We were sold a story about generosity.

Share everything, give freely. Community over competition.

In some rooms, and with some people, that’s genuinely right.

Yet there is a very specific pattern that happens when you share something freely - a creative process, a contact, a way of thinking about a brief, a methodology you’ve spent years developing. It moves directly into the hands of someone who will take the commercial benefit and not look back.

Then you’ll be asked to be generous again next time, and the time after that. The generosity will be celebrated as a personality trait while the extraction goes unsaid.

When I speak about gate-keeping, I’m not thinking about the proverbial gate at the entrance to the community. Actually, that gate must be positioned at the boundary between the people building with you and the people extracting from you. That distinction is important because the ‘share everything’ argument is right about one of those groups and wrong about the other.

Knowing the difference requires attention and discernment. There have been times I can point to where I overlooked this, and learnt from it. Paying attention means accepting that not everyone in the room is there for the same reasons as you.

Some people are in community with you.

Some people are accessing you.

One easy tell: who is giving as well as receiving? Who disappears once they have what they came for?

I’ve been on the wrong side of this enough times to stop being embarrassed about protecting things. I’m currently building something right now, and I’ve learnt to build quietly. To recognise what I have that are assets.

The relationships I’ve cultivated aren’t a free referral service.

The knowledge that comes from years inside the commissioning room doesn’t belong to every conversation I’m friendly enough to have.

Some things should be protected.

Not because you’re precious about them, but because you understand their value. That understanding is precisely what they’re expecting you to lack. The generosity narrative only works for everyone when everyone is an active participant in it. When they’re not, the person who keeps giving freely is not being community-minded. They’re being extracted from.

There is a version of the creative industry that trains you to be grateful for access instead of paid for your value.

If you grew up without much, or if you spent long enough chasing entry, you internalise it so completely that you start doing it to yourself before anyone asks you to.

~~~

where this shows up

Under-charging because you’re scared the client will say no.

Overdelivering because you’ve confused generosity with worth.

Not negotiating, because negotiating feels greedy and you haven’t quite convinced yourself that you belong here yet.

Saying yes to the brief that’s under-budget because at least it’s a brief.

Treating access to the room as the reward instead of the starting point.

A poverty mindset in creative doesn’t look like lack. It looks like a rate you’re embarrassed to send. It looks like a revision that was never in scope but you did it anyway because you didn’t want to seem difficult. It looks like being relieved when a client says yes instead of being neutral about it - the way someone charging market rate would be. It looks like building your pricing around what you think they’ll accept rather than what the work is worth.

a structural issue no one wants to change

The industry doesn’t correct this because the industry benefits from it.

There is an entire commissioning economy that runs on the gap between what experienced creatives know to charge and what newer ones accept in the hope that this project will be the one that opens the next door.

That gap doesn’t close on its own. It closes when you decide to begin charging accordingly, with confidence.

What shifted it for me was understanding that a ‘no’ on your rate is not a ‘no’ on your value. A client who can’t meet your rate is not in your market. That shouldn’t affect the way you value your work.

The emotional weight we attach to being turned down on price comes from the same place as the under-charging: a belief, somewhere beneath, that the number reflects how much we’re wanted rather than what the work costs.

The practical ability is there. The portfolio is there. What's still catching up is the belief that the work was worth what you charged for it.

The thing about overthinking is that it feels like work.

It has the texture of diligence. You’re still at your desk, still brooding on the problem and still refining the options. Surely that counts.

It doesn’t.

What I’ve learned, slowly and at some cost, is that overthinking is almost never about the decision in front of you.

It’s anxiety dressed up as analysis.

It mimics rigour well enough that you can lose days to it without noticing.

I don’t often play poker, but here’s the tell: if more information would actually change your answer, then you’re not overthinking, you’re under-researched. Go find the information. Talk to someone who knows. Do the work that’s actually missing. If you already have everything you need and you’re still ruminating - reading the same brief again, reopening the same deck, rewriting the first paragraph for the fourth time - then that’s not diligence.

what it cost me

I’ve stalled on pitches I already knew were right. I’ve delayed sending proposals because I was convinced one more revision would make the difference when what I actually needed was to

Just.

Press.

Send.

I’ve let opportunities pass me by whilst I was still preparing for them. This was the price of overthinking: the fear of committing to a direction when I already had everything I needed to make a decision.

The part I’ve had difficulty reconciling is that the decisions I’ve stalled on the longest have almost never been the wrong ones. Stalling was the problem, not the decision.

learning to be better

What’s helped is discernment. Learning to distinguish between a genuine gap in information and a need for reassurance.

Reassurance isn’t something you can research your way into. At some point you have to move and let the feedback tell you what to adjust.

Done and adjusted beats perfect and delayed. Every time.

The people who move quickly have just accepted earlier that certainty isn't what they're waiting for. The work will tell you what’s wrong with it once it becomes a real thing. Nothing happens when it’s sat in your drafts.

I’ve recently read Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. It reframes failure as redirection: if the missile goes off course, it adjusts and keeps moving toward the target.

Done and adjusted beats perfect and delayed. The work will tell you what's wrong with it, but only once it's real. That’s the real information you’re looking for.

Heritage is the most recognisable thing a brand can sell. Credibility is the hardest to maintain and the most expensive to borrow. Burberry’s bounce-back story shows us how two opposing briefs can work without cannibalising each other.

~~~~

In 2024, Joshua Schulman joined Burberry as CEO. At the time, it was one of the most troubled brands in luxury fashion: profit warnings and a share price that had dropped by 40%. Over 18 months later, Burberry reported a return to growth in its FY26 results. Could this be one of Britain’s best brand comeback stories? By any financial metric, Schulman’s ‘Burberry Forward’ strategy has been a success.

Any rebrand is difficult. Particularly for a heritage brand in a landscape of declining global sales. Joshua Schulman has a reputation for transforming luxury brands (Coach, Michael Kors, Jimmy Choo).

There have been a few luxury rebrands in recent years and not all of them have been positively received (read: Jaguar), so here’s a look at what the Burberry Forward plan entailed, and what can be learnt from it - as a marketer and a creative commissioner.

Subscribe now

what changed at burberry?

A lazy analysis of this will define this as a redemption story. A heritage brand loses its way, a new CEO joins and returns it to its roots and voila the numbers recover. Whilst it is true, it’s an incomplete picture. ‘Returning to its roots’ wasn’t just a creative decision by Daniel Lee; it was a choice about which audience the brand would cater to.

Schulman joined Burberry and condensed the problem in a single phrase: the brand had drifted into a ‘niche aesthetic’ and the product ‘skewed to a narrow base of luxury customers’. Reading that as a marketer: he’s referring to the reach rather than the taste behind it. The previous strategy - shift upmarket, raise the price of leather goods and lean into seasonal fashion - had made Burberry appealing to a smaller, fashion ‘purist’ audience whilst alienating the much larger one who simply want a recognisable British trench coat. Schulman undid this, with a brief for broad appeal: make the brand instantly recognisable again, to as many people as possible in the markets that pay. Heritage is the most globally recognisable asset Burberry owns, and he doubled down on this.

There have been a lot of media reports about this in recent months and here’s what’s missed from a lot of them: Daniel Lee hasn’t left. He joined as creative director in 2022 and is still there. His Burberry is about cultural credibility and that hasn’t left. One of his campaigns cast Skepta, Raheem Sterling, Shygirl and John Glacier. A Britishness represented by grime, football and London ‘cool’. His summer 2026 campaign still blends music and fashion, as he says: ‘music pushes boundaries, blurs lines and defines the codes of fashion.’

What’s happening is there are two briefs running simultaneously since Schulman joined, and they’re both in place to achieve entirely different things. There’s Lee’s credibility ambition which follows one of the oldest playbooks in the game - borrow credibility from the right footballer, music artist or postcode. Then it’s juxtaposed with Schulman’s commercial brief, which champions the heritage product. With a specific goal to regain customers in Asia.

Two briefs, two goals and intentions. Which one did the heavy lifting for +2% FY growth?

a tale of two briefs

Cultural credibility and commercial viability are often in competition with one another in the briefing room. Burberry’s turnaround story has arguably demonstrated which one has the real power. Schulman’s answer to this debate was unambiguous: when recognisability and credibility conflict, the former pays the rent. The numbers back that up - a credible brand can’t sustain itself when you’ve priced and narrowed it into irrelevance. That logic can be applied elsewhere, like music. Mariah Carey entered her Glitter era with one of the most recognisable catalogues in commercial pop, then she pivoted to a project with a retro R&B sound and hip-hop features. It didn’t connect in the same way and has since been pulled from digital platforms. One external challenge to note is that it was released the same day as the 9/11 attack. Her next project, ‘Emancipation of Mimi’, recovered her lapsed audience not by being more interesting and specific, but by returning to her pop roots and becoming palatable to a mainstream audience again. It’s the same brief as Schulman applied in a different context.

Returning to luxury fashion, Wales Bonner and Martine Rose built their brands the other way around - credibility first. The brands scaled from a specific cultural point of view, rather than introducing it after an audience has been established.

lessons learnt

Here’s what I’ve taken from this, for any brand with heritage and legacy as an available asset. The first thing to decide on is whether this brief is selling recognisability or credibility.

Burberry’s transformation so far has proven that heritage and familiarity can help you to recover an audience which may have been lost. However, when Burberry’s largest financial gains are in Asia and China more specifically, the impact of licensing credibility from talent is still a little more opaque right now.

One question I’ve often struggled with in conversations with some clients is the metric for cultural credibility, as this isn’t comparable to traditional advertising formats. Instead, I’ve looked at what Google Trends tells us. It’s not a measure of conversion but it does reflect intent. In China, the fast-growing queries are product searches - recognisability driving search. In the UK it’s a different picture. The main search is ‘goddess burberry’ which is tied to Lee’s creative direction - that’s the credibility work. Two briefs, two audiences and two search behaviours, which means the data legitimises both briefs.

If Schulman’s recognisability caters to an Asian audience, whilst Lee’s credibility is doing the work in the UK, both supplement each other. One stays rooted in the place where it was born, and the other finds the consumers who want to invest.

The move isn't to choose between recognisability and credibility. It's to brief them separately, for separate audiences, toward separate goals. All it needs is a specific audience for each brief, and the discipline not to let them bleed into each other.

Nobody briefs for personality.

Every job spec asks for software proficiency, platform knowledge, a portfolio. Nobody writes ‘must be able to communicate well’ or ‘must stay within agreed deadlines.’

Yet, every creative career that has progressed has done so because of exactly these things.

I’ve watched technically strong people get passed over because they couldn’t manage a relationship under pressure. I’ve seen people with average portfolios go further than people who were genuinely gifted, because they made the commissioner feel understood and asked the right questions. They knew how to receive difficult feedback without becoming defensive. They could sit in a meeting where the brief was clearly wrong and find a way to redirect it without embarrassing the person who wrote it.

None of that is in the job spec, but all of it is expected.

how the work really gets delivered

The budget gets allocated in a conversation and the commission goes to the person who made the client feel seen in the speculative conversations, not necessarily the one with the strongest portfolio. If you’re not someone people want in the room or on set, the quality of your work doesn’t hold enough weight on its own.

I’m not saying that the work isn’t important. It is, and always will be. Nurture your craft. I’m sharing the reality of how work gets delivered. Your technical ability might bring you to the conversation, but people’s personal experience of working with you is what decides whether you get the next opportunity. I've seen talented creatives with stellar portfolios genuinely confused about why they're not getting booked, because they delivered the work they wanted to make rather than what the client asked for. From a client's perspective, that's a liability.

doing things differently

The solution to this is almost always relationship. It’s how you handle disagreements on the brief. It’s whether you show up to set on time and with a positive attitude. It’s the thing you said in the room that made someone think: I want them on the next one. It’s ultimately whether you make people feel confident or cautious when they work with you.

Practical ability gets you considered, soft skills get you chosen.

Don’t overlook the importance of cultivating both. The industry allows the romanticised myth of ‘if my work is good enough, I’ll get the job’ to persist. Think about the people who have commissioned you, championed you and referred you. Now think about what actually caused that. It wasn't the portfolio.

The creative industry will convince you that you need to grind on your own because your peers are your competitors. That the only way you’ll get ahead is by protecting your space, your IP and your contacts.

In some aspects, this is true. As a creative, it’s important to have boundaries. It’s important to view and protect your work as business assets - especially in the AI world we’re living in. It’s also important to nurture your professional network.

However, when that starts drifting into gate-keeping and isolationist territory, you’re lowering your own ceiling.

the root cause

There are many reasons why this happens and a lot of it points to a structural issue in the creative industry. For new talent, there’s a romanticisation that the industry is meritocratic. That you’ll be discovered on the strength of your work. As time progresses and experience is gained, there’s a realisation that the industry actually rewards visibility and proximity. It’s less about the strength of your work and more about whether the decision-makers know you, directly or through recommendation. So someone could be mediocre and still get ahead.

Then there’s the ‘starving artist’ mindset - a prevalent ideology that there’s scarcity of opportunity in the industry.

This creates a perception that everyone has the potential to seize opportunities you feel were meant for you. Which leads to gate-keeping. Not necessarily as intentional behaviour, oftentimes as an act of perceived survival.

On the surface, it seems like a practical solution. Look beneath it and you’ll see what it’s really doing.

Capping your market.

the power of a collective

There are many instances that have proven that collective power is far more formidable than individual output. Resources, contacts, skills. Pool them and your proposition to clients is immediately bigger.

Lately, I’ve been referring to Take More Photos, Babes With Blades and even unofficial collectives - Clint419, Gabriel Moses and Slawn. Something they’ve each understood is the strength in community. Find those with a shared goal or intention. A shared taste or identity. Then work together as partners.

what changes now

If this resonates with you then here’s how to think about this.

There are different ways of approach, and you don’t need to call it a ‘collective’. Think about the types of clients you want to work with. Consider what their needs are and then find people with adjacent skills and experience to you so that you can collectively meet those needs. Nike might need art directors and DOPs. Loewe might be looking for photographers and content strategists. Penguin Random House might need illustrators and typographers.

Think of it as a way to expand your proposition. Not only does it broaden your network (read: prospective clients list) but it also gives you greater bargaining power when it comes to rates. If you can offer more, you get paid more.

Simple.

There is a particular kind of content that has become the ambient noise of every creative person’s feed. Ten slides. White background. Bold serif. A numbered list of things wealthy people do before 6am. Track your money. Delay your gratification. Build systems, not goals. Improve by 1% daily. Small gains compound into extraordinary results. Enter: Alex Hormozi and Matt Gray.

It is not wrong, exactly. It is just written for a different body.

The underlying assumption of the ‘atomic habits’ principle is that you’re a machine optimising for a single output, and that the best version of you is the most efficient version of you. Track everything. Data drives better decisions.

Apply this framework to a creative person and something stops making sense.

Discipline does matter and consistency isn’t a myth, so it’s not that. What’s wrong is that the creative process has a fundamental requirement which the wealth-building framework doesn’t represent.

The wandering hour. The half-formed thought you dwell on for a little too long. The album you play for the fourth time not because it’s new but because you haven’t understood it yet. The old draft you return to, not to salvage it, but to remember what inspired it. These aren’t inefficiencies in your system. They actually are the system.

What the productivity gurus will tell you is procrastination, the creative process calls incubation. What the hustle ideology calls distraction, the creative process calls input. What the wealth-building model considers sacrifice as virtue - the 5am alarm, the optimised morning routine, the removal of everything that doesn’t compound - is, for a creative person, the erosion of exactly what makes the work worth producing at all.

This is what self-sacrifice starts to look like. From the onset it looks like discipline. It feels like you’re making progress - you’re tracking, staying consistent and you’re building. Then, a day arrives when you realise the well has run dry and you don’t know when it happened because you were too busy measuring output to notice the input had stopped.

The creative people who last - the ones who are still making things at forty, who still have something to say that you want to hear - they’re not the ones who optimised the hardest. They’re the ones who understood to protect something important. They scheduled breaks, as a part of the work rather than a recovery from it. They went back to old pieces not to monetise the archive but to stay connected to what produced them. They preserved their creative space not as an aesthetic preference but as an environment that held their attention differently than the rest of their life did.

They did not treat themselves as a resource to be extracted.

The 1% rule is real. Compounding is real. Consistency matters, but for a creative person, the thing that compounds is not output. It‘s depth. It’s the slow accumulation of reference, feeling, experience, and care. Depth cannot be forced on a timeline and it can’t be measured on a dashboard. It can’t be optimised without being destroyed.

Fix your habits and your wealth will follow? Yes, maybe. Fix your habits the wrong way and your creativity will leave first, without notification, because you failed to cultivate a way to protect it.

The atomic habit of a creative person who is still feeding their creative spirit is not systemising and optimising. Delaying pleasure and reward until the product has reached a benchmark monetisation.

In truth, it’s the daily practice of nurturing the part of yourself that makes the work worth doing.

Everything else is just execution.

The representation spectrum is a way of mapping where any brand, institution or creative practice actually sits, based on action rather than published values. Commissioning decisions, brief structures and platform selection all point to a choice. Operational, rather than moral.

the two considerations

Consideration 1 asks: what does this commissioning decision do with the face it hires?

At one end, it’s the face without context. Anok Yai, without her South Sudanese history. The campaign takes what the person represents - Blackness, South Sudan, minority - without engaging with their reality: the history, community, and conflict.

At the other end: the face is there, supported by an institutional response. Nike and Colin Kaepernick. The commission brief acknowledges the context and the platform amplifies it. The institution is an active participant - publicly, structurally and with resources.

Most briefs sit in the middle, they’re not aiming for either end in an effort to preserve neutrality.

Consideration 2 asks: what does the brand keep and what does it decline?

Every commission reflects this decision. The brand takes the cultural value: relatability, credibility and aesthetic legitimacy. Beyond that, the brand chooses to what degree it will engage with the cultural context surrounding it: the history, community, geopolitics and infrastructure.

Taking the value and declining the context isn’t a neutral position.

the four positions

the self assessment

the next move

What under siege and what she said are exploring isn’t intended as a moral argument about brands doing more, it’s an operational point of view about what each brief represents through choice and omission. Each implicit decision becomes an explicit consequence.

by the way, i’ve started a 30-day writing series this month, called Crash-Out, where i’ll be sharing a more personal reflection of my 10+ years in the creative industry - on the client side (marketing, brand strategist) and the creative side (commissioning)

crash-out

Welcome to day 11 of my 30-day writing series, Crash-Out.

If you’ve ever felt under-represented in a workplace, or whilst working with a client then I have a message for you. Whilst it’s always important to advocate for your community, sometimes they don’t want to be representative and honestly, it’s ok.

As a black woman who didn’t grow up in London, I’ve often felt stuck in spaces where I didn’t belong. Coming to the Capital was a culture shock. I’d never been around so many black people all at once. In some ways, I felt out of place there too. After finally settling and finding my character-community, I’ve become much more cognisant of the spaces that welcome me and those that don’t. The spaces that don’t haven’t made me jaded, in fact they’ve fuelled me to create things for those that look like me. Think like me. Through that journey I’ve realised that every context doesn’t require complete neutrality. Sometimes, having a specific point of view, a specific goal and intention is important.

start letting go

Representation doesn’t happen on its own. It doesn’t happen through passivity, nor does it happen from spontaneous enlightenment (in most cases). It takes time, intention and work. It’s a selfless act of serving the community and it should be celebrated. Every time.

However, discernment is key. The Gujarati community don’t call for representation on Love Island, because they have Indian Matchmaking. The Korean community don’t cry out for more products in the ‘world food’ shopping aisle, because they have Oseyo.

Diversity and representation is always good, but not at the mercy of infrastructure.

As someone who once yearned for dark-skin faces in every TV show, film and billboard, I now view things differently. Not every platform requires it. We don’t need to demand it. The reason why JW3 Centre and the Black Cultural Archives are so significant is because they serve one community. Not to be isolationist but to be specific. Preserving a culture and history with authenticity isn’t possible without bias, and you can achieve that without prejudice to another.

Communities that don’t build infrastructure never really hold power. Without that, there’s always a dependency for another community to share resources. It’s why every year there’s dismay that Love Island has one token dark-skin woman. That token is a reminder of the ecosystem we have failed to architect for ourself.

it gets better

A lack of infrastructure presents the opportunity to build something which is truly of value to community. Look outward to see what others are building, but only to see how to build something for yourself. There will always need to be representation in certain spaces, those which have a responsibility to reflect society as it is: governments, welfare support and healthcare, to name a few. Yet there’s room for us all to create with a goal to represent the nuanced needs of those with a shared identity. Does Abercrombie & Fitch need to cast South East Asian models, or do we need more Lisa Von Tang?

Think about building an ecosystem which is protected by the community, because that will compound far more than proximity to someone else’s.

Yesterday, whilst on the Jubilee Line, I overheard a conversation about plans for a forthcoming brand campaign. ‘Cultural relevancy’ and ‘being part of the conversation’ were mentioned.

If you’re talking about either of those, you’ve already got it wrong.

If you’re trying to ‘be part of a conversation’ which you weren’t before, it means it’s already become so mainstream that it’s probably not that ‘relevant’ anymore. Speaking of relevance, anyone who is truly a part of a culture isn’t thinking about that. It’s innately a part of their identity. Their preferences. Their perspective. Their lifestyle.

Most marketers don’t understand this and it’s why so many brands appear for the moment and then fade into the void once it’s passed.

Something else I often see is the conflation of zeitgeist and culture. Zeitgeist is the general trend of thought or taste - think: jelly sandals of the 90s. Culture refers to shared beliefs or social characteristics - read: my grandmother making Saturday Soup on the Dutchpot 🇯🇲.

Failing to understand the difference will mean a brand will never really be part of something in a meaningful way.

what’s happening now

I recently read an interview by People Brands and Things with Pinterest’s Sydney Stanback, Global Trends and Insights Lead and it got me thinking. Tomorrow is the start of the biggest World Cup in history: three host countries, three languages and three football cultures.

Pinterest released its first Sports Edition of its Summer Trends report and unsurprisingly, many of us are looking for sports-related goods. That’s the consumers, and the brands are following too. We’ve seen several World Cup-firsts for brands like Axe, The Home Depot and even LEGO with their ‘Everyone Wants a Piece’ ad. Very fitting.

On the surface, it’s great to see so much engagement around what is set to be a historic event for football fans. What will be really telling is what those brands are doing in August. La Liga and the Premier League will be starting again. Let’s take bets on which of those brands are still present for the football community. Not only with billboards. With something that is truly meaningful for those that experience it as an inherent part of their identity.

what culture really looks like

The difference between a brand that is part of a culture and one that is performing proximity to it comes down to timing. Not timing as in scheduling. Timing as in: when did you arrive?

Three questions that actually tell you something:

Did you know about it before it was ‘cool’ to know about it? Not from a trend report. From being present - in the rooms, the nights, the communities, before they became content. If the first time your brand encountered something was when it became a positive signal to a senior stakeholder, you weren’t building from within the culture. You’ve observed something at a distance and found an entry point. The people who built it have already clocked you.

What have you left behind? Sponsorship is extraction. Money goes in, exposure comes out, and the community is left exactly as it was. Cultural participation requires contribution. Infrastructure, platform, access. Something that would still exist if your logo wasn’t on it. Think less about what your brand shows up for, and more about what you leave behind for those still there.

Would they talk about you if you stopped paying them to? Organic mentions. Does the community actually claim you? Do they wear it, reference it and defend it without an invoice? Culture isn’t something a brand joins - it’s something a community allows. If the only evidence of your cultural participation lives inside a pitch deck, you’re not in. You’re adjacent.

The brands showing up for the World Cup will find out in August when the Premier League opens. The conversation moves elsewhere. The brands that were genuinely present - not for the moment, but for the community - will still be there. Not because they planned a campaign around it, but because they’re immersing themselves in what it means to the fans who are there when their team has lost.

My toxic trait has always been giving away free ideas. It’s not that I enjoy de-valuing myself, which I know that I’m doing. I really love to be challenged by new briefs - the pressure to think differently. Plus, if they’re free ideas there’s low expectations to over-deliver. Which is probably another of my toxic traits. I’m nothing if not self-aware.

Something happened recently which made me pause to reflect. I made a genuine, intentional, proposal for a campaign I’d like to work as a freelance strategist. The ideas were great, if I do say so myself.

It turns out they were so great that the recipient decided to take them without my involvement. This is the risk of not protecting your IP as a freelancer. However, it’s always been my belief that ideas are endless and there’s a wide gap between idea and execution.

You can take the idea, but it doesn’t mean you’ll execute it as well as me. Though it did have me thinking about this from a broader perspective - why are some people better at executing than others?

why people get it wrong

I recently watched Emma Grede’s Aspire episode with Issa Rae (love!). During that conversation, Issa spoke about the challenge of needing executors. People in her team that can ideate as well as execute. It’s a skill which isn’t inherently available for everyone. It’s one which can be acquired, though.

Here’s what I think is typically missing for those that are struggling to manifest an idea. Firstly, confidence. Now this is something I’ll speak on more a little further, but for now I’ll say that a lack of confidence can block you before you’ve even started. It’s like having a strong singing voice but fumbling as soon as you reach the stage. Innately you can, practically it falls apart.

Next is applied knowledge. Having an idea is great, but perhaps you might also need to understand the real cost of materials and equipment, or an understanding of the team you’ll need to assemble to achieve the work.

I once had a beta version of my creative platform, The Black Book, and as part of that I had a very successful mentorship programme. I recently met with one of the mentors who shared his experience of having a mentee who had so many grand ideas and for which he wanted to help him achieve them. However, he felt that he likely didn’t have the practical skills and understanding required to execute them well.

Next is insight: knowing the market, being able to read the data, or knowing the signals for whether something is working or not.

Without these, ideas are redundant.

execution paralysis

Now, going back to the confidence. It’s something I’ve been struggling with recently. Having too many ideas that I’ve only gone and overwhelmed myself. As someone that’s starting a business, after having one which had already failed, I call it execution paralysis. The uncanny ability to overthink myself out of starting. Most likely to materialise when I’m working on my own projects rather than for clients. Also it’s that historic adage of being a chronic perfectionist and not wanting to start until I know all microscopic details have been accounted for. For anyone else who needs to know this, trust me, most of what you’re obsessing over is probably going to be overlooked by others.

So I’ve found myself in a state of paralysis lately. Knowing the idea and mapping it clearly, but having the fear of missing something preventing me from taking the next step.

Ever felt like that?

what I’m doing differently

Well, I’m doing things differently. Radically, even.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be getting all of the foundational elements in place that are required to launch. After that, I’ll just get started. I’ll execute, learn and adapt in real-time. The best feedback I’ll receive is from when it’s been imparted from my brain to become a tangible ‘thing’.

Sometimes you have to force your overthinking brain into submission.

Struggling with applied knowledge? That’s the easier fix. The resources exist in abundance - financial literacy, industry context, enterprise basics. The internet and your local library have all of it. The only requirement is wanting to learn.

It’s more valuable to know how to turn a mediocre idea into something meaningful in experience or insight than to have a great idea which falls flat at the final hurdle.

Most people live in the gap between idea and execution indefinitely, so here’s what I’ve decided. I’m setting a launch date: 1st August. That’s the day my platform launches irrespective of my overactive brain. We go, and we adapt.

The African Giant. A man who has helped to bring Afrobeats, Nigerian pride and culture to the world, challenging Western misconceptions. He’s sold out arenas with his energetic performances. He’s had the internet frenzied with controversy. He’s encouraged Nigerian youth into political consciousness. Most of all, he’s shown the Black diaspora what is possible when you believe in your own sauce.

the brand that was built

Burna Boy is an artist who shaped his brand identity around being an African man. A Nigerian man. His album title choices were a declaration to the global audience. ‘Twice as Tall’ and ‘African Giant’ came with a continental position, and the latter was a direct response to being billed for Coachella as a perceived lesser act. Africa is an empire rather than an aesthetic. He challenged Western ideologies that Africa is third-world, under-developed and lacking talent. He represented Africa as a cultural and commercial power. Throughout his career, he has maintained the same message of what Africa is and deserves to be seen as.

false representation

Recently, I saw the music video for Burna Boy and Shakira’s World Cup 2026 song.

Baobab tree. Dust. Barefoot children.

This is Africa.

This isn’t the first time. Western media and NGOs have been portraying Africa the same way for decades: a mono-culture with limited economic development and impoverished children who are just happy to be here. Now, the world’s biggest sporting institution has reinforced this narrative, with the credibility check of Burna Boy.

The video is part of a charitable initiative raising money for Ghetto Kids Uganda, with their recipient children featured in the visual. It’s a nice idea. However, even when the intent is charitable, the visual default is the same lens: poverty. Need as spectacle. The image of Africa as a place that requires saving, rather than a place building the infrastructure to save itself.

Who made this choice, and who said yes? How much leverage does the talent really have in brand deals?

FIFA didn’t hire Burna Boy despite the visual. They hired him because of it. Afrobeats is the sound which represents Africa to a mainstream audience. Burna Boy is the most commercially significant African artist right now, so his presence provides the cultural legitimacy to make the imagery feel like it’s accurate. Remove him from the video and it’ll be perceived as antiquated reduction, but with him there’s credibility and pride. That’s extraction.

preserving old ideologies

Africa is a continent made up of 54 countries, hundreds of languages and thousands of ethnic groups. The creative economy there is among the fastest-growing globally with the world’s youngest population. It has a tech ecosystem which produced M-Pesa, Flutterwave and Paystack. Lagos, Nairobi, Accra and Kigali are cities building significant creative infrastructure. Nigeria alone has a music industry worth over $600m and projected to reach $1bn by 2033.

FIFA saw all of this and chose to represent Africa with barefoot children dancing in sand and dust. This was a deliberate choice to preserve a false reality. To reinforce the preference for an Africa that is vibrant without being a commercial threat. Rhythmic but not rich and developed. Present, without authority.

the uncomfortable truth

The traditional partnerships model between talent and brands has been evolving over the years, though not entirely. FIFA paid for Burna Boy’s face, but who controlled the creative? Burna Boy isn’t known for diplomacy and he has previously called out institutions like Coachella. So the lack of response to this visual would suggest he co-signs it. Doesn’t it? He has enough leverage - commercially and culturally - to have co-curated the visuals which represent the community he is from.

Maybe he did and lost. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe the bag was large enough that the question didn’t come up.

FIFA will always be the institution that it is. Football has been riddled with issues of racism for decades. What’s more interesting here is what happens when the most influential African music artist alive is a part of a video that diminishes the continent he spent a career defending.

FIFA’s charity fund is real and honourable. Yet the image of Africa discredits the intention, and it’s hasn’t changed because the preference hasn’t changed. Until African creative talent negotiate not just the fee but the visual language, the message will stay exactly the same.

“Before I get off the stage, I just want to call attention to Sudan. I wish peace for Sudan.

There is a massacre happening there. I ask the U.S. government to do right by my people.

And to everyone watching, I ask you not to look away. My family is dying, and I don’t know what to do.”

~~~

The global fashion industry was addressed directly on its most prominent stage, by Anok Yai the first South Sudanese model to earn the prestigious Model of the Year award by the British Fashion Council. To close her acceptance speech, she said earnestly, and vulnerably, that her homeland is experiencing a genocide. The crowd applauded, the media reported on her dress and then everyone moved on. The brands that commissioned her image said nothing. The institution that gave her award recognised her resilience but never acknowledged what she was resilient against.

Everyone was silent in response to a direct appeal.

This is part 2 following an exploration of five brand archetypes and how they respond to wars happening around the world. Sudan is distinct because there is no functioning media ecosystem or productive consumer market. Therefore, brands have quietly disappeared with no audience to hold them to account. This goes further when exploring how the creative industry responds, particularly when its most visible talent is exposing what is being ignored, solely from the act of being present.

what representation actually looks like

The same ideology which allows a brand to re-distribute its spend away from Sudan without thought for a press release allows an industry to celebrate a Sudanese model without consideration for what she represents.

Representation is the commissioning decisions, the creative choices, the platforms and messaging that give a face context and continuity. Without those, it becomes something else: extraction.

When Anok Yai opened the Prada show as its first Black model in over two decades, humbly, she said ‘this is bigger than me.’ It’s easy to perceive that as aspiration but what’s likely at the core is rooted in identity. An acknowledgment of the community she is from, and the collective responsibility she feels indebted to.

Versace, Saint Laurent, Mugler, Estée Lauder. The brands that commissioned her in 2025 had bought access to Yai’s aesthetic, her culture and heritage. Yet, when she spoke at the BFA, none had responded with intent to pay back in kind.

what the creative industry lost in sudan

The result is a rapidly declining economy, limited international visibility and a violent campaign to silence those in the country who attempt to broadcast their experience on the ground. A look at Google trends was striking. Very few are pro-actively looking for information about Sudan, and even less interest in the civil war.

A country that produces acclaimed creatives such as Yousra Elbagir, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Adut Akech and Anok Yai no longer has the ecosystem to nurture the next generation of talent. With the global creative market becoming decentralised and more accessible, that too should apply here. If not for solidarity, for the continuation of progression in creative.

the self-censorship question

Looking beyond Sudan and history shows us that some of the most powerful creative work has been made in protest or as part of activism.

Gran Fury’s ACT UP campaign, Bob Dylan’s ‘Masters of War’, France’s Charlie Hebdo publication and The Guerrilla Girls to name a few. They all produced something which spoke to the time: societal and political angst. The creative industry nurtures expression, so with this shift towards silence and neutrality it erases a critical part of creative work: freedom.

Self-censorship is safe, and in a world of political correctness it’s an easy way to protect a brand’s reputation. Marketer Christy Lee put it plainly: “if you are choosing not to participate, you are actively choosing a side.” We saw in Russia what the result of perceived neutrality was.

In 2022, the British Fashion Council released a statement titled ‘We Stand with Ukraine’ urging the fashion community to condemn Russia’s invasion and offer resources to Ukrainian designers, retailers and media. In 2025, the BFC responded to Anok Yai’s plea for support with decisive silence.

Every brief reflects a position, and tells the world how much you believe in representation and what you’re willing to give to achieve that.

I’ve spent years searching for my ‘tribe’, my community. It took a long time for me to realise that it doesn’t work the way we think it does because we’re conflating two things which should be kept separate.

‘Sisterhood’, ‘community’, ‘tribe’, ‘my people’. That shared space probably isn’t doing all the things you need it to.

There are two types of community. One which nurtures your character - identity, culture, interests & hobbies. The other which feeds your ambition - personal or career goals. Conflating the two is what holds many people back, including me. Social connections look different between the two, or at least they should.

Character-based community is where to go for enjoyment. It’s the group chats for planning Soft Life Ski, GymBusy and Bible Study. To nurture interests and feel represented.

Ambition-based community is utilitarian - formed with a specific intention of growth. New business connections, shared resources and insight with regular accountability. New business owners cultivating a community of other start-up founders. Accountants creating a space to share finance news and support in mentoring junior execs. Black entrepreneurs coming together to support each other in navigating industries which lack representation.

Same, same, but different.

Next time you go looking for community, scrutinise the intention first. What you actually need determines where to look.

Don’t look for a business mentor at the padel club. Find them on LinkedIn.

I am big on data as a marketer. As a creative commissioner? Numbers suck. When you’re orienting your creative craft around what is being amplified by the algorithms, or what consumer trends are telling you is relevant, it becomes a filter for your work before you’ve even started. External validation will always have its place - A&Rs, curators, collectors and the like - but focusing too much on attention won’t allow you to produce your best work. Take it as a consideration rather than the framework.

~~~

what’s happening now

It’s a great time to be a creative right now. There’s more ways to produce and distribute your work. Brands are beginning to become more expressive in their visual identity again. In some regards, it’s also much cheaper and faster to create at scale. We’re also seeing an abundance of new content creators earning their own space.

However, I saw a recent interview with Poet, one of the OG Black British content creators, who shared what he’s observed. To summarise, he said that many new creators are focusing on the wrong thing: attention. Instead of creating something meaningful, he thinks most of what we’re seeing now is ‘microwave content’.

This resonated with me as I’ve recently been speaking about the two types of taste: taste for attention and taste for intention. It’s easy to get swept up in the analytics - views, reach, watch time, shares - and forget what the core purpose was. To create. It’s even harder to maintain that as your centre of gravity when another layer is added. To create and monetise. However, I think it’s possible to do both.

intention > attention

You can nurture your passion without letting capitalism direct your practice. It is possible to create with intention whilst also monetising. Focus on the product. Focus on the core audience. Focus on your purpose, before anything else.

I should’ve been launching my creative platform in May, but as it approached the end of the month I realised that I was building a product which wasn’t entirely making sense. I had the art direction, the website and the content strategy but it was all oriented toward what’s popular right now. Rather than what’s meaningful to the real purpose and intention. So, I scrapped everything. I started from the basics - what’s the purpose? - and I’m rebuilding from there.

As a marketer for 10+ years, one thing that’s always been clear is the real audience who stays with you is the one who understands and trusts the intention. They believe in the mission along with you. Once you know who you’re building for, and why, then the next step is producing something which makes sense. If it’s meaningful to them, they’ll buy it.

It’s why Slawn can charge for artworks at a base rate of £15,000 without having to post BTS every day. It’s why Adele can disappear to her quiet, family life and then return with a Grammy-winning album. It’s also why the video director Loose can work on projects for the likes of Anderson .Paak, Little Simz and Fred again…, with only ten Instagram posts in the past four years.

Cultivating a sustainable career as a creative doesn’t need you to be viral, to hold the attention of everyone, to be clipped and reposted by the masses. You don’t need to have millions of views. When you’re reaching such a large audience it can often mean there’s no specificity to your output. Specificity is what wins the commission, so that’s the move. Build for the right audience, rather than the biggest one.

The tides are turning. Gone are the days when the Americanisation of culture was all we knew. Now, there’s a growing contingent of Black British creatives who are representing our talent, voices and stories on the world stage and it’s cause for celebration.

the emerging pattern

What’s happening now is a decade in the making, with the earliest signals at around 2014-2015 when Skepta’s ‘That’s Not Me’ began circulating in American tastemaker circles. In 2015, Kanye West came to London for a Brit Awards performance joined by Skepta, Stormzy and other grime MCs on stage. That was a moment which had the internet divided - did it open a door to Black American visibility, or was he simply using British artists for texture.

The more significant moment was Drake’s 2016 declaration of his affiliation with Boy Better Know before featuring Skepta and Giggs on his ‘More Life’ project. Drake’s proven his intent to bring Black British culture to a global stage when he brought the cancelled Top Boy show to Netflix - a hugely significant moment for the authentic representation of London culture for an international audience.

Elsewhere, Black British actors and actresses have been shaking up Hollywood: John Boyega in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Cynthia Erivo as Harriet Tubman, Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out, Damson Idris in the internet’s favourite Snowfall, Letitia Wright in Black Panther… As a Black Brit I can say that I love to see Black British talent being recognised at the centre of global entertainment, but it’s hard to ignore the tension it has caused. You only need to spend 20 minutes looking on Black Twitter or The Shade Room’s comments to see there’s a running commentary about the relatability of Black Brits portraying historic Black Americans. Samuel L. Jackson spoke publicly after the release of Get Out and we’ve recently seen Druski’s skit go viral and re-ignite the debate.

Now, there’s been the latest news of Filthy Fellas partnering with Revolt for World Cup 2026 coverage from Miami. Quite frankly, I think this is all signalling something important: Blackness is no longer being represented by one community - Black Americans. The Black diaspora is strong around the world and, if handled responsibly, these new moves can become an opportunity to create commercial infrastructure outside of America.

why it matters

We’ve always known that America has an appetite for Blackness - culturally and commercially - yet, as in most Western countries, it’s historically struggled to serve the community equitably. With the emergence of Black British talent in the global market, it brings a new dynamic. Black Britishness is nuanced from Black American history because our time in Britain is relatively new in comparison. The Black British community relates to culture and ancestry differently. Many Black Brits identify as dual heritage: British-Jamaican, British-Nigerian, British-Somali and so on. We’re first, second and third generation so our identity is shaped not just by the country we’re born in, but where our parents had migrated from only years past. That brings a new layer of representation for the global diaspora, particularly for Black Europeans of whom many have experienced what it means to be a migrant. In Britain, Black people don’t cultivate community simply because we are Black - it’s segmented based on ‘ends’ and heritage. American government recognises the history of slavery. British government systematically destroyed colonial documents in Operation Legacy. That is structurally different.

However, this is all well and good until we think about the operational structure. Who controls things? Top Boy is a show that was revived by Drake. #Merky Films is a company built by Stormzy and partnered with Netflix. Filthy Fellas is being brought under Revolt’s infrastructure.

Presence is great, but the move from talent to producer is where the real power transfer and democratisation happens.

what comes next

Presently, I see a clear gap in media and sport content. and Filthy Fellas are the proof of concept: Black British sports media independently building an ecosystem of culturally-relevant content with significant audiences in the UK. These are what sit on the periphery of that gap.

The American appetite for the Premier League is real, and so is the demand for authentic, cultural commentary. However, the terms are being set by American platforms.

There’s a space available to occupy, so the goal should be to leverage these crossover moments with a longer-term ambition to maintain ownership. To become the producers and commissioners, rather than being absorbed into an existing brand or network.

The Black British contingent is here, growing and is becoming increasingly more significant. What comes next will be determined by how each new deal is structured. Negotiating ownership into every agreement is how to build something which compounds.

The hustle-ambition which powers the city has quietly, persistently, become a matter of survival.

~~~

the london dream

In June and December, I have an accidental tradition of reflecting on where I’ve gotten to. My goals and my state of mind, to be precise. It’s now that time, and I’ve been thinking about how I’ve been living recently. Something I’ve realised is that in London we’re optimising our life for efficiency: our schedules are organised in 30 minute increments. If I want to plan time with my friends, I’m scheduling 3+ weeks in advance.

I came to London with a romanticised idea of ‘The London Dream’ - where things that felt out of reach in Derby might actually be possible. For the most part, that has been true, but at what cost? We’re halfway through the year and i’d barely noticed the past five months go by. Collectively, there’s a perpetual state of anxiety. Always ‘on’. Always alert, always chasing and never truly feeling secure.

Most times when I go online, the conversation is about having multiple streams of income, having an ‘athlete mindset’ and glorifying no days off. Moving so fast that we barely retain memory of what had just happened.

I work full-time, I’m launching my own creative platform and I’m here on Substack, YouTube and TikTok. I’m ambitious as much as the next person, but something I’ve realised is that there’s murky territory between ambition and complete burn-out. As the saying goes: ‘work to live, not live to work’.

why I appreciate derby now

Anyone who has ever spoken to me about my hometown of Derby will know I regularly refer to it as ‘Mordor’. As a teenager, with only a bingo hall, a struggling cinema and shopping centre - which have all since closed down - it felt desolate. The Orcs were the elderly racists and the youthful addicts; the elves were the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Yet, in the time since living in the capital, i’ve found there’s some quiet luxuries i’d never noticed in Derby.

Peace.

A calmness which is never really present within the concrete cityscape. Where in London everyone is always busy and in a hurry, in Derby the pace is different. Time slows, inviting you to savour the moment.

In Derbyshire we have the Peak District, and if you’ve never been but like the outdoors, I’d recommend it. Go to Bakewell for the real Bakewell Tart (or pudding).

In the midlands, we know our neighbours by first name; better yet, we invite them over for BBQs and football watch-parties.

In London, we’re moving so fast, optimising for peak efficiency and chasing the next ‘bag’ that we don’t have time to stop and say hello.

@gregjamesJoin my anti-optimisation/Bartlett cult at a very reasonable price TODAY! My book is available for 99p for only 12 more hours! Quick!

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

how I’m decolonising

Ultimately, London is a capital city in a major economic market. By very nature of the circumstances, it’ll always be a place for the ambitious, which is great. However, I think with economic downturn, the longer-term Covid effect on jobs, well-being and work culture, plus the current geopolitical landscape, it’s had the cumulative consequence of very acute pressure to always do more.

In the past six years, London specifically produces this colonisation of pace and self because we’re looking laterally now more than ever. Which is, of course, exacerbated by social media. The highly curated, artificial nature of Instagram is creating an omnipresent sense of internalised inadequacy.

So what next for me? The London mindset, to me, is an imported and internalised set of values i’ve now recognised and i’m choosing to reject.

I’ve no plans to move back to Derby, though. I love the fresh air, the friendly community and the Bakewell tart, but there’s no real infrastructure to cultivate entrepreneurialism there - yet.

London is the capital but it’s no longer the centre. North England and the West Midlands have been developing into regional business hubs, which I love to see. I’m exploring the possibility of relocating in the coming months. Until then, I still love London but i’m choosing to move at a pace true to a Midlands girl. One where I take time to enjoy life alongside curating the one I choose for myself. Not dictated by the endless pursuit for ‘more’, but instead with the intention of peace.

It’s easy to get swept up in the ‘always on’ culture, and it works for many. It worked for me for years, too.

The city that promised possibility turned out to be selling urgency, and a lot of us bought into it.

Nike has been losing its way in recent years and it’s not only sad to see as a fangirl, it’s a worrying signal for every athlete who needs a brand willing to stand behind them.

~~~

the tea

They’re not intrinsically linked, but politics has a material influence on sports and Nike has proven it understands that. The brand isn’t going to collapse, but it’s dropping behind competitors in some markets, whilst losing sight of who its audience is and how to speak to them.

Irrespective of that, Nike is the boldest, most consistent sports brand supporting social justice and political activism on a global scale, even when it’s polarised the public. The compounded impact has placed it as a market leader because its identity was strong and the message was validated by action. Times are becoming radical in society and the pressure of accountability is becoming more pronounced, which means brands are wholesale shifting to safe, politically correct messaging. Nike’s closest competitor doesn’t have a brand identity; it licences cultural currency from talent rather than building any of its own.

So without Nike, what brand can be relied on to represent or respond to social angst?

the landscape

Nike has a long history of using sports as the medium through which it responds to current events and activism. It started in the early 90s with their women’s empowerment campaigns, which at the time was starkly progressive in comparison to the political and societal view. Since then, they’ve championed LGBTQ+ rights, racial justice and abortion rights. This has been achieved through structural commitments within the company and how the brand works with athletes. Whoever the talent, Nike’s values are always reflected. Which is why partnerships with the likes of Serena Williams, LeBron James and Colin Kaepernick have all been such powerful moments. Though of course, not forgetting the ‘burn Nike’ response.

Nike’s had a solid run, but nothing lasts forever and we’re seeing that manifest in real-time. Campaigns at the Boston Marathon, the Paris Olympics and even the move to withdraw from several retailers have culminated in financial decline and an erosion of the brand’s reputation. By late 2024, Nike’s revenues had dropped 10% year-on-year, with direct sales down 13%.

Meanwhile, others are filling the space which Nike is exiting, with specialist brands beginning to dominate. New products and new representation are great for consumers but it leaves a structural void for athletes. If there’s no longer an established brand that’s willing to advocate for them in politically tense times, no brand that’s transparent and proactive about its values, it creates a vacuum. It takes away a significant commercial opportunity from athletes who feel compelled to champion something which risk-averse brands won’t publicly endorse.

Marcus Rashford: child poverty and free school meals

Colin Kaepernick: racial justice and police brutality

Lamine Yamal: immigrant identity

Tommie Smith and John Carlos: racial inequality

To really understand the gravity of this, you have to first acknowledge the weight of expectation placed on athletes to take a stance. It’s not just an internal will, oftentimes it’s an external pressure. That tension between what their fans expect and what’s ‘better’ for their own career is felt. Deeply.

what next for Nike?

After Adidas’ ‘Backyard Legends’ film, which had a seismic impact on brand sentiment across social media with almost 15m combined views, Nike’s got a steep hill to climb. Though it’s possible, the approach needs to be different this time.

Nike’s company size was never the scale, because once upon it was a struggling start-up. Where it dominated has always been the clarity of its perspective at scale. ‘Dream Crazy’, ‘You Can’t Stop Us’ and even its original ‘Just Do It’ campaign of the late 80s worked because each of them were speaking to a very specific audience and the brand understood why it mattered.

Return to that. Double down on that.

Apply that same intentionality on a hyper-local level. Not only will Nike begin to recover but it’ll claim a space which no other brand is occupying yet.

Brands have conquered the workplace, the cafés, the padel courts and run clubs, and even the holiday. Yet despite how much wellness, regulated nervous systems and mental health are in the cultural lexicon, there’s one space they haven’t properly reached.

The majority of us are sleep-deprived and self-aware about it too. In the UK, a report by bed brand Dreams says that 60% of Brits are getting less than 6 hours of sleep per night. The Royal Society for Public Health, YouGov, Nuffield Health, Benenden Health, The Lancet and *exhale* The Sleep Charity have all made similar findings over the years, and the gag is we know it and aren’t doing much about it.

This isn’t going to be a diatribe about getting more sleep - but really, you should. I’m just curious why related brands rarely attempt anything experiential or even just interesting around this. Don’t forget, how productive you’ll be each day isn’t determined by your morning routine, because it’s already been dictated by the quality of sleep which came before it.

Sleep is an interesting experience to experiment with because it’s so personal. What’s possible, without being intrusive or uncomfortable?

Let me think out loud a little:

• Amazon x Consul Studio - temporary sleep pods and supplementary sleeping aids erected at motorway service stations, providing respite during a long journey

• Frameless London x Deepmind - exclusive exhibition exploring what happens in the brain during sleep, based on someone actually sleeping in real-time

• British Airways x CALM - weighted eye masks, noise-cancelling headphones and sleep playlist integrations

• Marriott Hotel x a sleep researcher - a sleep audit at check-in (a short questionnaire) that adjusts the guest’s room temperature, blackout level, and morning alarm tone automatically

I know, I know… a strategist giving away ideas for free. Consider it a baby pitch.

If there’s one thing for brands to take away today it’s this: diverge from everyone else and consider exploring new ways to connect with your audience (without being weird or intrusive, please).

As I mentioned yesterday, it’s becoming so much easier to test ideas quickly and at low cost, so don’t sleepwalk your way through the next campaign. *wink, wink*

Sugababes in 2021, Mis-Teeq in 2026, Bella Hadid’s Jane Birkin look for Cannes Film Festival, the Millennium music tour, the all-female Ghostbusters reboot…

I love a nostalgic moment. I love when a core memory is unlocked in a surprising and satisfying way. However, I think we’ve long since reached the point of crate-digging and pulling from the archives as a moment of homage and fond memories. Now it’s starting to feel like we’ve become creatively bankrupt, and I have to thank for inspiring this today.

We had the Groovy 60s with pop art, the hippy rebellion and psychedelics of the 70s, the 80s was for postmodernism and materialism, then the Y2K era of the 90-00s. Since then… minimalism and memes? Almost two decades have passed with no defining aesthetic or zeitgeist. Just a perpetual cycle of cultivating taste with the methodology of ‘if it worked before, it will again.’

I’m not completely knocking it though. I know a part of this is because, for some, it’s not necessarily about recycling old ideas. It can also be an urge to return to an era before algorithms defined everything. Before social media immortalised it all. A time when ideas could live in the space you’d contained it to, and therefore gave greater freedom to be expressive. Looking through the archives and you find a visual language which determined its own point of view, rather than being dictated by what the mighty algorithm says is relevant or interesting.

However, AI does give us something we’ve never had before: the ability to prototype and stress-test ideas at low / no cost. The gap between idea and execution has never been as marginal as it is today, and with the speed of churn through content online, you can test an idea today and it will be forgotten by tomorrow.

@sarelPleaseeee save me from your crap AI “art”

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

In 20 years’ time, the 2020-2030s will be considered the seminal era for the next revolution of the creative industry. Right now, technology is advancing rapidly and creative workforces are being condensed wholesale as a result of automations. CreaTech is being heavily invested in by the private and public sectors, and consumers are protesting against algorithms and AI slop. Now is the time to zealously, aggressively, showcase the authority of human thinking and creativity.

Let the history books show that the Millennials and Gen Z built a legacy for the next generation: advancing technology without surrendering to it. For me, I’ve just received a trademark I’ve been waiting for, which means I’ll soon be sharing news of my incoming creative platform. Traditional creative agencies are becoming redundant, hence why we’re seeing so many mergers happening, so what I have coming will be a proclamation for what comes next.