Innovation can be a long and difficult road.

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 I am going to talk about Metaverse, AR/VR, gaming experiences, and anything immersive because they are all used interchangeably. One of the loudest cries I hear from those adverse to the Metaverse, is that the Metaverse Does Not Exist, and all these other immersive experiences are not the Metaverse.

I’ve noticed that there are two groups of people who are really down on the Metaverse – those who are very wedded to the fact that regardless of everything that has changed in the media landscape, TV and Outdoor are the only answer, and Creative/Strategy types who I feel often resist these new areas because they are challenging to work within their roles. Clearly not all, but the ones who protest the loudest. It was the same with Audio and Digital in earlier days, and it feels the same with these new trends. 

In the early 2000’s when digital advertisers took off, a big part of why it became so performance led was that not enough creative and strategic brain power was invested in it. It became all about clicks. When Google first launched in the UK, the marketing world did not know what to do with it. Later, when YouTube launched, many quarters just called it ‘cats on skateboards’. Creative agencies did not want to go near it. When Facebook launched, I remember being in a session in a room full of creative directors and strategists in the US, and collectively no one could work out what to do with it and so allowed independent and digital agencies to eat their lunch. History repeats. 

There is a vast anti-Metaverse sentiment, and I get it. There are over promises, some bad actors, scale is not there, and it’s not really clear what the Metaverse really is. But importantly, we should embrace the road to innovation. From what we’ve seen with past trends, it will likely pivot and evolve to become something different from what we think it is today.

We all think the Metaverse will be consumed by wearing Oculus devices, but will it? If the Metaverse does not manifest as we have been told it will, does that make it wrong? In short, the answer is ‘no.’ I can imagine so many different ways we will be able to enjoy the benefits of another digital environment, so we have to give innovation some time. For now, it’s ok not to have an exact definition yet. 

During my career, I have been in new and upcoming areas of media and advertising. I have been surrounded by people pushing back or making jokes about the topics, predicting the end of careers, businesses, whatever, so I have a stronger view today than ever. Every one of those people, some very important at the time, some very smart, and some in jobs meant to predict the future were wrong. 

I observe those bashing the Metaverse today as a concept – most of whom were doing paper rounds when Google started or YouTube even. They have not experienced what it means to have something completely new come along and disrupt, as the Internet did, and therefore are quick to jump against it. TV and Outdoor are amazing, but they can’t be the only answers. Innovation takes time. 

As far as advertisers are concerned, they are getting stuck. Even those who have done things well are being told ‘that’s not the Metaverse’ if it’s in Roblox for example. Well, maybe it is, perhaps it isn’t. Regardless, it’s a step in that direction, and it’s important to experiment. So I congratulate every advertiser who experiments and learns now. They will be stronger than ever, and those naysayers saying stick to TV and make some lovely TV ads are on the wrong side of history in my mind and won’t reach any young people. Brands who experiment will win in the end.

The Metaverse is just a name for a concept made up of different ingredients – like AR or VR or Roblox or Fortnite or Decentraland or whatever. What we are seeing right now is that those ingredients may taste a little off as they may not have been put together perfectly yet. But one day they will, and those who have created and tested these experiences will be better off for them. So I would love to see all the creative communities of advertising, whatever role, take a positive view and make something unique.

Marco Bertozzi Joins Whalar

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Marco Bertozzi, the former Publicis Media executive and head of European ad sales at Spotify, has joined influencer marketing agency Whalar, Mediatel News can reveal.

Bertozzi has been appointed president of EMEA for Whalar, reporting to CEO Rob Horler, and will take up the role on 25 October.

After leaving Spotify in January, Bertozzi launched his own consultancy and one of his clients, Whalar, has now decided to retain him in a full-time role running its commercial operation in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

He told Mediatel News: “While I was consulting I realised I was always like, ‘just let me in there and do this stuff!’ Rather than just give advice, I just wanted to climb in and get going. My instincts are always to be in the thick of it.”

Chasing high growth

Whalar, which describes itself as a “dating service” because the site’s algorithm helps brands find creators for collaboration, has been chaired by Sir John Hegarty since 2017 and its board includes R/GA founder Bob Greenberg. Whalar has been backed by Hegarty’s incubator The Garage Soho and was a beneficiary of the R/GA Ventures programme in 2017.

After launching Publicis Groupe’s programmatic trading desk for VivaKi (now Publicis Media Exchange) in 2010 and, before that, Zenith Interactive Solutions, Bertozzi says he has “always gravitated to new things” – specifically high-growth businesses because he is allergic to “managing decline”.

“If you’ve grown up with growth from almost the start of your career, you don’t have this negative reaction having to constantly hit big growth targets, that’s where your expectations sit,” he explains.

Bertozzi will take on duties handled by Emma Harman, who has moved to chief client officer as the business expands. It is understood the business is on forecast to grow by  300% this year, although the company has not disclosed revenue figures.

Whalar, which was founded by James Street and Neil Waller in 2016, is on a hiring spree this year. Waller announced on LinkedIn last month that the company had 85 open roles, having already recruited more than 80 people this year in the US and EMEA.

https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:share:6830539973083717632

Bigger advertiser deals

Bertozzi’s first focus in the role is to assess the needs of the sales team and to ensure the business is geared up to handle much bigger advertiser deals.

“We need to not just go from one piece of work to the next – how do we go to that next level of a proper partnership, so that we can lean in and do our best work and you can realise the benefits of it. So, I’ll be working on the team around who are going to be our clients, what sort of clients should we be going for, how we how we bring the best of Whalar together, to put that into action.”

“It’s fine, when you’re asking advertisers for 30 grand, you can deliver a certain level of service. But if you’re asking them for multi-million budgets, you’ve got to be able to deliver on that in terms of your service and your strategy.

“If you’re going to realise [the founder’s] ambitions, you do need to start to put structure around it, you need to have a focus about how the teams are operating, and how they’re thinking about the marketing industry, how they’re going to market and what they’re saying and presenting.”

The company is one of only three influencer marketing agencies, along with Captiv8 and Influential, that TikTok has allowed to tap into its new creator marketplace API. This allows brands to pay influencers directly through the platform (as well as use measurement tools), while the influencers can tap into an achieve of first-party data and find new work.

At the heart of the business is the Whalar platform, which “makes everything sing,” Bertozzi added. While there are opportunities for brands to work with big names with large Instagram or Twitter followings, Whalar has also pushed advertisers to work with so-called “micro-influencers” who have much smaller followings but are extremely engaging among niche fanbases.

“If a brand really wants to take a message to market in that space, then they’re going to want to work with these people that are very authentic, very genuine and will be able to deliver a real match in terms of what they’re looking for,” Bertozzi said.

‘They’ll know exactly where they stand’

The majority of Whalar’s business is selling directly to advertisers. Bertozzi insists the company is open to working with ad agencies but recognises many of them are creating their own in-house influencer divisions.

Whalar also operates a separate talent management division that is focused on content creation. It has recently launched creator houses, such as the Los Angeles-based Crib Around the Corner, for influencers to collaborate on content creation.

During his tenure at Spotify, Bertozzi expanded the music streaming giant’s operations, after the audio platform had previously made short-lived leadership appointments in the UK.

Bertozzi had previously spent two decades in agency roles at Publicis Media’s Zenith, Starcom and Performics, in the UK and globally.

He describes himself as a frank but fair leader who prioritises empathy and support for colleagues, but insists “they’ll know exactly where they stand at all times”.

“Our obligation is to our clients to do the best job we can, and I just expect them to treat people with respect and speak in a straightforward fashion, I don’t care who they are.

“I run my teams like that. I’m clear with people if things haven’t been going the way they should be going. I started using the term ‘speed back’ [two-minute feedback] ironically recently but it’s sort of caught on. I never let anything build up – everyone I works with will know exactly where I stand at all times.”

History repeats itself for Audio, like ‘digital’ before it.

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Recently Warc released one of it’s reports on media channel revenues vs time spent and I have seen a lot of commentary about the big gap between time spent (31%) and percentage of advertiser revenues (9%) in the audio space. As someone who was involved in digital back in 2000 and all the way through its growth it reminds me of how much the digital crowd used to complain about the exact same thing. To compound the digerati were always incredibly frustrated by the fact newspapers used receive disproportionally more revenue than they should.

I think in both cases, although from different directions, the one thing it shows is that the advertising community, both agencies and advertisers tend to move a little more slowly than the audiences out in the world. Speed of change is vital from a number of angles, firstly the industry moves more slowly than audiences, but then within that, some businesses (not all) move even more slowly and eventually start to fall behind. There are organisations in the Radio world for instance that need to continue to change and change fast to keep up with those audiences that represent that 31% and actually take advantage of them. The Publisher world has seen winners and losers and those who are winning all have one thing in common, they grabbed the future with both hands and turned it to their advantage. Companies like Hearst, Future, Telegraph, Guardian each took the chance to capitalise on digital developments and it has paid off for them.

SO back to Audio, and those who are commenting on the gap, what I would say is that although sometimes it is frustrating, I do believe the industry eventually does catch up and Audio will continue to see a great growth over the coming years. I have seen some comments about how radio is cheap / cost effective and other related words, as a means of explaining why advertisers should engage, I would massively look out for and avoid this kind of rhetoric. Many of the digital audio companies like Spotify, DAX etc are by no means cheap and rightly so, they bring the benefits of audio with the data and targeting of digital, they deserve to expect a premium. Audio just needs to keep focusing on its benefits and demonstrating the commercial benefits of spending with their media channel – TV and Radio has had years of demonstrating ROI, digital audio on the other hand needs to work a bit harder in that area, years of learned performance will help advertisers invest more and more and thats when the revenue will start to shift at scale.

Overall I am incredibly optimistic for Audio and I think we will see lots more growth to come, but the traditional publishers in Radio have to adapt fast to take advantage of this and the digital audio companies must demonstrate ROI if they are to shift that revenue vs time imbalance, only time will tell, but I am very optimistic.

Are you defined by your job?

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What’s your first reaction? It will probably vary depending on a few factors.

  • How high profile is your work or job,
  • how high profile are you as an individual
  • what else is happening in your life,
  • what other things are you doing outside of work.

Most importantly:

  • Have you ever had to cope with the question

There will be others, but those will definitely be large contributing factors as to how you answer the question. I know there will be people out there who have had to deal with this question, who are still dealing with it and those that have not, so depending on that this article will either be irrelevant or perhaps a sage piece of understanding for a potential future state or you will be sat there living every word.

I have been high profile over the years, by that I don’t mean some big cheese or something conceited, I mean I have always had opinions and been vocal about them, I have always been busy on Twitter and LinkedIn, worked in sectors or companies like Spotify that have been in demand and so have stayed visible. I have enjoyed doing it. I have always taken a lot of pride in the companies I worked for and the people I worked with in those companies. I have enjoyed the wins, been excited seeing my colleagues do well and progress, it’s a buzz.

So what happens when that stops and you no longer have the big job in the big company?

What happens when the invites stop.

What happens when the journalists stop calling because you don’t ‘represent a company’

What happens when all that experience you have built up is no longer useful in the job market.

What happens when 25 years of being high profile does not get you an interview anymore, too old, too expensive.

There will be many people out there who have been or are going through it right now. It’s tough, isolating, pretty soul destroying. Yes there are people worse off and having it harder, but that does not diminish your own challenges.

Well I will tell you what happens, you have to make your own story, you have to stop relying on your company, your profile, your job. I have so much advice for people, I can’t fit it in here but I am going to tell you my experience as succinctly as possible. This has been my roadmap and here’s my advice.

  1. Help others and ask nothing. When things feel a little dark, helping others gives so much positivity to the system. I offered my LinkedIn network my time for advice about any topic. I filled 70+ meetings, it felt great and I hope helped some people. I continue to do it now, two tomorrow in fact.
  2. Stay visible and don’t be afraid to post and comment and write if you feel that way inclined, keep talking, keep meeting. Enjoy having an independent voice.
  3. Find People, companies, charities that do value your experience and will embrace your knowledge, it may be consulting, it maybe pro bono but get that inspiration going again.
  4. Dedicate time to causes you care about, do more of the stuff you could not before. I have enjoyed working with people trying to change advertising for the better and it feels good to do.
  5. Talk to people who have left the industry or are doing exciting things around it. I have been inspired by people who are not fixated with our industry and have done their own thing. It might be setting up a Gin company (Kirstine) or finding new ways to recruit (Kate) or created start ups and travelled the world (Andy) or try to change the world (Seyi / Spencer) or helping others (Shereen) They are not defined by what they used to do, but what they do.
  6. If you can then create something for yourself. Even setting up a company so as to act as a consultant feels empowering. I purposely set up http://www.bertozzi49.com to remind me of the year of my life that my career changed for ever. I have since set up a second business with a friend that is launching in the Autumn in the automotive sector and it’s been a while since I have felt such pride. Not everyone will set a business up, but if you have an idea, go for it. I had been toying with this idea but until I spoke to Andy Hart who said ‘just go and fucking talk to this guy’ I was procrastinating, so I took his advice and here we are.
  7. Even though I am doing a number of amazing things right now, I still dread the ‘what do you do question’ because I don’t have a quick answer and I know I don’t have time to explain that I do lots of things and I can’t just say ‘I am VP Spotify EMEA’. This is the definition stage, this is the what am I worth stage. It’s the toughest one, a few people say to me ‘we are waiting to see your next big job’. It makes me wince. The reason being, that’s not the path anymore. It’s not the definition of me anymore. It might be, but it’s not where I am aiming. It’s taken me 8 months to understand that by doing other things, by taking a break, by not being in the day to day I am someone else. I am now an entrepreneur, I am now a consultant (currently for the amazing Whalar), I am now a Board advisor for a really hot Music NFT platform being launched soon and so on. I am the sum of all I have done and I am working on all the new things I am going to do. Sorry, no simple ‘this is what I do’

So a message to those who are out there struggling right now, it is vital you take your own control, In the time it has taken me to start two businesses, become advisor to two amazing companies, to consult for 4 businesses I have had 3 meaningful job conversations in 8 months…3. It is vital that you create your own next steps and make your own future. You can’t allow the industry to define you. Spend some time thinking about what and who you are, what you have done, not who you work for, how many people work for you, what company it is, come up with a new answer to the ‘what do you do’.

And a message to everyone who currently does not have to answer my original question because you have a great job and the world is great. Remember you will be judged by how you act with someone in times of trouble, not when things are great. Take a second to think about how you could help a colleague, call them, intro them, meet for lunch, whatever. If they are consulting and need an hour of your time, give it to them. Journalists, go talk to those not working for big orgs, they are much more likely to talk freely about the industry, get them on some panels and help keep their names visible. This has been a tough year for many, as an industry we can all support each other.

I would like to say Thanks to all of those people who have been unrelenting in staying in touch, being helpful, encouraging even as things went up and down. I want to wish all those I have spoken to over the last few months, even those I was meant to be helping. Thank you for the time you have given up.

Good luck everyone. There is so much out there to do, lets do it.

Yours Entrepreneur, consultant, advisor, investor, mentor, job hunter and all around pain in the arse!

Consultancy vs Full time work – is it for you?

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As someone who has only ever been employed by a company for the last 25 years, I was always fascinated with the concept of consultancy. It seemed to be the thing you did when you got too old to be employed in the industry (about 35). I think I always used to think it must be a slightly unsatisfactory type of work, just getting involved with the feedback and strategy but not the execution. I think overall I was naive about it and didn’t really understand how many types of consultancy there are and how many people are involved and my own involvement so far has opened my eyes to this way of working.

After leaving Spotify I started Bertozzi49, my own company that I started in my 49th year. It was time to explore what this consultancy lark was about. The first thing I would say is there is a difference between someone who has decided to do this for the rest of their career or for a temporary period of time. In my case it is for a temporary period of time, allowing me time to focus on my new business (soon to be announced and not in the media space) and any full time role interviews. I think perhaps that makes it harder as you don’t necessarily invest in marketing yourself hard and your messaging is not as focused but on the other hand, it means you are likely closer to being a practitioner vs a serial consultant and further from the sharp end of business.

I am excited by the projects I have worked on so far, one was a project evaluating sales structure and approach for a ‘grown up’ but they rightly wanted to plan for future scaling, it was short and sweet and focused and fitted into my own view of a ‘second opinion’ approach. Another was much more in depth, over a longer period and was a genuine chance to get close to a company’s business, a big media company at that. The second was tougher for me, as I really wanted to go deeper and further into the business and see our proposals executed but that’s not our job and I think that’s what you have to get used to in many cases. However, the upside of that is that you get to be really brave on your strategy, you are unencumbered by existing baggage, internal politics, personal or corporate targets etc and allows freedom of thought which is a nice change from having to cope with the day to day as well as strategising. I think the worst thing I can do as a consultant is not be straight, honest and challenge the thinking, hopefully the business you are working for is open to that and not paying people to validate their own formed views.

Interview processes are SLOW and so this kind of work is very useful to keep you sharp, thinking about the industry and importantly out in the market place talking to the wonderful network. It is also a chance to learn about an area of the business that you may not take a full time role in, but by understanding it better is adding to your overall expertise and knowledge. When I move back into a full time role, I know these experiences will be invaluable to that company. As I start my own business in the automotive sector, these learnings also help shape how we plan for the future as well.

I would also say that this is where social media comes into its own, my LinkedIn network and Twitter network has been amazing through these last few months and provided me with so many good leads and opportunities so I highly recommend to all those starting out in your career, start building your network now, don’t dismiss social and don’t be that person who says ‘do you ever do any work?’ based on someone’s social activity, more fool you in my view. These platforms could be the bedrock of future business or people helping you with your own business, I dont know where I would be without the support of the network here on Linkedin.

I am excited to announce two more projects in the coming weeks that I will be more visible as I will be representing the companies in the market to some extent, so more to come on that – they are in two incredibly exciting companies and can’t wait to get the news out there and start to get some momentum in the marketplace. Bertozzi49 well and truly firing on all cylinders.

So overall, I think this approach to work can be very fulfilling, you can learn a lot and help many people and businesses. I think if you are still heavily drawn by wanting to do the execution part and seeing all your hard work come to fruition (thats me) then perhaps there is still another salary job left in you, but if you like the strategy part and the variety of consultancy then I would highly recommend it! Whatever you do, good luck!

Digital advertising: Should we return to simpler days?

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First Published in New Media Age here

Marco Bertozzi, most recently Vice President, EMEA and Multi-Market Global Sales at Spotify is a true digital veteran and NDA’s new regular columnist. He started his career at Zenith Optimedia, went on to have leadership roles at companies including Vivaki and Starcom and has long been an influential, some might say legendary, industry figure.

This latest Google news has really got the advertising community talking. There are a plethora of articles that paint a very dark picture of where the death of third-party cookies on the Google landscape will take us. There is a lot of money at stake and it’s serious topic for many, but for now, I want to reminisce a little.

I started working in digital in 2000. I worked alongside some wonderful people Martin Kelly, Andy Cocker, Damian Burns, Damian Blackden, many have gone on to amazing careers in advertising. We worked for Zenith Interactive Solutions (you can tell its old with Interactive in the title).

If you worked in digital back then you will know that actually the digital landscape was very close to print advertising. We used to pull together schedules based on target audiences that would reflect what we thought the audience would enjoy. If you wanted to reach a 35+ ABC1 man then roll out the golf websites, automotive websites, maybe some finance one and we tried to squeeze in gardening as it was also one of our clients (Greenfingers.com).

Our KPIs were clicks and click throughs, the schedules ran into double pages, sometimes 40/50 lines deep. At the start there was no third-party tracking. We did not have audience segments, retargeting was rare, even the scourge of the internet, ad networks had not taken off.

For the younger readers there was also no Google, YouTube, Facebook, Snap, Twitter, or TikTok and algorithms were still a NASA-based concept. No, back then we did one very simple thing, we worked out what our target audiences liked and consumed and we put ads in front of them. When we wanted scale we had a Yahoo home page takeover, that was as crazy as it got!

Trouble was, print was not cool, and there were so many sites that we found it all a little inefficient and so we started down the road of tracking, adserving and ad networks to make things a little easier. The rest as they say is history, digital advertising was born and we have been on a 20-year journey of excitement about data and adtech to get us to become the dominant advertising channel and deliver a brave new world.

Or have we?

When you look back, when you really ask yourself now whether things were better or worse, it is hard to say. Yes, that sounds like some old bloke reminiscing and I am, perhaps stretching things, but is everyone happy with what we have?

Can we all hand on heart say that the terrible targeting around the web, the uncomfortable arrival in your feeds of things you had spoken about days before, the repetitive ads for the same product for weeks, one perhaps you had already bought, can we really say things are better?

Still today you are hard pushed to find loads of data proving that audience segments really outperform their cost, indeed the most common discussion is that data segments don’t pay back for performance. I think there is a reason for that, they are just not that good. They are built out of shonky data with little transparency and the tough situation we face now is that a few giant companies have the good data, they are the biggest and they dominate.

But maybe we were on to something back in the day. When Damian Burns walked in each morning with his massive coffee, when Simon Halstead took a bite into his bacon sandwich and Andy Cocker took out his calculator to negotiate his next deal, we all had one goal.

How to reach audiences so that advertisers could place ads in front of them based on context and content.

We wanted to show products and services to the right people and publishers were where we went. Even the portals were all about channels – Auto, Finance etc.

Perhaps we have an opportunity to reset and start to think about how we support publishers and quality content and start to spend where audiences are because they are properly engaging with content, not because they just liked their cousin’s photo.

Advertisers need to prioritise quality over quantity so let’s use the death of the cookie as a chance to return to a simpler mission, one less driven by adtech making money and more for publishers to make money.

Internal recruitment needs to be on brand and empathetic.

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As I continue to consult, mentor and devote time to myself and family I am also concurrently talking to companies about potential future roles. I wanted to reflect on my experiences of this process so far and how I have observed companies deal with me.

I have been working for nearly 25 years, held senior roles in good companies and who knows exactly what that next role will be, and yet I continue to be surprised by how little consideration and communication is given to candidates of my level and experience during these times. In this instance I am mainly focusing on in house recruitment vs agencies. I think there has been an ever growing trend towards in housing of hiring processes, especially amongst the tech companies but also traditional businesses as well. I think with that trend comes a burden on that team that I am not sure all of them realise and are probably not held accountable to from one day to the next.

If you decide as a business to have your employees engage with external candidates, especially senior ones, then they need to have the same ethos as any of your out facing teams. Those interactions set the tone, they leave lasting impressions and who knows may damage future relations depending on where that candidate lands. Bad news travels fast right? Well those looking for a role, especially those not currently employed will be particularly conscious of that brand experience, and that’s what it is, your recruitment team are representing your brand. 

In these short months that I have been engaged with in house recruiters and indeed actual managers within businesses I have experienced many different versions of that process. I have spoken to a couple of companies that have been in communication through out, followed up, did what they said they would do and that’s all one asks. On the other hand I have been blanked. Now let’s be realistic, you can’t always expect things to move forwards, perhaps they don’t like the cut of your jib or your background is not what they wanted and so things don’t progress, we are all grown ups, what I do expect though is feedback and a decline. Take Conde Nast, contacted by them after an application, interview with recruiter, followed by interview with HR and then blanked. I personally believe that if you have asked a candidate to talk twice, you owe them politeness and respect to update and decline or move forwards. 

Hiring is not personal, you should never take it personally, finding the right candidate or job is about finding the round peg to fit in the round hole and it’s easy to find a little edge that catches and stops that fit, that’s fine, it’s natural. What is personal is how you go about doing that and I am afraid there are many external facing recruitment people who are either not trained or not scrutinised as to how they engage candidates. I think it’s a shame for two simple reasons. The first is you can absolutely set the tone of your organisation through these contacts, you are sending a message and when these candidates end up in other businesses, perhaps potential clients, they will feel positively about your business or not and secondly its is not difficult, it’s simple manners, it’s simple communication that costs the recruiter nothing but gives that job hunter a feeling of knowing where they stand and what’s next. 

Finding a new role is so exciting and I am loving all the possibilities, but it’s important to be true to yourself and expect a certain level of respect. Be thoughtful everyone. Times are tough without treating people with no consideration.

We are all in our heads too much.

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First published here.

Marco Bertozzi, most recently Vice President, EMEA and Multi-Market Global Sales at Spotify is a true digital veteran and NDA’s new regular columnist. He started his career at Zenith Optimedia, went on to have leadership roles at companies including Vivaki and Starcom and has long been an influential, some might say legendary, industry figure.

Over the last few weeks I have been speaking to a lot of people. I wanted to use the time I have to try and give back a little and so offered my time to my network for advice on anything.

I have filled five days and counting so far, learnt how to used Calendly to organise all the requests and met a lot of really great people. I have written before about the importance of your network but this time it has involved 50+ calls with complete strangers bar one or two.

This was the unseen, unknown network who got the confidence to reach out to another complete stranger offering time to talk.

The topics so far have been very varied. We have talked about launching and growing businesses, people stuck at a crossroads, some struggling to find work, changes of careers, and changes of direction within their companies.

It’s only been two days but already it’s been fascinating. As I reflected on these conversations I realised there was one thing, that I haven’t heard spoken about so much, that it was clear we are all suffering from.

We are spending too much time in our own heads.

Work from home has had many impacts on us, like stress, boredom, loneliness, loss of joy and many other side effects but one less spoken about is the lack of inputs into our minds and a dramatic reduction in stimuli. Stimuli that could be a variety of things.

It could be validation, reassurance that you are doing well – who doesn’t like a ‘wow looks like you are doing great’ or ‘you guys are doing great!’ comment. In normal days, inspiration can came from anything and anywhere, whatever the stimulus is, it is welcome, it distracts, it motivates, and of course can sometimes be a negative as well but keeps you thinking externally.

The reality now is we lack all that, we are just in our heads.

Those times when you press leave or end on the video call and just sit and breathe out. Left with our own thoughts, wondering how we did, whether that was the right thing to say or not. More than that though, if we are at a juncture, starting a business, getting a job, being rejected daily, we just go around in circles in our heads.

I heard on my calls a number of times comments like, I am stuck, lost, don’t know what to do.

I firmly believe the vacuum of external stimuli has been filled with us arguing and debating with ourselves. Another dog walk alone, a chance to go over old ground again, in more ways than one.

So, after the first few days of talking, I realised for both me and the person on the other end of the call, what we were really getting out of our chat was a chance to talk to someone different, someone who had no connection to their work or business, someone who would listen without judgement and give some new stimulus. It may be reassurance, direction, feedback or sometimes a push to get out of the position of being stuck or lost.

The future of work is around the corner and I am hopeful some of what we love will return, but before then, why don’t you go looking for that stimulus.

If you are stuck or lost, get hold of someone you don’t know and just have a chat. I hope when you press Leave at the end of that next Zoom call you don’t let your brain just churn about how you did, but rather smile at the opportunities ahead.

Who is going to Cannes? Too soon?

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OK, so lets all agree, no one is going to Cannes right? Or are they? Now the news about lockdown being lifted, maybe things have changed? Cannes is the best example of how the industry is grappling with the post pandemic issues of events and perhaps is the best example of how we are entering a period of being able to create events, but being confronted by the reality of will anyone go?

I think this is the biggest challenge for the coming quarters, not whether events can happen, but rather, should they happen and will anyone go? As I think about events, there are a few areas to consider when trying to predict the future and where we will net out.

  1. Who is paying? We often start with the health dialogue or appropriateness of going, but truth of the matter is someone has to pay and that someone has likely significantly cut the budget. There are very few businesses who will not be coming into 2021 with a slashed events, travel and marketing budget. As most people in corporate work know, once its gone, its really hard to get back and two years of austerity will make that a mountain to climb.
  2. Who blinks first? Putting budget aside, the next one is whether or not when you send people to an event, or go yourself, you become part of a super spreader horror headline, where executives were red faced not because of Rose but because they all caught Covid whilst enjoying some International or even local event. So who wants to be the one that says ‘yes lets invest in this event and go for it.’ Who goes first? 
  3. Virtual events are getting better. I attended an event With Mediatel where they used some latest technology to allow us to virtually mingle, network and chat before and during the event. It was actually pretty good, it created some challenges, there was no opportunity to politely escape a table (not that I needed to, had a lovely bunch) – there was less serendipity, but overall it worked well. I liked the big brother feature where messages were sent out like in 1984 to shepherd guests around. Bottom line this tech is only going to get better and better and so virtual events will continue to evolve and entertain.
  4. Virtual events are driving inclusion in our industry. Cannes or CES is an extreme of course but its the everyday events that I think our the hardest to navigate in person. Some are not going to be worth the time and effort, even if cost is not an issue to come to from say Manchester or anywhere over 2 hours, even if the content is solid. Now they are virtual, people from all over the country, even the world can join. I also think the charging model can change to be less aggressive knowing more people will join. I think that is really exciting for the industry and for those organizers and importantly sponsors. I was surprised at the event mentioned above that there were no sponsors in the networking area, or anywhere really, that is an opportunity and suddenly you may be reaching 1000 people instead of 200, that becomes interesting. We should embrace the chance to have more people from different backgrounds attend our events.
  5. Charging models. I believe that events need to really look at how they are charging now, it is a seminal moment to review events and consider the best way to maximize utility and commercial gain. Micro payments in my mind are still woefully under utilized. Let’s say there is an event on Digital Audio. It would be great if lets say you were going for a job in that sector to go to the site, pay a fee and get to watch the whole event. Perhaps there are subscription options as well for certain companies. All in all, commercials should now take into account larger audiences online, follow up micro or one off payments to a whole range of other people and perhaps a subscription model for all the events. Makes things interesting perhaps?
  6. Content has to improve. Anyone who was not a content organizer will say that the number of events and awards was getting out of hand, everyone enjoys winning but there is only so much that can be done and paid for in a year. I also think because of that content was not good enough, not prepared enough and rushed through in too many situations (not all). I hope that when we do have live events again, organizers realise that it should be quality over quantity or I think many cash strapped companies will politely decline. If that is a product of all this, that can only be good for organizers and attendees.

So as things start to ease and we plan our future, will we be rushing back to live events together, or will we be looking to have face to face for only the very most premium occasions and lets face it, in 2022, or will we be rushing back to how it was. I would love to see the return of some live events and perhaps for the first time, as with many things, people have realised that they took these events for granted and actually they do have a worth beyond the content. 

There is an opportunity to change and adapt, I have seen some real progress already through lock down and I am certain there will be more to come, we should embrace these changes and make them work alongside our new working environment where I believe the combination of virtual and face to face will be very much the norm.

After 25 years – the network comes into its own.

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Since posting on LinkedIn my departure from Spotify, I have been enjoying some down time of sorts. What I have not been doing is staring at Google Hangouts for hours everyday. Instead I have been meeting with lots of different people, some I knew and some I did not and hearing about what they are up to, it feels like a rush of different inputs all of a sudden after a long period of having the same circle of contacts for a long while.

I have spoken to people in the fin tech space, dating app space, beauty, sales, sports and more, yes the completely switch off and relax thing did not exactly happen, but hearing about all these industries has been fascinating and exciting.

Taking a break from work has not been the big, wave crashing relief you might expect but more a gradual reduction in stress, it feels like that long summer holiday where the first week is a little better but your mind is still wired in, second week things start to really chill and if you get beyond that, then you are into forgetting password territory. I am in the area of relaxing, but still keeping the mind alert with the conversations and discussions, just not that consistent pressure we all have from a normal 9-5 job, especially in today’s climate.

Something else very exciting has happened in the last few weeks, I have reconnected with so many old friends and contacts which has been a breath of fresh air, something that we all aspire to doing but just never do, thank you to everyone who has been in touch for one reason of another. Whether it is to be a moderator of a panel, on a panel, fireside chat in another company, help and advice, these last few weeks have been rich with interaction and that has been amazing.

As per my previous post on Ikigai, I have had so much discussion about ‘what next’ and well, I realised that now is the time to go for it because, well, what else is there too do?! I have put more and more thought into the next role and as I have spoken to people and really analysed, I am more excited than ever to take what I have learned over the last 25 years and put it into practice. 

I also have realised how many people right now are not working, I joked about launching a podcast for highly talented operators who were not currently working, pretty sure it hit a nerve and there are many out there who don’t want a rest or a break, they want to work. Great to see businesses coming for this talent pool, putting it to good work. Stefan Bardega with http://www.traktion.ai as well as Kate Merritt and team with http://www.libertyhive.com and there are others. Its inspiring to meet people all those out there scrapping away, building things, innovating and in some cases just starting their independent journey. It’s pretty wonderful to see.

So fully expecting a quiet lull to come soon after the wave of contacts, hopefully will stay in touch with many and excited for the leads and next steps. Even in this shitty period there is opportunity everywhere. Just got to make it happen.