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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Posts tagged ‘2002’
07.01.2023
To the best of my recollection, this is the only photograph of HM Queen Elizabeth II and HRH the Duke of Edinburgh that I shot and own. You’ll have to look closely. In fact, you might not even see them at this resolution.
I gave the print to someone at Warehouse Stationery who was a big fan of the Queen, but I came across this scan yesterday. I still have the negative, of course.
This was from the royal visit in 2002, her last to Aotearoa. As Labour was in, and they weren’t big royalists, there wasn’t a huge welcome, and the Queen and Prince Philip were ferried around the back roads from Lyall Bay through Rongotai and Kilbirnie. Here they are in the viceregal Daimler Limousine on Coutts Street: I stopped my car to take the photograph from Mamari Street.
Congratulations to those who spotted Graham Payn’s line as Keats in The Italian Job used in the title.
Tags: 2002, Aotearoa, car, Daimler, history, New Zealand, photography, retro, Rongotai, royalty, Voigtländer, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara
Posted in cars, New Zealand, Wellington | No Comments »
09.09.2022
I wrote the below in Lucire—even though plenty of publications have covered our monarch’s passing, it still felt right to acknowledge it. After all, she had appeared in Lucire a few times.
With the passing of HM Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday UK time, it would be remiss of this magazine to not mark this world event.
During the 25 years of Lucire, the Queen has featured several times, mostly from events that she attended. We weren’t around when she was newly crowned in her coronation gown by Norman Hartnell, and wearing the latest British fashions in her youth, a glamorous symbol of a new Elizabethan era that lifted the United Kingdom’s mood after World War II and continued rationing. But it is easy to imagine the coronation in 1953 being a dazzling, colourful event, and indeed it was covered in the likes of British Vogue at the time.
Her era has seen unprecedented change. As the longest-serving monarch in British history, she presided over an era which saw television become mainstream (a technology that she embraced with her Christmas message), many former colonies gain their independence, the dawn of the World Wide Web, the end of apartheid in South Africa, and both her country’s entry into and exit from what is now the European Union.
Much has already been said about HM the Queen’s sense of duty, and how she still read her red box’s worth of papers as head of state right to the end. On Tuesday she asked Liz Truss as the new prime minister—the Queen’s 15th, having begun with Sir Winston Churchill when she ascended to the throne—to form a government.
Here in Lucire the late Queen has attended events we happened to cover, beginning in 2008, with her last appearance at the Cartier Queen’s Cup in 2017.
I only caught a glimpse of her during a state visit to New Zealand in 2002 during her golden jubilee. It was her last visit to Aotearoa.
The visit was very subdued and HM the Queen and HRH the Duke of Edinburgh were whisked from the airport round the back roads of Rongotai, past the main street by Lucire’s then-HQ. I managed to photograph them as they drove by.
A neighbourhood shop had a staff member who was a diehard monarchist. I mentioned I had a photo of the royal couple and later gifted her my print. I still have the negative somewhere.
At the time, my sense was that our Labour government had republican leanings and downplayed the royal visit, hence ferrying them in the viceregal Daimler past industrial areas; it was a far cry from an earlier visit I witnessed in 1981 when as a school pupil, my schoolmates and I lined the drive at Government House to welcome her.
As someone who chose to retain my British nationality (I dutifully renew my passport every 10 years), as well as adopting my New Zealand one in 1980, I admit to having a tremendous amount of respect for HM Queen Elizabeth II and her unwavering sense of duty. Some of us born in Hong Kong in the 1970s, whose parents had memories of less pleasant times behind the Bamboo Curtain, appreciated the freedoms, although they stopped short of democracy, that we enjoyed in a Crown colony. Up to a point: my father said he could have worked harder to lose his Chinese accent after fleeing Taishan for Hong Kong after the communist revolution of 1949, but he chose not to as he didn’t want to be seen as sycophantic to the colonial power.
It was thanks to the Commonwealth that my Hong Kong-born, but China-raised, mother was able to obtain her nursing qualification from the General Nursing Council for England and Wales. When we emigrated to New Zealand, that made her transition into her job that much easier, as it was considered a notch above the rest. (Having said that, the Hospital Board put her on a lower pay grade than what she deserved, leading my parents to fight for it, with the help of Sir Francis Kitts, a family friend and the former mayor of Wellington. We won.)
When we came here, one familiar thing was that the currency had the Queen on it, and it was her constant presence that told you that there were, in principle at least, shared values. While we can rightfully critique the Empire and what it was built on, at least for this chunk of history, it was a reassurance for us as émigrés that there would be the rule of law in our new country, something that, as my parents could attest, China lacked during the difficult years of the war and immediately after.
My father’s preferred form of governance was social democracy, but he appreciated a constitutional monarchy; and my own studies at law school concluded that while an imperfect system, it was one which I, too, valued. The prospect of one of our own being president, at least to the law student me in 1992, seemed unfathomable and potentially divisive.
The success of the system does depend on our faith and trust in the monarch. HM Queen Elizabeth II gave us that sense, as one who placed duty first. As this nation enters into a period of official mourning, we also wonder what her successor, HM King Charles III, will bring to the table, with his interests in the environment and a UK government that he might not see eye to eye with.
Whatever the future, we pay tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II and mark the close of this second Elizabethan age.
Tags: 1970s, 2002, 2022, Aotearoa, family, history, Hong Kong, JY&A Media, Lucire, media, New Zealand, publishing, royalty, UK, Whanganui-a-Tara
Posted in China, culture, Hong Kong, media, New Zealand, publishing, technology, UK, Wellington | 4 Comments »
10.11.2020
Danjaq LLC/United Artists
Time for another podcast, this time with a Scottish theme. I touch upon how fortunate we are here in Aotearoa to be able to go to the ballet or expos, and, of course, on the US elections (thanks to those who checked out my last podcast entry, which had a record 31 plays—sure beats the single digits!). That leads on to a discussion about A. G. Barr, Richard Madden, and Sir Sean Connery, who never said, ‘The name’s Bond, James Bond.’
Tags: 2002, 2020, A. G. Barr, Annette Rosencreutz, Aotearoa, Bora-Bora, Boris Johnson, culture, Donald Trump, election, film, humour, James Bond, Joe Biden, media, Medinge Group, New Zealand, personal branding, podcast, politics, popular culture, Rory Bremner, Scotland, Sean Connery, Tahiti, Thomas Gad, TV, UK, USA
Posted in culture, interests, media, New Zealand, politics, Sweden, TV, UK, USA | No Comments »
19.12.2016
Tonight, I had the sad and solemn duty to announce publicly the passing of my friend Thomas Gad.
I’m still waiting for someone to come out and tell me that I have been severely pranked.
Thomas was the founder of what we now call Medinge Group. After working for 17 years at Grey Advertising as an international creative director, Thomas set up Brandflight, a leading branding consultancy HQed in Stockholm. He authored 4-D Branding, Managing Brand Me (with his wife, Annette Rosencreutz), and, most recently, Customer Experience Branding.
In 2000, Thomas seized on an idea: why not gather a bunch of leading brand practitioners at Annette’s family’s villa at Medinge, three hours west of Stockholm, for a bit of R&R, where they could all discuss ideas around the profession?
Nicholas Ind was one of the people at that first meeting. In a statement tonight, Nick wrote, ‘I first met Thomas when I was working in Stockholm in 2000—he invited me to join him at Medinge in the Swedish countryside to talk about branding. So began a professional and personal relationship that was truly fulfilling. Thomas, and his wife Annette, hosted the annual meetings we had at his house every summer after that with unrivalled generosity. My strongest recollection of those days is not the debates we had or flying with Thomas in his sea plane (even though those are also memorable), but Thomas and Annette sitting at the dinner table in the evenings singing songs, telling jokes and bringing everyone together. Thomas was exceptional in the way he made everyone feel welcome and valued in the group—he will be deeply missed.’
I came on the scene in 2002, invited by Chris Macrae. The event had become international the year before. Thomas and Annette made me feel incredibly at home at Medinge, and we had an incredibly productive meeting. He had taught me to sing ‘Helan gÃ¥r’, for no Swedish gathering is complete without a drinking song.
At the same meeting, I met Ian Ryder, who wrote, ‘As a founding member, and now Honorary Life Member, of Medinge Group I couldn’t possibly let such a sad announcement pass without observation. Thomas was a really bright, intellectually and socially, human being who I first met at the inaugural pre-Medinge group meeting in Amsterdam sixteen years ago. Little did we know then that our band of open-minded, globally experienced brand experts would develop into a superb think-tank based out of Thomas’s home in Medinge, Sweden.
‘For many years he and his lovely wife, Annette, hosted with a big heart, the annual gathering at which he played fabulous host to those of us who made it there. A larger-than-life, clever and successful professional, Thomas will be sorely missed by all those lucky enough to have known him.’
By the end of the summer 2002 meeting we had some principles around branding, the idea for a book (which became Beyond Branding), and a desire to formalize ourselves into an organization. The meeting at Medinge would soon become the Medinge Group (the definite article was part of our original name), and we had come to represent brands with a conscience: the idea that brands could do good, and that business could be humane and humanistic. This came about in an environment of real change: Enron, which had been given awards for supposedly doing good, had been exposed as fraudulent; there was a generation of media-savvy young people who could see through the BS and were voting and buying based on causes they supported; and inequality was on the rise, something that the late Economist editor, Norman Macrae (Chris’s Dad) even then called humankind’s most pressing concern. If everything is a product of its time, then that was true of us; and the issues that we care about the most are still with us, and changes to the way we do business are needed more now than ever.
This is Thomas’s legacy: Medinge Group is an incorporated company with far more members worldwide, holding two meetings per annum: the annual summer retreat in Sweden, and a public event every spring, with the next in Sevilla. The public events, and the Brands with a Conscience awards held in the 2000s, came about during Stanley Moss’s time as CEO. Stanley wrote this morning, ‘Thomas brought his vision and resources to the foundation of Medinge, and served as a critical voice in the international movement for humanistic brands.’ We continue today to spread that vision.
We have now been robbed far too early of two of our talents: Colin Morley, in the 7-7 bombings in London in 2005; and, now, Thomas, taken by cancer at age 65. My thoughts go to Annette and to the entire family.
Tags: 2000, 2002, 2016, Annette Rosencreutz, authorship, Beyond Branding, Brandflight, branding, Brands with a Conscience, Chris Macrae, Colin Morley, corporate social responsibility, CSR, friendship, Ian Ryder, Medinge Group, Nicholas Ind, Stanley Moss, Stockholm, Sweden, Thomas Gad
Posted in branding, business, marketing, social responsibility, Sweden | 4 Comments »
09.06.2016
Above: Chris Evans and Rory Reid talk about the McLaren F1 in Extra Gear.
Now that the new new Top Gear has aired in New Zealand, I have to say that it isn’t really there yet. But unlike much of the UK, I’m not going to dis Chris Evans, who is a consummate gearhead. The reason: I have a memory that goes back beyond February 2016.
When Jeremy Clarkson and Andy Wilman brought Top Gear back in its current form in 2002, it was actually disappointing. People seem to forget James May, who originally replaced Clarkson in the original Top Gear, wasn’t even on the show. My memory of the studio audience was that there were about four people hanging around Clarkson as he introduced … wait for it … the Citroën Berlingo. Which he took to France (insert Clarkson pause) to buy cheese.
The idea of a show with a perfect complement of three hosts who got on well with each other, each playing a caricature of himself, did not exist for the first year, and even after May replaced Jason Dawe, it took a while for those personalities to emerge. It’s rare to get three hosts to play those roles as well from the get-go—Top Gear France (which is actually made by the BBC) is an exception, and every other foreign edition of Top Gear that I’ve seen doesn’t quite have it.
But Clarkson was a ratings’ winner. When he first quit Top Gear (or ‘old Top Gear’), the series which started with Angela Rippon as its host in the 1970s, ratings fell from six million to three million. The TV environment was different a decade and a half ago. And the BBC persevered because at that time he hadn’t offended Mexicans or Argentinians, or assaulted an Irishman, or Piers Morgan.
However, importantly, the public was quite happy letting things develop. They could have gone and watched Fifth Gear with its familiar line-up of ex-Top Gear presenters, but they stuck with Clarkson, Hammond, and whomever the third man was.
Twenty sixteen. Enter Chris Evans and Matt Le Blanc (somewhere between the ending of Friends and today, the space seems to have disappeared in his surname), both personalities who love cars. They are disadvantaged by not having been motoring journalists, but they are entertaining. The show doesn’t flow well with the studio segments, the stars introducing each other doesn’t work, and I’m nostalgic for the reasonably priced car—although at least the French have continued la tradition. However, because everyone expects the show to remain on a high, the internet jury has been nasty. No one demanded an overnight success before, but they’re out for blood now. It’s an unfair position to put Evans in.
The absence of motoring journalism experience could have been filled quite easily. We were originally told of a huge line-up of Top Gear presenters, to which I thought: great, the BBC is going to give a big roster a go again, something that we hadn’t seen since the 1990s. In there we saw names such as Chris Harris. Yet Chris Harris and Rory Reid have been relegated to an internet-only show called Extra Gear, which is meant to serve Top Gear in the way Doctor Who Confidential served Doctor Who, with a bit of behind-the-scenes stuff, deleted footage, and some sensible road testing around the test track of models not covered in the main show.
Here’s the thing, and this has been said in the British press: these two guys have great rapport, and come across better than Evans and Le Blanc. I vote for them to be on the main Top Gear. They are more personable, humorous, and relatable. I wouldn’t be surprised if they found a way to work them both in next season, and why not four hosts?
One thing Harris and Reid have is that they know their stuff after serving in motoring journalism. They aren’t rich guys who happen to love cars, but guys who have worked that passion into careers. Harris, in particular, put integrity ahead of kissing up to Ferrari and Lamborghini. I have tremendous respect for these two guys, and there’s simply more heart in Extra Gear than Top Gear, which at present feels a bit empty and by-the-numbers.
I don’t blame Evans at all—the man had a herculean task. The producers probably tried to reduce Top Gear into formulaic chunks and believed that by cooking with those ingredients, they’d have a winner. This is a reminder that you cannot create heart from a formula: you can’t predict where it surfaces. Now that we know it’s there with Reid and Harris, the BBC would be wise to capture it. Let Top Gear evolve—after all, it did between 2002 and 2015—but also let these personalities do their thing.
Tags: 2000s, 2002, 2016, BBC, cars, celebrity, England, history, Top Gear, TV, UK
Posted in cars, culture, interests, media, TV, UK | 1 Comment »
26.01.2014
I posted this quotation from I Acknowledge on my Tumblr today:
The news that should have us all worried is: the derivatives market contains $700trn of these debts yet to implode.
Global GDP stands at $69·4trn a year. This means that (primarily) Wall Street and the City of London have run up phantom paper debts of more than ten times of the annual earnings of the entire planet.
It brings me back to one of the first things we ever wrote in the Medinge manifesto: ‘Finance is broken.’ Attempting to value companies using shares or financial statements can be a mugs’ game—and that was in 2002, before the market became so improbable.
If only we knew how much worse things would get. And we thought, in the immediate post-9-11 period, that we would be learning the lesson about a Dow that was well overvalued. History has shown that we didn’t. And the most recent recession hasn’t corrected things: we’re still sitting on a time bomb.
We wrote in the manifesto, ‘We believe money is a poor snapshot of human value. Brands, however, create value. The branding industry is about creating value for our customers. It makes more sense to measure the ingredients of branding and relationships.’
It’s an ideal, and one with its own problems, too. But I know that part of the finance industry has failed us through its greed. I’m not too certain how their deeds and those of these British forgers differ, creating “wealth” backed by nothing.
Tags: 2002, Beyond Branding, branding, corruption, Dow Jones, England, finance, London, Medinge Group, New York, NY, stock market, UK, USA, Wall Street
Posted in business, globalization, UK, USA | No Comments »
05.07.2011
 I don’t think there are too many people prepared to condone the News of the World’s alleged hacking of the cellphone of murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler in 2002. Not only did the Murdoch Press paper hack the phone, but when her voicemail filled up, The Guardian alleges that the News of the World began deleting newer messages—giving the Dowler family hope that their daughter was still alive and checking messages. By that time she had already been murdered, though it didn’t stop the same newspaper from interviewing her parents and asking them if they had hope that Milly was still alive.
There’s an outcry today, of course, as this news became public, and the Murdoch Press has said it would cooperate with authorities.
Although it must be noted that its article in The Sun on the subject this morning merited a grand total of 95 words.
The best punishment that everyday consumers can make is to stop buying their papers. But I don’t think it’ll happen.
After the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, we received so many comments from readers at another publication along the lines of, ‘I will never buy a tabloid again.’ What happened? Those readers might have stuck to their commitment, but tabloid circulation actually rose after Diana’s death.
I’ve no doubt that the print numbers have since fallen—we are now in the 21st century, and the daily dead-tree industry looks increasingly anachronistic—but the appetite for tabloids and tabloid journalism remains.
We still live in a world where ‘sources close to’ are interpreted as gospel, even by some so-called qualities and broadsheets.
If Milly Dowler’s case is to mean anything, these commitments to dump tabloids, on- or offline, had better stick.
Tags: 2002, cellphone, commerce, England, history, journalism, law, London, media, Murdoch Press, newspaper, privacy, Surrey, UK
Posted in business, internet, media, publishing, UK | 1 Comment »
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