This photo was taken almost a year ago. A lot has happened since then – maybe I’ll get to that in time – but it feels the right time to start back on getting things right again.
A few years back, I had a chat with a bloke in a sauna at the David Lloyd club. I was a member there while rehabilitating from knee surgery. Normally I’d quite like to sit in there for a few minutes after exercising to unwind and breathe. Acknowledging anybody in there but largely trying to keep myself to myself. One day a large chap came in and started talking. Nice chap, Icelandic if I recall. We started talking about things and ended up sharing why I was doing the exercises I was doing. He had noticed my weird knee workouts. He then said to me:
“What’s the most important thing in your life?”
Instinctively I said, my family. He said, imagine this in a quasi-Shwarzennegger accent,
“Wrong!”
He continued.
“YOU are the most important thing. YOU! If you put yourself under others, you become miserable. If you are happy, everybody else will be happy. Because you’re happier, you find time for everyone else. If you’re not happy. Well…
You need to put yourself top of the pyramid. That doesn’t mean you exclude others or only think of yourself. Get yourself right and everything flows from that.”
I never saw him again.
But it’s stuck with me ever since. But as always, things stick around, notes get written, ideas had but a lot stays in the proverbial drawer because life happens.
I started to re-evaluate myself last year. I’d seen Chris Barez-Brown at Silicon Beach before and have enjoyed his thinking and approach ever since. I bought Upping Your Elvis when it came out. I started to do the hacks. They started to make a difference. I realised I was putting myself first. I was feeling healthier and happier.
One of the key things was understanding my own energy rather than focussing on trying to lift others. I needed to learn the rhythms of my own energy. Chris sets out a simple task:
Spend a week noting your energy levels every hour.
Score this 1-10.
Notice the patterns.
Then design your life around these patterns. e.g. Don’t put heavy meetings when you’re low on energy.
The pattern is really clear for me. Green denotes high energy which is from waking to mid-morning say 11am. I then start to tail off and drop over lunch. A bit of a mid afternoon boost and then done.
I started to put this into practice. It made a tremendous difference. Focus and high effort tasks in the morning. Then have a low energy clean up of email/Slack versus the constant bombardment and distraction. Then save lower energy tasks for later in the day.
It’s quite alarming how much of my life has been designed to be green all the time. The always-on, constant pressure of the advertising business and life. Thow in running your own business and you realise you are not a machine. It’s easy to do 80+hr weeks when you’re in your 20s. But is it the most sensible? Part of it was presenteeism for sure but it was also full of work. Hard work. Enjoyable work. Mostly. But that’s not sustainable. It’s also increasingly getting lower returns because nobody can sustain that level for years. It’s also not putting yourself top of the pyramid and understanding how to get the best out of yourself.
At least by understanding my own rhythms I can attempt to ride the pattern better. Tune things to fit me rather than the other way around.
Time to start again. Now where’s the ladder to get to the top of that pyramid?
Cleaning up my old notes recently, I found this from c. 2016/7 and thought it deserved an airing and quite poignant reading this today given what’s happened the last few months in my own life. I wrote it verbatim after a day out with the delivery drivers as a means of me processing the information of the day. It helped us shape our pitch thinking. Maybe more to follow…
//
Spending time with the people who buy is the best way to really understand them. Ethnography. Immersion. Call it what you will. It can illuminate in ways that you just cannot get from a powerpoint deck or the sometimes dubious world of the focus group.
We have just started working with Wiltshire Farm Foods and I was to spend a day visiting customers. My business partners worked with them previously. I knew little save for the effect of osmosis by working with them in the same company previous, but went into the day shedding any preconceptions or thought processes. I started the day I would spend accompanying Mark, the delivery driver, dumb as Dan Wieden calls it. Eyes wide open, listening, learning, asking.
At 7.30am on a cold October morning, the freezer was being unloaded ready for the delivery vans to be loaded. Last rounds in first, first in last. Accommodating late meal requests from people who miss the deadline and making adjustments to the rounds. Already understanding that the drivers have a strong knowledge of and relationship with many of the customers.
“Mrs James is always ringing up late. Bless her, the girls upstairs expect it now.”
The day ahead would be 48 deliveries, approximately 10 of those first-timers and would take from 8.30am to approximately 2pm. No sat nav needed as Mark, who has been with Wiltshire for over 9 years now, starting as a picker in the freezer and working his way up to an Operations role which also encompassed driving.
The round we were going out on was not Mark’s, but Ed’s. Ed was on holiday. But you’d never really know it. Mark covers Ed’s round when he is away and also used to deliver in this area previously. His recall of the people he was delivering to and their situations was incredible. Almost as incredible as his in-built mental sat nav of the area as we weaved down country lanes to the exact location of people. Both old and new.
It became clear in our conversations in the van that this is not just a job. There’s a calling here too. But also a tension between the humanitarian caring and the operations of a business that while providing a service, has a need to be efficient and profitable. 1 minute talking to customers is 48 minutes added to the day. Get chatting to one person for a good 20 minutes and then you’re explaining to others that follow why you’re a little late and it all adds up. This franchise tends to leave the judgement to the drivers. All of whom have been doing this at least 2 years, mostly all over 8. As Mark said, you get good at being able to exit politely without causing offence, ‘must get on’ etc.
I saw 48 elderly people that day. I’m not sure what the correct term is; elderly, pensioners, senior citizens – i’m sure I will learn this. Three couples, mainly singles. mainly women. All at different stages of life, care, illness, happiness and outlook on life.
These things struck me the most:
Neatness is a sign of good health.
Most people I saw were incredibly house proud. It must be a generational thing. Beds made in such pristine fashion it looked like they’d never been slept in. Hair done and gentlemen clean shaven, wearing cardigans and ties. Must look presentable. The ornaments arranged just so. The crocheted head rest covers on the sofa aligned properly. The kitchen clean, everything put away. These were the people that looked the healthiest and seemed to have the most positive outlook on life.
Untidy is the opposite.
The people who were not – or not able – to look after themselves as well also seemed to have plummeting health. Mr. G in his caravan in the farm looked like he’d been on a bender for several days and a hurricane had been in the caravan. Mark told me it was a good day because he had pants on and there were no chickens in the caravan. His cough was awful. Terrible. Like the soot falling from the chimney as my grandmother used to say. He really should be in hospital. But Mark said he – and others – have signed a form to refuse ambulance care to the hospital. A futile stance of denial as the body weakens and the mind cannot comprehend or does not want to. A last stiff upper lip moment. But to what end? To wheeze and choke continually in a filthy, cold caravan?
Where Mr. G was at one end of the spectrum, you could see the untidiness in others too. One of the first ladies we visited had a garden so overgrown that she basically said she’d given up. You could see her hoarding newspapers, free supplements, post, washing up, rubbish in the kitchen. The mannerisms and tone of someone who knows they are moving to the last stages of their life. And eyes raw from the effects of macular degeneration that will cruelly deprive her of vision in these last years.
Christmas
With one exception, the reaction to the Christmas flyer was a negative one. Not for the food – they like the food. Love it. But the notion of Christmas, a reminder of another year. Most also deployed the gallows humour of ‘If i make it to Christmas this year…”
Christmas is a time of families, celebration, joy. When you look at these people, generally it seems they have little family and little visits by them, not many things to celebrate, little joy and while they have all the time in the world in the day, they fear they have little time at all. Christmas becomes a reminder of the good times they used to have. Or a day when they will, figuratively or literally, wheeled in and then almost as quickly wheeled out again. Or left to ‘celebrate’ on their own.
Loneliness
For some, Mark was the first person they had seen in days. I joined Mark on a Tuesday, one person had not seen a living soul after Friday evening the week before. The isolation must be crushing. Only the radio and the television for companionship. Jigsaw puzzles half-finished. The ones still with their partners, their soul mates – the lucky ones. Even when you see that partner fading before your eyes. Or unable to recognise your face or the room you have spent countless years in. At least there is somebody to talk to. The loneliness seemed to manifest in two ways: those that were so happy to see someone and those that made you feel quite unwelcome with barely a grunt of recognition. One lady greeted Mark with outstretched arms and went if for a full embrace. #awkward.
Routine
Routine is important. The daily routine is largely the same. But the Wiltshire delivery is timed. They expect it. They sit waiting, peering from behind the net curtains for the white van with the delicious meal on the side. Garages left open at the allocated time. Or a little teasing if you are ‘late’. The 5 – 10 minutes is a fleeting moment in a day of 48 deliveries but a significant moment when there is little of other significance happening.
Routine of who they see is also important. The reassurance of seeing the same face every week. The familiar interplay of welcome, update, au revoir and occasionally banter. Every single one of the repeat customers asked where Ed/Eddy was despite him telling them he was going to be on holiday for two weeks.
Tea
If there is one routine and constant among every person it is tea. No matter the health, outlook, spritely-ness or curmudgeon, always tea. Always in a china cup, with saucer and spoon for sugar. And lots of it.
Acceptance
In my life I have largely been fortunate to avoid the emotions of seeing a slow death. The cruelty of the ageing process. My paternal grandparents died when I was relatively young and I recall only seeing my mother’s mother in her hospital bed in Salisbury Hospital after one more fall that broke her hip and leg. At under 5 feet she was always a small woman but she looked even more tiny. Shrunken, frail, skeletal in that hospital bed. Doll-like porcelain, thin skin and white hair that seemed to glisten even in the yellowing fluorescence. I recall holding her hand and just saying ‘I love you’. She couldn’t answer back. That was the last time I saw her. My parents somehow managed to shield my grandfather’s demise into dementia that brought much humour with him stuffing tea towels and money down the toilet to surprising force and physical violence from a septuagenarian that ended with him in a secure nursing home. I am just starting to see the first elements of ageing with my mother and perversely feel fortunate that my father had a sudden, unexpected heart attack thus avoiding this phase of life. Brought more into focus by his best friend now suffering the effects of a stroke that was not able to be treated within the crucial 4 hours. While his fight continues, I was faced with some whose fight is fought.
Of Mrs. K who was permanently connected to gas. Who had accepted that there was nothing more that could be done for her, was allowed home from hospital and was literally waiting to not wake up one day. She accepted it with good grace but it was highly emotional. For Mark, this is a daily occurrence and he rationalised it by saying you need to have a level of emotional detachment, to be professional. But admitted that it’s difficult to know that you go to a room in retirement home knowing that someone you used to deliver food to lived there before but has passed away. Or when the orders stop coming in.
Failure
The body fails as it ages. The zimmer frames help movement but the fingers and thumbs just don’t work with the same level of dexterity that they used to. Eyes fail, hearing fails. There was a lovey Fawlty Towers moment when we entered one room to find an elderly lady staring at us open mouthed with a slightly alarmed look as Mark literally bellowed at her, pointing at his badge and showing the food. At which point she put her hearing aid in and normality resumed.
Falling down is seemingly par of the course too with one chap sporting a cut and an oversize plaster above his right eye that was more suited to a city centre A&E department after a Friday night. In a pronounced Dorset accent, he told us that he had lost about 4 stone in the last month as he had an emergency operation that without it, he would be dead within a week and with it, he only had a 50/50 chance of survival. He took the surgery route and is now facing a daily battle. Weakened by the brutal surgery, his clothes are several sizes too big and he has been left frail and gaunt; leading to the fall in his driveway where skull met pavement. But even with this setbacks, he had a great sense of humour and positivity. You wanted to spend time with him, help him, go beyond. Go to the local charity shop and buy a medium suit for him rather than the extra large that now swamped him in a tragic-comedic way.
Triggers
It is moments like this that trigger the need for Wiltshire Farm Foods. Needing the benefits either because of ill health, being unable to cook properly or being advised by healthcare professionals or more often it seems, by family who know that supermarket ready meals are nutritional poor. Reluctance or even refusal is a common starting point – “I don’t need that, I can look after myself”… another refusal to admit that help may be required. But it’s a help that is not intrusive or demeaning. A help that still enables independence. Perhaps Wiltshire also signifies some level of hope too?
Mark said that the ‘Ronnie’ campaign brought in a good 15 plus newcomers every day. ‘Fern’ has also increased the number of customers but they are noticeably younger; trying the product a few times maybe mentally preparing themselves and then they go away for a bit, to return then they need it.
Daughters
The main instigator in persuading the customer to try Wiltshire is typically the daughter. or even the daughter in law. It’s very rare the conversation includes the son. “Because we’re all shit” as Mark elegantly put it. We’re just repressed when it comes to emotions and try not to get involved but likely feel terrible guilt but also tremendous relief that your sister or wife or other close female relative has taken the leading role. The caring gene is stronger in the female; or at least they have the gumption to do something.
Downsizing
A strange rite of passage where we spend large periods of life aiming for bigger homes only to feel the are too big when we get old and downsize to make it manageable. Desiring the bungalow because you can no longer go upstairs. Or there is the ‘home.’ One of the surprising but obvious in hindsight requirements of downsizing is space. Particularly space for food. Where we enjoy or full size larder fridges and matching freezers, the downsized elderly often have a small fridge, with even smaller freezer compartment. Consequently they cannot store a large amount of food. And then suddenly the weekly Wiltshire Farm Foods delivery makes sense. I’m sure they may like to bulk order, and some with their own homes and larger freezers do, but for most the weekly delivery is a necessity because of space. Plus it also fosters the regularity of human connection and reinforces the personal nature of the brand.
Trust
I was truly amazed at the levels of trust. Knocking and opening doors and walking in. Leaving food in freezers. Cheques completely blank save for a signature. I was conflicted with this. On the one hand it’s a sign that there is complete trust with this brand. On the other, an openness that could leave these people open to other less scrupulous people. I had assumed there would be Fort Knox level security in retirement flats only to see you just need to press the trade buzzer and you’re in, straight into the corridors and able to open most doors with no effort.
Recognition
One thing that felt could be beneficial to help with the above and the diminishing mental faculty could be personalised photos of drivers and expected delivery times. Information that reminds the customer who their driver is, what their name is, what they look like and what day and time they come. And a space for updating with a temporary change to accommodate for holidays.
Beige
Along with tea, there was another constant. Beige. And many variations thereof. Carpets, furniture, clothing, ambience. Beige. A colour that is both staunchly stoic, quiet, formal and informal all at the same time, classic and reserved. A little like our customers.
I left feeling illuminated, humbled but also very emotionally challenged. I think I’m starting to understand a little more. One trip doesn’t make me an expert. But it’s opened my eyes to the situations, the people and the challenges.
//
Eventually we pitched, won, wrote, directed and produced with the team at Kream a new direction for the brand, away from celebrity endorsements and casting real people for four 30s DRTV commercials that captured their love of good food and the love of life. We called it ‘Good Mood Food’. It reversed the sales decline and set Wiltshire Farm Foods on to the trajectory of success they still enjoy today.
It seems in our world, decks have become our currency. It used to be the black and white Art Director scamp was the most revered ‘product’ in an agency and in meetings. Today it seems it’s the deck. Whether that’s right or wrong is another thought for another day.
I work in Keynote because I have become more familiar and comfortable with it. I dabble in Google Slides as it’s easier to share across multiple people and always works when it comes to online meetings. I have avoided PowerPoint for some time. But you know what, I think I may have come back to love it. Those who know me will be horrified by this.
We’ve been working with a great group of people at Presented for some client presentations to add some extra pizazz and when I had the opportunity to speak at the PAGB Digital Week last month, I knew that our template and my skills were just going to look flat. I wanted to lift our presentation, I really wish I had time and the skills and the balls to do a pre-recorded film but this came pretty close.
Sometimes the temptation is always to just jump straight into Keynote but having had the outline idea, it started here on Post Its. Still by far the best way to distill your thinking, organise the flow, question what you’re saying and why. It also forces you very early to think of the key messages, not the long-form.
Only when I was reasonably comfy with it did it move into Google Slides. No design, why waste time with that when I totally trust the team at Presented? Key messages with annotations of what I was thinking to bring the slide to life. And then after we’d tossed it about internally between a few of us, I let the team at Presented get to it. I think I made two small adjustments to the final version they sent. In then end I hid about four of the slides as when rehearsing they were a bit superfluous and took too long for the time I had. The end result is really impressive – check out the video below to see all the animations. Yes, this is all PowerPoint. I may have to dive into PowerPoint again. Let me know what you think?
I can’t show you the final presentation in full because of client confidential information but here is a write up.
And always nice to get some feedback from a client who was in the audience:
I thought it was a great presentation! Well done, really! It was informative for attendees, with hands-on concrete information – and at the same time it was a really nice advertising moment for Team 11. 😊 You came across as very professional, knowledgeable, and with a great track record. I know that if I didn’t have you already as my global agency, I would definitely have contacted you guys when “shopping around” for an agency that can support me with me digital strategy and activation.
Link to the Presented team’s Linked In post about this project.
In our always-on world, taking time out for you and your family is increasingly hard. It’s important to set the tone. Not being plugged in to email, Teams and Slack all week, not feeling the need to just “check-in”. Just to let go. I think you forget just how draining this past year or so has been and how much you really need to just stop and unplug. With many thanks to my team for giving me the space I probably didn’t realise I needed as much as I did last week.
Photo is looking out from Totland Bay on the Isle of Wight.
I met Dave a couple of years ago when I had booked to go on the Spark.me conference on a whim. It was in Montenegro. I didn’t know what to expect but it was great for a number of reasons. I came away inspired, enthused and excited. One of the stand-outs was the working sessions with Dave who introduced us to his way of generating ideas and debunking a lot of myths. You can read my thoughts on it at the time here.
But you can also see that I couldn’t quite remember as the diagram of aiming for the non-obvious is wrong. Always aim for upper right, not bottom right! Admittedly, I was doing all of that late at night after a full day, after quite a few drinks and trying to recall. Dave talks fast… I bought Dave’s book… I got distracted by life…
So, fast forward to this year and all the same kind of feelings were hitting. A need to recast the net to find some inspiration. Serendipitously, Dave’s course popped up – a course he was doing with Shama Rahman on innovation. Lockdown had kicked in, I was seeing lots of people taking advantage of up-skilling and while humbled that we were busy (insanely busy it turned out) while others were – and still are – being furloughed or worse, I wondered how I could take advantage of the sudden stop in commuting time or business travel time to get some of that inspiration.
It turned out to be the best investment in time. An hour or more every day for 5 days of creative thinking to unblock.
And here’s that same diagram in the correct manner:
“A mixture of inspiration and personal business therapy that could be summed up by re-booting the way you think by unlearning the way you currently think. The blend of creative thinking, neuroscience primers and actionable exercises that get you out of the comfort zone we all find ourselves in equips you with strategies and tools to push you into more creative and innovative thinking.”
This is what I wrote after the course. I have tons of notes. 30 plus pages in my Google Drive. All of it gold. I even did the exercises at the end of every session. This is something I haven’t done for ages. It felt great to let loose and explore away from the day to day but clearly seeing where you could apply the principles.
I then went on a weird kind of Dave Birss-a-thon. I couldn’t get enough of Dave. I read his book. Twice. It also makes a great mouse mat and while that may seem a little weird, it’s a good reminder to follow his principles. I then took every Dave course on Linked In.
What I really enjoyed was they cement and build on the book and the course. If, like me, you find yourself having tons of ideas but procrastinating on them (yes, it is six months since the course and I’m only writing this now), then this combo of reading and listening/watching Dave really helps.
I’ve become a bit of a fan boy. Not in a weird, stalking way. But a tiny little Dave head pops up in my brain when thinking about problems. Dave has been a little voice that keeps saying:
“What’s the judging criteria?”
“Aim for the non-obvious”
“No, you have to give it the time and the status otherwise you’ll just get the uninformed first thoughts”
And obviously I do hear it in Dave’s distinctive voice.
We’ve all had to pivot in this uncertain world but Dave’s remote workshop course on Linked In is really the only place you need to look if you’re wondering how to do a good workshop over the Zoom airwaves. I feel fortunate to have participated in his online course early on in-person, it added some invaluable real life/live experience that assisted us as we moved our highly successful workshops into the tiny box of a computer screen.
Do yourself a favour, spend some time and money watching Dave’s courses. Buy his book. And join me in hearing Dave whisper in your head.
Thanks Dave for spending the time talking to me about my own personal situations and for giving me some clarity. It meant a lot at the time. It still means a lot. Thank you.
I should point out Dave hasn’t paid me. He once did get me a beer in Montenegro but I’m pretty sure it was still a free bar at that point in the evening.
Gin and football. Not necessarily two things you would put together. Nonetheless I found myself experiencing them in a very different way this Bank Holiday weekend.
Gin has had a massive resurgence in recent years. Long-lamented for being ‘mother’s ruin’, the rise in all things artisan and some audacious flavour combinations has seen the gin category rise some +20% while vodka and whiskey flat line. The small, craft distillery has taken on the corporate giants and is hurting them: a 167% rise in artisan gin versus +30% in mass-produced. We’re interested in trying new things. Craft beer led the way tempting us from the staples into something that actually tasted different. Gin offers a blank canvas for distillers. Once you get the basic combination, it’s down to your own imagination and perseverance to make something stand out. Which is exactly what Warner’s do.
We stumbled across Warner’s a year or so ago. I’m pretty sure it was in the Oak’s in Highcliffe when we had a rhubarb gin which the waiter recommended. Since them it’s become a staple. We’ve sent birthday gifts from them, bought in bulk when lockdown happened – and it’s been needed to survive home-schooling – and received gifts from them. Being a somewhat cynical marketing type, you kind of take the marketing guff with a pinch of sat. “Made on the farm”… is it really? Well, you bet it is.
My wife received a wonderful present from some friends. A live gin tasting. The pack arrived with many miniatures and mixers, a request to get glasses and ice and a time to turn on the zoom. Which we almost forgot.
Peering through what seemed a Vaseline-smeared screen, we saw two people in what looked a field. Rain pouring down, the screen in and out of connection. The sound largely out. And then it held out long enough to hear Tom and Tina Warner unleash their personal passion for saving the world from mediocre gin. A passion that started on their farm in 2012 and clearly has not gone away.
We saw the fields, the botanical gardens, the distillers, the dogs, the people, the rain, the bees, the bar, a cocktail being made in the great British bank holiday rain that none of us watching had a clue what was going into it because the rain was so loud we couldn’t hear but wanted to give it a go nonetheless.
But what we saw – even if you couldn’t hear a lot through the rain – was passion. Pure, unbridled passion. I have no doubt that they’re a successful commercial organisation if our contributions to their turnover are anything to go by but it’s so much more than a commercial operation. It’s a passion, a drive and energy. A passion that created the first-ever rhubarb gin and made a big dent in the corporate giants and big waves in the gin market. It’s passion that have seen them experiment and fail a few times too but keep going – I’m quite excited by the dandelion tease in the tour. I’ve been on brewery tours before. They’re largely formulaic – you see the big machines, you smell the ingredients, you see it at each stage and then you retire to the bar and sample the various delights/get hammered and forget all the knowledge you acquired. This felt different. This was personal. The tour wasn’t managed by someone in the organisation on a roster. It’s the owners. It wasn’t a stage-managed corporate performance. It was them in their environment doing what they do. Filmed by the team who also work there. Introducing you to the stories, people and the real behind the scenes.
Passion for what they do. Not written in a 200 page brand book or flip charts in a boardroom. Just 20 seconds into a conversation with the owners in a rain-drenched field on a glitchy zoom call was all you needed to be persuaded. We loved their gins before. We love them that bit more after this.
And then there’s the opposite. It’s been a funny old season in football terms made sweeter by the mighty Liverpool finally climbing back on their perch. August was to see a frenzy of european matches. Not the drawn–out nonsense of previous years but one-off games in a mini-tournament to settle both the Europa and Champions Leagues. Unfortunately both exclsuively on BT Sport. But for £25 for one month of football – why not? Easy to add. Just click a button on the website. Done.
Fast forward to the end of August. Is it just as easy to remove it as had been insinuated? Not a chance. Click to remove – oh, here’s a phone number. Call number – out of office hours. Call number next day – queue messages about staffing issues and taking longer to get through to you and hey, it’s really easy to make changes online… I know, but you won’t let me. Voice prompts for what do I want to discuss today – they never work do they? Eventually I get through to a human being. After verification, what do I want to do today? Why did your system ask me if you then don’t get that information?
“I’d like to remove BT Sport please.”
What then ensued was over 15 minutes of obfuscation, up-selling and increasingly annoying me with my repeated attempts to re-align the conversation to “I’d like to remove BT Sport please.” Along the way I learned you had a 31-day notice period which isn’t signposted particularly well anywhere so what started out as a make the most of all the football in August should have come with a notification that if you really only wanted it in August you should have also cancelled it the same day you ordered it. Which really doesn’t make sense and has just annoyed me further.
I just wanted to do one thing. The sales agent on the other end I am sure has targets and scripts a-plenty but I just wanted to do one thing quickly. I didn’t kick up a massive fuss about the extra month because I guess I’ll see a few of the games in the first weeks of the new season which I wouldn’t have done ordinarily. But where was the human element? Where was the passion of Tom and Tina? It was just script and up-sell. Boring. Far from making me feel part of the brand, it made me feel like a revenue stream. Of course I know I am for anything I purchase but there’s a way of dealing with it. We had some terrible issues with our Volvo when we first bought it but the service level at the garage was exemplary which over-rode some of the issues. Compared with friends who purchased a Land Rover and had a terrible brand experience and will never buy another. Without getting all theory on you, you think of a brand as one thing but your real-world experience of a brand, products, services and people across the myriad touchpoints of today changes your opinion. And your loyalty.
Next time you think about real people interacting with your brand, think of Tom and Tina in the pouring rain versus the person whose name I can’t remember trying to upsell. I know which one I would go back to.
Working closely with an Italian team means seeing your future before it happens. I’ve seen them react to their evolving situation including travel restrictions, school closures, shops closing and working from home. In almost daily update video calls, over the last few weeks it’s been clear that this was going to be the new normal for all of us. And now it’s here.
We were meant to be in New York last week for a global meeting but as the clock ticked towards take off, people dropped out as the situation worsened and then the client guidance was to stop all business travel and switch to remote meetings. Two days of meetings on video screens across New York, San Jose, Zurich, London and our base in the West Country. All successful if a little stop-start at times when it came to screen sharing (Teams or Zoom are much better). The funny thing being the team in New York had one of those cameras/sound devices that moves to who is talking. When one unfortunate person started eating crisps the camera shot to her 😉
We have had clients ask for our approach to contingency planning which we have advised them on. Some of our clients have either asked all their employees to work remote or to exclude visitors from their offices. One new member of staff joined our client on Monday and at midday they were sent home with everyone else to work remote. A tough start!
But we’ve been busy preparing. Considering our main client is based in Zurich and we have a network of people across Europe and the world, working remotely and via video or conf call is pretty normal for us anyway. We’ve made sure that people have Teams set up, Slack working and are able to access the server remotely. We have a daily check in where we make sure everyone is all ok and where support is needed. There are virtual lunches and coffee time happening. Calls from a few doors or miles away to London, Turin, Zurich, Cologne, Brussels and Paris over the last two days alone. And we get to see inside the homes and work spaces of our colleagues and clients. And it’s nice to not have to apologise when your kids appear on screen too. That’s just how it’s going to be now.
And definitely turn your video on. You might think it weird looking at your own face but it breaks down the barriers and makes you feel connected. It stops you and everyone else being distracted by the email pings, the mobile phone and the Slack notifications. It’s much nicer than just staring at initials on a screen too.
On a lighter note, washing your hands more needs a bit of fun. You’re meant to repeat “Happy birthday to you” twice in your head to get to the twenty seconds of recommended wash time. But that’s a bit dull so why not print your own lyrics ?
It’s quite strange how reluctant people are to put away their phones and close their laptop screens in meetings. Having been frustrated a lot recently as both participant and running workshops, we decided to be very clear and deliberate in two sessions we ran this week. After limited response to the first request, we repeated, slowly, saying:
“no, we really do mean this”,
using hand movements to close laptop lids and pausing until the room had complied. Everyone can spare a full hour of concentration otherwise why be in the room? Haven’t quite got as far as a box to confiscate them. Any other advice for this? Oh and HONK! Our latest workshop tool based on trying to get 30 (yes, thirty) participants to pause and play back. It worked too and raised a smile.
There are good people and not so good people. They’ve defined who I work for and who I am. It’s how I react to situations. It’s why I’ve run through walls for people and broken myself in the process – not necessarily as a result of those people but what happens in life. But what’s interesting is how people react to that. And sometimes being broken makes you take stock and realise what’s important. And defines how you look at life moving forward. This podcast gave me the opportunity to look back at what has driven me and to try and make the culture at my current business the best it can be.
It was difficult to talk about but it’s better to talk openly about things, right? You are fundamentally dealing with people. And people are flesh and blood, not machines. Let me know what you think. Have you experienced similar circumstances? How are you dealing with it?
My thanks to Stuart who inadvertently took me to places I have locked away for some time but have fundamentally shaped who I am – whether I wanted it to or not. It was quite hard listening to this again but made me realise some fundamental principles I live by. And my continued thanks to Chris, Norm, Scotty and Becky for being wonderful human beings who made such a difference to my life. I probably don’t think and don’t say thank you enough.
It feels quite raw. Still. Let me know what you think. I feel I’m more “me” these days though. Who knows?
![[bluurb] stuff and things](https://bluurb.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/cropped-a33a6dad-0d66-4aaa-bb33-661beb2fd126.jpeg)
[bluurb] stuff and things 