to an economist because that would be a little like nominating the 2011 winner of Global Diplomacy as Bashar-al Assad.

Anti-economists? You bet. Because they are all in in their own minds right yet offer no leeway to opposing views. And nearly all of them seem to get it wrong. Anatole Kaletski whom is I’m sure is a delightful man is just such an expert. I’ve found I’m happier if I disagree with everything he says, as a matter of principle.
And the Greeks or the ones who are wealthy are scarpering and coming to London where the 50 most expensive apartments on the market were snapped up by the Micropolis Brothers, the Anastokios’, Joannis Ladis and so on last week. And they weren’t coming here for the cats.

London is becoming an ever more powerful magnet for the crookedly rich, Russian, Arab, Indian and now Greek. You can see why. It’s got the best Arts in the world and some of the best food. Anatole Kaletski would probably think their arrival a disaster. There, see, I told you. And if you think I’m being mean to Anatole because he’s Russian I have one thing to say

“Miaow”.

WHO DO YOU WANT TO SPEND YOUR LIFE WITH?

2011-10-17T06:12:00.000+01:00

I’vebeen studying a major piece of research into senior executiveattitudes this week which endorses what the good guys knew alreadybut it’s nice to know we are in the majority. It conclusively showsemotion is as important as rationality in forming plans, thatcorporate culture is a key issue ignored by too many CEOs and thatpositive-minded and engaged managers are substantially more likely tohave a good effect in a business. (Good. I’ve been advising themass assassination of cynics for years now).

So how dowe find these “super” guys and girls?

TheManaging Director of Diesel said you had to tear up their CVs andlook at their eyes. Are they really alive and enthusiastic? If theyare, hire them. Then you can sort out the easy stuff they’remissing.

Thisappeared this week in Fast Company.in an interview with Oren Jacobone time CTO at Pixar – here’s his criteria for hiring the best:

WhenPixar is evaluating potential hires they look for three traits:humor, the ability to tell a story, and an example of excellence.These aren’t unique qualities to assess in applicants, but howexcellence is defined is not that common. It doesn’t matter whatyou are excellent at, just that you have reached a level ofexcellence. It’s important that you know what excellence feels likeand what it takes to achieve it. It could be gardening, jujitsu, orcooking. The main thing is you’ve had a taste of excellence andwill know how to get there again.

Mytwo best hires in my career were just like this. They had amazinghunger and energy and they made me laugh. They’ve deservedly goneon to be huge successes. But I would have hired neither by juststudying their CVs.

Apartfrom people who are colourful-thinkers (www.colourfulthinkers.com)and my wife and family (who are also bright and smart) I want to havearound me people who joy in life and who care.

Sothe protests against the unacceptable face of capitalism and theanti-banker riots that have now spread right across America - “OccupyWall Street” - and all round the world over the weekend should tellus something interesting. I think I sense democracy waking up.

AN INSIGHT INTO GOOGLE

2011-10-13T21:43:00.002+01:00

This link takes you to a fascinating insight from a Google insider - its a long read but I think you may well find it worth it.

MAYBE WE HAVE ALL GOT A BIT LAZY

2011-10-11T06:16:00.000+01:00

My favourite cartoon from years ago was of a guy walking downstairs with a blank expression and a thought bubble from his head saying “What do I think today?” He picks up the Daily Mail from the doormat. The headline screams “It’s a disgrace!” His face breaks into a thunderous frown. “It’s a disgrace!” he cries.

My thesis is that like Mr Daily Mail reader we’ve stopped thinking for ourselves. And some of us have stopped thinking altogether. Melvyn Bragg, one of whose heroes is Isaac Newton, speaks in awe of Newton’s alleged ability to sit and think for hours, days and weeks at a time. Melvyn says he can do three minutes before he has to make a cup of tea to break the monotony. Marcus du Sautoy who is Professor of Mathematics at Oxford says he can only think about maths for an hour or so because it hurts to do it any longer. So we shouldn’t be ashamed at finding thinking hard.

But there’s so much going on now that we do need to think about it….for our own peace of mind.
About sovereign debt, about the Human Rights Act, about our holding the European title for largest % of the population imprisoned, about the level of and justification for top salaries, about English Rugby, about our state educational system, about our likely economic prospects, about what we are going to spend money on this Christmas….

None of these are trivial and all deserve some thought. Just try exploring the pluses and minuses of all of them. Take the last one – only 75 shopping days left. And apparently the fate of the British Economy lies in us emptying our wallets on stuff that we don’t really need or want. So take a long, creative think about how you’d make this Christmas more fun, worthwhile and memorable.

Example: think about those financial instruments none of us understand (but then again that’s because we’ve never tried to.) Let what Hercule Poirot called his “little grey cells” get to work. Think about what’s really going on.

You may not save the world by doing this but you might save you sanity and your career. Because we all need people who can really think right now rather than just reading those headlines.

WHEN FEAR IS KING WE'RE STUFFED

2011-10-03T06:08:00.000+01:00

In common with other writers on marketing I’ve been trumpeting the fact the consumer is in charge for a long time now. We’ve learned to complain. We’ve earned the right to be promiscuous in our buying habits. We can fight and win. Isn’t the mis-selling of PPI by the banks and their humiliating climb down strong enough evidence of the transfer of power from them to us?

But whilst part of me is high fiving all my spot-on instincts the other half is wondering just why I keep encountering sheer naked fear. Intelligent friends cautioning me to be very careful in what I say. A sense of living in not a police state but something worse, a polite state that will be circumspect about saying what it thinks (believing that it would not make any difference anyway.) And have you noticed the virtual absence of decent satire? What ever happened to Spitting Image? And even Private Eye seems a pretty safe, old fashioned thing now.

I was watching Newsnight the other night where even Jeremy Paxman seems to have been neutered into a kindly guy who growls a bit but will curl up if you tickle his tummy. A day or so back a well-suppered Peter Osborn from the Daily Telegraph had called a Eurocrat idiot who was being interviewed “that idiot from Brussels” and this created a media storm – why? This episode dealt mildly with what Greece was really like now.

Antonis Papagiannidis Editor of Economics Monthly said
“It’s the little things that matter not the macro stuff…”

What we saw then was a lot of leafy suburban despair in Athens. Little things; they looked down and spoke flatly. People like us who’d given up. Who believed the game was over and their children had no future. People afraid that they would and could do nothing. People who had nothing to add. Frighteningly, people whose eyes had died.

Antonis is right. But we are capable of changing little things by saying what we think. We shan’t emerge from this Euro-shakedown unbruised, happier or richer. But we can come out of it losing a lot more than money.

Meanwhile in New York the “Occupy Wall Street” movement took to streets three weeks ago, not well reported this, and this Saturday night 700 were arrested on Brooklyn Bridge.

That “no” vote is getting louder.

CONFIDENCE AND CREATIVITY ARE THE CRITICAL CURRENCIES

2011-09-26T07:00:00.000+01:00

It’s easy to talk oneself into a state of despondency. Read any economist today on sovereign debt and you’ll reduce your forecasts and plan to dine on gruel two nights a week. Lose your confidence and your expectation of success reduces too. Barack Obama said “always act confident”. If we acted on what we are reading currently we’d all be doomed.

But there is a side effect of the prognoses these economic gurus are having. They are dispiriting most of our competitors and giving the rest of us huge opportunities. Strategically we should be embarked upon a share-gain plan, ruthlessly selling the benefits of our products and services at the expense of our more pessimistic competitors.

This is the age of the salesman…they crop up every decade or so …where confidence, can-do and enthusiasm will win friends and sales.

The world has changed. Countries like Greece and Portugal, we’re told, are structurally doomed and being targeted by those who make their money by selling things short. But none of this makes a scrap of difference to someone selling industrial flooring, pesto sauce or who’s running a restaurant. We may live in a global economy but on a day to day basis we live in our own worlds, world’s a lot simpler and more driven by practical needs than those of macro-economists.

In planning for 2012 you’ll be told to expect downturn to which your answer must be “not necessarily”.
The answer to most things will be to retain good, cheerful, smart people in the front line, to focus on existing customers encouraging and incentivising them to do more with you, to invest in programmes of positive coaching for all your sales people and to be much more creative in your presentations and your solutions to problems.

This is the age of creative confidence when ingenuity and the ability to talk things up rather than be down in the mouth will pay dividends.

And in the end with low interest rates and an increasing pressure on people to work harder 2012 could be quite spectacular in terms of share growth and productivity for some of us.

To put it in perspective here’s what one-time US President Calvin Coolidge said about the prospects of doom:

“If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.”

AN ISSUE OF GOOD TASTE

2011-09-19T06:00:00.000+01:00

Fresh from doing battle to stop marketing exploitation with Pure and with some self-delusion about painting myself as a 21st century Ralph Nader I’ve come a cropper.

Enter Abel and Cole on their organic steed and their neo classical marketing techniques. The door-to-door upmarket canvasser of their gastronomic delights came to call. And sold me on signing up there and then for a weekly fruit and veg box, size small, cost £12.

They were right about the first bit. About it’s being small.

It contained 1 broccoli, half a dozen plums, 3 bananas, 4 apples, some deep red carrots (a small bunch), 2 courgettes, 2 onions and a bag of leaf beet. It was very small and £12.

So I fired them.

Courteously but firmly.

E-mail one came back immediately. This is terrible they said. How can we have let you down so badly. You’re not paying. We are very, very, very sorry.

E-mail two followed. It was much longer than this blog and contained these lines near the end of a well written note which was a passionate essay about their value system and their relationship with their farmers:

“I hope I have managed to convince you, even just a little bit, that we are different from a large number of grocers, not just in the produce we supply but in the ethics we uphold as a company. I do completely understand that we may not be for you, but I wanted to explain the background as I would hate you to think that we intentionally charged you more than you felt the items were worth.”

My wife sniffed she’d never seen such self-flagellation . Me? I was in tears and feeling awful.

So I had a plum...And then an apple...And the bloody leaf beet and courgettes with my supper...And a banana for breakfast.

And they all tasted wonderful. They taste of…plum, apple, banana, spinach, courgettes and (this is frightening) I’d completely forgotten what those tasted like. As far as I’d seen it vegetables tasted of green crunchy stuff on the side of the plate and fruit was either unripe or overripe and most apples were kind of fossilised.

Tonight it’s carrots and broccoli.

And tomorrow it’s sackcloth and ashes and an e-mail from me to them which says: “Sorry. You are small but you are very, very nice.”

WHEN TECHNOLOGY GOES MAD

2011-09-12T06:00:00.000+01:00

Some time ago I seem to remember Toyota had some quality problems which involved accelerators in their cars remaining depressed and the vehicles speeding out of control and impossible to stop. Nothing could be more frightening.

Now imagine writing a document in pen and ink (hard to do unless you are old fashioned like me) and imagine the pen suddenly starts spurting ink and writing “fuck, bugger, shit and bollocks” over and over again in capitals.

I think that would be even worse.

Well it’s my PC that’s got Tourette’s Syndrome and it’s much, much worse.

I’m revising one of my books, Brilliant Marketing, for the 2nd Edition and decided that a fairly substantial rewrite was needed given the pace of change in the recent marketing world. All was going swimmingly until this morning when something somewhere went mad and now I can only get one paragraph a page which given I’m prone to use short paragraphs looks pretty silly.

In fact, very silly.

And then all the fonts change to large bold and Ariel when they should be small not bold and Times New Roman and then as I watch everything turn to shaded blue. By now I’m going at 80 mph and the steering wheel has come off in my hand. I’m told it isn’t my PC at all but the printers’ word files I‘m using in which there are embedded templates so as I achieve my peak of brilliance in my changes some Dorset gremlin, because that’s where my printers live, decides to restrict the changes and makes me go mad by mucking it all up and in a west country burr says “how’d you enjoy that my dear?”

I don’t.

This sort of thing didn’t happen to Dickens or TS Eliot. I am a victim of 21st century technology or worse, a 21st century disease. Some mischievous editor virus that is sitting in the in the machine at random taking things out and putting things in? Bugger. Bugger. It’s all very, very disconcerting.

Cars that never go wrong and brilliant computers are all very well until they do and when they do you are f……the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog…..bugger, bugger.

UPDATE - PURE DELIGHT OR PURE STUPIDITY

2011-09-05T06:00:00.000+01:00

Pure delight leads to penury!

First the good news.

Last week I took Pure the cashmere people to task for favouring conquest potential customers over loyal ones.

During the week something strange and rather nice happened. They sent my wife a new catalogue giving her the discount previously reserved for non-customers plus free postage.

Well done Pure.

And now the bad news.

She promptly spent £200 saying now she was, in fact, saving money.
I wish I’d never got involved. Let sleeping dogs of customer relationship malpractice lie in future.

ORIGINAL RANT below

My wife loves cashmere so she was cheered to discover that Pure, the mail order cashmere people, were offering a 25% discount. Given the eye watering cost of cashmere this was a welcome piece of news.

But hang on. She was told she wasn’t eligible as she was already a good customer of the company. It was only for people who weren’t Pure loyalists.

I e-mailed them: “My wife just called to talk about a 25% discount she’d heard about to be told this only applied to “new” customers not “existing (loyal)” ones. Surely this is mistake”.

They replied: “Thank you for your email. You wife has been given the correct information with regard to eligibility of the 25% discount. This is an introductory discount for new customers placing their first ever order with Pure.

If we can be of any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact us.”

Not good enough so I remonstrated: “I’m intrigued. Do you believe it’s sensible to treat non customers better than loyal ones? I think you’ve rather disenchanted my wife – check out how much she’s spent with you.”

By now a senior officer, Trevor, was involved who started digging furiously in the hole Pure had created for themselves:

“Unfortunately, the 25% discount booklet your wife found inside a magazine is a recruitment offer that we have to run in the media to attract new business, so we’re unable to use this offer for existing customers. I do realise that this may be disappointing, (how about outraged Trevor?) but I hope you’ll understand that only by expanding the customer base will Pure be able to continue giving good prices to all customers throughout the season, like the 10% discount offer we’re currently offering everybody for the new collection.

The media booklet you have there does also explain that the offer is for your first order with us as a new Pure customer, on the inside cover, so we apologise if this was not clear enough.

However, as we appreciate this may be disappointing for existing customers, we would be happy to honour free postage on your order for you, as well as the 10% discount that is already available for you.”

Absurd. It pays to be disloyal as a cashmere customer.

And Pure, bizarrely seem to think it’s important to understand that their customer recruitment strategy is of interest to its disadvantaged loyal (till now) customers.

Actually, yes Trevor, it’s all very disappointing, bemusing marketing and a case of pure stupidity.

BRAND CRAZY TIMES

2011-08-30T06:15:00.000+01:00

I blame the accountants.

When they discovered that brands were worth lots of money we were all told to join the brand game. If it earns money it’s a brand now. And brands are valuable. Madonna is a brand but so is John Humphrys – the Today programme inquisitor. Be a brand.

Put it this way, as the CEO of Nestle did when asked what would the consequences of each of the following occurred. Imagine the following horrors:

Your top team assassinated
Your key manufacturing plants blown up
Your top brands confiscated

He was remarkably sanguine about the first two – a bit of time, a lot of money but back to normal soon because no-one and nothing is indispensable apart from brands…. If the brands go we are in big trouble….it will take vast cost and risk in trying to recreate them.

Brands are hard to create, expensive to develop and hard to control…like works of art or orchids or Pit Bull Terriers.

Brands used to be staid and safe. Benton and Bowles (imagine what Messrs Benton and Bowles were like) were said to have been the architect of the three ‘b”s – “big, bland and boring” or if you add the eponymous founders the “five b’s”.

And this was especially so in the field of professional services where the names of the founders were used to define the business – thus J Walter Thompson or Doyle Dane Bernbach were all we needed to know. But now we live in different times.

Here are just a few names flying around in the marketing game right now. Marketing men have stopped behaving like bankers (and the mind still boggles as to what Saatchi & Saatchi would have done to Midland Bank if their attempt to buy it in the 1980s had come off – maybe the face of the high street bank would have changed forever.)

Some names, names just within the professional advisor sector: Mother, Strawberry Frog, Adam & Eve, Karmarama, Elvis, The Red Brick Road, Pretzel, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, 3 Monkeys ….

And why not…why not find a name that grabs the imagination and tells a story?

These are brands now not just firms of advisors.

And as such you could argue life is more colourful.

The days of egocentricity have been surplanted by a desire to make your company name sing and I think I prefer it.

HOW SOCIAL IS OUR MEDIA?

2011-08-22T06:16:00.000+01:00

A really bright creative called Scott Leonard said to me last week – “let’s not talk about social media let’s talk about how unsocial old media used to be”.

To be sure letters to the Times and Any Answers were about as interactive as it used to be and I recall sitting irritably in a Greek Harbour waiting for the ferry to arrive with the Sunday Times. I’d have killed to have got the last copy. To read it, by myself, like a news addict.

Although now Mr Murdoch seems have finally proved how anti-social old media could be.
But why can’t I get more worked up by Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin?

I think it’s to do with their content.

Most of the stuff on them barely raises itself above the level of “OMG don’t you hate Sundays. Groan!”

And imagining you can sell stuff on Facebook seems naïve. It’s a place to chat not to do transactions and having big brother brands next you pretending to be cool is absurd.

But as the riots and the Arab Spring have shown, social media is an efficient way of managing the expectations and movements of crowds.

When it comes to ideas, though, something else is needed – Dave Trott provides that in his blogs with genuine “I hadn’t thought about it – whatever it is – quite like that” insights. Ken Robinson and Matt Ridley do it on TED.

And TED and its mission to spread interesting ideas that seems to change our world.

It’s when you can pick away at and disagree with someone that something interesting happens.
What is happening, I imagine to the distaste of most politicians, is a lot more people are starting to think and the old fashioned art of conversation has started to be revived.

I like neither the word “social” nor the word “media” very much – if only we could describe the phenomenon as “community conversations” I might be less grumpy.

Because that is really interesting – the idea of groups of people spreading ideas and thinking about stuff that really matters.

The megaphone is redundant. Welcome back the village pump and the oral tradition. Welcome back storytelling.

Welcome back discussion.

DEJA VU

2011-08-15T06:36:00.000+01:00

Am I the only person over 25 viewing these riots in a slightly different way? To sound in control ministers are talking like Harold MacMillan in tones of horror and vote-for-me outrage.

I’m not saying the looting, violence and riots are to be treated lightly. But nor can they be just brushed under that “criminality” carpet.

The Arab Spring must have felt like this from the other side and Dave Cameron is probably feeling like Al-Gadaffi … outraged, confused, cheated (in Dave’s case of his Tuscan holiday) and very cross.

There are a few things to note.

This turned from a local protest to a series of “flash-mobs” to a wave of orchestrated gang and passer-by looting to chaos. Shopping-with-violence someone called it.

And it was a mix of very young, middle aged, of black and white but few Asians – except as vigilante protectors of property. It became infectious because the big broken society was ready for such a social explosion.

The real issue is not the criminality but the disadvantaged young whom we don’t understand. Judges (on their own planet) seemed appalled that parents weren’t accompanying their 14 year olds to court. But nearly half those over 14 are no longer under parental control. Parents-in-charge are a thing of the past; gangs as group to belong to aren’t. But the middle class doesn’t get this. I expected to hear a judge ask “were these young people on properly signed exeats?”

So we’ll send them to prison to join the other 11,000 young prisoners. We’ve had a 66% increase of young prisoners in the past 5 years. Nowhere else in the world can boast a prisoner growth of youth as high as that.
And we’ll slag off the police as soft and although they were slow and are out of touch with change, the way the senior politicians treated them was a disgrace. Good to see a fight back from Deputy Commissioner Orde.

We’ll demand social networking is curtailed (how?)

And we’ll lament the passing of happier times.

But the opportunities this shock has created are exciting. We have a chance to sort out security; a chance to recognise parental and school authority breakdown – and do something about it; a chance to begin to dismantle those gangs; a chance to upgrade police intelligence; a chance to educate our Prime Minister and peers and a chance to invest in the future (education) as opposed to the past (the NHS).

It could be worse. And taking those chances since the zeitgeist feels just right are worth more than an AAA rating and a focus on money. It sometimes takes a storm to blow away apathy and ignorance.

YES BUT WHAT DO THEY ALL DO?

2011-08-10T06:00:00.000+01:00

I was walking the streets of London recently staring up at skyscrapers full of people and wondering what they all did. As I sit on the train from Brighton looking at them tapping on their PCs or talking on their mobiles with blithe unconcern about revealing internal confidences I always think “is what you do actually worth doing? Does it make a real difference?”

When we hear about the “dreaded cuts” we all know that a refocus on business – stopping doing the many irrelevant things that get done merely because there are people enough to do them – would result in massive downsizing, improved profitability and better business. We’d stop doing all those surveys no one reads. We’d stop having meetings where nothing happens. We’d get rid of departments with nice people whom we didn’t really need.

We have a vast unwieldy civil service spread all over the place. The Civil Service has some great people at the top but some time-servers and lazybones too. Too many people doing stuff very slowly and not very well that makes no difference. I read the Department of Education in Britain is 100 times the size of that in Sweden.
And yet in neither the private sector nor public sector do we address the key issue of what really needs to be done and how to get it down most cost effectively.

Wouldn’t it be great to hear a Minister say “I don’t know the answer to that nor shall I bother to find out as the cost of so doing would in my judgement vastly exceed the benefit the knowledge might bring.”

Recently I met someone from Fire Brigade who described the most thorough, exacting and expensive recruitment exercise I’d ever come across. Something like 3000 applications going through 6+ levels of sifting resulting in 12 appointments. I may have these numbers wrong but the principle is valid. We just have to be better, faster, smarter and cheaper at what we do. The incentive to question the need of the action rather than recruiting the staff to fulfil it is missing.

One of the key questions today needs to be asked and asked and asked.

“Yes, but what do they all do?”

And unless convincingly answered some very tough decisions need to be made which I doubt if this government or any other would make themselves or really want to see made under their administration.

WHO'S IN CHARGE?

2011-08-08T06:00:00.001+01:00

“For the first time the consumer is boss, which is fascinatingly, frightening, scary and terrifying because everything we used to do, everything we used to know, will no longer work.”That was what Kevin Roberts of Saatchi said.

And then there’s the story of investors in the early days of the web demanding to be told who the CEO of the internet was – “there must be a CEO. Who is it? Why’s he hiding?”

If someone isn’t in charge we get worried.

As children it’s our parents and our teachers who are in charge and those incorruptible authorities…”I’ll call the police and they’ll take you away.” My grandsons think the police are quite wonderful…they’ll learn.
Journalists used to call the Prime Minister “Sir” – he was seen to be in charge. And he wouldn’t have dreamed of going to Tuscany for a holiday – why do they do that?

And now?

This dilemma certainly distressed pundits on the Today Programme recently as they demanded to know who was in charge of the EU.

The answer is everyone and no one.

The accepted wisdom is “let the markets decide.”

And yet we know a thought becomes a rumour becomes gossip becomes an urban myth becomes fact now in a blink. The marketplace rather than the market decides sitting round the metaphorical well in the town square on the web.

No amount of leadership beats that crowd.

We live today in a state of perpetual intellectual riot.

Decisions are made by focus groups “they don’t like your voice Ed…fix it”; “they don’t like immigrants Dave get them outta here” or they aren’t made at all until enough money, opinion or noise makes something happen because…”the public is expressing outrage.”

Liberal democracy is a wonderful thing but it has a downside. Loonies like the Tea Party and the Norwegian Breivik get to express themselves and begin to think they can actually be in charge.

The world it seems is managed by market-confidence yet politicians would clearly not even pass GCSE in psychology (were it an optional subject) if they believe you can preach “austerity” and expect your voters to rush out shopping, simultaneously.

In the end Kevin Roberts is right but as we know in marketing, consumers don’t really know what they want until they get it.

Everyone’s waiting for someone else to make a move.

Anyone who’d like to be in charge this week, just call. Otherwise leave it the experts (again).

MEMORIES MAKE MONEY AND SAVE LIVES

2011-08-01T06:00:00.000+01:00

On Saturday a charity that I chair, responsible for raising funds to restore the oldest building in Brighton held its AGM. Professor Bruce Brown, pro Vice Chancellor of the University of Brighton spoke engagingly about the things that made Brighton special and its being a Super City of the future, according to an HSBC study, owing to its independence of spirit, an ideal qualification for a thriving SME community.

But I was riveted by what Bruce said about the distant past, when few read and books were unusual, when buildings themselves were like “textbooks” – where pictures, sculptures and decorations all held great meaning and how old buildings, well restored and archived were “memory palaces”. Google has its own value, of course. The internet allows us to find out how to make a bomb or deworm a cat but a memory palace it is not.

I am not nostalgic but the practical value of having people in a business who know where the bodies are buried and who know how to deal effectively with a crisis be it pandemic, flood or earthquake is immense. I’m not talking about spectators who, seeing a building collapse, are fondly reminded of Fred Dibnah – the TV steeplejack star and demolition expert of the 1990s. Practical memory means having an intuition so finely honed that it and not your brain instinctively helps you do the right thing when there’s no time to stop and think.

And we are placing perhaps too little value on memories and instincts seemingly wired into an organisation which often determine how it behaves. It’s the expression “it’s in the woodwork” that determines how a Google, News International, BA or even political party behaves. Better to delve into the collective memory to understand it rather than try and brainwash it and hope it will change. Cultures don’t change that easily because of the collective memories that permeate them.

Having recently had a birthday and gloomily counting them forgive me if I reflect on the value of grey hairs. In Japan they give the wise, older executives “a seat by the window” so they can read their newspapers more easily but also because they are a constant resource of memories for others to use.

The current propensity to say in an age of change that the past is like an unwelcome anchor is wrong. We all need access to the past to avoid making the same mistakes and reinventing that same old wheel which may be diverting to watch but is wasteful.

Memories matter. They inform the future. Ask someone older next time.

THOSE WELCOME WINDS OF CHANGE

2011-07-25T06:49:00.000+01:00

The original “wind of change” speech was made by Harold Macmillan, then British Prime Minister, 51 years ago in and about Africa. To many it seemed a seminal insight.

This week a very dear friend came round and as we had a drink or two he sighed. Understand that this guy is someone hugely successful and effective so his weary pessimism was significant.

“Our institutions are falling. The Media. The Police. The core of government. The judiciary (they’re probably next). Big companies we’d relied on. The armed forces. Nothing seems capable of surviving any more…it’s very depressing”.

I disagreed. It seemed to me the windows were being opened in a large, dusty house that ponged a bit. It’s time to work out what we stand for and to stop talking about money the whole time. If money were the sole determinant of a successful life then the Mafia must be up there with the great institutions. I think what’s happening is just what we needed. A big shake-out. Sorry for some of the guys caught in the crossfire like Paul Stephenson but in a zero tolerance world you don’t take freebies if you’re the top policemen, however innocent that may have been.

So as you write your next marketing plan you’d better be clear about what you would or wouldn’t do (“would you pay £5,000 for a copy of your major competitor’s plan? Would you slip a briefcase full of £20 notes to a buyer at a supermarket group to double your facings? Would you write an anonymous damaging tweet about a personal rival?”). If you aren’t clear that this is a game with rules and diving in the penalty area gets you fired then join the guys in the smelly house with closed windows.

And if you don’t find life funny and full of delicious ironies then you should join the pastafarian cult. Didn’t see it? Niko Alm in Austria persuaded the driving-licence authorities to allow a licence photograph with him wearing a colander on his head. As a disciple of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster he must have been persuasive or do you think he just slipped then a brown envelope full of euros?

WHO'S IN CHARGE NOW?

2011-07-18T06:00:00.006+01:00

It used to be so easy.

There were people who were in charge and there were those who obeyed them. Think of school. Think of work. Think of society. Society was neither big nor was it small; it was just a perfect triangle of rulers at the top and the ruled at the bottom - kings and subjects.

And then, following the American model of checks and balances, we had the executive, the legislature and the judiciary and, added to that, the free press. Remember Watergate, that moment when all rulers trembled. Followed by a period when through processes of consultation in companies, concepts like referenda in politics, abnegation of decision making to others (“this one has to go to Brussels for a ruling”) and an over eager use of market research, the tree of ruling has been damagingly shaken. We have delegated the decision making process and those whom a one-time gardener of mine used to grimly call “the authorities”, are now no longer in authority or, more to the point, have any authority.

And it’s been, happening again and again and again. Dictators, Party Leaders, MPs, Police, Media have all lost their influence and next? It’ll probably be the judiciary because it’s time for the biters to be bitten as the always wise Matthew Parrish put it.

I don’t know about you but I’ve never had a greater sense of power. If I don’t like something that’s been done or the way it’s being done I shall complain and kick up a fuss. That’s what social media can help me do but beyond that the so-called authorities are running so scared that any blip on their political or publicity radar will make them fumble with their bone china strategies.

Which brings me to marketing. I’m rewriting my book Brilliant Marketing for its 2nd edition. Since 2008 when I first wrote it much has changed. As marketers we used to practise mass-marketing, what Seth Godin calls “interruption marketing” and power-marketing…telling people what to think and do. Marketing was once a baseball bat of a weapon where we stunned consumers first and then left it to salesmen to finish them off (closing the sale we called it), now we are using conversation, irony and gestures of friendship. We are building relationships not inducing transactions (or we should be.)

Most of all, we, the customers, are in charge. Let’s hope we use this better than the ones that went before us.

BISEXUAL VICAR IN BONDAGE DISPUTE

2011-07-11T06:00:00.007+01:00

The thing I’d always loved about the News of the World was its Donald McGill naughty seaside postcard sleaziness. The editor of the News of the Screws seemed likely to be a Max Miller “you-really-think-those-are-big-tits?” sort of person. We all read it – in fact it had the highest AB readership of any organ (sorry!) The News of the World was the Heinz or Kellogg of newspapers. An institution that was as British as the London Palladium, the Beatles, Coronation Street, Twiggy or Auntie Bessie’s Yorkshire Puddings. It was an iconic brand.

And then it got sold to Mr Murdoch, the man who has arguably done more for newspapers, the media in general and sport in particular than anyone in history. Yet whilst he’s done all this good he’s done something else too - set the bar higher and higher until the only way of them hitting the target was for them to be increasingly more “creative” in how they got sales which meant how they got news.

The fact is that spying is a common enough business practice and has been for centuries. That poor old Vicar in the headline was probably caught by a camera hidden in a bible. But what’s unusual is for a big brand to be killed-off like this one, like a pig with swine fever. The product had been bad: the brand was strong. So what went wrong?

Are we as Matthew Parrish suggested, in Saturday’s Times, simply getting things out of proportion? Because this was the way the media all always behaved with now that extra of technology thrown in? The NOW brand was a leader amongst a pack of wolves who behaved in a similar way. The Telegraph started its MP expenses campaign via a stolen CD so, as we know, they were really all at it. That’s what they believed they had to do in their relentless quest for “truth”. Spy, eavesdrop and pilfer dustbins.

Machiavelli has a lot to answer for because the end doesn’t always justify the means despite the pressure from owners, shareholders, CEOs, CFOs and talented people hungry to advance their careers.

But there’s only one thing even more unpleasant than the reek of corruption and sleaze which I can smell a lot of right now - sanctimoniousness.

More tea Vicar?

WHY RUTTING CHIMPANZEES GET AWAY WITH IT

2011-07-04T06:53:00.000+01:00

There are two aspects to the DSK saga that strike me.

The first is why the great and the good seem time after time to get way with inappropriate or sometimes possibly criminal behaviour. Zuma, Clinton, the Kennedy’s and now the man that was born to be the President of France, Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

The recent swing from how a previous recipient of his unwelcome attentions described him, “rutting chimpanzee”, to wronged roué is pretty amazing. The high profile arrest, the comic spectacle of the French in the dock, the self-righteous commentaries and the immediate presumption of guilt was always liable to prove troublesome for any prosecution but the speed with which their case is unravelling is bizarre. It argues for all of us to be a lot more circumspect until we have all the facts. As Sean Meehan, Professor of Marketing at IMD said:-“in God we trust …all others need data”.

The truth is, as the editor of the Lady, Boris’ sister Rachel Johnson noted, DSK is sort of fanciable and (I loved this one) seemed to like women a lot. Years ago I was at the Hay-on-Wye Book Festival when Bill Clinton was there. Sponsored by the Guardian it was full of feminists who strongly disapproved of his presence. Until they met him at which point “phwoar!” set in and they pretty well all confessed to melting beneath his ardent you-are-the-only-one gaze. Others, like the Kennedy’s had a kind of droit de seigneur about them that meant they got away with murder. Incidentally this sexual entitlement for the boss was known to apply in several British advertising agencies at one time.

None of this justifies rape. None of this justifies lousy behaviour or the sexual equivalent of ram- raiding.

Simply that there’s more to a scandal than meets the immediate salacious media eye. As Rod Liddle notes “sex sells papers” and he was desperate to scoop the Prime Minister being found in bed with the Archbishop of Canterbury and several goats.

The second question is why on earth talented people behave so badly, recklessly and stupidly.

Stephen Ambrose, the late US historian and biographer had the answer:

“God created man with a penis and a brain, but only gave him enough blood to run one at a time”.

So the worst charge would be diminished responsibility. Hmmm!

WHY HAVE SO MANY GOOD CAUSES SCREWED UP?

2011-06-27T06:00:00.000+01:00

Polar bears, organic vegetables, political correctness, liberal values, employee rights, health and safety. Somehow they’ve all got melded together in some kind of misguided and worthy gel. And all the good stuff that lay behind the causes they individually represented has been lost.

How can it be that I’ve leapt from a believer to a sceptic this fast?

Let’s look at organic food. How is it can I find myself applauding Matt Ridley saying that organic farming was sustainable for sure, sustainable insofar as it sustains famine and food shortage? Why? Because it’s so inefficient a method of production. And I’ve just begun to discover something important: a lot of it doesn’t taste very good. And there’s the e-coli issue in Germany has made me question how safe it is. So if it costs more, tastes poor and makes me ill, that seems a dodgy old marketing platform.

One after another, good liberal causes are being strangled by mendacity or hype. I suppose it’s the messengers rather than their messages that I’ve begun to distrust or think would say anything to prove their point. Life seems too short for this and the devil in me is muttering there’s nothing that a diet of Marlboro, pork pie, Tequila, chocolate and Jeremy Clarkson won’t solve.

My second thought this week relates to role models. There’s probably nothing really wrong with Bob Diamond who runs Barclays or Sepp Blatter who runs FIFA or Bernie Ecclestone who runs Formula One or Jean-Marie Le Pen who runs the French National Front Party (potentially the next French President). They are rich, successful, utterly shameless and with feet of something clay like.

But Rory McIlroy, the wonder golfer, fills me with joy (especially in contrast to the charmless Tiger). As does John Hegarty ad man extraordinaire whose book is just out. As does Jamie Oliver. As does George Clooney. As do Sue Barker, Margaret Heffernan, Carolyn McCall, Stevie Spring ….

All nice guys.

As Margaret Heffernan put it “nice is the new mean.”

The nice guys who espoused the nice causes I talked about up front have screwed up because they’ve stopped being nice. The moment you forget your values and just focus on winning at all costs you lose your sense of fun, your reputation and your soul.

VENICE: A PARADIGM OF DEGRADATION?

2011-06-20T07:16:00.000+01:00

Jan Morris entertainingly described the history of Venice as a transition from power to luxury from luxury to flippancy and from flippancy to impotence. But the Venice of today, where I recently spent a week, is on the ascendancy again.

There are real craft shops doing great stuff, the Biennale is in in full swing and once you’ve overcome three shocks one has a deep sense of admiration that billions of dollars have been well spent on restoration
.
The shocks are economic -the pound/euro parity – so a couple of beers cost £15; iconoclastic - the cruise ships (Voyager of the Seas which has over 3,000 guests and is 14 stories high slid past on the Giudecca Canal and nearly gave me a heart attack because there are no skyscrapers in Venice except these) and finally commercial, the posters and African market traders of knock-off designer labels in St. Mark’s Square. The 96 sheet ad for Citroen was particularly nasty, the Louis Vuitton knock-off bags a close second.

Pseuds’ Corner would have a field day with the arty fliers. Here are just some of them:
“One of a thousand ways to defeat entropy”;
“The cloud of unknowing”;
“Permanently becoming and the architecture of seeing” (this one authored by Julian Schnabel, the US film maker and artist) and from the Canadian exhibit at the Biennale itself – (Canada clearly got out of bed the wrong side that day)
“Triumphant secretion sculpted in foul mist
Dehydrated spectral birth at war with false metals”

Even the local Casino got in on the act with this: “an infinity of emotion” – yes that’s what you get with your chips on the tables of Venice.

The city is glorious – learning, effortlessly reaching back a thousand years and forward to a world of art and experiment, of hand craftsmanship and of car-free and Vespa-less perfume. Venice feels quite modern and self-confident in some ways, a world apart from the wrinkled old lady I first saw over twenty years ago.

Look at Venice today and see how once great can be reborn as the capital of conferences, global art, fashion and opera. There’s the odd jolt and tacky moment but it felt young, experimental and fun; a place in which to learn rather than a place in which to decay or die.

And maybe it’s a place to use as a new paradigm – one of restoration and hope.

HAPPY DAYS

2011-06-13T06:00:00.000+01:00

Richard Hall is happily on holiday and will post again around mid June, when there will be tales triggered by travel.

JUST DO IT

2011-06-06T06:02:00.000+01:00

My favourite recent story was from Nigeria. The economy there is in a mess with frequent breakdowns in electricity. This means factories have to rely on expensive generators and this makes life hard.

The scene is a Lagos Stock Cube Factory in Lagos as electricity fails again.
BBC Interviewer: “How do you cope with this? It must make you very uncompetitive in cost terms.”
Stock Cube Company MD; “We just make as much as we can and hope for the best.”

The day a sophisticated CEO in the western world says “we hope for the best” which in a completely erratic world where you can’t control events is the right thing to think and do, is the day I’ll break into applause.

Herb Kelleher who used to be Chairman and CEO of Southwest Airlines in America, one of America’s most admired and successful companies, said once when asked about strategy at his airline: “We have a strategy here. We call it doing things.”

It’s that same action-packed attitude to life. Hurray for people who park their sceptical brains and get their hands dirty.

We are now off to Venice to what Mike Geoghegan ex CEO of HSBC described in a soulless way as
“Once the greatest financial powerhouse in the world and now a mere water attraction”

In that sentence we get to see what’s wrong with bankers.

As regards the weather, food, and aching feet we are going to follow our Nigerian’s advice and hope for the
best.

HOW DID YOU DO IN YOUR EXAMS?

2011-05-30T05:19:00.001+01:00

Anyone who knows me thinks I’m an optimist maybe, sometimes, too much of one. A colleague in advertising suggested I’d enthuse over old turnips to win the account for Old Turnip Growers. So when I say that because Brighton’s population has a greater % of people with degrees than anywhere else in the UK, you need a 2.1 to get a job at Pizza Express, everyone would assume I was being flippant.

Which I was. But now I’m not so sure.

All I hear anyone talk about now is education. I see people doing jobs they hate, working themselves to death and suffering rotten lifestyles to fund their children’s education or lying sleepless in bed in case the dice falls the wrong way when they allocate primary school places. Fortunately it fell the right way for my grandson. Great excitement and relief; even pride. Grandson aged 4, asked if he had anything to say, replied (and I love the brightness of this):

“Yes. Can you stop going on about it. It’s only a school.”

It’s only a school. Right on son and it can help but not substitute for your innate smartness and appetite for life.

This week I heard of a brilliant young talent in childcare who wouldn’t (couldn’t) do his exams so now he’s out of childcare and into…whatever (or nothing). Imagine if they discover Wayne Rooney had insufficient GCSEs and was being fired by Man United. Or if you were told the meal you’d just enjoyed in a restaurant had been cooked by a degree-free chef. Imagine the rising sense of nausea. Not even an HND?

Exams trap people rather than liberate their talent. I want to know what people show a liking and talent for. And that talent being encouraged and becoming great and amazing.

Degrees are not qualifications. They comprise a pretty easy exam at the end of a pretty enjoyable three years talking, listening, drinking and learning. Which is good in its own right..

But education is not about ramming stuff into kids, it is…Balliol. Oxford? Literally, from educere (latin) – to lead out, draw forth.

So more of this drawing out, please. And the next time I hear someone given a job based on the exams they’ve passed rather than their energy, enthusiasm and appetite for life remind me to be optimistic if I can.

Turnips indeed!

SETTLING DOWN WITH A GOOD BOOK

2011-05-23T06:00:00.001+01:00

And before we go on further can I say I am obviously unable to comment on those allegations in Twitter that I have served a superinjunction so can we move on please?

I love books. We even have a small but beautifully fitted out 2500 book library at home. I spend more money on books than anything else. Barely an evening passes without me buying a book on Amazon and barely a week passes that I don’t go into Waterstones and come out of it grumpy. And yet I used to love the place.
And today, Saturday, I see the Russian oligarch Alexander Mamut has bought it from HMV (no surprise that…it’s been well trailed for ages) and put in James Daunt to run it (huge surprise that.) Daunts Books (there are seven branches but I only know the one in Marylebone High Street) is the delicatessen, the very Dean and Deluca of books. I always find books in there that I’ve never heard of but desperately want to read, books that I feel I really need.

Will James succeed with big W – the place that has become the shame of the High Street…the place where a friend was told a recent publication was not in stock and given the friendly advice by their staff “why don’t you try a real bookshop mate, like Foyles?”

The omens are not good. Book sales were down by 3% or so last year. Luke Johnson, owner of failed Borders and Books etc said book retailing was finished and his involvement had been a stupid error. Amazon say e-books now outsell paper books. Barnes and Noble are being kept alive by their e-commerce division the Nook and are currently considering a $1 billion bid by Liberty Media, the QVC shopping channel people.
And yet…and yet. Shops that sell great brands and give great service thrive. Farmers Markets burgeon. Organic and quality food blooms. New restaurants keep on opening. Literary Festivals flourish. And nothing beats a comfortable chair, good light, a glass of wine and the feel of a real book, the smell of fresh print and beautiful paper, the clunk of a hard cover and that certainty that it’s all there in your hands, typeset in Dutch 801 by MacGuru and printed by Clays in Bungay, Suffolk.

Our Kindle gathers dust from neglect. Our library just gathers dust, the dust of knowledge and turned pages, that fragrant dust of words.

I love books. I need books. Good luck James. Turn back the pages.

IT'S TIME TO BE INCREDIBLY AMBITIOUS

2011-05-16T06:00:00.008+01:00

and go for it

What brought this on?

Here I am in lazy Brighton in the best weather we’ve had for ages. The birds are singing, the deck chairs are out and the roses are exploding symphonically into bloom. Maybe it’s the glorious Aegean blue skies early in the morning or maybe it’s the people I’m meeting and what they are saying that’s provoked it but I think it’s time for us all to wake up.

Let’s start with the Brighton Festival.

A huge success in 2010, aiming for better things in 2011, the number of Friends hugely increased and with Aung San Suu Kyi as guest director in the year that seems to mark the nadir for dictators. Magic. “We can really take on Edinburgh now,“ I said. No, I was told, this is little Brighton, little sister of London… Edinburgh has the clout, the history and the gravitas. And the Scottish B&Bs and the weather and the distance and the smugness. Go for it Brighton. What’s wrong with you?

Emily Baker. Young. Singer. Songwriter. She appeared at an event called “Riding the Wave” organised by the local Chamber of Commerce. I spoke. She sang. We are bound together by virtual greasepaint. Will she make it? Conventional wisdom says she’ll struggle because she’s probably too good musically (eh?) and this is so crowded a field. But life is crowded and as BWW said “the fast always eat the slow.” So be fast Emily. Be newsy. Be ambitious, girl. I’m backing you to win.

Jess Wood. Designer. Very young. Running her own business. Just done a pack design job for Nestle. Great presence. Good work. Needs to rocket to a new level by being more daring, mould breaking and ambitious. Be fast Jess. Dazzle us with your design-sprinting. I’m backing her too.

And Sussex CCC and Brighton and Hove Albion FC and the Olympics. Self- confident. Classy. Winners.
It’s time for the sceptics, cynics and naysayers to bow out or be ejected. It’s May 2011 and I want anyone reading this to repeat after me:

“Let’s be much more ambitious and take more risks. We have nothing to lose but our torpor”

….or our jobs? In the case of the gloriously self-employed Emily and Jess not even that. And, anway, if that’s the price of renouncing boredom and despair, so be it.

Vote for ambition. Vote for innovation. Vote for freedom.

WE NEED TO DISRUPT THE WAY WE THINK

2011-05-09T06:00:00.001+01:00

You’ll have heard of TED (Technology Entertainment Design) which is the 18 minute speech-bite business of the great, good and not-so-good sharing their ideas with an audience of millions. Biggest thing since pastrami. And more addictive. Check it out.

They came to London and together with the London Business School ran a day with 24 slots. The broad topic was disruption and now I’m knackered but inspired. Nine hours of iconoclasm has that effect. For the longer write-up watch this space. But just for now settle for Andy.

Andy Stefanovich. With a name like that you have an unfair start in life. His biog describes him thus:

“As Chief Curator and Provocateur at Prophet, Andy has earned a reputation as one of the most disruptive and effective advisors in business.”

Imagine a bespectacled, curly headed man of medium height seemingly on ecstasy, tequila and who’s been trained by Tom Peters to do it like him but louder, faster and without pause.

Andy spoke about business just being an excuse for him because it was his way of filling himself up with thoughts and inspiration much like people who go into a museum and in awe of what they see are transformed into a state of museum-mentality which is what we all aspire to since the admission fee to life is our life and with stakes that high not being inspired the whole time is crazy and this applies to holidays too which he takes with his family a month at a time in New York in a kind of erratical-sabbatical soaking up and distilling of that Soho energy and then getting back to disrupting lazy businesses with a storm of ideas and demolition and inspiring people to a better world which they’ll create by inspiring each other through delight demand and design and you try saying all this without taking one single breath no I swear not one and regarding the full stop like the condemned man regards a bullet namely to be at all costs if possible avoided thank you

Andy was brilliant.

Life is uncertain but too full of possibilities for us not to try and make it even better which means disrupting ourselves from comfort to new discoveries.

See. It’s catching.

YOU AREN'T GETTING ENOUGH SLEEP

2011-05-03T21:34:00.000+01:00

Nearly everyone I know is going around feeling tired. For sure, this is a busy world but is there more to this?

There is. It’s sleep deprivation that we’re all suffering from.

I’ve found a compelling study from the States which shows all the top athletes are now treating sleep as importantly as diet. The data is compelling. Sleep enough and your accuracy in tennis improves by up to 42%. Which, of course, is why that master tennis player, Roger Federer, sleeps 11 – 12 hours a night. Now that is serious teenage sleeping. That is, in fact, professional sleeping. And it’s also why the champion skier Lindsey Vonn says “I love to sleep”.

I’m with Lindsey. And I’m against all those alpha males telling me 4 hours a night is plenty. Being knackered isn’t macho, it’s crackers. I believe it may well be they’ll discover the financial crisis was brought about by crack bankers having too little sleep.

Two other myths to debunk.

Cigarette manufacturers telling us – do you recall the straight faces with which they did so? – that cigarette advertising made people change brands not want to take up smoking. Balloney. I was exposed to a raft of old ads at Sheffield Park Railway Station on the Bluebell line recently which is an authentic trip into the past and the romance of steam trains and the wonderfully blunt world of great poster advertising for Brasso, Camp Coffee (“the best”) and cigarettes. As someone who’d long given up I was struck by how suddenly and desperately I wanted a cigarette, Woodbine “the great little cigarette” or Players or Craven A….anything.

And finally the theory about “just in time” which I’ve always worried about as it seemed to me to be another way of saying “nearly too late” or as Honda are discovering “much too late.” They’ll run out of parts in the USA and UK in the next five weeks. Just in time makes sense only in a perfect world.

So tomorrow I’m going to stock up with essentials, smoke a few cigarettes and then get off to bed for a very long time.

Just like the old days.

DO YOU FEEL THE WAY YOU SHOULD ABOUT THINGS?

2011-04-26T06:01:00.000+01:00

There were three events this week leading to the opposite sensation to the one I’d expected.

Firstly the weather.
Phew what a scorcher and all that. I heard a series of misgivings related to global warming and the impending drought but the vast majority were mildly in favour of it until schadenfreude kicked in and mildly in favour became euphoric as we realised it was raining in Alicante, 10 degrees colder in Athens and distinctly chilly in Istanbul. They say it isn’t enough to win. The other guys have to lose. And they were, losers that is, as they grimly set off to Gatwick.

Secondly the weather (again).
As we basked in the summery sun and the birds excitedly copulated and the trees burst proudly into plume all I heard was “well that’s it…our bloody summer…won’t last…never bloody does.” What is wrong with these perverse pessimists? Enjoy it while it lasts and my firm conviction is this is just the hors d’oeuvre before a scintillating summer which, regardless of weather, I intend it to be. And anyway I expect a lot of sun accompanied by “bloody typical…peeling skin…this weather of ours I ask you.”

And thirdly self-esteem and motivation. Both of mine took a knock when we went to buy sanitary ware – curious descriptor – and were offered a 25% discount only running till “tomorrow”. Well, probably not only till then but as the deal seemed OK we went back the next day but they wouldn’t let us buy saying a new deal was kicking in and we now stood to save…wait for it (lots of tapping on the computer) an extra £150…”isn’t that great?” No. It’s bizarre. I felt an idiot being happy with price one and then being offered, without asking, price two. I hadn’t even had the pleasure of negotiating.

And the story of Handlesbanken the Swedish Bank which does not pay its senior people bonuses because, they say, long term confidence does not sit alongside short term rewards and that people’s self-esteem and motivation should come from a rewarding job not large sums of money. "Blimey! That won’t work" they said in Canary Wharf. Last year Handelsbanken grew by 8%, made an operating profit of £1.5 billion and has quietly built 100 UK branches.

Bet they only came here for this bloody weather of ours.

IN PRAISE OF PROMISCUITY

2011-04-20T10:00:00.002+01:00

I heard someone recently lamenting consumer promiscuity. They went further and said they despaired of a world where 40% of marriages ended in divorce and where employee loyalty was generally absent.

I believe behaving like a lemming, staying with a partner marital or commercial when it isn’t working despite your trying isn’t loyal. It’s stupid.

Anyway if you have a great product and service promiscuity is exactly what you should be seeking so people try other people’s offerings and realise just how good yours is as gratefully they come flocking back.

Brands like BT use this as a key plank in their strategy.

But I want to think about loyalty the other way round.

About loyalty by the brand to the consumer and by the employer to the employee. That’s been pretty absent too hasn’t it?

Just why should the consumer be loyal if the producer has taken cost out of the product, moved production offshore and cut back on R&D? What investment is he putting into retaining your custom?

And that employee who’s constantly reapplying for his or her job, being bullied, trained in idiotic practices and given (in contrast to the board) tiny salary increases…what has the employer done to merit their loyalty?

Politicians are also not immune to demanding tribal loyalty too.

No chance.

It seems to me we should all become exceedingly promiscuous and behave like commercial wantons. Phone your bank and ask them to re-pitch for your business – write to a shortlist of the others and make them say why you should give them your money to look after.

Do the same with your supermarket by having little affaires with the others.

Check out your insurance provider. Say “hey you are too expensive…what are you going to do?”

Taste and check out all your most often buy brands – are they still as good as they say and you remember or have they been overtaken? Kellogg, Heinz, Cadbury etc.

Have some fun in this age of austerity. Spread your wings and become a consumer swinger.

EVERY LITTLE HELPS

2011-04-18T06:00:00.001+01:00

Tesco’s advertising claim promoting incrementalism is belied by its own seemingly unstoppable growth and is irritating because it belongs to that know-it-all neighbour with over-the-fence-homespun-wisdoms (“a stitch in time…”; “time and tide…”;) and because any Tesco executive who was asked how sales were doing in his sector and replied “oh, you know, steady enough, keeping our head above water but, then again, every little helps”, would be instantly fired.

Its growth is matched by its creativity in finding new opportunities and imaginative ways of executing its strategy – yes, Tesco creative …and no, it’s not an oxymoron.

Now it’s into second hand cars creating (for Tesco) a high margin business, for the consumer a lower cost and more trustworthy source of product and at a stroke have changed the automotive game.

To the global automotive business Britain is known as Treasure Island because of the premium prices they can get here. And car dealers make more money out of selling second hand cars than new cars. Post-Tesco they won’t be doing so much longer.

Despite their success Tesco’s image has taken a bit of a battering over the past few years. In research consumers don’t always say very nice things about them. Ironically it has something of the image problem of second hand car salesmen.

And yet the image right at its core is one of reliability, low prices and, in Tesco Finest, the biggest food brand in the UK. Quite simply if you were as ubiquitous as they are, you’d be up for a panning too – as are the USA or Microsoft or BT. In short the Tesco brand is a strong one in terms of awareness and reach and is respected perhaps more than liked but when push comes to shove, one that has, at worst, grudging approval for its standards.

This move into cars could change the way they are seen by the sceptics. The Tesco brand beats small, expensive, undercapitalised local brands. And one other plus – Tesco actually know how to sell to women which virtually no car dealerships are good at.

It’s already doing advanced trials in reinventing banking and reinventing estate agencies proving that strong brands can reach the parts weak brands can’t.

The scale of change continues especially in sectors where margins are very high, where customer service is wanting and where product and service innovation is lacking. Tesco is an early player in doing what Virgin dreamed and talked of doing.

My guess is this is the beginning of a new wave of looking at things buying a lot of the stuff differently. Sorry Arthur Daley. You are history son.

THE GRASS IS GREENER

2011-04-10T07:55:00.000+01:00

The grass may be greener but it’s likely to be a lot more dangerous.

A recent 20 year study in the USA by consultants AT Kearney and the Kelley School of business at Indiana University shows that Chief Executives promoted from within an organisation generally outperform those recruited from outside. They conclude external recruitment is “more risky, costly and disruptive.”

How much more costly? 65%.

How much more disruptive? 40% of outsiders last 2 years or less.

So it’s game, set and match for talent development and succession management.

Which is no surprise to anyone I speak to in most large or smaller corporations. Because whilst non executives and consultants are all going to be proponents for change and disciples of pundits like Lester Thurow of MIT who said:- “A competitive world offers two possibilities: you can lose or, if you want to win, you can change”, few of them are bent on annihilating the organisation they are trying to improve.

Change does not mean big, random, “asserting my will” changes an incoming CEO often from a different culture, a different country and, like as not, a different market, might want to make. Change, as in changing course, seldom means doing brutal hand-break turns or going from 30,000 feet to 10,000 feet to shake up a few people. Change can mean skilful pruning and working with the best one’s got. Usually an incumbent executive will be better at that than a stranger who’s got a huge package with vast incentives, a mandate for carnage and is unencumbered by knowledge.

UK companies who tend to promote from within include Tesco, Shell, Next, HSBC, Glaxo SmithKline and GKN. And in the USA General Electric, Intel, Nike and a host of others are succession management junkies. And when Apple went outside look what happened to them.

This puts a big premium on Talent Management and Leadership Coaches. Yet this is where the most important investment any business can make resides. Their task is not to clone conservative CEOs who don’t rock any boats but to grow and develop free thinkers who understand what RA Butler, the 1950s brilliant politician, called “the art of the possible.”

There’s a great book on golf by Robert Rotella called “Golf is not a Game of Perfect”. Neither is running a company or finding a new leader.

In fact that greener looking grass might be more toxic than it looks or it might be concealing some very venomous snakes.

IF ONLY I'D HAD A MENTOR WHO'D GUIDED ME

2011-04-04T06:00:00.002+01:00

Not in fact the departing words of Sir Fred Goodwin or Chuck Prince, perhaps, but if we are honest most of could do with a grandfatherly figure who can fearlessly, and with our best interests unconditionally at heart, advise us and, most important of all, get the best out of us.

Leon Taylor is an Olympian. He won a silver medal at Athens doing with Peter Waterfield, the most difficult dive invented in history. He fought injury, disappointment and still threw himself off the top of a three storey building, hitting the water at 40mph again and again and again. In short he’s crazy.

But he’s written a great book on mentoring and he’s Tom Daley’s mentor (so. if Tom doesn’t win a gold in 2012, Leon’s entirely and brazenly to blame.) A great book because it has an innocent clarity about it. No cynical management book this, it prescribes laughter, hard work, excitement, and good planning as keys in the success recipe. But having the calm, inspiration and support of your mentor can make the difference between hero and nobody.

There are two things Leon says that stick with me:
“You can’t always choose what you do but you can always choose how you do it”.
I’d rather be a great check-out operator than an unenthusiastic brand manager and so on and so on. Do what you do brilliantly and with enthusiasm and the rest will follow.

The second is a quote from Dr Steve Peters and his three rules of life:
1. Life is not fair.
2. The goalposts always move.
3. Your job is to do your best under the circumstances.
Steve has pretty well captured the dilemma mankind faces. And by making us face it does us all a great service. Stop whingeing – get up and get on. But as a mentor I think I want to add a fourth point.

4. Your mentor’s job is to help you understand how great you can be if only you press the right buttons.

When people say “but what does a mentor do?” I feel like saying “what does a gardener do?” Answer “makes the soil sing with colour.” Mentors are those button locators. We are the messengers of hope and inspiration. We help people see what good is and how to get there. We fuel laughter and adventure. We make good people become great and sometimes good people do something different in order to become great.

Life is like high diving. It’s frightening. It hurts. You haven’t got enough time to think but if you have a mentor like Leon Taylor, or a select group like him, you can learn to press the right buttons and do your best under any circumstances.

FIRST OVER THE TOP GETS SHOT!

2011-03-28T06:00:00.001+01:00

Even the originators of the FMA theory (“First Mover Advantage”), Lieberman and Montgomerie, seem to have had a change of heart. Last week I heard the eloquent Professor of Marketing at IMD, Seán Meehan, define Apple as a fast follower and not an innovator as such at all.

Hurray!

At last the dumb truth about innovation is being laid to rest. Be best not first. That ‘s also what Jonathan Mills, Director of the Edinburgh Festival, said in laying into “premieres” in the arts.

The secrets of success lie in listening to the customers who use the products, fixing the problems that exist, constantly improving the product (iPad2 looks like being a bigger triumph than iPad1 just 8 months later) and being totally clear about the promise - in Apple’s case a confident “thinner, lighter, faster.”

I loved this assertion about clarity. Most mission statements are a confusing mish-mash.

Better to be a Ryanair saying “we are the cheapest” – and reacting with surprise and indignation to the question “do you do customer satisfaction surveys?” No, they focus all their attention on their core promise. They are living proof that it is better to be respected than liked.

So the message is to nail down brilliantly what you have in that box before you think of getting out of it. Stop trying to be an “original.” Focus on getting better and better and better.

And this is a tough new world.

Motorala’s global market share in mobiles fell from 45% to 9% between 1994 and 2008 whilst Nokia’s rose from 20% to 40%. And now Nokia are facing a near death experience. Brands are not immortal. Not Nokia. Not GM. Not Toyota. Not Apple.

Which is why life is so exciting.

Anyone out there who wants to be the next Steve Jobs might make it if they are as demanding about relentless improvement, brilliant design and speed to market as he is.

They don’t have to be first, though, just much better than the others.

Although looking at the Boat Race on Saturday I wondered if there wasn’t something in FMA after all.

OH MY EARS AND WHISKERS, HOW LATE IT'S GETTING

2011-03-21T16:04:00.000Z

The white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, whose ears and whiskers these are, cuts a very modern figure, oppressed by the tyranny of time.

If you want to think your way though the problem time pressure creates, read Leon’ Kreitzman’s “The 24 Hour Society” or listen to what Lawrie Philpott thinks – his shortly to be published book “2,500 hours. All you’ve got!” is addressed at time-short CEOs.

Leon notes cavemen used to work 15 hours a week and whilst clock-time rules now - the first thought modern man and woman have on waking is “what time is it?”-   more primitive societies lived by event time – like rice-cooking-time or pissing-time. They worked shorter hours in winter. Their lives were controlled by the frontier of night. Life was simpler.

Lawrie focuses on the need to spend time on the right stuff with the 2,500 hours at our disposal. Don’t work longer as you’ll burn out or, in your weariness, make things worse (“oh my ears and whiskers” – that white rabbit was a classic case of workaholic.) This hypothetical CEO’s aim is to make their time ensure that their workforce’s time is used best.

Both Leon and Lawrie (who are beginning to sound like a music hall act) recognise time is money and how the speed of change in a modern world has created time-inflation…in other words each second is worth less than it was.

Three brief observations:

1.    What senior managers need are “Time Lords” – people who teach how to allocate time in their organisation. We have business plans. What we also need are “time-plans”.
2.    Saving time saves money.
3.    Whichever way we look at it, we know too little time is spent on thinking creatively about the future and about change….by anyone.

This is not just a narrative about “time-management”. It’s a story about a global world where the smartest are looking at ways to cut and reallocate time and simplify what we do.

All the research I’m doing shows time-stress is spoiling lives, performance and creativity.

It’s time to call in some Time Lords and start thinking afresh.

FOLLOW YOUR PASSION

2011-03-14T06:00:00.006Z

This is what Oprah Winfrey said:

“Follow your passion. Do what you love, and the money will follow. Most people don’t believe it but it’s true”

Which sounds great until you look at your debt, your food and fuel bill and your rent or mortgage repayments…..But I don’t think Oprah was suggesting you followed your passion into bankruptcy, merely that you decided what you really wanted and that you went for it.

It’s like love. You don’t marry the first person who comes along. You don’t get hitched to a call-centre of a person – “I don’t enjoy them but they get the cooking done”. You marry for better, for richer, in health and in fun.

So here are three questions:

i)    Do you really know what your passion is?
ii)    What do you really need in life?
iii)    Do you actually want to follow your passion?

Most people say loosely I want to be …”fulfilled” and rather weakly flap their hands. What you need to identify is what exactly it is that fills your mind and about which you want to know everything, a focus for all your learning urges.

I met Nicholas Showam MD of Jaly Ltd. at an RSA conference on Saturday. His passion is machines and making things. He could talk forever about the latest bit of kit. He believes we can out manufacture the worlds if we choose to.

He’s followed his passion.

We don’t have to be passionate 100% of the time. We can earn what we need and be pragmatic about budgeting but we must follow that passion like the wonderfully talented Richard Crane, playwright, dramatist and actor who observed jovially “I’m on the stage…I know all about austerity…and how to deal with it.”

He’s followed his passion.

On Friday I went to Birmingham to the great Pre-Raphaelite Exhibition in their Art Gallery. Birmingham is rocking. Great customer service; taxi drivers who tell you how wonderful the place is and the new Bullring…a revelation of 21st century quality retailing. I love positivism, art and great business. I want more of this and we all need more of it to break out of the austerity trap.

So on Friday I too followed my passion and I believe the money will follow.

UNLEASHING FEMININE POTENTIAL AND EMBRACING DIVERSITY

2011-03-07T06:09:00.000Z

It’s been a week of two halves.

The first about “not getting it” – me, my e-mails as Orange, my provider, collapsed; Orange – not getting the restrained fury their laconic call centre is creating.

The second about being cheered up by a presentation from Kirstin Furber HR Director of BBC Worldwide on the power of women. On the basis of what she said the future will be better (and better looking than the past.)

USA data shows women have recently built twice as many companies as men;
whilst they find it much harder to get funded than men, that doesn’t stop them succeeding.

They succeed because:

Their motivations are huge…”I wanted to do something for me…but I realised it was also for the people who worked for me – which was better.”
They want to create a good, sustainable business not just get rich.
They tend to be kinder than men, looking to create a business that outlasts them.
Their sense of the zeitgeist is profound noticing gaps in markets
They are good at “pattern recognition”- a key barometer of success in business
When a female CEO is interviewed she’ll tend to have her top team there with her, in support and answering their special interest questions. (Male CEO’s tend to be seen alone – as the leader.) Women see themselves as conductors of an orchestra – they don’t make the noise.
Women in general want their company to be smarter than they are.
Women tend to be more right brain users but they really work at and try being good at left brain too – their male counterparts tend not to work much at their right brain.
Women have an “irrational love” of their customers whom they regard as part of their family.
Men are measurement obsessed and love doing plans and revising them interminably. Women are looser about possible outcomes saying: “No one expects things to turn out quite the way we predicted.”

The future’s bright if our managements and leaders – female and male - follow the “ten commandments” above but the future certainly isn’t Orange unless they start to have a more irrational love of their customers than they showed this week.

THE HELICOPTER WORLD OF MONETISATION

2011-02-28T06:00:00.005Z

The occasion: The London Business School Summit on Technology and Media 25/02/11
The speaker: Dr. Bobby Rao, ex Vodafone Marketing Director, now founding partner in Hermes Venture Partners.

We’ve all had that moment. One of sheer unbridled hatred of the cleverest boy in the school. Who gets all the prizes; who gets all the girls. That’s Bobby. The coolest and most suave presenter I’ve seen.

We are living in the midst of a game where we are all asking “where’s the ball?” Because there’s been a collision of three markets: the internet; media; consumer electronics - between them worth $3 trillion. And the legs of each has been kicked away.
Historically media has thrived on scarcity – now through digitisation, high speed Broadband and the low price of storage, scarcity is over.
You can fight scarcity by focusing on live events. Or you can go for quality (iPad and iPhone). Or you can monetise the new usage occasions there are.
But recognise this is a new personal market meaning advertisers must really understand individual people. So who has got the best information? That’s why Facebook is valued at c. $70 billion.
Yes that’s what Bobby used to see what was going on in Egypt via live video in Tahrir Square as it happened. BBC didn’t have a chance against what they now call “pro-sumers” (producers and consumers.)
To monetise all this we must charge people in the right way and the right amount. It’s not about how many eyeballs any more it’s about whose eyeballs and what’s going on behind those eyeballs.
Yet marketers - an “avoid-failure”, in-transit-between-jobs bunch - are conservative and lagging behind the changes that have happened already.
And of course we are living in the middle of a valuation bubble (what was later described by James Bromley CEO of Mail Online as descending from the “peak of inflated expectation” phase into the “trough of disillusionment”).
But be aware that this $3 billion game will not be played on the small market Euro stage (let alone the tiny market UK stage.) It’ll be played out between Asia and the USA.
It’s about customer knowledge, customer experience and a scale of population big enough to pay for the weaponry the big guys need. It’s a good time to be a customer and a spectator watching them - Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Omnicom and WPP. But remember - no one knows where the ball is yet.

Thank you LBS.

I’m off to look for that ball.

ALL THINGS MUST PASS

2011-02-21T06:19:00.000Z

This was George Harrison’s song, quoted wistfully by Phil Redmond at a recent conference, “The State of the Arts”, as his lament for the cuts in arts’ funding by the government. Ed Vaizey, Minister for the Arts, tried the brazenly stoic “we are where we are…let’s move on” approach which from the prime culprit is a great try-on… use it yourself when arrested for drunk driving….”let’s move on Officer.”

“All things must pass”. Do you feel as though you were living in truly seminal times when the demolition of all we knew is changing? Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen – hallo tube…hallo toothpaste. Yes, just you try getting it back in.

And it’s not just the Middle East. It’s that naked King. Suddenly like Hans Christian Andersen’s little boy we realise that “he’s in the altogether – as naked as the day that he was born.” And it applies to everything.

Lying and calling it diplomacy, selling arms and praising it as our export drive, supporting dictatorships, placing expediency over principal, pretending command and control works…all stark naked nonsense.

And this applies to our jobs too. The employee and consumer will no longer simply be told what to do. They are beginning to realise they actually are much more in charge than they thought and that the big corporations are scared stiff or should be….not of the Unions or Which magazine but of…people.

It’s time to tell it like it is.

Gavin Stride Director of that interesting creative centre Farnham Maltings, said at the Arts Conference I mentioned, and to general dismay:

“I don’t believe in partnerships…they are generally between people who don’t like or trust each other just to get something out of someone else…in the Arts it’s usually money out of the government. But I do believe in friendships.”

He also said:

“Under the previous government Arts Organisations were stabbing each other in the back. Now under this government they are stabbing each other in the front.”

At least the front feels more open and honest. At least it’s a change. You still die but you know who killed you.

All things must pass. All things must pass away. Don’t be sad or nostalgic. Be excited – we are entering new times and new times mean new opportunities.

HOW TO JUDGE THE POWER OF ADVERTISING IN THE DIGITAL AGE

2011-02-14T06:00:00.002Z

When I was in advertising the word on the street meant more to most of us than Millward Brown tracking studies did because the loudest word was the word of our knowing and, hopefully, envious peers. Now the word on the street includes everyone. All the punters out there are our colleagues too.

Twitter and You Tube have instantly changed the game. Now everyone’s point of view counts and is counted. No event or conference is a proper conference without a constant Twitter flow. Ditto advertising campaigns...instant judgements are made.

What’s interesting is that these qualitative reactions are being weighed more carefully than the more ponderous quantitative stuff. Welcome back to the real world…and I’d feared the researchers had hijacked advertising. Here’s what the guys in the business are saying:-

"The dialogue around Super Bowl ads has changed--it literally used to happen at the water cooler, and now, the minute an amazing ad hits, the Twitter world goes crazy," says Tor Myhren, chief creative officer of Grey New York. "I personally believe the YouTube view count is the single most important factor in judging the success of a Super Bowl ad."

"It used to be that you'd watch the Super Bowl spots played on TV and in the news right after," says Jill Beraud, chief marketing officer of PepsiCo, which monitors chatter on Facebook and Twitter to measure an ad's success. "Now, the longevity of these Super Bowl spots is endless between YouTube and all the digital tools that are available."

Jason Peterson, chief creative officer at Euro RSCG's Chicago office, believes a Super Bowl hit is more than just YouTube views or Twitter tweets. The most successful ads, he says, will not just be watched again online, but be reimagined. In other words, they'll not only go viral--they'll become Internet memes.

"The next level is: How many parodies are you getting? How many people are getting off their asses, getting video cameras, and actually interacting with the work you put out there? Parodies, to me, are the biggest gauge of whether an advertisement is relevant with the market."

Interactive, engagement and really getting into it…this new world of marketing is getting more emotional and it works.

KNOWING ME KNOWING YOU - the value of being in a network.

2011-02-07T20:22:00.000Z

I thought some of you might find this podcast interesting. It was recorded at a recent Brighton and Hove Chamber of Commerce event I attended.

THEY DIDN'T ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT GOOD WAS...

2011-02-07T05:59:00.000Z

John Neill Group CEO of Unipart described this as the main failing of British Management in the post-war years. Peter Lederer, Chairman of Gleneagles, said this was why he left Britain in the 1970s. No good.

But now we’ve got adept at knowing what good is and as adept at hiding our lights under bushels.

Britain is world class at restaurants, retailing, the arts, building brands, hospitality and creative industries (and just for fun I’m including investment banking in this category.)

World class. The Royal Opera House. Glyndebourne.
World class. The Tate. Royal Academy. National Gallery
World class. WPP. M&C Saatchi. Sedley Place. Barclays
World class. BBC. Pinewood. Hat Trick. Talkback Thames
World class. Gleneagles. Hotel du Vin. Browns
World class. Selfridges. John Lewis. Fortnum&Mason. Foyles
World class. Fat Duck. Ivy. Galvins. Wolseley
World class. Simon Rattle. Kate Adey. Jamie Oliver
World class. Canary Wharf. O2 Dome. St. Pancras. London Eye
World class. Football. Rugby. Cricket. Golf. Cycling. Sailing

Yet we persist in doing three crazy things.
i)   selling our brands to anyone, anywhere with a bit of cash
ii)    outsourcing what we should do ourselves to high inflation economies
iii)    failing to improve what we do and make every single day…because good is never good enough

We have the choice of becoming third world class – Primark, Poundland, Charity Shops - or working our balls off to be best.

I was watching Jeremy King at the Wolseley the other day, chatting up his staff and walking the floor that’s what leads to world class. That’s why sensible CEOs should live in their reception feeling and seeing the face of their business. Why Sir John Hegarty, founder of ad. agency BBH said you could never take your eye of the shop for a second.

Stop for a moment just trying to be big or get rich. Start trying to be better. Start to change the game (that’s why I call Kate Adey world class – she changed the way we saw women broadcasters forever.)

World class takes perspiration, focus, trial and error and a withering disregard for anything that takes your eye off great customer service.

It takes pride, ambition and a willingness to be measured against the best, smartest and most competitive.

Welcome to New Britain….and not a minute too soon.

LESSONS OF HISTORY AND HOW TO SURVIVE

2011-01-31T06:00:00.008Z

Last week I did a keynote speech at a Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce event on the HSBC report on the Super Cities of the future. Brighton was one of these and I was asking the audience of 100 whether they thought there might be a symbiotic relationship between the thriving arts scene in Brighton and the booming SME, entrepreneurial community in the city. I noted the HSBC were very impressed by the rebelliousness and individuality of Brighton and observed it was “the UK capital of deregulation.”

Which takes me to Tunis, Cairo, Sanaar, Amman and so on. As I type this the violence in Cairo has worsened. So rebelliousness, deregulation and, even, revolution is in the air throughout the world.

Dictatorships and dynasties are doomed.

The voice of intelligent people is being heard and is organising itself through willpower and technology. Governments are discovering that mobile phones are more potent weapons than tear gas and guns.

Talking to people at that Chamber of Commerce event about networking and now reading the news about Egypt has finally persuaded me that social networking is much more important to our world than I’d been acknowledging.

Here are the top ten tips from Brighton this January for being good at Twitter, Blogs, Facebook or whatever.

-    Talk about what really interests you not just about what you do
-    Be curious about the world and ask questions
-    Be a Renaissance person, a polymath, a person with wide interests
-    Be yourself – be true to what you believe
-    Make friends don’t just regard the network as business forum
-    Get into your local universities and find out all the good stuff they are thinking about. Ask and you’ll be surprised how open they are
-    Be positive – look for the good things - don’t just be judgemental
-    Don’t live in anyone’s shadow – be your own hero
-    We live in a world of conversations not orations
-    Spend 20 minutes a day on social networking

It’s time more of us were talking to each other and being active in our lives. As Thomas Jefferson said “a little rebellion never did any harm.” And there’s never been a better time to rattle the cage.

See you in cyberspace.

I THINK THEREFORE I AM

2011-01-24T22:45:00.000Z

When Descartes wrote this he was creating an anthem for philosophic thought. But if the converse is true - “I do not think therefore I’m not” - we should reflect on the potential for many of us, our lives and our businesses ceasing to exist.

To be blunt, there’s more sound and fury than real thinking going on right now in many places. And with so much changing and the mass and mess of conflicting events, it’s pretty hard to keep up. In this supercharged world the premium is on energy rather than insight.

So how do you think? No, I’m not being funny. How do you actually do it? In a multitasking world it is evident the bit that gets abandoned first is thinking. It’s the juice in the plum that gets spilt when you get to multitasking with that “let’s be busy” knife.

The very clever Isaac Newton, apparently, would sit and think for days at a time…and that’s a terrifying thought. Imagine. No distractions. A twitter-free, iPod-free, PC-free environment. Imagine a white sheet of paper with three weeks alone to think and nothing else…in silence.

Relax. Use whatever it takes to help you and for many people silence is a cruel state of being broken only by the insistent sound of a bee buzzing making real concentration impossible. Marcus du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford and one of the people who make me wish I’d become a scientist, says maths is too hard to think about, really think about for more than an hour a day. What’s good enough for Marcus….

But what I really want to talk about are baths. Sue Wilkins who runs Panache PR told me she’d printed off my last blog and read it in the bath. (So this one’s for you, Sue.) If we had more baths we’d think more and better. Do you suppose Archimedes would have had his “eureka” moment under a shower? If only more people lay back in a hot, foaming bath and spent an hour in it just thinking about a few key issues we might be in even better shape.

A case quite simply of “I bath therefore I think”. Try it.

WHAT A WASTE...

2011-01-17T06:00:00.001Z

Seamus Smyth is one of the brightest people I know. He used to work for Shell. Now he thinks a lot and is a kind of intellectual social entrepreneur. He also has very long hair which I miss in the deep thinkers of today who tend to favour baldness. He said this when I asked him what 2011 and beyond held in store:

“The mission to give people more of what they actually want and need, rather than what people make will intensify to a degree that we’ve never seen before as WASTE will become the world’s common enemy.”

I recalled seeing a piece in Fast Company about the iPad wars noting that as many as 80 tablet devices were debuting at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Seamus is right. Over in China, Taiwan or Japan factories employing thousands of people are working away, trying to keep busy and screaming at their sales forces to sell more. What they make is irrelevant. It’s sheer and utter madness.

The voice of marketing is being deafened by the sound of production making “stuff” – most of it not quite what people want. The God “growth” is what fills the minds of City analysts and the media. So Tesco must be trembling in shame for its appalling 1% yoy decline for quarter 4 2010 whilst Sainsbury is a brilliant A* student because of its +3% growth. Please.

We are wasting a lot of things right now:
·    Resources - the intelligence to rein in on making the unsellable
·    Space - the unneeded buildings we could flatten and turn into parks
·    Our talent - the bright young minds that will remain unemployed and losing the will to think when we could be coaching them into being thoughtful citizens of the new world
·    Day to day waste - all manner of activities in big companies that use up time and money to no good effect (getting people at the coal face of any business to remove waste would save billions and they would be savings not cuts)
·    Hubristic plans - expenditure on big and irrelevant capital projects – like the high speed train link. It takes 2 hours Euston to Liverpool by train. Who needs faster than that?

The penalty of the quest for economic growth is extravagance and waste. In a so-called age of austerity it’s a brilliant moment to reduce what you do that has no obvious beneficial effect and to spend a bit more time thinking.

Seamus is right. Waste is the common enemy.

STOP TAKING IT ALL SO SERIOUSLY

2011-01-10T05:58:00.002Z

Focus is the word of the moment or, if you’re a sportsman, staying in “the zone” or “the bubble.” The trouble is that just as Gekko’s observation in the film “Wall Street” - “lunch is for wimps”- led to a generation of anorexic miseries – so a fixation on focus is impeding the detour-taking rambles of the curious minded.

I remember when I was young hearing the aphorism “life is real and life is earnest” and thinking it rather strange because life seemed a hoot. Politicians like MacMillan or Callahan always had a ready turn of ironic phrase. Industrial heroes were all comedians as well as being fearless warriors. Women like Anita Roddick. Men like John Harvey-Jones of ICI, Robert Townsend of Avis or Jerry Della Femina of whatever advertising agency he chose to be running at the time and author of the book about advertising, with the title from a supposed end line for a campaign for Panasonic he’d dreamed up, “From those Wonderful Folks that brought you Pearl Harbour”.

Food was a key to creativity. We all met, talked, laughed and had ideas with our mouths full. Richard French one of the champions of creativity and marketing who could laugh at himself, decided to cut costs in one of his agencies – quite a reversal of human nature for Richard, cost cutting. He decided client entertaining should be trimmed but was told by the accountants that in fact all lunch costs were not only re-billed to clients but that a commission of 17.65% was also added to them. This delicious discovery prompted his writing of one of the world’s immortal office memos.

It was entitled “Eat Your Way to Profit.”

This is not going to be a nostalgic things-used-to–be-more-fun piece. It’s a mild but critical observation I’m making that an inability to play as well as work, to see the funny side, is hindering current leaders and managers. I never thought I’d be yearning for the return of showmen like Peter Marsh or sports leaders like Malcolm Allison but I do.

And as David Ogilvy observed “the consumer is not a moron, she’s your wife”. We started to treat our customers seriously when we started to make them laugh. It’s time to lighten up and have some great conversations, flirtatious fun and enjoy the ironies of life.

And if Twitter is really as good as it gets I shall have to get very drunk.

A NEW VOCABULARY FOR A NEW DECADE

2011-01-07T06:00:00.002Z

A friend of mine gets enraged when he hears management jargon. He’s not alone. Lucy Kellaway, that brilliant writer on the Financial Times, recently listed some bệtes noirs – “office-speak” she ironically calls it. Here are some:

-    loopback
-    in this space
-    strategic staircase
-    living the values
-    letting the grass grow
-    And my least favourite “you can’t have your cake and eat it so you have to step up to the plate and face the music”

And the real problem going forward (ugh!) is that I keep reaching out to people (oh no!) incentivising them (aaghh!) to sprinkle their magic (I’m so sorry!) even if they didn’t think they had enough bandwidth (I feel sick!) to cascade (sob!) their thoughts with granularity (bang!)

Yes, it’s catching. Like swine flu it’s a pandemic. But sadly those most seriously afflicted seem to thrive rather than die.

So I thought we should create our own more helpful vocabulary. Eight verbs and one cliché –

-    Influence – instead of “telling” people start to “suggest” and “persuade” – in the best sense of the word and start “selling” rather than “imposing” your ideas. Be a good influence.

-    Give – sometimes by unconditional giving you can build a relationship. Not everything has a price.

-    Shepherd – not to imply that your employees are sheep but when it comes to ideas try to coax them out of people. You can see how “office speak” develops because it would be so easy to add “so we can shear the flock’s innovation-wool” (don’t you dare!)

-    Engage – grab people’s imaginations and get their attention. No one has perforce to listen to anything nowadays which makes management hard. People have to be persuaded to listen and to hear what’s being said.

-    Inspire – this is engagement on speed. Inspire by dramatising and telling great stories. Inspire by saying what you yourself really believe.

-    Converse – conversations not speeches are the future.

-    Discover – learn new stuff; find out what you can really do; go to new places.

-    Lighten – simplify and illuminate. Make life simpler if you can.

And the cliché?

It’s from Margaret Heffernan author and speaker who said “Nice is the new mean.”

Yes, that’s right, you don’t any longer have to be a bastard to succeed. Nor do you have to touch base about anything offline ever again…(there I go again!)

I KNOW WHAT ITS LIKE BEING A 24/7 GLOBAL PERSON

2011-01-06T06:00:00.007Z

My brain hurts and I’m jet lagged and I’m convinced there’s something seriously wrong with me. You see I’ve had my radio on all night listening to the Test Match in Sydney and before that I watched an episode of House.

The combination of the two is lethal.

I dozed off and dreamt that Gregory House and Thirteen were peering at me on my bed saying:-

“It’s gone from being a nasty attack of Collingwood to Advanced Hussey, although of course that’s treatable, messy but treatable but now I’m afraid we may have complications…”
“Not Swann’s Disease”
“No worse than that. Haddins”
“If it’s Haddins he’s had it.”
“Poor Richard”…..

Poor indeed….and knackered.

A bit like doing a new job which some will be doing in this new year.

If you think that it’s hard doing your job in charge of the UK try controlling a global empire and hear things like this:

“They don’t like it in Seoul but in Rio they can’t get enough, in Kabul it’s been banned and in Calcutta they’ve diluted it with sheep’s milk”…
“What about Helsinki?”
“…delisted and a court case pending.”

The real issue for anyone trying to run a global brand or company is trying to remember everything that’s relevant and putting a hundred cultural quirks, foibles and differences into a usable framework. Try too hard and your brain may shut down with a deep voice inside your skull intoning “you have tried to perform an illegal procedure.”

Some words of advice to anyone newly doing an international job:

1.    Get a good up to date map of the world and learn where everywhere actually is (most of us last did this at school)
2.    Learn the populations per major country – you can stop at Australia - that come in 50th (the UK is 22nd in the league table and Germany is the first European country at 14th).
3.    Read “The Week” every week which gives you the best idiots guide to what’s happening where in the world.
4.    And the Economist which isn’t for idiots.
5.    Read this overview drawn from a talk at the RSA by Mike Geoghagan Ex CEO of HSBC which helped me.
6.    Get travelling and keeping notes about anything that defines a culture.

It may or may not help to know that a relatively low % of US International Sales Directors are reputed to have passports. It sounds like an urban myth but pass it on anyway.

WHAT ARE MY MARKETING PRIORITIES IN 2011?

2011-01-05T06:00:00.001Z

So should they have changed? Surely the strategy remains constant whatever else?

That used to be true, for sure, but no longer when all around us the landscape is changing so unpredictably – when there are earthquakes in Yorkshire and floods in Queensland, Australia. As John Maynard Keynes said:

“When circumstances change I change my mind. What do you do?”

I’ve changed my mind.

In the Times of December 28th Peter Stiff wrote “advertisers seek a brand new world where corporate identity is king.” It was about Procter & Gamble and Arla Foods doing advertising reflecting their corporate credentials and values. Something Unilever and Reckitts are working on too although Kraft think it may interrupt consumers’ enjoyment of its brands. I think Kraft is wrong.

My life in fast moving consumer goods was performed within the liturgical belief that the mono-brand was king and that Heinz, for instance, was an aberration.

Today I believe provenance, values and the degree of trust a corporation inspires is what really counts in engaging the support of the customer.

John Lewis and their culinary sister Waitrose breathe their beliefs about life, their people and their quality and value story in everything they do so it’s unsurprising they score so highly in surveys.

It’s time to re-engage fundamentally with people who buy or might try our products.

Back as they say to the drawing board to sketch and colour in with bold strokes the story of why we are in business and what lasting excitement we enjoy in creating, producing our products.

And if you want to be inspired read about the teenager Fraser Docherty and taste and study his brilliant “Super Jam”…all of the leaden footed marketers should read, taste and learn from him.

2011 is going to be the beginning of a decade of earning and retaining trust, engaging with the minds and spirits of our customers and in building relationships not just performing transactions.

The truth will be our strongest weapon – so we’d better tell it. And the great thing about the truth is you never have to remember what you said….

PEOPLE POWER RULES OK

2011-01-04T06:00:00.002Z

I feel sorry for bankers. They had a horrible 2010. They’re next in line for one of those entrapment scoops by one of the papers – probably the Guardian. And they’re about to make things worse by paying themselves large bonuses because (as everyone knows (sic) money is the only way of retaining talent.). No it isn’t. Never was. It’s a poor second to job satisfaction, interesting colleagues and so on. As long ago as 1959 Frederick Herzberg produced his “two factor theory of motivation” that still holds good.

So why fly in the face of this by suggesting that bonuses are so important.

Because they aren’t.

Unfortunately there is another myth with a body that believes global economics is a science.

The truth is well expressed by Sir Martin Sorrell boss of WPP the marketing services group:-

“All business decisions are marketing decisions and all marketing decisions are about people.”

Success or otherwise in 2011 will come to those who better understand what makes people really tick – customers, colleagues and employees. In a shrinking world where nearly all ideas seem to be conceived spontaneously and simultaneously, it’s the people who shape and execute the ideas and the teams who shepherd the gathering of ideas that make the difference.

Look at the spirit and creativity at Google, Apple, Nike and John Lewis – places where people really want to work. Places where people feel they’re making a difference.

What Steve Jobs said to John Sculley one-time CEO of Apple when he was trying to hire him out of Pepsico still holds true:

“Do you want to spend your life selling sugared water or do you want to try and change the world?”

No brainer.

Engaging with people and making them enjoy what they do will always be the key to real success.

Not money.

NEW WAYS OF WORKING IN 2011

2011-01-03T06:00:00.012Z

If we learnt nothing else in 2010 it was that anything is possible and that no one is bomb proof any longer – isn’t that true Mr. Geoghagan?

You’ll recall Mike is the now ex CEO of HSBC.

2011 is going to be a year of churn – more new business models, more job changes, more focus on execution and more innovation. Because if you stand still the global tsunami will get you.

A few obvious things:

-    the I-Pad and Kindle are changing our lives and where and how we can work and think. We can, as Daryll Scott of Noggin put it, think and do at the same time. We can spend more time out meeting and talking and less behind that PC – the dinosaur of the 20th century.

-    And here’s what Stephen Bailey of the Design Museum thinks of commuting:- “commuting will one day be looked on as we now look on surgical bleeding by leeches.” But not in 2011 sadly.

-    Like Air Traffic Controllers who work intensely and then rest we’ll learn to intensify the way we think and work with shorter harder, less agenda-filled meetings and then relax. The world of “bleisure” (no obvious separation between work, rest and play) will be the norm for all people at the top of businesses or running their own. Play is going to be the key if we want to remain not just sane but effective.

-    We’ll all learn to get rid of all our e-mails everyday. Read the advice from Fast Company http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/132/scobleizer-reengineer-inbox.html - don’t be tyrannised by the 200+ most of us get every day.

-    Jack Welch ex CEO and Chairman of GE likened business to ice hockey – fast, violent and very unpredictable. There is a strong body now from people like Margaret Heffernan that “nice is the new mean”. It’s still dangerous out there but this is a real and thoughtful team game and by being “nice” we’ll hopefully get the best out of our colleagues.

-    The concept of “Senpai” and “Kohai” from Japan – roughly speaking “experienced mentor” and “protégé” but where the protégé is often the CEO figure, full of vigour, energy and indomitable spirit counselled in the discreet background by a senior, dispassionate dispenser of thinking, caution and inspiration, the Senpai.

Whatever else, 2011 can be exciting and rewarding if we all embrace change and do everything we do harder – work, play, laugh and think.

Because our most powerful weapon is our brain.

And it’s time to make more of it.

THAT WAS THE YEAR THAT WAS...

2011-01-02T06:00:00.002Z

it’s over, let it go

I’m not much into nostalgia. The future always seems to be more exciting than the past about which there is nothing you can do.

However here’s a brief glance at ten events from 2010 that we can learn from before fast forwarding into 2011.

i)    The problems with the Euro - specifically its probable demise. Look at Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain and ask yourself if rapid rushes for growth funded by debt ever made sense.

ii)    No one is immune to demise. Ask the nearly-made-it-to-basket-case-Titans, BP and Toyota.

iii)    Nature has a way of putting things into perspective. I loved that volcanic ash. How else would I have got to see Anglesey and have read the first Stieg Larssen in one sitting as I came back from Ireland by car, boat and train?

iv)    And Haiti. Remember the earthquake. Well hallo….it’s got worse. And no the money we gave didn’t get through. And, yes, it’s off our radar now. Remember this is the age of short memories.

v)    We take water for granted. Unless we live in Belfast where some 60,000 people have had no running water since Christmas. Take nothing for granted.

vi)    The coalition is not a party. It’s a coalition. It’s a model for all of us…working together. Of course it disagrees and stumbles. At least it feels real as opposed to Old Tory and New Labour.

vii)    “Yes you can.” Not necessarily Barack. No one doing a job or with political power will be loved or liked forever or, nowadays, for more than a month or so. Thicken your skin. This is not a popularity contest.

viii)    Suddenly we’ve retained the Ashes, the Ryder Cup, are breeding convincing Olympiads and are still also-rans at football. Maybe FIFA were right.

ix)    Is the mini-celebrity bubble going to burst? Strictly Being Fired and X Factory seem to belong to another age. Like Simon Cowell’s teeth. I don’t think I can bear another conversation about Matt Cardle.

x)    And that one blinding moment of unalloyed joy and simple humanity. The Chilean Miners’ Rescue.

Be humble. Be authentic. Be resolute. Be prepared. Be frugal. Smell the flowers and be grateful.

A PERSPECTIVE FROM HOLLYWOOD AND BOLLYWOOD ON 2010

2011-01-01T15:47:00.000Z

We’ll shortly be bombarded in the media by the “anguishings” of economists and gurus about 2010. So I thought I’d start by going instead to the world of film, with which I grew better acquainted over Christmas, for some pointers.

“This is my show” (Anil Kapoor as Prem Kapur the gameshow host from Slumdog Millionaire.)

As he felt his own control oozing away, Prem got more and more frustrated. Yet we’d all better stop trying to run things and start trying to steer them. However much we huff and puff the age of the Fat Controller is over. Events of 2010 proved just how out of control the bullies are.

“Doubt is not a luxury we can afford any more” (Elastigirl from the Incredibles.)

It was Lord Denning who said “people pay us for our certainties not our doubts” and Shakespeare more tersely “our doubts are traitors”. Whilst we have never lived in more complex times with information overload and unprecedented events happening at random we need to have a sense of clarity and an unfailing determination to be decisive if we are to survive. Better to be wrong than die in a sea of vaccilation.

“Your book is going to change the world.” Stanley Tucci (as Paul Child) from Julie and Julia.

As a writer I always believe this secretly although I doubt if it’s true. Yet the optimist that visualises the best result is the one more determined to go for it. Who’d ever start a film like Titanic, Avatar or Lord of the Rings without such an indomitable belief? There’s never been a better time to go for it.

“Impossible. Impossible. Nothing is impossible. Dig little mouse. Dig.” Matthew Broderick (as Philippe Gaston) from Ladyhawke.

This irrepressible positivism allied to nothing any longer being inviolate, from the corporate reputations of BP and Toyota to the hero to zero slide of various politicians in 2010 (in Nick Clegg’s case from zero to hero to Nero), underpins the new world order. Since nothing is impossible just do it. And remember Rutger Hauer (star of Ladyhawke) in those bizarre Guinness commercials. He said “just keep an open mind”.

Time I’d suggest to watch more films and read fewer Harvard Business Reviews. When truth is stranger than fiction it’s time to go to fiction for inspiration.

This is the first of a series of blogs to mark the New Year – enjoy them.

JOHN HUMPHREYS - YOU'RE FIRED

2010-12-27T09:42:00.001Z

This is about laying the ghost of John Humphreys, icon of negativism and whingeing, a born-again Victor Meldrew, the dreary voice of constant dissatisfaction. Occasionally though, just occasionally, a letter of complaint cheers one up. Here’s an extract of one written to NTL – it went on in similar vein for pages:-

“British Telecom – w*****s though they are - shine like brilliant beacons of success, in the filthy puss-filled mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy.”

It’s been the endless quest of the miserable, negative and of course the media to prove how limitlessly inadequate we in the UK are. Take the weather for example? Useless, hopeless, shameful compared with the continent. Hmmm!!

Here’s a letter from a Dutch lady in Tuesday’s Times describing her recent drive to Britain:

“The roads were appalling in Holland, pretty bad in Belgium- particularly the enormous potholes on the motorway – and not much better in France….. (arriving in Britain) I was pleasantly surprised to have a smooth journey on three motorways without a lane closure in sight. On the other hand my eldest son is stuck in a motel in Germany as conditions are impossible on the autobahn, and my husband spent four hours travelling 20 miles as the Dutch trains went, once again, into meltdown.”

A very Happy Christmas to everyone who thinks on balance everything in Britain is in pretty good nick from the NHS to the gritting system to the academic achievements of our young people to attitudes to work, life, family and friends. And a particularly stupendous New Year to all those actually looking forward to 2011.

To the rest of you and to you John Humphreys, especially, bah humbug and though it grieves me to say it….good luck in that puss filled mire.

ARE YOU WEARING THE RIGHT COLOURED KNICKERS?

2010-12-20T06:00:00.001Z

The question is not me being gratuitously salacious …it’s what UBS, the Swiss bank that was recently bailed out to the tune of $60 billion, have included in their new internal dress code.

And, apparently, the right colour is flesh toned. So presumably this allows licence for whether you are Afro Caribbean, Indian, pale skinned, suntanned , feeling off colour (greenish), working too hard (grey) or with acne (spotted).

Knickers, of course, is what hit the headlines but management feeling they have to tell people to change their socks (black) daily and to use nourishing skin cream fills me with a powerful sense of foreboding. Not since the Third Reich or school have I encountered such paranoia about uniforms.

Big companies often seem to need this sense of control over their staff – what they look like, what they wear, what they do, what they think and even what they feel. They talk of being a “family” which, given the dysfunctionality of most families, is a bit worrying.

In Japan they have early morning company songs….now we only need to add things like detention and gating people to make the senior management happy. Yet why is it what their employees wear worries them so much – isn’t it how good they are, how customer attentive, how effective – “yes but however good if he had a flowery tie or – shudder – no tie at all?”

UBS has clearly scored an own goal and deserves to be teased were it not for the fact they are supposed to be grown ups, not anally retentive juveniles.

Life is not about making everything into equally sized black and white bricks. We live in a world of diversity, complexity, ambiguity and constant change. Rules are there to be broken. “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing” as Thomas Jefferson said.

What place creativity has in a world where all that management can think about is knickers heaven alone knows.

Although now I come to think of it knicker-elastic is a whole lot more creative than quantitative easing.

EAT THE RIGHT STUFF - It’s only that thick, deep, baritone taste of tomato that reaches your knees

2010-12-17T07:39:00.000Z

.

Brrrr! Here it comes again.

White Friday December 17th.

I understand that maternal feeling about nurture because I had it, even as a man, I had it – a fortnight or so ago.

On White Tuesday, November 30th.

The world as we know it was totally cut off by blizzards, ice and snow. No trains or cars in or out.

And that atavistic need to feed my brood….wherever they were.

I wrapped up and in some bastard’s steps I trod unto yonder Co-op to buy “two for £5” best mince – 2lb. of the stuff - an onion, a clove of garlic, two jars of stir-in Sacla sauce – tomato, one with mascarpone and one with garlic and a bottle of Barolo.

At home I settled for the men’s way of cooking and inspired by the weather crisis I heard myself intoning “we may be some time without proper food if all utilities go down.”

Two hours slow cooking in the oven – everything just bunged in after the onions had been gently fried to transparent– well half the Barolo plus an Oxo cube just in case.

It was that Bryn Terfel-tomato-aroma of “the sun will shine again” that made me relax, feel good and on the verge of laughter.

And the flavour was sublime. Heinz Tomato Soup in many more and complex dimensions. Everything the great comfort foods provide; an amplitude of flavour-smell-rich, full and chill-busting.

Think marmite, peanut butter, buttered toast, Heinz Baked Beans, Bovril and the greatest Cottage Pie ever but with the light slippery promise of summer spaghetti too.

Big authentic taste deliverers are what make great food great.

Tomato; onion; garlic; cheeses; basil …..

These are all weatherproof, harmonious and loud enough foods to see off the cold.

Real weather-food for people like us. And today it’s started all over again…the white stuff.

So we need more of the awesome medicine and nourishment.

JUST LIKE THE GOOD OLD TIMES REALLY...

2010-12-14T12:59:00.000Z

The ghost of Christmas past stared at me gloomily, a Woodbine in one hand and glass of brown ale in the other. He was referring to the student riots, “them revolting students” he said coughing noisily “reminds me of the good times.”

Yes, it was a plus ça change week…

Charles and Camilla having a charge of the light brigade moment as they encountered some young people; Mr. Plod being wrong footed (again); students breaking the windows of….Top Shop – Top Shop? Makes you weep about their sense of irony; the Australian response to losing a test match – “we fielded like a bunch of Clydesdales” and that James Naughtie on-air spoonerism of the Culture Secretary’s name …and I bet Jeremy Hunt’s glad his parents didn’t call him Mike.

Good old times; it was a Private Eye kind of week.

But the ghost of Christmas future lives in the words of the 14 year old who solemnly told me “one day everything will be much better.” Thus, dreadful old pubs become super-gastro-zones (like a local bar in Brighton previously nicknamed the “Stabber"); WikiLeaks tries to make things better by causing a stir, telling us things we knew but about which we previously didn’t speak– “Prince Charles asked where the lavatory was and was gone a while” – A Chas-Bog-Shock story? No. Nothing new - just a leak.

Get used to it. Turmoil; even ambiguity and change but…life goes on….and it does usually get better.

The immortal comforts in life over this week? A warming Spaghetti Bolognese with a double jar of a rich tomato sauce, the impact of which reaches your knees, a glass of claret, a hardback novel, a few great carols (and I love it that “most highly favoured lady” has been transcribed by choirs everywhere to “most highly flavoured gravy”) and a prospect of a must-get-better-future despite, or even because of, student riots.

Most of all I love to see these students revolting …over “whatever”…. as they always have. The bankers of tomorrow behaving like bankers today (that is – I think – a counter spoonerism.)

Happy days, says the ghost of Christmas future looking at Christmas present, and I think she’s right.

"EXCUSE ME, AREN'T YOU A PRIEST?"

2010-12-06T10:03:00.000Z

Such a question being addressed to me in the street by a stranger would not be worth commenting on were it not about the fifth time it’s happened to me this year. It has not so much ruffled my agnostic feathers as made me ponder deeply on perception – the magic tool of the marketer.

And talking of magic here’s what David Berglas, Former President of the Magic Circle, said on talking about Harry Houdini: “It’s not the trick, it’s the presentation that counts.” Not that Harry wasn’t a genius …no, but he was an especially brilliant actor.

Change can impact on perception. The weather has hit my perception of life. On Saturday when I awoke in Brighton which had just undergone unusually brutal Arctic weather to find all the snow melted I had this weird feeling that Christmas had just come and gone.

WikiLeaks has changed a few perceptions too – the Americans are good guys – a bit on the naïve side but nice and the Russians are rascals. Rascals because a Spaniard said so, said it was run by the Mafia – have you noticed how this opinion has in a flash become established fact?

And FIFA. England’s derisory vote has brought about a sphincter tightening sense of national isolationism not experienced since the Suez crisis. We are a bit like Millwall Football Club and their battle cry “nobody likes us and we don’t care”.

It’s not that they don’t like us just that they don’t rate us…little England v. Big New World Russia ….the past v. the future… Cameron v. Putin (even an absent Putin)….a huge deficit v. loadsamoney. A man from Mars would have chosen Russia purely on commercial grounds. Our perception of ourselves is awry.

Back to our priest – and who wouldn’t have wanted to be one if they could have become a bishop with a great hat like that? There was something curiously exciting to have been taken for something I was not. I left this encounter preening my feathers, as it were, and feeling remarkably cheerful. Looking back at this, a rich news week I thought “we just don’t do boring around here any more do we?”

At least that’s my perception.

"I WANT TO BE A SALESMAN"

2010-11-29T06:00:00.002Z

I have been thinking about the role and reputation of selling recently and the fact that you are much less likely to hear anyone say they want to be in selling than you should be. Apparently the desire to sell is declining even in America where Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” has become a reality.

But not in China where it’s a prized job…now that should tell us something.

It’s baffling because all great businessmen and leaders have to be good salesmen and they are. Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, Charlie Mayfield, Michael Dell, Jack Welch are or were great salesmen. Tony Hayward of BP was not – so he was the wrong man for that job.

The only two things that will get us out of this global mess are going to be great innovation and great salesmanship. And by salesmanship I mean not just the art of pitching or being a huckster, I mean the art of profound understanding of a product or service, the ability to present its benefits beautifully and engagingly, the ability to build long term relationships based on trust and an absolute commitment to customers needs.

The marketers meanwhile are brand building and creating social networks. Hell, I’ve been in marketing all my life and love it but the way some marketers talk about selling you’d think it was a very dirty word involving transactions and…money.

One-to-one selling is going to be the key to the future and you can forget the busted flush of Asian Contact Centres which have done perhaps more than anything else to damage the image of selling.

To be a great salesman you must be very bright, understand the business scene and what senior management have on their minds, be economics savvy, very intuitive, able to think on your feet, be a great presenter, think long term, be very margin focused and understand that real marketing is theatre. Like the incredibly rich Jamie Oliver.

Accountants can cut cost but they can’t increase sales income.

So it’s time to find out if you’re good enough to be a salesman now…and join the true, new heroes of the 21st century.

AUSTERITY AND HILARITY

2010-11-23T06:07:00.001Z

I was wondering why I was in such an extremely good mood. It’s not the news - a mining disaster in New Zealand, the catastrophe of Haiti and the humiliation of the Irish (as the Times put it.)

At first I put it down to the impending ho, ho, ho of Christmas – the first time in years I’ve felt that surge of goodwill (is it flu? No it’s goodwill – an acute case of it.) It could be the effect of young grandchildren and great nieces but there’s more to it than children’s sense of wonder.

I genuinely believe if we set our minds to it we can be a lot more cheerful, productive and effective. Being in a good mood is as much up to us as it is to outside events. As Jack Welch put it (former head of GE) “determine your own destiny or someone else will.”

Which takes us back to the Irish for whom I feel a genuine affection and sympathy – they’ve been stuffed by the speculators as so many of us have been in the past. Do not confuse speculation with entrepreneurialism. The latter is about making calculated adventurous moves – like a new product launch – the former about betting the house and all your neighbour’s houses on red.

There’s only one way out – a dose of austerity which I’m afraid will taste like a powerful Bloody Mary – and a decision to laugh in the face of the doom mongers. As the recently spanked Lord Young said “honestly, you’ve never had it so good” Naughty Lord! The truth is that the way we really feel is in the mind not in the wallet.

And right now I’m feeling great. Positive, on song and up for it.

And they say it might even snow later this week.

Happy Christmas.

THE NEW WORLD OF BRAND VALUES

2010-11-16T21:48:00.000Z

I’ve been spending time recently thinking about the brands of the future and what they’ll look like. This has been helped by a recent survey.

The Times of October 15th published the Populus/YouGov list of the most influential brands. I’ve compared 2007 and today to see what’s changed in the “top ten”.

2010	2007
Apple	Google
Google	Apple
John Lewis	Tesco
Amazon	John Lewis
Facebook	Microsoft
Microsoft	Virgin
Innocent	M&S
Co-op Group	Goldman Sachs
Co-op Bank	McKinsey
Twitter	BSkyB

In 2007 we were in the Vienna days of those good times before the economic war, so the reputational demise of Goldman Sachs and McKinsey since then isn’t so surprising. Virgin, M&S and Tesco are perhaps punished for their failure to keep up with the way people see the times and Microsoft and Tesco, I suspect, for being so big and bullying. But apart from John Lewis and the Co-op the “go-go” brands are young, all post war creations. Ten years ago half of them would have been establishment brands like Coca-Cola, Cadbury and Ford.

The big news is from the “we stand for an attitude to life and employees – employees always coming first” – John Lewis and the Co-op. Look at the Innocent website and you’ll see that they live in this same world of celebrating its employee/partners and its ethics (yes – good for them – they actually use that word).

The somewhat unworldly Co-op evoking as it has done a patronisingly sniffy “room-for-improvement” response from many marketers proves the power of staying true to principles and putting substance before style.

So welcome to real and sustainable brand values if you want to be taken seriously and maybe great product values too.

WOMEN ON MY MIND

2010-11-08T06:00:00.002Z

Women….can’t stop thinking about them…and that might not be so bad a thing nor even so unusual one but the thoughts about women fizzed dramatically into life for me three or four times during the week.

In reverse order – I met a 24 year old manager of a design group in London doing terrific work and feeling her way into the job with appealing modesty. She will be amazing in two years and is merely very impressive now.

Then, lunch with two women of power and a vast sense of curiosity and the endless desire to ask “why?” and to mean it. So you have to stay on your mettle because you are being asked to give their questions your genuinely best shot not because you’re joined in a male debating combat where he who blinks first loses.

And finally, a conference at Mercers in Tower Place. 100 very powerful women and about 8 not so powerful men. I was impressed by the observations of Margaret Hefferman (author of “The Naked Truth” and “Women on Top”) who’d researched successful female entrepreneurs in the States. And their success, she said, was owing to a series of factors:-

The motivation amongst these women was huge – far greater than their male equivalents – and they mainly wanted to create great companies that lasted not just create great wealth.
Their sense of zeitgeist was profound…they noticed “gaps in markets…noticed…yes, that’s what women do, they notice things.
They had an irrational love of their customers whom they really seemed to regard as being part of the family.
They surrounded themselves with advisors and smart, interesting people who kept them alive, alert and on track.
They had plans and to a person said wryly “but no-one really expects things to turn out that way”.

There was more but that will do for now….great stuff.

This is not about glass ceilings or feminism or Girl-Power…it’s about balance. About all this female right brain power battling with all that male left brain power.

As someone said to me during my troubled week….”how about finding a way of using the whole human brain for once?”

LOOK UP AT A BRAVE NEW WORLD

2010-11-01T21:27:00.000Z

I’ve had three things on my mind in the last week:-

The richness of sights and thoughts that happen when you look up rather than down
The appeal of personal simplification enjoyed by Generation Zero
The madness of the “cuts masochism”

First of all, “looking up” which in a care-worn world too few of us do. Look up and the see the wonders of London like the amazing sculpture of Elizabeth 1 at St Dunstans in Fleet Street. It survived the Great Fire in Ludgate Circus and was moved here in 1760. Apparently it’s the only sculpture of her that was done in her lifetime. So given my refrain about creativity being enhanced by our having an acuity of observation, start looking up and looking around.

Secondly, after Generation Y we now have Generation Zero according to the Times. These “zero” guys keep all their worldly possessions in one suitcase and everything they know on a laptop (and in their brain) and all they want to read, no doubt, on a Kindle. Their life and contacts are on Facebook and the other social network sites. No office. No ties. No mortgage. No need to shop. An invitation to Brazil is suddenly so easy to say “yes” to. They are global citizens with little to screw up their minds.

Finally that 29% cut in the arts budget. “Inevitable”, we winced. “Necessary”, we squirmed. Meanwhile in France they managed a budget increase of 2% to their arts budget raising it to £6.4 billion whereas our budget is just £400 million. What the hell is going on? Can the French be thinking more clearly than we are?

This is all about priorities.

Priorities about what we look out for – like Commissario Brunelli in Donna Leon’s novels about Venice who spends his days looking for the next discovery in the architecture of the city.

Priorities about what we need. In other words it’s about reducing our dependence on “stuff”.

And priorities about what really, really matters in our lives. It’s about real cuts not about symbolic ones.

Have a great week and see if anything changes in your life by looking up, simplifying and prioritising.

Together

2010-10-25T06:05:00.001+01:00

That’s how we are “in it” according to George Osborne and the government. … ”together”. And, no, this isn’t going to be a cynical disavowal of partnership…quite the reverse. Because, for once, I agree with the government.

Amy Williams, skeleton gold medallist in the winter Olympics talks about “we” the whole time. Hers is very much an individual effort but crucially underpinned and inspired by her team of advisors.

In a complex and dangerous world make sure you travel in convoy because pioneers get scalped.

Yet many people on business and in life prefer to go it alone…

“No I’m not really lost and I will not, no, I will not ask someone the way….I’ll work it out myself”.

Working it out yourself is daft and unnecessary when good dispassionate advice can sometimes save you from unnecessary embarrassment – take the wretched naked Emperor who was conned into believing he was wearing fine clothes.

I’d argue that the need for cryptic, experienced mentoring has never been greater. NLP expert Daryll Scott says unequivocally that it’s the cheapest and most effective thing any executive should seek today.

Experience counts.

Live through six recessions, live through the strikes and economic chaos of the 70s, live through the Thatcher years and the dotcom bust and come up smiling, battle hardened and very philosophical and you might just be worth listening to…

I’m constantly being asked for directions – it’s my age dear – but I’m reminded of a cat we had when I was very young, unadventurously named Pussy (creativity came late to the Hall household), of whom I was very fond saying, I’m told, “I like that cat. He knows where he’s going”.

It’s time to know where you are going and, if you aren’t sure, get help. Get a mentor.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT...........

2010-10-18T06:55:00.000+01:00

This is the work of a 17 year old Singaporean, Leon Yuchin-Lau. Imagine what he’ll be like at 50 if he avoids being murdered by jealous rivals:-

If a boy must wonder

If a boy must wonder

Let him recall

Not the lightning grace of falcons,

The dizzying aeronautics, Darwin’s finch,

The voyage of the ancients

Who saw further, with their charts and sails

And bubbly telescopic minds

Brought ashore hope

To lift

A charioting god to the moon,

But how

Even a rogue dream of stars

Once birthed the possibility of flight.

The art of creativity which lies at the heart of business today (or should do) lies in making connections, in looking at an object and wondering “what if?” It lies in change. It lies in being like children at play and the stories they create. It lies in questions and “rogue dreams”.

Most of all it lies in our ”bubbly telescopic minds” – the ability to look further and to magnify and to feel that surge of approaching new worlds – of keenly wanting to know the unknown.

I really think the most exciting thing in the whole world is a white sheet of paper, a sharp pencil…and that sense of questioning and of potential to “birth possibilities”.

Get bubbling…..

THERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU DON'T LEARN FROM AN MBA

2010-10-11T06:05:00.003+01:00

Funny week.

Started by hearing Mike Geoghagan (outgoing CEO of HSBC) talking about global markets and especially about CIVETS (Chile; Indonesia; Vietnam; Egypt; Turkey; South Africa). Turkey was much on his mind. Crucial for the EU – he said – vast opportunity.

Turkey, I confess, had not been much on my mind.

Until Friday.

That was when I read an interview in the Financial Times with Suzan Sabanci Dinçer Chairman of Akbank, Turkey’s largest bank and indeed largest company.

The sooner we work more closely with talent like this the better…..

What makes a good banker (or leader, or executive of anything – I’ve added these…)?
“Confidence, the ability to look over the next hill and to think on your feet”
Fantastic, and it gets better…

Your golden rule?
“Leave things better than they are”

And your attitude to money…it’s ridiculous, she says to “poo-poo” it but
“Money gets things done: bling is a waste of time”.

She’s impatient, doesn’t suffer fools, and loves her door which can control her life – “something to close”.

I am smitten by two things here. Her straightforward English – not a piece of MBA jargon in sight and by her attitude to life.

Bring on the Turks – the EU needs you.

BRINGING ATHLETIC VALUES TO WORK

2010-10-04T06:09:00.001+01:00

For a long time now I have been a sceptic about the value of using sport as a guide to success in business. Talks on how javelin throwing can help you gain market share have always seemed to me to miss the mark.

But I’m changing my mind after last week.

I went to a conference called “Ahead of the Games” at the Royal College of Physicians in Regents Park to hear a cluster of past Olympic medal winners tell their stories.

And something happened to me; it wasn’t, you see, just what they said but what lay behind their talks and the uniformly clean, enthusiastic positivism of their delivery and attitude to life that suddenly got to me. I became not just a believer in the Olympics but in this simple professional approach to life. There were no spurious words about market forces or external factors. This was simply you against them.

Three things particularly stuck in my brain (although if you want my list of all 20 top tips just e-mail me at richard@hallogram.freeserve.co.uk )

On marketing – here’s what I jotted down as they were talking “The Olympic buzz is a virus – think of how to create a marketing buzz in your business – create a build up: a sense that something’s going to happen; use real people to talk about it; make the event itself extraordinary; worry about how to exceed expectation and then how to leave a legacy of new talent.” Stop using military metaphors in marketing and start using medical ones. How to create a pandemic for your brand – that’s the marketing man’s real job….spreading the bug.
On the big performance – be that the race or, say, a business presentation….one chance…one contest…one winner….or as someone said “it’s sometimes not so much winning a bronze as losing a gold”. They all talk about proper preparation, about smiling at the start and reflecting “I’ve done all I can”. If Olympic athletes were as prepared to busk as most business people seem to be we’d never win anything. Robustly thorough preparation is everything.
On success – top athletes all surround themselves with good advisors on diet, on positive thinking, on aches and pains, on technique because the difference between success and failure is the small % point improvement such help can give. And all, literally all, talk about WE not I – “we met every week over four years”: “we talked about it”; “we discovered a better way”; “we ran…” Compared with the value of achieving success, good mentoring and coaching is really cheap. Not to be mentored is one sign of career damaging egotism.

This event taught me more about business than I’d expected as well as inspiring me hugely. The Olympics is coming. It’s going to be great. And if business in Britain is half as professional as the builders of the event itself and athletes competing in it then the next good times are just around the corner.

CREATIVE MOMENTUM THAT TAKES YOU AHEAD OF THE CURVE

2010-09-27T06:33:00.001+01:00

When I run creative workshops there are two conditions that really make them work:-

Understanding the context in which the ideas will exist – in what sort of mood will the customer be who receives news of your creative ideas
Appearing to be super-active – one idea isn’t enough – you need a flurry of activity in which another good idea shines brightly

So I read about the latest news from Waitrose with pleasure .They’ve scarcely put a foot wrong since the banks went barmy in 2007 and fell in love with quantum mathematics and financial products no one understood.

Here’s their track record: the launch of Essentials, the purchase and then the brilliant development of Duchy and now the cheekiest price promotion ever.

Remember Avis? They said “we try harder” over 40 years ago in comparing themselves with market leader Hertz when like Waitrose today they were a lowly 5th.

Here’s the Waitrose game – price matching Tesco on 1000 key branded items and blasting this from the top of page 3 in the Sunday Times (great PR).

“There’s a perception that we are massively more expensive than the other supermarkets and this dispels that myth” says Mark Price Waitrose MD.

It does - at a stroke, in a marvellous piece of creative jujitsu.

Waitrose has nicer shops, much smarter staff, better quality, wider choice of quality food, a better value range, a better premium range (Duchy versus Finest – who wins?) and now price parity with “terrible Tesco” (that’s not me being pejorative that’s what a lot of shoppers call them.)

The Tesco machine will of course brush this aside and march on but it’ll sting them and Waitrose has leapfrogged those others around and above them.

Waitrose are setting an example to all other brands who are in the no-mans land of “other brands”. They have become real contenders - they are exciting, they understand the hopes and fears of middle England and are stomaching a £26M. margin hit.

Like the other success brands of this century they are saying “how can we be shapers of and players in the sort of world this is going to be? And how can we be the bringers of a flow of good news?” This is real business creativity in action.

My book on creativity “Brilliant Business Creativity” is published by Pearson – it shows techniques that help you get ideas almost as good as these.

LOVE WHAT YOU DO - IT'S THE WAY TO SUCCESS

2010-09-20T06:07:00.000+01:00

Michael Winner’s ads for Esure the direct insurance company took the medium apart in a pleasant way and probably sold some policies. Whatever else it put self important creativity firmly in its place.

So this ad from Psychologie the magazine which I saw on the London Underground recently is just that – only an ad – but raises some interesting questions.

“Is it better to love what you do or do what you love?”

Interesting because it is so far from reality for most people, some 50% of whom hate what do and therefore do what they hate but they do need to pay the bills so needs must. And to many people (increasingly) the Dickensian expectation of Mr. McCawber that “something will turn up” turns out like that hoped for goal in extra time to be just a delusion.

We should (of course) decide what we really want to do and if we can do that which very few people can, we should do whatever it takes to achieve it….training, studying, self promotion, networking …whatever.

And if we have a job that isn’t exactly what we really wanted then we should try to do it really well, get on with our colleagues, do more than is expected and most of all make a difference…and yes, try to love it.

The trouble with life is that if we aren’t grateful for its being so much fun and so exciting, perpetually, and, yes, full of challenges and surprises then we’ll be exposed to constant disappointment.

So if we love what we do the chances are we’ll end up having the chance of actually doing what we love.

In the end we can control our own destiny.

(The second edition of my book the Secrets of Success at Work (published by Pearson) is due out shortly)

THE TYRANNY OF THE SELF-DEFEATING BONUS

2010-09-13T06:00:00.002+01:00

A lot has been written about this subject and most of it quite angry and in the style of “the unacceptable face of banking”. Bob Diamond new CEO of Barclays as ever to the fore.

But the accumulation of wealth seems normal enough and actually quite healthy. Indeed over time the spending of individual wealth on great art, music, buildings or sport (because that’s where money tends to end up) has been a good rather than a bad thing.

What needs more study is whether bonuses actually work.

Anton Surorov, a Russian economist, shows the problem with human relationships based on reward systems is there’s no going back. Once you say 'do this and you get x', the agent to whom this is said will only do whatever it is if given x or, more likely, start negotiating to do it only if given 2x in the future. Mr. Crow are you reading this?

So far, so bad.

Neuroscientist Brian Knutson takes us a stage further forward. MRI studies of the brain show that when people anticipate getting a reward the activation in the part of their brain called nucleus accumbens is identical to that a drug or alcohol addict will display.

So once on that bonus treadmill you are hooked.

Worse than that, such activation predicts behaviour one would seek to avoid in employees: “both risky choices and risk-seeking mistakes”.

Intuitively many of us know the reward structures we have in place today are not aligned to performance…would Wayne Rooney play better football if paid more? Would Tiger Woods play worse if paid less? (Well we actually know the answer to that in the Ryder cups of the past which may tell us something interesting about his highly addictive nature.)

The big question is about what really motivates people, what really transforms their performance. Look no further than Daniel Pink’s book “Drive” on this subject which I really recommend.

WHEN YOU STOP BELIEVING THE TRUTH

2010-09-06T06:00:00.001+01:00

Matt Ridley’s piece in Tuesday’s Times is deeply shocking (“This discredited science body must be purged”). It’s to do with the wilful bias and distortion of global warming evidence. In a week tarnished by gambling, the Pakistanis and cricket and now this, nothing will quite be the same again.

I for one will stop believing virtually everything I’m told.

And so should you because no-one, not the church, men of “honour”, seekers after truth, scientists and philosophers is above cheating and mendacity it would seem.

The impact of this on our lives and our education is potentially horrific and grist to the mill of, for instance, that large vocal minority of creationists in the USA (only some 20% or so I believe but I distrust that figure now). If so many scientists are liars, what price “Big Bang”?

And this is a very black day for the green movement.

As Matt says “I have concluded that global warning will probably be a fairly minor problem…”

But he only goes part of the way towards dismantling a whole edifice of scientific chicanery.

From the death of David Kelly to the Himalayan ice caps who’s to believe?

Not it would appear scientists whose agenda is no longer to discover the truth so much as to make their point; more advocates than explorers; more purveyors of fiction (or worse “faction”) than fact.

It’s a sad story. Just give them a hard time, accuse them of fabrication and stop relying on them. That’s their penalty for cheating us.

Read his article

ENTHUSIAM ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH

2010-08-30T06:00:00.003+01:00

When I’m mentoring people I preach the importance of energy and enthusiasm. Yes, you have to believe with great passion in what you do, say and sell.

But you also have to know your stuff, really know it.

I suppose if a charity salesman on the street is called a “chugger” (charity + mugger) then one phoning you is, I guess, a “phugger”.

And I was “phugged” thus a few days ago:

PH: Hallo Mr Hall? As you know Age Concern and Help the Aged have merged to form Age UK. Isn’t that great?

Me: How big does that make the business in revenue terms?

PH: I don’t know. I’d have to come back to you on that. But we do such fantastic work like helping old people and that.

Me: How? And what % of the income actually goes to good works as opposed to administration costs and general overhead?

PH: I don’t know. I’d have to come back to you on that one too. But can I tell you about a new scheme we have. You pay just £1 a week and that entitles you to participation in a lottery and you could win prizes –like £10,000 at Christmas – just imagine winning all that money.

Me: But this is gambling. It’s wrong, immoral and totally un-Christian (this an inspired thrust on my part). You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.

PH: Oh dear but it goes to good works like….

Me: Like?

PH: I’d have to come back to you on that.

Am I being a bit mean?

The poor guy had been dropped in it and had not been trained. So my gripe is with Age UK not with him.

In common with many other businesses more money spent on staff training and less on so-called marketing would be a much wiser investment.

However enthusiastic you might feel about what you do, the first need is to know your stuff backwards and then to learn how to pitch a great story. There is no substitute for the hard work of learning and understanding your script.

SOAP, HATS, TIES AND PIES

2010-08-23T06:55:00.005+01:00

Robin White, the one time ad man, invented the term “advertising archaeology” by which he meant delving into the past to find a brand’s DNA. And it’s true that some of the staples of the past that are dear to the nation’s heart have been mislaid rather than forgotten or renounced.

On the come-back, for instance, are Spam and Wall’s Ice Cream.

But here are four that are about to hit the headlines – and remember you read it here first.

Soap. The real thing. A lump of cleaning foaming perfumed purity. A Knight’s Castile. A Palmolive. A Pears. A Wrights Coal Tar. Baths you see are coming back. I sometimes have both a bathe and a shower. A shower to wake me up, a bath in which to think and in a bath I need a lump of soap to play with.
Hats. Fedoras make you look like an actor or a secret agent. They also stop you getting damp around your neck when it’s drizzling. They say you can lose up to 30% of your body heat through your head in the cold because that’s where the most skin area is left uncovered. So hats are cool. Or rather vice versa.

Ties. Symbols of the fat cat, bloated plutocrat or wage slave. The first thing the genuine entrepreneur discards. The SME equivalents of a commando’s underpants. They’re slowly coming back as mood creators. A cheerful, colourful tie signals a happy person. They also set you apart from the tieless throng of fat cats, bloated plutocrats and wage slaves who are trying to stay in fashion.

Pies. In January of this year the Daily Mail noted a Nielsen statistic in this £230 million market; “Pie sales in Britain have soared to a 30-year high with an extra 17million sold over the past 12 months.” Better quality, more variety, OK (as with everything) in moderation. They are also great value and trophy sales flags of the mighty recession busting Greggs, Britain’s largest specialist retail baker with 1,400 outlets. Pies are the new sushi.
So keep an eye on quality items slipping out of fashion and wait for their bounce back. You can’t keep a good brand or product category down for long. Take Old Spice, the men’s fragrance, which thanks to the social networking campaign of Isaiah Mustafa is making a come-back.

Remember – it’s never over till the fat lady sings…talking of which look out for the return of well rounded divas…

THE ART OF THE PUT-DOWN, or the 'Bon Mot'

2010-08-16T06:55:00.003+01:00

The relevance of this to marketing or to presentation is that all of us are forever seeking the simple and crushing meaning of the universe; our very own “42” as it were.

If only we could find our own “Reassuringly expensive” or “Because you’re worth it” we should succeed.

Dream on…

The smart line is seldom enough unless like Oscar Wilde that’s all there was, a never ending volley of smart one-liners. Or if you’re Lord Saatchi what he calls the two word equity (see Stella Artois above).

But in its time it was devastating.

Example, Harold MacMillan having just stood down as PM meeting a young historian Simon Schama who tripped and fell flat on his face in front of him to be greeted as he blushing arose by MacMillan saying:

“Gratitude understandable; prostration quite unnecessary”.

Or Dorothy Parker going through a doorway ahead of a rival who muttered “age before beauty” and without pause Dorothy riposted:

“No, my dear, pearls before swine”.

But this is not about smart lines alone, it’s about a mastery of the English language possessed by only a very few writers like Frank Skinner in the Times and comedians like Michael McIntyre.

My recent favourite was in Bombay proving the Indians have really got what we once had. It was a poster beside a road which said:

“Impatient at wheel, patient in hospital.”

QED.

AMAZING HIDDEN TALENTS

2010-08-09T19:43:00.002+01:00

“Come to the edge

We can’t. We’re afraid

Come to the edge

We can’t. We’ll fall

Come to the edge

And they came

And he pushed them

And they flew”

(Guillaume Apollinaire)

I did not expect to quote poetry let alone French poetry.

But I guess M. Sarkozy will be pleased if he reads this….and if he does I hope he takes note.

But I think it captures what it is which inhibits most of us from trying to be a great presenter, a creative thinker or someone who is ambitious to try something difficult or new.

I mentor people. The objective is always the same. To push them over the edge and then watch them as they discover they can fly. It is less a tribute to my skill and judgement and more a testimony to their leashed talent that when I decide it’s time to push them, their spiralling flight always amazes them and makes my own heart stop at the sheer brilliance of nearly all human beings.

Helping people realise just how talented they are and how much closer they are to the level they aspire to, is hardly drudgery.

The trick is to do two things.

1.Understand the potential of the person.

2.Enable them to feel the confidence and sense of purpose to express that potential.

As simple a magic trick as that.

And as amazing.

YOU'RE LUCKY TO BE A WOMAN (EXCEPT IN BRIGHTON)

2010-08-02T06:48:00.004+01:00

The press release last week of the four new strategic directors for Brighton and Hove Council struck me as odd as all four were men.

I have been a strong believer in the benefits of diversity in creating a strong team and whilst I have no doubt the four guys were selected for their individual merits I doubt if they’ll prove to be a compelling “team”.

The point is diversity leads to creativity and creativity overturns the traditional and outworn. Besides which surely a council would want to be vaguely representative of its voters’ interests or the other 50% as it were.

Tom Peters, who is one of the more stimulating management thinkers of our times has a strong view about why, possibly, all of the appointments should have been women:

“It is my fact based conviction that women’s increasing power – with their leadership skills and purchasing power – is the strongest and most dynamic force in the American Economy today – this is even bigger than the internet.”

Women are bigger than the internet….. but not in Brighton and Hove they aren’t.

But then, look around the boardrooms of Britain – the supermarkets, banks and insurance companies - and women are a rarity.

Let’s face it business is still a boys game and however liberally minded you are seems likely to remain so. Talking of which it’s not just business - only 7 out of 57 Lib Dem MPs are women.

So Brighton and Hove may have got it wrong but they are in good (male) company.

WHY AUGUST CAN BE THE MOST USEFUL MONTH

2010-07-27T06:57:00.000+01:00

Something weird happens around this time of year. It’s called a delusion.

“Everyone goes on holiday.

Nothing ever happens.

I get bored.”

Yet this is the best opportunity, apart from January (when everyone, supposedly, is ill, broke and nothing happens) to get your act together.

For a start there are six things to do.

Refresh your mind and body by taking time off to do stuff you wouldn’t normally do (go to the cinema in the afternoon; go to an art gallery; visit a wonderful garden; go for a long, energetic walk; visit somewhere near where you live where you’ve never been but should have been etc.) You might even have a short forget-about-it-all holiday. But don’t overdo it – as Placido Domingo said recently “if I rest, I rust.”
Refocus. Work out what you want to achieve personally and for your business over the next six months and quickly (the essence here is speed) create a plan to achieve it.
Do a major clear-out – computer, office, wardrobe. See how much useless never-want-to-see-it-again stuff you can dispose of.
Practise presenting. Get out an old presentation you did. Revise it. Practise how you could make it ten times better.
Do some creative thinking – set up a creative workshop or on your own do some basic creative exercises.
Create a short range practical marketing plan that will revitalise your business by Christmas.

You have a relatively undisturbed four or five weeks to focus on six things that really matter and could change your life.

Have a brilliant get-ahead-of-the-game time while all the major corporates like the Government, BP, Toyota and Apple are winding down and taking a well-earned rest.

ROCK MUSIC WASN'T EXCITING ENOUGH

2010-07-19T08:00:00.004+01:00

“……and that’s why I went into HR”…

Opposite me was Curtis Ruptash who, let’s face it, has a pretty exotic name, one you could envisage an impresario proclaiming….”and now helped by his exotic assistant Gossamer, Curtis will attempt the quadruple Salsa on one leg whist playing the oboe…the amazing Mr. Ruptash!!!!!” Drums roll….

At 16 Curtis was on his way to become a rock star in Canada with the group called Pretty Rough. Instead he ended up in HR doing benchmarking studies and quantitative diagnostic work helping define attitudinal and potential behavioural shifts in that complex entity called a “company”.

From drugs, sex and rock and roll to personnel – through choice! Wow! How provocative is that?

He still plays, with a group called Peabody and Sherman’s Playdate – check them out.

They are highly creative, doing sophisticated improvisation, a bit jazz, a bit reggae, a bit whatever and as he put it

“we pull each other out of our comfortable little spots whilst following, or staying true to, a melodic theme”

That sounds exactly how you should manage a great company and, for perhaps the first time, I understood why Curtis had shifted his musical gaze to HR.

It’s why companies like BP, Boeing and BT should be hiring more musicians because in the modern world if you can’t improvise you can’t survive.

Now Curtis, about that Salsa….

UNDERSTANDING WHAT YOUR RED THREAD IS

2010-07-12T08:00:00.001+01:00

This idea came from Jayne Haines, a very senior HR lady from GlaxoSmithKline whom I heard talking last week.
She worked in Denmark for a while where the idea of the “red thread” was fixed in the culture (by the way it’s claimed on the web to be untranslatable. The best they can manage is to describe it as the main thread of a plot.)
Elsewhere it is described as the ancient Chinese belief that we all have invisible red threads, around our ankles as it happens, which identify who our true soul mates are.

More prosaically it is said by some to come from the red thread woven by ropes used by the British Navy to make them impossible to steal and sell on.

Jayne’s sense was it defined the essence of who and what you were so when she said “I’d die if I didn’t go running” she was describing something so viscerally central to the core of her being it captured what she stood for.

For some this might be singing, bird watching, mountain-biking, doing mathematical riddles, writing, painting, gardening, chess …. In other words passions which obsess the soul and inform a person’s character and development.

This essential thread – the story of our life, the real brand that we are – gets closer to helping understand what it is that distinguishes people one from the other and what makes each special. It helps give a more tangible meaning to life.

And it could also apply to larger or people created entities like corporations or brands.

So the question is what is your red thread?

What is your brand’s red thread?

And what is your company’s red thread?

What , in short, really makes you tick and ultimately turns you on?

SHAME ON YOU COCA COLA

2010-07-08T19:17:00.000+01:00

I ordered a bottle of sparkling water in a restaurant the other day.

When it arrived it said “Schweppes Abbey Well - British Natural Mineral Water – sparkling”, on the label with a rather dull water colour of a country scene.

The old marketing man in me bridled a bit.

The old “Shh…you know who” brand hadn’t travelled too happily from its home land of Tonic Water and Ginger Ale (can you honesty say any other Schweppes product was worth bothering with?)

And wasn’t it now owned by Coca-Cola whose own sortie into the mineral water market is best forgotten?

It tasted all right, I thought, but it was unlikely to be more than natural tap water and bicarbonate of soda (and this from a hater of cynicism.)

I then turned the bottle round and read the back label (unfortunately few people actually do this).

Here amidst other stuff is what it said:-

“Schweppes Abbey Well Natural mineral water comes from a single naturally protected source in Morpeth, Nothumberland from a well 117.5m. deep. Every last drop has been naturally filtered through water-bearing white sandstone for at least 3000 years.”

If that isn’t a cracking story hidden under a proverbial bushel I don’t know what is.
Shame on you Coca-Cola.

THE POWER OF TEAMWORK

2010-06-28T18:55:00.000+01:00

“They think it’s all over. It is now”…..
I refer of course to the myth about the power of individual talent, forever blown by the England Football Team with their so-called crack individuals proving they are a crap team.
You don’t need to be a footballer or even a sportsman to know there are two formulae demonstrating the multiplying impact of teamwork and the reductive effect of its absence:-
5 + 6 = 14

and

5 + 6 = 7

England enacted the latter and Germany the former; that simple.
To work and the world of the corporation.
In the offices of Britain and the global corporations of the world the myth of the hero is tarnished and dying. The quest is to build teams NOT of the greatest individual talent but of the greatest team impact.
No more shall we have or accept teams where to quote Alan Hansen “our defenders behaved as though they’d never met each other before”.
The HR director who described herself as “a casting director” got it right.
It’s time to create teams that know, like and work for each other in all walks of life.

THE INVISIBILITY OF AGE

2010-06-28T06:31:00.000+01:00

This was the great line I heard at a group discussion I recently ran with some quite elderly people. Trevor who uttered it was mildly ironic about it – being forgotten isn’t the end of the world he reflected.

Well for many it is.
Yet this group of highly intelligent people who spoke thoughtfully in punctuated sentences without pause, repetition or deviation were speaking for what soon will represent 25% of the UK population.
The average survival age today is apparently 89 – it was 64 in 1920.
Pensions and retirement are in the news and are big news this week in the budget and are going to be over the next few governments because we can’t afford them. Ian Duncan Smith one of the stars in this coalition because he’s so clearly done his homework is gently explaining we’ve got to work longer.
Not only can we not afford the pension costs as they stretch off into an ever lengthening future, we can’t afford the waste of talent.
The papers have lines like “make us work till we drop”…in my experience its younger people who collapse with stress and exhaustion much more readily.
It was striking in this group discussion how these people talked about their skills and how they were still using them but not enough and not on enough stuff. I wondered how good a think-tank they’d be and concluded they’d be terrific – ego free, wise and liberally minded….yes most of all that. Their sense of tolerance was remarkable. But I guess even they might be under pressure to retain their cool if they encountered some of the current corporate bureaucracy.
For instance it’s company policy at some places to exclude the elderly. A 75-year-old was told she would only be allowed to sign the forms for the Carphone Warehouse's TalkTalk phone and broadband package if she was accompanied by a younger member of her family who could explain the small print to her.
When my father was 60 he was getting on and ready to rest a bit. I know 70 year olds nowadays who are ready to go for it.
It’s time to realise that retirement is not a sign of game-over but a time of game-on.

MONEY IS NEVER ENOUGH

2010-06-21T06:52:00.001+01:00

Well there’s a dangerous assertion when, tomorrow in George Osborne's budget, that is all we are going to be talking about…the lack of it.

Over the past few years we’ve seen reputations and/or companies topple.

Time Warner, Arthur Andersen, Woolworth, Lehman Brothers, Toyota, BP.

It’s easy to talk about issues of principle when you are being pursued by dividend hungry shareholders and bonus hungry colleagues. When you are under real pressure you forget about everything except survival and for survival in business you need cash.

Here’s what Joseph Gregory told the soon-to-resign Lehman executive Alex Kirk who was complaining about the level of leverage in the business:-

“Growth. Growth. Growth, Alex. That’s what we want and need and we have to stay focused…..” (from a Colossal Failure of Commonsense by Larry McDonald).

But that’s not a possible dream, not in isolation to other realities, and the only way of pursuing this strategy is to cut cost, to abandon principle and cut corners.

The trouble with big businesses is they do all this and then they overcomplicate and lose touch. All those mentioned in my list of Clay Feet Icons did everything they wish they hadn’t.

For the next blog later this week I am going to quote at length from Ron Ashkenas of RHSchaffer who has written and spoken compelling on one way to cut through to the essence of what needs doing.

It’s the “simplicity strategy”.

As Einstein said – impressively not for the first time:-

“Three rules of work – out of the clutter find simplicity; from discord find harmony; in the middle of difficulty find opportunity.”

12 HOT MARKETING TIPS FOR JUNE

2010-06-14T19:48:00.000+01:00

Here are the last four tips which are written in a welter of new potential woes – apparently our banks are up their necks with Greece, Spain and Portugal to the tune of £100 billion (small change in the global economy? No not even trivial by global standards) and Hungary’s in trouble.

But we won a test match and the world cup is on its way – floating down the Rio Grande….is Ferdinand’s knee hereafter to be called the “knee of God?”

Part 3

9. Do things properly.

The great line from a banker in Uganda who was responsible for a spectacular turnaround and when asked how, said “we started to do things properly”.

Apply rigour, don’t run out of control but don’t ever think marketing and doing things properly is easy.

10. Create momentum.

The most difficult thing is getting “traction” (and this from a man who promised no jargon!). You know you are winning when the media want your stories and when people start hearing what you say and talk about you….no not like BP (a classic example of why we all have feet of clay.).

11.Execution. Execution. Execution. The key to success.

“T’aint what you do it’s the way that you do it; that’s what brings results.” The Ella FitzGerald classic song gets it right. Better to do an average idea well than a good idea badly. Check out Green and Blacks for an example of this.

12.Give me lucky marketers not ones with good CVs.

“Do you feel lucky punk…well do you?” It was Napoleon who best understood the power of luck. Make your own with your energy, enthusiasm and sheer appetite for success.

A few tips with two more to add.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket (the Pru) and
remember that people like to party (the Pimms current sales drive as the sun comes out).

Richard Hall is the author of Brilliant Marketing and Brilliant Business Creativity.

12 HOT MARKETING TIPS FOR JUNE 2010 - part 2

2010-06-06T17:09:00.000+01:00

The strangeness of the world we live in is shown by Portsmouth, the bedraggled and struggling-to-survive football team reaching the Cup Final for the second time in three years.

Anything can happen if you keep the faith and go for it.
Here are four more tips.

5. Targeting – imagine it was you being sold to.

Targeting used to be easy. We had a big marketing blunderbuss called prime time ITV which reached everyone we wanted to. Today it’s harder. But don’t despair. Imagine selling to yourself. Excite yourself and you have the chance of exciting others.

6.A few wins are better than a lot of draws.

Do not spread your money too thinly. Make your brand win big time in Brighton rather than being a nonentity in London. Build fame on sound foundations.

7.Use the tools you’ve been given in wonderful ways.

We are so lucky. In addition to more convention tools, experiential marketing and digital allow us to spin on a Euro and have fun. Marketing is our opportunity to show off about our brand and enjoy it.

8.Speak bloke not boss-talk and give up jargon forever.

In a book called the Cluetrain Manifest the authors vowed death to corporate language. Death is too good. Speak simply and succeed. Make your brand easy to talk to.

I hope you are having fun – this is all a cross between Black Adder and Mary Poppins and I love it.

More next week or from http://www.richardhall.biz/