Personal thoughts about my friend, Merrill J. Fernando

Above: Amanda and me with Merrill in 2016.   I was saddened to learn of the passing of my friend Merrill J. Fernando, founder of Dilmah Tea and the MJF Foundation. I’ve written an obit over at Lucire, since he was very much a friend of the magazine, too, and his values of social responsibility […]

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Twenty years ago, Lucire and United Nations Environment Programme teamed up for a first

  Twenty years ago, the United Nations Environment Programme and Lucire announced their partnership. I look back at how the arrangement came about in 2002–3. At the time, it was unheard of for a mainstream fashion title to make this sort of a commitment to sustainability, but I felt we couldn’t afford not to. Even […]

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CSR is already woven into Māori leadership

I was fascinated to read a New Zealand Herald story on the Māori asset base, though it wasn’t the financial part that hit me. What was more significant were the principles behind Māori businesses.    About 15 years ago, when chatting to a woman representing a Māori winery, I said that she had an amazing […]

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Endorsing Laurie Foon for Southern Ward

While I no longer live in the Southern Ward in Wellington, I know whom I would vote for if I still did. It’s after a lot of thought, given how strong the candidates are—I count several of them as my friends. One stands out.    I have known Laurie Foon for 20 years this year […]

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Being an optimist for a better post-Google, post-Facebook era

Interesting to get this perspective on ‘Big Tech’ from The Guardian, on how it’s become tempting to blame the big Silicon Valley players for some of the problems we have today. The angle Moira Weigel takes is that there needs to be more democracy in the system, where workers need to unite and respecting those […]

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Trading identities in the 2010s: when corporate branding and personal branding adopt each other’s methods

Above: Brand Kate Moss was probably seen by more people when the model collaborated with Topshop. In 1999, the late Wally Olins sent me his book, Trading Identities: Why Countries and Companies are Taking on Each Other’s Roles, a fine read published by the Foreign Policy Centre that argued that countries were trying to look […]

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Farewell to Thomas Gad: a friend, a colleague, and a uniter

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 […]

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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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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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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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