BRANDING AND THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

“The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish”
— Danny Blanchflower

This is a piece about branding and football. So let’s talk about cricket.

 

The England cricket team to be precise.

 

Less than a year ago, New Zealander Brendon McCullum was appointed as the England Test team’s Head Coach. Since then, alongside captain Ben Stokes, the team has made a public declaration that, first and foremost, their aim is to entertain. To whack as many balls as possible out of the park, score oodles of runs at lightning speed, bowl with the sole purpose of taking wickets, and bugger the consequences as long as it’s a load of fun. It’s been 11 months of smiles-on-people’s-faces – punters and, crucially, players alike. And, by the way, England have won 9 out of their 10 tests since McCullum and Stokes have been in charge.

 

To anyone used to decades of test cricket played at tectonic speed, uber-defensive batsmen, dour-defensive bowling and ever-emptying grounds, this has been revolutionary. Test cricket played at the speed of a 50-over match. In honour of McCullum’s nickname, it’s been dubbed ‘Bazball”.

 

The probability is that, if England’s success continues, Bazball will spread as a tactic to every other test-playing nation around the world. And if that happens, instead of withering slowly away in harmony with its ageing audience, test cricket might just have bought itself several more decades of relevance, popularity and general sexiness.

 

Whatever else, though, the England test cricket brand has transformed itself in just 12 months. From barely respiring to truly aspirational.

 

In sport, as in everything else, brands are important. And this is where we get back to football.

 

I’m a lifelong Tottenham Hotspur fan. Not even a North Londoner, I started supporting Spurs not because they were outstandingly successful but because of the way they played. (I stress the past tense here). I loved Spurs above all because I love football. I loved the Brazilian team of 1970. The Barcelona team of 15 years ago. The Real Madrid of Zinedine Zidane. The 1970s Dutch team. I love beautiful football even when it’s being played by Arsenal - which this season it is. Good for them. And over the years I’ve loved Spurs best when they play like Danny Blanchflower said they should.

 

Danny Blanchflower explained the Spurs football brand ethos in the wake of their fast, flowing, ‘push and run’ football of the early 1960s. "The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning”, he said. “It is nothing of the kind. The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish, about going out and beating the lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom."

 

Of course you want to win. But watching your team play with smiles on their faces - and putting a smile on yours, too - is way, way more valuable. That’s what gets people renewing their season tickets, subscribing to the sports channels, buying the merch, and wanting, whether you’re from Stoke Newington or Seoul, to support the team in the first place.

 

In 2019, Tottenham Hotspur had spent 4 years with a young-ish coach, Mauricio Pochettino, who wanted his team to play fast, pro-active, attacking football that entertained people, neutrals too. He embodied the Blanchflower credo. After a nondescript season, which nevertheless culminated in a Champions League final, Pochettino was fired. His replacement was supposed to be someone who could take the team to the next level, and start winning trophies, to usher Spurs from bridesmaid to bride. Jose Mourinho, and his ultimate successor Antonio Conte, were the wrong choices for Spurs. They’re successful coaches, but their appointments showed that the decision-makers at Tottenham Hotspur don’t understand their own brand. Every Spurs fan knows that, for all their undoubted talents, Mourinho and Conte are not a fit with the Spurs DNA. Even if they’d been successful, their style of playing football is the opposite of what Spurs has always stood for. Many Spurs fans would agree that we are currently playing the most unlovely football in the Premier League. “To dare is to do” is the club’s motto. There’s certainly been daring and doing in regard to the bricks and mortar, but a complete absence of it in the football itself – ‘turgid’, ‘ghastly’, ‘joyless’, ‘sclerotic’ and ‘constipated’ are just some of the adjectives that spring to mind. What’s more, even on its own terms it hasn’t been a particularly successful approach: Spurs have conceded more goals this season than any other team in the Premier League’s top twelve. And the worst part of all? The team look miserable. They seem lost. Even Heung-Min Son’s perma-grin has vaporised in 2023. It’s that bad.

 

“If you care about your business, you’d better care about your brand”

So who’s presided over all this? Tottenham Hotspur is run by ENIC, and ENIC is essentially run by two people (itself a red flag, some might think). Their business acumen - based on real estate, resorts, currency trading and finance - and a good deal of vision - should be applauded. They’ve given the club a wonderful stadium, a state-of-the-art training facility, and a very stable financial footing. They’ve given it longevity. But they seem to have little idea of the softer arts of normal 21st century business, never mind the unique dynamics of a football club. They’ve consistently shown hopeless PR, hapless communications, little genuine transparency, and not a clue about brands, least of all their own football club’s.

“I think we sometimes forget, or take for granted, the unique beauty of this game,” Pele once said. Tottenham Hotspur’s brand manifesto, its belief system, its brand, used to be about just that: beautiful football, win or lose. After more than two decades in charge at Tottenham, ENIC show no understanding of this, or any comprehension that the people who pay to be entertained by the team will not continue to do so indefinitely if they’re not being, um, entertained. Even the serial masochism of being a lifelong Spurs fan has its limits.

 

You can be charitable about Tottenham’s owners and say that they simply don’t know any better. The worst you can say is that maybe they don’t really care as long as the business’s bottom line looks good when they decide to sell. But in 2023, if you care about your business, you’d better care about your brand, too.

 

However, it’s nearly summer. England’s test cricket team are playing soon. They’ve reclaimed fans’ love, not because they’re winning, but because of how they’re doing it. Win, their brand of sport says, and people will merely like you. Do it in style, and they’ll love you. Let’s hope Tottenham Hotspur’s management are watching and learning.

 

I can’t recommend this episode of the ever-excellent Spurs Show podcast,‘There’s only one Scott Munn’, too highly. Available on a range of platforms, here’s the link on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/theres-only-one-scott-munn/id261350282?i=1000608250610

 

Nice to have been the writer on this smart website

Not often, I’m guessing, that a security company understands the importance of their brand, but @knightprotection have definitely done that here. Hats off to @glassupandstoski for the design, @andrewserednyj for the thinking and, of course, the client themselves: https://knightprotection.co.uk

Escaping racehorses, fall-outs, love trysts, theft, loaded guns, rabid dogs. Now that was a shoot.

The latest instalment of photographer Brian Griffin’s brilliant photographic autobiography is just out. So when Brian asked me to write down my memories of an advertising shoot in Mexico in the 1980’s, I was thrilled to contribute. The first thing I did was get the year wrong. Apart from that, my account (p172 of ‘Black Country Dada 1969-1990’) is mostly true. I think. Here’s what I remembered …

IMG_0234.JPG

Memory is like an old home movie. Some of the images are clear, but in places the emulsion’s gone. And some bits are missing altogether.

 

Saatchi and Saatchi 1985. Art director Roger Pearce and I have created a print advertising campaign for The Republic National Bank of New York. In 1985 we didn’t do library images. This was going to be shot by a top photographer in a road trip across the USA and Mexico. I beg and grovel to go too. Although I’m a copywriter, Paul Arden relents. Well, it’s 1985. I join them on the second half of the shoot. I’m ecstatic. I’ve never been outside Europe before. 

 

Brian and the rest are already in the States – at a Kentucky stud. A week or two later I travel with the modelmaker Les Gay to Los Angeles. We land late one lovely afternoon. They say LA is 72 suburbs in search of a city. But we barely see one. For us it’s the Hertz lot. To pick up a van. Then on to a warehouse, where we load a model of a satellite phone mast complete with call-box into the back of the truck, and start driving. Out of LA and on to Las Vegas. It’s a 5-hour drive. The modelmaker’s at the wheel. Jet-lagged, he wants to stay awake, so the aircon is on full freezer-blast the whole way. It’s a warm California evening, but 3 hours in my teeth are chattering in sync with the cicadas. 

 

Las Vegas, Nevada, with hypothermia. We emerge from the black desert into a retina-busting assault of neon. The modelmaker turns the pick-up into the floodlit entrance to Caesar’s Palace. Disapproving parking attendants park the truck. A vision appears. It’s Brian. Standing on the steps, arms flung wide in welcome. He’s wearing a blue-green Mao jacket. Bathed in light from the kitsch central fountain, he gleams like an Abalone seashell. 

 

Caesar’s Palace. A casino full of old ladies encased in wheelchairs with their legs mummified in surgical stockings play the one-armed bandits all night long. Cocktail barman: ‘You guys from England? What part of England, London? What part of London, Birmingham?’.

Las vegas 85001.jpeg

 

There are five of us. Art director Roger, stylist Catherine Laroche, me, Brian, and his assistant, Steuart. 

 

The first shot is in the Mojave Desert, where kids race quad bikes at weekends. But in the world of the ad, we’re in the Middle East. Or at least the middle of nowhere. A (business)man is on the phone – the call box with mast - below a dune. He’s calling his broker. Or buying a ship. It’s 120 Fahrenheit in the shade and I get sunstroke. On the pulsing horizon a missile test launch at Edwards Airforce base. World War Three? Brian takes a great shot. 

 

Mojave 85002.jpeg

Next stop Mexico. A black chauffeuse takes us in a white stretch limo to Vegas airport for our flight. Well, it’s 1985. She asks if we’re a rock band. It’s dark at take off. As we bank, Vegas is a tiny square of light pollution in an expanse of virgin blackness. 

 

The outskirts of Mexico City are a constant sprawl of shanty buildings. Every corrugated iron roof has a TV aerial. Once in our hotel, I’m realising that Brian may have been involved with the stylist before I arrived. But now my art director Roger seems to be spending a lot of time with her. Meanwhile, Brian’s concerns accelerate into something more serious. Bad news from England. His father has died. Naturally he feels he should go home. The shoot will have to be aborted. Brian wrestles with what to do. Eventually he decides to stay. It must be a tough decision for him.

 

In Mexico, we have a driver. He takes us over the Sierra Madre and down towards Puebla. A rainstorm hits us. It’s so violent, we have to stop the car. ‘These mountains used to be full of bandits’, the driver tells us. What happened to the bandits? ‘They became presidents.’ His grin has a gold tooth in it.

 

The next shot features a rich ranchero on a horse, in a cactus forest, on a mobile phone the size of a breeze block. We look for cactus forests to shoot in. Returning to the hotel through Mexican villages at night, packs of snarling wild dogs chase the car. We don’t stop for a pee. 

 

A location found. Just off a road, a great prairie full of cactus. The horse box arrives, two thoroughbreds inside. It drives carefully down the sloping tracks. But hits a big rut, or a hole. Truck keels to one side. Horses panic. One of them has an injury. Thankfully it’s OK. The handler calms the horses. Insurance is mentioned. Someone calms the owner. Brian takes the shot.

IMG_0235.JPG

Back in Mexico City, our stylist’s hotel room has been burgled. Her passport, and a $10,000 cash float, are gone. She reports the matter to the local police. Insurance will cover the cash. The police chief, after sufficient money has changed hands, gives her a temporary exit visa, and we’re good to go to the airport. 

 

At emigration we’re all waved through. But not our stylist. The officials don’t like her paperwork. She can’t leave the country. We’re being called through to departures. We can’t leave her behind. We protest. Things get heated. Mexican customs officials are armed. Things get more heated. A pistol is pointed at us … the airport manager arrives. Voices are still raised. But the weapon is lowered. Finally the stylist gets waved through, regardless of her documents. Well, it’s 1985.

 

Two days later we’re back in London. We have a campaign. Brian was a joy to be with, and he took a great bunch of shots. And I have great memories. Some of them may not even be true. But that’s memories for you.

Simon left Saatchi & Saatchi in 1985 for Lowe Howard-Spink, where he became Head Of Copy. Apart from a year as a creative director at Leo Burnett, he’s been freelance since 1995. In 2015 he created the ELFy health app, which he co-runs. In 2017 he published a children’s novel, ‘The Morphant’, under the name Cornelius Fuel, and in 2020 released an album with his band The Wood Demons. A debut album by Simon’s solo music project Vegetarians & Carnivores, is due 2021. 

PROFESSIONAL INDEMNITY INSURANCE FOR FREELANCERS – WHO REALLY NEEDS IT? (EVERYONE, APPARENTLY).

 2 million people in the UK work as freelancers. This is written from the point of view of someone in the largest group (37%) in that 2 million, which includes writers and designers. But the issues concern everyone currently freelancing.

Like most of us, you’ve probably hired a car at some time, and someone’s tried to flog you additional accident cover. Like most of us you’ve probably thought about it for a second, then said: ‘Nah.’ 

 And when my father died, we had to unpick the multiple insurance policies that he’d bought and not needed. Like many elderly folk, he’d got nervous in his old age and bought everything the insurance business had tried to sell him. It turned out that he was paying £600 a month in unnecessary policies alone. 

So there’s insurance cover most of us agree is a good idea. House. Car. And maybe a couple of other things besides. Fine. Don’t mind paying for them.

 And then there are policies where it’s simply the insurance business trying to sell you something in the hope that you’re naïve enough not to realise that you just don’t need it. 

Professional Indemnity, in my professional opinion, is one of the latter. 

Well, so what? We all know what insurance our businesses need, and we can simply ignore what we don’t, right?

Wrong.

PI, as it’s not very affectionately known, is being forced on thousands of freelancers - whether they want it or not. 

Let’s be clear. There’s no legal requirement for PI. And yet we’re being told that if we don’t get it, we won’t get that job we’ve pitched for. And by the way. That thing many of us don’t need, and may not want? We’ve got to pay for it out of our own pockets. 

So far, so bizarre. But there’s one other aspect of PI which is crazier than all of the above. Which I’ll come to shortly.

But first, what is PI? 

PI is designed, or so its proponents claim, to protect freelancers against being sued for giving incorrect advice, or making errors that result in a client’s business being damaged. 

It’s also designed, so they tell us, to protect clients against such an eventuality. 

So in my 20+ years as a freelance writer working in advertising and related comms, how many times have I encountered, or even heard about, a freelancer or client being involved in a legal dispute over incorrect or inadequate advice? 

Here is my answer: 0. That’s right. In over two decades, this has never, at least to my knowledge, occurred.  

Certainly, the occasional client will say he doesn’t like the work. 

When that happens, you simply do it again. Or the client re-briefs. Or the client doesn’t work with you next time. But not once in my working life has anyone attempted to sue me, or anyone else I know, because they think our work has harmed their business. 

There are reasons for that, apart from most of us always trying to do a conscientious and professional job for our clients. 

1. Legal battles are expensive enough to stop most sane people from wanting to start one. 

2. The work we do in advertising, design, PR and many other fields is subjective. No court in the world can say whether a creative concept can be deemed ‘good’ or ‘bad’. And no court on earth could possibly decide whether a downturn in a client’s business can be traced to inadequate design of a logo, or a sloppy press release, or a crappy headline, or a mediocre bit of content, or a misjudged brand strategy. 

3. Virtually every client will already be protected against such an unlikely eventuality already through their existing terms and conditions and business insurance. Many freelancers will, too, through their own Ts&Cs, or being a Limited Company, or both.

4. Most freelancers aren’t rich enough to make it worth suing us anyway.

So why on earth would anyone think that freelancers must suddenly pay for Professional Indemnity insurance to protect both parties from legal battles that are vanishingly unlikely to happen?

Well, here’s the even crazier bit I referred to earlier. And it could provide one possible answer.

In the past month I’ve looked at various jobs advertised through recruiters. These recruiters are suddenly telling everyone that PI is now mandatory. Take it out or you can’t apply for a job on their site. (There’s no legal requirement, remember? But they’re making it compulsory anyway). 

So out of curiosity I search out what insurance policy options are available. I see that I can get £50,000-worth of insurance, and the recruiter will then allow me to accept a job if one comes through. 

Then I see a project on a recruiter site that catches my eye. And here’s the thing. The site is telling applicants that if they accept this job and work on-site (possible again very soon, I’m sure), my hypothetical £50,000 of cover would actually not be acceptable to the recruiting agent. 

Why not? Well, it seems that £50,000 is not enough. Guess how much insurance cover I would need to be deemed an acceptable risk for this particular job? 

£1,000,000 is your answer. 

That’s right. £1 million-worth of insurance cover to get the job if I wanted to work on site. That would be excessive if I was Ebola-positive, psychotic, and carrying an automatic assault weapon to their office. How hazardous can one copywriter be?

Clearly this is divorced from reality. So what’s going on? Well, we can speculate. 

If you accept that up till now no one wants to sue a freelancer for the reasons above, then all of a sudden that might change when there are sums like this floating around. That’s when someone might actually consider that it’s worth pursuing what until now has not been remotely viable. Now it’s worth making an issue out of. 

In other words, no one needs PI now. But if everyone is forced to get it, then we’ll all need it. Just to protect us against the distant possibility of someone being unscrupulous. And at that point, PI becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. 

Put it another way. If we all go out and buy Professional Indemnity insurance, we’re all going to need Professional Indemnity insurance.

Catch-22 author Joseph Heller would love that.

And don’t forget: if you buy a PI policy as a freelancer, the lunatic who might want to sue you isn’t paying for the privilege. You are. 

Pay to get yourself sued. Joe’d love that, too. 

Tell me this: if you’re a client and you really think your business might be seriously damaged by working with me, by all means go ahead and get yourself your own policy to cover yourself against my incompetence. If you’re not covered already. But you want me to pay for it?

In effect, these insurance policies are not protecting anyone. They’re actually doing the opposite, by increasing the likelihood of legal disputes. I used the word ‘unscrupulous’. There’s no other way to describe the role played in this by the insurance industry. 

And the blind acceptance - so far - of such snake oil by some recruiters and clients is, to put it mildly, misguided. 

Let me rephrase that. It’s beyond simple acceptance. In some cases it’s enforcement. And that’s unethical.

I’ll say it again. PI is not a legal requirement as a freelancer. And mandating something that isn’t lawfully required as a condition of being able to work is wrong. 

Of course, in your business, you might feel you need it. That’s fine. But that’s a matter for you, no one else. Nobody should be able to force it on you, or on the freelance community as a whole.

The spread of Professional Indemnity insurance in the property market has been roundly criticised by consumer watchdogs. And it’s just as questionable in the world of freelancing. 

So let’s question it. If we don’t, PI will cost every freelancer. And if it creates a litigious landscape, which it might, it’ll cost all of us. 

Win-win for insurance companies and the legal profession, sure. Lose-lose for the rest of us.

But there’s one final ironic twist. 

Try Googling ‘Professional Indemnity insurance’. It looks like a sales page for the insurance business. The insurance companies are falling over themselves to spread it like a virus through the property and business communities. 

What does that tell us? As we all know, the insurance business does everything in its power to avoid making pay-outs on claims. So they will already know that no one in the real world will be making successful claims for these staggering sums of money. In truth, they’re going to be paying out zip.

In its enthusiasm to flog it to us all, the insurance industry is telling us something about Professional Indemnity insurance that some recruiters and clients haven’t yet figured out. Nobody will ever end up using it.

Because it’s PI in the sky.

Based in London, Simon Carbery has worked all over the world as a freelancer for over 20 years. He was an award-winning copywriter at Saatchi & Saatchi, Head of Copy at Lowe, a creative director at Leo Burnett London, and a Member of The D&AD Executive Committee. 

 

 

 

 

Music to my ears

Well done to The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. (And thanks for listening to the suggestion).

IMG_7788.JPG

Fantastic book on ideas by Michael Johnson

Recommended this at my School Of Communications Arts Talk. Very entertaining, and jam packed with brilliant observations and tips on having ideas. And beautifully designed, too, of course. Love it.

IMG_6914.JPG

Great writing: John Le Carre

The BBC version of John Le Carre’s gripping ‘The Little Drummer Girl’ is coming to a climax. But can film ever do complete justice to a book when it’s so brilliantly written?

“When Schulmann greeted you, his whole right arm swung in on you in a crab-like punch fast enough to wind you if you didn’t block it. But the sidekick kept his arms at his sides as if he didn’t trust them out alone. When Schulmann talked, he fired off conflicting ideas like a spread of bullets, then waited to see which ones went home and which came back at him. The sidekick’s voice followed like a stretcher-party, softly collecting up the dead”
— from John Le Carre's The Little Drummer Girl
images.jpeg