A BIT MORE CHARM WOULDN'T GO AMISS

Maybe I’m in a genial mood because I’m about to go for a week’s rest, relaxation and reflection in Spain. When I discovered there’s going to be seven days of wall-to-wall sun there I felt even more genial. It’s the opportunity to read a book a day and fill my mind with new thoughts, plots and excitement.

My geniality was enhanced by Amy Ryder. Amy  works for British Airways. Here’s why we spoke. When our flights to Malaga were cancelled because of the pilots’ strike I tried to get my refund. It was at moments like this that automation and technology seem sadly wanting. With some 450,000 other thwarted customers also trying to get refunds on their PCs the BA systems crashed. Eventually I e-mailed Alex Cruz the BA CEO  and Chairman saying I realised he was busy but could he get someone to sort out my problem. Enter Amy. She was professional, charming, relaxed – in short, a delight and a brilliant example of customer service.  It took five minutes of unscripted conversation on the phone for her to sort my problem and five minutes for my faith in BA to be fully restored. Charm makes magic.

In contrast Parliament has been charmless. No worse than that,  thuggish, barbarian and stupid. Boris is not and has never been restrained. Reckless, rumbustious and expansive describes the man. But his behaviour was dwarfed by the baying crowds around him. I began to feel parliament had been prorogued by for far too short a time. How about proroguing it forever? And then within their ranks there were wistful reflections that maybe they could have another shot at Theresa May’s deal. Increasingly “no deal”  begins to feel like the vet’s humane killer gun necessary to put us out of our misery. The worst thing, of course, is their shocking manners and hostility.

How do we unite this broken country I heard someone wail. It’s doable but only if we encourage people to listen, think and debate good humouredly. I heard some signs of this on Any Answers on Saturday but presenter Anita Anand sounded frustrated as people phoning in were in succession thoughtful Brexiteers who kept on reminding her that the government had pledged to do what the referendum told them to do. “But no one voted for no deal” she retorted “No one didn’t not vote for it either” someone said. Hmm! Presenters and interviewers seem rather keen to stir things up which is regrettable.

In the meantime the BBC and everyone else needs to calm things down. The mood of the nation must be less adversarial and , yes, more genial. Recently I met someone who said how much he hated Christmas yet it’s that Christmas spirit we need. Here’s what Washington Irving who was the real inventor of the Christmas we love said:

So I’m off to Spain, the land of lazily enjoying life in ultimate geniality.

Se amable. Que te diviertas. Feliz Septiembre.

THE OLD NEED REINVENTING...LIKE CATS

Tom Goodwin is an Executive Vice President and head of Innovation at Zenith Media. Here’s what he said last week on Linkedin:

“Living in New York and working in advertising I rarely see people over the age of fifty.  I'm never exposed to, let alone have the pleasure of working alongside them. This is one of the worst things about working in marketing right now.  As an industry we're obsessed with youth, we're endlessly trying to get "upwardly mobile Millennials" or "hard to reach youthful influencers" or some nonsensical and largely broke crowd who can't afford the premium SUV we have on offer. Meanwhile we've not looked around the BA First Lounge or the Hyatt Hotel lobby, or the Emirates Business class cabin to see that all the people with money and influence are actually rather old. And wise.

Occasionally, on the rare events where I get to listen to some of the wonderful old folk of advertising, it quickly makes me realize how much we as an industry suffer from a lack of wisdom. We have incredible levels of vision, an abundance of precociousness, brilliant creativity, but as an industry we pretty much have no wisdom at all.”

Personally being one of those “wonderful old folk of advertising” I found myself in profound agreement with Tom who is still in his 30s.

In Japan where the concept of mentoring has always been taken more seriously, “senpai” is someone of a higher age, or senior and “kōhai” is a protégé or junior. Wisdom there is a prized commodity whereas here it’s all over when you hit 50 or 60.  Yet watching Liz Truss our Justice Secretary, a gangling 42 year old and clearly out of her depth, I lamented the lost wisdom of predecessors like Ken Clarke and  Jack Straw, Poor, young Liz. There was no justice in putting her in that job without the gravitas and wisdom to clothe her naked inexperience.

Cats like the aged have a problem too. They kill allegedly 55 million birds a year in the UK.  Their DNA is shockingly obvious. They are predators and pretty selfish creatures.  But the most successful pets in the world numerically.

Their relaunch comes in a new design. The more sedate pussy. Welcome to the “sausage cat” - apparently it’s a fashion wow (or miaow) in America coming your way soon - slowly.

Cats and the aged are not much alike but like cats we aged need to become more visible. We need to review how we’re perceived and relaunch ourselves if our “wisdom” and thoughtfulness is to be treated more seriously. Too many of us are grumpy, petulant lamenters of lost youth - critics of the young rather than enthusiastic spectators and coaches of a youth potentially better than we ever were. We need to get out of BA First lounges and start working again to show how useful we can be and how we can complement the skills of today’s dynamic leaders.

TOMORROW - an additional blog from Richard.

THE WORLD OF THE NEW COULD BE EVEN MORE THRILLING

I’m not against big businesses. They’re full of people who are smart, civilized and charming. I like Google and Apple (who couldn’t?) I used to love the spirit Nike had in the period of their pre-21st-century glory. I love the confidence with which companies such as John Lewis, Heinz (now 3G) and BMW go about what they do.

I enjoy seeing challengers like Aldi disrupting the market and behaving small when they are actually the 90th biggest company in the world - quite a lot bigger than Tesco with twice as many stores in 18 countries. I ‘m thrilled by the narrative of British Airways and the problematic relaunch of Coca-Cola. But there’s something about big companies that’s beginning to worry me quite a lot. It’s that being big can make you a bully and turn you prematurely deaf.

Being big makes you think ‘There’s my way and then, of course, there’s my way.’ Most of all, being big makes you an enemy of marketing. The big decisions you make will be about cost and margins, about downsizing, consolidating and acquisitions. They should be about people and what they want and need. They should be about marketing but they won’t be. And when you get too big to focus on marketing, you’re going to die. Big, old companies often get trapped in their own legacy with an out-of-date business model and old fashioned products. They get uncomfortably stuck with a redundant overhead too expensive to write off yet dragging the minds of the company downwards and backwards. New businesses are about the future. They are about risk and about change. They are now and next. They are where innovation thrives. They are about learning. They are busy doing important things. Like visualising how the world might be in the future. Thinking radically and being inspired.. New businesses are lucky. They generally don’t have shareholders. They don’t have a lot of out-of-date plant and property they don’t need. They don’t have a huge workforce or a lot of bureaucracy. But what else don’t they have? They don’t have enough money to have much wriggle room. So they need to be very smart or lucky to survive. 

In a recent conversation between Professor Clay Christensen and Marc Andreessen (Silicon Valley entrepreneur) at Startup Grind Global 2016, Clay Christensen said there was capital everywhere looking for a home. Unfortunately return on investment was virtually zero overall and there was an astonishing $6 trillion in negative yielding bonds. So why isn’t more of this money being invested in start-ups? The success rate of start-ups is improving and starting from zero is recognised as a great place to set off from. The world of the new and disruptive is amazing. Consider. The biggest media company in the world is now Facebook, the biggest Hotelier is Airbnb, the biggest producers of films are India and Nigeria (Hollywood comes third.)

Excited? Well I think we should be.