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Sponges and Rocks
Sponges absorb. Rocks don’t. Increasingly I feel that the advertising agencies are populated with rocks while all the smart sponges who absorb knowledge, references, culture are going to start-ups, consultancies and so on – the new capital makers. I see fairly young creative teams who churn out the same old ‘manifestos’ characterised by 2000’s era […]
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The only refuge left for truth – comedy
The only safe place (relatively speaking) left for Critical thinking and truth is comedy. The last refuge which holds itself through plausible deniability. The rest of the media has been completely overtaken by the powers in charge. The news media has completely assumed the role of propaganda machines. The few journalists who remain are being […]
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Our role in the fight against climate change.
Weren’t we supposed to be the good guys? Advertising alleviated the pain of the Sisyphean tragedy of modern capitalism. Advertising taught the world how to want. Advertising gave the notion of free will and choices when it comes to consumption. It made the powerless feel powerful, that their choices, their consumption mattered. The consumptive soma […]
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Embrace complexity to navigate the complex world
This article was subsequently published in Kantar’s BrandZ 2019 report. You can access it here. ____ “The destiny of our species is shaped by the imperatives of survival on six distinct time scales. To survive means to compete successfully on all six time scales.” – Freeman Dyson, From Eros to Gaia, NY, Pantheon, 1992 Unprecedented […]
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Driving at 20 in fifth gear
<rant ahead> Working as a planner feels like driving at 20 in fifth gear. The brain grates against the imposition of working full time but under capacity. It is held down with asks and tasks that require time, thought and concentration, but are largely inconsequential, often trivial and almost always misguided. (Inconsequential in cognizance of […]
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The brown dwarf
Brown dwarfs are the universal in-between – neither a star, nor a planet. They were potentially stars, but failed short. They failed to shine. Unlike the sun, the nuclear reactions on a brown dwarf sputter unstably, sometimes being extinguished of that majestic fire altogether. Its death is slow, degenerate. It contracts, cools, degenerates very slowly, […]
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Home
Moving I recently moved to my eighth house in ten years across five cities. Now that I look back at our movement, I am in awe of the amazing ability of my home in accommodating that frenzy and turning it into a simple peace. I moved with economic currents, with multiplying of love, with refusal […]
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On how not to ‘disrupt’ advertising agencies
I spent quite a bit of my time this year on pitching ‘agency as platform’ idea. Over every iteration and every conversation the business case improved, the roadmap became more concrete. I now have a fairly robust idea of how it can actually be implemented, what we will need and what we can expect in […]
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The business of transformation
WPP is now a ”creative transformation” company. I am cautiously optimistic about this facelift. I hope there is more to come. And that WPP will go beyond the facelift and the simplification. fingers crossed. But… After Ogilvy‘s ‘refounding’ and Publicis’ marcel attempt and now WPP’s structural simplification & brand identity ‘reveal’, it feels as if […]
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Truth About Branding 