Creative Generals

What perfect timing! I had a funny moment yesterday, got a text that looked exactly like it was from my bank. You know the one, "verify your account," dodgy link, the works.

Except my bank has spent years telling me they'll never send a text like that.

📢 𝘛𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘰𝘥𝘢𝘺, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘵 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘊𝘔𝘈'𝘴 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘚𝘔𝘚 𝘚𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘐𝘋 𝘙𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝙖𝙣𝙮 𝙗𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙚𝙭𝙩𝙨 𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙣𝙖𝙢𝙚 𝙣𝙚𝙚𝙙𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙚 𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙙, 𝙤𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙬𝙨 𝙪𝙥 𝙖𝙨 "𝙐𝙣𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙛𝙞𝙚𝙙" 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙜𝙚𝙩𝙨 𝙜𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙥𝙚𝙙 𝙞𝙣 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙪𝙖𝙡 𝙨𝙘𝙖𝙢 𝙩𝙚𝙭𝙩𝙨.

Took us a while to get here, but here we are - where a brand now needs government permission just to prove it's telling the truth.

If your business sends bookings, reminders, or marketing texts under your name, I’d check today whether your provider has registered you. Otherwise, tomorrow your legitimate texts might look exactly like the scam you've spent years warning people about.

Good thing I don’t text… (too much)! 🤣

My niece turned four last weekend. Magic unicorn party. Full theme, every detail covered - awesome fun!!!

I wore the hat. No regrets.

Here's the thing about parties like this. Some people throw a "themed" party and it's a few balloons and a cake. Some people try hard and it still looks like a school fundraiser. And then some people commit completely, every corner of the room says unicorn, and it just works. Full credit to my brother's partner, Elyse, who pulled this one off ‘like a boss’).

Branding is exactly the same.

Some businesses think a logo and a colour palette is "branding." Some try, but it never quite lands. And some go all in, every touchpoint tells the same story, and customers feel it before they can explain why.
The businesses that get it right usually have one thing in common. They know when to hand it to someone who actually knows how to make it land.

(Also, yes, I'm aware of how I look in this hat… Worth it!)

I bet you’ve heard of the brand YETI, but did you know that YETI built a billion-dollar brand selling $300 coolers.

Not because the cooler was magicand it had a cosmic material that kept things cold forever – but because the story was real. Real people. Real places. Real conditions. Guides, farmers, fishermen who actually used the thing, captured honestly, with no gloss on top.

People didn't buy a cooler. They bought a membership into something they believed in.

That's the thing nobody tells you about ‘𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁’. You can't manufacture it. You can't buy it with a bigger ad spend or a shinier logo. 𝗜𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱. And the only way to earn it is to tell your story so honestly, so consistently, that the right people start to feel something when they come across your brand.

Most businesses never get there. Not because they don't have a good story – they do – they've usually got a great one. They just haven't found the right way to tell it yet.

We drove out to Cowra at dawn to film a family grain business with 30 years of history and almost nothing on the outside that reflected who they actually were. Multiple days on location. Paddocks, silos, conversations that had never been captured on camera. The
result was a brand and a film that finally sounded like them.

𝗪𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵 𝗶𝘁 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 👉 https://vimeo.com/971070243

That's the work we do at Creative Generals. Not branding for branding's sake. Story that builds trust, opens doors, and
makes a business worth more than it was before we started.

If your business has outgrown the way it's currently being presented,
I'd love to talk. Or if someone you know is at that point, send this their way.

Full disclosure. I am an Apple tragic.

I have (just about) every product. I watch (just about) every keynote. I once genuinely considered naming my son Steve. My dad's name is Steve, so I had a pretty solid argument. (But… my wife still said no.) 😆

So watching Tim Cook take his final WWDC bow this week hit me harder than I expected. The man ran the most valuable brand on earth for 15 years and somehow made it feel more human with every passing year.

But let's be honest. It all started with one guy in a black skivvy who stood on a stage in 2007 and told us he was about to show us something that would change everything.

He wasn't wrong.

Steve Jobs didn't just build products. He built belief. He made millions of people feel like they were part of something bigger than a phone or a laptop. That's not marketing. That's storytelling at its absolute finest.

Tim Cook carried that story forward with grace. Whoever comes next has very large shoes to fill.

Anyway. It's Friday. I'm going to go stare at my iPhone for a while and think about legacy… (since it’s an iPhone Mini, and I still LOVE it).

Happy weekend everyone.

I'll be honest. The Monaco GP on the weekend was painful.

As a McLaren fan, watching a 19-year-old that nobody had heard of twelve months ago absolutely dominate the most prestigious race in the world while my team fell apart was not what I had in mind for the weekend (even though I have a soft spot for Mercedes Nelson 😉).

But here's what's interesting. Kimi Antonelli didn't win Monaco because he had the biggest name or the longest track record. He won because he knew exactly what he was doing, stayed composed when everything around him was chaos, and executed with complete conviction from start to finish.

In two weeks, the world's best creative work gets celebrated about 20 minutes up the road at Cannes Lions. This year, for the first time ever, they've introduced a dedicated award category purely for brand creativity.

Not for the loudest campaign. Not for the most produced. For the work that actually knew what it stood for and committed to it completely.

There's a pattern here. In racing, in creativity, in business, the ones who win aren't always the most experienced or the best resourced. They're the ones who are clearest about who they are and brave enough to back themselves.

Most brands are still waiting for the right moment. The right budget. The right time.

Meanwhile someone younger, leaner and more focused is about to take the lead.

Sound familiar McLaren fans?

What do you think? Does your brand know exactly who it is right now?

Launched something today, I've been sitting on for a while.

New work, new focus, and honestly, a clearer sense of what Creative Generals is really here to do. Brand story and video have always been at the heart of what I love most. From here, that's where all our energy goes.

If you've ever felt like your brand hasn't quite kept up with the quality of your work, that's exactly who this is for. And if someone you know comes to mind, I'd love the introduction.

Curious to see what happens…

👉 creativegenerals.webflow.io

KPMG just rolled out AI to 276,000 staff across 138 countries.
OpenAI launched a $4 billion consulting company this week.
The biggest firms in the world are betting everything on artificial intelligence.
And yet not one of those announcements will help a family business in Melbourne figure out what their brand actually stands for. Or tell the story of why they built it. Or make their customers feel something real.
Big tech is getting bigger. The human story is getting rarer. And rarer means more valuable.
That's the business I'm in.

I've been doing this for over 20 years, and I've never seen so many brands that look like each other. Same AI-generated copy. Same stock imagery. Same ‘authentic’ tone of voice that sounds like every other authentic tone of voice.

But, here's the uncomfortable truth - if your brand ‘could’ belong to someone else… then it probably does. The businesses winning right now aren't the loudest, they're just the ones brave enough to sound like themselves and take a few risks.

When did we all agree to stop doing that?

𝘗.𝘚. 𝘠𝘦𝘴, 𝘐 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘈𝘐 𝘵𝘰𝘰, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦.

Ever watched a flock of birds and tried to pick one from another?

That's what's happening to brands right now.

Same fonts. Same colour palettes. Same "authentic" stock photography. Same AI-generated everything. 🤮

Is that the tool's fault? Or have we just stopped asking the harder question: What actually makes this brand different from every other one?

The businesses that stand out right now aren't the ones with the biggest budget, they're the ones with a 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆, and they tell it with real intention.

𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙙𝙤 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙠. 𝗜𝘀 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗻𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹, 𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗲𝗲 𝗮 𝘀𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗹𝗮𝘀𝗵? 🤔