Just a spoonful of ambition...

This morning I was assured once more by the complimentary marketers at Adidas that ‘impossible is nothing’. Either this means the sportswear on show really is quite something, or that they have a rather disproportionate impression of my physical and mental prowess. Either way, I responded accordingly by bounding up the escalator in an appropriately self-congratulatory manner.

Ambition can be useful (and tiring).

As well as being the action hero of brand slogans designed to grab you by the heart strings and convince you of your latent omnipotence, it brings together the smorgasbord of emotion that includes ‘be the best you can be’ and ‘go team!’, through to ‘grit yer teeth ‘n’ bear it’, and where there’s a will…’.

It can be pretty invigorating stuff – and the best bit is that it tends to come with a healthy serving of belief, and a side of blind optimism. And busy tucking in with great, gulping forkfuls, is everyone from spokespeople to sportspeople, marketers to the military.

I suppose part of the attraction is that ambition acts as something of a siren’s call for acts of apparent insanity. Do 8 golds really justify 14 years of swimming in a straight line for 25 hours a day? Who looked at the moon and thought ‘hmm, I reckon we could get a flag on that’? Why, when presented with a moving staircase, do I think to waste precious calories through self-propulsion?

Perhaps then, ambition should be the fuel for communicating other ludicrous ideas, like a low carbon future, or a world free from poverty...

We’ve started having a think about our own visions for a positive future here. At the moment it consists of lots of thoughts on post-it notes, but I’m pretty confident that before long…

(We’ll keep you posted.)

1. Nyree said on 01 Sep 2008 12:57:07
   
   Excellent use of 'smorgasbord'!

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