NORTHERN PLANNER

I’m kicking myself right now, as I seem to have misplaced my notes. So I’ll muddle through this last bit and hope parts 1 and 2 make up for it.

First up after lunch was Jeremy Ettinghausen on how Penguin innovated their traditional brand for a digital age. I really liked this talk, especially the way Penguin understood the problem wasn’t reading being out of date, it was the way the industry presented itself. In the end, I think he was saying that it’s all about great content delivered on your customers’ terms.

Dan Hon from Mind Candy was next. His talk about gaming was one of the highlights of the day. He opened my eyes to not only what’s possible technology wise, but how bespoke experiential games can become a really useful part of a brand experience.

Ian Tate was maybe THE highlight of the day. He spoke on why digital agencies are better than advertising. This was largely tongue in cheek of course, but not only was it fun, engaging and entertaining, it drove the message home that while old agencies are maybe better at the art of communication, digital agencies are getting to grips with things they haven’t thought of, they can move quicker, adapt better and maybe it’s simply more interesting.

I’m ashamed to say I went out for coffee for the Can planners be the new creatives? session. I know the people speaking know better than me, but personally it’s such a dud question. Planners do what they’re best at, creatives do what they do well too. You either work in place that works on positive conflict, or somewhere that encourages you to work together. More planner want to work with creatives than the other way around, and curiously, it’s the planners (or some of them) who seem less conservative than creatives. In the end, people should do what they’re good at and they’ll always be a blur.

Hugh McLeod showed us how a wine brand can harness the social aspect of web 2.0

Martin Cole gave us some food for thought on Visual Business. His argument was that humans have always used images to navigate around their world – and the rise of the city and Web 2.0 actually means we’re becoming more visual. So we should use the fact that we’re really good at visual stuff more – it’s the one thing clients who are getting OK at agencies do can never replicate.

The in was Russell, George Parker, Stan Stainaker and Johnny Vulkan to discuss the future role of the marketing industry. I took two things out. First, and this was shown all day by the small, nimble companies that had spoken – big agencies, and maybe big companies find it really hard to do anything new. The people doing the most interesting stuff tend to be small, and don’t specialise in advertising.

Second, and inevitably it’s a Russell quote, "It’s not as if most agencies were ever any good". In other words, they enjoyed a brief spell when advertising agencies sat at the top table, but they got away with murder – and now they’re getting found out. If you work hard, do your stuff well, you’ll be alright. Amen to that.

It was a lovely, useful day. As I mentioned before, I think  I learned that there’s lots of interesting stuff going on, big it’s more likely to be smaller, less advertising focused people doing it. I also learned that it’s easy to make something look hard by overcomplicating it and giving it funny names – but that’s the Northerner in me.