NORTHERN PLANNER

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Category: The day job

  • The things they never teach you number one- be more like waiter and less like a rockstar

    There are some things you are formally educated on when you join an agency.  Like most clients expecting a clear role for communications, or the framework of issue/insight/thought. Then there are more informal and craft rules you mostly get taught. For example, make the creative briefing as inspirational and focused as you can, because creatives…

  • How you see the world is irrelevant. How your target sees the world is critical

    I did some research with British young folks a while back. I went in wanting to find out how miserable they all were with older generations messing things up, leaving them with zero hours contracts, university fees, uncertainty and whatnot. Of course they obliterated my misconceptions, by communicating how sorry they felt for people my…

  • Nobody is perfect, so why try and make marketing flawless?

    So I was given a Golden Bungle for stealing a client's phone. Accidentally of course, hers looked exactly like mine. She saw the funny side (I think).  This proves I'm not perfect, but this is mostly a good thing. Recent data shows people like brands to embrace imperfection a little bit more these days. I'd…

  • Here’s to the Colonel

      I really like all this new KFC stuff. Obviously it's great to watch and funny. But it's also an idea that means you talk about as much product as you like, rather than getting all sniffy about product features and benefits. It's an idea that works as a 2 second GIF, as ideas have…

  • This book should be interesting. Or why smartphone are sexist

    I haven't read this yet, I've got it on pre-order but it looks interesting.  You can't move for female empowerment focused campaigns right now.  From a cultural perspective, this has to be a good thing. From a brand perspective, you don't want your brand to look like it's jumping on the bandwagon, however good your…

  • What Planes and Coca Cola tell us about the dangers of data without wisdom,

    Someone reminded me today of the Abraham Wald story.  If you can't be bothered to click the link, he was a World War 2 statistician who helped improve the armour on planes to protect against enemy bullets.  His major contribution was to tell everyone they were looking at it the wrong way. They were putting…

  • The power of context

    The media folks will tell you that planning media to show up in context can be up to 30% more effective. As with most insight shared my media agencies, this shouldn't come as a surprise.  Ice cream sales go up when it's hot. Match making sites get more traffic closer to the weekend. Fitness brands…

  • Solve real problems

    So I had a bit if a cold recently and saw my work on the back of the tissue packet. This is from a few years back. You may remember Keep Britain Tidy, who still exist to stop lazy Brits littering everywhere.  They wanted to criticise litterers and make them aware of the scale of…

  • Do without things if you want to learn about them

    I saw a film where a bunch of brand loyalists were made to do without their favourite packaged brand for a couple of weeks. They were given and unbranded replacement and moaned for the whole two weeks about how it wasn't as good. Only to find they had actually been using their favourite brand without…

  • Culture and stuff. Two ways to think about it

    So I'm working in a new place with a heritage in PR. I know what you're thinking, probably this:   That's mostly my experience too. But not all PR folk are like that, and they're not here.  It's funny really, you can't move for all sorts of integrated agencies banging on about influencing culture, mind…