Archive for the ‘MediaComment’ Category

What can we learn from Ronnie the Rocket about winning?

Monday, March 4th, 2024

Ronnie O’Sullivan is unlike other legendary sports people in a number of ways.

First of all, he’s got huge longevity: he is the only snooker player to have won the world championship as both the youngest, and now the oldest player.

Secondly, at the same time as being on top of the modern game, in some ways he is traditional. He won’t switch chalks. Most snooker players use the TAOM chalk which apparently reduces friction better. Ronnie has stuck with the old Triangle chalk. It certainly doesn’t seem to be holding him back from being both one of the most successful and the most entertaining players.

Thirdly, he says frequently that he does not care about winning at all costs. Although his rivals talk about him as a legend, he must annoy them. He often talks about the fact that he really doesn’t care about winning, only about playing well.

And yet time and again, he wins.

Fourthly, when he plays badly, which he acknowledges that he does reasonably frequently, his competitor seems to drop their game too. Ronnie will then apologise for “dragging the other player down to his level”. Ronnie then recovers his game and beats the opponent. It is like a weird version of the “Tiger Woods effect” whereby the presence of a superstar in a tournament has statistically been shown to diminish the performance of the other contenders. Weird because in the Tiger Wood instance this was because he was playing so well. Not, to quote Ronnie, “dragging the other player down to my level”.

In January 2024 Ronnie won his 8th Masters Final and the World Grand Prix. But he told his public that its not winning that matters to him as much as playing well.

In an interview with ITV Sport on January 17th 2024, Ronnie said this:

“Its nice winning tournaments, you know, but the biggest worry for me is that I’m not really comfortable, or I don’t feel that I’m playing with confidence – to do with cueing and stuff like that. I know I’ve won tournaments but I’m still not really happy with my game, which is more important that winning tournaments to me…… it’s been surprising, I don’t know where it (winning) has come from. Maybe cos its not the most important thing for me. The most important thing is I want to play well. I’d rather play well and get beaten than play badly and win.”

Now clearly Ronnie likes to win (as he has stated before). No champion is averse to winning. But caring about how you do it as well as what the outcome can indeed drive more longevity and better job satisfaction in the long run.

Winning at any price can drive short term benefits in our sector, but winning at the wrong price may mean under resourcing an account, failing to have anything other than a transactional relationship and can be harmful for the work and the outcomes for clients and businesses.

Teams suffer under a pressure to win at any price. We are all human and usually we are motivated by doing our best work. Compromise might be pragmatic, but if it is the only option time and again, then its not the most motivating way to win.

A boss once told me, “don’t worry about winning the pitch and double guessing what you think people want to hear. Focus on what we think is right and showing up as our best version of the ourselves”. It was inspiring, it took the pressure off, it made me want to win even more (and in fact we did win.)

Winning matters, but so too does being your best self at work, doing beautiful work and delivering true breakthroughs. Putting the latter first, may help you come first more often.

For love or money? What is professionalism?

Monday, February 19th, 2024

Nick Dunlap made golfing history in January 2024 when he won The American Express PGA Tour.  He is the first amateur to win a PGA Tour event in 33 years.  The prize money for the event is £1.5m.  However, because he is an amateur golfer (Dunlap is a university student), he doesn’t get to win any of the money.

In a 2019 episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld takes his friend and guest, fellow comedian Mario Joyner to the barber.  Jerry insists that Mario’s beard needs trimming.  Leaving aside the strain that this might put on any relationship (if your friend’s hirsute style troubles you would you book them into a hairdresser, and if you did would they still be your friend?), the sincerity of Seinfeld’s horror at Joyner’s unfettered beard is clearly authentic.

Post barber, situation resolved (though the difference seems marginal), Seinfeld points out that he thinks it is much better, and that there are some things that need to be carried out by professionals.  And this takes the pair into a familiar (to regular viewers of the show), rant about how comedy is only the business of professionals, and amateurs telling jokes fills them with horror.

But doing something because you love it, the original definition of amateur (from the latin amare – to love), requires a passion for the subject that could transcend simply doing something for money, clearly evidenced in Dunlap’s golfing victory. 

Most bloggers will be doing it for the love of getting their point of view out there.  I don’t get paid for this blog – it doesn’t mean that I don’t consider myself a professional blogger, and care about every word, every semi colon, and the cadence of each sentence. 

The scientist and heiress Miriam Rothschild spent years compiling a four volume catalogue of fleas, published in the 1950s.  She had come under accusations in a field almost exclusively populated by men, of being a dilettante.  She instead used the term amateur with pride.  According to Natalie Livingstone, the author of Women of Rothschild, it was Miriam’s “expert amateurism that allowed her to follow her broad interests, work across subdisciplines, imbue her work with her love of literature and philosophy, and avoid the increasing specialism she observed taking place”.  Miriam was a huge success in her field, she served as the first woman trustee at the Natural History Museum and was awarded an honorary doctorate of science by Oxford University and was a visiting professor at the Royal Free Hospital.  Read between the lines and her amateur status allowed her to break the glass wall of men dominated institutions, and the freedom to explore her own judgement for the benefit of science.

What does being a professional mean?  In the world of sport, being a professional means getting paid for what you do.  Is that the only criteria?  Or is there a level of professionalism that requires more than just a salary?  My first job was selling shoes in Dolcis in Brent Cross.  I don’t think the lavish salary (for a 14 year old, (with double time for bank holidays and a bonus for selling Scotchguard)), made me a professional. 

My colleague Rob Meldrum, head of creative futures at EMX, spoke recently to his team about a collective ambition to make “the best work of our lives”. 

This ambition, together with the expertise and persistence, are what characterises professionalism.  And it is what I’d want from a barber / hairdresser.  What any client would want I think.  And what keeps me loving my job.

A good boss is a servant leader

Tuesday, February 6th, 2024

Happy 2024.

As the old year turns into the new year there are often added pressures.

Where it is acceptable to move a meeting from June to July or from October to November, moving a meeting from one year to another seems much more epic, and rude, so maybe the last weeks of the year have been especially fraught with added pressure to squeeze catch ups in?

For organisations with calendar reporting there is all the busyness of finalizing year-end figures, and crystalising business plans for the next 12 months.

Then there are awards, the new season is also starting with Campaign Media Deadlines in January.

Is your boss putting pressure on you to get stuff done at an even higher rate of agility than usual?

Bosses increasingly see the benefits of being in the office together and want to see you there.  So, getting you physically in the office is an overriding agenda too, which can be an added pressure to a difficult work life balance for some.

Bosses shouldn’t be adding pressure of course.  That isn’t the role.  A great leader will be working as hard as possible to alleviate pressure and find hacks to make your work simpler and less hassle.

Our popular culture doesn’t reflect this does it.  It’s locked into a 20th century, even Victorian, notion of the boss as tyrant, making unreasonable demands and not caring about anything more than the results. 

From the wonderful Sylvie in Emily in Paris to the iconic Katharine Parker played by Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl, to 9 to 5, The Office and Horrible Bosses and all stations in between there are a myriad of caricatures of rubbish managers.

And where are the good bosses on screen? Few and far between.

In our best-selling book (with Kathryn Jacob), The Glass Wall, success strategies for women at work and businesses that mean business, one of our anonymous interviewees told us about the need to ask your boss for help, not to assume that they just expected you to Just Do It.

She told us that she had taken a big promotion but felt really out of her depth. In fact, she confided that after her first few weeks she was completely miserable, not sleeping properly and she felt like she was

letting her new boss down badly.  She had found out that she wasn’t superwoman.  Well, nor are any of us.  What she needed to do was ask her boss for help.  Because her boss wanted her to succeed.  Of course, he did, he’d promoted her, and her failing was only going to cause him more problems. 

This is true of everyone.  Always remember that your boss needs you.  But they might not know, unless they are mind readers, what you need from them.

In an ideal world your boss would prioritise your welfare.  In Agile ways of working (of which I am a huge believer) the notion of the Servant Leader is pre-eminent.  The role of the team leader is simple, to control workflow to make sure it is realistically manageable, and to remove barriers from your path.  And the daily standup and transparent KanBan ensure that the leader can do this.

Not everyone works in this way of course.  Your barriers or difficulties might not be clear to your manager, and remember they have their own problems, and pressure.

So, take time to communicate what you need from your boss.  Manage your manager and try to manage your team better than Sigourney.

Please don’t bore us, get to the chorus.

Friday, January 19th, 2024

First lesson of presenting:

Say what you’re going to say.  Say it.  Say what you have just said.

I learnt this in my first ever presentation training and it is true not only of presentations, but every time that you want to communicate.

Got some feedback for a team member.  Say what you’re going to say, say it, say what you just said.

Pitching for a payrise.  Say what you’re going to say, say it, say what you just said.

Breaking up with someone… Say what you’re going to say, say it, say what you just said. 

Writing an awards entry, Say what you’re going to say, say it, say what you just said.

People’s ability to hear what they want to hear is pretty amazing, and our brains love to stick to existing patterns of thought, so if you have something new to pitch you need to make it simple and repeat it. 

If you complicate things, then that will allow misinterpretation.

If you hedge around an issue, people might just not hear anything that you say.

If you assume that they will work out what you mean from your subtle implications, you’re probably wrong.

And if you love (as many in adland do), to lead up to a big reveal, don’t count on the fact that people will still be paying any attention at all unless you have given them a really good reason to by, yes, you guessed it, saying what you’re going to say in the first couple of minutes.

Our favourite sing-a-long songs demonstrate this beautifully.  It doesn’t matter what the artist intended, all people remember is their interpretation of the chorus.

The Pogue’s classic, with the wonderful Kirsty MacCall, Fairy Tale of New York from 1987 is a perennial favourite in the UK.

But have you really listened to the lyrics?  They aren’t cosy, they aren’t that Christmassy and they aren’t really suitable for a singalong with your nan or your kids.

Britain’s favourite Christmas song, starts in the drunk tank, and goes downhill from there: Blessed Shane now “won’t see another one”.

Every Step You Take is still popular as a classic wedding song, and the Police original from 1983 was of course about a stalker.  40 years later, it’s still hugely popular, as a love song.

There’s a Bowie favourite used to rouse crowds and boost corporate spirits; but when people hear “Heroes” what they hear is just the line “We can be ‘heroes’!”.  What they don’t hear is that the song is actually about a doomed, dysfunctional couple whose dream is that they might be ‘heroes’ (Bowie includes the ironic quote marks, just to make it absolutely clear that they’re not really heroes) just for one day.

Born In The USA by Bruce Springsteen is played at patriotic gatherings.  Its about how badly vets were treated after Vietnam.

And the highly hummable, Stevie Wonder hit, Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours, is less of an actual love song, and more of a dodgy and unbelievable grovelling apology for bad behaviour.

Of course, there’s more.

And why should the artists who made the hits worry?  After all they may be misunderstood, but as my grandmother would have put it, they’re misunderstood “all the way to the bank”.

The key point here is that this is more common than you might think, and this is worth remembering every time you begin to compose.

Let’s assume that most of our readers aren’t writing hit songs, but you probably are writing presentations, scripts for meetings or working out how to sell something.

Two crucial points to remember are:

You need a chorus, something memorable, and repeatable.

No-one will remember anything else apart from the chorus.

And, as I have said,

Say what you’re going to say, say it, and say what you have just said.

Or in other words:

Say the chorus, repeat the chorus, repeat the chorus again.

Breakthrough in the New Communications Economy: Culture and Communities

Tuesday, December 12th, 2023

The final week of November saw a week of breakthrough presentations at EssenceMediacom and EssenceMediacomX from our partners, our teams and a wide set of inspirational people.

Everyone was asked to come and deliver their view on how brands can breakthrough in the New Communications Economy (NCE).

One clear theme stood out from many amazing sessions.  Culture has undergone a transformation in the last decade. 

It used to be that there was a dominant mono-culture.  This would either be dictated by or amplified by established media platforms.  The glossy magazines would set an agenda for the season, or TV shows would create the buzz for the season.  A new release by a band or the latest hit musical might fuel that theme.

Now there is no mono-culture but a set of overlapping and contrasting multi-cultures.  And these are not dictated from above but formed by micro-communities.  Everyone can contribute to and might contribute to, or even star in, the zeitgeist of the moment.

From the thousands of communities on Reddit, to the explosion of fan communities on YouTube, and everything in between, it is micro-creators, geeky communities and their weird and wonderful points of view that make culture real now.

This isn’t new, but now it is properly widespread.  In 2012 in my co-authored book Tell the Truth, honesty is your most powerful marketing tool, we published a case study about an innovation in magazine publishing, a new phenomenon that at the time was very successful in leading the way.  We wrote: “Magazines have always traded on knowing what their readers want.  From Cosmopolitan’s vision of the young single woman to Good Housekeeping’s soothing of the household matriarch, a wide offering of publications produce images and words to satisfy readers dreams and aspirations.  This is the classic model and it is traditionally left to the instinct of the editor to pronounce and deliver it… A new model of journalism is evolving now that is based on audience behaviour online.  Goodtoknow has transformed from a top down editor’s opinion led publication to a bottom up reader-enlisted model.” 

It’s editor, and pioneer of community fed editorial, was Jolene Akehust, and she led the way, 20 years ago, by flipping the model. She informed content from what was trending in online forums, and she aimed for the tone of voice of shared experiences in supermarket carparks between busy mums.  She confided in me at the time that she didn’t really fit the gang of the other women’s mags editors who (supposedly) dictated culture.

Even earlier, in the 1990s, I was really intrigued to work with Converse’s ad agency who employed a “cool hunter”, Jane Buckingham, who travelled the world looking for the new hottest fashion passions to feed back to our comms strategy.  The plans weren’t driven by what the media considered trendy, but by micro communities in far flung cities. 

This week our EMX ceo Clare Chapman interviewed Adam Baidawi, GQ’s Deputy Global Editorial Director and Editor in Chief of British GQ.  He explained that GQ had transformed, from a publication that dictated how one homogenous cohort of men should look, behave and buy, to a title that reflects and adds to different pockets of culture.  It’s no longer about looking for the biggest audiences as an editorial focus, but instead finding the biggest enthusiasms (however niche) and putting them in the spotlight. 

In the New Communications Economy, where user generated content is now the dominant content in young people’s lives, you can breakthrough if you put people, their passions and their communities first.

Now we’re all cool hunters, and there’s millions of communities to seek out for the next (for the moment) big thing in the zeitgeist.