Working on ghd was as close to working on a Nike or an Apple as it gets if you work outside if London in the UK. One of the problems on working on a brands like that is that the industry at large always thinks it knows what made that particular brand great.
I always felt working on ghd that the world and his wife wanted to tell me why ghd had got to where it had (£100 million turnover in 5 years etc) and what should be done with it, commercially, as a brand, what the ads and stuff needed to be. Not everybody was 100% wrong but no one was 100% right. Because they didn't know the business, they hadn't seen the tracking, they hadn't done the segmentation, they didn't see the client, they didn't talk to women about ghd and their hair week in week out.
I had a few ideas about it before I worked on it, some strong opinions about the work and the brand in general. I was almost completely wrong, but didn't know that until I started working on it. So what's my point?
I think it's healthy to have an opinion on other people's work and think about what the strategy was. It's good to look at the work and have a view in the creative idea and how it's executed. But it doesn't make much sense to think you know better than the people that worked on it – unless the people who've worked on it have told you.
That's why I have a problem with lots of business books with half baked theories and case studies of stuff they haven't done. By default, they don't KNOW why something worked. They only have an opinion. That's why I hate Campaigns creative review, it's a bit of fun, but in the end, it's someone's opinion…and this industry finds it really hard to say anything good about other people's work.
On the other hand, there's work as bad as this. Feel free to say what you like.
NORTHERN PLANNER 
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