One day last week the motorways were impassable, so I took the train. It went through loads of places I’ve never been to and probably never will, just like most marketing teams and boardmembers. It reminded me that a planner’s job isn’t just to make brands relevant to people, it’s also about bringing the opinions…

There’s no getting away from having to do the factory tour. Insights into your audience are important, but obsessing about them can make brands forget to talk about themselves. Getting to meet the people who work there is a great antidote to this and can teach you something fresh and interesting that the people in…

Big Shiny Thing has a post about Google Trends. After a quick look, Mumbai beats New York and London for searches on Account Planning. Also, in most UK cities far more people are searching for Arctic Monkeys than Mcfly.

Grant McCracken has put up a thought provoking post about BMW. They seem to be positioning themselves as an ‘enemy of the enemies of ideas’. Interesting since, in the UK at least, BMW drivers tend to be seen as conservative and rather dull. I wonder, has the new ideas culture led to them to look…

Saw this ad in the Observer. I thought it was good visual idea, dramatising the line ‘avoid getting old ahead of time’. The problem was, I was damned if I knew what they actually do. They probably wanted to intrigue me enough to go to the website. They did, but then I had to play…

Sorry for the lack of entries recently. It’s time consuming being a one man planning department. Anyway, the newspaper society ran an interesting ad in Campaign last week. It told us that ad avoiding consumers actually look for ads in local press, nay, that’s why they buy them.They want you to go onto www.thewantedads.co.uk to…

Just been uploading pictures of last month’s trip to the Eden Project. Perfect example of a brand with a consistent message. It’s inspiring, interesting and all about plants and the environment. You end up being so motivated to support the cause, you end up spending a fortune in the gift shop. These cotton seeds on…

‘The Independent’ reports that this year’s World Cup could see a match winning goal broadcast in an ad just minutes after the final whistle. New technology will allow you to edit right up until the last minute. Maybe this will give more cut – through in the post PVR world. Imagine Subway airing a commercial…

Here’s an article from Ad Age Daily about the importance of search marketing for brands. I was in a meeting last week when the media planners tried to convince the client that they needed to go on TV to be credible. We thought that perhaps there were other things to work on first. Looks like…