NORTHERN PLANNER

I was reading that they’ve discovered a new techonogy for removable sticky stuff, all thanks to sudying spiders. Reminds me of all the things we’ve learned from copying nature. Like these:

54% of Britons want to live abroad (Institute for Policy Research), but nearly half that do emigrate come home. Maybe some of this is to do with doing before thinking, but doesn’t it show how human desire is a contradictory little monkey? We want what we can’t have and tire of it when we get it.

Julian Barnes’ makes this point in the last chapter of ‘The History of the World in 10 and a Half Chapters’. His version of heaven is a place where all your hearts desires are granted, but after a few millenia, sheer boredom leads you to choose to be deleted from existence.

If you do one good thing today, pay it a visit to Give Rob a Job and sign the petition, even better just hire him!  That’s right, no one has given  The Famous Rob Mortimer the planning job he so richly deserves. Rob @ Cynic has lost patience with us all and kindly created the site. Do not let Rob down.

If you’re in any doubt of Robs powers, take a look at his blog. If you haven’t been lucky enough to meet him, you must have seen his generous comments on other people’s blogs, so you’ll already know what a nice fellow he is.

…sprinters you could trust. No ‘nutritionists’ in the shadows, no grotesque musculature, just skinny chaps in baggy white outfits (from The Guardian). Still, now they’re getting better at catching cheats, maybe they’re on the way back….

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: