168 Things

When budgets are tight and times are hard, the temptation is to create safe marketing. Bland, samey nonsense. Pap. It all starts with a creative brief getting dumbed down, and then you're all on the road to hell, if hell had the fire and brimstone removed, and all the interesting, bad people, and was run by estate agents. You have to make a stand. 

Every creative person knows the feeling - you've presented your ideas, and now the client has some comments... and once you've heard them, all you want to do is run away. But don't - or at least, don't go too far. Find a place that can give you solace, and inspiration. As I did, one wet afternoon in London. This podcast tells the story. 

In this episode, we interview Rob Steeles - a highly successful creative director who is also a self-confessed introvert. How has he done so well in an industry that favours more flamboyant, extroverted characters? Listen to find out, and learn how business leaders can create space and time for more introverted people to flourish, to everyone's benefit. And how, if you are an introvert, you can make your way right to the top. 

How to develop a superpower that will give you a major competitive advantage - listening and thinking about what you're hearing. You'll find out what your clients want, but can't quite manage to say. You'll stand out from the crowd, in a business where everyone else spends the time they should be thinking about what they're listening to thinking instead about what they want to say. 

The post-lockdown world is upon us, and with it, a lot of job losses. The next few months are going to be difficult, to say the least. In this podcast, we're talking about how business leaders should tell their people bad news. It's never great, but you can make it much worse by handling it badly - and conversely, you can make it hurt a little less by doing it well. We're drawing here on our own experience, and hoping we can help you rise to this horrible challenge and come through it like a decent human being. Serious, important stuff.

Leaders around the world are facing the greatest test of their lives. Some have failed, as we can all see, while others have done far better. What is the single most important quality a leader can show, and who best exemplifies it? In our business lives, what can we learn from these examples? 

We need better leadership, now more than ever. In business as much as in politics - and in this podcast, we talk about what happens when you take on a leadership role, and how you deal with the new demands on your mental powers. The temptation is to try to have an answer for every question - with the best of intentions - but here we talk about why that's a bad idea, and start to think about a better way forward.

This time we're back to the subject of pitching. We look at how you can learn more than the pitch brief tells you; how to keep the prospect excited about your pitch during the run-up to the presentation; and why tissue meetings are a terrible idea. This is for anyone who has to present ideas to win business, in marketing or elsewhere. Pitching will be a recurring theme in these podcasts.

Where do ideas come from? A head full of all kinds of random stuff. You have to feed your soul, as Chalice puts it, and then you'll make interesting connections and come up with new thoughts - which for anyone in creative marketing is vital. In this episode, we talk about how a cat up a tree sparked an award winning campaign, and why a boxing match might be as useful as a visit to an art gallery. 

This time, we're talking about why sometimes you need a short attention span.