Well, we did it….

Back in 2017, i’d just finished the Nice Cannes marathon as part of the Mimosa Relay team and I was discussing with a marketing lady regarding the benefits and traps of social media.  We discussed the rise and fall of certain platforms…. Myspace, Digg, Bebo all becoming almost obsolete…. and how “photo-based” Social Media was on the up – Snap Chat & Instagram being the example of this.

The point I was raising with said marketing lady was that people and companies are becoming soooo “addicted” to their social media, that they are beginning to post absolute rubbish.  My timelines were full of banal statements, the quality of the articles were dropping, no interaction, nothing interesting to say.  So it got me thinking! Do we actually NEED social media, and do I NEED to commit to writing an article a week on my blog (a statement I preached to many of my own clients) ?

not touching the company blog for a whole year was unheard of, unhealthy and definitely not the sort of business diet I should be going on….

So I went on a marathon diet…. a blog-free year…. kind of to see if I could do it, and secondly to release myself from the idea that I HAD to write a blog.  I admit, I still posted out from the company Facebook page from time-to-time – an interesting install, a fun project…. but I stuck to the idea that a picture paints a thousand words…. madame marketing lady said I wouldn’t be able to manage it – not touching the company blog for a whole year was unheard of, unhealthy and definitely not the sort of business diet I should be going on….

Social Media usage has been going up 7% every year over the last 9 years but in 2018 everything changed…. social media usage dropped by almost 4 percent !   Thats quite a major drop and part of a movement I was proud to part of.

So, what HAVE we been up to ?

We took the whole of February off to take part in some voluntary work in Nicaragua as a family – what a beautiful country with beautiful people.  Back in France, we worked once again with Williams F1 at the Monaco Grand Prix, we made giant logos float in the Mas Candille swimming pool for EXON, we made the House of Sillage shimmer in Cannes, we relaunched the Home Hunts website, usual giant stickers on yachts, brochures delivered to Spain and the odd banner, modelled by my wonderful daughter…. we even put our own team together for this years Nice > Cannes Marathon.

Has it been worth it ?

I’ve no idea to be honest.  I did miss writing about what we’d been up to as a company, I didn’t like the ZERO NEWS from Pure Design in the blog feed…. the fact of seeing that the last time someone managed to update their news was over 12 months ago bothered me a lot!

But we DID IT !  I spent more time with the family, less time working late, more time helping the kids with their homework, making more paper airplanes with my son, more time around the piano with my daughter.  Its not helped me grow Pure Design, but its definitely helped me grow as a person and a dad.