Lola's Big Haircut

A few weeks ago I made a short film about my daughter. Not a huge surprise, as I am massively proud of her and I am a film-maker.  But this was different to the usual family stuff I make.

She created a quiet storm of events which ended in the her making another (unknown) little girl’s life a bit more bearable in the face of incredible adversity.

Chemotherapy is intolerable in the strongest of us, I am told. Apart from the physical sickness and side effects it creates, there’s the humiliating loss of hair. Like the therapy needs to make sure you are “flagged up” in some visible way. Insult to injury indeed.  This is tough to wear even for a self-aware, rationalising grown up.

But what if you’re a 10 year old girl?

Your hair is such a huge part of your identity the psychological effects must be crushingly sad.  The “Little Princess Trust” funds professionally made real-hair wigs for young patients undergoing chemotherapy. So they need (young) hair and money (each wig is around £400.00).

This is why my daughter wanted to help.  I have never been so proud of her.  I will not be so cynical as to make some kind of business connection here, so apologies to those of you who miss my communications insights this time. Normal service will be resumed next week.  I will say that if anything you ever created for your business contained just a fraction of the intimacy Lola’s story engenders, you’d have a very powerful story on your hands. Enjoy the film.

If you’d like to help us raise even more money for this cause, click here. Lola’s efforts made sure she could finance a professional wig maker for one wig, but there’s always more to do of course.

Thank you.

Running into the Sea

This picture means a lot to me. It’s my son Rae having fun on a day out. It was taken on an out-of-season trip to the seaside here in the UK, which means wind, cold, and closed attractions. Why would we do this? Well, there’s a certain kitch-ness to seeing off-season resort towns, a timeless charm. With almost no people around we got to focus on each other, and we all seemed to get this feeling of being the only people left on the planet. Which is cool.

The reason I love this picture so much is it represents a moment of madness I really want clients, friends and fellow creative to take note of.

It was freezing cold.  It was windy. We were not staying at any hotel, and we had no beach items (towels, spare clothes etc etc.).  At this point my 7 year old (as if trying to demonstrate his own craziness and bravery) simply ran into the sea. Up to his waist.  After the initial shock of the cold, and seeing our reaction, he knew he’d done something out of the ordinary.  He loved the fact that this was the LAST thing he should have done. And that it somehow now set him apart from the rest of the family as the “crazy” one. He grinned as passers-by stopped to comment, and he laughed as panic passed and we all saw the funny side.

Moreover, he experienced a visceral moment of cold, excitement, and joy.  I am pretty sure he’ll remember that moment for the rest of his life.  And that’s what happens when you take a chance. When you do that thing nobody expected you to do. 

That moment reinforced two things I knew to be true:

1.            The downside of taking such a chance is almost NEVER as bad as you think it will be (Rae spend the day squelching around the town like this was some huge badge of honour).

2.            The benefits are always memorable to everyone involved, especially if you live a life of quiet desperation, as most people do (It reinforced our family belief that Rae will change the world one day).

We spend so much of our lives on the dull stuff. Filling in forms, commuting, being in meetings.

Isn’t it high time YOU ran into the sea?

Where’s the STORY?

18 months ago I write a slightly brusque post about how to get the best in a client (video) testimonial situation. My experience was that the people asking for a short video of a customer were driven by the logistics of the situation – rather then the outcome. They were bothered more about what time we could get there, how quickly we could set up, who would be there to chaperone us with the client, what the equipment would entail – those sorts of thing.  These things do not happen often, after all..

But what about the story?

The objectives of the session SHOULD be to create a compelling piece of film that intimately explains why this customer uses your services and products. The purpose of this is to support other sales pitches in the future. The use of the word intimate is deliberate, as that will get you the credibility it needs and stop it looking overtly scripted.  We tend to forget that part. I’d like to approach it as if we are making an award wining piece of journalism – a story where a crisis was averted through innovative design – or something like that.

Remember:

1.              Ask open, relevant questions

2.              Connect with the problem being solved

3.             Don’t “carpetbomb”. Only ask specific questions relating to the agreed STORY

4.          Get B roll - nice situational imagery that relates to the story, or the metaphor of   the story.  Here's a nice example.

This will make the footage easier and quicker to edit, instead of buying everything in the store THEN deciding what to have for dinner.  Don’t write the story in front of the customer.

Start with why. Then state what you want the story to be about, and create questions that favour that story.

Simple.

What the world needs now…

Awoken by a headache I take some pills and distract myself from the ache with a trawl through my social media feeds.  I love that when I do this there is almost always gold there. Partly because I have so many creative and connected friends, and partly because of our American friends who have been up for an extra 6 hours or so sharing stuff while I’ve been sleeping.

 


If more of the people I work for understood only 5% of the intimate connection that Amanda Palmer is talking about in this TED talk, then my job would be a lot easier as I persuade them that their audience is not a group of people who are to be treated with suspicion, or patronised, or feared.  They are just people.  Give them some credit.  This usually happens when we want to try to make them laugh. Our clients wonder if someone will be offended.  We've NEVER met anyone in any business that has been honestly offended - they are always talking about that other nameless generic employee that might complain about something of other.  

To them I say PLEASE stop covering your ass, and for Pete's sake grow a pair. 

When people understand your good intent, they assume you didn't want to upset them even if you make a mistake. So make sure your audience understands your intent. The best way to do this is to be honest and communicate like a human being. Intimacy is the key to doing this if it's been a long time since you made an honest connection.

The process of finding our way back to intimacy with our fellow humans has started. Social Media – where the hell have you been. We’ve missed you.

Selling Fluff?

Today, Huawei (Chinese telecoms manufacturer), launched its first major western advertising campaign.  I have to say I’ve never seen such trite, nebulous, self affirming rubbish in my career.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=a1Uso9flORA

Not that long ago, Tesco lampooned the crap out of this generic, over-worthy, sonorous brain-poop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWc-UBis4uk - Hilarious...and well observed.

My thinking is that due to the nuances of cultural tastes and translation issues, there was no policing on the part of the agency to protect the client from themselves. So – what was viewed by the client as ground-breaking and creative (there might even have been much client interference…er…collaboration), was eventually realised via stock art and oh-so-street-credible voiceover as hackneyed and pointless.

It happens to the best of us and we need to be ever vigilant over the use of lofty philosophical sales pitches.  If you want proof that it happens to the best of us, I wrote this little demo for a pitch over five years ago.  I love the music, and the voice is just to die for - but the words are crap.

The client (anon) quite rightly awarded the project to someone else.  Come on Huawei – you’ll need to better than that if you want to make any sense this end of Europe… 

Putting yourself out there

This week I had the fabulous thrill of performing in a short festival comedy show called "Lindsey & Jim are Married".  The reason I see fit to mention this on our official company blog (since when have we ever been seen the official anything?) was to illustrate a principle.

Someone once said that you should put yourself in harms way at least once a month (or do something that scares you every day...? - I can't remember which).

My comedy partner and I probably had a total of two days work on this project (not including nando's "workshopping" sessions).  We felt desperately under-rehearsed as we both live very busy lives, and walked onstage on Monday night with more than a little trepidation.

Thankfully - it went as well as we could have dreamed. Perhaps a bit unpolished here and there but awesome nonetheless. The audience seemed to enjoy it too.

The lesson I want you all to draw from this post, my little chausson's, is that you should do stuff. Anything. Put yourself out there. Seth says we should simply SHIP baby! And that what we did this week. It was a packed venue and we DID it. It felt great. I hope your life has something that you can feel that great about - honestly.

What have you done recently that scares you?