NORTHERN PLANNER

Wannabe Adman’s asking "How can Account Management, Planning and Creative work better together to both develop and sell big communications ideas?"

Here’s a fascinating contribution from Life in the Middle. He’s be an interesting client no?

My two penneth is largely focused on the interpretation of the brief:

"Breaking the question down, i’d say it’s actually two questions:

• How can we improve efficiency?
• How can we ensure that ‘big ideas’ are allowed to flourish/be sold?"

I’m not sure it’s really about efficiency –   lots of little silos doing their own job. Isn’t it the overlap that makes it work? Lots of conversations and lots of ideas. The more talk, the more chance to expose something interesting- or something dumb for that matter. This isn’t really possible if every time an enthusiastic account exec has the cheek to suggest an idea, they get booted out of the room to finish the contact report.

Which begins to answer Will’s second point – ideas ‘flourish’ and grow through lots of input. This includes the client who knows their business better than anyone. An enthusiatic team that believes in what they’re proposing (and each has had a stake in it) is far more persuasive than one that’s been banished to respective corners to do their job-espescially when the person that is supposed to approve the work has had a big part of it’s development in the first place…

On another note, isn’t the question itself quite revealing? Why isn’t it asking about the media people and the other agencies too?

Gymns are great for unwinding, but the best bit of training a lot is being able to eat more. This is a good thing since food is my favourite thing in the world, apart from maybe drink, or a good cup of tea.

Food is preparation; it’s relaxing and losing yourself in a task, the joy if creating something and making other people happy (when it goes right). It’s shopping for the right ingredients and imagining what it will all taste like. It’s a quick 20 minutes at the end of a long day or chatting over a glass of wine while the pot bubbles.

Food is about the senses, not just taste but smell, sight and touch – but that’s if your lucky. If your not, food is not being hungry.

Food can say a lot. Food can mean ‘love you’, ‘I’m sorry’, ‘we’re a family’ or sometimes ‘i don’t care’.

Food is culture, tradition and ritual: it’s Christmas, Passover or Ramadan. Food is knowing what fork to use. It can also be new and controversial, like snail porridge.

Food is personal; it’s prefering your Mum’s lasagne, having a favourite chippy or a secret pasta sauce recipe.

Food is about identity, it’s local, regional and national. It’s a different Ragu recipe in every town in Italy, it’s Yorkshire Pudding or Chicken Kiev, it’s Prawn Gumbo or Lamb Kleftiko.

Food can be quick and simple, or taking your time. It can be a quick spaghetti or taking a day to get the perfect balance of flavours in a cassoulet. It can be grinding your own spices in a curry or getting a takeaway.

Food brings a texture to life; the fried Sunday breakfast, the half time pie, peanuts at the bar, lunch at the desk, the family dinner, the mean when he proposed to you the Mcdonalds hangover cure, the guilty pleasure of the pot noodle or the popcorn with a film.

Food feedsthe belly but it also satisfies the soul.

Roast chicken risotto tonight, better do some rowing first.

I’m hungry.

I like it when you stumble accross something new by accident. Isn’t that when you get something really fresh and interesting? To find something you don’t expect,  you have to get lost sometimes, or at least take a different route.

I suppose that’s why I’m not too keen on rigid process, since it forces you to fit a problem to a model, instead of doing what’s right for whatever you’re up to now (of course that’s probably an excuse for not being formally trained…). That’s why I get nervous about agencies that hire people that think like they do (and clients). What’s the point of paying someone to tell you what you already know?

  I was lucky enough to do the APG Briefing for Advertising course a couple of years ago. I’d highly recommend it to anyone since you learn a lot from the tutors (Russell was course leader), also from the other people on the course. I think this is an overlooked benefit of training – working with other people with different outlooks and jobs can teach you as much as the actual content.

Two things still stand out today:

1. Creatives always remember the briefing, never the brief – so make it as interesting as you can. Things like showing a picture of the target audience instead of relying on words.

2. Here’s an example from Dylan Williams on working hard to write less:

We had the first Northern Planning summit at The Showroom in Sheffield last night. I got there first and sat down with a coffee to do a bit of work. Strange nervous feeling at this point, I sort of know these people, but I’ve never met them before.

James arrived next. We swapped notes on the places we work and the unconventional ways we got into planning. Then in walked the famous Rob Mortimer soaked by the rain.

Some people like going to the cinema for a first date, that way there are no awkward silences and you then have something to talk about after. It was a bit like that for us – thanks to shared experiences from blogging, the conversation was easy to start and it only really stopped when the bar staff wanted to go home.

Amongst other things, we covered the advantages of baldness for planners, the lunacy of Rob not having a planning job yet, the merits of being open in blogs v keeping things back, the value of doing what’s right now v planning models, the brilliance of 80’s music, the lack of good researchers up north and advantages of using pictures and analagy over words. Also, I think James recorded me likening good creative briefing to Ronnie Corbett telling a joke, and Rob’s views on the strange success of Magners. Rob also played the orginal version of that track on the Sony Bravia ad – magic. We had to move rooms when the live music came on (hope the performer wasn’t offended) and ended up talking over a candle lit table and enjoying personal waitress service (the girl has probably heard of Rob).

I thoroughly enjoyed their company. We’ll be doing it again soon.

Out and about tomorrow so limited blogging. The day will end with a drink and a chat with the famous Rob Mortimer and the not so famous James Boardwell. With any luck there’s some sort of ‘beer goggle effect’ for interestingness and they won’t catch on that I’m actually as dull and predictable as this blog.

I’m not really into fashion (as some of the sporadic self portraits on this blog will confirm) but I still like this great example of a corporate blog from GQ.

On another tack, it’s another example of our increasing need for editors in our lives. The Long Tail and the increasing plethora of choice means it’s harder to actually make your mind up. From top ten credit card deals and pension guides to things to wear this summer and albums you must buy this year, editors help us decide. In the UK we’ve got ‘Happy’, basically a magazine that tells women what to buy and where. We’re going to see a lot of brands making themselves useful just by helping us make sense of the limiting effect of having so many options.

It used to be a lot easier to find new music for example – back in 1990 you just read Q, the NME and Vox (remember that?). Now you have to know what you like and find a source that likes it too. But that means you just find more of the same thing. Luckily I have a source called "Muller" the man who also introduced me to Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2005 and Prince in 1986. Indeed, some people think we’re only best friends because no one else likes our records or shares our humour.

By the way, I’m in love with The Guillemots at the moment (Made Up Love Song describes everything I feel about Mrs Hovells). Muller hasn’t got it yet, which means he’ll pretend not to like it at first.

Stuart pointed me to this site. Genius way to champion learning by doing. Reminds me of this and this.

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Interesting  post on waste from No Man’s Blog. It shows how much individuals could help the environent if they knew how easy it is. Yet most of the questions the media asks tend to be about the big, difficult things with no easy answer; like nuclear power, Kyoto and the behaviour of governments. It’s easy to do nothing when the conversation manages to shift responsibilty onto someone else.

There are lot’s of simple, and painless, things we can do before having to worry about drastic changes. Take Asi’s example;If one mobile phone charger per household is left on standby, the energy wasted is enough to provide the electricity needs of 66,000 homes for one year. Or consider that DVD player uses 80% of it’s power while on standby. Most people can’t afford a wind turbine but they can afford to switch things off whem they’re not using them.