Thanks to the serendipity of the web, Twitter specifically in this instance, I came accross this blog by Courtney Beck. It's nothing do with planning, it's a long tail about dating (I'd like to state I'm happily married!) and she writes with wit, charm and grace. Makes me wish  could write like that. I've often…

Someone emailed me, as they've just finished Miami Ad School and wanted my help in starting out to get work in New York, by sharing the things I wish I'd known when starting out. As usual, I'm bemused anyone cares what I think,especially someone looking to work in New York. Also, I thought I'd share…

Creative agency type people have looked down on PR types since the dawn of time. The cliche of the 'PR girlie' is still rife within the corridors of most shops- chauvinist and elitist in one fell swoop. Of course, if you've worked with PR practitioners, you might feel aggrieved that they seem to only be…

"You do not reason a man out of something he was not reasoned into" Jonathan Swift Planners take note. Few consumer decisions are really rational, so appealing to the common sense rarely works. Even fewer client decisions are made based on logic and evidence. Logic evidence are simply used to justify them. In other words,…

John Steel's Truth Lies and Advertising is still the first book anyone should read on planning. Much might have changed since it was written, but to be honest, the majority of stuff is the same. Yuu really should take a look at this talk he did recently and pay close attention to the ditinction between…

In the last two months we must have watched Cars or Cars2 at least 3 times a week, thanks to our little boy;s utter entrancement with Lighting McQuenn and co. He doesn't take just one McQueen replica to bed, oh no, he takes two. I happened to read the reviews on Amazon after we'd the…

If you want to really get creatives to understand the target customer you're on about in a brief, you could do a lot worse than show a picture of them, even better, a video. I don't know why, but it works every time. Oh yes I do, creatives respond to imagery, video or metaphor, not…

I was chatting to someone about the pitfalls of working with, or for a big company and how company size seems to be inversely proportioned to its intelligence.  We agreed that most people in marketing seem to think being huge or being interesting (dare I say it cool) are mutually exclusive. Why? Maybe that's what…