Archive by Author

accentuate the positive: constructive criticism in Adland

24 Feb

Sitting in the audience at yesterday’s Battle of Big Thinking, one of the most extraordinary things was the accompanying conversation on Twitter. It was free from the usual slights, snarky remarks and bitching – people responded to new ideas with enthusiasm, and a desire to share them. But sadly that’s not how the industry usually is.

A criticism levelled at Australian advertising is that it often lacks creativity. There are, of course, significant exceptions to this, but I think it’s fair to say we produce more than our share of “safe” work.

My small idea, inspired by the day, is that the industry should make a conscious commitment to become an environment that cherishes ideas and responds positively to creativity. Perhaps the reason for the lack of courage in creative is that the Australian industry is so hostile, quicker to tear down than build up.

Read the whole shebang on Mumbrella

 

 

Ghostpoet: peanut butter blues and melancholy jam

10 Feb

I rarely write about music (I leave it to the experts), but I’ve been loving this man’s sound since a friend sent me his way last year.

This album deserves attention.  He’s an elegant and eloquent lyricist with a unique sound. His beats are lazy, fluid, assured, his hooks ensnare you.

I’m not swayed just because he’s a fellow Coventry kid, but to escape the crushing deadendedness of that defeated city, then turn it into poetry and light, well, that’s a beautiful thing.

Ghostpoet is more than an emcee; he’s a raconteur. His voice is mellifluous, languid, the lyrics rich with idiom, popculture and puns. You sense he loves language, is gleeful at clever rhymes and artful linguistic juxtaposition. And this all undercut with eclectic samples, languorous beats and gorgeous backing vocals.

It’s a late night record, comfort listening, like sinking into an evening of slightly maudlin self-analysis with an old friend and a fine scotch.

There’s no bullshit posturing, no MC attitude. There is humility and humour, tales of everyday life and struggle told with compassion and kindness. At times defiant, like the strident insistence of Finished I Ain’t; at times discordant and portentous (Gaaasp), at times tranquil and reflective (Floating): every track takes you on a journey.

Even the moments of melancholy hold glimmers of optimism. He’s down but not out.

A man on his way, in his own sweet time.

Go buy it. Or stream it here courtesy of the Guardian and the Streets (together at last..)

Ghostpoet peanut butter blues and melancholy jam

o still small voice of calm: meditation and ideation

3 Feb catherine wheel

I have begun to practice meditation. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’m a complete novice, and most of the time I’m frankly rubbish, although my teachers are opposed to this sort of talk. There’s no judgment here, they say. More on that another day.

What’s been interesting is the fact it’s changing my thinking in catherine wheelother ways. I was concerned that daily practice would in some way affect my ability to do my job.
I’ve discovered that my mind is like a kitten in a barn full of mice. It scampers and pounces on every flickering, corner-of-the-eye thought. Each rustle and twitch captures its attention and off it darts.
At work, my mind is a Catherine wheel in continual revolution, firing sparks in all directions. Generating ideas is central to what I do, and the notion of trying to make that frenetic creative energy slow down, even for a moment, has been frightening. Anyone who has ever suffered from writer’s block will understand what I mean.  What if, once the engine stopped, I couldn’t start it up again?

What I’ve realised is that you can apply the framework of meditation to the creative process. I like to call this practice
the Double Drop.
Essentially, you meditate twice. Once to clear your mind, and a second time to let the ideas come swimming up from the darkness. I’m finding it’s a shortcut to ideation: somehow, by slowing down and emptying your mind, only the strongest ideas persist. And you don’t have to struggle and search for them, they’re tugging insistently at your hem like a hungry toddler.

the double drop meditation
Sit in a quiet space, in lotus pose if you can, or with your feet flat on the floor, straight backed. Let your shoulders relax. Close your eyes. Start to observe your breath. Don’t regulate it, just watch as it enters and leaves your nostrils. When thoughts arise, try to return your attention to your breath. Each inhalation and exhalation contains your whole focus. When your mind drifts, simply redirect it to your breath. Begin to enjoy the feeling of peace. The more you do this, the easier it should be to think only of the breath. Apparently.
Do this for ten or so minutes.
Then take a moment or two. Consider the challenge or problem you’re working on. If you’re like me, it won’t have been too far from your mind during the first practice.
Then assume the position once again, clear your mind and focus on your breath. This time, visualise yourself sitting in a silent dark space. Imagine you are sitting in a small circle of light. Inhale. Exhale. At each exchange of breath, imagine that the circle gets a little larger. At last, when you’re sitting in a large clearlit space, notice that feeling of calm, enjoy the clarity and let the ideas come. They’ll come towards you, shyly or boisterously, like woodland creatures, beautiful and fragile, stepping into the light.

Now all you have to do is make them at least ten per cent less good and you’re ready to take them to the client.*

*Of course I jest.

I really have become such a hippie. I blame Australia. Must work harder on retaining my rapier sharp citykid edge.

(if you’re interested in meditation, I  recommend having a chat to the lovely people at the Mahasiddha Kadampa centre).

meditate in sydney

telling stories

15 Jan

I recently discovered a lovely Tumblr called “the great untold,” which is a collection of opening lines from the greatest tales never told. It reminded me of a story a beloved great aunt told me as she drifted in and out of senility. The story was long and convoluted; a mashup of several memories rather than a single tale and as it meandered along my attention was beginning to drift when a single sentence pierced my soul.

“Of course,” she said, “that was when the lieutenant’s monkey got out.”

It remains the greatest punchline I’ve ever heard.

So much is contained in that sentence: a magical sense of other-ness, exotic climes, a bygone age, a yearning for lost Empire, my aunt’s delightful deadpan pragmatism, her sense of decorum and her secret, irrepressible love of mischief. And everything’s better with monkeys.

Neil Gaiman says that there are only four words every storyteller wants to hear: “…and then what happened?”

We’re losing the ability to tell stories. I don’t know if it’s a consequence of the over-communicated self, continually babbling into phones and on Facebook about minutiae, or maybe it’s that less people read novels, but it seems to me many of us lack the ability to create narratives about our own lives. Being the articulate author of your own story is important, not only because it reminds you that everything is a choice, that your story is the consequence of choices you make, but also because it’s so damn tedious not to be. Those interminable tales with no clear purpose and no end in sight, no sense of having edited the irrelevant or selected only the choicest anecdotes for the listener’s pleasure. Assigning equal weight and significance to everything is the hallmark of a desperate bore.

I think it’s fundamentally disrespectful; I have enough pointless shit and tedious detail in my own head without having to take on someone else’s as well. Telling a good story is a way of demonstrating your desire to please and entertain your interlocutor. A story is a gift.

Bring back the lost art of the raconteur.

The reminiscences of elderly people often return to a particular place and time.  Caring for people with Alzheimer’s or senility, I noticed that the events of many years ago seemed more real and relevant than the present to them, and those were the stories they wanted to tell over and over again. When the mind starts to disintegrate, it’s as though we seek refuge in the time we lived most intensely in the past. Those happy times comfort us, shore us up against the dying of the light.

I wonder what that time will be for me, and whether I’ve already lived through it.The Lieutenant's Monkey

it’s the little things…

12 Jan

We talk a lot about the big idea. I think 2011 might just be about the small stuff, and here are some of the small things that will make a big difference this year.
I copped some flak, reasonably enough, for not having articulated the importance of microfinance as a key trend for 2011.
This is a small way of making it up to you…

microvolunteering This may sound a little like the way that you never meet a fisherman who’s only caught small fish, and gaols are full of the innocent, but I had an idea a couple of years ago to create an online portal to connect marketing and advertising professionals with charity projects in need of their expertise.

How could I
resist…?

Luckily I never got around to doing anything to develop it, because The Extraordinaries have taken my big idea and made it…smaller, leaner and much cleverer.
Sparked combines two of the big motivators for marketing, techie and creative types: showing off, and showing off on our iPhones. Whenever you have a spare moment, contribute your brain power, offer advice, strategy, and micro-consultancy, as well as commenting on other people’s work – all this from the palm of your hand. The morning commute might just leave you feeling good for once. At present the database is largely US not-for-profits, but I am sure the net will widen as word spreads across the world.

micropayment for creators I heard about Flattr about six months ago, and I think I’m right in saying that the reason I’d entirely forgotten about it until Beaney reminded me today is because, like various other ventures with the utopian dream of paying people for the things they create and we enjoy, it hasn’t really taken off yet.

Perhaps we need to embrace the idea of the blogger as online busker. While Murdoch’s Times paywall may not have solved the issue of how we pay for online content, there are other avenues in need of exploration.
Shakespeare got to get paid, son. *shakes tin*

small kindnesses
A stranger smiles at you without agenda; you pay for the coffee of the person behind you in the queue; a teenager offers his seat on the bus to a shopper laden with bags; a kid takes an old man’s arm as he stumbles: these acts weave together to form community.
Cynics may argue that these are acts of self-interest, a long game of investments in the bank of society to be drawn against in the future, but I’d rather live pseudo-altruistically than the elbow-in-the-face, everyone for himself alternative.
The “social surprise” campaign by KLM is a neat demonstration of the return on investment from random acts of (marketing) kindness.  The campaign reached a million impressions – it’s clear that small gestures can get big results.

(Thanks to the Digital Buzz chaps).

micromeditation
Regular readers will know that I abhor the hackneyed, so please don’t attribute my conversion to the practice of meditation to my recent backpacking trip to a Buddhist country. That’d be a terrible cliché.
But if you consider that three minutes of inner peace might just be the biggest gift you could give yourself (and those poor sods who must endure your company), you might be able to get past it.  Find a quiet space, close your eyes and focus on the ebb and flow of your breath for a few minutes. Thoughts will clamour for your attention like a greedy toddler with ADHD, but try to simply acknowledge their presence and let them be.  Even three minutes of tranquillity can help.
Health warning: I’ve heard a tale of a Buddhist marketing person being counselled for substance abuse after her boss became suspicious of her disappearing to a toilet cubicle at times of intense stress and reappearing moments later radiating zen-like calm.

microfinance for not for profits
Depressingly enough, the dream of microfinancing seems to have lost some of its shine. Muhammad Yunus, one of the originators of the microfinance movement suggested that running these schemes to benefit the investers, rather than as a charity, would inevitably “turn do-gooders into loan-sharks”. Kiva and other NFP funds continue to do good work, but there’s an emerging school of thought that using technology in small ways could help more effectively – Gates’ Foundation is working on making access to banking systems affordable for all; other projects are recycling technical equipment for use in developing businesses, in an attempt to solve both the issue of landfill and deprivation.

It’s what happens at the micro level that shapes the macro, and these are the changes that are easiest to make.  Which is lucky if you’re shiny-eyed and idealistic but pretty bloody busy, actually, and somewhat inclined to laziness on your days off…

It’s a small world, after all.

are you ok?

4 Oct who

It’s the nineties. It’s a crisp autumn day, pale sunshine breaking through the wisps of cirrus clouds as we make our way along the road. I resist the urge to kick one of the freshly swept piles of orange and russet leaves into the air just to see them swirl and flutter on the breeze.  We’re all dressed impeccably, these good-looking skinny kids and me; we look like we’re in a band or some stylish cult, on our way to a photo shoot or a goth flash mob.
We’re not, though. We’re all wearing black because we’re going to our friend’s funeral, because a week ago he jumped off a bridge to his messy, violent death.

He had a huge, beautiful smile that could light up a room, light up your day. The clown of the group, but gentle, without malice. And he could be a terrible pain in the arse, because he was a teenager, and teenagers tend to be. I think he would have been a lovely man, had he grown up. I remember dancing with him once, a joke waltz; we were too cool to dance in couples, then, and I can still remember the warmth of him, the life. He tried to kiss me and made a joke about it. I wish I’d let him. I would give him a million kisses to have him back. He was happiest making other people laugh. The world needs people like that.
My heart aches to think of his mother missing him, missing those incredible bearhugs, missing nagging him about his revolting smelly bedroom.
It still makes me sad, even though it was many years ago and I’ve lost several people to suicide since, but he was the first, and the youngest, and there is still, even now, that voice that haunts me, because I never knew he was in such pain, and I never asked him if he was ok. It’s the not knowing, thinking of him walking around with all this pain and keeping it inside, hidden. I can only assume, and I’ll never know, that he must have had howling torment in his soul for some time before he took that last step. How many chances did I have to try to let him know that he wasn’t alone, that I cared?
I didn’t know that he wasn’t ok because I never asked.
I was young too, and self-obsessed as young people are, and I thought all the misery of the world was only on my shoulders until I got that phone call. I’ll never know if there was anything I could have done, if one single question would have changed the course of events. I don’t know whether it would have changed anything, really, but I’ll always regret not reaching out.

I’m writing this post for RU OK? Day. On the 7th of October, ask someone you care about if they’re ok. Reach out. You never know what difference that simple gesture might make.

Find out about getting your workplace involved and other ways of taking part in RU OK? Day here.

naked and famous: call for documentary participants

2 Oct

I’m making a documentary about identity and the internet. If you’re articulate, passionate and would like to be interviewed, I’d love to hear from you.

It’s an idea I’ve been mulling over for a while. The ideas have been shaped by working in a space where authenticity seems at risk of becoming merely a buzzword, experiences like the Spencer Tunick installation, debates like Mark Pollard’s views on self-disclosure and Tim Burrowes’ argument on Mumbrella that there is no separation between personal and professional identity online.

With a little help from the wonderful Tim Noonan, it’s coalescing into something I think is absolutely fascinating, and I very much hope you will think so too.

The Naked Documentary (working title): nudity, identity and the self in physical and virtual spaces.

It’s exploring what happens to our sense of self online, (where nobody knows you’re a dog), and what changes when we’re naked.

Is identity a fluid construct which shifts and changes according to one’s environment? This documentary seeks to explore whether there is a core identity and if so, where it resides. Does cyberspace give us a place to be an idealised version of ourselves, free from our physical bodies, or conversely, are we most truly, honestly, ourselves when stripped of outward trappings – when we’re naked?
One idea is that  the identity you inhabit online is one constructed purely of thought, expressed through language, unrestricted by arbitrary biology. Or is it the case that the way one experiences the world in a physical sense is what shapes one’s character, and the self can never be separated? Can we then infer that the naked form is the simplest and most authentic?
Tim has a theory that the human voice is at its most honest, resonant and beautiful when the speaker is naked, so we’ll be exploring that too.

The format will be a series of interviews with a variety of people who use the online space in different ways, sharing their views and experience on aspects of identity, authenticity online and offline.
Each interviewee can choose to be interviewed naked or clothed during their interview, and reveal as much or as little of their souls or their skin as they feel comfortable with.

Drop me a line here if you’d like to discuss taking part.

we could be heroes…just for one day

15 Sep Coventry

I’m neither English nor a patriot. I’m the daughter of a Scottish man who has a genetic memory of rage against the Highland Clearances, and an English woman who lost her father after he suffered shellshock in WWII and “went Doollally,” in the parlance of the time. He abandoned my mother just after she was born and she never saw him again. I’m from Coventry, a forever ruined city which serves to remind anyone how truly Pyrrhic victory can be. Coventry

So it’s hard for me to identify with the patriotism of the English, and the fervent martial pride people often display on the anniversaries of wars.

Working on the 1940 Chronicle with RAFBF has been surprisingly transformative; I love the campaign, and it’s part of my job to promote it. But as we’ve been planning and strategising to help the wonderfully written words reach their audience, I’ve found that the stories have started to seep into my soul as much as the audience have begun to connect with these fictional characters and their very real situations.

The campaign was created around the idea of bringing historical events to life using new technologies, using the contemporary to make the past relevant; the characters blog and tweet the events of this day in 1940 as though they’d had access to iPhones and pcs and the like.

I’m almost ashamed to admit it’s the tech stuff that’s made these stories so real to me; I’ve heard eyewitness accounts from so many sources, but suddenly pieces fell into place. How very connected we are now, how very fortunate we are to live in a time when it’s both physically and culturally possible for us reach out to one another.

It’s helped me think differently about my grandfather, how terrifying he must have found it being tormented by dreams of explosions and screaming, feeling as though he was alone in the world with those horrors. My grandmother, keeping a stiff upper lip, knowing nothing, unable to imagine the things he’d seen. And my great aunt, tirelessly nursing the wounded, keeping cheerful and busy and waiting all the while for a letter delivered by boat, months late, to tell her he wasn’t coming back from the front.

I’m struck by the realisation of how very lonely I would find a life where my only possible human interactions were face to face; as much as I treasure solitude, it’s always a choice.

Even I draw the line at the idea of social media bringing about world peace, but maybe it’s not so outrageous. I found myself asking if World War Two could even have happened if there had been the possibility of sharing knowledge so widely and so fast? For example, Wikileaks genuinely seems to be affecting the direction of the war in Afghanistan, and a growing diversity of information sources certainly shifts popular opinion on the subject. Forgive my reducing something so large and complex to a dumb question, but can you remain in ignorance of the humanity of your fellow man when you’re connected to him, when you’ve seen what his house looks like, know you share a love of music or making people laugh? Is it simplistic to think that when we connect with something real and meaningful, constructs like nation and religion will begin to seem irrelevant?*

Language constraints and internet snark aside, could you really go to war with and be instructed to kill someone you follow on Twitter?  Could social technologies make conscientious objectors of us all?

Primo Levi said

Meditate che questo è stato Vi comando queste parole. Scolpitele nel vostro cuore
- Never forget that this has happened. Remember these words. Engrave them in your hearts.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. As part of the Day of Action, we’ve asked people to do one small thing to commemorate those heroes. This post is for everyone whose lives were touched by that war, with deepest gratitude and respect to those men and women who fought and suffered and died so that we could be free. And perhaps being a hero for a day will be the catalyst we need to become heroic every day.

*I know it is. But a girl can dream…

you know you are a dreamer…

31 Aug

I had a funny dream last night.

I know this is a socially unacceptable opening gambit (unless the dreamer reveals they dreamt of having sex with their interlocutor), but it illustrates a point, so be patient.

In my dream I was tasked with teaching an alien about the idiosyncrasies of modern life. It’s not clear whether this was an alien in a cultural or planetary sense, but in any case, I was explaining how various colloquialisms were used. At the point when the alien asked why there were two instances of the word “epic” to refer to a situation that seemed anything but, I woke up laughing.

epic comment thread is epic

I’m obsessive about language, the way it shapes our thinking, the way it transmits meaning first and a rich set of semiotic data second and the way it changes and evolves.

But when marketing people get a hold of it, bad things seem to happen. I think it’s time to say that we are losing touch with those with whom we seek to communicate.
Watching 4chan founder Christopher Poole painfully and painstakingly articulate the in-jokes and slang that make up the fabric of a world built in text,

“It’s a joke?”

“Yes.”

…I’m reminded of my own attempts to explain my own work to my parents and friends.  To say “I work in digital” is as meaningless as “I work in analogue,” unless you’re a watch maker.
We’re privileged to work in this industry, but we need to reconnect with reality: in the real world, barely anyone has read the Cluetrain Manifesto; Cory Doctorow is not famed for his bedtime stories;  people watch a funny video their mate sent them, not “a viral”.

You’re dreaming if you think your preoccupation with Insanity Wolf or Julia Gillard’s belatedly conversational use of Twitter is shared by your non- industry peers.  My non-digital industry friends are architects, film makers, journalists, teachers and rocket surgeons; they spend plenty of time on the internet for business and pleasure but online meta-subcultures pass them by, and what’s more, they’re not wishing they were in on the joke; they find it – brace yourselves, Digerati - faintly risible.

All tribes need their own language to define themselves, particularly those nascent groups who seek to firm up their identity; people who work in what’s ultimately still an emerging industry gain strength and a sense of belonging through shared slang.  So what?

So perhaps we need other ways to define ourselves: a code of conduct, agreed-upon professional standards of practice…? Just a thought.

By describing the work we do with jargon and obscure terminology, we’ll lose the ability to reach the people it’s our job to talk to.

By that I mean clients and punters alike: if we don’t talk human, we can’t talk to humans. And if we refer to our professional practice in arcane buzzwords, we can’t expect the true value to be understood.

A client said jokingly in a meeting recently “can we have all that Web 2.0 shit?” He was making an astute observation; piling on buzzwords for their own sake does no one any favours.  Flogging  mechanisms and tactics that aren’t relevant and won’t achieve specific objectives inevitably discredits the whole industry.  You can forgive people for thinking social media is a magic bullet when we obfuscate its meaning.  But it’s our job as communications professionals to create clarity.

At times it seems as though the whole industry is in the grip of a shared hallucination. Just because a conference your boss went to impressed upon her the need to have a corporate blog, a YouTube channel and a set of the finest vestments cut from fabric only very clever people can see doesn’t mean we shouldn’t challenge that. Your responsibility is to advise and consult on the best course of action for your clients’ needs.  Regardless of whether other chartered accountants give tax advice via Plurk, your professionalism requires you do what is needful and effective.

It’s time to wake up.  Let’s restore some perspective, stop using gibberish and call what we do what it is. We communicate. Do that. 
Better still, do it brilliantly.

Alternative ending: In the 1972 film Death Line, an inbred tribe of mutants roam the London underground croaking the last vestiges of human speech they’re capable of. “Mind the gap” they gasp in a hideous mockery of the words they had once mastered. Let’s not be those guys…

enlighten me (it’s the twenty-first century)

26 Aug

Every now and again I come across something so wise, so resonant and so much in harmony with my own beliefs but expressed with such eloquence that I’m left awestruck. This beautifully illustrated speech by the RSA’s Matthew Taylor is just such a thing, and I wanted to share it, along with those comments that stirred me most.

  • We need to live differently, and to live differently means to think differently, bring to bear powerful new insights into human nature.
  • We must resist our tendencies to make right and true that which is only familiar, and wrong or false that which is only strange
  • Fostering empathic capacity is just as important [as education] to achieving a world of citizens at peace with each other and with themselves
  • Rationality can tell us how to get from A to Z, but without ethical reasoning, we cannot discover where Z should be. What we aim for can be as important to our well-being as what we achieve
  • Creative people who want to make a difference have a million and one opportunities and distractions. To engage them means an ethic which is intolerant of negativity, rigid thinking and self promotion

In the words of the anthropologist Margaret Mead:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

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