NORTHERN PLANNER

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  • Bread

    For thousands of years, the ritual of daily bread has been deeply rooted in Western culture. The phrase, ‘our daily bread’ still has religious weight. The word companion  comes from the latin meaning ‘one who eats bread with another’…meaningful bonds are made over the breaking of bread. If we make our own, it’s an act so basic it’s deeply satisfying. And then there’s that smell.

    Bread

    Leavened bread was first made back in Egypt as far back as 1500BC, supposedly the result of using ale instead of water to make the loaves. For many centuries, the masses survived on a diet based on bread. It reached the level of magic – the marriage of earthly and symbolic, sacred and profane.

    Our attitude towards bread today shows much of our attitude to food in general. As living standards have improved, we’ve cared less about the basics. We spend less (relatively) on food than we ever have, and such a disconnected attitude to food we’re highly succeptible to fads. Fear of carbs means bread is being rejected. But, while more of us should eat less, not just less bread, is would be a shame if a thread that links us right back to our ancient struggle to survival was let go. Bread connects us to out roots. Each culture has its own – the jewish challah, Greek Pitta, Irish Soda bread. It’s edible history.

    I think it’s a question of quality (more) over quantity (less). That goes for all food. And to that end, we’ll be doing some bread recipes food.

  • Rabbit Ragu

    It’s January, it’s dark, wet, cold and miserable. Time for another recipe, something  comforting, warming and cheery.

    Rainyday

    This one takes a bit of effort, but you’re probably skint after overspending in December, the weather out is rubbish, so it’s not as if you’ve anything else to do.

    Just a word on rabbit. It’s lean, cheap, has a deep, complex taste and shreds like a dream. You can get it at any good butcher – which is a good excuse to not go to a supermarket and buy something local. Ask for it jointed, with the sweet meats removed.

    So………….

    Put the jointed rabbit in pot with one large onion. peeled and halved. Put it on the hob and bring it up to light simmer, leave it gently bubbling for two hours.

    You’ll have plenty of time to make a simple tomato sauce. Finely chop two cloves of garlic, gently fry in a small pan for a minute or so, tip in a can of chopped tomato and sprinkle in a teaspoon of dry oregano. Bring all that to the boil and leave.

    Then open a packet of fresh lasagna and cut into chunky, 1 inch thick ribbons. You could use papardelle, bit there’s something even nicer about thicker, uneven pasta. It seems to hold more sauce, and if you’re having people over it looks like you made the pasta yourself.

    When the rabbit is done, take it out of the pot and remove the meat from the bones, shred it finely and leave ready for later.

    Strain the remaining stock and then boil as hot as you can, until it’s reduced by a half. Then pour in a glass of white wine and reduce by a half again.

    Tip tomato sauce into the stock wine and bring to the boil, tip in all the rabbit meat and simmer for five minutes.

    While it’s simmering, bring a pan of salted water to the boil and throw in the pasta, boil it for three minutes and drain.Return it to the pot and pour in the sauce. Stir it all on the heat until the sauce thoroughly coats the pasta and serve it immediately, ideally with grated Parmesan cheese.

    This mean is a dream, trust me. A proper winter warmer – and pretty impressive if you’re having people ’round.

    Next time we’ll do some hearty vegetarian cooking.

  • Objects can civilize us

    They cana make us behave differently and be aware of what we do. A cup isn’t just for gettin liquid inside us. Take tea (of course tea). It started as a medicine and became a drink, in China first, five thousand years ago. By the 8th century, it had become very rarified (Imperial tea was harvested in the morning to the sound of drums and cymbals. The women wore silk gloves to pick it). For the Japanese, it expresses harmony and beauty, enhanced by the vessels that form part of the ritual. Literature, architecture and language have all been affected. Someone who is too aesthetic is describes as having too much tea in them, while those who lack sensitivity are described as having too little. In the west, the objects, the rituals are still seen as having part of the allure. Do you have enough tea in you?

    Tea1

    Now take that mass of history and heritage and then read this. I dare you not to get annoyed.

  • What’s in a name?

    It seems that blogging has reached some sort of critical mass – naming people named after their blog.

    The favoured method of adressing me at work has become, "Hey Northern.". Which, I must admit I quite like.

    They could have chosen ‘Planner’, but since that’s actually my job it doesn’t work so well.

    There’s a minority that enjoy calling me ‘Hovis’, but there you go.

  • The stuff of myth

    When I was young, I used to love Greek mythology. Of course, at that age the stuff I read never included the sex, the incest or the jealous, petty cruelty. It’s actually racy stuff.

    Zeus

    The Guardian has published some free booklets, with a summary of the best bits. It’s fun to read them as an adult and realise how naive I was as a child, but re-reading them, I also found a wider theme.

    At the heart of great myths, the ones that last forever, there lies gritty realism. Like Homer’s tale of Troy, to quote Michael Wood in the introduction,"Of love and hatred, cruelty and heroism: the unchanging facts of the human condition" That’s the why the film adaptation of Troy never worked for me, it was a largely happy ending, whereas the real story ends in tragedy.

    Another interesting strand is the way much of myth can be traced back to a kernel of truth. There is a real likelihood that a city called Troy actually existed, and some great war actually happened. Just like King Arthur lived in a real castle we think we’ve found –  Tintagel.

    So the best myths seem to encapsulate some sort of folk memory – a framework for tale the expands and grows with every generation – but likely to have some sort of authentic core, somewhere at the start.

    I think this has some lessons for those of us trying to make brands interesting. We have to start with something real, we have to make sure the way they behave is more realistic – there’s nothing wrong with having a dark side…….and we have to surrender some control so the story can take a life of its own.

    I’m not sure if this is just twaddle, but it seems to make some sense on a Monday morning – let’s face it, we’re trying to create modern myths are we not?

  • First cock up in the new job

    Okay, so this morning I was supposed to meet a very important client, along with my CEO in the Radisson Manchester.

    The good news is that I turned up to a Radisson Manchester on time with no problems.

    I get there early, I take a seat in reception. I see Piers Morgan sweep by, pose for the papparazzi and jump into a huge Merc. I see two other celebrity type people. I find out they’re here for ‘Britain’s Got Talent’.

    Then I get a call along the lines of, "Where are you? We’re ready here at Manchester Airport" I’m in the city centre one. The new boy, trying very hard to do well. Not doing well…….OH MY GOD!!!! I AM DEAD!

    Brain shuts down, feel funny. Black out.

    Next thing I know I’m being helped up by a familiar face – someone from ‘Cutting it’. She asks me if I’m all right and asks her PA to get me some water, before gliding out in front of the waiting flashbulbs.

    I drive back to the office to face the music. I don’t get fired, I don’t get a roasting. I do get mercilessly mocked.

    I would have prefered to spill lots of tea as my first gaffe, but there you go.

  • Thoughts on marketers and marketing

    Someone asked me to crash out some thoughts on marketing departments and the relevance of marketing in today’s world. What follows is a slightly edited version. But in a nutshell – I couldn’t do  marekting director’s job and I respect people who do. I think that’s the key to lots of things – love the fact we’re all good at different stuff and surround yourself with people who can do what you can’t……
    It’s tough in a Marketing department. You need two hats – the cold, rational side for the very real commercial realities like reporting to your board…and the creative skills you need to generate and recognise great ideas. Few people have both.
    In my experience, most have a bias towards the rational, business side, and fairplay to them too. If I has a board and shareholders to please, people who really do only think in straight line, so would I.
    But this makes marketing very risk averse…the greatest percieved risk is doing something different, but thanks to the the new medio savvy, web enabled consumer, not standing out is the REAL risk.
    I think the best client/agency relationships are where each party understands what they’re good at – and relish others that fill their gaps. The worst relationships are where you pretend to be alike.
    But it is hard….advertising isn’t what it was, and there’s this scary new world of multi touchpoint brands, content and God knows what else. It’s complex. Hard manage.
    A marketer can react by keeping their agencies in silos – and buying ‘stuff’. The good ones force their agencies to work together, have a lead strategist and makes them share the risk, whatever the media.
    100_3012
    As for the relevance of marketing……I think marketing done well is still relevant, but we’re in this wierd transition phase when no one can agree what good marketing looks like. Most still think marketing is still about pushing messages, and manipulating people into wanting to buy your stuff. They target individuals.
    But marketing has to get inspiring, in a world where people can shut out marketing that’s dull or irrelevent, people have to want to give you their attention – what you do needs to be at least as interesting as the ‘normal media’. That’s a big leap for most marketers and their agencies to make.
    Oh, and I totally buy into the whole ‘herd’ and transmedia way of thinking. We’re  social animals, marketing will work best when it targets people as part of a social network – and magnifies the conversations there (or reframes them!!!). Most of the ills of the western world come us mistakenly thinking we’re each more special than we really are – it stops us learning from each other’s mistakes and listening to experience….."I’m/we’re different, won’t be the same for me/us"
    That’s roughly what I think. Feel free to rip it to shreds.

  • Quiet clothes revolution

    Since I work on fashion/style brand now, it’s kind of funny that my own personal taste is dire. Basically, look at the Howies website, find something that fits. The tyranny of choice is a bit much for me.

    Guysadvertisingbig

    So it’s with great pleasure that I share Palmercash with you. I now shop from two places. Toto at work showed me the way. Genius (the t-shirts, not him, though I think he’s pretty clever too).

  • Keep a scrapbook

    This is nothing new, you’ll have heard this a million times. But my word it’s useful! Keep a scrapbook!

    Scrapbook

    I was in a tight spot last night/this morning. I’ve never worked on a brand that exclusively looks to fashion conscious young women, and I certainly can’t ‘plan from within’. It’s my first creative brief on this brand, I want to get it right and there’s no time. It’s needed at the speed of light.

    100_3000

    Then I remember something I saved about Generation Y women. I look in my box of tricks and bingo. Positive selfishness. Connections fire, off we go.

    It’s one thing to have something for long term, crumbly stimulus. Sorry, it’s essential. Sometimes though, this stuff on tap can get you out of a very tight corner too.

    And breathe……

  • Morning

    I get up early, very early. Some of that is to get to work before the traffic builds up, some of that is plain old early birdness. And to be honest, a mild case of insomnia is making me rise even earlier at the moment.

    Night20sky

    I could gloss over the stress of new job…. taking so much stuff in etc but that’s not my style. Now of course things will calm down, but that doesn’t help when your brain insists on processing a zillion bits of new information at 5am.

    But I like being awake before anyone else. I like the feeling of existing in some sort of parallel universe. It feels like some sort of place that exists out of time. Everything seems somehow slowed down. You get a better sense of of the world around you without people in the way.

    And that was one thing that struck me this morning, on a quiet motorway, hills in the distance. We don’t worship nature anymore. Nearly every religion used to hold it in awe…..they used to pray to the sun, the moon, the sea and even animals. And we were at its mercy. You get a much better sense of how big the world is when a horse and carriage takes you days and weeks to get anywhere, when every time you cross the sea is literally taking your life into your own hands. Take Edmund Hillary conquering Everest – it was such a pivotal symbol of the strength of the British Empire. Explorers were heroes. Nature was a challenge, now it’s an inconvenient truth.

    Now our gods are technology. We worship the car, the Ipod, the plasma screen. These things are considered beauty. Nature is scenery – an optional extra. Technology may well save us from this eco mess we’ve got us in, which I find ironic since it’s what got us here.