This was in Campaign last week. Hard not to sound like an arse doing something like this. I'm very pleased though to have got 'Darth Strategist' in as a job title.
responsibility and life in public
I wrote a while ago about the positive aspects of public living via blog. (For me anyway.) But I'd not really thought about the scarier aspects of it - like presenting in front of lots of other bloggers and waiting for the reviews to come in. On the whole people seem to have liked it, and they took better notes than I would have, but a couple of them gave me a little nudge to remember to deliver more than stuff I've already said on the blog. Good thought to hang on to.
(And I'd like to say again how grateful I was for all the help and enthusiasm from everyone there. These planning.ro pictures really captured the mood of the trip for me, thanks for the chat Costin.)
On a related note, I bumped into John Griffiths in the Apple store yesterday. We went for a coffee and talked about Romania. He was there a few months back and he told me that someone had said that our blogs were, basically, their entire planning training.
(another blogging loop coming up)
Firstly, that's obviously a tremendous honour, but secondly, it's also quite a responsibility and it made me realise I need to attach some sort of health warning to some of my posts. I often throw out thoughts on here just because they seem interesting, and to see what they look like out of my head, but it doesn't mean people should take them too seriously.
Maybe I should have a star system where Five Stars mean sensible advice that might be useful in the real world and One Star means random stuff I've made up to annoy Richard Huntington, not to be mentioned to actual clients under any circumstances.
I suspect most of my posts will be Ones or Twos. But I think most of the APSotW stuff is safe enough for public consumption.
napoleon world tour
So. On Tuesday and Wednesday last week Neil, Jeffre, Ben and I bored a small group of Romanian ad folk senseless with endless tales of how great it is to work at The Design Conspiracy and Wieden + Kennedy. Or at least that's how it sometimes felt from the stage.
We were guests of the splendid Headvertising, and especially Bogdana, who invited me out to reprise the trip Bill and I did a couple of years ago. Her initial suggestion was a two-day Russell Davies conference which even my enormous ego baulked at, so I said how about they forget about the fee and I'll try and persuade some other people to come - because I bet people would be up for a trip to somewhere they've never been. So huge thanks to Ben, Neil and Jeffre for coming just because it seemed like fun. (And huge thanks to Bogdana and Headvertising, and everyone, who's hospitality was generous and perfect.)
Things I learned in Romania:
If you're not sure people will believe your ad, you might want to write 'True: statement' on it. Just to reassure them.
When bloggers travel together, infinite loops quickly become possible. This is a photo of Jeffre, taking a photo of Ben, taking a photo of me.
This is the second largest building in the world.
People who organise conferences don't like it when you tell them that you'll just make up the agenda as you go along. (Early on the first day, Bogdana, pictured above, looking worried, told Ben she realised that we really didn't know what we going to do, and was rather alarmed, she'd just assumed I was joking.)
Romanian ad folk are slightly better than North American planners with spaghetti and marshmallows. And they're smart, energetic and funny.
It's hard not to be intimidated when told this is your venue.
Bucharest has some rather beautiful bits, but not in a prissy, touristy way, instead in a rather attractive, rough at the edges way that I'm not really capable of photographing.
Stencils are very fashionable in Bucharest right now.
Blogging is doing to planning what television did to variety/music-hall.
I've always thought that a planning career is very like a stand-up comedy career. You spend a couple of years getting a decent 40 minutes together (act/presentation). That means you can go on the circuit and do presentations, meetings, pitches. Then if you're good/lucky you get a few more bits and stretch it out to an hour, maybe 90 minutes, and that means you can be a consultant, doing the same old schtick to a new audience every engagement.
Television killed variety because it quickly consumed everyone's act and the jugglers and novelty seal-balancers couldn't delight a new audience every night, because everyone had already seen it on TV. And blogging's doing the same for planning. You can see here that Claudinho felt he'd already heard everything I said because he'd read it on the blog. And he was probably right. But I only have so many ideas and I really like throwing them away on here. (Though I am starting to think I've not got much else to say about brands, I'd like to write about some other stuff.)
We really like going to new places. So, if anyone out there, somewhere off the usual beaten advertising track, would like some of us to turn up and talk for a couple of days, we'd love to do so. Me and three or four like-minded folks. You'd have to cover travel and hotel and stuff but we wouldn't ask for a fee. If anyone's interested, drop me a line. (But please bear in mind, this is not a way for you to get cheap speakers at your conference, the idea is to get something to happen that wouldn't happen otherwise.)
elvish surprise
Arthur and I have been big fans of the original Lego Star Wars game for a quite a while, it's the only computer game either of us have ever really played. We've been playing it on my Mac. Then recently we got very excited because we saw a bunch of ads for the new Lego Star Wars Original Trilogy and went out to get that too. But you can't seem to get it for the Mac. So I raised the idea of getting a PlayStation.
We've always resisted before, partly out of middle-class guilt and snobbishness, partly because I was worried it would start to burn up my time and displace some less essential activity (like sleeping) and partly because he'd never really asked that deeply. But we'd always assumed we'd relent sometime, if nothing else because it seems like familiarity with a joypad is a requirement for basic cultural literacy.
Anyway, in the typical parental way I tried to defer the moment a bit (to give the impression that you can't always get something just because you've decided to want it) and said maybe Arthur could have PlayStation and game for Christmas. He wasn't happy about that but he did OK with it.
But then Anne really surprised me. And I really love that after 20 years together she's still, in many ways, completely unpredictable. She said that she didn't want to get Arthur a PlayStation for Christmas, if we were going to get one we should get it now. I imagined it would be a reason to do with not spoiling Christmas day etc with us all gathered around a machine. Or to do with avoiding a Christmas day hyped up with technological maleness. Or something.
But really it was because Anne doesn't think Santa's elves are capable of making games machines and sophisticated electronics. Anne's image of elves doesn't tie in with computing and consumer electronics and she thinks that getting presents like that from Santa diminishes the myth. I suggested that maybe she was guilty of the worst form of stereotyping, her prejudice consigning elves to being locked in a craft economy, never creating a strong, wealthy, educated middle-class and never being able to overthrow their tyrannical oppressor but I think she probably has a point.
Anyway. We now have a PlayStation and our lives will never be the same. In a small way.
after my own heart
Just the fact that the Condiment Packet Museum exists makes me glad to be alive. The fact that it's so nicely put together is the cherry on the glad-to-be-alive cake. (thanks to Jonathan)
moving lights
I'm not a big fan of motorbikes. They seem to represent all that's wrong with motorised transport. Dangerous. Fast. Uncomfortable. Hard to drive. But we saw the Goldwing Light Parade at the Blackpool Illuminations and I was completely captivated.
It probably helps that Goldwings are some of the most car-like bikes you can get and seem to attract a different sort of rider than the usual macho bike nonsense. But the lights were brilliant. Actually joyful. (And really hard to photograph, at speed, with my little digital camera. Though actually I quite like the effect, it gets at some of the pleasure of the things.) The lights enhance, extend and camoflage the shape of the bike, making them look more like UFOs than anything I've ever seen.
It reminded me of the only good bit of the movie Black Rain; the cool Japanese trucks with the scrolling lights. Those things are genius. I can't find good pictures of them. But check out this page.
But it got me thinking about customisation, which is clearly a fairly deep urge amongst so many car-owners and how I've always wondered why ordinary car manufacturers seem to make it so hard for people. Obviously people do mod their cars. All the time. And some of them are gorgeous and some are horrible. But it's actually pretty hard to do. It's not like cars come with optional wings you can snap in and out. Or with Lego studs so you can stick stuff on. They're made of glossy, shiny metal which is spoiled the moment you go near it. It actively discourages experimentation. Strange.
driving pleasure
Since pictures of Arthur are now officially sanctioned by Business Week, I couldn't resist these two of Anne and Arthur from our trip to Blackpool's Pleasure Beach last week.
If only driving real cars was this much fun.
romanian adventures
Next week, Ben, Neil, Jeffre and I are going to be in Bucharest at the invitation of Headvertising. We've no idea what we're going to do, but we're hoping that it's as unconferency as possible. We want to talk about what'll be useful to people, so we plan on starting off by finding out just what that might be. If you're going to be there next week and you want to get ahead of the game, any suggestions about stuff we should discuss very gratefully received.
what I did on my holidays
One of the points of quitting a very good job and starting OIA was to be able to have proper holidays and really make the most of the time Arthur gets off school. And I have to say that, in those terms, August was a big success. I hardly earned anything, and just before August is probably not a great time to start a new business if you're looking for lots of momentum but, holiday is the greater good. We saw lots of Britain. We all hung out a lot. And now September's rolled around and everyone's feeling 'back to school' the phone's starting to ring with work and opportunity.
The last few days of August were spent idly cruising along the Shropshire Union Canal which was rather splendid. It's like camping or caravaning, in that you've always got your kettle with you, but you don't feel the need to go and do stuff, because just drifting up the canal, at walking pace, is doing enough. And like camping it forces you to hang out together. Quite often when we're at home in the flat we'll be in separate rooms, doing our seperate things. But that's not possible on a barge. You're all together all the time. Which has it's downside and I can imagine it being difficult with teenagers. But with a 6 year-old it was good. Especially as we had both Scooby-Doo Happy Families and Star Wars Top Trumps.
Then we drove up to Blackpool for the weekend of the illuminations. It rained and blew and the hotel was a bit of a disappointment but we had a marvelous time. The illuminations were great. Strange. Pointless. But great.
They've been doing this since 1879 when 8 primitive arc lamps were billed as 'artificial sunshine'. These representations of the seasons were our favourites:
Aren't they lovely?
Anyway. Holidays are over now. Will also try to be a better blogger.