Belated Birthday Musings
Starting to hit mid life philisophical meanderings of the mind...thought I'd share.
Just had my 39th birthday - that's ok (got a bucket of KFC instead of cake, brilliant!!) - except for the onslaught of accompanying cliches & the really annoying "Single & 39??" online dating ads that have cluttered my Facebook page.
My favourite of all is "life is short", meant I assume, to inspire a sudden desire to climb mountains, date unsuitable men or drink myself into an irresponsible coma.
Well here's the thing people, life isn't short, in actuality it can be quite long. We have a myriad of choices & opportunities that needn't dry up at the first appearance of grey hair.
Not meaning to be pessimistic - yes it is short if you stuff it up & miss out on the things that should have been important all along (cue pics of family holidays & puppies). The flipside is, make the wrong choices & you have to live with them for a very, very long time, we're talking decades here kids! Not the bad break up hair do sort of choices, but the big stuff - career, marriage, finances - serious 'live with long lasting consequences' sort of stuff.
The upside is if you don't like the bed you've made for yourself, then you can always strip it back & start again - good for me, not so much for advertisers (you knew I was going there) - here's the lecture:
Brands! Stop & think before throwing your hard earned marketing dollars into the wind. You're meant to be creating relationships - authentic, consistent & in need of long haul nurturing.
With recession on the mind, you no longer have the luxury of saturating the market with a pretty TV ad in the hope that consumers will forget yesterday's wrong doings. (By the way - they never forget, they'll ocassionally choose to forgive).
Yes there are immediate business pressures, yes there is this whole world ecomomic crisis & productivity on everyone's lips - but here's the funny - short term knee jerk reaction, just as damaging as being paralysed by fear - possibly more so.
So, happy birthday me!
why do people have to hold up the mirror when you're perfectly capable of looking in it every morning yourself?
Posted by: kate | November 27, 2008 at 07:18 PM