Some of Dr Mumbo’s favourite people are strategists – they usually have an entertaining and original point of view.
So Dr Mumbo was delighted to see a column on the home page of AdNews from WPP’s chief strategy officer Rose Herceg.
In the short article, Herceg makes something of a leap, linking a US Supreme Court Justice’s observations about pornography with the difficulties in defining trust:
Herceg in AdNews
By an amazing coincidence, the same observation has been made before, in a book about… wait for it… trust. According to David A Shore, in The Trust Prescription for Healthcare:
David Shore’s book on trust
Which is, no doubt, all a coincidence.
And here’s another coincidence. Rosemary Herceg made what was presumably an unwelcome appearance on The ABC’s Media Watch program back in 2002.
In those days a trend forecaster with her own agency Pophouse, Herceg had a column in BRW magazine.
But the ABC TV show noticed an interesting trend. On a number of occasions, the observations she used in her column were remarkably close to those that had previously appeared in the US magazine Fast Company.
There was this example:
‘Today if you want to catch the wave of the future, you have to start surfing a lot closer to the Fringe.’ – Fast Company Magazine
‘If you want to catch the wave of the future, you have to start surfing a lot closer to the fringe.’ – Rosemary Herceg, BRW
And this one…
‘…they created the Scion brand from the ground up, starting with the actual silver-coated badge that appears on every car and ending with a cutting edge Web site that screams youth and exuberance.’ – Fast Company Magazine
‘… they created the Scion brand from the ground up, starting with the silver-coated badge that appears on every car and ending with a cutting edge Web site (www.scion.com) that screams youth and exuberance.’ – Rosemary Herceg, BRW
Media Watch used lots of unpleasantly judgmental phrases like “theft” and “pinched”. Even, unpleasantly, “plagiarism” and “rip offs”
After the ABC revealed a copy of a BRW column where almost all of the text had first appeared in Fast Company, Rosemary’s writing career with BRW came to a rapid halt. Then editor (and now Ten’s chief spinner) Neil Shoebridge told Media Watch: “‘Rosemary was dismissed as a columnist for BRW as soon as I could get her on the phone.”
Luckily, at the time, she was able to give Media Watch a completely reasonable explanation: “I have to tell you I have a crazy photographic memory.”
Fifteen years on, Dr Mumbo wonders if we’re any closer to a cure for a crazy photographic memory.