NORTHERN PLANNER

I used to work in creative type agencies, now I work in media type places.

The things I tend to miss about creative places:

1. Unlimited big pads and sharpie pens for scrawling notes and thoughts etc.

2. Creatives that liked solving problems

3. Experienced planning directors who wanted you to get to some great thinking

4. Working a planning department

5. Suits who loved working in partnership

6. Creative reviews that took your breath away with inspiration

7. Working in an agency run by people with the kind of experience you'd kill for and were incredibly generous at sharing that experience

8. Jonathan Fletcher

9. People who cared and understood about the craft of making ads and content

10. Seeing the ad you worked on appear on telly (come on, we all did)

11. The endearing passion to debate how advertising works and break new ground

 

The things I don't miss:

1. Presenteeism

2. Planning directors who wanted you to write up their great thinking

3. Creatives who wanted to talk about if the work was a gold

4. Arguing about brand theory and how advertising works to justify okay work

5. Working out what the hell Media Arts was

6. Spending a week getting a proposition signed off by various stakeholders so the creatives could ignore it

7. Discussing the creative brief format

8. The minority of the people

9. Creative reviews where you're scratching your head trying to find something positive to say.

10. Pre-testing

11. Working in an agency run by people who had only ever done CRM for tiny, tiny clients who knew no better

12. Reporting to a Head of Client services who's response on most things was 'When I worked at Little Chef'

13. Obsessing about the size of the logo