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"The sophistication of modern sport workd against freakish solo-domination. In skill- centred sports rather than purely physical sports, some records are virtually unbreakable"
Which means..
"There truly was a time when great men were greater -but human progress means those days witll never come back, there really will never be another Don Bradman"
Which is immensely sad. It seems like blokes need high mimetic heroes today more than ever.
From 'What Sport Tells Us About Life" by Ed Smith. If you fresh insight into sport,or life for that matter, because sport is really a mirror for everyday life, you should read it.
This also puts the arrogance of planners into sharp focus. It's not that most are genius strategists, it's just that others are even less good.
My career in a nutshell……….
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It's 6am, it's cold and dark. I'm supposed to be getting up to go swimming.
Someone said these words recently, "You're nearly 40. isn't it time you admitted your age and let it go?" They haunt me.
Shouldn't I?
Work means I'm not always around when the kids wake up. Shouldn't I be there every chance I get? Can't I listen to my aching body? It's always a bit stiff on mornings these days.
Sometimes the convinction wavers and, like gravity, the reality of being 39 year old drags me down.
But I go on. Mis-placed pride, ingrained habit and the knowledge that swimming has been such a big part of my life for so long, I don't know anything else.
What's more, when you know you we're born good at something, it seems somehow wrong to waste it. Even if the performance is a mere facsimile of days gone by.
I drive to the swimming pool. I dive in, it's freezing cold and my body takes longer to warm up that it used to. The old scar tissue from a torn shoulder muscle throbs for a little longer in the cold.
Then my thoughts wander.
It's been a hard three years as a husband and father. Being a parent puts simultaneously wonderful and terrifying challenges in front of you. I think it takes a real man do without a nights sleep, to comfort a sick child, then work the next day. It takes bravery to see your little boy in A&E without caving in, or have a doctor tell you your little baby girl might have brain damage and then not try and punch their face in when they've mis-diagnosed.
It takes a man to understand they will never be number one in the wife's eyes ever again. It takes a man to accept the immense responsibility to do more than protect your children, but help shape who they will become. To always be patient, to explain, to comfort, to not just shout and punish.
Winning at work, out drinking your friends, owning a good car or anything else that's supposed to signify manhood, pale next to this.
Including performing at sport. It seems pointless next to being their for my wonderful children. I love them and their mother so much.
But then I think of my parents, how happy they were for me to find something I loved as much as swimming.
How proud they were, win or lose, a long as I tried. And How pleased they were when I took it up again around ten years ago.
They're getting really old now, to the point when the fact they won't be around forever becomes less of a far off idea and more and ever present reality, quietly nesting in the subconscious.
Dad used to get up before 5am to take me swimming when I was young, then
go to work. They sacrificed their weekends and their evenings together
for me. Despite the prospect of all that time, they were still heartbroken when I packed in serious racing before my
time, but they understood.Trying to keep swimming at a decent level feels in many ways feels like a way to love and honour my parents and respect what they've done for me. Because, one of the many things they've taught me, is that everyone should be respected and valued. Everyone can do something well if you look hard enough,and everyones talent should be celebrated, no matter what it is.
This seems more important in these instant gratifications times, where people get rich or famous for doing nothing.While the quiet bravery of those that struggle everyday is forgotten. This is something want my children to understand as they grow up.
Then I'm not really thinking any more as I cut through the water. I'm just doing. I'm in a waking dream, totally in touch with my body as it remembers it can do this.
And it feels like home.
It feels like what it was like to be a child, when nothing needed a point, the joy was simply in the doing. You didn't think about playing, you just played.
I'm well into my session now. People often ask how I can spend so long in a pool, just going up and down. It's hard to explain what it's like. How you get to a state where you're not thinking, you're just focused on the act, fully aware of every stroke, every second, every turn.
How quieting the cacophony in the mind, not worrying about what's next, not going over what's happened, not second guessing, not trying to do ten things at once, lets your subconscious talk to you.
It's an escape, but that escape leads to ideas, solving of issues.By not thinking of them.All that stuff bubbling in the back of the mind just drifts forward. There are few problems or issues that don't seem easier after a good hard swim.
Swimming also stops me going soft, provides ballast. The harder it gets, the more it matters.That's whay that 6am conflict matters so much. If I give in to that, I start to crumble under all sorts of other temptations.
Like hell.
But it's not really any of that. The only point to swimming is swimming.
It doesn't have a purpose, it doesn't need it.
The act is enough.
Which in turn, reminds me how to live in the present and appreciate what's under my nose.
In my marriage, to not always pursue distractions, to just 'be' sometimes.
With my children, to not always be educating or even worse, having something more pressing to do. To just play for the sheer joy of playing.
Guess I'm saying that swimming is a contradiction.
It takes me away from wife and children.
Yet swimming helps me work out how to be a better father and husband.
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Still got stuff on, but writing (however badly) is welcome distraction
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I'm going away for a while. Got some some stuff to sort out, important stuff.
Unlike the unfortunate Lawrence Oates, I will return.
In the meantime.
Only use freshly drawn boiling water, warm the pot and always put the milk in first.
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I hastily put together this presentation for a conference thingy.On promotions.No one talks about promotions very often, despite this course of action being the default for so many marketers.Basic argument………..Most people think price promotions attract new buyers, but in reality they mostly work on current buyers, because only they are remotely interested enough to notice them.They produce a short term kick in sales, but after the promotion, everything snaps back to normal – there is little long term effect.So marketers do it again, and again to get the same artificial sales hit.Like an addiction.Yep, price promotions are the crack cocaine of brand marketing.While added value promotions – sponsorships, competitions etc perform in pretty much the same way.But at least they don't cut margins, or get folks used to a lower price. It's just that they tend to only work on current buyers.Many traditional marketers could be happy with this, because they labour under the misapprehension that they can build their brands' share through loyalty.They can't. As Byron Sharpe shows us, brands grow through penetration, through getting more buyers, not more sales from the ones they have. Loyalty is a false God.There is a massive saving grace for the traditonal promotion though – retailers love them. Doing promotions to keep the buyers in big retailers does make lots of sense, because penetration only comes from two areas:Physical availability – broader distribution.Mental availability – brand salience. Getting it noticed and though of in buying situations by more people.Looking at promotions in a different way can do more that build distribution though. They can address Mental availability too.The route to building salience is through being distinctive. Getting on the radar of people who just don't care.Promotions can help with this by not 'saying at people' but 'doing with people'.
- Find a credible link between what the brand and the audience cares about.
- That bring the brand purpose to life.
- Do something interesting and compelling that buyers can participate within, something with a story, something that's socially combustible – a story, a rich purpose for an event you can access through purchase, a physical gift with purchase or even a competition.
- Then create the tools and impetus for buyers and participants to share, so it gets into the feeds and timelines of their peers.
This also creates cut through in advertising – telling the story of what you've done, rather than what you sell.And if you've worked with the PR folks (and you should have) it should create headlines too.Not sure if it's any good overall, and I wish I had more time to put in more of the compelling statistical evidence, but, as with so much I seem to go on about these days, just read Byron Sharpe's book. It's all in there. -
I get the train a lot. I quite like it. Even with delays and all that.
Sometimes I like the peace and the chance to read, just think and even, now and again do some work that needs thought.
But I also love the train for the chance to embrace the sheer humanity of everyone.
Slice into the stick of rock that is the British public and see what's in the middle.
To admire the sartorial bravery of some..
The Theo Paphitis lookalike in his expensive, mafia coat.
The commuter pairing his cerise Nikes with suit trousers.
The bloke on the quiet coach who waited in silent rage before telling someone to stop typing so loudly.
And the self righteous response from the perpetrator who pointed out that the rules only state that devices should be switched to silent. And just typed louder.
The inner city kids on their first ever trip out of Leeds, on their way to London. Who thought Doncaster was the most amazing thing they'd ever seen.
The old couple sharing a flask of tea.
The bloke on the phone begging his girlfriend to forgive him on the phone. Then laughing about it to his mates.
The coven of lairy hen-doers.
The very well spoken, very old buffet trolley bloke with an obviously intersesting story I'll never hear.
The ticket bloke with the Patience of Job over the indignation of umpteen people who have bought the wrong ticket.
Real people, real stories, real life. A thousand little dramas in the everyday.
You won't get stuff like that in focus groups. Where folks cannot articulate their own lives.
You won't get that in segmentations, that look for what to divides us, rather what connects us.
A thousand little insights, but it's more than that. Planning is as much about instinct as about fact.
It's not about research, it's about truth.
Instincts about what really matters to people and how to become a very, very small part of that.
People live in the real world. Not dimly lit hotel rooms or TGI runs.
Put another way, go to the jungle, not the zoo.
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You may have noticed I have an, above average, appreciation for tea. Proper tea, made in a warmed pot with decent tea bags.Tea doesn't get much more complex than that for me. I believe it tastes better in a china mug, I think you should put the milk in first and I sometimes like Earl Grey for a little frivolity.
That's it. You CAN have silverware, natty trays, ironic mugs…you can even serve it in a stately home. But if you haven't done what you SHOULD, you haven't got the basics right, no amount of embroidery can make up for substandard tea.
Just like a really good steak need not be smothered in sauce – if it's good quality and cooked well, it doesn't need it.In fact, it shouldn't have it.
Just as good pasta tastes great with nothing more than great olive oil, garlic and quality parmesan.
It's a bit like that with planning and ideas in general. If your thinking is good enough, if you've done what you should:
Where are we?
Where could we be?
How could we get there?
It doesn't need bells and whistles. It stands alone in a well crafted sentence or two.
Just as ANY creative idea, digital or not, should make folks excited with nothing more elaborate than a few sketches and a few, well crafted words.
Just any presentation should make no more than 5 well made points.
I bristled recently in a meeting when a very senior planning person told the group, 'Sorry for the planning language in this, it's more for people like me and Andrew, we'll create something simpler later".
I reacted strongly against being lumped with 'planning language' which really meant needless long words and jargon, very complex charts and slide after slide after slide. That's not planning, that's hiding the fact you haven't done any yet. That's managing to alienate everyone else by implying they're a bit thick, only big brained planners will get this.
Well I'm sorry, if you can't say it concisely, if you can't get folks excited in a few sentences, you haven't thought about it hard enough. And no amount of quotes from Wittgenstein or 'The Social Animal' will mask it.
Just as no amount of reference, wireframing, quotes from Forrester or Mashable, mood films or mac concepting can mask something that is all execution, or even technology and no idea.
We're really lucky that we live an age with lots of choice, over media, technology and making ideas come to life really quickly.
But what hasn't changed is that all that stuff builds on solid thinking and a great idea.
It doesn't make up for flaky thoughts and bad ideas.
Or not having either at all.
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As you might have noticed, I'm in midst of the Year of (nearly) not buying stuff. Some of this is to do with saving, lots of it is a need to notice everyday life a little more.
So I was putting together a photobook of my little boy's first two years, and the act of editing and putting together that story made all so vividly real again.
It forcibly reminded me how special it all was. There were no pictures of shopping bags, new clothes or any such things. It was all times spent together, that we barely noticed then. We were too busy looking forward to the next thing, rather than just 'being' and enjoying now.
Which is why I'll edit and play with photobooks more, they remind me to smell the flowers while I can.
On that first two years. Will won't remember any of it. Which is at once said and really great. There will be a point when he doesn't want to be with us much, he'll have his friends, his ideas, his own stuff.
But we'll have our own special time when there was just the three of us. He was all ours, we meant the entire world to him. The fact he won't remember that means we own it. It's our little secret together.
Which reminds me to focus on our one and half year old little girl that little bit more. When there's some bloke (or girl!) she'll replace me with eventually, but I'll remember this time when she was all ours, that for her never even existed. There's little more sad/wonderful than that.
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He won't like me doing this, but since he's currently as far from the internet as could be, i.e the North Pole, there is nothing he can do about it.
I'm not talking about Robert Campbell, the legendary one with the big ears from Rainey, Kelly Campbell Roalfe.
I'm talking about Rob Campbell, the one from Wieden and Kennedy.
I'm talking about that one because I don't know the other Robert Campbell. I'm sure he's a nice bloke, but there's no reason he would talk to me. I'm a planning journeyman from Leeds. There's no reason Rob would either, but he does anyway. He's like that.
In fact, he talks to lots of people. He's incredibly generous.
Generous enough to blog nearly every single day about the job, offering all sorts of invaluable advice.
Generous enought to manage fantastic Account Planning School of the Web projects for aspiring planners around the world.
But it's more than that. In a business full of hubris, self importance and pretensiousness. Of arch irony and self satisfaction, he's totally authentic.
Not afraid to admit he likes Queen.
Not afraid to show how much he loves his Mother, his wife or his cat.
Not afraid to write in the most touching way about his departed father (who must have been quite a guy).
Not afraid to display absolutely no dress sense and doggedly stick to his army surplus shirts and Birkenstocks.
Not afraid to say what he thinks and tell it like it is.
Not afraid to admit when he's been totally wrong about Morrisey.
Not afraid to wear hats that him look a cross between Chewbacca, Justin Lee Collins and Mutley.
Who never defers to status – he treats everyone the same, junior planners, students, creative directors, CEO's.
And never uses his own. Never shows off about his considerable brilliance and incredible achievements. He just gets on with it.
No, not Robert Campbell. Rob Campbell. A shining example of generosity, authenticity and talent that gets on with being good, rather than talking about it.
The Rob Campbell who shows us that even Nottingham Forest supporting, Queen loving, Diet Coke addicts, not afraid to show their emotions, have time for everyone and don't seem to know that we stopped saying 'toptastic' in the '70's, can make it to the highest levels in this business.
Have fun with your Mum in the North Pole Rob.
NORTHERN PLANNER 