One picture, many stories

I can hardly tell people to be curious, experiment and try new things if I don’t do it myself. So when my good friend Eraldo Mussa asked me to contribute a short story based on a stimulus of one photo and one line, I said yes.

I’ve always enjoyed stories. I think writing is an essential part of being in a strategic and creative discipline. But writing for brands is one thing, creating a piece of fiction is another. I had a few thoughts but just let a stream of consciousness come out. A gracious editor, Eraldo let me know the first draft was quite a lot longer than the other submissions.

Editing is like cutting your own hair. Hard. You start with one thing in mind but soon you’ve got a mohican because you couldn’t judge the scissors and reverted to the clippers. There’s 15 stories from various collaborators. All inspired by the single image and the one given line:

“Lofoten Islands, Monday 21 August, 10.35pm.”

The stories were released across three weeks. Mine is in the 3rd link.

… La foto delle Lofoten

… La foto delle Lofoten (II)

… la foto delle Lofoten (III)

You’ll also notice it’s in Italian so the original English is below. My thanks to Eraldo for a wonderful job on the translation. We had a very funny conversation about the role of ‘him’ and the protagonist. And of course the photo inspiration of Roberto Tosetti.

It’s been encouraging to receive some very lovely feedback. 

What’s your story? 

Original English version:

Lofoten Islands, Monday 21 August, 10.35 pm…

He always left the door open to hear the stillness. Smell the nothingness. He had appreciated this in the first days since they brought him here. He knew it would time to leave when the lights in the cabin on the other side would be turned on at night. Had he really been here for 44 days now? His reflection in the mirror showed improvement to the bruising and cuts on his face and body. It could not hide the emptiness in his eyes. The emptiness that had brought him here. The emptiness that arrived the moment she went. He turned away with disdain from the mirror. 

He walked out of the bathroom, through the sparse lounge area and onto the decking area, then slowly to the edge and sat down. He had got used to the coldness of the water. He had trained for extremes. It was the darkness that unsettled him. He could barely make out his reflection in the gloom. Just a little light from his cabin was enough to help him make out the shapes of the island around him. Tall, imposing, impenetrable, brooding. Characteristics they may have labelled him with. Not today. Never again. Not since…

It had been a single bullet wound to the head. Just a trickle of blood running down her face. Murdered on their wedding day. He had known this. He knew that he would seek revenge. He knew he wouldn’t rest until she was avenged. It had taken him three years. Three years of his life. The forged resignation from the Service. Three years of murder to gain trust in the shadows, leading him to him. He found his way into Damascus by way of a diplomatic route. The techs had called it something else but basically it was a bloody bag in a boot. He was left in the safe house of the rebels. He gave the bomb to them. They just had to put it in the room. He had been  in the building opposite with the rifle. He needed the blast to destroy the thick, bullet proof shield. Previously he had been a precision instrument. That day there was just hatred. It was this anger that made him miss the perimeter alarm. The red warning light was in his periphery. But his vision was blurred with tears as he watched him torn apart by the large calibre rifle ammunition.

He only remembered the blow to the back of the head. Waking up in a cell. Syrian security officials shouting at him, beating him, using machinery on him. He could still feel the drill point going into his shoulder even now. Three days of extreme interrogation. He told them why. He had nothing to protect. They didn’t believe him. Three days until the blast from the drone took the building apart. An expert detonation to take the top of the building but leave the underground intact. Then he was bundled into the back of a sedan. Another bloody bag. He woke days later in Switzerland. Tubes everywhere.  And then they arrived here by boat. They left him alone to recover. He’d got his revenge but he felt nothing. His life had ended with her.

He poured a glass of vodka. Drank it neat. He stood, momentarily paused. Then dived. As he entered the freezing cold and dark waters, he saw a light in his peripheral vision of the other cabin. 

Look up, look ahead

While the headlines have softened a little and the rhetoric is more of a ‘soft’ recession than the self-inflicted imminent implosion of the Truss/Kwarteng aftermath, the mood music out there is still not that upbeat. Brands are still wanting to spend less. Agencies still fighting to get their share of the even smaller pie.

With most looking at the immediacy of the situation and making the best of 2023, perhaps there is the opportunity to look ahead and plan now to ensure success beyond the immediate?

Admittedly that is easier said than done. The average CMO tenure in 2021/22 was at it’s lowest in years. An average of 40 months pushes thinking into the short-term to demonstrate immediate impact. Add to this the quarterly reporting to Wall Street is counter-intuitive to long-term thinking. Miss a quarter and the pressure intensifies even more. Having ‘enjoyed’ this approach while at Digitas many moons ago, the pressure to deliver quarterly forces your hand to the immediate and the tactical with long-term thinking largely sidelined. 

Rather than put all the energy and priority into the immediate, my focus would be to look a bit further ahead:

In-year immediacy. Your committed plan, your business as usual. And whether your guru of choice is Ritson, Binet & Field or Sharp, avoid the temptation to cut spend; the evidence is clear that spend cuts in downturns puts you in a very unfavourable position against brands who maintain or increase spend when the world returns to normal. 

What’s next? As strategic counsel to brands, this is where I would be spending most of my time. The immediate and next few months should be all set. This is about what comes next. Understanding and prioritising the unmet needs of consumers is the crux of this and there’s nothing better than getting out and talking to your consumers and seeing them interact with your category, brand and product. As marketers, we’ve all got lazy. The internet can provide so much at the speed of light. But often masks the true problems consumers face and the opportunities to deliver against those or innovate. The world has changed so much that what’s important to consumers now is often quite radically different to to what it was and what is likely set down in a few bullet points in a carefully curated consumer persona. We get so absorbed in our language of segmentation that we forget to go and talk to real people. One former client group were so obsessed with the labels and statistics that they had never actually seen customers ‘in the wild’ yet would argue ferociously about whether an idea would resonate more strongly with archetype X or Y. Even a cursory stalking of the relevant aisles or malls will furnish you with fresh insights. Especially if you are tasked with looking after multiple markets. The pharmacy world of Spain or Italy is so different to the UK that you cannot comprehend it from a desk in the UK.

Getting fully involved in qual groups to discover deeper insights rather than used as a crutch to support a new campaign. A media agency I once came across used to spend a vast amount of money planning and booking campaigns for an automotive client but had never driven the car, spoken to owners or visited dealerships. The temptation to deliver a plan based on economical programmatic when what was absolutely paramount was eyeballs to make the brand visible and give it mental availability in the poor performing physical availability of dealership coverage. Unilever used to mandate that their brand managers spend time every year with consumers with ethnographic visits. It’s still surprising that most brands maintain a peculiar two-way mirror of distance between themselves and the real consumers. This discovery investment (never a cost!) is paramount to prioritise where the unlocked value is for your brand. Then you can get into the ideation of what will it take to unlock that change and be set to tackle the following year with renewed vigour and build on your solid current year activity.

Longer-term bets and innovations. This is where you may want to push back if you’re coming under immediate pressure. Push out, but don’t bin. Ideally this will be populated by your discoveries from the above activity.

While the immediate is likely to be louder, quieten the noise and focus on looking ahead.

Main photo by Ian Taylor on Unsplash

Image of consumer groups from Team Eleven ‘consumer closeness’ session.

More room for thinking, less room for meeting.

Busy-ness is a curse. Best seen in your calendar bursting with back to back meetings. How many have a real purpose? How many even have an agenda attached to them? Does everybody invited even need to be there? The January meeting fest has begun and given me a headache.

In the US there are 55 million meetings. Per day. WTF! 55 million. And studies suggest over 50% of these are not focussed on anything of value. 

As Martha Lane-Fox said in a recent Times article,

“Knowingly wasting half your time seems a strange business decision.”

As the cold fronts of the economic downturn or shallow recession are here, shouldn’t we be making more of an effort to use people’s time wisely? 

And is there anything worse than a meeting invite that just says “catch-up”? Why? What’s the purpose? Should I be worried? What don’t I know? The mind spirals out of control and if you live on the edge of anxiety and stress as most people in advertising do, you start thinking more about what it could mean rather than what it actually does mean.

Most times it genuinely is just a check-in to make sure everything is OK.

I’ve been guilty of it myself but hopefully pre-empted with a conversation and defaulting to that as a subject because we default to lazy things when we’re busy.

But we can all be a little better every day. I’m not advocating to kill a catch-up because actually, catching up is vitally important to check the temperature, the stress levels and understand in a non-project related way how your team are doing. But does it need to be formalised as a meeting request?

Some, like Shopify, have eradicated meetings of more than two people which they claim will save over 76,000 hours in meetings. That may be the case but this broadside at meeting culture only works if you facilitate other mechanisms to debate and share.

IBM used to – I have no idea if they still do – limit meetings to 30 minutes. This is a drastic reduction to the default one hour that most people assume and indeed that bastard Outlook programme defaults too. 

In covid times, I noticed a subtle shift in people setting meetings to 45 or deliberately 55 minutes. Presumably in an effort to avoid their meeting overload of what ended up being a string of back to back meetings meaning you needed to take your video camera off and put yourself on mute to even manage a bathroom break such was the deluge of invites and expectation that everyone was available all of the time.

Shorter is, for the most part, better. Better still is having a clear idea of what you’re meeting about and what your outcomes are. Without this you might as well just roll up to any old meeting unprepared and wing it. Meetings are meant for agreement and outcomes, not general chit-chat.

Preparation is something Amazon do. You’ve most likely heard that Bezos the space avenger has banned PowerPoint and instead asks for people to prepare memos and spends the first part reading and then discussing. They also have the famous two pizza rule which is slightly weird as surely it depends how big the pizzas are and your appetite? Given that we can wolf down a large domino’s for one person you’re back to Shopify’s no more than two rule but with the added benefit of a pizza.

There’s undoubtedly a very simple way – be clear on what you are trying to do.

This avoids the generic ‘catch up’. If you just want to catch up, ask someone for a coffee or go for walk. Don’t set a meeting.

I’ve always liked this flowchart from NOBL on ‘do you really need a meeting?’ 

You can tailor it to your own organisation’s culture or your own behaviours but no, you don’t always need a meeting.

If you really do, be specific about it. I still recall and try to use the POST system that Diageo had and stuck to:

P – Purpose. What is the purpose of the meeting?

O – Outcome. What outcomes do we want to achieve as a result?

S – Structure. Is it a pre-read and discuss? Is it approving recommendations? Is it a workshop or brainstorm? 

T – Timing. Not just the timing of the meeting but the timing of the pre-read delivery and for the outcomes. The meeting timing is critical. You need to stick to it to avoid blathering on. This doesn’t mean you have to say ‘we’re short on time’ to try and rush people. Plan enough time to suit the P, O and S. Stick to it.

Pre-reads are essential. In our busy worlds, people are allegedly too busy to write them. The famous quote from Mark Twain is clear here.

“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

You need them. It will help ground people in what you’re trying to do, lay down the scenario. It avoids you having to spend the first part explaining to people. It also gets you good at writing. Writing is important. Articulating your thoughts and setting them out in a clear, accessible and concise way is a skill. You only get good at skills by practising. If you’re looking to develop in your career, one must have writing skills. Persuasion in written words is art. Set out ‘the task and the ask’. 

Even better, create it as a shared document so people can start populating their responses or questions in advance. It speeds up the whole process and quite often circumvents the need to meet at all because you also let the brains of the people you need input from percolate over the ask. We don’t respond well in the moment. It’s why brainstorms end up being group think rather than best think. We default to the loudest or most senior voice in the room. Creatives typically hate brainstorms because they like to think on a problem. Going to the pub for 3 hours and playing pool seemed like they were being lazy bastards. Actually they’re letting their minds wander. And then KAPOW! The idea hits. It may come quickly or in a few days. Rarely is it in 20 seconds on a post it note in the boardroom.

In summary, meetings can be good but you need to put the effort in. 

More room for thinking, less room for meeting.

Photo credit

From driveway envy to driveway curiosity

We’ve been doing a bit of consultancy work into the high net worth (HNWI) and the ultra HNWIs in the second half of this year. One of the areas that always comes up is ownership and role of cars. It used to be quite easy, but change is happening fast. Here’s some thoughts. Oh and as an added bonus, I popped the same question into the ChatGPT AI thingy that’s got everyone excited. Overly it would seem but you may prefer the artificial version.

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From driveway envy to driveway curiosity.
The supercar market in 2023 and beyond.

The supercar market, despite the everyday headlines of doom and gloom on inflation and mortgage rates, is largely shielded due to the HNWI wealth. But the market has been, and will continue to evolve.

The obvious change is the forced acceleration of electrification. Most of the major marques are already either in hybrid or pure electric, with the effect that the price tags of high end “mass cars” are now encroaching on the “entry level” of the super cars. A Porsche Taycan, fully spec’d is nudging up the Ferrari Roma. The Mercedes EQS is the wrong or right side of €100,000 dependent on your wallet size. Even the new Polestar 3 announced recently is tagged at nearly €100,000. An eye-watering amount for a brand that was, until lately, the performance off-shoot of Volvo. And the new EX90 all-electric version of the Volvo’s flagship XC90 is pegged at €100,000.

The pressure from below to traditional supercar marques is also being felt sideways, new entrants are muscling in based on EV pure plays. Brands such as Rivian, Fisker and Aehra (and a list that is getting longer by the week) don’t have the heritage (or as Fisker may be hoping, short memories). But Tesla have paved the way and done the hard yards here; you don’t need heritage if you can compete on IWOOT/FOMO fever with Ludicrous Mode and the like. As much about showing off with the latest gadget than the heritage and prestige. And of course, in Tesla’s case, a robust and well-connected charging network to take away the range reality oft-perceived as range anxiety in the minds of drivers not yet ready to commit.

A stocky slab of non-slippery bodywork with an elephant-size stomp on the scales would appear to be the antithesis of the supercar territory.

But perhaps a bigger shift than EV new entrants is the widening of the audience from the traditional male audience who want the purist 2-seat, rear wheel drive super car. The APAC and Middle East markets have a strong affinity with SUVs and buy them in droves. North America is the home of bigger is better and they just love their home grown SRTs and the like. But the SUV explosion is fired by females and families. A stocky slab of non-slippery bodywork with an elephant-size stomp on the scales would appear to be the antithesis of the supercar territory. But the phenomenal rise of SUVs in mass has broken the dam. Nissan’s Qashqai started the movement and brands up the premium ladder quickly took notice; the Cayenne is now Porsche’s highest volume selling vehicle.

Lamborghini’s Urus is essentially an Audi with Lambo styling, but this did the dual trick for Bologna’s finest: it sorted out their poor reliability perception with a thick slice of Vorspung Durch Technik and made the Urus appealing to females and families who wanted a touch of prestige, luxury and performance as well as being able to lug all the stuff a family, even a very wealthy one, needs. It also makes a stereotypical appearance in the car park of Arsenal FC in their Amazon Prime ‘All or Nothing’ series. One can question whether that helps or hinders the brand in as much the same way as Aston Martin’s foray into a partnership with Stormzy was loved and loathed in equal measure. The trend spotters applauding the unconventional move, the establishment raising an overgrown eyebrow in bemusement.

Aston Martin’s DBX borrows heavily from Mercedes-Benz to assuage their own glut of reliability issues. There’s only so much Daniel Craig can do on the big screen. Even at the luxury end, Rolls Royce and Bentley SUVs are now no longer a surprise on the streets on Chelsea and Downtown Miami. They just are.

Ferrari have entered the SUV territory as well as the entry level supercar meaning their brand exclusivity may be eroded to the purists, but this just seems to have fueled desire. Speaking to Ferrari dealers, the announcement of the Purosangue SUV (pure blood – the name evokes performance rather than functional packing space) and the Roma have brought in more serious prospects than F1 does on a race weekend. But they also acknowledge that 75 years of pure-bred race heritage plays into the mystique of the brand, and they claim they are fully sold out for at least the next two years, and they feel emboldened to continue to act in a detached way. “People come to Ferrari, not the other way around.” A sense of the brand being bigger than the driver.

“People come to Ferrari, not the other way around”

All of this means that the dynamics of the game are changing. Where you used to buy a supercar perhaps to show off your wealth, the dual combination of societal pressures – particularly in China and Russia of dialling down external shows of wealth – and also the massively increased competition for your increasingly earned rather than inherited wealth. There’s also the role that electrification plays. Even the Top Gear presenters enjoying the anonymity of a Ferrari 296 GTB in pure electric mode. And effectively sounding the death knell for top-speed and pure acceleration of ICE models as the Rimac Nivera gave a comically large head-start to a Lamborghini and trounced it.

The rise of the SUVs and the new entrants give the HNWI audience more choice than ever and with that comes more opportunities to express their individuality more than ever. Traditional brands have relied for so long on people belonging to their tribes, bound by history, heritage and a collective sense of belonging. The emotions of belonging to a tribe are incredibly strong. But temptation is just around the corner. Temptation in different shapes and with different names. Especially if, as a manufacturer, you are only just entering the SUV category, you’re already some way behind the curve.

And electrification brings a different level of headache: software reliability. Where brands that have not been, shall we say, renowned for reliability in the past, the skateboard-style approach to EV production puts ever more reliance on the software over the bits that explode and hum and thwang beneath the bonnet. The bastion of uber-reliability, VW is suffering a lot of software issues on their much-vaunted ID range and McLaren’s Artura was delayed for nearly two years due to software issues. The battleground may be moving into technology reassurance against the ‘will it start on a cold morning in November’ hope. It’s a hugely exciting time of change in the automotive industry but whether start-up or heritage brand, mental and physical availability must remain a priority in understanding where to reach the HNWI audience and perhaps turn driveway envy into driveway curiosity. 

Image credits:

Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash , photo by Krish Parmar on Unsplash 

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And here’s the ChatGPT version:

Bid on a bonkers NFT of me as coffee table to raise money in memory of David Amstel

We shot me as coffee table as part of our new agency film. All a bit of daft agency type fun. I shared it a week or so ago and got some fun responses. My good friend Jennifer said I should do a limited calendar run. Which made me laugh out loud. And then the laugh made me think of a better idea. My former colleague, David Amstel, passed away suddenly earlier this year. David had the most terrific and booming laugh. He’d laugh at this bonkers thought: release it as a one-off NFT and all proceeds will go to the charities nominated in David’s memory. I’m laughing and crying writing this.

You can bid here

I suspect you’ll have to set up some web 3 wallet malarkey and Google is your friend here or try this link . 

My huge thanks to David’s partner, Andrew for letting me do this bonkers thing. And to Jennifer for the genesis and also the title of this bonkers piece of art.

If you didn’t know David, you can read this wonderful obituary in Campaign.

The charities this will benefit if anyone is crazy enough to jump the the web 3 hoops and bid:

Marie Curie Hospice, Hampstead in recognition of the excellent care they gave to David via https://lnkd.in/eWNH2FTr

Albert Kennedy Trust, a charity close to David’s heart via https://lnkd.in/eEJ8z-Fj

Spread the word all you web 3 NFT crazy loons. Bid. As Bob Geldof would say, give us your f***ing money.

A word of caution, I started it at 0.1 web coinage currency thing as that equated to $12 rather than my first attempt which would have been a steep entry price of over $1200. I don’t understand this stuff but hey, it’s for fun. It would make David laugh. Put a smile on some people’s faces too.

experiments in AI | part 1

This may be a short set of experiments but nonetheless I’ve always espoused that to understand something you should dive in and give it a go. Although I’m still resisting TikTok. I did a little update around Lancia this week and I had plugged some prompts into MidJourney: Italian, elegance, future, automotive, fashion. Attributes that are associated with Lancia but obviously not some of the super secret words and phrases in their brand docs. Midjourney came up with the imagery above. It’s OK. Feels a bit 1950’s view of the future.

Below is where the real world is headed.

Admittedly I didn’t tinker with the results and honestly I find the interface quite exhausting to look at so this series of experiments may be short-lived but I have seen some impressive mood boards created if you have the patience.

the new code of elegance

My Dad had a Lancia in the 70s. It could have been a Fulvia. I’m not completely sure. What I do know is that it was dark green and that he wrapped it around a lamp post on an icy road. My Mum banned him from getting another – and any other car that was green – and so began a steady stream of sensible saloon cars and motorway cruisers. A trail of Ford’s, Vauxhall’s, Rover, Mazda and for one fleetingly exciting time, a Saab 9-5 that brought the excitement of the dimmable dashboard that made you feel like you were the fighter pilot in their telly ads. He ended up pranging that too. But the Lancia was the only one that kept coming up in conversation. Definitely not the Ford Scorpio. Why? Because it was different. Because it looked great. And it made you feel great. Of course back then, that feeling was often tempered with reliability issues that have stuck with most Italian marques since then. 

I had quite forgotten about this until I came across Lancia again several years back. I worked on the Chrysler launch into the UK which was a soup of Chrysler and Lancia vehicles thrown together with Chrysler badges to create an instant range. It may have worked but it also seemed a little bit like it wouldn’t. A US-style approach that fitted the iconic 300C and the bad ass Grand Voyager but never quite fitted the chic city style of the Ypsilon or the Delta. 

I’ve been involved in Lancia on and off with my Italian colleagues ever since. Dabbling in ideas, subtly changing script copy, a few workshops here and there. Discovering the history and story, understanding more about the myth and the legend. Half-understanding Italian language only zoom calls. Always hoping that Lancia would one day break out of the one model, one country space it found itself in. 

Enter Stellantis. A new energy and a new future vision. I don’t claim to know Luca (Lancia’s CEO) but I’ve been in meetings and calls and see a man driven to bring Lancia back and his focus and energy are infectious. But there is also the strong desire to keep Lancia firmly rooted in what it stands for. Not just another skateboard-platform brand but a true Lancia. With a full line-up. And of course, leaning into the EV future. Electrification makes sense for Lancia. Because electrification brings a sense of elegance to driving. For the past 18 months or so there’s been a huge amount of work by everyone connected with Lancia. A few drops of brand films have teased and excited but earlier this month the most daring reveal of the new Lancia dropped. I’m proud to have played a very small part with my colleagues and friends at Armando Testa and I look forward to seeing Lancia grow. Elegantly of course. Saluti Eraldo, Raffa, Federica and Jose. 

Lancia. The new code of elegance.

The full reveal from the day:

Growth outlook: Winter is coming. Should I get my coat?

About this time of year everyone gets their crystal balls out and we all know most of it is made up and hoping rather than knowing. But what feels different this year is that universally every agency person has the same level of optimism around new business. And that level is pretty bloody low. Sitting in on the last AAR Town Hall of the year, it was quite sobering that everyone from the behemoth network to the small agency had similar experiences and feelings about the task ahead. 

The themes are familiar, consolidation of rosters, less VC money so less start up pitches (the driver of the new bus scene for a few years now), brands wanting to work smarter, not larger (e.g. less money to spend). Number of pitches likely to continue go down, combined with levels of overall ad spend declining (still technically in growth but at least 1/3 lopped off the levels expected earlier in the year) and don’t get me started on the Government own goal advice telling business to cut back on marketing spend.

In a word, 2023 will be ‘meh!’

That’s a pretty grim outlook for an agency owner as we turn seven and look to continue to build and grow. 

But then a chink of light in the gloom. Against this and the doom and gloom economic backdrop, one of the key outtakes from the Town Hall was that CMOs are apparently crying out for ammo to help them build their case against the noise of cost reduction and help to justify ROI, growth targets and cost management.

Well, hello there. You need ammo? We got it.

At a recent webinar event we ran, our strategy director Jo Vaughan provided some personal experience in her years as a Brand Director at P&G about how they handled downturns. Jo is probably better placed than most to talk from experience of having tried every which way to keep brands growing again economic uncertainty. So she knows her onions. If you need ammo, you should talk to Jo. 

The full talk can be found on the link below but you’ll find 13 and half minutes from c. 6m30 well worth your while.

https://vimeo.com/760314378

If you need more, go google Mark Ritson or Binet & Field’s the Long and Short of it.  Oh and here’s a recent example where AirBNB switched from a focus on performance marketing into brand building and it’s working.

So Winter is coming. But I’ll be trying to stay warm with Jo’s thoughts. Or if it all goes wrong I’ll have to burn my marketing books to keep warm.

Image created by MidJourney because everyone seems to be at it so why not? Prompts: 2023, economics, gloom, depression, city

we don’t like clients

We had a meeting last week. We were hosting, not actually part of the meeting. Just lending the Bank of Brilliant Ideas to a client to have an off-site. Much coffee and croissants prepped, we also gave each person our new notebook that has ‘we don’t like clients’ on it. It had the effect we wanted. “What?” “Why?” So here’s why…

We started with a simple premise.
We’ll be the best team you ever worked with.
To do that we need the best people.
People that care.
Because it means more when you give a f***.
Service over servility.
An honest no over an easy yes.
To treat those who pay your bills as if they were one of us.
Never one of ‘them’.
We won’t baffle with bullsh*t.
And it’s why we spend your money like it’s our own.
Giving best advice even if we don’t benefit.
It’s why we don’t like clients.
We prefer a team.

This is Team Eleven.
Welcome to Teamwork.

it’s a fantasy world full of deviants…

Way back in 2006, there was a thing called Second Life. And web 2.0. And every agency person and marketer I knew was falling over themselves to do something. Anything! I recall many presentations explaining what it was all about and trying to act like I knew what I was talking about while being bemused at wandering around empty brand palaces and finding the only places full of people were typically in the ‘mature’ areas.

Fast forward to 2022 and the noise is familiar. Experts in the Metaverse are among us. Brands are spunking huge amounts on everything from NFTs to buying land in new places. And everybody has an opinion and at the same time nobody seems to know WTF it still is.

I was doing some clearing out of old tech, hard drives etc. and came across a few decks about web 2.0 and Second Life. You could drop these into a conversation today no?

The first is from Greg Verdino who was leading the charge in Digitas at the time.

Plus ca change. And this lovely quote from Chris Clarke, then ECD at Digitas in the UK.

Deviants. Fantasy. Funny for sure. But the point is still relevant. Don’t replicate the same stuff in gaming/NFT/Minecraft etc. that you would do in everyday life.