NORTHERN PLANNER

A women with the biggest head in the world

A man with glasses lenses at least 5 inches thick

An obese man struggling to get out of his Porsche in a car park

Someone about to throw his chocolate wrapper on the floor until he realised he wasn't alone

A very attractive girl admire herself in a shop window until she walked into an OAP

A skinny jeaned teenager in tears on an unspecified conversation on his iphone

A shoplifter sprinting away, security guards in hot pursuit

You see I work only 5 minutes from a large shopping centre, which is fortunate since I'm an enthusiastic people watcher…or maybe I'm just really nosey.

Either way, I find it really healthy to give myself a healthy dose of real people, rather than the made up ones you see in segmentation study.

There's more drama, intrigue and insight in one hour wandering around a mall than any TGI run or blog post.

It's really important not to limit yourself to the usual research sources, or even the more lateral, crumbly little bits on the internet when it comes having ideas about how people behave.

It's dangerous to base your future success on what other agencies are doing or the cool trends you read in PSFK. Original ideas depend on original stimulus – if you just fish where everyone else does, guess where that leads?

There is nothing as surprising, nothing as interesting or admirable as real people going about their lives. It's how you watch them that makes all the difference.