Happy heatwave, siblings. As I write this on Wednesday morning I believe those of you in the melty South are heading for a 35 degree day, and if that’s you I encourage you to find somewhere with aircon – somewhere that already has it, let’s not go on a planet-smashing journey for the sake of a few hot days – and water and iced coffee. I’ll come back to that. And if you can’t find that, find somewhere with a nice pool and get in it instantly.  

Buzzing I am today, and as a result there will be minimal industry business in this Update; maybe just a wee bit because I’m bad at stopping myself. I’m buzzing for two reasons – firstly, today is the lang cat’s AdviceTech Catwalk event in sweltering yet fashionable London. The five contestants are limbering up and the High Inquisitors are cracking their knuckles and necks like a bad guy in a Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson action movie. It’s going to be a great event even with the heat, not least because the venue has aircon, we’ve got loads of places to fill your water bottles and I do believe there will be an iced coffee cart as well, which I expect to be doing box office. We will report next week what happened. 

I’m buzzing for a second reason, which is that we won a thing, and I’m not blasé about it at all. Our PR and comms team picked up PR Agency of the Year at HeadlineMoney last night; this is the benchmark award for This Sort Of Thing and it’s the second time we’ve won it in three years. We don’t just do research, insight, events and emails on a Wednesday; we have a full-on PR and communications business as well, and this is a huge bit of recognition for us. 

As ever, we were up against a bunch of amazing agencies, most of whom are much bigger and posher than us. Many have fantoosh offices in expensive parts of London and membership at the kind of clubs where the doorman would take one look at a toerag like me and laugh and laugh till tears ran down his muscly face. (To be fair, this isn’t correlated to whether these agencies are any good or not; you don’t last long in this game if you can’t do what you’re meant to do.) 

We’re not much good at being fantoosh. Our thing is to just be really, really good at what we’re meant to do and not worry about anything else. To make it about the work. That’s what Mark Locke and his team of brilliant, exceptional and devastatingly good-looking comms professionals do every day. And so we reived down over the border and we won the big award again, by being a) total specialists b) not afraid of doing actual work and c) awesome.  

So to the team – massive congratulations. You may have fifteen (15) minutes off for quiet celebratory contemplation. To our clients: hey look! Your agency won. Now pay your invoices. And to everyone else who might want an agency: if you fancy working with actual specialists then give us a shout. And then pay your invoices. 

There’s another bit to this. Some of you who know me will know I’ve been off for a little while, and if you’ve known me for a long time you may remember that way back in the very early days of the lang cat I didn’t get around too well and thanks to a highly entertaining dose of rheumatoid arthritis used to walk with sticks sometimes. I’ve been fine for a long time but for one reason or another my old pal has come back to play and I’ve been pretty knocked out for the last few weeks. As a result I’m not doing any travel – or really anything at all very much bar the Update and annoying people from the sofa – and so I’m missing Catwalk and I wasn’t there last night for Headlinemoney either. This to me is like missing your kid’s final ever school prizegiving (which is tomorrow and no I’m not missing it; it’s a big old week here). What’s made it bearable is the people who work in the lang cat (how many is that, Mark? About a third of them, ho ho) who quite apart from being fine human beings have stepped in and taken the heat off me while I try to get myself straight with meds and all that. I am feeling quite redundant at the moment, but in the very best way. Jenny and Jamie and lots of other cats are running Catwalk with steely precision and Nat and Rich will cover presenting duties so I don’t have to haul myself to London. Mark and Ruby and Nicola were on hand last night to pick up the award. It’s all taken care of because of how good the 30 or so folk who work here are. 

There’s meant to be at least some kind of business thing in an Update, and so here’s a business tip for anyone building up their company: surround yourself with the kind of people who will look after you if you ever need it, and then do your best to look after them. That’s worth more than anything. Now stick that in your AI and make some crappy Linkedin post out of it. 

Oh, and if you really wanted some financial services content this week, the new ISA cash rules are really, really very silly indeed. Here’s another award-winner – Laura Purkess – on what’s changing. One proper thought – has anyone actually gone and asked the people with the cash why they’ve got the cash? “Hi Ms Client, I see you’ve got a £30k cash ISA there; how come you’re not investing it in a series of investment vehicles which allow various companies in the long-term savings and investment industry to earn a share of it? Have you NO SOUL?” 

Obviously some people are under-risked. Not everyone acts rationally. But I am reminded of what Agent K said to Agent J on the park bench: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals, and you know it.”  We view things like macro ISA investment statistics in the round and the abstract. But individuals do have a habit of acting rationally in their own frame of reference, and overcomplicating ISAs still further to try and get round that seems completely wrongheaded to me.  

I am also reminded of a story I was told once about a client who’d gone and bought an annuity with his whole, very large, pension pot. The adviser was aghast as their beautifully planned drawdown strategy bit the dirt. Sobbing, sinking to their knees, they pawed the ground and bellowed “THIS IS A SUBOPTIMAL OUTCOME ON ALL EFFICIENT FRONTIER-BASED STOCHASTICALLY MODELLED ECONOMIC MEASURES! WHY? OH LORD WHY?” and the client’s response was “so that I never have to deal with the investment industry ever again, and that’s worth quite a lot of money to me.” 

True story, maybe. Not everyone behaves the way we think they should, and sometimes they’re justified. 

Anyway, buzzing.  

Your music choice this week? Well, there’s a new Insomnium song out, or Metallica are playing Glasgow tomorrow. We could do those. But I’m buzzy, and so is Bloodbuzz Ohio by The National, so have that instead.

See you next week, winners 

Mark