my pledge to think bigger

So I spent the day skating in the suburbs with my little brother who had a baby boy recently. I spent much of the drive out there regretting the last thing I posted this morning about how disappointing it is to see sites like this pop up when I thought of something similar a long time ago because people who talk like that are bitches plain and simple. If you say you're gonna do something then bloody well go out there and do it and waste anybody's time whinging about how things didn't quite work out.

Two things have happened since that rattled my cage.

I re-listened to an episode of This American Life called 'Origin Story' about legendary ad man Julian Koenig who wrote, amongst other things, the single most applauded piece of advertising of all time, VW's "Think Small" campaign from the 1960's.

 

 

He is now a very old but also very bitter man, due to someone else apparently taking credit for most of his best ads over his lifetime. Listening to his story made me feel even more annoyed at myself for the back handed compliment I paid the great website Aardvark this morning. So I told myself that when I got home I would either delete the post, or apologise publicly for being such a douchebag.

 

Then I saw this.

If you know anything about me (and I would venture that the three or four people on the entire planet who may be reading my blog right now probably know me reasonably well) then you will understand why this new Billabong ad campaign stung me so badly.

i surf because... is about as close as you can possibly get to the first t-shirt design I ever made for my clothing label called because design. It's even in the same font style

 

 

And so, after everything I thought about today, my chest clenched up and my breath got a little shorter, and I felt a bit sick at the idea that once again, someone has done a great job creating something that I should have done years ago. Like a bitch.

 

I don't know what my next big idea will be. All I can say is, I never want to feel like this again. And I assure you, I'm gonna work even harder to make sure it never happens again.

Thanks for listening... I'm sorry for being a bitch.
Murray