NORTHERN PLANNER

So the incomparable Roger Federer has won another Grand Slam. Like most sports geniuses, he seems to be able to bend the laws of physics, just like the way Ali seemed to float across the ring or Michael Jordan seemed to hang in the air. But sometimes, having such mutant like gifts can make things harder.

He always had the skill, but he lost matches thanks to being too much of a natural.  Because he could play so many shots instinctively, he had too much time to think. It wasn’t until later that he learned to handle the confusing choice his skills presented to him.

I’m sure there’s a parallel in there for what it’s like being a young planner sifting through all the brilliant free advice out there on blogs and stuff.

Second Northern Planning Summit this in Leeds. Last time was fun but we enjoyed a bit more Leffe than we should – one of use ended sleeping in tent apparently (name withheld to protect the guilty).

"Your twenties are torture,really, because you don’t know what you’re going to be or whether it’s all going to work out, and you are supposedly an adult but you haven’t really learnt anything…I think your thirties are a wonderful time."

Helen Mirrren

The nights may be drawing in, but you also get to see more sunrises like this on the way to work.

Next time you lose reception on your TV take the time to appreciate what your seeing. Part of those crackly bits on the screen are caused by radiation from the Big Bang. Your watching the start of the universe, the few seconds when it suddenly went from infinitely small to infinitely big.

It’s not often you see something made out of nothing.

Pipex is pleased with the former Knight Rider. Brand recognition is up 50% according to this article. But hold on – up 50%? Who had heard of Pipex before? Anyway, they’re hiring Pamela Anderson next. No need to artificially inflate any figures here…

By the way, there’s some stuff around for an insurance company called Hiscox. Nothing can save this brand until they figure out what most will make of their name.

I quite like that Vodafone line,it certainly applies to one or two accounts I’ve worked in in the past.

If you’ve ever worked on a housebuilding account, you’ll probably be glad you don’t anymore. Same work, week in week out, same old dull site visits, just change the price on that ad this week and so on. I did it a few years ago as an account manager, but you know what? It wasn’t half bad. Like most retail stuff, or small briefs, you need to take the opportunities when they come. Here’s why I’m glad I worked on a homebuilder.

1. Speed

You learn speed. Homebuilding works from week to week, changes happen at drop of a hat. You learn to be adaptable, and you learn to work very quickly. We did TV, DM, websites radio, the lot. I’ve never worked on such a mix of media in so little time. or learned as much.

2 CV

There’s at least one new ad a week to develop. You can either recycle what you’ve done elsewhere, or you can work hard at finding something new for a creative brief. Doing this week in week out is very,very hard, but it’s wonderful practise if you’ve any leanings to being a planner one day, with loads of great thinking to talk about when you’re ready to do something else.

3. Strategy

Every housing developement is different, but most are marketed the same. You cannot get away from location and price, but there is always something –  better for schools, there may be a history to the area, sometimes it’s the kind of people who will live there. Below is a rough of something that ran in Manchester, amidst loads of amazingly shot, stylish ads, it was aimed at under 25’s and it worked a treat. We could have just done a normal location ad..

4. Inventiveness

Art direction rules and copy styles tend to be very rigid, so you can make all the ads accross all the developments consistent. Working within narrow guidelines is far more challenging than a blank canvas.

5. Craft

Learning some craft.  You get to work very closely with the studio and art directors, usually both in front of a mac while the papers scream down the phone for copy. It’s great to get a feel for art direction and how macs work.

6. Relationships

The studio is your lifeline (which is often forgotten), you find out what makes them tick very quickly. As for creatives, they dread homebuilding briefs. If you can get them interested in this, selling briefs in later life will be a doddle. They’ll also love you for trying and let you into their world (bribery works too though).

            

7. Being useful

Client meetings are not easy. There’s the sales team, the media agency and the PR people. You learn to only talk if you’ve something useful to say, and you learn to suggest, not state. Useful for a planner who’s only there to be useful.

8. Campaign planning

More and more, developers have to sell houses without a showhome. You can either roll with all this and change from week to week, or you can develop a plan for each site, based around key events, like showhome preview, introductory prices and even drumming awarnessin the local gymn. Wonderful practise for channel planning and doing what’s right for right now.

So there you go. If you’re on one of these, chin up and take you chances when they come.

The Future Foundation has found that in Europe, luxury is no longer reserved for the selected few. A certain level of material wealth is within the reach of more people (half of the UK think they can afford to splash out), so luxury is less about flashy names and more about ‘me time’.

Instead of an obsession with with names and ‘labels’, we frown more on self indulgence. Instead of massing more stuff, we want to try new things and share more experiences with friends and family.

Luxury brands are becoming less about quality and more about quality of life. Like a bottle of wine becoming more about sensuous pleasure and less about the exclusivity of the vineyard. But luxury brands wrapping  more experiences around what they sell presents and opportunity for those that don’t.

‘No frills’ brands like TK Max, Primark, Lidl  and Easy Jet have benefited from offering the same result for less money – by eschewing all the added extras.  Not many have an agenda setting reputation though, most are just ‘there’. Maybe they could stand for spending less on ‘stuff’ and doing all the things you want with the people you want.

Imagine an airline that wants you to spend less on in flight and more on a romantic dinner on holiday, or a clothes discounter that wants you to be able to have that little black dress and be able to go out and show it off more. What do you think, can no frills brands be about living your life on your own terms? About doing the things you never seem to get around to doing?

Went to a wedding at the weekend. The evening do was fancy dress, I’m the pathetic Baywatch character in the middle.

Her indoors was the quickest draw in the west.

The smaller Dark Lord of the Sith beat the bigger one in a lightsabre duel.

Thankfully The Jedi were on hand to protect us from the sore loser – although he’s attempting to cut off Harry’s Potter’s cheek here.

Once opon a time I used to swim competitively and I thought I was pretty good. One summer I was in America and this smug kid from Wisconsin not only beat me without really drawing much breath, he had time to wave.

It reminds me of then story of Mozart and Salieri. Salieri was a very good composer but he wassimply in awe of Mozart. He also despised him and his foul mouthed, feckless, infantile behaviour. It seemed a cruel joke that Mozart was the genius, while he was just very good. Espescially when only someone as good as Salieri could grasp the full extent of Mozart’s greatness-ergo be so savagely wounded by it.

So when I took at look at Helen’s Comfortable Disorientation blog I began to wonder why I even bother posting. Take this post for example about the lack of love letters men write. Not only did it spur me to write one for Mrs Hovells, it made me think of all the things I take for granted. Many blogs make you think, not many make you think about your own life.

I bet she’s really nice to meet too. Damn.