Cynicism: Our Industry's Favourite Poison
The vultures were circling on LinkedIn this week.
When Liquid Death announced their UK market exit, the cynics emerged in force - gleefully rubbing their hands together, revelling in what they perceived as failure. The "I told you so's" flowed freely. The tall poppy syndrome was on full display as people celebrated the supposed downfall of a brand that dared to be different, that refused to follow the formulaic playbook.
It was a disgusting spectacle. But sadly, not a surprising one.
Three years ago, I gave a lecture to the IPA's Brand Leaders of Tomorrow. Given carte blanche to speak on any topic, I chose to focus on what I saw as the greatest existential threat to our industry's future: cynicism.
Reading back through that talk today, its message feels more urgent than ever. We're witnessing increasing toxicity, rage, and schadenfreude across our industry. The joy some take in tearing others down is palpable.
This matters because creativity requires optimism. It demands hope. It thrives on possibility. Every great creative leap, every breakthrough idea, every piece of work that moved culture forward - they all started with someone believing something new was possible.
Cynicism is the enemy of that possibility. It's the coward's way out - far easier to sit on the sidelines and mock than to step into the arena and try something bold.
If we don't check this behaviour, if we don't actively cultivate optimism and enthusiasm in our industry, we risk entering a death spiral of our own making. We'll gleefully throw stones at others' attempts to innovate until we realise, too late, that we've burned down the very thing that gave our work meaning and magic.
And that truly would be fucked.
There's still time to change course. But that change starts with each of us choosing optimism over cynicism, creation over destruction, possibility over pessimism.
It's up to you, but just know that every time we celebrate failure, we write our own industry's eulogy.
(Click on the below image to read the full talk).
Sadly jealousy has always run rampant in marketing. You see it really come through at every pitch where time is spent criticizing what was done before to show why your team is smarter and better instead of saying - what you've done has been really good, but we see an opportunity for a different direction. And now that everyone has a pulpit, those hallway conversations being critical of others work are now public. I hope it changes.
Yeah. I don't understand it. Not only the cynicism but criticism, on the border of bullying at times. This industry sucks enough of the soul out of people already, the least we could do is not also bite and snipe at others' work too.