Posts Tagged ‘Graphic Design’

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Chores and challenges 

May 2, 2016

Drudgery

Sunday of the bank holiday weekend and I knuckled down.

I had to clear down emails, work on copy for the new Fuzion brochure and work on new training materials for an updated social media course.

A dark cloud appeared over my head as I was in no mood for this work and everything was a grind for me.

The cloud got darker and darker and eventually I had to call a day on my work as we had planned to pop over to friends for the evening.

I was in poor form as we walked over to our buddies as I felt my “day off” had been ruined.

And then it came to me – I love what I do but I had been treating the work I had to do as a series of ‘chores‘ and not ‘challenges‘ because of my poor frame of mind and as a result my day and mood were ruined.

Every email was full of potential opportunity, the work on our brochure was a chance to really capture who we are and showcase why we are a special agency and the work on my new social media course notes was a way to explore new features and how to apply them.

I had wasted my day ..

If your work is a series of chores try changing your mindset and turn them into challenges.

If they are still chores despite the change of mindset then it’s time to change what you do!

Today was a great day..

#Positivity

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Inspiration, Motivation, Personal development, Positivity | 5 Comments »

Leap of faith 

April 17, 2016

Brendan Canty - Feel Good Lost

I’m sitting on a plane heading to the UK with Brendan my son for a huge Liverpool FC match versus Borussia Dortmund. How he managed to get tickets for such a match I have no idea but then again he has always managed to do things like this with his interesting network of friends and connections.

He is absolutely buzzing as he has just won another role directing a major advert for a huge international brand. After the Budweiser, Conor McGregor “Dream Big” advert this kind of work was going to come.

His enthusiasm is infectious and I listen to his plans, how he wants to shoot the advert, who he wants to cast in it and I watch him as he quickly and seamlessly sketches out the storyboard for the advert on his notebook.

He was chatting to me about the costume girl for the advert and he has opted for Sarah who was the costume girl in one of his fantastic music videos. The problem with Sarah is that she hasn’t done commercial work before but the great thing about Sarah is that she is raw, beautiful, authentic, pure and a gorgeous fresh face that Brendan knows will deliver something very special.

Adverts are big business and the process is expensive so you need people who know what they are doing so using an unknown, unproven person is a risk so the safe thing to do is to hire someone who has done it before.

He has told me she is already proving to be a star as she has gone away and researched the role so she can immerse herself in it and she has even unearthed material that will help the overall project.

Sometimes being safe is risky and if you want something special, something that will make a real difference then take a leap of faith and go with that unproven star who could just bring you some magic.

Go on, take a leap of faith..

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Creativity, Inspiration, Motivation, Positivity | Leave a Comment »

Grabbing opportunities just like Ferris

April 14, 2016

Liverpool v Newcastle

Part one – written on a flight from Cork to Liverpool, 14th April.

It was April 1996 and I was sitting in my office in Guinness in Dublin flicking through the newspaper.

In the classifieds I noticed a ticket and travel package for an evening midweek league match at Anfield, Liverpool versus Newcastle.

I am a die-hard Liverpool FC fan but I had never been to a game at Anfield. Liverpool were playing exciting football that year, in contention for the title but Newcastle were the really exciting team of the season that had taken the league by storm.

I thought long and hard about going but managed to find some reason not to and I ended up watching on TV what people still describe as the best match ever in the Premiership as Liverpool scored a last minute winner to win 4-3 in an incredible match that had everything.

I could have been there…

Brendan Canty celebrating Liverpool beatingg Dortmund 4-3 at Anfield

When Brendan, my son called me 20 years later to say he could get tickets for Liverpool versus Borussia Dortmund, the quarter final second leg UEFA Europa Cup match at Anfield I didn’t think too long and hard about it.

Of course I had things in my diary, of course I could think of 100 reasons why I couldn’t go but as Ferris Bueller famously said “Life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”

I embraced this spirit and here I am sitting on a flight to Liverpool with Brendan. Hopefully the match this evening will be great, poised delicately after the away tie finished 1-1 against a really superb Borussia side.

Bring it on..

Part two – written in the Holiday Inn Express, in Liverpool while Mr Canty junior is working on his next TV commercial (he always gives out to me for working too hard!)

Lovren and Klopp celebrate

At 2-nil down at half time against a fantastic team “we” would have to score three without reply to win the match … This was a monumental task of Istanbul proportions and probably not possible.

It didn’t stop “us” fans (yep, we were in the middle of it, strangely sitting next to a few Borussia fans that had all the officials upset) belting out “You’ll Never Walk Alone” as the teams emerged for the second half.

The young and powerful Origi scores for us after 3 minutes and the place went berserk …maybe it was possible?

Liverpool piled on the pressure, the fans were urging them on with a wall of noise and then the sucker punch. Borussia score again – this team are just too good for us and the balloon of hope was burst.

The fans recovered and started singing again and my mind drifted back to that famous 4-3 match that I stupidly missed.

Never.. ?

Coutinho scores, 3-2 … The place erupts and now I am witnessing that special Anfield Magic. It’s the team and the fans together in a frenzy, the noise is crazy and there is belief everywhere.

Sahko scores, 3-3 … The place just goes ballistic and the frenzy has been whipped into the stratosphere and there is a tangible electricity flowing from the team to the crowd, from the crowd to the team, a powerful invisible nut tangible force.

Dortmund manage to contain this pressure and the game gets a little stop start as the clock nudges painfully to 90 minutes…4 minutes of extra time.

A strange thing happens..the crowd start to belt out “You’ll Never Walk Alone” again… everyone joins in. This is really odd as the Liverpool faithful only really sing this at the end of a match when they know the game has been won.

Free kick, Milner to Sturridge, Milner keeps running into the box and takes a return ball from Sturridge. We all gave out about Milner’s corners during the game but this time he delivers a perfect cross into the box for Dejan Lovren (who had an awful start to his LFC career the previous year) who rises above everyone and powers a header into the net.

(Admission – At the time I had no idea who scored it happened so quickly!)

Lovren scores the winner against Borussia Dortmund

Oh my god…. I have never witnessed anything like it. I was hugging Brendan, the guy next to me, the people in front of me. Everyone played this match together, singing, urging, believing… When the players lost hope we were there, when we lost hope, they were there.

Now we were there together – Jurgen Klopp walked past us, saluting the crowd and punching his chest, his heart. We got it.

If you haven’t seen it yet you just have to click here to see the incredible celebrations at the end of the match and click here for some crazy fan celebrations!

4-3 ….best night ever?

Ferris was right, we need to grab those opportunities when they come along

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Entertainment, Inspiration, Motivation, Personal development, Positivity, Teamwork | 2 Comments »

Macho politics and the need for femininity

April 8, 2016

Enda Kenny and Micheal Martin

If you mention gender quotas to me you will probably sense my temperature rise and start to notice the steam emerging from different parts of my body!

I want the best person to get the job but I do absolutely believe that we need to do everything to make sure this can be a woman or a man with no disadvantage to either.

However (this is huge coming from me!) watching the political standoff between Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, the independent candidates and the other parties as Ireland struggles to form a government reminds me of some of the key messages I heard recently at the Network Ireland, International Women’s Day event.

At the conference Gabrielle Motolla (a very impressive American photographer who lives in Iceland) spoke about the worldwide economic crash and a profound comment that was made at the time that “the banking systems lack of femininity caused many of the problems”

It wasn’t that there were too many men involved but the point was there was too much “masculinity” in the mix – too much testosterone, too much macho stuff, too much bravado, too much risk taking, too much ultra competitiveness and too many egos recklessly driving the banking system off the cliff.

All of these characteristics can be demonstrated by men or women but they are typically masculine traits so a gender balance could provide some protection against the potentially dangerous excesses of these traits.

This point really impacted on me – I understood exactly what she was saying and I can see the danger myself of too much of any particular trait in an organisation.

I met a Canadian woman at the same conference who operates a large energy company in Canada and we spoke about this issue. She’s not in favour of quotas but she explained that in her business it would be virtually impossible to manage a team of all men and it would be just as difficult with a team of all women.

In her experience the guys are just too macho and the women are too passive and cautious – she reckons a balance works best and in her industry she reckoned 60/40 works best and this is what she strives for when assembling teams.

With our political impasse at the moment I notice that nearly all of the posturing, which is getting us nowhere is very masculine.

We desperately need to sort this out and get our country back on track – maybe we should introduce some femininity and get this process moving?

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Communications, Equality, Gender equality, Irish Politics | 4 Comments »

What do you do with Mr and Mrs Toxic?

March 25, 2016

Mr and Mrs Toxic

I am working on a really interesting project at the moment and because it is quite complex there is a diverse team made up of very talented individuals from different organisations working on it.

We had a full day session, which included a meeting with the client group and instead of being the enjoyable experience I was expecting it was a horrible, draining one.

There is one characters (who happens to be really talented and super valuable) on the team who is just plain rude, arrogant, dismissive and being honest a little nasty. This has led to a testy atmosphere with team members trying to give their opinion but being dismissed in a rude manner.

Everyone witnesses the ‘put down’ and are waiting to see how the person who has just been insulted reacts …. he feels bad, he feels small and he feels weak if he keeps his mouth shut or does he decide to react and let the whole thing bubble over? To be fair to him he decided to bite his lip and eventually other people jumped in and supported him. I’m not sure if my lip would be that resilient.

At the end of the day I was totally wiped out and demotivated and a potentially great project had now disintegrated into something that was hardship. I can’t wait for it to be over is now my main thought but there is still a lot of work to be done with this crew.

I have made an effort at addressing this with this group of people who I don’t know that well .. I did it by email the following day (lets’ see if it makes any difference?)

Team spirit – At times yesterday a horrible, testy atmosphere crept into our team meeting – this makes the work very draining and we have to mind ourselves. The team leader has assembled a talented bunch together for this task – lets get the best from this collective talent and synergise. This is a team folks …lets support each other and make this job a enjoyable one.

Life is way too short!!

What do you do with Mr or Mrs Toxic?

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Bullying, Communications, Teamwork | 8 Comments »

Dreaming Big is banned in Ireland!

March 21, 2016

Conor McHregor, Budweiser advert banned by RTE

Our state broadcaster, RTE has just banned the Budweiser commercial featuring UFC fighter and Irish hero Conor McGregor.

The banning has already led to newspaper articles, much discussion and a huge curiosity and will inevitably have everyone googling just to see what this “offensive” advert was all about. I suspect they will be left scratching their heads wondering what the fuss was all about.

In many ways this could be deemed as a huge success for the brand because it will now achieve a level of visibility and notoriety that it previously didn’t have, without having to pay the advertising costs.

While it sends out a big message from RTE you would like to think that this is a good, sensible one because we do want there to be watchdogs to protect us from danger. It is important that ‘banning’ makes sense, that it is rational and that it is fair.

The advertising guidelines around alcohol are very strict in Ireland and all of these were followed carefully.

In the advert there isn’t a picture of a bottle of beer, there isn’t a pub in sight. There is just Conor tastefully captured in a scene walking around his home town, Crumlin in Dublin, which then transforms into a street in LA.

This 27 year old apprentice plumber has achieved huge success by dedication to his sport and the advert demonstrates this with the help of these scenes and the voice over by Conor:

Never give up on your dream

Be your own inspiration, a beacon of self belief

Keep proving others wrong

If your dream doesn’t scare you, then its not big enough

So dream, as big as you dare

Only at the very end of the advert do we see the Budweiser logo and the usual drink responsibly message at the bottom of the screen.

For me the message from the advert is a very inspirational one, delivering a powerful positive message. Yes, it does come from a beer brand, which I think is more than ok. It shows you how the guidelines are keeping alcohol brands in a very responsible place and forcing a communication about positive values.

The message coming from RTE in banning this advert?

According to the newspapers they issued a statement to the Sunday Business Post that the advert breached advertising guidelines because Conor McGregor is considered a “hero to the young“, which will in turn encourage them to drink alcohol.

I don’t get it..

In my view banning the advert will achieve the wrong thing (besides totally confusing an industry that is trying to be very responsible) – viewers will definitely seek out the inspirational advert and could instead conclude that we are living in a censorship state that in some way has an issue with people from working class backgrounds having and achieving their dreams.

Banning the advert is also bad for the RTE brand as in my view it shows them as being ultra conservative and this is not good when they are up against such stiff competition. Leaving the censorship to the advertising authorities might be a much better policy.

It’s a great thing that we are seeing extra vigilance about alcohol advertising but we need to make sure that the brands that are working really hard to get it right aren’t punished.

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

 

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Posted in Advertising, Branding, Censorship, Communications, Ethics, Motivation, Passion, Positivity | 15 Comments »

Are you dreaming big enough?

March 18, 2016

Conor McGregor - Dream Big

“If your dream doesn’t scare you then it isn’t big enough. Dream as big as you dare”

These are the words that were challenging me and the strange thing is that I heard them uttered by Conor McGregor in an advert that my son, Brendan Canty directed for Budweiser.

I then hear both Conor (the apprentice plumber from Crumlin) and Brendan (the boy from Ballincollig!), two 27 year old’s from different parts of our fine country and from different backgrounds talking about “following your dream” in a behind the scenes video about the advert.

Brendan talks about throwing everything at your dream and Conor talks about following your passion.

From the outside it probably looks easy and then I think about Malcolm Gladwell and his theory about 10,000 hours in his book Outliers and I think about what I know about these two young men.

Brendan didn’t get the grade he hoped for in CIT because his lecturer had some issue with his short film “The Kid“. Take one look at the trailer or even the full feature and make up your own mind (Brendan will kill me for drawing attention to this – this work by a student is incredible!).

He regularly pitches for videos and adverts that he doesn’t win – some of these treatments have some of his best work in them but they will never grace our screens.

Brendan Canty - Feel Good Lost

He takes the kicks in the backside and drives on. Following your dream means driving on even when things happen that might leave you feeling on the floor.

Conor with all of his talent and brashness has followed his dream. I haven’t followed his story well enough to talk about his knocks but I am sure there have been many and I have no doubt that 10,000 hours of sweat, toil and disappointments are all in his ‘experience bank‘ that has him where he is today.

Okay, he took a kick in the backside in his last fight against Nate Diaz but he spoke about “celebrating defeat” ..we have to if we want to succeed!

With all this talk of dreaming I was inclined to look at my own life and what I was doing at 27 years of age and what I have done since.

The dream of a thirteen year old was to work in the music business. I flirted with managing bands for about two years, which was fun for a while and then the bands I was working with broke up!

I always wanted to start my own business and I got that chance when I started a fast food restaurant with another guy. It wasn’t my industry of choice but this ‘golden opportunity‘ to start something and make some money seemed like a good idea.

It wasn’t my dream so I talked him into opening music stores. We didn’t know the first thing about this industry but it didn’t stop us opening one in Cork, one in Limerick and one in Galway in the space of 12 months. During that time we also opened a second fast food restaurant in Cork.

We were business trailblazers but we were crazy – this rate of growth was reckless and if anything went wrong we were in huge financial trouble. Some of these ventures worked out and some of them were miserable failures.

All of this was when I was incredibly still holding down a full time job – I was working around clocks that I didn’t even have!

I was then asked if I would become the General Manager of Deasy’s, the Guinness owned subsidiary that I was the Financial Controller of. I was staggered to be asked to take on such a role and this was another dream fulfilled! After doing this for two years I was asked to join Guinness in Dublin ..wow..working in a relatively senior role for a huge international company – another dream. I was 29!

I took a job as General Manager of a subsidiary of Heineken a few years later – I quickly realised that repeating myself wasn’t part of the dream and I needed to change.

Catwalks In 2001 I had a dream about creating a high end fashion and beauty event and taking it on tour around Ireland with the top Irish models. Myself and Dee created ‘Catwalks’ which was the talk of the female luxury sector in Ireland for a number of years.

Dee emigrated from Kerry to Cork and we opened a Fuzion office on the South Mall in Cork (before that we worked from home for a few years – thank you to Alison, Doreen and Barry who were happy to have enough faith in us to do that).

Soon after that we became the only agency in Ireland to have an office in both Cork and Dublin as we opened one in our capital city.

This year I was elected to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce council by the members – this sounds like a very trivial thing but it is a big deal as members from smaller firms find it impossible to get elected. This makes me very proud as it is a small tangible sign that we are succeeding in Dublin and achieving some recognition for the work we are doing there.

Brendan Canty and Conor McGregor - Dream Big

When I heard the words “If your dream doesn’t scare you then it’s not big enough” I had to admit to myself that I feared I had stopped dreaming big and maybe that I had stopped dreaming at all. After writing this piece I know this isn’t quite true.

This 51 year old hasn’t stopped dreaming but yes …I admit, my dreams don’t scare me.

Maybe it’s time to be scared again and not leave that to the 27 year olds!

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

 

 

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Posted in Inspiration, Motivation, Personal development, Positivity | 2 Comments »

Fancy a dance ?

March 6, 2016

Saturday Night Fever

I was having a chat with a buddy of mine who we do some work with from time to time.

A project with an immovable deadline had hit an impasse because someone on the client side had let one of his guys down – the task they were to do was a relatively straightforward one but they didn’t get to it due to their own work pressure.

The person on his team informed him that she could do no more because of this ‘thing‘ that wasn’t done so the project deadline would be missed.

It would probably have been a legitimate reason for missing the deadline and he could quite happily declare that “there is nothing we could do“.

He had a choice to make ..

Being in business is like being on a dance floor except you have no idea what music they are about to play or who you will have to dance with!

You turn up expecting an eighties disco and suddenly they play a waltz. You are waltzing and an Irish gig comes on. Sometimes the dance floor is packed and you are struggling to manoeuvre around the floor and suddenly you find yourself dancing by yourself and feeling very awkward as everyone is watching.

There are times when no one is dancing and its up to you to get things moving by dragging an unsuspecting dance partner out on the floor in the hope that others join in.

Sometimes you can dance all night and have the best of fun but there are times when you are just not in the mood – your feet are sore but you still have to dance.

Sometimes it’s dancing with the most perfect, incredible, stunningly beautiful woman and sometimes … Well. you can only dance with the women who are in the room!

My buddy instructed his team member to just do the task that the client was supposed to do as it wasn’t a big deal and he wanted to deliver the project on time. Nice move..

Fancy a dance ?!!

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Business Planning, Customer Care, Motivation, Personal development, Teamwork | Leave a Comment »

Marcus Tullius Cicero – Mistakes that mankind keeps making

March 3, 2016

Humanity

I bumped into a good buddy of mine, Pat Sweeney recently and we were exchanging various nuggets of wisdom (of course!) and he started chatting about some wise fella called Cicero, that he is very interested in and studies quite a bit.

Cicero used talk about six mistakes that mankind keeps making century after century. I was quite interested in what these mistakes were and when he was alive.

Marcus Tullius CiceroIt turns out Marcus Tullius Cicero was  3rd January 106 BC and died on the 7th December 43 BC. He was a Roman philosopher, politician, lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul, and constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and was widely considered to be one of Rome’s greatest orators and prose stylists.

He seems to have had an interesting life – following Julius Caesar’s death Cicero became an enemy of Mark Antony in the ensuing power struggle, attacking him in a series of speeches. He was proscribed as an enemy of the state by the Second Triumvirate and was consequently executed by soldiers operating on their behalf in 43 BC. His severed hands and head were then, as a final revenge of Mark Antony, displayed in the Roman Forum!

The six mistakes he spoke about were:

  • Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others
  • Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected
  • Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it
  • Refusing to set aside trivial preferences
  • Neglecting development and refinement of the mind
  • Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do

Not a whole lot has changed since 43 BC!

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

 

 

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Posted in History, Personal development, Politics | 1 Comment »

Promoting female entrepreneurs in rural areas

February 24, 2016

Wonder womenI was checking through my emails this minute and I was looking at the e-tender notifications about new projects etc.

One particular post caught my attention, which concerns me, which annoys me, which makes we worry that we are taking certain agendas to a stupid extreme.

Development programme targeted at female entrepreneurs in Irish rural areas

“The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Ireland, intends issuing a public tender in 2016 for the provision (by one single service provider) of a national development programme targeted at nascent female entrepreneurs in Irish rural areas”

Programmes that encourage entrepreneurship in rural areas is a fantastic idea.

Programmes that encourage entrepreneurship in any areas is a fantastic idea.

Programmes that promote female entrepreneurship specifically are wrong, silly, discriminatory and it strikes me that we are totally losing the run of ourselves with the gender equality agenda.

The fantastic women that I work with every day don’t need any special “pass”.

It’s about ‘equality’ folks, not the opposite.

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

 

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Posted in Equality | 6 Comments »

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