Category: The day job
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I never thought I’d write that headline ever. When I joined an agency a long a while back I was a little at sea, because of the obsession and process for workshops and brainstorms. Let’s be clear, I was fairly experienced in planning and running them, but I was unused to a mentality where no…
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I never thought I’d write that headline ever. When I joined an agency a long a while back I was a little at sea, because of the obsession and process for workshops and brainstorms. Let’s be clear, I was fairly experienced in planning and running them, but I was unused to a mentality where no…
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I used to know someone who went in-house for Nike. The person didn't last a long time as a non-athlete, because as soon as something was up for debate, they were simply asked 'And what record have you set'. You might argue the business should be more welcoming, I reckon that commitment to actual sports…
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I’m a failed account handler. Too shy, too disorganised and too easily bored to be successful suit, only surviving thanks to doing planning (yes planning, I still struggle to call it strategy) on the job without realising. I could write good briefs and coax great work out of creative people, even if I couldn’t get…
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It's common for people turning 50 to share the fruits of their experience. I've just reached that milestone but I won't. Because I know I'm nothing special. Because most of these kind of posts are edited versions of the truth. (Like the case studies that help no one) Because failure is the greatest teacher. Because…
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If I was any good as maths, I would have been a physicist instead of planner. Such is life. That said, I've always kept a passing fascination for the subject, especially particle physics. There's a weird phenomenon when things get very, very small, which blows my mind. You have to assume tiny particles are in…
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I was ten when Purple Rain came out, so it's fairly natural I've always loved Prince. Between 1983 and '88 he created a body of work that was unlike anything that had come before, bursting with new ideas. However, that was only around 10% of his total output – it's just that we got to…
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When I was a teenager I used to both dread and relish the week we're in now. I used to race at swimming and, the week before we had time off for Christmas, there was an evil tradition called 'Hell Week". It was exactly that, seven days of the hardest training our coaches thought we…
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You can measure your life in many ways. How much you money you made. What your legacy might be. How many friends you made. But what about how much fun you had? How much you did things that made you feel alive rather than simply existing. What about the things that scared you to death,…
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Russell has written his laws of powerpoint, you should read it. If you're newish to the job of planning, strategy or whatever it's called these days, you'd do well to go back in the archives of his blog and start reading from post one. Back before blogging was a thing, years before Facebook, Russell was…
NORTHERN PLANNER 