Blog Archive
2010
Businesses may be feeling optimistic about the impending economic recovery, but need to ask themselves just what effect the recession has had on their employees. Another black cloud looms.
Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. Executives at Toyota will be feeling this acutely. A cartoon in The Times today shows a driver of a Toyota with a ejector seat lever next to him. From an icon of reliability to a standing joke is a mighty fall. MPs, bankers, and other groups have also seen trust erode recently – because people believe they have done irresponsible things with public money.
Washington and San Francisco. Barack Obama and Steve Jobs.
In America on 27th January 2010, two men gave two very different speeches. Both President Obama and Steve Jobs took to the stage last night to command the world’s attention. President Obama’s first State of Union came in the wake of a media storm following last week’s Massachusett’s election, while Steve Jobs introduced the iPad, having managed to generate a whirl of popular speculation around Apple’s latest launch without saying a word.
Burns Night, Monday 25th January, saw many of our team, clients and associates participate in a very special whisky-tasting event at Century Club in Shaftesbury Avenue. This wasn’t just about an excuse to indulge in the amber nectar, nor simply an opportunity for a social; it was a superb, seamless piece of storytelling, delivered by the Ambassador of one of the UK’s most celebrated single malt scotch whiskies – The Balvenie – Dr Andy Forrester.
Is anyone else as besotted as I am with meerkats? I just love them. They’re so cute, confident and cool. Not just the real animals of course – I mean the pretend ones on Compare the market’s fabulous TV ads.
I have been taken aback on two occasions recently as I realised the sheer power of the way humans share things digitally.
First, I noticed my son Dominic (who is 16) using phrases such as “No Charlie” and “That hurts Charlie” dropped into everyday speech – as 16 year-olds do! There was a particular way that he said it, a kind of baby-talk. I just dismissed it as a “different generation” thing. Then, he was on the computer playing youtube videos, and happened to play the one this came from. I was on the London underground a few days later – and a small girl was using exactly the same phrases. I have since discovered that this youtube video has been viewed 149 million times! From a chance filming on a home camera of a couple of kids new phrases almost instantly appeared in youth speech!
(This from our colleague Dan Honeywell, whose expertise in all things Mandarin earns him huge respect from the team):
Isn’t language fascinating? I have always been amazed at how squiggles, lines, dots and sounds can combine to form such beautifully intricate forms of communication.
Each Christmas as the fire begins to burn low and the full impact of culinary over-indulgence takes its effect, I find myself perusing the presents of others. This is not to say that there is any dissatisfaction with my shiny stockpile of gifts – far from it. It is more a combination of curiosity, downright nosiness and the lack of physical ability to move further than the length of the sofa by the end of the day.