Oh. My. God!

It's official. Social Networking has the blessing of 'God's official representative' here on earth. It appears the Holy See wants to get down with the Catholic Youtubers across the world by broadcasting short video news clips on His activities and events at the Vatican. So what can we expect? Pope gets his ring kissed in public? Pope ponders his Hitler Youth photo album? Pope does nothing about Gaza? Pope fails to flog Vatican booty to end world poverty and starvation? Pope bollocks editor of Catholic Herald for slamming the Internet as the work of the Devil just before he launches onto Youtube. Pope gives class on Creationism v Cretinism (or are they one and the same thing?) Pope gives low-down on the top ten spiritual themes of all time. (Que: Alan Freeman VO with Italian/German accent), "Coming in at number 10 in this weeks chart it's: I am Therefore You are Not, by Notorious G.O.D. Up two places at 9 it's: Though Shalt not Thrill, by Forbidden Condom. And at number 8 it's: Suffer little Children Unto me by Confessions of a Catholic Priest in a new parish. At number 7 it's: Killing me softly, by Cain and Able. Creeping in at number 7 it's: Disability - you asked for it by Ban Stem Cell Research. Just outside the top 5, at 6, it's: Mary: Did she or didn't she do it with an Angel? by the Immaculate Conception. At 5 it's: Father, they know not what they are doing by IMF and the Bankers. At 4 it's: God told me to kill my Son for a laugh by Abraham and his estranged son Issac. At 3 it's: Yes, I'm talking to you by Burning Bush. In at number 2 it's: You don't count the dead when God's on your side by Crazy in Croatia. And at number 1 it's: And the Truth Shall set you Free by They'll say Anything if you Torture them with a little help from Jesus in Guantanamo Bay. Can't wait...

Whose Brand is it anyway?

I can't tell you the number of times I have asked in a lecture room full of brand people 20 floors above Canary Wharf, "Who owns the brand?" The brand people to a man, woman and hermaphrodite answer, "We do."
"If that's the case," I prompt, "I want each of you to write a one liner on the brand." After a few minutes of allowing them to look deep into the recesses of their considerably well-educated minds (for the corporately approved answer), or out of the window over the Thames (for a little personal inspiration), I collect the answers and list out the incredible, not even remotely related range of answers. I then go for the brand jugular...
"If you lot can't reach a consensus, how are the hell are customers? The fact is, most brand gurus seem to have little or no interest in what real people think about brands. It's better to stick your head in the sand/up your own backside (take your pick) and just get on with thinking out of the box/our box (depending on amount of cocaine used to stimulate creative juices). After all, we are the pros, are we not? Why let the great unwashed/uneducated (those without an Eden Project-sized atrium in the office) have a say in anything? I wonder if this blinkered thinking is why direct is now bigger than brand and both will soon be subsumed into digital (the brand that people are defining and re-defining 24 hours a day. Start listening to what the people (not in artificially inseminated focus groups) are saying about your brand in real time and you might learn something: the truth about your brand.

Here we go again

It's that time of year when we ask ourselves the two vital questions: "What have we done?" and "What next?" Did you finally get your work/life balance sorted out? Will it be this year? What is the correct ratio for the achievement of balance in one's life? 50/50? seems a little neat and not very practical. One of the key problems is that you spend a large percentage of your "Life" factor in bed asleep, thus wasting perhaps 50% of your down time on getting your head down. So you try insomnia to help make the most of your awake time only to find that clients/contacts/students start emailing and facebooking you at 4 in the morning. Now your work/life balance is really skewed/screwed. So you spend more time out of the office, working from home, hoping that Gmail will act as a moderating channel between you and the world and only to find that your nifty Blackberry never shuts up twittering and muttering at you. I'm driving to a meeting, it twits. I'm in the loo, it twits. I'm going out of my mind, it twits. There it goes again. Work/Life balance my arse. I must be crazy to even audit my work life balance. Look waht happened to Dudley Moore in the film Crazy People. He's an ad man who has a Jerry McGuire moment and say's "I know what we'll do: we'll tell the truth about products and services in our ads." They end up locking him away in an asylum. I hope there's room for me. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em I say. If we all end up living in a "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" wardened controlled home for retired ad and marketing people, perhaps the world would be a better place. No-one to make the general populace suffer from coms-induced status anxiety about the lack of funds required to purchase the latest ipod. No aspiration-crushing demonstrations of ad campaigns designed to underscore your oh-so-obvious inability to have it all (the footbal clubs, old masters, gargantuan houses, helicopter-toting yachts, private aiforce, top gear wheels, faberge eggs for breakfast etc etc. No it is easier to just join the nutters asap. The more, the merrier.