"CRISIS. WHAT CRISIS?"

This is what appeared on the front page of the Sun referring to the then Prime Minister, the laconic Jim Callaghan, during the so called Winter of Discontent in 1978.

44 years later we’re back again to the “C” word. Friday’s Times headline was ”Britain slides into Crisis.” Note, not Crashes, not Plunges but Slides. There’s a  graceful inevitability to sliding but there’s only one direction to slide…down. And in the context of economic recession there’s a subtext…a slide isn’t sudden it’s a progressive state often caused by inattention. 

Growing inflation and recession have been inevitable for most of this year so there are no surprises here. It’s not just Britain that has its problems, Europe is struggling towards recession too with Italian debt the highest on record and France and Germany both struggling to cope. Most worrying of all is the Chinese economic slump and especially the issues with a mortgage-repayment- revolution. It smells a bit of 2008.

Read Ian Williams – “The Fire of the Dragon” which is just out. A reviewer for the Daily Mail called it “a devastating exposé.” Chinese ambition for global domination mixed with internal discontent and an economy in trouble is a caustic cocktail.

So what can we do? Apart from being worried, frightened or just angry.

Our own slide into crisis is an acceleration owing to sleepy, eye-off-the-ball government plus the pandemic, Ukraine and Brexit. The global picture isn’t our concern  right now. That blaze down the road can be sorted out when the fire in our own home’s been extinguished.

I recently helped in a recruitment process of young, recently graduated Financial Analysts. The candidates were well qualified, gifted, high-achievers with positive attitudes to life. They were impressive. I was uplifted.

The biggest lessons they discussed were the resilience of human beings and the positive outcomes that crises like the pandemic, brought out in general and, specifically, in the ability of specialists to achieve in months what would normally have taken years. They didn’t talk much about government but instead about the inspirational impact people could have who had the will and capability to change things.

The heroes of the pandemic were  Kate Bingham who drove the vaccination programme and the team at Oxford who got so much of the Astra Zeneca programme to happen so quickly.

One of these clever young people I met said, crisis, more often than not, accelerated creative solutions and that, in general left to their own devices to work things out, people came up with good solutions or, at the very worst, muddled their way through.

These candidates’ faith in human ingenuity, reliance and energy has been missing in the media and in many people I speak to.  A more accurate Times headline would have better described the mood if it had read “Britain slides into depression.” But these clever, single golf handicap, accomplished musicians, county standard chess playing, A* gathering, 1st class degree (of course) young people were clear-sightedly confident “it” – this crisis- could be fixed. And fixed quickly.

Their refreshing view of life and their own obvious ability to juggle as well as excel cheered me and made me want to make sure we keep them rather than lose them in the brain drains that happened in previous economic difficulties.

Later that day walking along Brighton Seafront I saw what just 20 years ago had been scruffy, grotty quality stalls and caffs but was now transformed to a smart – could have been the South of France – resort of the middle class. This uplifted me further. So again:

Crisis? What crisis?

WE ARE IN CRISIS (AGAIN)

A friend of mine is over from China where he works in the business I once tormented (advertising - yeah, you probably noticed the resemblance between me and Don Draper.)  He said something I’ve heard a lot recently.

“The industry’s in crisis”
“Yes” I said, “it always was.”

It was in crisis when the young Turks with ideas took over, it was in crisis when the Brits took over the US agencies, it was in crisis when the media men like Kraken awoke and plundered the business and it is in crisis now digital is the story. Someone asked recently what a client’s social media strategy was. That’s rather like asking for a conversing-with-friends strategy.

As the lovely lady exclaimed in Smiths today - “bollocks” as for the second time her purchase of some magazine was double-counted by the DIY self-service till. She said “sorry” but I explained consolingly this was the word I’d been seeking to describe “a social media strategy”.

(By the way what a dreary, ill lit and drab place WHS is. And Kate Swann, their ex CEO, left with £13million for the job she did for them?  Astonishing.)

Recently I met someone with whom I was at Oxford. I haven’t seen much of him over the many intervening years but discovered he was so positive, so different from the many Meldrew “just-typical” figures of our generation, so inspiringly hopeful that we were not in crisis but that in fact we’ve, to quote a Prime Minister of my youth - Harold MacMillan, “never had it so good.”

The fact is markets change because technology changes but human beings don’t. I’m struck by how similar marketing ideas and advertising strategies are to those used a century or half a century ago. Our passions for strange football teams remain solid. (And what a great observation that those stunning crowds that Jezza Corbyn drew in his campaign were smaller than 2nd Division Accrington Stanley gets.) We love, we live, we row, we laugh, jokes we laugh at live forever - and we want the same things - safety, comfort and companionship.I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.  - Thomas Jefferson

And one other thing - a bit of rebellion - Thomas Jefferson one-time US President and a genius said a “little rebellion now and then is no bad thing”. The Corbanista and Trumpeters have brought a sparkle back into politics, some real arguments and besides anything else, how lovely to see the looks of confusion on the faces of the establishment.

So the industry is in crisis. Martin Sorrell is, I hear, intent on “horizontalising” (means “integrate”) the marketing services business. If I’d offered to “horizontalise” that young lady in WH Smith they’d have arrested me.

Sorrell wants to re-invent the one stop shop. It was always a lovely idea but it doesn’t work that well. Stick to your knitting and be the best at what your great at.

Because there is no crisis except in our heads and that’ll never go away.