Who do you know?
Type in Hugh into Google and he comes up top. Yup before Hugh Jackman and Hugh Grant…
Hugh is an ex Ad man, who in the last recession lost his job as a copywriter in New York. Hugh is a cartoonist, the CEO of Stormhoek wine USA, the Marketing Director of Saville Row’s bespoke tailor English Cut; oh yes, and the author of ‘Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity’.
Hugh started a blog 9 years ago and in it he wrote down the 40 rules that he had been taught as an Ad man about creativity – about the time of its million download he got a book deal together. It was written to really help others avoid the land-mines that he encountered. The wine, the suits all came from him writing his blog.
He started writing a blog about the things he felt strongly, whether advertising, loves lost, friends gained… the blog has had in excess of 1 billion visits. There can be no doubt that Hugh carries a wave of knowledge, has a large following and can exert some influence on products and services around the world.
He’s a friend of mine, we were at school together and have known each other since we were 10. I briefly went out with his sister (a long time ago)… he came to my wedding… you get the picture. Anyway the reason I mention Hugh – he was the one that introduced me to Jaiku and Twitter back in 2007 and all the other various social media platforms but more to the point he introduced me to the very reason they can work really well, or not at all.
There are a couple of chapters in his book that I particularly like, one is Sex and Cash. As a creative you have to follow both if you are going to make a living and pay the bills – yes you can do the sexy work – but more often than not it’s not that work the client buys. The other chapter is the “Great Ideas = a lonely childhood”, a great idea takes a while to grow and usually people don’t like it straight off the bat.
Hugh’s mates include Seth Godin, Loic Le Meur, Robert Scoble, Michael Arrington to name a few – he’s quite a handy friend to have – it made me question are businesses really getting this social thing? I’m quite fortunate that I own a digital business and know techy people that can help, who know techy / marketing people that know techy / marketing / advertising people… who do you know that can help your business? Are you using them to promote or discuss your business? Or are you ignoring everybody?