My old radio consultant Des was the best of the best, he was a great people person. He was like the old time-travelling medicine man preaching about his miraculous all-ailments remedy from the back of his chuck wagon.
Des was great at selling an idea, and brilliant at taking bullsh*t and making it look like an award winning sculpture titled "Angus Expresses Himself in the Colour Brown".
He was so clever at dispensing ideas, but more than that, he would explain how to spin things and create magic using zero budget and a microphone. He introduced me to the idea of "smoke and mirrors". He taught me the magic of illusionists. He taught me that you can make anything seem like something with the right words, sound effects and pizzazz. (I spent 10 minutes trying to spell pizzazz. My phone kept wanting to make it "pizzas". I do not use pizzas in my smoke and mirrors routine. Plenty of pizzazz though).
The key to making people listen, stay listening, do what you want or "quick, look over there" is to create an illusion. Or a diversion. Create a diversion? Brilliant! Brilliant Mr Politician! Brilliant political Brain Trust! You smoke and mirrored us. You created a brilliant, ludicrously unnecessary diversion.
I've written before about the extraneous palaver (my phone tried to make that "pavlova") we went through to choose a flag. It was so ridiculously fluffy and artsy-fartsy. I still strongly believe someone (probably Ritchie McCaw) should have appeared on TV and announced:
