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Creating fighting spirit – how AdWeek got me thinking

What does creativity really mean? Are we all creative? How do we overcome difficulties and find resilience? With creative and fighting spirit perhaps. My wondering mind analyses the key take-outs from Advertising Week Europe 2021 two weeks on.

Can’t believe it’s been two weeks since AdWeek.  Fantastic three days of thrilling sessions covering all areas of advertising and realities of working in the industry.    This year I found the key themes, not too unexpectedly, but importantly were:

• Equality, diversity and inclusion
• Wellbeing
• Remote working
• Climate change

Two weeks later and I’m still thinking about creativity and fighting spirit.  Perhaps because they were apparent to me in different ways across various sessions, or maybe I picked up on these especially as two key facets of my own personality.  Either way, I’m going to talk about what I learned about creativity and personal resilience.

What is creativity?  Art, drawing painting, design, absolutely, but it’s much more than that as well.  Problem-solving, expression, activity, ideas – a way of thinking.

The closing session of day one for me was Colleen DeCourcy in conversation with John Cleese.  As a huge fan of Monty Python I was delighted to hear anecdotes about the making of the TV show.  John Cleese talked about creativity – how much easier it was back in the day.  

Shockingly it was 1969 when Monty Python’s Flying Circus was first aired, so the development stories took place more than ten years before I was born.  He talked about how the executives of the time gave them exponentially more creative freedom than a new team of comedy writers would be allowed now.  Partially as they were less concerned with numbers – viewing figures and ROI.  That was back in the day when the BBC was truly public service, but also a time when TV making was comparatively in it’s youth.  I’d like to think this was a time when producers believed in giving artists space, but in reality it would more likely have been a naivety that resulted in great creativity.  

Having worked in the TV industry for many years, I couldn’t agree more that the landscape has dramatically changed, there are many more parameters, particularly for people new to the industry as John Cleese and the crew faced back then.  However even when I was entering the industry in the 2000’s, there was room for creativity.  Ok the BBC weren’t going to commission a surrealist comedy sketch show written and performed by a bunch of recent graduates without a script and barely an actual idea, but we found ways of indulging our creative talents, developing important skills in the process.  With groups of friends in the business, we entered 48 hour film challenges, spent weekends making short films for the cost of a pizza delivery, put on our own film screenings and for me personally, I wrote.  So these films on the whole didn’t have a great delivery platform (often for good reason!), but from these experiences, we were able to make mistakes, grow and learn – setting us on a path of greater knowledge, awareness and creative understanding.  These were our Monty Python days and I can clearly see how they informed us, some of whom have gone on to make and produce TV and film on a large scale.  Creativity helped us find our voice.  But we still had careers to make, mountains to climb.  Our creativity wasn’t earning us a living, yet.

It wasn’t easy; we’ve all had struggles with life and art, still do and will continue to.  So how do we overcome difficulties and build resilience?  This brings me to day two at AdWeek, another plethora of brilliant discussions.

People, profit or planet: what matters most for business?  Presented by Let’s Reset, featuring Suki Thompson, Sarah Harbon, Harriet Hounsell and Douglas Lamont.  Looking at priorities for organisations in 2021, what they are and what they should be.  How to create an organisation that’s going in the right direction.

My key take-outs:

• Listen to your team.  It’s true that you don’t have to act on everything your workforce says, but listen to their thoughts and ideas.  Work out what themes are recurring across the business.  Senior management can miss key forces in the business and surrounding community that sometimes other people do pick up on and sometimes people are less comfortable reporting to a senior manager.  People – employees and customers are crucial for any organisation, so listen to them and look after them.
• Stop making bad decisions. 
• Accept that we don’t have all the answers, but do try.  By trying you may find answers, in the fast evolving space of wellbeing, mental health, environment and climate change, you may even find answers that others haven’t considered.

The concepts I learned here are not only useful in business, but can help individuals to grow and be resilient.  It’s ok to be wrong, if you make bad decisions or mistakes, learn from them and move on.

All ideas I’m still working on in my career, but suspect I always will be if I continue to strive to do my best and be my best self.  Into my 30’s I had a career change.  I wouldn’t say it was dramatic, film/TV to marketing, there are a lot of transferable skills, but it was important for me personally.  I’ve had to grow fast and build a new resilience, but I’m eager to progress.  

Coming back to creativity, another learning was let creatives be creative.  Leaders in advertising should give creatives responsibility to be creative.  Too often creativity can be stifled by micro-management and over interest from business leaders who should be concentrating on business.  Interesting parallels to what John Cleese was saying on day one wouldn’t you say?

The last session I attended on day two was:

Ambition, strength and fighting spirit, with Suki Thompson, Davina McCall and Helen Gorman.  

Suki led the discussion, Davina and Helen talked about ambition over 50, personal challenges and wellbeing.  Davina has become more entrepreneurial.  As her kids have grown up, she’s been able to concentrate on what she wants to do – to become a fitness guru amongst other goals.  Helen moved from a long career in the corporate world to set up a start-up (Let’s Reset) just three months before the global pandemic.  A lot to deal with for anyone, then she was diagnosed with cancer for a second time, fifteen years later.

Both have different approaches to challenges than their younger selves.  With more experience, you can take a more measured approach, put one foot in front of the other.  50+ is a good time to be innovative, don’t get stuck, you can always change paths – just be open to opportunities.  Be brave and live your best life.  Davina changed her career after overcoming addiction and having a family, it’s never too late (phew!)  You can change your career any time you like.  Embrace challenges – overcoming challenges makes us stronger.  In terms of wellbeing, don’t wait until tomorrow.  Put wellbeing on the global agenda now.

Davina and Helen summarised the session with this awesome advice:

• Attitude for gratitude – be grateful for mistakes, they give you knowledge, new learnings and resilience.
• Have self-acceptance – no one’s perfect, be aware of your faults.
• Listen – listen to each other and ask how people are. Watch the Roman Kemp documentary.
• And EXERCISE!

Personally I was glad to hear about their attitude to being 50+.  It’s good to know that in my 40’s, it’s not too late to grow, develop or even change career.

Day three was a new mix of exciting content.  Great session on the representation of black people in marketing – that’s a whole other article!  Mental health and wellbeing: why it’s critical to support black, Asian and other ethnic talent with Diana Tickell of NABS, reinforcing the need to embed inclusivity, mental health and wellbeing in every company’s strategy.  

Two weeks later, I’m concentrating on my personal take-outs from the week.  As someone in my 40’s and still full of ambition, I aim to take on these learning’s, have a fighting spirit and use my creative thinking to go far, while helping people, profit and the planet along the way.  A huge thank you to all the presenters and panelists at AdWeek and best wishes to Helen Gorman as she undertakes more rounds of chemotherapy.  

Right, I’m off for a bike ride before watching the Roman Kemp documentary and figuring out some new challenges to keep my creative juices flowing.

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Hammertown

When Dad lived at home, all he did was watch sports on TV.

‘That man drives me mad’ my Mum used to say. Sunday’s were the worst she said, that was racing.  He said he followed one called Hammertown or something like that.

On a Sunday I couldn’t talk, not to him.

‘Shut up and help your Mother in the kitchen’ he barked at me.  I would go and sit in the kitchen, put my head in my hands and watch Mummy stir sauces and kneed the dough.

I sat on the stool at the edge of the kitchen and listened. I could hear the whizz of the cars, they seemed to speed up as they approached the camera, but I couldn’t see, I’d just listen.  Sometimes I’d hear a gasp or a loud tut, occasionally a cheer.

Sometimes Mum would let me lick a spoon when she was baking cakes.  Simon sat in his room, he said he didn’t like it when Daddy was shouting and he hated sisters, especially little ones, so he hid.

Now Daddy only sees us at weekends.  But he stopped watching the sport.  Sometimes we get to play sport, like catch in the park.  He plays music by the Beatles in the car.  I like to pretend that his car is bright yellow and we’re all in a big submarine.  Daddy used to complain about missing the races.  One day, when he was dropping us back home, he gave me a present.

‘For my little girl’ he said.

I was so excited, a toy car, not just any car, but a Yellow Submarine Bump Around.

‘Daddy, can you stay and play?’ I asked.

He looked towards the house as Mum was looking out the window.  He grunted something.

‘Next time’ and we were out of the comfort of his yellow sub, but now I had my own one!

The next week he didn’t want to play with my cars, I only had one car after all.  But at the end of the weekend he had got me another present.  A Paul McCartney Fish’d and Chip’d.  Outside the house, again I asked if he would come in to play.  But he didn’t.

I was so excited, I took the shiny, blue patterned car out of it’s box and ran upstairs.  Now I had two, they could race!  They whizzed and whirred and threw themselves off high shelves, landing on the bed or floor.

Next weekend Daddy said there was a special race on TV, it was at Silvertown.

‘Please Daddy, can we watch it?  I want my cars to join the race.’

This became a ritual.  At weekends we would watch the Gonepee and I would play with Submarine, Fish’d n Chip’d, Cockney Cab, Morris Mini and eventually Dad had bought me them all!

Fish’d n Chip’d whizzed around, Cockney Cab screeched at the corners, Yellow Sub went glug, glug, glug, Kool Kombi chugged.

Daddy asked me which one was Hammertown.

‘None’ I exclaimed. ‘But one day I want to be Susie Wolff.  She’s one of the first women to drive in the Gonepee you know and when I’m big, I want that to be me.’

Today when we got home, Mummy came out to see Daddy. She tapped me on the head, turned to Daddy and said ‘Thank you’.  She said she liked seeing me happy.

Daddy says he’ll take me go-karting next weekend.  I can’t wait.  I’ll make sure to take Bump Around, my Yellow Submarine and this time I’ll be driving Ringo’s Fast Felion!

This is an article I wrote for the LGBTQ+ newsletter at work.

Never assume – I’m not a Tomboy

When I was a kid I had short hair, I liked climbing trees, I played with my Transformers, mostly wore trousers and I liked gardening with Dad.  When I went on holiday other kids often thought I was a boy.  People called me a tomboy.  I’ve never considered myself a tomboy, I also liked playing Sindy dolls with my sister and I’d sometimes wear a Sunday best dress to church.  I’m just me – but people like to categorise – it makes them feel safer, people like to make sense of the world in a way that suits them.

However, we are all different and I’m yet to meet anyone who 100% matches the expected categorisation of female or male.  The dictionary definitions of female and male denote sex organs, as such, I would be considered female – and I appreciate those who choose to define themselves this way. However, I believe that gender has become more than sex organs.  When the media, historical and cultural values come into force, people are seen differently because of their gender.  It becomes natural that people use the words female and male to categorise people and as a result treat them differently.  I do not want to be treated differently because I have a vagina and I do not associate myself with the cultural norms of female despite my sex organs. In my opinion I believe everyone should be treated equally – but differently – as individuals and not because of their genetics or gender.

This is why I associate myself as non-binary.  Few people would guess this from meeting me, in fact a lot of people don’t know the term. If you feel the need for categories, ask people the question, you might not get the answer you’re expecting.

From Wikipedia:

Non-binary, also known as genderqueer, is a spectrum of gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or exclusively feminine‍—‌identities that are outside the gender binary.

These days, when I wear a dress or a skirt, people often feel the need to tell me.  Yes, I do choose to wear dresses and skirts sometimes, but most of the time I feel more comfortable in trousers.  For me they are more flexible and less hassle, but I don’t need to be told on the days that I’m not wearing trousers what I am wearing. I chose my clothes and put them on – I am aware.  Let’s try not to make judgements about the way people look and what they choose to wear or make it a part of our daily commentary.  Come on, there are more important, more interesting and more fun things in life.

With regard to diversity, Royal Mail are getting involved.  Royal Mail encourages employees to bring their whole selves to work and this has helped some to feel more able to come out and be open with their gender and/or sexuality.  Royal Mail is also proud of its association with Pride, encouraging attendance, providing a Pride striped postbox at events and covering Pride both internally and externally in media.  However, what more can we all do?

At work I have been accused of being bossy, would these managers call me this if they saw me as male? Or would I be considered a confident and strong individual with leadership skills?  What affect do these ingrained assumptions have on the lack of non-males climbing the career ladder and pay scales?

Bossy?  What’s gender got to do with it?

Women are called bossy in the workplace more often than men. Women were twice as likely to be told they are bossy (33% of women, 17% of men).

I consider myself to be someone with strong opinions and a confident manner.  When I am called bossy, I question it, whoever suggests this. But not everyone feels able to do this – so people, especially, but not exclusively, at work, need to think about what they say.  We all make mistakes, but be aware of them, consider them and next time – don’t do it!

Abolish outdated firemen term

The Fire Brigade Union said it had not used the term ‘firemen’ for decades and has “consistently complained to print and broadcast media and programme makers for using this archaic term that no longer represents our modern fire and rescue service”.

In our line of business, I’ve heard and read the term ‘Postmen’ being used regularly, sometimes in the context of Postmen and women, but not always.  As the second largest employer in the UK with Postie’s being one of our most common jobs, should we look at re-naming this role?  We used to have Policemen and Policewomen, we now have Police Officers.  We used to have Firewomen and Firemen, we now have Fire Fighters.  How about Delivery Officers?  Or Postal Fighters? 😊  Royal Mail has a huge majority of men across all levels of the business – what can we do to improve this?  In the gender reporting, where do non-male and non-females sit?  What is the official term for a non-female and non-male postie?

I have a lot of questions and I’m eager to learn more.  But there are things that we can all do to address inequality in the workplace:

• Kindly pull someone up when they use genderised or inappropriate language
• Treat each other equally and with respect
• Don’t judge, invite discussion and listen – learn from others
• Get to know people who are different from yourself

This last point is interesting to me.

Why meeting diverse people is important

Without contact with people outside our comfort zone, it is easy to fall victim to stereotypical thoughts and misconceptions. Until real life experiences are had with others we can easily lose site of our innate human similarities.

Benefits of diversity in the workplace

A company that can successfully manage a diverse workplace has a solid advantage over companies that don’t embrace diversity so readily.

If someone is different from you, get to know them and why they are different.  You may be surprised at how similar they are when you get to know them, perhaps you’ll learn more about the world around you and other people’s perspectives.  When a kid chooses to wear trousers and play with Transformers, maybe they’re just that – a kid. When an adult doesn’t conform to the stereotypes and categorisations that you’re familiar with, perhaps they are simply a person.  I by no means claim to know it all, I’m learning all the time, but let’s do it, let’s stop making assumptions and make Royal Mail and the world a better place for all people.