What a year
Came to understand and appreciate that working with people in an office is not just about work. The debate about efficiency misses the real point entirely. The columnist Nesrin Malik nailed precisely for me what I was missing when she wrote: “We are just wired to work with others, to cooperate and feed off each other… in order to achieve social and community goals, we are designed to work together, otherwise human civilisation would not have made it this far. Communal work has another by-product that I also didn’t realise was impossible to synthesise without having a hub of colleagues: a social life. … Hanging out with people we work with is not specifically about work. Having the ability to share a common work goal with other people is one of the greatest privileges. To have the ability to embrace those people outside of work and get to know them is not a professional chore, but a huge perk.”
Helped pitch and win a global business. All on Zoom. It can be done.
Withdrew from a pitch in progress and thanked my lucky stars I worked for a place that had the integrity and independence to do that.
Wondered how many more times I would say “can everybody see my screen?”.
Was repeatedly reminded that there really is nothing like developing strategy in the sure and certain knowledge that it’s going to have the creative nitros strapped to it and lit. Every. Single. Time.
Laboured under an NDA that continues to deny me epic bragging rights - and thus the personal validation and ego salving I still (frustratingly) crave. Consoled myself with appreciating just how much I am learning.
Found the FUS we are all living through helped focus my mind on what (professionally speaking) mattered to/angered/worried/excited me most, so I condensed it into words and soon found myself ranting it down a Zoom tube while on holiday in Lübeck to a paying audience. I still stand by every word. And still do not know how many (or few) were on the other end of it.
Gave thanks that there are still business owners out there confident enough in what they need and want not to need a multi-month, multi-agency, multi-round feedback-drenched pitch process.
Thought about how my father would have put things into their proper perspective by reminding me that however hard things were at the moment at least a) we weren’t being shot at and b) it wasn’t minus 40°F.
Was privy to a spectacular case study in the inconvenient truth that work and wins don’t just fall out of the sky. It takes fortitude, tenacity, resilience, vision, and patience to go the distance. The bigger the prize, the longer the race. And the more ‘invisible’ the toil, the more essential it is. This business is impossible without the marathon runners.
Reflected on the client who (after always pushing, or challenging, or asking for more, or for better, or for different) always closes by expressing a clearly sincere “thank you” at the end of creative presentations - and how those two small words act like shirt-sleeve-rolling-up-let’s-nail-this motivational bombs in the creative soul. Classiness is vastly unappreciated in our industry. You probably don’t know who you are you wonderful person, but thank you.
Was too busy to blog. Lucky everyone.
Woke with coffee. Worked with tea.
Sighed repeatedly that the mark (and curse) of not being a profession is that the basics, the fundamentals have to be discovered anew. Again, and again and again. The upside is the freedom and chaos and silliness that creativity thrives on and that come with not being a profession. But boy, the constant reinvention/discovery of the marketing wheel can be so fucking tedious.
Assembled and rewrote eleven years’ worth of blogposts, had the arrogance to call it a ‘book’, and then snapped myself back into reality and realised it wasn’t. Moved it to Bin.
Was reminded that if you can work from home you’re not an ‘essential worker’.
‘Humaning’. Oh reader, how I shat myself laughing.
Came to believe even more devoutly that cooking for the one you love is the best way to get your head out of your own ass and un-fuck yourself.
Attended the webinar on share of search given by Les Binet and James Hankins and was reminded that it is the generous ones amongst us (the ones with something to give, not merely something to say) who push our industry forwards. As opposed to just their profiles.
Found so much joy in the fact that nothing cuts through the seriousness or tension of a client Zoom meeting than your cat flaunting its butthole.
Talked about the nature of planning/strategy as part of the Hoala master course in brand strategy.
Talked about the role and nature of the creative brief as part of the MADS programme in Russia.
It was good to be forced to go back to, reflect on, and question old assumptions and first principles.
Concluded that Glühwein is a duvet for the soul.
Hated the word ‘webinar’ more and more each time I saw or heard it.
Struggled with a paralysing sense of perspective. Asked myself why go on wittering (and twittering) about the finer points of brand building and the planning craft when the tectonic plates of our lives, of commerce and culture seemed to be grinding and shifting beneath our feet? When the air was so thick with lies and vitriol? When lives and livelihoods were being shattered?
Reminded myself that what by comparison might feel like the desperately small and quotidian has value. That business and brand owners still need good advice. That while there is room for reinvention and need for reformation, the world still needs good corporations that provide employment, opportunity and meaning, the goods and services we need, and that pay their taxes.
Came to the realisation that the existential concerns can run alongside the everyday ones, just as they have done since time immemorial.
Tried to remember that nothing lasts forever.
Resolved to live and work by the words of Rebecca Solnit:
“To hope is to gamble. It’s to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it’s is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk… I say all this to you because hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. I say this because hope is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency; because hope should shove you out the door... because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal… Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope. … To hope is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable”.