NORTHERN PLANNER

I’m off to a fairly important meeting this morning. With me will be Dawn, account manager and future CEO of somewhere good (seriously), James, digital strategist and Peter – one of those analysts who can do econometrics and proper numbers. Quite intimidating company when you think about it, all these brilliant people.

Reminds how important it is to surround yourself with great people, people who can do the bits you cannot. Others to make you look good.

But not just the people the client sees. There are all those other people without awhom agencies just could not function.

The studio, accounts and, maybe the true heart of where we work – traffic. It’s bloody hard getting good work out, it takes lots of people, most of whom the person paying the bill doesn’t meet very often. If ever.

I sometimes wonder, in a world of squeezed fees and timesheets for going to the loo, if agencies shouldn’t be a bit more honest about how hard it is to say yes. We tend to be the ultimate yes men, "No problem we say", while burning inside as we frantically wonder how the hell to oull this one off. If you make it look like a doddle, why would someone pay over the odds for it?

If we were honest, good ideas come out of chaos, they rarely happen in a nice linear process. Making them actually come to life takes hard graft, arguments, pulling together and the odd panic attack. It’s not easy and perhaps we should be more honest about this.