New Year's Resolutions

New Year's Resolutions

So have you made any? Have you broken any yet? Please don’t tell me you are one of the ‘Dry January’ brigade – it doesn’t work in the Northern Hemisphere because January is far too depressing to be faced entirely sober and it doesn’t work in the Southern Hemisphere because it is summertime and you just need a cold beer.

Moderate if you must, to balance out the excesses of December, but don’t deprive yourself of the occasional snifter. My advice is to do what I have done – enter a ridiculously long bike race in March (The Cape Argus) which forces you to up the gym work and cut down on the food and booze for fear of spending so long in the saddle in order to complete 120 kms (with very big hills) it will have to be surgically removed.

I have resolved to read more and have cracked through three good novels in the first two weeks (hope I can keep the pace up). But nothing more stretching than that – certainly nothing like the words on a tea towel someone gave us for Christmas (really you shouldn’t, no really you shouldn’t).

Dance like there’s nobody watching
Love like you’ll never get hurt
Sing like there’s nobody listening
And live like it’s heaven on earth


This is based on a quote by William W. Purkey (he’s American and writes about ‘Invitational Leadership’ whatever the hell that is). Seems all wrong to me. By all means dance and sing when nobody is watching or listening and love someone that won’t hurt you but live like it’s heaven on earth? Maybe... just don’t watch the news. But it got me thinking – what would be the marketing equivalent of this? Well, here goes:

Brief like you are clear what you want
Research like you are curious
Develop ideas like they are never going to be tested
Tweet like you’ve got something to say


Try those out as resolutions for 2015 and let me know how it goes for you. I recall Gifford Pinchot’s 10 Commandments for Intrapreneurs (people who want to behave like entrepreneurs but in businesses owned by someone else so you never reap the full rewards for taking big risks) one of which was:

Come to work every day willing to be fired

Yes, that’s right, speak your mind, take risks, be bold. Perfect advice for people with large family trusts or another job lined up. I hope I am not coming across too cynical here.

Maybe the best thing is just to make a New Year’s Resolution to be resolute and resolve issues. I’m not sure I have ever read that on someone’s Year End Appraisal “John Smith is resolute. He uses curiosity and a preparedness to look at all the data, to take fresh points of view, then forms his own point of view which he applies to his business challenges resolutely”. I like the sound of that guy.

I also like the idea of resolving. Let’s face it there really are no new challenges in marketing so the challenge is to re-solve them – come up with some new ideas to the same old problems. I hope that inspires you all. My other resolution for this year is to write like anyone is reading and express ideas like anyone cares what I think. It’s either that or another hour on the bike.


Read more from Mark in our Clubhouse.

(Feature image courtesy of Andrew Campbell.)

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