Does your CSR stack up?

Having a corporate consciousness with genuine integrity is becoming increasingly important.

Customers and employees alike want to see much more evidence than a bit of box ticking – and much has been written about the scrutiny, from millennials in particular, when it comes to assessing corporate credentials. Grin and grip photographs or a lunchtime spent painting a fence certainly won’t cut the mustard. CSR, corporate social responsibility, is exactly that – a responsibility.

Ethical sourcing, sustainability, lowering carbon footprints etc are all key, of course, but supporting community initiatives is an area that I feel can deliver results in a whole manner of ways.

My new agency One Black Bear has been doing great things for St Basil’s for a number of years. So along with my CIPR Midlands’ colleague Rachel Owen, we are now hoping to promote best practice for community activities with a big focus on St Basil’s.

Our first initiative is going to be a CSR event for Birmingham businesses which will endeavour to ask businesses – and PR practitioners especially – how their CSR stacks up. And indeed, what sort of city do we want to live and/or work in?

St Basil’s fundraising is headed by the charismatic Barrie Hodge. Of course encouraging significant financial donations is part of his role, but Barrie is also on a mission to educate businesses about how else they can help homeless people in Birmingham. For example, getting homeless people into work is a critical part of regaining control of their lives. Businesses can obviously make a meaningful contribution here in a whole host of ways. Work experience. Mentoring. Apprenticeships. Much more useful than a lunchtime painting a fence that in reality might have not really needed painting because some other company had done it not so long ago in a bid to team build whilst ‘doing good’.

We are planning an event on the evening of Thursday, 27^th April (venue TBC but it will be central Birmingham) when Barrie will be speaking alongside other people who feel passionately about helping to make the city a better place, in a way that will genuinely pass the CSR litmus test – and engage customers and employees along the way. Win win win is the plan.

For more information, please email me at bron.eames@oneblack.com

Don’t be first, be better.

As we enter a new year you can’t help but be bombarded with articles about the next big thing. We’re told (as we are every year) that technology and innovation will change our jobs, lives and thinking.

Encouraged to be ahead of the curve, a cutting edge provider of new ways of doing things.
Clients want leaders, they want to be the first, seen as revolutionaries.

Except they don’t really.

In the main, clients and agencies want to tweak the edges. Make slight improvements and nuanced changes that shift the dial.

Because, revolution and leading the way is a dangerous path strewn with many pitfalls of huge failure.

It is our job to keep an ear to the ground, see what’s out there.
What has potential and where the dangers lie.

We have stats and figures in abundance but stats and figures so often lie.

The Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome is growing stronger and stronger.
Suddenly the data for all things digital and social is flaky to say the least and we’ll see how deep some of these new billionaires pockets are once the giant corporations begin demanding recompense for the money spent in good faith on dodgy reporting.

Remember this, John Loud invented the ball-point pen 50 years before Laszlo Biro got in on the act.
In fact by the time Biro launched his product, there were already 350 alternatives in the marketplace.
Biro’s worked and became huge, not because he was first but because his was the best.

We all pray for creative simplicity.

All across Germany this year, the jowly, dour portrait of Martin Luther will adorn public places as people commemorate 500 years of this German monk’s contribution to the Protestant faith.

Hardly a fan of the Roman Catholic Church, Luther had grown tired of the indulgences offered up by some of his clergy mates promising everlasting life etc. in return for people not playing up. You see, Luther believed it should be integrity of faith and not individual, remorseful actions that brought mortals closer to God.

Ostentation, not surprisingly, didn’t figure heavily in his hallowed code and was considered a ‘disgraceful distraction‘. Simplicity was key to ‘Lutheranism’ but as word took hold and his teachings spread across northern Europe. This man of the cloth saw the colours of his beliefs run into much wider areas such as architecture and even the advent of flat pack furniture.

Yes, you did read that correctly. Flat pack furniture.

Luther is today widely credited with inspiring the brutal, modernist lines of the Bauhaus art movement that shunned ornamental indulgence for function.
But as if that wasn’t enough, and as Luther’s teachings spread right across northern Europe, the Swedish town named after him (Lutheran) went onto become the birthplace of none other than IKEA.

And so it would come to pass that God subjected middle aged males to a life of DIY purgatory. And in no small part, you have a German monk to thank for that.

2017. The end is not nigh.

When pilots come in to land on an aircraft carrier, what do they do?

The natural assumption is that they’d slow the plane down to a gentle landing on deck then hit the brakes as hard as possible to avoid slipping off the end of the tiny strip of metal.

The opposite is in fact true.

As they touch down, it’s time to hit full thrust and speed up.

The reason they do this is that if anything was to go wrong with the landing, they’re already getting up to speed where they can successfully take off and attempt to land again.

A complex hook and rubber band system is essentially what brings them to a halt and stops them falling to the bottom of ocean.

This is how we’re approaching 2017 (happy new year by the way). No letting up, just a full throttle approach to all of the challenges that face us.

As the Christmas High Street numbers come in, there’s more talk of economies slowing.
Add to this the political instability the world over and you’d think this year may be our last.
For some, this doom and gloom outlook will have them slamming on the brakes retreating to the hills and hoping that it all goes away while they ride out further turmoil.

However, I implore you all to be positive and full of optimism for the coming twelve months.
It will bring a multitude of challenges but more importantly, many opportunities.

It’s gonna be fun. Just as long as we all keep on accelerating.

2016… At first I was afraid.

Listen to pundits reviewing the past year and there’ll be doom and gloom over what a terrible 12 months we’ve just had.

Whether it be the talk of all the celebrity deaths (up about 15% on an average year apparently), the heart breaking tragedies in Syria that the West just stood by and watched or the political upheaval encountered both here and across the pond.

For One Black Bear though, (Birmingham’s largest full-service agency) rather than an annus horribilus it’s been an anno triumphantes.

We took 50 6ft pigeons to Trafalgar Square, put three drag Queens in Victoria rail station singing Gloria Gaynor and had seven cowboys gun slinging their way through Cardiff – all for our client National Express. Stunts that managed to actually shift the share price.
A client we were appointed as lead agency for back in January and had a TV ad and a new positioning in place by Feb.

New relationships have come through our doors in the form of working with Camping & Caravanning Club, National Grid, Siemens, Boost Energy Drinks, Eurolines and two other brands I’m not allowed to mention yet.
We already have six new business meetings/pitches in place for when we get back next year, so the long term programme of old fashioned DM we implemented must be working, along with our multitude of blogs and thought pieces.

You may or may not have noticed our new positioning ‘Sometimes it’s an ad’ which not only explains the breadth of what we offer but also represents the way we think and approach answering briefs. For us, the excitement of what we do lies in how differently we can solve the multitude of problems we face day in day out.

Some of our other creative highlights have included the ‘Donate your Homepage’ project we developed for local Youth Homeless charity St. Basils. We also designed their latest Annual Report (the third year running) and have just launched their free text service. Let’s not forget our topical Jeremy Corbyn ‘seatgate’ ad too.

Our award winning work for the NHS continues to change lives and preconceptions with new trusts getting on board. Spanning social, web, ads and PR to attract the very best talent. Not to mention successfully saving the organisation hundreds of millions of pounds.

We merged our Social Media agency (Shadow Giants) under the OBB banner and bolstered our offer with the addition of PR services.
This year also saw us introduce a new management team as we added the two Amys (Gouldson and Eddy) to join Rich and myself in helping run the agency and made massive steps forward by hiring two of the industries finest minds – Kate Hartsorne as our Associate Planning Director and Bron Eames as PR Director.

Big thanks to everyone who came to the ‘surprise’ party celebrating Rich and I working together as a creative team for 25 years. I know, we don’t look old enough.

Of course, all these ups can’t happen without the occasional down. We said goodbye to a few talented people and one account. After 22 years of working on the the business, we have parted company with Subaru. But as these things are cyclical, who knows, the relationship may reignite somewhere down the line.

There was also a couple of pitch time-wasters this year. This isn’t being a sore loser, we fully understand the process and I’m never bitter about things when conducted properly. Quite willing to accept defeat, as long as the process is conducted professionally and fairly.
But this year we experienced three of what can only be described as being some of the most ludicrously run pitches I’ve experienced in over 20 years.
These three alone will have cost us at least £40k in time investment. Multiply that by the four to six agencies involved in all of these (who will have put an equal amount of energy in) and the wasted resource is approaching £250k. It’s akin to the car insurance industry, all the bad drivers, criminals and faux injuries push the costs up for everybody else. We need to sort this out as an industry on both the agency and client side. That said, it’s an argument that’s been rumbling for decades and I don’t think 2017 will see a sudden change.

But it’s Christmas and should be about good will and optimism, so let’s concentrate on the seven gains vs one loss. We’ll take that.

Top visited blog posts of the year:

As our thirteenth year in business draws to a close, we’d like to thank all of those we’ve worked with and for. We’re excited about the prospects that 2017 holds (even with the triggering of article 50, a new President and further turmoil the world over) and look forward to meeting friends old and new.

We hope you’re one of them, so have a great break and maybe we’ll see you in the new year.

It’s democracy, people. Now do as you’re told.

A quarter of Americans born since 1980 believe that democracy isn’t the best form of government.

That’s some statistic and it got me thinking. Don’t worry – this isn’t another article on the nationalist shocks to the political establishment of an eventful 2016. It’s either been said or will be said by loftier commentators than I. Rather, this is a piece on the attitudes that have lead up to this point.

We don’t do moderate anymore. We’ve banished the Liberal Democrats from main party politics in the UK and we’ve chosen to turn our back on our European cousins thanks to Brexit.

We’ve overlooked and rejected the career politicians of Whitehall/Washington in favour of a billionaire gadﬂy with no experience or a back bench stalwart who resembles a protest group leader rather that the Head of Her Majesty’s Opposition. Someone pointed out to me that perhaps we’ve had too much choice over the last decades.

Too much liberalism, too much wishy washy policy and ultimately, not enough ‘do as you’re told’. As a result, we’ve lost respect for government and we don’t have to play ball any more. That commentator wasn’t suggesting for a minute that we all become North Koreans and succumb to totalitarianism but he did say that people need leadership not just pastoral politics. Ponder this for a minute and you start to see why Donald got his message across (no matter how terrifying the subject matter).

His list of intentions prefaced with ‘Donald J Trump proposes…..’ sent a message to people terms that HE was in charge and would get stuff done HIS way. Of course, these proclamations have a little more weight when you consider Obama was hamstrung by a Republican dominated congress that smothered much he wanted to achieve. However, some prefer another take and refer to him as a weak and ineffective president and simply another advocate of ‘focus group politics’ – something that has featured in many recent administrations from Blair to Merkel, Sarkozy to Clinton.

The whole credo has leaned towards ‘Don’t tell people – let the people tell you’.
‘Yes, but I’ve elected you to do this haven’t I? So lead for God’s sake’.
Not so long ago, Cameron talked of ‘Big Society’ – aka minimal meddling from central government. ‘Go and build your own schools’ his policy unit exclaimed – you don’t need us interfering. Indeed, the western trend has very much been towards stepping away from state involvement rather than intervention.

Politicians think it’s what voters want. In actual fact, many leading think tanks are now beginning to reach very different conclusions. Government light touch can be interpreted as abdicating responsibility when in actual fact, people actually want a bit of Churchill or Thatcher dictate now and again. And like it or not, they’re among our most instantly recalled leaders – young or old.

We promise to bind the wounds of division but we want to build walls and deport millions. And right across the world we struggle to reconcile the gulf between merchant banks and food banks. What is clear is that we need decisive actions from SOMEWHERE and SOMEONE. Not another public consultation, not another misguided and short of the facts referendum or decision by focus group.

Now just get on with it (wo)man .

This article was first published on comms2point0.com

Going for Gold at the Unawards

And it wasn’t just any award. We won ‘BEST WORK BY AN AGENCY OR FREELANCER’ for the second year running, and we’re thrilled to have our work with Genomics recognised.

You can check out our award-winning work here. Here’s to next year!

Who knows what’s around the corner.

Some days are shittier than others.

In 1962, Croatian music teacher Frane Selak was riding on a train through a canyon when it derailed and plunged into an icy river. He suffered a broken arm and hypothermia while 17 of his fellow passengers unfortunately drowned.
In 1963, he took his first and last flight. A malfunctioning door opened and he was sucked out. He survived by landing in a haystack. 19 others sadly died in the subsequent crash.
In 1966, he was on a bus that skidded off the road and (like the train) into a river. He swam to the shore while four others didn’t make it.
In 1970 his car caught fire and he managed to get out just before it blew up.
In 1973, a malfunctioning fuel pump doused his engine and spewed flames through the air vents, singeing his hair off.
In 1995 he was hit by a bus.
In 1996, he was involved in a head-on collision with a truck on a mountain curve. Not wearing a seatbelt, he was flung from the car, grabbed a tree and watched as his vehicle plunged 300ft into a gorge.
In 2003 he won the lottery.

In this game we have good and bad days. Pitching and winning or pitching and being told thanks but no thanks.
We have won a fair bit of new business just recently but even after all these years, it’s still hard to not ride the rollercoaster of emotions when something doesn’t quite go to plan.

The key is to pick yourself up, dust down and get mentally prepared for the next challenge. Who knows what’s around the corner, whether it be a truck on a mountain road or a lottery win, embrace life, love work and enjoy the constant surprises each day brings.

As Noel Coward once said: “Work is more fun than fun.”
Unless you’re a music teacher from Croatia that is.

Catching exactly what you went for.

My seven year old lad is into fishing. He loves it.

That means I spend a fair bit of time in the tackle shop buying things like worms, method feeders and other totally extraneous bits and bobs in readiness for another weekend spent next to a pool, often in the rain.

Now if you’ve never been in a tackle shop – and I mean a proper tackle shop, not somewhere like Go Outdoors – you really are missing something in your life.

Imagine a local pub that certainly doesn’t sell food and is populated by proper blokes.
Not blokes like me who work in this game – proper blokes.
Some retired, some in camouflage, some built like wrestlers.

A land where they don’t use words like ‘granular’ and ‘holistic’.

So picture, if you will, a forty something bloke in a blazer, jeans and brogues waltzing through aisles of keep nets, pole rollers (come on, keep up) and the like, while proper blokes exchange opinions on drop shotting, helicopter rigs and spods.

I sheepishly take my purchases to the counter and speak to Pete who I think has taken pity on me and my new found plight.

I place an array of fishing bits on the counter and while I dig out my wallet to pay, Pete places most of my items back on the shelf display behind him.

When he catches my expression of puzzlement, he wearily explains in his black country brogue: “Your lad likes to catch big carp. This stuff ay no good for that. This stuff woh get him what he’s after”

And that’s it. I’m too afraid to argue. Because Pete is a proper bloke and he knows what he’s talking about.

He then proceeds to place a bag full of grey pellet thingies on the counter that cost a fraction of all the crap I’d put in my basket originally.

I leave the shop, the weekend arrives and my lad catches a carp that heavier than his birth weight.

Thanks Pete.

At One Black Bear, we’re a full-service agency with the mantra ‘Sometimes it’s an ad’, we don’t try to sell you stuff you don’t need.
If you don’t need ads, we won’t advise that you to run ads just because they make us more money.
If there is a better solution, we’ll do something else.

That way you’ll catch exactly the people you need to and none of the ones you don’t.

Let the games begin.

The news that Birmingham is to launch a bid to be the host city for the 2026 Commonwealth Games is welcome.

It will be seen as a huge opportunity for the city should its bid be successful.
And despite a poor record when bidding for similarly prestigious events in the past, there is no reason why this time Birmingham shouldn’t triumph.

The city’s unsuccessful bid to host the 1992 Olympics can perhaps be seen as over optimistic in hindsight as the regeneration process to turn Birmingham into a modern, attractive city had barely begun.

Image credit: Brumpic

The poorly executed bid to become the UK’s first City of Culture in 2013 should perhaps be glossed over.
But the city is a different one now. It is a more grown up, confident place with five Michelin-starred restaurants, fabulous retail and leisure offerings and, at last, a transport system we can be proud of.

It puts on major conferences and stages huge concerts and conventions and its position in the centre of the country, surrounded by motorways and with great train connections, makes it easily accessible.
People want to come here to take advantage of the excellent universities, great career prospects and the buzzing lifestyle.

Birmingham Airport continues to grow and its owners would certainly welcome the chance to bring in tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of overseas visitors to attend the Games.

In the sporting arena there is an awful lot to offer too.

Whilst in football terms our teams have not been bothering the trophy engravers overmuch in recent times, in Villa Park we have one of the most iconic grounds in the country.
It staged games at both the Euro ’96 football tournament and the more recent 2013 Rugby World Cup and hosted the final of the 1999 UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup.
It should be remembered that planning permission was sought to increase capacity from its current 43,000 to more than 50,000 with the 2018 World Cup in mind.
Whilst that bid was unsuccessful the plan still exists and could be brought back into play.

Athletics meanwhile has a world class facility in the shape of Alexander Stadium in Perry Barr – home to Birchfield Harriers – and both it and the Barclaycard Arena in the city centre have hosted international athletics events.

The Barclaycard Arena has also hosted major tennis tournaments whilst its big brother, the National Exhibition Centre (NEC), would also presumably feature as a potential venue in the bid.

Edgbaston Stadium is another world class facility with a capacity of more than 20,000.
It played host to arguably the greatest occasion in the city’s sporting history: the defeat of Australia in the 2005 Ashes series.
Most observers agree that this was the greatest match in the greatest ever cricket series.

And the city’s first ever Olympic-sized swimming pool is being built as the showpiece of the £55m Sport and Fitness Centre development at the University of Birmingham.

It is unclear whether venues outside the city could be included in the bid but if they can, Coventry’s Ricoh Arena – home to Coventry City FC and rugby club Wasps – could certainly be utilised.
And another Olympic-sized swimming pool is to be built at the city’s Alan Higgs Centre.

Other facilities would be built as necessary and as the Games take place just a year before the first stage of high speed rail project HS2 – linking Birmingham and London – is due to complete, one can envisage something of a building boom taking place in the mid-2020s.

That’s one obvious advantage to the city and there are plenty of others.

It is estimated that staging the Games would generate in excess of £390m GVA (gross value added) for the local economy, create thousands of jobs and boost the global stage.

The Glasgow Games in 2014 attracted 690,000 additional visitors to the city.
These are people who may well come back if they like what they see and tell their friends to do likewise.

But for all that it can offer in terms of facilities, Birmingham’s ‘pitch’ to the Commonwealth Games selection committee should surely be based on its people.

The Commonwealth is a somewhat outdated concept, based on countries which were part of the former British Empire.
But if the 71 member country Community of Nations means anything today it is in the way such different cultures come together – illustrated by the Games which are held every four years.

And if there is one thing Birmingham knows about, it is the coming together of cultures.
With an estimated 42% of its one million-strong population being non-white, the city is in many ways a role model for multi-culturalism.

There are unlikely to be many, if any, of those 71 Commonwealth member countries which are unrepresented in the Birmingham population and that should be reflected in the bid.

A positive view of multi-culturalism should surely be Birmingham’s legacy from the Games, should its bid be successful.

But it should go further than that?

Birmingham has gone through a remarkable period of regeneration since the 1990s but, with the exception of the re-invention of Longbridge, much of that regeneration has been in and around the city centre.

A key part of the bid should be to stress that where Commonwealth Games-linked regeneration needs to take place before 2026 it will be prioritised to take place in the poorer, inner city areas which are ethnically and culturally diverse.

And one final thought. Wouldn’t it be great if a bid could coincide with the airport changing its name to Birmingham Shakespeare Airport? Surely linking the Second City and the world’s most famous writer – who lived ‘just up the road’ – makes sense and what better time to announce the change than when bidding to be the host city for the 2026 Commonwealth Games?

A bit of Four thought.

But while Birmingham-centred global TV phenomenon Peaky Blinders has undoubtedly helped to turn the attention of makers of films and TV drama onto what is available locally – not least from a location perspective – in other areas of the media the city is still playing catch up with its provincial rivals, notably Manchester.

But could all that be about to change?

Rumours that TV broadcaster Channel 4 may be moving to Birmingham refuse to die away.
At the time of writing, reports in the national press said Karen Bradley, the new culture secretary, was due to tell David Abraham, the chief executive of Channel 4, that plans will be developed to relocate its headquarters away from the capital. Details of what that entails are likely to take several months to emerge, industry watchers suggest, but Birmingham and Manchester have been mentioned as likely locations should re-location happen.

Channel 4, it should be remembered, is a public-service broadcaster. It is owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation, a public corporation of the Department for Culture, Media & Sport.

The theory is that the Government is keen for the London-based broadcaster to move its headquarters to a large provincial city, both to further its promise to re-balance the economy and also to capitalise on the sale of its Westminster base, said to be worth £100m.

There are some taxpayers who might think that Channel 4 coming up with its own ideas – “innovation, experiment and creativity” is supposedly its ethos – rather than spending £25m ‘poaching’ The Great British Bake Off from the BBC might be another good way of saving money but I digress.

Let’s just think about such a Channel 4 move happening.

Manchester is a larger media centre than Birmingham – historically because its greater distance from London led to national newspapers having their northern offices there whilst The Guardian actually began life there – but it would be something of a scandal if the Government overlooked Birmingham again given the BBC’s high-profile partial relocation from London to MediaCityUK in Salford.

Many BBC TV programmes – including the flagship Breakfast programme on BBC 1 – are now broadcast from Salford and the BBC’s operation there is set to double in size with a £1bn expansion.

Birmingham-based newspapers and MPs, meanwhile, have held the BBC – and by extension the Government – to account for a lack of investment in the city and its environs.

The corporation announced that the now online-only BBC Three is to be based in Birmingham but campaigners don’t see that as the major commitment to the city they are looking for.

Bagging Channel 4 on the other hand would provide a huge boost to Birmingham’s credentials as a media city.

It should be said that the broadcaster itself isn’t keen on moving away from its London comfort zone.
Soon after the story first broke in early summer, the broadcaster’s chairman Charles Gurassa was quoted in The Guardian as saying:

“I have been written to by various mayors of various cities telling me why theirs is a great city and why we should move there.
“All our major competitors are based in London, that is where the market has evolved and for the foreseeable future commissioners and advertising sales will continue to be based in and around the London area.”

Channel 4 chief executive David Abraham suggested the best way the broadcaster could help the Midlands and other regions and nations in the UK was through commissioning programming out of London. To paraphrase the famous words of Solihull’s Mandy Rice-Davies during the Profumo trial in the 1960s, they would say that wouldn’t they.

The reality is that it will not be their decision.

It will come down to whether the Government is serious in regard to its agenda of re-balancing the UK economy.
All the rest is just logistics.

Clearly Channel 4 – which outsources much of its output anyway – could survive and thrive in Birmingham in the same way that the BBC has in Salford.

It is worth looking at what Birmingham could offer Channel 4 were it to come here.

As has been mentioned, it would save a lot of money on commercial property costs. It would have choice of locations in Birmingham and, most likely, a building would be built to suit its needs in the same way one is being built for HSBC, which is basing its UK retail banking HQ in the city from 2018.

One could see Channel 4 being based in the cultural hotspots of our very own Digbeth or the Jewellery Quarter or even in the heart of the city where large-scale redevelopment of sites continues.

Its ‘edgy’ persona would certainly fit in with such a young, vibrant city as Birmingham and its commitment to inclusiveness would be well suited to a city of such diverse ethnicity.

Its increasing digital output would also be well served by a city at the cutting edge of creative industries and by a young population with the requisite skills needed to fill creative roles. And its staff could scarcely complain about the lifestyle available to them locally, or if they could maybe they should do it over lunch at one of the city’s five Michelin-starred restaurants or perhaps during the interval of a world class production at Shakespeare at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in nearby Stratford.

Birmingham also offers something of a blank canvas to Channel 4.
As the first national broadcaster to have its headquarters here it could really make its mark and become something of an exemplar for doing things differently.

For all of its commitment to Manchester/Salford, the BBC still remains resolutely anchored in London.

And finally Birmingham is 100 miles closer to London than Manchester which, logistically, would make it easier for its news team to operate across the two cities and for its executives to travel to the capital and back.
It is perfectly possible if one were based in or near, say, Leamington Spa or Warwick – not unattractive options – to commute from there to London or Birmingham or even both.
Many people do so already.
Even as it stands, a train journey from Birmingham International to London Euston takes around one hour ten minutes.
A journey into the centre of London from the suburbs on a Tube or commuter train can take just as long.
Once high-speed rail line HS2 is up and running – in 2027 – the travel time between the capital and Birmingham will be reduced even further (some estimates suggest 45 to 50 minutes from city to city).

Birmingham then looks like a very attractive option indeed for national organisations looking to reduce costs substantially without downgrading the quality of their output.

Hopefully Channel 4 will be able to report on such a phenomenon happening from its base in Birmingham.

Actions speak louder than words.

I’m forever amazed when I meet some other agency owners and discover their lack of qualifications and experience in this business.

All too often, it’s something they’ve fallen into.

We operate in an industry where anyone can buy a laptop, switch on their phone and print a business card with whatever job title they want, then set up a LinkedIn profile and claim to be an agency.

No qualifications.

No apparent aptitude or ability.

No years of toil and problem solving behind them.

Just wake up one morning and think ‘let’s start spending other peoples money’.

This is the only career my business partner and I have ever had.
We’ve lived it ever since we met on an advertising course back in 1991.

We have a degree in it.

We have written hundreds of strategies and thousands of ads over the years (and picked up quite a few awards along the way).
We’ve solved business problems across more industry sectors than I could possibly remember.

But we’ve always stuck to knowing what we’re good at and learned from some of the best along the way.
We also employ some of the most talented and experienced people we’ve ever met.

Nigel Richards, from New Zealand, has won the world Scrabble championship three times, the US national championship five times and the UK six.

Last year he won the French Scrabble championship.

Thing is, he doesn’t speak French.

He can say “Bonjour” (in an accent) and knows the numbers – but nothing else.

He memorised the French Scrabble dictionary in nine weeks before competing and beating his French-speaking rivals.
See, the thing is, he knows all the words but not their meaning.
He knows their numerical values but has no idea how to deploy them in the real world.

He appears to know what he’s doing but you wouldn’t want him calling a doctor for you in Marseilles.

We operate in an industry awash with the latest buzzwords and promise of the next game changer.
Just be careful there’s a bit more substance behind the person spouting it all.

Remember an E X P E R T scores 15, but a C H A R L A T A N only 14.