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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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