Skip to main content

My Hopes For 2018


Three years ago I wrote a post called "My Hopes For 2015." Just to show how little things change, I am re-posting it here word-for-word as my hopes for 2018.


I'm tired of being disappointed. Every year I have high hopes that it's going to be different. And it never is.

So this year I am determined not to be disappointed. I've adjusted my hopes for the year accordingly.

Here's what I'm hoping for in 2015:

  • I'm hoping that some people with no talent or brains became really famous. 
  • I'm hoping that a presidential candidate writes a book.
  • I hope that some Hollywood stars sign a petition.
  • I'm hoping that a famous athlete gets arrested.
  • I'm hoping that college students discover the world isn't perfect.  
  • I hope there's a Super Bowl spot with talking animals.
  • I'm hoping that companies I buy things from make it very hard for me to talk to someone on the phone. 
  • I'm hoping for really annoying online ads. 
  • I hope to see more about Donald Trump, Kim Kardashian, and Al Sharpton.
  • I'm hoping that someone announces they are going to re-invent the ad agency. 
  • I'm hoping this is the year of mobile. 
  • I hope someone in Washington suggests that we move to the metric system. 
  • I hope that some pop music stars share their political opinions with us.
  • I'm hoping that a lot of people decide that anyone who doesn't agree with them -- particularly about religion or politics -- needs to be killed. 
  • I hope that two large advertising companies merge.  
  • I'm hoping that a marketing group holds a conference called "Disrupt" or "Engage" or "Connect."
  • I hope that people get really sensitive about their religion or race or size or height or sex or ethnicity. 
  • I'm hoping that we have more people on TV talk shows screaming at each other. 
  • I hope our elected representatives have really nice suits and haircuts.
  • I'm hoping someone makes a movie about a flawed loner who has to save the world.
  • I'm hoping that a car company has the best deals of the year. 
  • I'm hoping that all my friends post cute pictures of their children. 
  • I'm hoping someone says, "It is what it is." 
  • I hope that a food we thought was good for us turns out to be bad, and a food we thought was bad turns out to be good. 
  • I'm hoping for more data-driven insights.
  • I hope that the ceo of a once-great magazine or newspaper decides they need to be an "online content provider. " 
  • I'm hoping to read about developing my personal brand. 
  • I hope that a tech ceo publishes an article about how I can be just like him if I follow five simple rules. 
  • I hope that someone writes a book about how to market to millennials. 
I have a feeling that this year I won't be disappointed.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Simple-Minded Guide To Marketing Communication

We marketing people have a dreadful habit of taking the obvious and making it incomprehensible. So today I would like to go against the grain and take the obvious and make it more obvious. If you are someone who has to make decisions about how to spend marketing dollars, here are some principles I believe in for simplifying and clarifying your thinking. The first thing we have to understand about marketing communication is that there are no absolutes. There are just likelihoods and probabilities. When making communication decisions, our job is to assess likelihoods and probabilities. In other words, precision guessing . We need to reckon which of the many alternatives we are faced with has the highest probability of producing the result we are looking for with the budget we have. A second principle is to understand the limits of what we do. We don't have as much power to create business greatness as we think we do. There are too many important aspects of business success that a...

Technology, Progress, And Irresponsible Stupidity

The world does not move in straight lines. We expect things to go one way, but they unexpectedly go another. In 2000, when the Prius was introduced, most commentators saw a big future for hybrid vehicles. In 2009, a study by JPMorgan confidently asserted " 20% of all vehicles sold in U.S. to be hybrids by 2020. " In 2010, Consumer Reports said " 39 percent are considering buying a hybrid or plug-in for their next car. " And yet, as of April 2016, hybrid cars represented less than 2% of car sales in the US. Their share of market has dropped by 50% since 2013. A car dealer I know told me "we can't give 'em away." If you think the reason for this is the popularity of electric vehicles, think again. Electric vehicles represent less than 1% of car sales in the US. In the early 1990's the Soviet Union collapsed. We thought "liberal democracy" had become triumphant and would be the model for world governance. Today "liberal democracy...

How Ad Industry Destroys Brand Value

The advertising industry prides itself on being brand builders. Building successful brands is supposed to be the essence of what we do. But in recent years the ad industry has been guilty of cheapening some of the most important brands it controls -- its own. I am going to be picking on WPP because it is the biggest offender. But to some degree the same can probably be said about each of the major holding companies. WPP is the owner of some of the most famous and worthy brands in the history of the ad business: JWT, Ogilvy, Y&R and Grey. It has been systematically dismantling the value in these brands. Today they are splinters of what they were. The holding companies have undermined their agencies from the top down and from the bottom up. What a holding company usually does is buy successful brands and manage them at arms length to, presumably, add value to shareholders. Examples of successful holding companies are Berkshire Hathaway and Procter & Gamble. Nobody buys a Berkshir...