Andrew Chamberlain

Yey! I am still here, alive and kicking and working at Direct Marketing Giant Wunderman in their London office. Wunderman are part of the even larger WPP group, and so I find myself working (along with tens of thousands of others) for the famous Sir Martin Sorrell. It’s hard work here but generally it’s good work so I am happy; I am now going to have time to reflect on  some future writing projects. I am hoping to do some more work on a project over the Christmas break as a I start my first ‘enforced’ holiday break at this time of year since….well probably since I left university in 1988.

A happy, inspiring, and refreshing Christmas to you all dear readers..

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For all those people who are caught in the snare of the work / life / kids balance( or imbalance) can I suggest you take 6 minutes out to listen to Lucy Kellaway’s podcast on the subject of working parents and wayward kids. It’s required listening.
I think Lucy’s podcast touches on a truth that busy parents have to grasp, and grasp quickly. This truth is all about charting a course between two pieces of wisdom, and they should be pretty obvious. First, if you shirk your responsibilities as a parent then the kids will suffer. Mums and dads, especially dads really need to get this, there’s no short cuts, there’s no easy way to do it, you need to get stuck in and engage with the kids. If you are not relating to them it will hurt them. That’s the way it is. Going out with your mates is no excuse, going down the pub is no excuse, staying late at work (Lucy!) is no excuse.

Some people get this, but don’t get the second truth, and that’s this: you think parenting is all lovely and wonderful all the time? No of course you don’t but you may think you should feel like, if you’re getting it right, it should be lovely and wornderful all the time, the media tell you it, Hollywood tells you it. So is this right or wrong? WRONG! WRONG WRONG WRONG! Here’s the truth - bringing up kids, successfully, wonderfully, and brilliantly is still hard work, sometimes its boring, messy, frustrating, exasperating. Sometimes you’d rather be doing anything else but dealing with them. Is it wrong to admit this? No! Does it mean you don’t love your kids? No! Loving them is realising that this is a hard business, parenting, and still getting in there and doing it.  Thats the deal.

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Gerry McGovern has written a very interesting article on why marketers should stop treating their customers like fools; you can read the article here. Sadly, the truth is that, in the short term at least, irritating and misleading web banners will generate response. The trouble is they also generate resentment, and in the long terms that’s fatal to any brand.

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I had the opportunity today to take part in a discussion on UCB’s mid morning talk show, exploring the subject of loneliness. A fascinating discussion, which ranged across a dozen or more topics, from loneliness in the church to bereavement, to singleness; each of these things would warrant a series of shows but we had an hour! Still it was a good session with UK mid morning presenter Paul Hammond and Capt Tracey Godfrey from thge Salvation Army in Stoke. UCB can be accessed here.

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I’ve been reading Barack Obama’s book ‘The Audacity of Hope’, and it’s reminded me that this most beautiful and encouraging of virtues is in desperately short supply at the moment. The media are full of stories that reflect humanity at its worst: fear and darkness, violence and extremism. Perhaps because of this Mr Obama’s election seems to shine all the brighter. He will be inaugurated today as the 44^th President of the United States of America, and so it seems like a good time to reflect on the Christian virtue of hope

In the UK where I am based we are currently going through a vicious and depressing recession which, at this moment, looks like it might turn in to depression. Government ministers have spent the weekend locked in negotiations with bank executives, planning to lend vast amounts of money to the lenders. The sums involved are enormous. A figure of £200bn has been mentioned in the press - that’s £200,000,000,000 if you want to write it with a stupid number of zeros.  In many ways we seem like a bankrupt nation. The national debt, the amount of money owed by the government as a result of borrowing, has grown dramatically, and will be a financial burden for decades to come. 

In addition to this, as a nation we are bankrupt in the sense of being without the hope of the kind that Mr Obama presents. The foundation of his offer of hope is the shared values of his nation, the principles of the US Constitution, the dreams and plans of the founding fathers. The problem for us in the UK is that our sense of shared values, the base from which a UK version of Mr Obama might work, is fast disappearing. The notion of cohesion and community in the UK has been eroded to the point where the citizens of Britain have become a disparate group of people who happen to be living on the same Island,  but with less regard for, and understanding of each other than would have been the case fifty or even twenty years ago. This sort of vacuum is a breeding ground for distrust, extremism, and intolerance.

Our nation is becoming more lonely, more drunk, and more frustrated. We fear and despise the young people around us; we spend money that we haven’t got, just as our government spends money that it hasn’t got. All of these things are the antithesis of hope. Reasonable people look on with frustration at the poverty of our own political process, and they are forced to the extremes to find any dialogue that seems authentic. It’s instructive to note that, because of his authenticity, Barack Obama has a tendency to draw people to the middle ground and because he does this without resorting to a compromise of principles, people who would not normally communicate start to speak and listen to each other. This is fertile ground for hope.

A sense of hope and purpose are essential for the health of a nation, a community, and an individual. We should not be surprised that ‘Obamania’ has flourished in the UK; when there is a lack of hope at home people will turn to find it where ever they can. Certainly the election of a black president has a special resonance for people of colour and they are right to celebrate Barack Obama’s achievement; but hope transcends colour, we are all drawn to the it.

In fact, people will always hunger for hope, for purpose, for something to believe in and aim for. The attention given to Barrack Obama, not just as President elect but as a symbol for people’s aspirations, is a lesson for us all. Perhaps his success will be an encouragement for people of integrity and vision in the UK who also want to  bring hope to our own fractured nation.

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..is… well there were a number of things I wanted for Christmas, and in terms of the physical things on that list I pretty much got most of them, so thanks very much family and friends! My list included the iphone, and that’s quite a surprise for me because I don’t normally go too much for gadgets. In the past I have resisted the buzz that can surround some of the more trendy consumer products. In the form vs function debate I have certainly been a ‘function’ devotee. But even though it comes out of Apple, I would maintain that the iphone is actually a triumph for function that has the benefit of genius in form (and not the othher way round). But I think that debate is for another blog.

In terms of non-material things, they are much harder to find. In fact, as I get older I find that the things I want in life are more elusive. These are things like: hope, vision, purpose. To find such things is a rare and wonderful occurance. I am on the hunt for all of them; and like a hunter in a dense forest, I see glimpses of the prey from time to time. I am on the look out for these things in work, in family, church and life in general. Recently a young man who knew as a boy wrote to me and challenged me to ‘dream again’. It’s a stark and frightening thought, and his comments really hit the mark. I know that these prizes don’t come cheaply; they do require that I stick my neck out again, inconvenience myself again, step out and dream again.

Well thats what it takes. You either try for the prize, or withdraw and keep your head down. Nothing necessarily wrong with the latter, but it wont give you vision and purpose, it will just give you somewhere to hide. I don’t think I want to hide. I think I want to dream again. The start of the new year marks a very good time to resolve to do this.

2009? Bring it on!

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Now this is funny actually. Atheists groups and individuals have clubbed together to run an ad campaign on London buses. Their slogan ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’ just left me laughing. In a time where the church is buffeted on all sides by aggressive secularism and a range of other faiths, its good to see some comedy.

I guess it’s worth a bit of deconstruction. For a start, did the agnostics chip in? What’s this about there’s ‘probably’ no God? And pin up atheist Richard Dawkins is paying for some of this? Surely they should have gone for ‘There is no God’, that at least would have reflected the atheist opinion. I think they would have got in to trouble with the Advertising Standards Authority though, so it’s the more tame ‘probably’.Next we come to the latter part of the statement ’stop worrying and enjoy your life’; so do religious people worry only and atheists enjoy life, only? Think about it for a moment, it’s patent nonsense.

I think what this ad will do is just comfort the believers (or non believers in this case) and they are not the first or last to do this, people of all faiths like to encourage each other by restating their beliefs, declaring who they are to others.

Meanwhile, cheer up deists! And remember if you want you’re beliefs to be respected follow Jesus’ advice - love your neighbour as yourself. Enjoy!!

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I was amused to see Cherie Blair saying this week that history might judge her husband, the former Prime Minister Tony Blair, as having made as much of a contribution as Winston Churchill, the wartime PM. Her comments have been ridiculed by the Tories and treated with some amused derision by the press. The Telegraph had some choice quotes from one unnamed MP. These sorts of comparisons, where they involve people who are still alive, do end up sounding fanciful. The Tory party might be quick to defend the (rightly) exalted reputation of the great Winston, but we should not forget that there are many people on the left who respect and admire Churchill’s legacy. The socialist writer and commentator George Orwell used the name Winston for the hero of his dystopian novel ‘1984′ and Churchill is often seen, for all his Tory credentials, as something of an anti- establishment hero. We might also see another reason for Cherie to share Orwell’s liking of the great PM, after all ‘Geroge Orwell’ was just a nom de plume ;his real name? Eric Blair.

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Browsing the channels last night I came across a program about children’s fantasy literature. Some of the contributors I recognised: Philip Pullman and China Mieville (whose work I actually enjoy). What was telling was that this  collection of very post modern writers and commentators talked about the Harry Potter series as extremely moral and “like something from the 50’s” - a thinly disguised association with C S Lewis’ Narna books. Some of them were struggling to see why kids loved old Harry P so much when its themes seemed (to them) to come from a previous era.

I’ve been reflecting on how times have changed. A few years ago there was, and to an extent still is, a backlash amongst some evangelicals against the Harry Potter books. This was fueled by some Christians believing and quoting various hoax and spoof articles claiming that either the books and/or J K Rowling promotes satanic activity.  Well - what a load of rubbish that turned out to be. A cursory glance at the evidence suggests that Ms Rowling is a Christian, and a member of a Church of Scotland congregation. That she keeps her beliefs relatively private is a matter entirely for her - and wiser folk in the church at large know that it’s a good idea not to be too quick to judge the faith of others, especially on the back of second hand material in the press.

But you can judge her work, although if you are going to do that you have to read it first. Having done so I have to say that - especially towards the end of the series-  the story has a very rich moral, even didactic, feel to it - even I thought I was being taught something. It turns out that this is not just a story about wizards and witches and magic, in fact its not even primarily a story about these things. They are the medium for the message, and that message is about loyalty, friendship, and above all - love. It’s classic good versus evil, and forgiveness triumphing over hatred, it’s about laying down one’s life for one’s friend. It may not look as Christian as Narnia but believe me it certainly ’smells’ Christian.

So much so, that some of the commentators on the TV program I watched were mystified by it’s popularity. Why? Because they have a subjective, relativistic mindset; they distrust the themes that Rowling so proudly advocates (pure love, friendship, loyalty, an objective something worth fighting for) because they see, quite rightly, in these things the seeds of a philosophy that points to an objective, external set of values; and that flies in the face of the post modern agenda. It was no wonder some of them were thrown by Rowlings work; it is in fact that most powerful piece of counter cultural writing that has emerged since the postmodern age started. It is a light in the darkness, and as the phrase goes, the darkness simply doesn’t understand it.

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This from the Director of Strategy at Saatchi and Saatchi, Richard Huntingdon:

“Much advertising is self indulgent nonsense that serves simply to wate the client’s money and the consumer’s time.”

Now this guy has a senior role at a global ad agency; he isn’t a Consumer Rights champion, or a data protection advocate; he comes from adland, and that’s what he has said in the trade press this week.

He goes on to give some context to his words, taking both clients and agencies to task, and in his own way making the point I’d like to make - it’s not that all marketing and advertising is rubbish, it’s just that most is, and the bar needs to be raised quite a bit to achieve something worthwhile.

To emphasise the point - some pure opinion - if I were running the marketing budget for just about any automotive firm, I’d be shaking my head at the moment. Car ads - it’s hard to tell one from the other let alone the brands their selling, someone please have a good idea in the area soon.

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