Category: Industry Mole

Ticking over. That’s the most accurate description of business at Mole Graphics right now.

Apollo 11 was, as Neil Armstrong said, one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind – and also a giant leap for technology that, years later, created the industry, wide-format printing, in which Mole Graphics operates. When I watched the documentary at the local picture palace, it struck me, for the first time, how audacious, complicated and preposterous the entire mission was.

I rarely look at social media. And when I say rarely I mean it – not like my neighbour who says he rarely watches television – “just the news and wildlife documentaries” – but is strangely familiar with every twist in Game Of Thrones. (Full disclosure: I am one of the social pariahs who have never watched a single episode.) But the other day my sales director sent me a copy of a tweet from @AdWeak that made me laugh: “BREAKING: Client Informs Agency She Really Appreciates All The Hard Work That Went Into The Ideas She Is About To Kill.”

The best advice I ever received? “Never forget that it can be hard to distinguish between a rising market and a genius.” You’ve probably never heard of the man who told me that: a New Zealander called Sir John Buchanan (though he never insisted on the title) who was finance director of BP in its heyday.

I once vowed that the word ‘Brexit’ would never darken this column, but with a sort of final decision – or final indecision – looming, I’m going to do what politicians do all the time and break a promise.