A home on the web for all my things; from old podcast episodes, to advertising, gaming, travel, books, skiing, roller coasters, and more. My professional website is over at www.playfulbrandstrategy.com
I'm just back from visiting friends in the UK and made quite the discovery that had me go back to and reconsider Marmite and its advertising.
I thought I was clearly in the "I hate Marmite" camp, decided probably over twenty years ago. That was reinforced by years of love/hate advertising that I've always thought clever and fun.
Sure it's a divisive product, but this past weekend as my friends were telling me how they love marmite, had lovely sourdough bread, I thought well I actually haven't tasted Marmite in a very long time. Turns out I thought "hey this isn't actually bad", let me have some more, and I had more the following day too. Same for my girlfriend, she thought she was firmly in the hate camp and we both changed our minds.
My main big surprise of the past week is I actually quite like Marmite. I might even love it.
Their latest ad campaign launched in June is fun, sure, but how much room is left for people changing taste? Not so much it seems.
Our tastes change over time, if you go as far as strongly conveying the idea it's about genetic material then how can Marmite acquire new consumers, as in haters deciding to give it another go rather than simply leaving it like it's set for life... Similarly if it's a given these are the two camps, do many self professed lovers share their appreciation, or do they give up because some are just haters..?
As much as I appreciate their brand positioning and advertising, I'd say going into genetics and scanning babies is taking a step too far - unless it's all just a joke, but the video seems almost serious enough that I wonder if people find it funny or not?
I'm going skiing soon, and as I was planning the trip I noticed similarities with the ways I approach a strategy work project.
A few years ago, after I finished working at Energy BBDO in Chicago, I caught up with a couple of ex-colleagues for a drink and found out there were rumours about me in the office: people thought I was super wealthy because I went away on ski trips.
I first learned to ski when I was about 9 years old in France, during "classe de neige" school trip. I loved it but that was the only time I skied. My parents didn't ski, we didn't really have enough money or interest to go on ski holidays in my teenage years. It kind of stayed on my radar far in the background, as something that would be nice to maybe do again, some day.
I ended up re-learning to ski many years later, on a holiday with one of my best friends in 2016. I got totally hooked. It's actually the first time in my life I am so invested in a physical activity, to be honest.
I realise skiing is an expensive sport, generally reserved for wealthy people, and/or people living right by the mountains. I think I do well financially, even better than many, but I don't come from a wealthy family.
After describing the hostel dorm rooms and friends' places where I tend to hang out when skiing, one of them had an aha moment and realised it wasn't so much that I was rich, but rather that I didn't have the same travel comfort requirements they had when traveling.
Part of this is certainly down to budgeting priorities. There's also the satisfaction I get from organising a trip independently, looking for the best permutations of trains, planes, and automobiles, so to speak.
I can't help researching, strategising, and optimising plans. Which I suppose is also what I do with work and clients.
Ideally, any given strategy ends up seemingly simple. It has also likely taken me a long while to gather enough information and pursue long-winded ideas to finally get to that simplest result. The best strategies even look like they should have been obvious from the beginning, except it wasn't or couldn't be seen back then.
Occam's Razor, in philosophy and as defined in Wikipedia, "is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements. It is also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony. [...] Popularly, the principle is sometimes inaccurately paraphrased as "The simplest explanation is usually the best one.""
When skiing, the "fall line" is the steepest, most direct way down the hill. Skis should be perpendicular to the fall line, depending on your ability level, how steep the slope is, what the general shape of the mountain is, how the snow is, and also how you're feeling like skiing at that particular moment.
I like to think you end up sort of playing with Occam's Razor when skiing, in that you're gliding back and forth around and across the fall line, controlling your speed when turning, getting a feel for the slope and where the fall line is. Larger, broader turns allow you to control speed and slow down. Shorter, faster, narrower turns directed towards the fall line have you accelerate.
When the slope is shallow, you can easily point your skis into the fall line and go straight ahead. The steeper and narrower it becomes, the more you have to turn your skis away from the fall line to get down safely, and in the most parsimonious fashion. You need to ski on your edges, which should be sharp, kind of like Occam's idea of a razor, shaving a path down the slope, turn by turn.
I feel there are similarities with the way I might approach a new, presumably tricky enough, strategic challenge: considering ways to navigate it that aren't immediately relevant to a direct solution. Instead, I'll take side turns that generate new understanding and perspectives, which will strengthen the outcome.
It's arguable how close this really is to Occam's Razor, which is why I mentioned playing with it. When it comes to travel plans and skiing, I'm not necessarily looking for the direct path. Depending on time and budget, I'm after a fun, interesting, maybe even long-winded route.
At the beginning of this winter, it didn't look like I'd be able to ski much. Luckily that changed. After much time optimising and scheming (and a few urgent client projects), in ten days I'll be excitedly lugging all my ski gear around from Paris, to Vars on a night bus, then a weekend in Venice with my girlfriend, on to Cortina d'Ampezzo in the Dolomites, across the Austrian border to ski around Innsbruck, a quick stop to check out St Anton am Arlsberg, and then looping back to Paris via Zurich on the train.
All that to probably brag about my trip, and say that if you enjoy the idea of a strategic thinker playing with brand challenges like they would glide around a ski slope while connecting random notions like Occam's Razor or Lateral Thinking that I ended up removing, please give me a shout, and please comment about your skiing plans or problem solving approach (and if you want to go skiing together some time, particularly if you're a little better than I am, and/or if you have access to affordable accommodation in a ski resort)!
PS: Thank you James D'Souza for the encouragements to get back to writing & James Whatley for reminding me to write about what I'm interested in.
I haven’t updated my website, kept writing or recording podcasts, or videos (aside from Teaching Tangents, that has still been going strong, thanks to my friend and co-host James D’Souza.
As the title indicates, my father, Klaas van der Horst, died on the 8th September 2020 – just a few weeks after my aunt Arlette died. They were in different health conditions, but to make it short, both died of cancers that were diagnosed after the COVID-19 lockdowns in the spring of 2020.
Some family members and close friends couldn’t make it to the funeral, and 2020 being as strange as it is, I set up an international video conference of the funeral ceremony that took place on Monday 14th September 2020, and I recorded it too.
The audio and video quality are pretty dreadful, though if you’d like to watch the actual video, you can click here and make a request for it to be privately shared with you. My mother and our family wanted to share it for others who couldn’t be on the conference call and may want to see it, and simply to share the eulogies told during the ceremony, both in writing, audio, and video.
Klaas van der Horst’s funeral ceremony
This Dutch folk song played as people entered the room; Ik Hou van Holland (I love Holland):
His son,Willem (I acted as master of ceremony, the following words were spoken in French, translated in English here)
Hello, welcome, and thank you for joining us here today – in person, and this being 2020, also via video conference. We are gathered here to celebrate Klaas van der Horst’s life, with his wife Azucena; his children, Björn who is in Sri Lanka, Willem right here, Morgan, and Saskia. His grand-daughters Anahí, Mei; and his nephews in the Netherlands, Iwan and Mark Nilsen.
(the following was said in English) And welcome to all the English speakers attending via the video conference, and thank you for joining us in celebrating Klaas van der Horst’s life. Though we will conduct most of the ceremony in French, emotional language doesn’t need translation – and there will be a few bits in English too.
My father was a pragmatic man. He appreciated punctuality, accuracy, common sense, as well as humorous puns, and witty play on words.
I wasn’t with him in person, though I like to believe he would have appreciated that the time of his death, Tuesday 8th Septembre 2020 at about 3:40pm, coincided precisely with the moment his heart stopped beating.
74 years, 4 months, and 4 days earlier, the exact same heart, a little younger, started beating on the 10th May 1946 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
His was a full life, fully lived, all the way to the end.
We will paint a picture of Klaas through a few words, stories, songs, memories, and sensations.
My father was a man of few words.
Words were precious to him, so I think he used them sparingly.
He had a big heart and a huge presence. Qualities curiously combined with a grouchy, grumpy personality, sometimes even difficult to be around.
The technical term his friend Gene came up with describes it best, it’s being an Asshole – International Asshole, even (those words said in English during the speech).
As a point of proof, our childhood friends used to be terrified of him.
I remember the biggest party I’d organized at home as a teenager, I was sixteen. Over a hundred people in and around the house, in the far parisian suburbs where we grew up, in Neauphle-le-Château.
I had organized things so that my parents had given me the green light for the party, and were saying at a friends’ place for the night.
Except my father changed his mind about that, and showed up as the party was roaring, around 3 or 4 am, and loudly declared the party was over.
In short, thanks to his big and grouchy presence, all my friends fled in terror.
And then he told me I had to clean up.
He settled in a sofa, and watched while I cleaned and mopped the floor, pointing out any dirty spots still left, whatever wasn’t impeccable, till dawn.
Suffice to say I wasn’t thinking of his big heart at that particular moment.
I experienced it at plenty other moments though. He loved his wife and children, simply, and fully. He was happy with us and didn’t need much else.
I lost my biggest fan. He listened to every episode of my podcast, read all the articles, videos, and images I posted on my website or on social media.
He was a traveler, as am I. And he absolutely didn’t want to us to worry about him.
We chose one of his favorite John Denver songs for this last trip of his.
His nephews, Mark and Iwan Nilsen (patched in on the phone from Rotterdam, spoken in English during the ceremony)
Klaas,
You cannot say that your life was only doing the same each day.
Quit a person who was doing his own thing and following his own path.
I do not know exactly, but you went from Rotterdam, to Switzerland, to London, to New York, and from New York, to just outside Paris – Neauphle-le-Château.
And so when we were kids we would visit him in England, the United States of America, and France for example.
For us this was very interesting, and as we grew up we remember the good conversations we could have with our uncle. He was never afraid to tell you the truth or how he thought about certain things.
We had many laughs and good glasses of wine during these conversations that we will never forget, thank you for that.
The death of our uncle Klaas came very sudden and unexpected, we hope he has not suffered very much and we want to wish our aunt Azu, Björn, Willem, Morgan and Saskia and their children a lot of strength to get over the great loss together.
Now between me and you one last sentence in Dutch: Het ga je goed daar schele en ik hoop dat je je zus tegenkomt en jullie samen kunnen lachen.
His sister-in-law, Alba(spoken in French, translated in English here)
While looking for a word that might qualify best to describe who my brother-in-law was, for me at least, excess is the one I’d pick.
An excess of laughs, good times, and beer in our youth and my holidays in Rotterdam; excess in his tone of voice over the lively discussions we had; and excessive silence in these last few years, following painful losses. And in an ironic height of silence, your way of shutting up your suffering, probably as a way to protect those closest to you. I often heard you grumble Klaas, but never complain.
Another side of you I remember is your… How to say it? Adventurer? Nomad?
Rotterdam, Perpignan, Cambrils where you first met Azu and I, TOulouse, Rotterdam again – married this time around, Lausanne, London, New York, Neauphle-le-Château, Paris, Lausanne, and Perpignan.
From professional adventures to a beautiful family adventure, you built your life in both commitment and risk-taking, while always finding the wherewithal to bounce back in tough times.
You headed a beautiful family and you were able to share your enthusiasm, humor, and work ethics with your children.
These last few years, your grand children’s presence gave you solace as your health diminished.
Perhaps never letting on or showing any issue, and never asking for anything were rules you had set for yourself. I’ll never know.
Ne rien laisser paraître d une possible défaillance et ne jamais rien demander pourraient être des impératifs que tu t étais fixés… Je n en saurai jamais rien…
Klaas, thank you for passing on those family values.
Rest in peace.
Hi wife, Azucena (Azu) (spoken in French and English, all translated in English here)
I asked to speak after my sister, because without my sister, I would have never met Klaas. I was shy, timid, and in front of him I became audacious.
You invited us, the whole crew of young people we were, to get on a pedal boat. No one accepted, but me. You and your friend Kun spoke a language I didn’t understand, but I was never afraid of going with you. Straight away, I was clear that I already knew you.
You showed me everything from your childhood. Rotterdam, the warehouse where the bananas were ripening. And then one day you decided to change jobs. And throughout your career, the different jobs you had revolved around the market: the produce market in Rotterdam, the money market in Wall Street, and the farmer’s market where you sold your olive oils in Morges. The only differences were the number of zeros in the figures.
You ripened 50 to 60 tons of bananas, I forgot for how long. I learned with your mother, your sister, not so much with your father’s family, we didn’t really know them, aside from an aunt, Annie.
And then we had this whole time in Paris, during which you followed me at Landmark, and then you did what I never expected you to, you committed in participating with the Hunger Project, and you created it in France, with Brigitte among others, and I will read what Brigitte wrote on Facebook.
“Klaas, you will always be in my heart. With your great soul, so full of love and generosity towards everyone, with your humor, and your commitment.
Thank you for all those good times together, those exploits where we created infinite possibilities.”
I saw you in those days, leaving in your suit, that team along with you, crisscross the streets of Paris, asking people to sign a piece of paper, a card. There was nothing to give, other than a commitment. Commitment was a leitmotiv for the both of us.
The commitment was to say that chronic hunger would have disappeared from this planet before the year 2000. You’re Dutch, and projects should be successfully led to the end.
I need to keep dreaming of it, while you did not accept that in the year 2000, what you found out was that even more people than ever were going hungry. We tried explaining that it was juste that there was a lot we didn’t know and understand previously. You threw the baby out with the bathwater. Later on, you’d always tell me: “But that was a long time ago.”
And now what I’d like to celebrate is your generosity, the fact that you enjoyed a good party. We threw parties all the time.
(Spoken en English during the ceremony) I don’t know if you guys are looking, but you guys in Wall Street, you’re the ones who had the funnest times together. I don’t think I have anything else to say, I don’t know who is on the line, and from those days.
And I want to acknowledge our son Björn, who is far away in Sri Lanka.
We continue having paperwork, paper problems, and even here in Perpignan, we have been continuing, I am continuing.
There’s not so much else to say.
I love you. Ik hou van je. Je t’aime.
Merci.
—
George Carlin on death(segue, I said this – Willem)
My father liked to laugh, and George Carlin was one of his favorite stand-up comedians. He had a few good words about death, and what is said of people who just died. (3 min audio from the following video)
His sister-in-law, Violette(spoken in French, translated in English here)
We always needed to specify your Dutch origins whenever mentioning you, or your first name, Klaas.
I’m 5 years old when you show up in Toulouse to marry my sister. You gave me and Hélios a book about New York, among other gifts. Later on you invited me to Wall Street, and then in London’s City.
I’m 10 years old, you gave me my first flight, from Geneva to Toulouse. I loved the place ride. It’s decided, I’ll make it my career.
I’m 15 years old, on the way to London in your big American car, the black Cadillac, you stop and take photos of all the cows we happen to come by. I learned much later that there are no 2 identical cows.
Faithful to your origins, close to painting, an art you will practice throughout your life.
You begin learning to play the piano later on in life. In this, once again, you hold on and succeed. Music is always with you: Frank Sinatra, Leonard Cohen, Joan Baez.
Tu commences l’apprentissage du piano à un âge avancé. Là, encore, tu t’accroches et réussis. La musique toujours t’accompagne : Franck Sinatra, Léonard Cohen, Joan Bez.
Thank you, Klaas. Good-bye, Klaas. For your last trip, on to new shores.
Rest in peace. Totzins. Daar Klaas
Hi son, Morgan(spoken in French, translated in English here)
Dad, we did so many kilometres together. You gave me so much love.
We did so many kilometres together, laughing, and crying.
We did so many kilometres together, til only just a few weeks ago, to go and contemplate the sea one last time.
We did so many kilometres together, to get where we are now.
You always lived this way, as if there were plenty of kilometres left to travel.
And then the end of the road appears, unexpectedly, like when arriving at the entrance of the desert.
I just want to say one thing right now: I’m proud to be your son, dad. For ever.
And now we come to a fork in our roads and we go separate ways, I want to remind us of a quote you loved: “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.”
Salut.
Hi daughter, Saskia (message written by our dear family friend, Françoise, and read by Saskia, translated in English)
To Klaas, Azu, and our children,
It is still a time for tears, though also a time for memories that come along, and with it, smiles, and happiness.
Klaas,
I knew you were nearing the end of your life, but your death shook me greatly, and saddened me profoundly.
Over 30 years of friendship can’t really be summed up in a mere few memories, but evoking them make me smile for the first time in two days.
You’re there again, and your absence that I now know is definitive doesn’t weigh on me as much.
Klaas, I’ve loved going past your damn character and you rebuffs to keep talking with you when you didn’t want to talk to anyone.
I loved forcing your door open to share your grumpy silence.
Klaas, I loved walking through your door when it was wide open to sharing.
We have celebrated so much together!
I loved sharing our introspective conversations about our own self knowledge and the infinite opening of possibilities in our lives. And we created so many!
Klaas, I loved sharing your joy of cooking, and Ioved enjoying the small dishes you silently prepared with for us all, or specially for me.
I loved being at your table in the numerous houses you lived in.
In over 30 years of respective house moves, and moving further away from one another, our two families stayed in contact, linked with threads of friendships weaved by each one of our family members.
To encourage you to settle in Perpignan was a great joy for me.
I loved having the possibility of seeing you every year.
The last time we met, in February, we didn’t know anything of the illness that would take you away. We talked about healing, I urged you to take care of your health to get past the post-stroke period, a time I knew from experience can be tough.
And for the nth time, you gave me my favorite recipe: the chicken saté skewers with peanut sauce you made for me so often.
I succeeded in making them, they were delicious!
I’ll keep feasting in your memory!
Klaas, I will love regularly opening this memory door to you.
Thank you for all this and so much more…
Farewell, my friend.
Loving and tender thoughts for every one of you.
I will be with you in thoughts from Portugal.
~ Françoise Haubert Machado
His son Björn (patched in on the phone from Sri Lanka, the text was read in English)
Merci Papa,
You gave me life.
You opened a world of possibilities…
A vast, borderless and beautiful world…
Thank You
From the extensive global travelling to the always present copies of National Geographic and The New Yorker that piled high around the house you opened this world to me, and nothing was impossible.
Thank You
You took me on the Concorde.
Thank You
You took me to the Bahamas, we snorkelled and I ate the most delicious BBQed Barracuda with a wedge fresh lime…I can still taste it.
Thank You
You played the piano with me to keep me motivated.
Thank you
Through watching you Papa, I learned how to throw a party and how important close friends are.
I learned how to play music really loudly.
I learned how to laugh and tell a story and a joke and a little lie…
I learned how to be at a restaurant table…Beautiful Benihana comes to mind…
Thank You
I learned how to not drag my feet. Klaas did not like the sound of scuffling feet. There was a very public scolding in the streets of Manhattan that cured me of dragging my feet.
Thank you
Your generosity had no limits at times excessively so…almost to a point of ridiculousness…I too have that flawed gift…
Thank You
You introduced me to the finest things – foods – clothes – 1st class travel – shipping ridiculously large American cars to Toulouse…all very show offy of course…but hey! Who cares? It was the 70’s and 80’s…
Thank You
But more than all of those things…
You taught me that the most important things are not things…
You taught me to be a man…a big one…
You taught me to be a father…a just one…
You taught me to love unconditionally…
For everything and for who I am today…
Thank You Papa…
The stars will be happier now that you are dancing amongst them.
They Thank You.
That’s Life – Frank Sinatra
We closed the ceremony over Frank Sinatra, setting colourful flowers on his casket before it was taken away to be incinerated.
We plan to spread his ashes in Holland, hopefully some time in 2021, whenever the COVID-19 pandemic will allow the necessary travel plans to be together.
This newsletter was originally published via email on the 10th April 2016. You can also sign up to receive Ice Cream Sundae with the form on the right-hand side column or here (The newsletter format shifted from long to shorter form since).
I first found out about The Great Football Giveaway thanks to a post in my friend Neil’s blog, I think back in 2008 if memory serves. I was immediately hooked by the simple and compelling idea: 1 ball = £10
Thanks to donations from supporters, The Great Football Giveaway organises trips to go and give footballs and netballs directly to children to play with, in poor and remote areas of rural African countries. I highly recommend watching this short video about the project; it really says it all and more. If your heart doesn’t melt watching it you might be on your way to become like Professor Coldheart, I’m afraid even the Care Bears can’t help you.
Quick parenthesis to give you the chance to read this Sundae along with music; last week my good friend James recommended checking out an event his friend John was putting on at The Social in London. He used to organise large Afro-beat parties in China under the name No Go Die a few years ago. The music was excellent for dancing and appropriate for this Sundae about Africa. Here’s a good No Go Die mix, I’m listening to it while writing this.
Back to our main topic, I loved the simplicity of it: £10 = 1 ball.
Stripping down an initiative to an extremely simple proposition, getting to the essence of a message is exactly the kind of challenges I tackle as a marketing and brand strategist. This is the kind of clarity I aspire to as a result of my work.
You know exactly what you’re getting and what is being done with the money.
Moreover, you’ll be shown. Supporters get updates about each trip as it’s taking place: photos, videos and even their personalised messages on balls. Supporters know exactly what happened the day the ball they donated £10 for was given.
Nobody says it’s going to solve the world’s toughest issues.
It’s not feeding the hungry or curing diseases.
It is however going to make the day of one or several children in rural Africa who likely only had bunched up plastic supermarket bags tied with string to use as a makeshift ball until then.
It brings play and the widest smiles on faces you’ve ever seen. The joy is infectious, whole communities, schools and sometimes even entire villages join the kids to play ball and have fun.
It’s serendipitous.
It’s a gift.
It’s sheer happiness.
After all, what else are we after?
And if you can afford it, that’s definitely worth £10.
I also find this kind of project fascinating because it’s a positive difference made on a micro-scale, for one or several kids somewhere in rural Africa.
Of course it doesn’t replace initiatives that I’d qualify of acting at a macro-scale; large non-profit organisations like Save the Children or UNICEF being good examples. I’m no expert on the way they operate, though I understand their goals, infrastructure and methods are anchored in a long-term and large-scale view of humanitarian and developmental assistance. We could say it’s more of the “top down” view of making a positive difference.
This doesn’t invalidate organisations and projects working on what could be called “bottom up” initiatives like The Great Football Giveaway. On the contrary, every time they have an occasion to collaborate, larger charities are delighted to get footballs for kids to play with.
TGFG also focuses on remote areas that don’t have as many visits or activities from other charities, an important point of difference. These kinds of initiatives can also be amplifiers of larger charities working with children who might be lacking in simple and playful fun.
Fast forward to 2010; Neil is looking for volunteers to go to Tanzania with him.
Fast forward a couple of years to 2010 and Neil announces on his blog that he is forming one of the first teams of volunteers to raise money for balls and then go give them directly out to kids in rural Tanzania. He was hoping to find two people adventurous enough to follow him; eight of us raised our hands from a variety of backgrounds: advertising, media, coaching, hospitality and sales. Hugh who appeared on my podcast was one, and later my brother Björn and his wife Justine also joined the team.
We raised money through our personal networks and organised a fundraising event in London. In the end we had about 2,000 footballs and netballs, almost as many hand pumps and just under two weeks to go and give them out. We were given a broad geographic area to cover and a one-page sheet with a few bullet-point guidelines about the best ways to give the balls. Things like: “Always give the ball directly to a child, not an adult unless you’re certain they are in a position to give the ball and let the children play fairly (like a school teacher). Other adults might sooner take the ball from kids and play themselves, or sell the ball for cash.”
The rest of the planning was pretty much up to us. The area was the Southeast of Tanzania, one of the country’s poorest. Most of the international attention and assistance in the country goes to the capital, Dar Es Salaam and Arushanear Mount Kilimanjaro. After a little bit of research I suggested we make the small town of Kilwa Masoko on the coast our main base, from there we’d split out to cover more ground in three separate teams in different directions.
We also took a few days to drive down to the town of Lindi, approximately 150 kilometres to the South, and give balls on the way.
The whole experience was so mind-blowing that for months I didn’t know where to start or what to write in my blog about it. It’s definitely one of the best and most exciting things I’ve done in my life. While we don’t necessarily see each other very often, nor are we necessarily close friends, I know the nine of us on this trip remember it dearly. From the first drink we shared after landing in Dar Es Salaam we kicked things off laughing and taking the piss out of each other as if we’d been friends for years. We formed bonds and memories that will last for life.
We all saw the opportunity to contribute to something exciting and fun. We were also all in some kind of important transition, like changing careers or thinking about it.
We improvised and learned on the go. We had three four-wheel drive jeeps with local drivers to also help us translate and make recommendations about the best places to go. The container of balls had been delivered to Kilwa. Every day we’d stop at the container to fill the back of the jeeps with deflated balls. The two sitting in the back would start pumping them full, ready to be given and played with. At least in my jeep, the person in front usually decided where we’d be going, often randomly, or with instructions from a previously met person.
In the jeep we’d say things like, “Hey look, a dirt path there! Let’s turn left and see where it goes” or “I think I spotted a school to the right, let’s check it out!” Whether we’d come across random groups of children, schools, or remote bush villages each day was filled with joy and surprises.
Online research had yielded little results as to other non-profit organisations we could contact in advance, as we had been told this area of the country wasn’t particularly visible or known. Still, Neil had located and contacted an orphanage South of Dar Es Salaam that we could stop and visit on the way to Kilwa. The joy and happiness of the kids playing ball was beautiful. The establishment specialised in getting orphan children off the streets of the capital to care for them and provide them with an education.
Play is vital for children but with a tight budget essential amenities are of course prioritised; footballs, netballs and hand pumps that they couldn’t afford were welcomed and loved.
We organised playful competitions with the children to “win” the balls for the orphanage. In similar circumstances we’d talk with people in charge at the orphanage or schools to quiz the children on lessons they had recently learned. Other times we’d come across a few kids playing and stop to just throw a ball at them.
We were emboldened and excited by our first day, thinking we’d figured this whole thing out. The following day we thought we didn’t planning, closed the large map Neil had set on a table and just pointed on the map to the nearest town, Kilwa Kivinje.
It was a Sunday morning.
We hadn’t paid attention to the day of the week.
It was a chilling experience.
From the moment we showed up and gave a first ball things didn’t go as hoped – it was immediately was stolen from a larger teen who ran away, we saw adults adults stealing balls and fighting over them It was either mass or market day so the centre of town was busy with people, quickly driving a raving crowd to almost assaulting the jeeps of these crazy Mzungu giving brand new footballs away.
The feeling going on was nothing like what we intended, it was aggressive, greedy, with a hint of violence in the air.
We retreated, a little shaken and confused.
We stopped on the way of the town, close by what seemed to be a makeshift football pitch. Some of us started talking about what went wrong with the drivers. Meanwhile, I think it was Darren and Hugh, took a football from a jeep, walked up to the pitch and starting kicking the ball. That attracted the attention of a couple of nearby kids. They invited them to come and play. In no time we had a several groups of kids playing and having fun with us on the pitch.
The drivers helped us organise a quiz to give away a few balls, having the children promise to play together. The magic was back.
We put more thinking into our planning after that. We organised our days around going to schools in the area as a main objective, and branching out from there if we saw random kids, or heard of other worthwhile establishments to visit.
On our way to Lindi we drove by another jeep with a Save the Children logo.
We flagged them down and learned they were a small unit providing pre and post-natal care to women in remote bush villages. We gave them a bunch of balls so they could give them in the much further away villages we wouldn’t have time to visit ourselves. I’d write messages and take photos of all the balls my friends had donated money for, so I could tell them exactly where the money went.
In the evenings, we’d regroup and talk about our experiences of the day, trying to make sense of it all – from sometimes feeling kind of useless with meagre footballs in the face of so much needed in the country like health care, education, infrastructure, clean water, and more. And the following moment, one of us would share one of the magical moments we kept having of sheer happiness of these kids playing. We also had memorable laughs and stories around the dinner table and drinking the local firewater with the actual image of a fire on the label; Konyagi.
We weren’t helping solve tough issues yet we also knew that whatever we were doing was so emotional and magical that I’m certain it was valuable.
I guess this could be what I’d like to leave you with for this newsletter. As we grow up and become adults, we might occasionally take too much of a serious approach to what’s important. We worry about our work, taxes, paperwork, healthcare, retirement, etc.
Of course these are all important but ultimately not the best indicators of happiness or even fulfilment. In your planning of everything serious and important for your life, make sure to leave room for play too.
Whatever play you enjoy: kicking a ball with friends or children, playing a game, finger painting, playing a musical instrument, or even fun behind closed doors with your partner.
Happiness is never far away from play, and that’s kind of invaluable.
Thanks for reading, as every week I really appreciate your time. If you’ve enjoyed it and know someone else who might, can you forward them the email please? Sharing it on social media also works, look to the bottom and you’ll find buttons to post it on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin.
If you’re looking for something to listen to as well, this week I published a fun and fascinating conversation with Anjali Ramachandran for my podcast. Anjali is the Head of Innovation for a global media agency and also co-founded an online support network for women in technology and business, Ada’s List.
To finish, I’ve officially completed my last client project, if ever you hear of anyone looking for a brand & marketing strategist (preferably in London) please keep in touch, I’d be glad to be introduced and find out how I can help.
This newsletter was originally published via email on the 13th March 2016. You can also sign up to receive Ice Cream Sundae with the form on the right-hand side column or here (The newsletter format shifted from long to shorter form since).
My name was meant to be double barrelled: Willem-Anthony.
I was named after both my grandfathers. You can probably guess Willem was my Dutch grandfather on my father’s side. Unfortunately I never knew him, he passed away before my birth. My middle name is Anthony — for some reason it was changed from my grandfather’s name Antonio. My mom told me it was also meant to be the second part of a double-barrelled name: Willem-Anthony. In my opinion that idea was sensibly corrected by whoever was working at the birth registry office that day and Anthony became my middle name.
Antonio Fernandez is my Spanish grandfather. His wife Carmen passed away before my birth. He’s still very much around though and if I’m not mistaken he’ll be celebrating his 95th birthday later this year. Today is not linked to any dates in particular; I just thought I’d write about him and my Spanish ancestry.
He was born in Almería, a city in Andalucia situated in the Southeast of Spain on the Mediterranean Sea. I visited once; thinking it would be a nice idea to explore the area. It’s a port town with regular ferry and cargo connections with Northern African countries. The surrounding area boasts many greenhouses and fields growing fruit for export. Nearby is the driest area of Europe and the continents only true desert climate: El Desierto de Tabernas.
If you’ve seen Spaghetti Westerns, you’ll be familiar with the Tabernas Desert near Almería in Spain.
If you’ve watched any Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western movies, you’re pretty familiar with what the area looks like. Starting in the 1950s several film studios set up in the Tabernas Desert. I visited Mini Hollywood, whereFor a Few Dollars More was shot in 1965 and The Good, the Bad and the Uglyin 1966. They turned it into a tourist attraction though it is still occasionally used for commercial filming. There is a daily cowboy stunt show that was fun. It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re in the area.
I also recommend going to the southeastern peninsula of Spain in the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park, beautiful walks to go on in Spring or Autumn on the ancient volcanic rock cliffs and cactus pear (Barbary fig) fields. I was there in April several years ago. It was still too cold to swim in the sea but the right weather to go hiking. It would probably be really hot to walk around in the summer. Take the opportunity as I did to visit another famous film set: Playa de Mónsul, a beautiful beach where a scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was filmed. San Jose is a great base for a couple of days to explore the Natural Park. It used to be a little known secret, though I think more people have been visiting in the past few years.
I also recommend a fantastic book that begins in Almería: Andalus: Unlocking the Secrets of Moorish Spain, by Jason Webster. A brilliant read about searching for what’s left of the thousand years of Moorish occupation during the Middle Ages in modern Spain.
My grandfather wanted to fight Franco’s army in the Spanish Civil War. He was only fifteen years old.
All that said, my grandfather was only born in Andalucía. He grew up in the geographic centre of Catalonia, in Manresa. He was only fifteen when theSpanish Civil War started. He wanted to go fight Franco’s Army with the Republicans, along with his brothers, but his family didn’t let him. At least this is the story he told me. By the end of the Civil War, Franco had won and Antonio was old enough to be drafted in his army. He was sent to Spanish Morocco for training. His main goal was to rebel and he still had thoughts of joining the small band of resistance fighters, mostly operating from the Pyrenees Mountains in the Basque country and Catalonia.
Shortly after arriving in Morocco he deserted with a small group of like-minded friends. They managed to cross the border into French Morocco and hid there while looking for a boat to take them across the Mediterranean Sea. This was the middle of World War II, not many ships available or captains too keen to cross German infested waters. I recently learned from my aunt this was also the time he started playing chess. He was broke, in hiding and waiting. He played chess ever day for over two years. I also imagine him drinking a lot of mint tea though I have no evidence for that.
If I understood the last part of the story he told me correctly, they didn’t secure transport until after Operation Dragoon had taken place in August 1944, the Allied invasion of southern France. The German armies withdrew after the invasion and southern France ports slowly started operating again. Antonio arrived in Marseille; presumably late 1944 or early 1945 though don’t quote me on dates. He’d heard the Republican Spanish government in exile was based in Toulouse, so he made his way over there. I’m writing his story from memory when he told me about a few years ago and I hadn’t grilled him on dates to get a firm chronology.
He met my grandmother and stayed in Toulouse. As far as I know he never fulfilled his ambitions to join the Spanish Maquis in their guerrilla war againstFranco’s regime. He started a masonry and construction business instead, and kept playing chess. He still plays most days at the Centró Español in Toulouse. He taught me how to play when I was a child but I’ve never pursued this as an interest and I haven’t played in years. He travels a lot; he went on two Transatlantic cruises last year. He’s just gone on another trip to Spain this week.
My grandfather is a bit of a hoarder. When I visited as a kid I was both fascinated and weirded out by the stuff in his apartment.
Antonio still lives in the same apartment my mom and her siblings grew up in, a council estate called Les Mazades. He’s a bit of a hoarder. When I visited as a kid growing up I was fascinated and weirded out by his apartment in about equal parts. It was like exploring stacks of treasure and artefacts from the past, but it was also musty, old and dusty. After close inspection most of the stuff to explore wasn’t all that exciting.
He kept huge stacks of stuff on a large wooden unit in the living room and on the main dining table. I’d take a peek, a lot of were 10–15 year old promotional supermarket or retail offers. Completely out of date. He’d tell me not to touch his stuff. He was never a particularly warm character. Talking about post World War II geopolitics is his favourite topic. I didn’t understand much about what he said until I studied it in high school. Before that we’d play chess, or I’d explore stuff in his apartment while my parents talked with him.
For Christmas he’d occasionally pull something out of a stack of hoarded stuff and hand it to me. More often than not it turned out to be a branded promotional watch he’s been given. I wasn’t convinced when he’d say he was keeping it for me but I’d play along and thank him. To this day he still pretends he doesn’t know who I am whenever I talk to him or visit. He also says it’s a mistake when I call him papi, given he’s way too young to be anyone’s grandfather.
I was usually a pretty nice and well-behaved kid, except for that one time. Well, maybe not the only time but this one had to do with my grandfather. I was about ten or eleven years old when he turned 70. At that point I read several kids magazines that featured gadgets and pranks of various kinds. For a short while I was fascinated with stuff from joke shops.
I used my pocket money in a joke shop to buy coloured smoke bombs that seemed pretty wicked.
We went to Toulouse for his birthday celebrations. A few days before that I used some of my pocket money in a joke shop to buy a few things, including coloured smoke bombs that seemed pretty wicked. I was with my cousin Manuel, he’s about my age and we spent a lot of time together on holidays when we were kids. In front of the Mazades’ main block of flats was a sandy and ugly play area with the strangest kids play area.
The implements looked like a kids playground from afar, but close-up you’d realise it was actually all made of concrete. We’d still go and hang out there, rasp our bums and ruin our clothes on the big concrete slide. I tested one of the smoke bombs, a yellow one, and it turned out to be pretty effective. That’s where I came up with the idea I candidly believed would surprise and delight my family around the dining table.
A couple of hours later, the large table was set for everyone. I’m not sure how many we were, I’d guess at least 12 or 15 people sitting down for the kind of all afternoon lunch we tend to have in Spanish families. In the middle of Antonio’s birthday meal, as everyone was eating Paella, I discreetly lit a purple smoke bomb and threw it under the table.
Thick purple smoke quickly rose from under the table. Let’s just say I was a slightly off the mark with my “surprise and delight” intended effect. My mischievous smile was wiped clean off my face as I realised the grown ups didn’t think this was fun at all.
My mom and aunts completely freaked out. They were terrified and thought the living room was on fire. I only realised later it was probably a healthy reaction to sudden large amounts of smoke rising from the dining table. I guess I’d have a similar reaction nowadays. Not to mention the smell wasn’t that great either. I can’t remember details of how the rest played out, but someone — maybe me, pointed out it was just supposed to be a joke, people calmed down and the smoke bomb was thrown out on the balcony. Grown ups argued whether this was funny or not, with the latter opinion winning that debate. Windows were opened to air the room. I was justifiably told off. That marked the end of my interest in stink bombs and other prank shop favourites.
On the plus side, I learned to consider what other people might think of something and how they’d appreciate it before doing it. Funny enough being to learn about people and putting myself in their shoes to consider what they’d appreciate is an important part of my job as a strategist.
As I remember it my grandfather stayed pretty calm throughout, the smoke didn’t particularly seem to disturb him. He can easily grumble and get angry, on the other hand I don’t think I’ve ever seen him show surprise. I haven’t seen him in a few years, it would be nice to go visit this year. He’s not going to be around forever and I’m pretty sure he still has many stories I don’t know about.
Do you have a close family member whose stories you haven’t heard? You might want to ask them while they’re still around.
I hope you enjoyed reading this. This is the first time I’m sending a Sundae late; I thought I’d acknowledge it. You can blame procrastination for that.
This week on the podcast, I’ve published an interesting conversation I had with Tanya DePass who created a community and movement to promote diversity in the art of gaming.
On the work front, I should be completing my current freelance work this month and I’m starting to look for new freelance project(s) in London starting next month. If you hear of anyone in need of marketing strategy and advice, please give me a shout.
This newsletter was originally published via email on the 6th March 2016. You can also sign up to receive Ice Cream Sundae with the form on the right-hand side column or here (The newsletter format shifted from long to shorter form since).
Shortly after I had settled in my new flat in Singapore a few years ago, I was out for a walk on a Sunday afternoon. I stopped at Brewerkz on the Singapore River, a bit of an institution in the City-State, a brewery-pub and restaurant open since 1997.
I sat outside with a view of the river, Clarke Quay and the Saatchi & Saatchi office just across, where I worked at the time. I ordered a pint of their beer to enjoy on the terrace.
After a few minutes appreciating my surroundings, I started writing a list of things I like.
I was looking for a new hobby to keep myself busy in Singapore.
I was looking for something new to learn or practice, a new hobby to keep myself busy in Singapore outside of work. The two previous years while travelling I’d learned new skills with scuba diving and Thai massage, I thought it would be good to pursue this burgeoning tradition.
I got into drinking different kinds of British ales and beers when I first lived in London. A colleague at my first employer drank London Pride, a great example of the London porter beer style. The name porter appeared in the 18th century and was popularised by street and river porters in London, hence the name. It’s a dark beer, quite strong and hoppy by 18th century standards, hovering around 6.6% ABV. Shortly after for increased taxation reasons they started brewing a range of porters with different alcoholic strengths. Brewers called them “Single, double and triple Stout”. This is where the “stout” style of beer comes from, including Guinness, originally a “Double Stout London Porter” that was later exported to Ireland.
I started appreciating British ales and found out about CAMRA, The Campaign for Real Ale. They are an independent, voluntary organisation campaigning for real ale, community pubs and consumer rights. Founded in 1971, the four men who founded CAMRA were concerned that a handful of companies were taking over many pubs in the UK and standardising products with low quality and arguably bland flavoured beer.
Traditionally, British cask ales are unfiltered and unpasteurised.
Traditionally, the Great Britain is known for cask ales. This is unfiltered and unpasteurised beer conditioned and served from a cask. The carbonation is natural and no additional Co2 is added to the process. As a result they typically don’t have a lot of bubbles like German or American styles tend to have. The casks are served at room temperature, which is why I kept hearing about Britain’s “warm and flat beers” while growing up in France.
France and England having been “frenemies” for centuries I grew up hearing many such legends of the curious habits of our English neighbours, gathered from peers who had been on holidays or school exchanges there and telling us tales of the mysterious foodstuffs they consumed like jelly, Marmite and lamb in mint sauce.
I warmed up to most English foods since, except Marmite. I’ll probably never get why people inflict this upon themselves. It still fits with the overall theme given the black substance is made from spent brewer’s yeast. The process was originally discovered by a German scientist in the late nineteenth century (go figure what he was trying to accomplish when eating concentrated brewer’s yeast. I imagine it was some sort of bet).
While I worked at iris, I was lucky to be near one of the only craft beer bars in London, The Rake by Borough Market. That’s when I also started discovering craft beers from other countries such as the United States, Norway or Denmark.
In 2008 I found out about these new Scottish brewers, growing and sponsoring a few different events I attended like Twestival in 2009, now they have bars everywhere and are apparently planning to build a brewery in the U.S. as well.
I was hooked on the wide variety of flavours available in unpasteurised and unfiltered craft beers.
Quite naturally, beer appeared on the list I was writing that day.
It occurred to me that I’d heard some people make their own beer at home.
I walked back home and started watching home brewing videos on Youtube to learn the basics. I also found out there were two shops in Singapore selling home brewing material.
A couple weeks later I was the proud owner of a new home brewing kit.
The basic beer-making process is surprisingly easy.
Beer is the world’s most widely consumed alcoholic beverage as well as probably the oldest.
After all, beer is the world’s most widely consumed alcoholic beverage as well as probably the oldest. After water and tea it is the third most drank beverage in the world.
Beer features in the written history of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Its main attribute being fermented cereals, some believe initial forms of beer to be as old as the first steps in agriculture of cereals. A 6,000-year-old Sumerian tablet depicts people drinking a beverage believed to be beer through reed straws. A 3,900-year-old Sumerian poem honouring Ninkasi, the patron Goddess of brewing, contains the oldest known beer recipe.
Talking about recipes, modern beer is made from four key ingredients:
1. Water, the body of beer
Water constitutes over 95% of the beverage. In fact, during the Middle Ages when water wasn’t deemed safe for consumption, people drank beer instead.
Water often contains minerals, nutrients that yeast will use to ferment the beer and give it flavour compounds. The water matters greatly to the style of flavour of the beer brewed. For example Plzen (Pilsen) in the Czech Republic is famous for having soft water and being almost completely free of minerals. That turned out to be great for making the clear and crisp Pilsener lagers the Czechs are famous for.
In the UK, Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire is kind of the opposite in the brewing world. Their water is hard. Local water from boreholes contained high levels of dissolved salts and resulting sulphate in the mineralised water famously brings out hop flavours.
2. Malt, the backbone of beer
Beer is fermented grain. We use barley in vast majority. Malting is the process by which the harvested grains are steeped in water just long enough to begin sprouting, and then are dried again to interrupt the process.
The sprouted grain releases nutrients and sugars that would be used by the plant to grow, and that will be used to ferment into beer instead.
The malted grain can also be roasted, and depending on the time and technique, this contributes an important to part of the colour and style of the beer being made. Stouts for example contain roasted and grilled malt, giving darker colour, hints of coffee and cocoa in the flavour.
3. Hops, the beer’s personality
In antique times grain fermented beer-like drinks in France or the UK didn’t use hops. They used a variety of different foraged herbs to give the fermented drink flavour.
In 1516 Brewers and legislators in Bavaria got together to draft the “Reinheitsgebot” (“German Beer Purity Law”), stating that beer would contain water, barley malt and hops.
Hops provide the bitterness in beer as well as a great deal of flavour and aroma. It’s the flower of a plant and was first used in beer in the 9th century. In addition to bitter, zesty, flowery, zesty and citrusy flavouring, hops have convenient antibacterial effects that preserve beer. This also helped make it a very common water replacement during the Middle-Ages.
As a side note, the hop plant is a cousin of cannabis and their flowers look similar. The active compounds in hops that are used to bitter and give aromas to beers have psychoactive effects in cannabis. Human beings have been interested in and experimenting with a variety of psychoactive substances for a long time.
4. Yeast, the beer’s soul
When they wrote the “Reinheitsgebot” in 1516, they omitted yeast. That’s because we didn’t know about it and wouldn’t find out for certain until Louis Pasteur came round to study and identify these microorganisms and their role in alcoholic fermentation in the 19th century.
These little microbes absorb simple sugars from the barley malts and transform them into alcohol.
Yeast also provides a whole range of flavours depending on the beer styles sought. It is often the most kept secret from brewers as an important point of differentiation amongst breweries. Indeed they often purchase malted barley or hops from similar supply sources, while the recipes and know-how from the brewer matters of course, the choice of yeast can be the distinctive yet difficult to explain reason people go back to one beer rather than another brewer’s.
The difference between ales and lagers are a matter of the type of yeast used and the fermentation temperature. Ales ferment at higher temperatures (around 20-25ºC / 68-77ºF, while lagers ferment at colder temperatures (often around 10-15ºC / 50-59ºF).
Now we have all the main ingredients let’s find out about the basic beer brewing process.
First you have to measure and heat all the water you’re going to need to brew. This has been calculated in advance based on your recipe. It changes based on the volume of beer you’re brewing of course, and also depends on the material you are using.
It has been heated to a specific temperature conducive to extract most of the simple sugars from the malted barley. The target temperature approximately ranges from 65ºC (150ºF) to 76ºC (170ºF). This part of the process generally calls for pouring the warm water in a prepared recipient like a water cooler that can maintain the water’s temperature for an hour to 90 minutes.
Then you extract this sweet barley juice called the wort, and pour it into a large boiling pot.
Boiling has two functions: sterilizing the mixture and for hops to provide bitterness. When they’re boiled, the alpha acids in hops are broken down and add to the bitterness.
The brew boils for an hour to 90 minutes for most recipes, with different varieties of hops added at different stages of the boiling time depending on recipes.
From the moment you turn the stove off, the wort’s temperature has to be brought down from boiling point to approximately 20ºC (68ºF) as fast as possible in order to add the yeast.
This is a tricky time and everything in the preparation area has to be spotless clean to avoid contamination.
This is a tricky time and everything in the preparation area has to be spotless clean to avoid contamination by bacteria that can easily spoil the beer. Different techniques can be used to cool the mixture down, from throwing giant iced plastic bottles in there, to copper coils running continuous cold water. At the same time stirring the wort aerates it, which is a good thing, sufficient amounts of oxygen will stimulate the yeast and allow it to multiply and thrive.
When the wort has finally cooled down, the yeast will be able to survive in the wort. If it’s too hot, a lot of the yeast dies off. It should be dropped in and then the fermenter is hermetically sealed to prevent air into the fermenting environment. An air lock, usually with a small amount of water, lets the C02 generated by the fermenting process to evacuate while preventing air and bacteria in the fermentation environment.
The primary fermentation takes a few days and generates a scum of dead yeast that accumulates to the surface of the brew. If the recipe calls for it, this can be the time to add hops to brew in the fermenter like tea. It’s called “dry hopping” and gives the beer citrusy aromas. It is a popular process with the American-styled pale ales and IPAs (India Pale Ale).
Leave the brew a few more days and it will be ready to be bottled. A small amount of brewer’s sugar is typically added during the bottling process to encourage any residual yeast to finish fermentation and creates Co2 in the bottle, giving the beer its final carbonation level. Bottles should be left to complete fermentation for a few weeks before being drank.
All in all the process takes three to six weeks from the brewing day to the day you can invite friends around to taste.
In Singapore, I typically alternated between traditional and original beer styles. Even though I didn’t completely master main styles like pale ales, I enjoyed experimenting with ingredients.
My most original recipes included a brown ale with pecan nuts and maple syrup; and a bourbon and vanilla pod oatmeal stout. The latter was like a dessert beer and quite delicious.
I haven’t brewed since I left Singapore and I miss it now.
I haven’t brewed since I left Singapore and I miss it now. I hope to brew again once I’m settled in my new place in London. I love that while it’s fairly easy to make a drinkable beer, there’s a whole world to learn in order to make different styles of beers and it takes mastery to be able to reproduce the same beer again and again. I’ll tell you once I start again and maybe offer to send you some samples to taste it.
I hope you enjoyed reading, enjoy the rest of your weekend! If you have beer, drink with moderation of course.
If you’d like to listen to something I’ve just published a new episode of the podcast, an interview with Philippa White. She founded The International Exchange (TIE), a fascinating organisation that works with creative communications professionals and places them with non-profit organisations in developing countries in need of their skills.
I haven’t written one of these posts since 2012. Of course at the time it was meant to become a yearly thing. I’m having another go at it now I’m regularly writing here. It’s a post to wrap up the year. There might be a bit of overlap with what I wrote in a recent Sundae newsletter, I’m expanding on some of those ideas here.
It has been an interesting year. A good year on many fronts.
I started the year in the Pyrénées mountains with a lovely walk in snow shoes and a couple days later went to the Mediterranean Sea in Collioure for a walk, to appreciate the beautiful area where most of my family lives.
I had opportunities to do interesting freelance work and do it remotely at least in part, so I thought I’d stay and enjoy the area a little while longer.
I spent a lot of time with my brothers, sister, nieces, nephew and parents throughout the year. I was hesitating on where to live and what to do next. I visited a flat in Perpignan and took it immediately once I’d seen the view of the rooftops and mountains from the roof terrace. That’s where I’m sitting to write this post as well. Two of my oldest friends came to visit from Orléans and Bordeaux. I travelled for work and spent time with some of my best friends in London, and also went on a lovely weekend in Somerset.
A large part of this year was also in the context of a course I’m participating in and completing soon, the Landmark Wisdom Unlimited. The main idea of the course is to explore the qualities of a child at play and applying them to different areas of life with the maturity of adulthood.
The course comprises five weekends throughout the year in different cities in Europe, each weekend has a particular theme. In between weekends, I had weekly calls with a group of other participants in the course who lived in the South of France, we also organised weekend events, social gatherings at each others places. Another important aspect of the course are the various assignments, for example I worked on putting an autobiography together with photos for each year of my life, and displays with all the people I interacted with on a regular basis for each year.
In the course I looked at how I developed and grew as a social being, in the conversations, interactions and circles of people that make up my every day life. It’s a rich course and everything I’ve done this year was supported by the conversations I’ve had with others in the programme. I really enjoyed it and next year I’m participating in another course in the series, Partnership Explorations. If you don’t know much about these kinds of courses I’d be happy to tell you more, or for a good read, a recent article was published in the NY Times about Werner Erhardt who created these types of courses.
I redesigned the Ice Cream for Everyone website, one of my best friends redesigned the logo. I got back into tabletop roleplaying games and started contributing to a friend’s audio podcast about roleplaying games. I really enjoyed it and given I had occasionally toyed with the idea of creating some kind of audio or video show, I started thinking about what I could do. It took me several months between the first episode meant to be research back in August to nail down a format I could produce myself. It started complicated, then I brought it back to something relatively simple I personally enjoy enough that I trust I’ll keep up with it. I interview creators and thinkers in a variety of fields I’m interested in, like advertising, game design, media and strategy.
I spent time working out the kind of writing I want to do more of, as a result I’m writing at least one blog post every week, the weekly Ice Cream Sundae email newsletter, and I’m working on other kinds of articles and posts for other platforms.
On other hand there are several things I wanted to get complete this year and failed to, chiefly my driving license. It became an ongoing drama this year. I took many lessons, took the driving test twice and failed it twice. I’m really close and if it didn’t take so long to reschedule another slot I’d probably already have it. I never thought it would be so difficult but there you go.
I intended to have a complete draft of the novel I’m writing by the end of this year and I don’t. I still have the same draft I had a year ago after NaNoWriMo. I spent a little bit more time writing towards the novel but nowhere near enough. I spent more time worrying about developing and promoting my services as a freelance strategist and consultant.
The work side has proven to be tougher than I thought it would be. It’s not working as well as I’d like it to. Spending time going back and forth between London (or other large cities) and the South of France sounded like a fantastic idea but it’s pretty difficult and tiring. Fortunately there has been positive points too: the work I’ve been doing with Framestore was and still is really interesting, I’ve done some work with a few other clients, caught up with many professional contacts and was invited to speak at the European Planning Conference in Prague.
While I’m not really getting bored of my roof terrace here, I miss the opportunities and friends in the big city. I’ve also made a conscious choice to keep writing and working in English (rather than in French).
With that in mind, and after much consideration, I’m moving back to London.
It’s weird to be moving again after just a year, looking around my flat and having to pack everything up again. It would be been even tougher to be able to take the time I did this year to work out my new website, podcast, writing, newsletter, tabletop gaming and learning to drive if I’d been in London or any other expensive large city this year, so I definitely appreciate that.
I’m looking forward to spending another New Year’s Eve in the Pyrénées mountains with friends! Once I’m back I’ll write another post about what I have in mind for 2016. I’m looking forward to whatever is coming next.
I thought I’d add a theme music to this post, Röyksopp’s Happy up Here so you can listen while reading.
I took the train from Prague to Vienna last weekend, I’d never visited and it seemed like a good opportunity to catch up with old friends who live here. It was also a good excuse to take the train for a few hours, I always love a good train ride. It was a chance to see what that little part of the world between the Czech and Austrian capital cities looks like while editing some podcast recordings.
I walked around Vienna in the morning a few days ago, and was glad to stumble upon a Stefan Sagmeister exhibit at the MAK, the Austrian Applied and contemporary arts museum. Knowing the famous designer is Austrian by birth, and having seen some of his work on happiness in TED Talks, it was a perfect opportunity to check it out.
It is called The Happy Show and collects the designers thoughts, research, experiments, and ideas about happiness. He famously closes his studio every seven years to take a year off as a sabbatical and many of the works in the exhibition were produced during that time off, some of it while he lived in Bali for a year, which seemed to have been in 2008 or around that time. He shows some of this work in his TED talks, I recommend checking them out.
It was a fantastic and happy morning for me, I’m always happy to walk around the streets of a new city and it was sunny so just that put a smile on my face. The Christmas markets were open with friends and families of locals and tourists walking around having fun and gathering around small high tables to drinks warm mugs of the Christmassy spiced, slightly boozy, and variously flavoured local pünsch.
I also love checking out the food of course, and was surprised to see stalls serving warm soup in bread bowls. While I loved the idea, it didn’t occur to me as a practical kind of street food to eat on the go. I stopped to watch some people order and see how they ate it, they turned out to stop at some tables I didn’t see were there at first. More reasons to smile while walking around.
I’d been walking around the centre of town for about two hours when I came across the exhibition, a good time to stop and get warm in the museum. The exhibits also put a smile on my face. One of my favourite pieces was the “How happy are you?” yellow banana flavoured bubble-gum dispensers. Ten of them are lined up in a colorful display, numbered 1 to 10 and asking people to self select how happy they were and take a bubble-gum from that machine. It’s playful, and as Stefan wrote in comments about the piece; it might sound silly to ask though research has shown that people stating they were happy actually made them happier. I enjoyed noticing there were a lot less gum in the 8-9-10 dispensers than in the ones numbered 1-2-3, which were almost full. I stayed around a few minutes and it was fun watching people select it, visitors watched each other and smiled. Happiness, or at least smiles, are pretty infectious.
I mentioned playful already, and to me this was a recurring theme throughout the exhibition, playfulness and happiness are intertwined in their crafting.
He shares this award acceptance speech from Jerry Seinfeld, also a lot of fun. Cynical perhaps, though I mention as relevant in the same post it because he talks about the small moments of happiness advertising can provide.
“In advertising, everything is the way you wish it was. […] In between seeing the commercial and owning the thing, I’m happy”
I’m not sure I see it as happiness when I’m in the thick of working on advertising or marketing a product, though typically a common thread with all great and memorable pieces of advertising is that they put a smile on people’s faces regardless of the product or service being advertised.
Beyond the ironic humour, there is definitely something to be said for appreciating happiness moment by moment, and then to be able to laugh at the irony of the often nonsensical things I do in the world of advertising, which I think also holds true for a lot of people in other lines of work.
I just had a fantastic week attending the 2nd edition of the European Planning Conference in Prague this week. I was able to arrive a couple of days early and enjoy walking around and soaking in the atmosphere of old Prague earlier this week. The morning I arrived was bright blue skies and cold crisp weather, perfect for wandering and appreciating the architecture. As it started clouding over in the afternoon, I settled in a coffee shop to get some work done, particularly to write my conference talk. I had a few notes and generally knew what I wanted to talk about, but hadn’t properly prepared the work and the presentation just yet.
I met Kristijan who organizes the EPC a couple of years ago while we both worked for Saatchi & Saatchi in Asia. He was based in Vietnam, and I was on a business trip to Ho Chi Minh City, talking to wealthy car enthusiasts for market research purposes. A colleagues told me to get in touch with Kris, who was nice enough to take some time to show me around and sit down for dinner and a few beers while we talked shop. We kept in touch after that, he was about to move back to Macedonia where he’s from and told me at the time that he had a few ideas about organizing an event for planners in Europe. It was brilliant to have that perspective, given I often think of the centre of Europe in London or maybe Paris, and forget about the whole of central and eastern Europe that I don’t know well at all.
I was happy Kris invited me to speak at the conference, it was an enriching and fun two day event, I met fantastic people from all over the old continent: France, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Macedonia, etc. Kris told me the event was only one day long last year; he felt it was very rushed so he thought he’d try spreading it over two days this year. It was brilliant to also meet Jane (pronounced Y-a-nee or something I can’t actually write phonetically), Kris’ new business partner, they are in the process of creating a new agency, we talked about their new plans and I wish them the best in their new venture.
Tom Theys of FCB Global opened the conference with a talk he is testing and preparing for the upcoming Eurobest festival. I’m not going to give too many details before Eurobest, but it’s all about providing experiences and thinking ways to creative advertising and promotional pieces that will have an effect on changing people’s behaviours. This Nivea case study that I hadn’t seen is a great example of the kind of things he talked about:
Varia from Sid Lee in Amsterdam talked next, about the kind immersive and meaningful brand experiences they work on in the agency famously (at least partially) funded by Cirque du Soleil, who know a thing or two about creating memorable shows and experiences, like the Absolut Nights series of branded events for the famous vodka.
We ended the first morning with one of the two more academically inclined talks of the conference, Michael is working on a Phd, had recently interviews international diplomats to learn about their jobs, and studied the origins and principles of diplomacy. He told us of the lessons he drew from the world of international diplomacy and strategic planners could learn from it.
We had two energetic and brilliant talks in the afternoon from Achim Shauerte of BBH London and then Boris Nihom of Achtung! Amsterdam, both with interesting approaches and case studies from their respective agencies with slick, smart and fun presentations. Achim is really sharp, and Boris infectiously passionate. Boris shows us several interesting and practical case studies, like this stroller video. Before that Achim had told us of the process they went through at BBH to create this pretty bold (and possibly kind of disturbing) advert for Audi:
I’m adding these videos to illustrate a few case studies and ads, though they don’t do justice to the talks of course, there was more to it than that.
We all went for a nice dinner and beers to a nearby bar and restaurant in the evening to pursue geeky talks about advertising, marketing, branding, and more.
Friday Katharina started the day with a very interesting talk and an academic history lesson, as in the telling us of the principles of studying and learning history and the ways in which the discipline can be applied to develop foresight.
Robert who co-founded the idea crowd sourcing platform Future Bakery followed to tell us about his burgeoning nw business. He used to work for traditional advertising agencies in Prague for a long time before creative this new online platform a year ago. I wasn’t sure I understood what it was at first, and the more he told us about it, the more interested I was. It’s an online community – I guess à la Quora where he poses relatively simple questions to the audience of participants related to client briefs in order to crowdsource ideas and possible solutions to their business problems from a wide variety of locations and experiences. They’re not solutions or any replacement for the work of an agency or a creative professional, but they’re potentially ideas and perspectives you wouldn’t have considered otherwise. I was definitely left wanting to find out more about it.
It was a privilege to have Richard join us for a talk about whether it is more important for planners to be interesting or right. He lighted the room up with his enthusiastic energy and it was brilliant to have his perspective about planning and strategy today, as well as his comments on several pieces of great strategic work out of the APG awards case studies this year.
Tom and Richard both talked about the campaign to encourage women to practice sports in the UK from FCB, and, it’s worth checking out if you haven’t come across it:
Michail then told us of his original methodologies to create a compelling and original brand value proposition, including ways to cooperate with clients to create stronger value. It was very interesting and his models seem rich.
Finally, it was time for my talk closing the conference. I’d prepared a talk about what strategic planners can learn from tabletop games, one of my passions. I’ve actually recorded myself, hopefully I will be able to soon publish this as an episode to my podcast so in the meantime I’ll keep the details quiet.
I learned a lot and got time to meet and talk shop with amazing professionals in their fields. The European Planning Conference is really one of those where I’m not sure if I should just keep a secret because it was great to be with a relatively small committee and spend more time getting to know people properly as well as explore planning & strategy topics in depth, but at the same time it is a brilliant event and definitely deserves to have more European planners join for the conference next year! I hope I can go next year, I loved Prague and would happily go back. Look out for next year, I recommend it!
