ThoughtSpurs

It never rains but it pours. Haven't written diddley for squat and now I can't shut up. Boxing Day is such a curious, anticlimactic holiday. The streets of Auckland were busier than yesterday, but still the tumbleweed tumbleweeded down Queen Street. I find myself watching ' Four Weddings and a funeral. The only reason I can think of is: because it's Boxing Day, the holiday with no point. So pointless excercises in media consumption suddenly make sense. I do feel slightly awkward by some of the film's insights. The girl who corners Hugh Grant in the corridor of an hotel at one of the eponymous weddings with the accusation that he is a serial monogamist makes me squirm. And the death of the old fruit who's lover reads the WH Auden poem is a poinant moment that stops my clock: Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplan...

Got through another Christmas. I am not prone to cheap sentiment at this time of year. While I am not cynical about the holiday - I appreciate the idea of refocusing on some of the more pleasant aspects of human character as much as anyone - I do find the pressure to spend money and offer gifts has become something of a burden. Of the gifts I received the DVD of a television programme The Long Way Round (from my son) was my favourite. It follows a couple of soft actors - Euan McGregor ( Trainspotting, Moulin Rouge, Star Wars ) and Charlie Boorman (?) as they traverse the planet from London to New York - across Europe, through Russia, Khazakstan, Mongolia, Siberia etc, across to Alaska, Canada and the USA. The seven episodes are riveting. It shows the planning to the completion of the journey with hand held cameras and cameras mounted on the bikes (big BMW enduro machines). There are moments during their trip when I wondered how I would have dealt the hardships they endured. Imagine b...

My shoes are different sizes. I came to this realisation in a curious way. When I took my beloved RM Williams boots in for repair I noticed that the left was bigger than the right. "These can't be mine." I pronounced with absolute certainty. The welt of one seemed to protrude further out the other. I was more stressed than I should have been and insisted that the matching boot be found. It couldn't. As things transpired I was given a new pair of boots. But even then I was unhappy and gave them away. I've learned to live with my odd boots. Noone else has noticed. Perhaps I'm just picky. Or obsessive compulsive. Or both. Anything is possible. If truth be told, I have become rather fond of my idiosyncratic footwear. I like that they are unlike and take great pleasure in massaging leather cream into the cracks. I make no distinction between left and right. I don't even know which is the original and which is the adopted sole. I'm learning to let things sli...

The launch of Idealog magazine is next week, December 5. On the stands on Monday, launch party Tuesday. It has been quite a journey so far. Almost a year to the day since I first met Vincent Heeringa and Martin Bell. We began with a trade magazine in mind but have ended up with something a little more visionary. The idealists of Idealog. I like where we have arrived but there is a long way to go in terms of storytelling and design ideas. RIght now I'm just glad that the delivery is pending. I think I can understand how a woman feels late in a pregnancy when the charm is over and she just wants the darned thing out! Puuuush....wh...wh....wh! and puuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuush.

Took my daughter shopping tonight. We had dinner out. Got back home late. She laid her new clothes out in neat rows so she could choose what to wear for tomorrow. She's 5. I see her just every second weekend. How can such incredible errors of judgement (marrying my daughter's mother) result in such a wonderful little human being? Go figure

"We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?" Neils Bohr to Wolfgang Pauli "Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it" Jane Wagner "Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself." Jane Wagner "I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." Jane Wagner (and Lily Tomlin)

The magazine I have been working with HB Media to develop is GO! We have had confirmation of sponsorship from Auckland University of Technology, Microsoft, New Zealand Telecom, Balwins (The IP Lawyers) and Image Centre (who will be printing the magazine). It has been quite a journey to get to this stage. But now the real business of generating great articles and packaging them up for the creative community begins. Visit the Idealog site

"For an idea that does not , at first, seem insane - there is no hope" Albert Einstein Do you realise how much is involved in developing a paper and ink magazine? It is an enormous undertaking. I am creative director and co-publisher of the forthcoming Idealog (tm) (in conjunction with HB Media and AUT press). It is a thrilling and terrifying prospect at the same time. My greatest anxiety comes from the likely willingness of advertising agency media planners and buyers to book space in the book. In the past I have heard (time and again), 'we love the idea, but we will support you in issue two'. In many ways it is a familiar scenario to the launch of Family Health Diary (FHD). Though my partners and I had a significant underwriting commitment from a large international pharmaceutical marketer other brands seemed sceptical. At first. Now FHD is the biggest single advertiser on TVONE, the biggest channel in the country. The product is the benchmark, not only for the phar...

"It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you." The One & Only - Mark Twain I collect quotes. Some I drop into conversation, like a drop of vanilla essense into pancake mix. It's fun. Here's a bonus: "Reason informed by emotion…expressed in beauty…elevated by earnestness…lightened by humour…that is the ideal that should guide all artists." The One & Only - Charles Rennie Mackintosh

I tried to read Lance Armstrong's book It's not about the bike but had to give up. It was agonising. While I have enormous respect for Armstrong's achievements his ego build up in my mind like lactic acid in the thighss of a lesser athlete on a hill stage of the Tour de France . Still, Mr Armstrong qualifies as The One & Only. I doubt we'll every see another cyclist as accomplished anytime soon. Overcoming cancer alone would be a personal achievement enough, but winning the Tour seven times is incredible. The media property I created called Eating Well won a marketing award on Thursday night. I was very proud of the efforts of the team at BrandWorld who have sold the product so well and that the judges suggested we enter all of the products in our portfolio next year. Development of Idealog, the magazine I am working with HB Media to have live by December is progressing very well. It has been well received by sponsors and advertisers. The core concept of cross-po...

I wrote an article, published in the New Zealand Herald , about the value of reason in advertising. The news from England demonstrates, again, that the very reasonable expectation we co-exist and value tolerance over violence and hate is harder to come by that one might expect. Even here in remote, pacific New Zealand the backlash against the muslim community is disappointing. Perhaps I am an idealist (and I hope I always will be) but I still hope that reason can prevail. Acts of terror do nothing to positively affect perceptions. The west also needs to take responsiblity for its behaviour. I'm no analyst but I wonder if reducing demand for oil products would defuse the molotov cocktail the Middle East seems to be. That way we can leave them to it and get on with our own ways of life and enjoy the differences instead of hating them. Just an idea....whaddyareckon?

Big week ahead. I have agreed to spend half my time working for BrandWorld, the company I formed in 1996, at which I created the hugely successful Family Health Diary format. I kind of made myself redundant when the FHD property took over the focus of the business like khudzu. Given that I focus on concept, prototype and initial implementation and that the product is something of a template there wasn't much productive work to be done. All of our energy and resources were directed to selling and producing the TV and magazine properties. I sold my stake in 2000. I've come back now that there are more resources and much bigger set of goals to achieve. SInce I left I have remained in touch with the company, developing other properties like Eating Well and IN2IT as a consultant- with many more in the pipeline. I have also agreed to lecture at Massey University in the design faculty. I'll be covering marketing communications design and design research. I'm looking forward to...

There is something about modern celebrity that I wonder about. What exactly are the talents of Britney Spears or Jessica Simpson? Am I being unfair? Yes they are very attractive women. Well, Simpson is. Not convinced by Britney. Am I asking too much? Celebrity is quite different from talent. Take Paris Hilton. She certainly has a talent for publicity, it seems she can hardly engage in an intimate moment without it appearing on the internet or the front page of every tabloid magazine and newspaper on the planet - and now an Osbourne's style TV show. I watched Paris' TV road trip show a couple of times. Can't fairly comment on modern media if I don't consume it. To be fair to Paris; the publicity is usually unwanted, isn't it ( Yeah right - to coin a phrase. What was I thinking? A momentary lapse. My real issue with bimbo celebrity (and I am using that as a blanket term) is that the media/publicity machine churns blonde, beautiful girls with the same intensity as the...

I recently learned that the woman I loved and lived with for three years had been carrying on an affair behind my back for who knows how long before I ended our relationship. Oddly, I don't mind the betrayal (we'd both been married twice before and had many lovers before we even met; fidelity in that respect seems a quaint abstract - medieval ideas about virginity or 'purity' come to mind), but the deception is a different thing…I could have chosen a different course - had I known - and I like to choose my own path. It serves to remind me of the misunderstood and certainly overestimated concept of loyalty in marketing - as if we can truly expect fidelity from people in a world filled with infinite choices. It doesn't matter that people might behave in a fickle way and choose the next brightly coloured thing. More power to them. Don't simper, don't run after them. Be true to yourself. Enjoy what you do. And adapt. If you make hand crafted guitars but teenager...

How bizarre. The British Lions are here in New Zealand. So far it has been terribly dull, Other than the advertising frenzy, led by the likes of Telecom - leveraging their sponsorship investment. And isn't that the point? Money and marketing is far more interesting than the thing itself. The media has taken the opportunity to wax lyrical about how things have changed since the Lions last toured New Zealand, and further back when the Lions were ambassadors for the Old Country and spent time actually mixing with people in local host communitities - in rugby clubs and RSAs. Back then rugby was still an amateur sport. The Lions touring New Zealand now are an altogether different animal. Sir Clive Woodward's shadow looms over the team. The puppetmaster. If he could secure the World Cup of Rugby for England, why wouldn't he be able to work the magic for the Lions? The team has a over 100 personnel. Bear in mind that there are 15 players in a rugby football team. I heard a repor...

Well Michael Jackson is found innocent of every charge levelled against him. I heard it on the radio just moments ago. Not unexpected. Even casually noticing, rather than watching the news of the trial I kind of got the vibe that the single minded proposition (if I can borrow advertising parlance for a moment) was that it was Jackson himself who was the victim. The victim of avaricious people willing to exploit Jackson's weirdness, declining fame and the generally accepted meme that he is a child molester (on the grounds that there is no smoke without fire and funny looking people must be baddies - thanks to Hollywood and the Borthers Grimm ). The problem with being The One & Only is that, by being iconoclastic and setting yourself apart from the norm, is that you are going to either find acceptance or not. And that acceptance can be fleeting. Jackson once stood astride the world of pop music. His fortune was collossal, his repertoire rightly feted as an important cultural cont...

Squeeze would have been delighted to be honoured by his peers at this year's Axis Awards. Not only because of the accolade, but because he was usually actively involved in the creation of ads and didn't like being billed as part of the support team. Paul wasn't a frustrated creative person, like so many 'suits', he saw his role as to create fertile ground for clients to accept work that was challenging. He liked to build trust with his affable demeanor and boyish charm. He made the process fun. I've written about Paul before (Sorrow's Gift) and, as the time passes since his death I've thought about him often. Paul tended to consume ...objects, food and drink, substances...people. I look at pictures of him socialising with my family when my son was born and feel a certain nostalgia for the time we spent working together. It was often fraught. We walked out of an ad agency together, convinced we had their largest client in the bag. We didn't, as it tu...

I vaguely remember Geoff Ross, the guy who started 42 below Vodka, from an agency we both worked at - though he worked in the Wellington office and I was in Auckland. He seemed a decent enough chap. Quiet, unassuming…Who'd have thought he'd go on to be the founder of one of the most interesting brands in the world - and certainly THE most interesting in New Zealand. I mean, who'd have thought that Vodka would become a hip drink again (it sort of smacks of James Bond and martinis), let alone that New Zealand would become the source of a serious brand contender in a cluttered category. I've worked on Vodka accounts. It's a tough product to differentiate. Colourless and pretty much tasteless. Sales of vodka used to experience a spike just before closing time (when there was a closing time). Spike being then operative word. Vodka was the great 'leg-opener'. Vulgar concept, but we're all adults here, aren't we? Mix it in with orange (a screwdriver , I ...

Blimey, what am I thinking? I have decided to fulfill my lifelong ambition of playing the guitar. Even signed up for some lessons with the very patient Danny McCrum (who is also teaching my son). What I wasn't prepared for is how much it hurts your fingers. Ever seen the photo of Pete Townsend with blood running down his hands. Well, that's how it feels . I'm told you get used to it. I hope so. Maybe I'll start a band. Is it too soon to get a manager? Will there be groupies? And will I need a garage? (for cred). Danny McCrum's website

I have just returned from a charity fundraising lunch. My client Dr Tom Mulholland was the keynote speaker. I have worked with Tom for several years now, off and on, but had never seen him in action. Tom is a living and breathing example of The One & Only. While his message may not be especially 'original' ( Turning life's lemons into lemonade ) his personal style and story make the critical difference between being a successful speaker and author and being an also-ran. When I first met Tom he was the founder of the web start up - DoctorGlobal.com. His vision was to create an online medical consultation service. It mutated into being a powerful database of secure, private health records used by large corporations and institutions. Tom got to the point so many entrepreneurs reach when the time comes to hire a professional manager to run the company. Long story short Tom lost control of his gig and his shareholding in the company he founded was diluted. His wife left. Thi...

There has been a furor. The popular TradeMe auction site has banned some painters from listing their works on the site. Their reasoning: the paintings are not the artist’s own work. They, it has been argued, breach the copyright of a photographer. This raises an interesting question about the nature of copyright and what constitutes art. There are other issues relating to trade descriptions of the work, but for the purpose of this discussion I will set that aside. Here's the bully: Painter sources an image published on the internet he models an oil painting on the photo, making little or no alteration to the composition of the image. At first glance you might think the images were the same. But only at first glance. One, you see, is a record of a landscape created using a scientific instrument and some chemical processes. The other is a painting. There is little artistry in the work that is, in fact, the photographer's own. He has made a record of a scene. One might argue that ...

I've just watched a terrific DVD. Eric Clapton talking about and performing the music on his tribute to Robert Johnson. Click Here to find out more All of my life I've loved the blues as a musical genre. I've never really understood why it it made me feel better. Until recently that is. I mean, when you're down you have to have some way of releasing it or it's just going to burst a seam somewhere. For some people excercise works, other find solace in meditation (which I have just begun to try with results ranging from falling asleep to something nearing an ecstatic release. Just learning to quiten down the chatter in my head without distraction is something of a mission). Clapton's music has given me an idea which I'll be pursuing through this week. I'll keep you posted. If you're interested in the blues you might also like to check out the music of John Hammond, I have been listening to his album - featuring the songs of Tom Waits Wicked Grin (also ...

Let me tell you now that I have never felt worse, and that is why my blog has been erratic. My health seems at a low ebb and, ironically I am becoming more and more involved in the rather strange world of Integrative Medicine (IM). Ok, holistic, dammit. I would rather avoid that term because it conjures associations that are somewhat misleading. As the publisher of Wellspring , a project I rather fell into, I have had a great deal of contact with practitioners involved in anything from Aura Soma to Zero Balancing and have, by and large, been impressed with their professionalism and commitment to making a difference in the lives of their clients. The problem is this: the entire category of wellness and complementary medicine is fraught with misconception, mistrust and a lack of common ground between conventional or alopathic medicine and everybody else. I have found that, just as you cannot separate out the body / mind connection from the complete picture of an individual's health a...

This week two new media properties I have been developing go to air. The first is IN2IT, an infomerical along the lines of Family Health Diary and Eating Well, both concepts I developed for brandWorld - the company I co-founded in 1996 and sold in 2000. I continue to work with the company helping develop these innovative media solutions. It's not high art, but it is my art. The second is TXT2TASTE, which I didn't conceive, but have been consulting with the agency, Publicis Mojo to help steer the project. I like the innovation of the Mojo idea. I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays to consumers - teaching them to behave in new ways. I have also been working on some truly weird permutations of the infomercial concept - I'll share more with you later. But for now I'm just playing with some ideas that should be very different in this category. I'm beginning to wonder how many of the genre can run before consumers become immune or resistant. Time will tell. I...

Tomorrow I am speaking at a conference on the subject of integrative health - I guess in may capacity as the creator of the Family Health Diary and publisher of WellSpring. It will be an interesting day, attended by a spectrum of wellness professionals from general practitioners and chiropractors to pharmacists and naturopaths. Should be fun. I have prepared some material that should put the cat amongst the pigeons. I guess one of my greatest concerns about the concept of integration is that human nature always has a negative effect. Rather than a harmonious, homogeneous whole forming, there tends to be territorialism and power plays. In the mid 90s I sold my business to a larger agency that promoted an integrated model. "We can", they said"take care of all of your communications requirements." At which point they would reveal an organisational chart that, for all intent and purpose, looked like a multi -tentacled kraaken grasping at every budget morsel that was ava...

I don't revel in the misery of others. I watched the footage of Caroline Marcil on TV One's late night news broadcast. Caroline was asked to sing the national anthems at an exhibition game between the Canadian and U.S. national teams in Quebec City. Two lines into The Star Spangled Banner, Marcil appeared to forget the lyrics and left the ice briefly. When she returned with a lyric sheet in her hand, she slipped on the ice and fell hard. By then the crowd was booing loudly. Totally humiliated, she gave up on the performance. The game went ahead without the singing of anthems. I felt bad that we subject someone who obviously has talent to international humiliation by media. The sniggering of the show's minor talent hosts was worse than the item. I felt embarrassed for them. I fail to see how Kate Hawkesby's talent for reading from an autocue and being a fashion manque would ever work with The One & Only framework. Perhaps the Brazilian channel Globo have got it righ...

It has been a slow week for blog posts. I've been distracted with real world matters - moving house, school holidays. Going through my inbox this morning I found a regular mail that spots consumer trends. The latest issue talk about Generation C - consumers who want to have direct influence on what companies develop and produce for them. Access to media ranging from the ability to send stills and movies from a humble PXT phone to sophisticated movie making with digital video and PC based editing software gives anyone with access to quite low cost technology the ability to create and transmit ideas with no friction at all. The web gives us all an audience. Some of the most popular expressions of access and creativity have been where consumers create advertising for companies - such as the Converse movie gallery. The big question this raises is, what does the future hold for ad agency creatives when literally everyone and anyone has access to both the medium and the message? Brand ow...

As my personal relationship with my partner and lover came to its end over these last few weeks and months I have been contemplating the nature of relationships, intimacy and how we engage with the world. I've referred to Kevin Roberts Lovemarks in other posts and have expressed concern about the wholesale application of human characteristics onto products and services. I think we must take care not to make blithe assumptions about people and trivialise ideals that go beyond importance and extend into the essence of who we are. I worry about unhealthy ideas of 'love' projected onto brands in a needy, greedy way. My own thinking about the nature of brands as The One & Only, like all branding theories must, at some point consider the perceptual relationship with the product and the people who consume it. I believe that issues such as intimacy, as expressed in Lovemarks, don't properly address what intimacy is and its significance to us as humans. Intimacy begins with ...

This blogging business is fascinating. Actually, I'll qualify that, this whole internet business is fascinating. I was following some links from my blog to people who had left a message, and on from there to other connected sources, I made the mental leap between the trail we leave on the web via hyperlinks and the project to track the migration of humans across the planet using DNA. It's like a mirror image - the connection between the DNA project - looking for the origins of human beings and being able to follow chains of thought around the world. Kind of cool. Apparently we all came from Africa - and more recently than you'd think. National Geographic genographic project

The One & Only approach to brands and marketing is a humanisitic view, applied to both organsiations and individuals. At it's core lies the elimination of practices and expressions that do not fit or are not authentic to the entity. I read a sports story once (I can't remember where, who the protagonist was or the actual team involved - except that it was a famous American baseball coach and team - I'll do my best to be faithful, if not accurate); a new coach had been hired to work with a team that had been performing badly. The owner and had sunk millions into his team after making billions in some entrepreneurial venture; now he had the time and cash to indulge in his lifelong passion. It troubled him that the team was in such a slump. The first thing the new coach did was to interview all of his players. He paid particular attention to the pitchers. He believed pitchers won games. If batters couldn't hit the ball then they couldn't score home runs, let alone ...

Watching Nightline this evening I am left wondering about justice and activism. Farming couple successfully prosecuted for not moving stock to higher ground in the face of a bad weather report. All survived (just as they would, had nature been left to run its course) Meanwhile thousands of animals (cows, chickens, pigs) are butchered everyday to provide life threatening calories to people who don't need them. I love a great big juicy steak. My son and I have our 'steak out' on Wednesday evenings. I like mine medium rare. Recently I had a discussion with the marketing guy from SAFE , the animal rights activist. They wanted a campaign to promote the plight of battery chickens to the public. My suggestion was to promote a moderate view. Encourage consumers to simply eliminate one chicken meal every week. It's strange thing, but -in my observation - people are so used to seeing other PEOPLE eviscerated and dissected on CSI (the murder franchise: Las Vegas, Miami, and New Y...

Kevin Roberts calls brands Lovemarks and says that brands are dead. Lovemarks, it would seem, are the last word in branding. This has been bugging me for some time and, while I admire the way he has marshaled his resources to promote his brand, sorry Lovemark , I'm not convinced. I guess, in a way it would be like me coming home to my wife - if I had still had one - and saying "I'm not your husband any more I am your Lovinman," - and for good measure putting a trademark symbol on the end of it. Yes, I can be your Lovinman but I will also be your husband. Seems the two need not be mutually exclusive. Are Lovemarks anything more than a hi-jacking of the marketplace's attention? A re-branding of Saatchi & Saatchi? Something to be as carelessly applied as the received wisdom of the 1960's concept of The Single Minded Proposition. Make up your own mind: Order your copy of Lovemarks from Amazon My former partners at BrandWorld and I applied the strap line to o...

Mt Everest holds a special place in New Zealand 's consciousness. Ed Hillary climbed it with Tenzing Norgay and actually got to the summit and back in 1953. It may be that the English climber Mallory made it to the summit before the New Zealand beekeeper. But Mallory didn't make it home to tell the tale. Ed Hillary is widely regarded as a great New Zealander. One of the greatest. I agree, but not for the reasons most people do. Climbing Everest for the first time must have been challenging for him and I'm glad he 'knocked the bugger off' for himself - because 'conquering' a very small point at the top of the world seems to me to have very little real point or consequence other than as a personal challenge. Isn't it ironic that Hillary's real qualification as The One & Only is not for 'conquering' Everest and, literally, being on top of the world, but for his SERVICE to the community. He put aside the very ego that drove him to the summ...

Ok, so, a quiet night in, alone at home - for a change. I decided to have a Led Zep revival fiesta. On the weekend I hired film The Song Remains The Same - Tuesday now, been saving it. I wrote the other day about growing up with the music of the Clash. Well, Led Zep was probably more significant to me than all of the punk and post punk bands I enjoyed put together. I discovered the joy of headphones and stereophonic sound with Led Zep. Lying in bed at night with the lights off listening to the wailing guitar and sound of Robert Plant's voice oscillating from one side of my brain to the other. Now, I have to confess at this point that drugs never played a part in my enjoyment of the music. Not because I'm a stiff - (I don't care if you enjoy using drugs - it's entirely up to you), it’s just that I was never introduced to drugs. Never even held a lit cigarette, let alone tried to find a vein that hadn't collapsed. I've managed to live my adult life without anythi...

I read a little poem the other day - and while most poetry leaves me baffled I rather liked this one. "Come sit down beside me" I said to myself. And although it doesn't make sense, I held my own hand As a small sign of trust And together I sat on the fence. Michael Leunig - 'Sitting on the Fence' I return to the idea that: until we know ourselves and our own brand identity in rather more intimate ways than most people and organisations are currently comfortable with, then all we will be left with are projections of archetypes, cliches and rather pointless templates that fall, uncared for on deaf ears. If you are to be The One & Only then becoming comfortable with who you really, are is a significant challenge with implications throughout the marketing process from pricing to trade relationships? How can you charge a premium for your brand if your understanding of why it is worth more is faulty. How can you charge a premium if you do not have an utter and un...

I'm talking at a conference on integrative health on next month. I have been wary of the concept of integration in the context marketing communication since the early 1990s. It has always seemed to me that integration, when one person or organisation controls it, becomes a semantic exercise - a Trojan Horse for an agency that wants to control the client's budget. In my experience what is best for the client is less important than what is best for the customer. The motivation to 'integrate' has to be considered very carefully. Responsibility lies with the client - whether they are the patient of a medical centre or client of a multinational advertising agency. Something important has changed since 1994. Consumers have been given the most important tool in the history of economics. The commercial Internet made its impact felt in 1995. It has become a cliche but, since then, nothing has been the same. The web has refuted the economic principle that 'the consumer cannot...

"How we experience ouselves is reflected in the way we can experience other people: we cannot know other people better than we know our own selves; we cannot trust other people more than we trust our own selves. When we avoid knowing how we feel or what we think, we cannot learn to empathise with other people and take their feelings and thoughts seriously." Stephanie Dowrick - Intimacy and Solitude I have learned so much from Stephanie Dowrick. Her work as a psychotherapist and author has been profoundly important to me. I find her thinking refreshing. Her writing is clear and engaging. The two combined make a difference. There is something about market research, the opposite to Ms Dowrick's concept of humanity, that I find cold and disective. The only problem with dissection is that it is, usually, fatal or performed post mortem . There is plenty of evidence to suggest that marketing research is an utter waste of time. You can ask consumers in a focus group what their ...

Because New Zealand (and I use the term loosely) has a fascination with everything Scandanavian See my earlier story I thought I'd paste in some news that may have slipped under your radar. As of 1 January 2004 the new state owned company: Innovation Norway has replaced the following four organisations: The Norwegian Trade Council, The Norwegian Industrial and Regional Development Fund, The Norwegian Tourist Board and The Government Consultative Office for Inventors. Innovation Norway promotes nationwide industrial development profitable to both the business economy and Norway´s national economy, and helps release the potential of different districts and regions by contributing towards innovation, internationalisation and promotion. This is a footnote to the home page of the Innotown 05 Conference to be held in the picturesque Norwegian village of Ålesund on the coast, 45 minutes north-west of the capital Oslo (as the Valkyrie fly). Apparently Ålesund is an Art Nouveau treasure,...

There is a line in the Wild One when Marlon Brando's character is asked "What are you rebelling against Johnny?" With a dismissive curl of his lip Brando/Johnny sneers: "Waddya got?" That's the famous line. The one I prefer is when one of the rebel biker gang asks a local in the bar: "What do you hicks do around here for kicks?" "Oh,…The roses grow. People get married. Crazy as anyplace else. " Crazy as anyplace else. Now there's the rub. Often I meet with clients who agree with everything I say about being authentic; being The One & Only™. They nod and agree. "Yup, that's what we're all about. We're The One & Only™ alright. That's us…yessiree Bob" Then they tell me what they are doing to promote themselves to make the most of their distinctive qualities. "Well, we kind of match our competition because that's how things are done in this category." Lockstep. It is then I realise that o...

Sometimes I am just appalled by the expectations of my clients. It's not that they want too much. It is that they want too little. The following is based on a real converstation with a client. I have pixellated his face to preserve his privacy. "What about Big Hairy Audacious Goals" I flip in to the conversation, casually - as if to suggest some collegial affinity with Jim Collins (academic and author of Built to Last ), "You know - what's your BHAG". "What, like that book by Roald Dahl?" "No, you're thinking about the BFG. …BHAG - Big Hairy Audacious Goals." He looks back at me. Actually he looks over my shoulder, avoiding eye contact, as if to see whether my mind, which I have clearly lost, is running naked out towards the carpark. He fidgets nervously. "Look, I can't handle acronyms. If your going to use consultant-speak then I prefer metaphors, OK, …do this one thing for me and I'll be happy." "What, like ...