Here’s a question for anyone following COP 17 and the English Premier League – why is Climate Change like Robin van Persie?

You don’t have to be a fan of Arsenal to know that van Persie has been on fire this season & year scoring virtually a goal a game, putting him in front of the lauded Messi & moody Rooney. But Arsenal is in a fight for fourth place & a Champions League spot, following a disastrous opening to the campaign, leading many to scoff that the club is a one-man team. Climate Change has been making headlines for the past decade, to the extent we forget about the loss of biodiversity, peak oil, peak water, precarious food supplies, growing consumption & growing population. Climate Change is theone-man team of Disaster Rovers.

Disaster Rovers vs. Planet City

To extend the analogy (hopefully not to breaking point) we have the match of the new millennium:  Disaster Rovers vs. Planet City.  Added to the Rovers team listed above and with Climate Change as the striker, are Disease,...

Isn't it strange that as soon as people join a company, they are put into a division? Wanting to be whole, needing to be more than the sum of our individual abilities, we are sliced into things called profit centres. We fuel our tribal fears at the expense of our generosity of spirit. Brands are hailed as the unifying principle of the organisation. Yet brand-owners, busily create divisions for advertising, sponsorships, promotions, social media, corporate social investment and so much more, with separate budgets, objectives, agendas and measurements. They lose sight of the consumer who reacts to a whole brand and its myriad of touch-points across space & time. The low awareness, lack of affinity, increasing mistrust & shrinking territory that many brands suffer in the marketplace, echo confusion within. Divisions threaten the whole they are there to support. Because, by their very nature, divisions divide. Canaries in the mine When Freedthinkers are called in as brand doctors the usual diagnosis is...

I want to put a ding in the Universe. Steve Jobs

The hero's journey is a story celebrated in art and life. "The Lion King" opens with a happy young cub. Then thrust out into the wilderness, tough lessons are learnt. In the third act, re-entry to the magic kingdom, the most extreme test awaits. Now consider the career of Steve Jobs. One of the great garagistes, his early & quite clunky personal computers heralded an age of digital deities. Then, losing his war against the carbonated drink CEO he had appointed, Jobs wilderness was animation. Called back to the magic kingdom, at a time of dire trouble, he needed to fight his greatest battle - against the rampant Microsoft. The value of Apple surged past Microsoft some time back, & a few weeks before Steve Jobs announced his resignation as CEO, Apple became albeit briefly, the most valuable company on the New York Stock Exchange. Is it the beginning of a new world order where what's in your head is worth more than what's in the ground? Can oil & gas - the lifeblood of our world today be less valuable than premium priced consumer electronics - essentially a middle-class luxury? ...

One Small Step for Man in Bamboo Socks I’ve been reading about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area larger than the USA, where abandoned fishing nets, plastic bath toys, computers & plastic pellets wash around endlessly and wondered if I would find my odd socks and lost pens there.

Or perhaps Steve Jobs had charitably combined the talents of Apple & Pixar Studios with global MacBooks animating socks & pens in the dead of night, then directing them to march off and find the one-legged penless of the world.

These thoughts propelled me around the socks section of a Cape Waterfront clothing store, grumpily looking for replacement pairs.  Cotton-rich socks (unspecified percentage) with multi-coloured toes momentarily appealed to my hidden hippy, until I came across bamboo socks.  I knew that bamboo was eco-friendlier than most wood, so it had to be better for the future of humanity than water-gulping cotton.  They were in plain black or caramel – but fashion be damned, I was flashing my green credentials.

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Brand-building in the Time of Conspicuous Conservation  

Joel the Tailor was in a dilemma. It was approaching the time of the Jewish New Year and his synagogue asked him to take out a half-page ad in their annual magazine. Joel had no problem with this, the synagogue was in a poor area and struggled to make ends meet. The ads from local tradespeople helped. Some ads prominently promoted the advertiser - so his first effort was: "Be a Mensch in a suit by Joel the Tailor". Then the Rabbi advised him that the highest form of charity is when the giver is not known. That was fine, but business was slow and where did charity begin if not at the tailor-shop - after all, no customers, no ads next year. He resolved his dilemma with his ad, which read: "This space is donated by Joel the Best Tailor in the Mile End Road - anonymously". While the story, told by my late father, may well be apocryphal, it resonates with a human truth - we like to be recognised for doing good. On a larger scale, we have...

We are currently involved in three change processes. The first is with a once pace-setting company that now drags its heels; the second with an efficient organisation that is losing its relevance, finding itself out of tune with the times; the third with a leader needing a new & significant challenge. We encounter the reactionaries and radicals, the purists & pragmatists, farmers & hunters. We see fear of loss, hope of gain & the muddled middle.

The climate change debate is changing. Stage one was the no it isn't /yes it is debate, stage two was woe is us, the end of the world is nigh and now we begin to discuss and implement practical solutions.

For those who believe we have woken up too late, here is some reassuring maths from someone who woke up before almost anyone else.

Welcome to summit season on Planet Earth.  We have just concluded a new round of promises to half the rate of biodiversity loss by 2020, having spectacularly failed to do this, as promised, between 2000 and 2010.  Next is the Climate Change summit in Cancun that seeks to repair some of the damage caused by squabbling leaders last year in Copenhagen.

While we squawk, the world burns.  It’s time to listen – if those radio telescopes tuning in to the farthest reaches of the universe, tuned their sensitive ears to Planet Earth, here are some messages they would pick up.

If you want to build a bridge, study architecture for five years, find a junior job in a prestigious practice, work your way up & if you are lucky, you may get that assignment one day in your career. Or, at the age of 19, you can go to a distressed area and follow the Nike line - just do it.

You've got to accentuate the positive / Eliminate the negative / Latch on to the affirmative / Don't mess with Mr. In- Between is a piece of sound marketing advice too often ignored by businesses & brands.