Inspired

Alan Fletcher said the most successful piece of self-promotion he ever did happened by ‘being in the right place at the right time’. A similar feeling made me choose this piece by Nike, and it’s why I find it inspiring too.

A modest two-colour postcard it might be. What it demonstrates are the wonderful things that can happen when you combine a truthful insight, taut copywriting and an intelligent sense of place. I’m sure it would have made me sob were it not such an admirably succinct, beautifully written summation of my torpid and listless state at that point in time.

I found it on the wooden upright of the exit gate at the gym as I left my annual ‘new-broom’ visit to a running machine. I couldn’t have wished to have read – or wished to have written – a more accurate reflection of my physical state that chilly mid-January of 2005. I admire the fact that Nike didn’t try to sell me a pair of trainers, pop-socks or some phenomenally unflattering portion of Lycra.

All things considered, as a piece of work that has found itself in the right place at the right time, I think it’s pretty difficult to beat.