Bankers just aren’t very bright are they?

I was prepared to forgive the poor souls their indiscretions and absurd Toad-of-Toad-Hall poop-poopness about their bonuses. I was even prepared to concede that leveraging your debt to the tune of forty four times (as Lehmans did) was a touch over bold but not exactly criminal.

But then I realised what it meant in layman (or Lehman terns) terms was if you, personally, had a house, net of mortgage worth say £600,000 and other assets, pension, cash, paintings, car, lawn mower, books worth another £300,000 then you were in Lehman terms, worth around £39.5million.

And then I read “Too Big to Fail" by Andrew Ross Sorkin (read it – it’s an essential insight into financial hell) and I realised these people quite simply weren’t very bright at all.

Firsts, yes. MBAs, of course. Millions of dollars, very many.

But they had absolutely no clothes. They were stark, bollock naked when it came to pass the parcel.

The penny finally dropped when I recently saw a poster for the shamed HBOS, trading under Lloyds TSB. Here’s what it said:-

“Our bank managers are here to help you. Their specialist subject is money.”

I think that lies on at least three counts.

And I think it means you the customer have to start giving that so called “specialist” a very hard time indeed.

Why I stopped blogging, tweeting…and bothering…

To my readers – yes you sir, over there dozing…sorry; and you madam, looking slightly grumpy.

My apologies.

It was my back, you see, which went into chronic pain and I rather lost whatever plot there was, which given the way the global economy seemed to be heading put me in good company.

We don’t talk about pain but when it gets you, you are gone.

God preserve us from, for instance, a pain-filled US President – Roosevelt, Kennedy – how did they cope?

Anyway (as if you needed to be told) a simple, relatively non invasive procedure later and now I’m almost human.

And back to asking four questions:

1. Isn’t it going to be get a whole lot worse in 2010?
2. Don’t we need it to?
3. Shouldn’t we coach all our young people to cope with this new, erratic world as a number one, key priority?
4. Isn’t this sense of change exhilarating – the new worlds, opportunities and excitements?
   

Being optimistic wasn’t that easy in 2009 but the resilience and creativity of those around me was inspiring. Trust me, trust us, 2010 will be better. And new ideas are what will drive it.

It’s nice to be back (as it were).

THE SOCIAL NETWORK - IS IT GOING BUST?

What do people really think about social networks?

“Facebook and Myspace is just a slow, crappier version of e-mail.”

Why are creative people (in particular) turning their back on all this?

“Perhaps because creative people aren't shallow narcissists? Perhaps they have better things to do with their time than tweet what kind of sandwich they had for lunch or post a Facebook update about their wholly uncreative daily activities?”

These comments appear on Digg which I got on to via Fast Company – the – now daily – site I think is the best thing on the Web.

I’m inclined to agree and think the burn-out on these sites will be increasingly vast.

ADVERTISING AND MARKETING R.I,P.

Advertising Age recently had this article by Paul Ashby whom it transpires is pitching interactive marketing as the saviour we all need.

Here are some of the juicy bits.

“Advertising Age has just claimed that we are living in the "Post-advertising age"…… Actually we're just stuffed. Marketing & Advertising hit a tree….. There is no replacement advertising model for us to drive off in. We must bash out the dents, clear the broken glass, remove the bumper from the front wheel, and limp on as best we can. We should accommodate ourselves to that prospect…..

But behind the curve, and banging the table as ever, the marketing gurus all have not yet latched on to the rhetoric of the "new economic model"…. They are still trying to kick life back into the old one. But it becomes apparent even to the Marketing & Advertising community that there is to be no return to that golden decade of no hard choices and uninterrupted growth….. This recession is not a failure of market economics. It is a reassertion of market economics after a decade in which we paid ourselves more than we were producing, and funded it precariously and temporarily, together with a total lack of accountability so that it took a while for the market to rumble…. Now a prosperity that always baffled ordinary citizens has collapsed.”

Fair enough but it’s a touch cynical. Clever and effective marketing is exactly what the world needs right now in whichever form it takes. Marketing creates the confidence and the relationship between brands and that consumers that helps make this world go round. I am proud of being a marketer and not ashamed to say to people I’ve advised “sometimes it’s smart to spend less – it’s always smart to zig when the others zag”. I agree with Maurice Saatchi who said:-

“Creativity is the last, legal way to secure an unfair advantage”

THEY ARE SAYING THIS WAS A MALE RECESSION

Perhaps to be a little cynical that is why it is over almost before it has started.

All the signs are that green is the colour and surge is going to replace shoots.

If you believe what you read.

The story about male recession was in the Times a week or so ago and was about a McKinsey study revealing an emergence of an alarming gender imbalance in the city. Women are departing in their droves through voluntary redundancy, resignation or whatever. The emigration supposedly brought about by a high level of disapproval and anger at male excess and sheer bad behaviour.

One woman said “they were foul enough in the good times but now they are repellent”.

The women are off to set up their own businesses – what price the first all female bank? – now that would be a winner. And behind they leave chaos. Because without some kind of gender balance this is going to be a very unstable and erratically managed place.

If this was a male recession this loss of women terrifies me. It would terrify Tom Peters even more. It was Tom who said in Re-Imagine!

“Women make most of the buying and investment decisions. Women are better investors than men.”

He added “women roar”.

I think that’s what they’ve just done.

TAKING AN OVERVIEW

Take a view of global activity.

How many executives flying to how many meetings?

How many decisions made by jet lagged brains?

How many ulcers?

How much fuel consumed?

How much carbon emitted?

How much food eaten?

The most comforting thing is that we can look at it from our dispassionate cloud and smile.

So if you have a minute take a look.

Our Skies...

This is a 24 hour observation of all of the large aircraft flights in the world, (recorded by the 'plane flight transponders, via Geo-stationary orbital satellites), patched together and condensed down to about a minute. (viz. what you see is 24 hrs duration compressed into 1 minute).

From space we look like a beehive of activity. You could tell it was summer time in the north by the sun's footprint over the planet. You could see that it didn't quite set in the extreme north and it didn't quite rise in the extreme south.

We are taught about the Earth's tilt and how it causes summer and winter and have had to imagine just what is going on, now the "tilt" is visible.

With this 24 hour observation of aircraft travel on the earth's surface we get to see the daylight pattern move as well across the face of the planet.

SPEND YOUR MONEY ON COACHING YOUR PEOPLE

JWT have just published, as ever from that excellent agency, a beautifully crafted paper on why you should spend money on advertising in a recession.

I don’t get the “spend-your-way-out-of-disaster” argument that JWT and Gordon Brown are putting about.

I prefer the McKinsey argument which simply says – whatever else you do survive; this is not a time for dogma; it’s a time for do-what-it-takes and looking after the cash.

And I should add to this looking after your customers – present, past and potential so as to avoid massive revenue fall-off.

Simply coach your people to be brilliant at customer service.

Make people feel good about you and your product.

There’s never been a more important time to coach your own people to help you survive.