NORTHERN PLANNER

You finish work,it’s one of those perfect car journeys with no hold ups, every traffic light is on your side. You’re two minutes away from the swimming pool, already you’re thinking about diving in and forgetting the day.

You turn the corner and it’s gridlock. You sit there for another half hour and seethe silently.

I was watching Tristan and Isolde last night. An okay film about Dark Ages English tribes at war with each other instead of uniting against the ruling Irish. While I’ll have to check my history books for the veracity of the plot line (isn’t the real legend something to do with King Arthur of Excalibur fame?), it’s a useful reminder that the best way to unite is to realise you have a common enemy.

There’s not many planners in the North of England, so we need to stick together against the opinion that you need to go to London for good thinking,  Not to mention the fact that it can be a bit lonely sometimes.

So I’ll forget the ancient rifts between Manchester and Leeds (two cities in the North of England who don’t get on, not least because of football) and point you to Graham Furlong’s blog. He may reside in Manchester, but he’s another planner Up North and he gives you posts like this one on simplicity.

Stu’s been threatening to start a blog but I can’t persuade him to make the leap. In the meantime he’s decided to see if he can run 10K in 40 minutes, looks like he’s been influenced by my grasping at youth swim challenge.

I was in London on Monday for that pitch (No time to catch up with any London bloggers I’m afraid). Thankfully it went fine and we’re through to the final stage. We didn’t do finished executions, we showed them their voice, what they should feel like. It worked a treat.

There wasn’t a traditional creative team on this one, we had a planner/writer partnership from the start.  If you’re reading this Russell, thanks for the all that stuff on complexity and getting the people that do executuions involved at the start, it really does produce different work. Having Stu helps too.

We were showed the ideas from another agency. It was bit surprising and and I didn’t know what to say when asked, "What do you think?". I managed to mumble something about the ideas being good but it didn’t capture what I thought the brand was about. What are you supposed to say in these situations?

The annoying thing about writers is the way they make it look so easy, curse them. You’ll need no introduction to Scamp of course, but if you can bear witnessing someone else making it look like a doddle, have a look at find One Woman Running’s blog here. She hasn’t won a D&AD yet but she’s written  a fascinating post on what got her into this mess in the first place

Very busy today, so a fuller report on last night’s planning together will have to wait. It was fun and here’s some questions to ponder in the meantime:

1. Should Famous Rob’s weakness for  Cointreau preclude him getting that job?

2. What did James mean when likened himself, Rob and I to Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and the famous Karl (and which one am I)?

3. How do you get the right music volume in bars? Should everyone get their own speaker, or there own louder v quieter voting buttons?

4. In future should we all leave when Gemma and Joel do to avoid stuff like the above?

5. Anyone else want to come next time?

Fitting garb when talking about creative work

Andy’s sent me this limited edition silk screen print. The first thing I did was show everyone in the office. Hope the art directors give him a shout soon. Word of mouth marketing? Probably. Generosity? For sure.

My second name is Hovells. It never get’s pronounced right. Usually people say it to rhyme with hobbles, but sometimes I get something that sounds like go-wells. Thanks to Cafe Press, this should help.

Got a pitch on Monday (lovely weekend- not). For quite a while I’ve stuck to my lucky pitch clothes- all black. Should I stick to what I know or wear this? Should I spend more time worrying about something useful?

What do you think? It will do for monthly ‘My Brain Hurts’ meetings at least.

Third Northern Planning Summit tonight in Arts Cafe. After reading Russell’s ‘coffee and over the world’ post, it’s good to know we’re not alone (even though we may be drinking something other than coffee). It may have been started with planners, but anyone who wants to come is welcome.

We learned a few things from our first meeting; for example Leffe isn’t condusive for intelligent discussion and it’s always useful to have a tent in the garden if your locked out of the house.

When we managed to get together a second time, where we met Gemma, we found that I’m useless finding venues and James B gets lost easilly, while Famous Rob wowed us with his strategy for a discount supermarket.

We’ve sort of got a name for these meetings now (see below), and Rob will be bringing Joel. Next time Beccy from my place will be coming too. I’ve got Dave at work doing us a logo and things just for fun, maybe we’ll even have some tankards like my Grandad used to have at his social club.

Perhaps that’s what as should call it – ‘My Brain Hurts (Northern Chapter evening meetings)’.

Either this coming Thursday (12^th) or the next one (19^th) are fine with me.

gemma.

So does that make it a week on Thursday? That’s fine by me. Please say that’s what we’re doing my brain hurts.