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When meeting clients, I make one promiseto see the world as it could be. Thats not a bad message right now. Its a pretty weird world out there. The volatile political and socio-economic landscape can make us all feel like things are going to hell. And in the slightly less real world of marketing and advertising, thats even more the case. The challenges of any agency or client team continue to escalate. Instability abounds. Then theres the issue of client loyalty, reduced scopes, tighter timelines, and the not-so-secret plan of AI to take everyones jobs. And then the cynicism comes. As we know, misery loves company, so soonif you want to find itit can turn up everywhere. Youll see it in status meetings, LinkedIn posts, industry events, and coffee machine catch-ups. Quickly it becomes less funny. In the end, its just a deluge of boring negative energy. Thats why optimism is a way out. We need radiators, not drains, in our teams and our businesses. But lets be clear here, its not about smiling and hand clapping and whooping. Toxic positivity can be a nightmare, and will inevitably create a feeling of mistrust or emptiness from employees. Its about harnessing a belief and way of working that will refuse to allow the status quo to take hold or accept that things are inevitably going to be terrible. Active optimism Lets turn to the concept that I call active optimism. I see this as being willing to see what others dont, to learn, and to try new things. Its about fostering the growth mindset, which in turn allows people to be who they are and do things they never thought possible. Critically, as opposed to the cynics who are simply tiring to be around, active optimism creates a flywheel of energy that gathers people up and becomes a magnet for others. Now, dont get me wrong, a little bit of skepticism is sometimes useful. But in the world we face today, active optimism can be a powerful tool. And you can embed it into an organization. Practically, I define active optimism as follows: Taking responsibility Some days its hard to be positive. We have to deal with the truth and honesty. Sometimes, the truth isnt great. But we also know that our team needs us on our feet and to find a way forward. We need to take more responsibility for the environment, aspirations, and world as it could be. Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan recently made a plea to the writing community – to take more responsibility by Writing More Good Guys. In a world thats turning dark, taking responsibility is what a leader does. Adopting the we can if mentality Adam Morgan and Mark Barden in their brilliant book, A Beautiful Constraint talk about the power of using we can if as a starting point for finding a solution when faced with obstacles. Im obsessed with this approach. We spend so much of our time with challenges its so easy to default to its not going to happen. In many cases, that seems a perfectly reasonable point of view (back to that point about healthy skepticism). But the moment we use we can if weve started to create an answer. From there we can build a way forward. Try it, I promise it works. Implementing a reality distortion bubble My good friend, the brilliant Rob Schwartz, introduced me to this. Like some kind of Rebellion Base in Star Wars, you need something to keep the dark side out. When the chatter or negativity can start to rise, having you and your management team able to take time to live in this reality distortion bubble means you can help each other believe and keep moving. Far too many of us spend time with people coming up saying things arent going well. Even if they are. So it can sometimes feel like theres no good news, or that its only ever a problem. Sadly thats the job, which is why protecting yourself and your leadership team from it can be so useful. Now, as Ive mentioned before, this doesnt mean not dealing with the truth or putting your head in the sand. It does mean dont get taken down by these hits and occasionally give you and your team the opportunity to go into that bubble and think about the positivity in your journey to the world as it could be. Never wasting momentum A small win here, a positive meeting there. Grab them, socialize them, and understand why they went well. Learn and repeat. Negativity is toxic and can get into the corridors and crevices of a team very easily. But so can momentum. Surrounding yourself with the right people You want to spend most of your time with radiators, not drains. Were the sum of the people we surround ourselves with. Get the energy in the room and, where necessary, change the people, or change the people! It can be hard to be optimistic when fortune doesnt smile on you, and its even harder when you are surrounded by cynicism or negativity. Right now, many of us see a world and industry full of volatility and pessimism. But I believe for businesses, teams, and leaders, active optimism in seeing the world as it could be is the only practical course of action.
Category:
E-Commerce
President Donald Trump’s tariffs are unpopular and expected to raise costs for Americans, but he’s trying his best to message them in a positive light. When his proposed new tariffs on foreign goods go into effect on Wednesday, he’s calling it liberation day. We have liberation day, Trump said last week. Many countries have taken advantage of us, the likes of which nobody even thought was possible for many, many decades. Trump has long been one for hyperbole, and when it comes to trade, he’s not holding back, calling the word tariff the most beautiful word in the dictionary. But the choice of liberation day to describe tariffs is a true misnomer. In Europe, Liberation Day is observed by countries in celebration of the liberation from Nazi Germany. For Trump, he simply uses the phrase to describe a day on which he enacts his agenda. Already, Trump called his 2025 Inauguration in January liberation day during his speech, and he’s repeating the phrase to apply to tariffs hitting Wednesday. How to make a political phrase stick For words and phrases to take hold, both inside and outside of politics, they must meet the FUDGE test, according to the mnemonic device devised by linguist and Predicting New Words author Allan Metcalf. He wrote that new words need to meet a threshold for frequency, unobtrusiveness, diversity, generating new forms and meanings, and endurance in order to take hold. In other words, they need to be simple to pick up, used a lot, and able to be used flexibly across different groups and in different ways. Trump is a master of bumper sticker-style slogans and political rhetoric, repeating straightforward, memorable phrases to explain his political agenda that becomes widely used, like America first and drain the swamp. Perhaps the best example is his already tired campaign slogan, Make America Great Again, which he cribbed from President Ronald Reagan. That became so ubiquitous in Trump’s rhetoric that it spawned an acronym and inspired spin-offs, like Make America Healthy Again. Whether liberation day can similarly take hold remains to be seen. For Daniel Rogers, a Princeton University history professor who’s studied political rhetoric, the phrase is a distraction tactic. Changing the subject has always been one of Trump’s favorite tactics, Rogers tells Fast Company. Don’t engage with those who want to know on whom the cost of tariffs is going to fall, or what steep new tariffs will mean for the cost of living. Get people to believe that tariffs will free the nation from the oppressive trade policies of the commercial enemies that surround it. Get them to think that there’s a ‘war’ going on, and that tariff is another, beautiful word for victory. Whether voters outside Trump’s base ever find his trade-war rhetoric convincing seems unlikely. A majority of U.S. adults (55%) believe the Trump administration is focusing too much on tariffs and 64% think it’s not doing enough to lower prices, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday. It’s not as if Americans squeezed by years of post-pandemic inflation will greet as “liberators” the higher costs that tariffs will add to cars, housing, food, and other regularly purchased goods.
Category:
E-Commerce
Max just got a new logo. Again. Two years after rebranding from HBO Max to just Max with new a bright blue-and-white logo, the Warner Bros Discovery-owned streaming service is making an update to its logo. This time, it’s swapping blue for a metallic black and white logo. According to Max, the color change is part of a larger refresh. Max says the standalone logo will be in the black-and-white color scheme, but an updated color palette, chosen to allow for flexibility of the logo in app and in marketing materials, will be unveiled in the coming months. [Images: HBO Max] Why Max updated its logo Max includes content from HBO and other Warner Bros Discovery brands, like Adult Swim, Animal Planet, Cartoon Network, CNN Films Discovery, and TNT, but the new logo appears to put HBOwhich is responsible for top shows for the streamer like The White Lotus, The Sopranos, and Successionback at the center. The new logo reflects the black-and-white color palette of HBO’s branding and retains the circle inside the counter of the A in Max, a callback to the circle inside the O in the HBO logo. [Images: HBO Max] Throughout the streaming wars, individual brands have updated their visual identities to stand out in a sea of blue logos. Disney+ updated its logo last year from blue to teal, and when Max first rolled out its blue logo, its former global chief marketing officer Patrizio Spagnoletto said the specific shade was chosen because it stood apart from Paramount blue and Prime blue. Together with the logo mark, the color communicated something about how the streamer wanted to be perceived, he said. With our blue and the way that the logo is designed, what we were going for is a combination of premium but accessible, Spagnoletto said in 2023. In black and white, the new Max logo seems to be amping up the premium aspect of its brand and downplaying the accessible. A Nielsen survey of the top 10 most-streamed shows in the U.S. may suggest why, with HBO shows like True Detective and The White Lotus among the few Max shows with enough viewers to make it onto the list dominated by Netflix, Disney+, and Hulu shows. It’s a strategy that just might work.
Category:
E-Commerce
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