Yup, I'm on the road again
Tomorrow, with a spry spring in my step, I’m off to Frankfurt to join the EACA team to teach an eager audience of European account handlers. (The poor things; they have no idea.)
My task is to tackle the issues of organisational efficiency and project management. I suppose I was asked to do this because I survived 29 years in advertising, and therefore must have been doing something right.
Actually, I learnt early and quickly that the best course of action was to get someone else to do all the work and then to take all the credit. It usually worked.
In the middle of the LP cover to the left is Bob “The Bear” Hite, who, alas, is dead, his death probably hastened by walking into me at Heathrow‘s Terminal Three one day at the end of the Sixties. I came up to his belly button. I remember it well.
Hite had a lot of hits, such as Let’s Work Together and Goin’ Up Country, sang in an extraordinary counter-tenor pitch, and died young, but his big hit was On The Road Again. And that’s me. After a two month break, following Copenhagen in November 2010, I’m on the road again.
Anyway, most of you reading this will not have the foggiest idea what an LP was, so we’ll move on, and I’ll try to prove that I really am part of the digital age by encouraging you to have a look at an interview conducted by Polish TV in Warsaw last year with me. It concerns why traditional advertising agencies are taking a beating. I came across the interview by chance on YouTube two days ago, and was surprised because I thought the item had never been aired owing to some trenchant remarks by me.
If you disagree with what I said, or would like to add to it, please get in touch and tell me. I’ll then use your comments in a later blog when I get back from Frankfurt.
Finally, dates for Istanbul and Barcelona have now been agreed. If you want to join the Barcelona Summer School in July, please visit the EACA website. There are one or two tickets left, I think.
Stephen
Word on the street is the European Union is coming apart. I don’t mean today or tomorrow, but bit by bit over the next few decades. Rubbish?
j.
John
Thanks for this. I apologise for my delay in replying. The situation for the EU is not good. It clearly divides into three groups of countries, and they are those countries which have joined the Euro and then behaved responsibly, those countries which joined the EU and then behaved irresponsibly, and, finally, those countries which joined the EU but retained their own currencies. In this latter category are to be found Ukraine, Denmark, Poland and Britain. In the responsibly behaved categories the pre-eminent country is Germany, and in the irresponsible category are mainly southern countries, including Portugal, Spain and Greece. It is principally this bunch, to which must be added the Republic of Ireland, which are getting all the publicity. The countries which are not in trouble, including even Belgium which has been without a government for 239 days, are never mentioned in the news. That said, Greece, Italy and Ireland in particular will have to accept some weird and alien concepts, including that of paying tax. Hmm. You’ve got me going now. I feel another blog coming on. One other thing: if you feel like writing a guest blog, please send me your script and I’ll post it.
Best wishes,
Steve