How can we help those fooled into believing what their local brands are?

How interesting to see a silly Tweet of mine make the Murdoch Press and lead an opinion column—I’m told it even hit the news.com.au home page.    It’s a very old joke that I’ve told since 2002, when I walked along Bay Road in Kilbirnie and saw a locksmith sign in Futura. Back then, Dick […]

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When mistrust brings us together

I can be staunch on IP protection in a lot of cases—but in the case of Martin Shkreli of Turing Pharmaceuticals AG hiking the price of an Aids drug from $13·50 to $750 per pill, not so much (for obvious reasons). If you’re in pharmaceuticals, then there has to be some element of wanting to […]

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Four ingredients of leadership

I was asked by my Alma Mater, Victoria University of Wellington, to give a 90-minute lecture on leadership last week to students visiting New Zealand from Peking University and the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. (My half-serious suggestion that I spoke Cantonese and the three students from Guangdong who understood could translate to Mandarin to […]

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Being answerable to your public (or, if you can’t engage now, can we expect you to in office?)

One of my supporters Tweeted to say I was the only candidate at Vote.co.nz who has bothered to reply to citizens’ questions. It’s good for me, but sad to see my opponents so disengaged. I was also surprised to see that only three of us have bothered to register for the website this time, despite […]

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It’s official today: I am running for Mayor of Wellington again

It’s probably the worst-kept secret among some of the political circles, but I am running for Mayor of Wellington.    Wellington is a world-class city, with generous, creative, industrious, innovative and independent people who punch above their weight. And it’s time, I believe, for some leadership and some 21st-century thinking, to bring the right people […]

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Thinking to the future as Lucire turns 15

I’ve written so many editorials about Lucire’s history for our various anniversaries that now we’ve turned 15, I feel like I’d just be going over old ground. Again. I’d do it maybe for the 20th or 21st, but the story has been told online and in print many times.    But 15 is a bit […]

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Source4Style launches today, seeking to revolutionize the business of fashion

[Cross-posted] Summer Rayne Oakes and Benita Singh’s Cartier award-winning venture, Source4Style, which helps designers source sustainable fabric through a well designed, transparent website, launches its second version today. Lucire has the low-down in the main part of the site, and this story forms part of some of our next 2012 print and other non-web editions. […]

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Panos Emporio: dare to be human

We weren’t responsible for the layout or photography, but our contribution here is in the tagline, ‘Dare to be human’.    In my 12-year friendship with Panos Papadopoulos, the designer behind Swedish swimwear (and now clothing) label Panos Emporio, we’ve often worked on marketing tasks. The most recent one: come up with a tagline that […]

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Wikileaks’ brand of transparency is the enemy of the establishment

There are probably two things, chiefly, that fuel support for Julian Assange.    First, the idea that the mainstream media are not independent, but merely mouthpieces for the establishment. There’s some truth to this.    Secondly, the fact that Wikileaks is revealing, this time, things that we already knew: that governments are two-faced.    While […]

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TPPA could turn the clock back

During the campaign trail, people tended to ask me if I was left or right. While I cheekily said, ‘Forward,’ many a time (and had at least one imitator), there’s something to be said for abandoning what are, effectively, nineteenth-century constructs.    And unless you are DI Alex Drake in Ashes to Ashes, you need […]

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