Attention abundance disorder

I asked a few people this question today – if you had to pay for TikTok, Insta, X etc with a monthly subscription fee, would you do it? Invariably the answer was no. Perhaps inevitably so, because who doesn’t like a freebie?

Then when I asked, if there isn’t anything on these platforms you consider to be worth paying for, why are you on them? There was usually a pause, perhaps a shrug, then a listing of a few minor benefits.

You can probably tell, I’m no big fan of social media. I’m active-ish on LinkedIn. I get the role the platforms play and feel obliged, given my job, to stay sufficiently abreast of developments in the field. I also have accounts so I can use them for research sometimes. These platforms do, I think, have a positive offer for small businesses in particular.

However, I’m 100% anti the amount of people’s attention they absorb with so much damage and so very little in return. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Compare, compare, compare, Not enlightening. Not edifying. Vacuous. Soul destroying.

Hello social media platforms, if you profit from an abundance of people’s attention do something good with it. Don’t manipulate it. Change what you offer to something worth paying for. Help your users raise their game too.

I mean, if the biggest number of impressions I got on LinkedIn was for a post celebrating my identifying two dishwasher parts, something is very wrong.

Shakespeare and social capital

Sunday. Caught up on back issues of The New European and stopped on an article by journalist and author @GaryNunn. He was reflecting on being a social mobility experiment and how he and Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, both experienced what university was like via a Sutton Trust Summer School.

Nunn experienced Nottingham University. Streeting, Cambridge. The aim of these summer schools was – and is – giving young people from disadvantaged backgrounds some advance experience of the environment their talent could take them to. An environment which could, let’s face it, easily turn them off and away, because it in no way reflects the world they grew up in.

This all made me think of my secondary comprehensive school and the head teacher who led it for the best part of three decades. I found a 2003 article in TES Magazine, where the school is described as drawing from the best of the public school tradition, particularly in relation to extra curricular activities.

I benefited in abundance – not everyone did – from the sport, drama, art and music opportunities. There was even a debating society for a while (Rory Stewart would be pleased), as well as house competitions and trips. One of which took place every year – a two week stay at a campsite in Stratford-upon-Avon, during which we saw every play going, at all three of the theatres.

Our head teacher was obsessed with Shakespeare you see. He’s quoted in the TES article as saying “I love Shakespeare and I love my students. Shakespeare’s work has the deepest understanding of humanity I know, and when I see my students, every year, exploring these great mysteries and doing it well, it’s so uplifting.”

I do need to say again that not everyone felt included in this kind of activity but I do think that, in general, it was a very positive and involving school. For those of us who did go onto university – after our small town comprehensive – the traditional grounding we received, meant that the cultural shock and imposter syndrome we could have experienced, was lessened.

Reflecting back now, it meant that no-one at university felt alien to me, whatever schooling they’d had, even those who went to the leading public schools. I obviously spent as much time as I could making them justify it.

I guess what we’re talking about here is being handed some social capital – some inside track on what different situations involve. Being exposed to environments, protocols and opportunities outside of your immediate sphere and feeling more prepared for them.

It’s what my head teacher did in his own particular way, via Shakespeare camps, sixth form plays, annual Shakespeare performances and his selection of teachers, who gave so much of their own time to our extra curricular activities.

I wish there was more social capital sharing going on. But self-declared elites, anti-wokeism, rising protectionism and obsessive consumerism – as well as under investment in everything for the social good – are all conspiring to close doors, not open them. The trajectory I thought I was on – and assumed the next generation after me would consequently be on – is feeling very wobbly.

Please share your social capital today.

Brighter Days

I’m a sucker for a bright colour combination, leaving me less than enthused about Pantone’s colour of the year for 2025, an “evocative soft brown” they’re calling Mocha Mousse. I think they should drop an ‘s’ and call it Mocha Mouse.

The colours in the screen grab here are from Samia Halaby’s kinetic painting Spooling Up (1988) featured at Tate Modern’s Electric Dreams exhibition. The other brightly coloured painting that immediately drew me in was in the opening room: Work, by Japanese artist Atsuko Tanaka, reproduced for this Tate art print here.

Overall, Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet made me feel nostalgic, longing for a past era when experimentation felt innocent and original. For all the power of technology today things are feeling generic, even perhaps, a little Mocha Mouse…Mousse sorry.

Is the trend to passive and held back because there’s so much uncertainty around?

On looking both artists up I was happy to discover that they were women working their magic with colour. Etel Adnan is another woman artist I love who produces incredible colours and works with them in brilliant ways.

Brand Britain

This caught my eye, research by brand agency JKR on Brand Britain, covered by Creative Review. The headline asked, what does Britishness mean to brands now? I assumed very little, as did JKR prior to the research, but there is apparently reason for some optimism – if you’re a glass half full kind of person. We’re basically split 50-50 as a country (no news there), in our opinions of whether Britain is a force for good in the world, whether we’d choose to be a citizen of here or anywhere else, and whether we feel positive about the country.

The full report really is worth a read. You can download it here. I liked the structure of glass half empty responses to Brand Britain and glass half full perceptions. On the positive side, we’re front of mind with 18-34 year olds in G20 countries and seen as an attractive country, coming second to the USA. The top six traits associated with our nation are Sophisticated, Attractive, Strong, Trustworthy, Competent and Friendly, then comes Arrogant before we return to positives including Creative, Fun and Happy. Not too bad, eh, given the last 10 years of turmoil. 

Across the generations, all Brits feel that as a nation we’re Witty, Enduring and Traditional. Which inform the report’s conclusion that Tradition with a Twist is the way forward for our national brand. Something that has been extensively leveraged in the past, don’t you think? So I’m not quite sure, but it was good to see there’s still plenty of positivity hanging around Brand Britain.

Here’s why an open brief doesn’t work

Halfway through my first Masterclass ‘Achieve more with Gen AI’ with Ethan Mollick and Allie K. Miller, I was struck by this statement from Miller: restrictions boost creativity. She was saying the tighter the restrictions the better the outputs from Gen AI; that putting things in a box makes GenAI more creative. The same can 100% be said of creative teams, who need to know what box they’re in, to push the boundaries and get out of it. This all reminded me of an exhibition I organised a few years back with artist and designer Zoltan Marfy. It’s title was One Word Brief. Graphic designers, photographers and artists anywhere could select a One Word Brief from the options we provided and develop a response. We thought this kind of open brief would them to demonstrate their talent at full pelt. The reality was lots of people struggled and most responses were lack lustre. The better responses were from people who added restrictions to the brief – they took the One Word Brief and put it in a box of their own.

Optimistic

So this is the guy you’d prefer to have 211.4 million followers on X and sending their advice to the UK – Rutger Bregman, historian, author and co-founder of The School for Moral Ambition. He’s a guy who’s optimistic about human potential and wants to tempt talented people away from b*llshit jobs to make the world a better place, by taking on the biggest problems of  our time. The reason I believe he might just do it is examples I’ve seen of his fearless but subtle undermining of those who spout negativity and seek division. He challenges not with acerbic words or anger but with facts, humour,  steadfastness and transparency, and a sense, I suspect, that those he opposes are just a bit silly. Ambitious idealists like him, should discover more about The School for Moral Ambition at rutgerbregman.com/sma, where you’re invited to take the step towards a career with positive impact.

Interviews are often rubbish

There’s been an interesting thread on LinkedIn recently about sharing interview questions in advance of interviews. In principle I really like this, for inclusivity reasons in particular. But there’s an underlying assumption that interview questions either shared beforehand or asked in the meeting are good! Often questions are dry and generic, immediately diminishing the draw of a role and a company, and not giving the candidate anything to chew on, or the space and freedom to show their metal.

Effective interviewing is a real skill and much more emphasis should be put on interviewers doing it well. (Turning up having read a CV is a good starting point people.) So train managers/interviewers on how to get the most out of people, and make sure they know that monologuing about their business or department for 30 minutes doesn't reveal much about the candidate! (I've experienced the listening game in interviews too many times.)

Hopefully any interview questions are just the starting point for an insightful conversation about challenges, opportunities and relevant experience but also a door opener to discovering someone's potential. i.e., My pet peeve, don't just look at past job titles on people's CVs, discuss their ambition, what's next and what they want to learn, as well as getting to know them in the round. Find out who they are as an individual not just a job title and what they believe they're capable of? Then you start to get to cultural fit, on top of experience criteria, and even to people who can help shift your culture and business in the direction you need.

Oracy yes, spin no

Call me sentimental, cheesy, naïve or a dumb broad (actually not that), but when the world gets really heavy, I return to The West Wing. Any season from 1-4 will do. Who doesn’t feel reassured by a Toby Ziegler and Sam Seaborn speech in the midst of complex geopolitics, national tragedy or new policy that will lift people out of poverty and provide everyone with equal opportunity.

So of course Oracy being on the agenda at schools in the UK works for me. Being able to express fluently and grammatically in speech is an incredible and requisite skill to really get along in life. But it is abused.

We don’t need to look too far for examples of people using their speaking skills to deceive, obfuscate, dress up and motivate, when the substance isn’t there to back up the claims. This is a crime I need to be cautious of committing too.

There’s nothing I like doing more on the copywriting front than packing lots of meaning into as few words as possible. But I can feel my skin crawl with embarrassment as three word slogans are tripped out by politicians, fully aware that I’ve been guilty of the same and of some greenwash too.

Recently, I’ve noticed regular mention of the need to create, take hold of or steer the narrative, and of the need to develop the “right” backstory. As if all these things are open to manipulation and the story is all that matters to get you to where you want to be. Well they are open to manipulation, but I’m putting in a new bid for substance. Oracy, without the spin.

Embarking on the Midjourney

Have you heard the garbage in, garbage out saying? Here’s how Wikipedia describes it:

“In computer science, garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) is the concept that flawed, or nonsense (garbage) input data produces nonsense output.”

The same goes for any kind of input or briefing. If you don’t provide a decent brief, you only get decent creativity back if the someone(s) on the receiving end bother to challenge it, rethink it, push the boundaries a bit – or a lot – and tell you you’ve got it wrong.

Where does this leave us with briefing the machines I wonder? I’m going to find out with Midjourney, the San Francisco founded, generative AI research lab.

The twist is though, I’m not going to brief in the fantastical, as with most of their Community Showcase images. A large number of which, btw, seem to be images of remarkably similarly featured young women.

Wide eyes, button nose, white/tan, flawless skin anyone? Because it seems that’s the only response there is to the key words lady, woman, girl, empress, bride, cyberpunk, cyborg and beautiful alien girl!!" To be fair, that is probably what the world in the main is telling the machines. (GIGO right there.)

No, the twist is giving Midjourney the sort of briefing given in branding and comms all the time. You know core thoughts/ideas that are intended to lead to something distinctive, not just on the logo front but in terms of an overall visual brand or campaign.

Are the machines up to it? More interestingly perhaps, how does the briefing need to change to get outputs that aren’t garbage. Watch this space.

Don’t forget what isn’t measured

I’m all for great career advice. I’m not sure I received any at school or university. I didn’t know what the university milk round was so didn’t turn up and my career may have ended up differently if I had. So that was a bit of social capital I missed out on. Just a small lump of social capital compared to the amount many others don’t have and that’s something this country needs to work on for young people today. What I’m not sure it needs to work on is giving future jobs advice to five year olds. I’m with Margaret Heffernan who wrote in the FT “Schools should teach curiosity, not careerism”. Don’t get me started on the education system today, particularly since my sis gave me the book for Christmas “Sedated. How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis” (James Davies). Everyone being programmed (quite literally) to fill an industrial box is a shabby route to continue on for human existence. We’ll soon be measuring kids performance in coding as a matter of priority, as well as English and Maths, and while coding for sure is important, if we only measure and therefore manage that, what are we forgetting and leaving behind? If we did teach curiosity not careerism, we could cross-fertilise all subjects, come up with cool stuff and be a lot happier as human beings in the process.