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

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

Talk it out

Clear your head in 60 minutes? For free? Absolutely. Chris Barez-Brown believes that a ridiculously simple approach to mental-health and wellbeing will benefit everybody. He openly admits its not the answer to everything but it can help. He’s so determined to prove it can work that he’s teamed up with a leading University to run

Playing catch up: collaboration, automation, FinTech and CMOs.

So it’s been some time. Here’s a round up of some articles, comments and thoughts I’ve penned in the last few months while we’ve been busy launching pan European campaigns, creating content, expanding our minds, developing business and brand strategies, winning pitches and generally fuelling business growth for clients. More on that soon. Enjoy these

postcards from the beach

I haven’t been to any conferences or networking events for some time. Partly because of agency learning and development starvation but also partly because I had become tired of them becoming endless sales pitches or regurgitation of statistics or campaigns. I also detest networking events. Silicon Beach is unlike any of this. Curated by Matt

tiny explosive ideas with tiny explosive coffee

Stop thinking about the “big” idea. The big idea that marketing searches for elusively. We’ve all sat in meetings searching for the big idea. Written briefs that demand a big idea. Followed a path of big media that will fuel a big idea. And moaned that either the agency can’t come up with the big