In this instalment of the Mad Reality Check series with Mad Clarity, partner and chairman Eric Faulkner takes us on one helluva ride. With a side of Winnie the Pooh.
“It rained and it rained and it rained. Piglet told himself that never in all his life, and he was goodness knows how old—three, was it, or four?—never had he seen so much rain. “If only,” he thought, as he looked out of the window, “I had been in Pooh’s house …” – A A Milne.
I wish I had been in Pooh’s house too. I struggled to get my wet weather gear on, standing beside the road, while the rain streamed off my crash helmet, creating a growing pool of water under my boots. I set off again. And stopped… realising I’d left my riding glasses behind. I headed back. I found them. I was still wearing them!
A day earlier, with red wine and Sambuca leaking from my pores, I strained my old fart body out of bed at 5am. If Derek, who had been providing me with the red and white spirits the previous evening, hadn’t chaperoned me to the Newhaven ferry, I would have ended up in Norwich.
It was only day two of my 8,000 km journey across France, Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Italy and Switzerland on a Ducati. A journey that ranged from rain storms to heat waves, from long, deserted roads, to truck-filled highways, from serpentine mountain roads to stunning hill-top towns.
A journey that offered much more than great views… so what the hell has that got to do with advertising??
Happiness is a full tank
As I rode out of Le Mans, I peeled off into a service station. Not a small one. But there was no petrol. Nothing.
All the pumps had cuffs on the bowsers saying ‘Pas d’essence’.
After that, I rarely let the tank get to half empty. Expecting a problem.
It’s not hard for a colleague to take a back-up laptop to the presentation… and carry a spare charge lead… and remote… and what if the data projector doesn’t work… can we present it all on a white board… so we don’t run out of fuel.
The rain is so hard I can hardly see the road…
Communicating a complex idea or strategy simply and clearly is hard work.
We need to invest time and effort. Let’s not get Claude to do all the work for us. Let’s do our homework. Push through. Then the rain clouds disappear, the mist gets wiped off the visor and we get to sell our great idea.
We do the riding … not the bike
Of all the things that drive me crazy about the advertising world now, PowerPoint decks are right up there.
But it’s not PowerPoint’s fault.
There are no Microsoft directions to fill each page with bullet points and leave the poor audience struggling to read them while the presenter waffles on.
A motorbike gives us six gears, but it doesn’t tell us how or when to use them.
PowerPoint is much the same: it gives us tools like builds and reveals, but knowing how and when to use them is what makes a presentation easier for an audience to follow and understand.
We drop our focus for more than a second… and we’re dead
It’s raining. There are trucks. It’s dangerous.
A road-side ad is not a magazine ad. It needs to communicate fast.
On a bike we may have half a second… in a car, you may get one second.
So… no… let’s not add that extra line of copy.
Speed kills
On an open road we can see what’s coming the other way, but on a narrow, tightly winding mountain road, we often can’t.
But we can prepare. We can anticipate. Same with a meeting or presentation.
Instead of just focusing on what we are going to say, let’s think about what questions might come up… what challenges… what push back.
And instead of a stand-off or argument… we can engage… and enjoy the hairpin bend.
I rode up along the eastern side of Lake Como to Hotel Villa Belvedere. A small lake-side hotel that was converted from a villa and run for a number of years by Georgio and his Scottish wife, Jane. I first visited 20 years ago. It’s one of my favourite places in the world.
I have long dreamed of riding down the winding, lake-side roads to this place. Now, after thousands of kilometres of unbelievably scenic French and Italian hill-top towns… adrenaline-pumping Portuguese mountain roads… magical Algarve beaches… long, deserted Spanish highways… Alpine and Pyrenean passes… and leisurely pottering through calm, green and gold Tuscan hills… I had arrived.
I pull into the Belvedere car park, get off the bike and wander in to say hello to Jean-Christophe and Katia at the reception.
I sit outside by the lake. They bring me coffee and water. My head drops into my arms on the table. Is that a tear I feel in the corner of my eye… a warm, relieved, happy, tear?
I wonder how I can put all that into a PowerPoint presentation?
