NORTHERN PLANNER

1. What you put is directly related to what you put out. If you're reading the same stuff as everyone else, you'll do the same stuff as everyone else.
2. Cultivate interesting aquaintances. The more you hang out with people who do different stuff to you, the better.  There's nothing more dull than talking about brand models with a bunch of planners. And in general, if you want to be great, be around great people, some of their magic will rub off on you.
3. Avoid routine at all costs. Sorry Big Networks Who Like To Sell a Process and Keep Everything the Same, but if you work in the same way, you'll always do the same work. That goes for your daily routine, do different things in different orders. Sameness breeds sameness.
4. Always operate at the edge of your comfort zone. A really great way of working, or presentation structure or whatever always suffers from the law of diminishing returns. Mix it up, try aspects of the job you're not good at. When I was a swimmer, I would always train with people just a little faster than me, in time I caught up, then it was time to move on.
5. Booze doesn't make you interesting. It can release a few inhibitions, sometimes it can magnify what's inside, but that's it.
6. Great coffee and tea however, work a treat. They increase endurance, sharpen the brain. Don't waste time on the crap stuff though. Filter coffee as a minimum, tea made in a warmed pot (Yorskshire Tea if you can). Surround yourself with quality and it seeps into your work.
7. Be proud of your quirks. Agencies try and iron out the differences between people and get them working the same. This is dumb. Their needs to shared standards, but I'm never going to measured and emotionless, as some planners are, I can't help but be enthusiastic and get excited about things. Some planners are incredibly cheerful and clever. I'm neither, I just manage to say a few things simply. This is not for everyone, certainly not every client, but the ones who like me, tend to like me a lot. An old boss of mine was a force of nature, never suffered fools, bludgeoned some clients through force of personality. Some loved her, some detested her. Some planners naturally distill and less is very much more for them. I tend to stick around people I trust and throw all sorts of stuff around, they tell me the 10% that isn't dumb. You can't pleas everyone, unless you're dull, but you can please a few people a hell of a lot by being yourself and working out how to make that fly.
8. Be good at asking questions. Many planners are shy and fear small talk (I am for sure). Most people like talking about themselves, so get good at asking questions and listening. People will love your company. Be a bit more courageous in meetings and ask the difficult questions, the ones that make people reconsider or re-think. Like, "What is the actual objective?". You'd me amazed how many times I've needed to ask this question.
9. Have a thing. It's dead useful if people remember you for something other than work. Something makes people see you differently. For me it's the obsession with proper tea. For someone else in my office, he's a semi-professional rugby player with a heart condition.
10. Go on a journey. Something that annoys you, something that you really want to sort out, something you've always wanted t happen. Set out to make it a reality, do it with zeal. Enthusiasm and drive are contagious, it will influence the actual job and people will be drawn to your energy. I'm a quest to stamp out crap caffiene in every interaction in my personal and professional life for example. I'm training to do a 70 mile bike race in three and a half hours. It's not much, but it's a daily drive people seem to respond to. A friend of mine is hellbent on building a charity that gives free bikes to kids recovering from cancer.
11. Ignore this list, people who follow guides rather than finding their own way become dull (see point 3!!!)

Let’s be clear. Winning awards is nothing to do with telling the truth.
It’s mostly about what you can post rationalise to fit whatever people are looking for.
For IPA Effectiveness Awards for example, judges are looking for econometrics, some sign that above the line advertising still works and something new to tell the industry. The IPA is mostly about making adland look grown up and commercial – and create a bank of data for the IPA DataBank which will always tell you creativity pays back and do TV.
The APG Awards are looking for some sign that ‘planning’ had some influence on the creative work and, again, you have something new to tell the industry. In essence, the APG Awards exist to make planners look like a necessary evil rather than an unnecessary evil. And make planners feel creative.
Media Awards are all about evidence and some sign of innovation. Unlike most ‘creative awards’ where it can just submitting the work with a little background explanation, they’re looking for actual evidence you made a difference to a brand’s fortunes, they hate brand tracking and want actual evidence of sales and behaviour change. But as they don’t want econometrics, you can always find a sales story in the data somewhere. Boiling it down….., because media is boring, the direction of media awards is to try and make media interesting, but more grown up and serious than creative awards.
Creative awards judges are looking for something new and original. Something that hasn’t been done before. They couldn’t care less if it sold anything, or indeed of anyone saw it, as long as it rewrites the creative lexicon. Increasingly, unless you want to enter craft skills sections, this means avoiding actually entering ads and doing lots of social media/events/stunts that four people saw. The essence of creative awards is partly making creatives feel good since 80% of their work is destroyed by suits or planners before it gets to the client, then the rest is mauled by client committees and pre-testing. Leaving 1% of work running close to what was hoped for. The rest of creative awards is down to impressing creative directors at agencies you want to work at.

The essence of all awards is to pretend everything is perfect. Strategy, then creative or buying the plan etc, then production works like clockwork. When of course nothing happens until the day before the presentation and the idea that ran came from a rebrief after the client binned the original work.
The mis-quote the X Files, The Truth is Out There but it’s not in awards papers.

So, here’s a potted guide to winning awards……….

1. If it’s a written paper, write a story. Catastrophise at the beginning, the brand faces a massive challenge, put in some progressive complications (research made us realise we were facing something far worse), throw in a lightning bolt of discovery, base it on a universal truth (we realised this was all about the universal truth that music is form of rebellion to young people) then make sure, when you set out what you actually did, litter with as much gold as you can, focus on what was interesting, rather than what worked…and make the resulting evidence prove it was the interesting stuff that worked. Then write a moral of the story that is something that matches the agenda for the body running the awards…something they would like everybody to do or take on board.
   2. Make sure you build in evaluation into a funky campaign or plan when you are running it….and make sure it measures the cool stuff. I’ve seen some of very best campaign not even get nominated because there was no evidence in the results.
   3. Of course, if you’re entering creative awards, no one cares if it worked, but you need to make sure the best stuff runs. Make friends with the media agency, make sure there is stuff on the plan the client doesn’t care about and doesn’t cost much. And make friends with whoever is doing production. If it ran and it was one off, it still ran and it still counts. Juries are getting wise to this and to be fair, the better awards events have an agenda to celebrate real work, but even then, it’s the little retail press campaign that ran alongside the dull predictable telly that might do well.
   4. Get the client on board if it’s a written case study. Write it early, send it early. They will change it and think you need to reflect what actually happened….leave time for careful negotiation.
   5. You need to get innovation and ace stuff into the sell of the client presentation. The first challenge is getting stuff to happen. So make innovation essential and at the heart of your thinking, not a nice to have.
   6. Writing this stuff is a real pain in the arse, sometimes you are writing papers a year after the stuff ran. So every time you think you have an award winner, write a one pager – catastrophe, insight, what you did, why it worked..and what’s clever bit. It will save you lots of time and heart ache later one.

 

Awards do matter by the way. They are good for morale, clients really like them and brilliant for PR. Seriously, clients tend to select new agencies based on work they’ve seem.

But, like the industry, just don’t make a life or death thing.
It’s only life or death if you get too drunk and the actual do and tell your bosses what you really think of them (trust me).

 

Someone, I forget who, once said everyone is two people.
You have the person inside your head, how you think you are, how you think you come across to others. Exhibit A, the bloke in the media agency pushing mid-40s. He thinks the 36 inch waist squeezed into 32 inch designer jeans, paired with the Hugo Boss blazer comes across as smart casual power dressing. While the 32 inch waist size shows he’s still young and good looking. Exhibit B, the creative director (or Kevin Anderson) rocking the skin-tight black t-shirt to make him look young and edgy.
But then you have the other person, the one everybody else sees. Mr Media Agency, you just look like Jeremy Clarkson. Mr black t-shirt, man boobs were never a good look, not even in the 90’s where your outfit looked okay.
Just as the charismatic, off the cuff presenter (in her head) just goes in too much and looks really unprepared to the poor recipients of her nuggets of gold.
Arguably, there is a third one these days. The one in social media, that is maybe even more divorced from reality, but let’s not go there.
Then there are the planners. Who, on the outside tend to appear super calm, super open and generous all the time. No matter how you feel inside, you are the one who cannot lose your temper, have to earn your place in any meeting, have to look like you know what you are talking about even when you haven’t a clue and, know as much about everything as you can – be a super generalist, make the dullest subject matter seem interesting and, perhaps hardest of all, have to make the few gaps in others drawing breath count, as these are the only seconds you’ll get to say something.
Inside of course, we get just as frustrated, just as angry, just as nervous, suffer just as much anxiety, get just as bored as much as anyone else. This constant disconnect between internal and external dialogue, constant edit, precis and distil and constant hoovering up information, no matter how banal has side effects outside of the job.
In tricky family, or close friend situations, planner folk tend to assume the calm, conciliatory role. When everyone falls out at Christmas over Pictioanary, we tend to be reasonable ones who mediate between parties affronted over the unfairness of letting a seven your old write a word rather than draw, or the cousin who has one too many who offends Auntie Hilda by drawing some genitals.
That said, like Michael Douglas in Falling Down, planners can go the other way. All that calmness at work can mean they have a very short fuse at home and can crack at any second. This is rare, as planners tend to let off the internal pressure cooker with a chosen outlet.
Yep, most planners tend to do something which has nothing to do with planning out of the office. For some, that might be amateur dramatics, for others it might be venting spleen in a blog. Many find an outlet through sport. But rest assured, planners tend to have many outside interests. They may cultivate a persona of ‘being curious’ or ‘making sure they are interesting by being interested’- but mark my words, it’s all to do with making sure they don’t have melt down when someone tells them they’ve missed the breakfast serving by one minute.
All that extra stuff outside the office, couple with the factory visits, the cultural research, having to know what a fifteen year old finds interesting, while understanding what the hell your cloud computing security B2B client actually does, means planners have tons of pointless knowledge. This puts planet sized weight on the shoulders whenever there is a quiz. If there is some sort of agency quiz night, planners will never vote for a department based team structure, the expectation to win is simply too great –especially from the head of planning who will almost certainly lose that calm exterior and go Michael Douglas after endless goading from their other bigwig colleagues. But the mixed teams structure can be a blessing – as planners are never allowed to get their round in, as they need to be present for every question. Of course, it also means they have bladder issues, as they also are not allowed to disappear for a piss.
Dealing with unreasonable people become second nature though. You are so used to killing folks with kindness (Falling Down syndrome aside) planners are good at sneakily getting what they want.
However, this doesn’t go as far as relationships. We’re so used to persuading everyone, rather than just saying it how it is, partners tend to walk all over us. Even worse, we’re so used to not making the decisions, it can be problematic when we are actually given a choice. I’m amazing at making my wife and friends think they’ve chosen the venue for a night out, or what we’re going to watch on telly, but when someone actually says it’s my choice, I melt like warm Nutella.
Consequently, planning types tend to have very strong partners who know their own mind. Good thing too, if two planners got together nothing would ever get done, but at least they would never run out of conversation.
This willingness to be led by others by the way, also means planners should never organise any family outings, stag do’s or mates nights out. Seriously, unless you want to turn to Prague and find your hotel was booked for next month, or be driven into the wrong country (I have done both), don’t ask a planner.
On the other hand, if you’re going to get lost, get lost with a planner. We’re so used to it, we always deal with it pretty well.
Finally, we’re back to where we started, the clothes. Planners needs to look smarter than the creatives, but less smart than the suits. So we’re great at nailing the smart casual thing.
Unless it’s a media planner that is, the jeans, massive brogues, shirt and blazer is highly infectious and penetrates all levels of media.
Working in certain postcodes means some exceptions too. Anyone working around Shoreditch gets really good at spending a month’s salary looking like a tramp.
The general casualness of working attire also means that when you meet friends and family from work, it simply reinforces the impression we don’t have a proper job. When most folks in the pub are sporting a suit, or perhaps the dreaded chinos and suede shoes combo, turning up in £200 jeans and a Cat in the Hat t-shirt reveals you for the middle class dilettante you really are.

(this is too long to be spell checked and should be taken with tongue fully in cheek)

 

1. Follow the damned rules

2. Never help others break the rules

3. Help guide those who don't know any better

4. No matter what your excuse is for breaking the rules, it isn't good enough

5. It's all about the work. The only point of any strategic set up (and try showing the creative, the plan, or the content idea etc first and then show how you got there) is to help the client understand why you're recommending what you are recommending. Take the time to write less, they like value being added, you should be giving them insight they haven't considered, or reframing the brief in an inspirational way, but mostly, when they have 20 agencies, research partners and God knows what else, whatever agency you're in, it's more about helping them see the wood for the trees and compressing the hurricane of information they're flailing in, down to one clear task, or three clear principles. No one is sitting there thinking 'I can't wait to see the strategy' they want to see the work/the plan/the content etc. That goes for a strategic presentation too, they don't want chart after chart, they want you to get to a proposition/organising thought/task for communications quickly – that's the 'work' too. It's all about the work. Anyone who says otherwise is either and brandbabbler (as Ad Contrarian would say) or someone who charges a lot for process, rather than ideas and results.

6. Toughen the fuck up.You will sometime have to work late. You will sometimes have to work on a weekend. You will sometimes have to get up early. Your finest work will get rejected. Your finest work will get approved and then killed when budgets get cut. The occasional long hours are the job. The unpredictability and rejection are just business. Your clients answer to a board who don't care about ads and think marketing isn't that difficult. Their business is subject to market fluctuations therefore so are you. A booked media plan will get canned, an ad will get banned unfairly, a client will change their mind. It's called life, no, it's called business.

7. Toughen up even more if you're a planner. 90% of creative's work gets rejected, this makes them slightly sociopathic, if you want crazy great ideas, working with weird folks is one of the things you have to deal with. Creatives deal with rejection all the time. Suits want stuff off their desk and deal with the sharp edge of client business. You always run the risk of being a barrier to the work a creative wants doing, or a suit getting stuff done on time. Few love a planner, the best you can hope for is being tolerated. Get hard.

8. Suits must toughen up even more. See above. No one likes you unless you get them extra budget, defend you from the client, get the travel stuff sorted our or make the tea and coffee. To quote Gordon Gecko, if you want a friend, get a dog.

9. Workshops should never, ever last more than four hours. After that, everyone is silently praying all this will end.

10. Workshops are a waste of time. Trojan horses of mediocrity to quote Adliterate. These are a way for people with bad ideas and little imagination to get really, really smelly ideas into the mix. Only workshop when you have no choice. And if you must have one, employ dirty tricks to get what you need out of it (see Rule 11)

11. Use workshops as major tool for dirty planning. If you have the kind of client, or stakeholder group who never approve anything unless it's their idea, it's time for a workshop. Just make sure you know what the answer is and structure the day and your moderation on helping folks think for themselves.

12. Creatives must reject the brief in all cases, no exceptions. Usually, it's because the brief is crap. Sometimes, it's because it's really great, but no creative will acknowledge this. A creative lives or dies by their ideas, that includes anything sort of strategic. Even if the brief is good, creatives must use the first review to make it look like a good strategy was their idea in the first place.

13. Ignore everything a social strategist says.

14. Media Owners and content partners must ignore the brief at all times. Three rounds of research the client has payed through the nose for, then going back and forth over the comms strategy, the usual tussle between agencies, the three rounds of creative. None of this matters because no one gets content like a media owner, no one else knows how to surprise and delight people like they do. So every presentation needs to have a major piece of work done by a strategist, with a killer insight, such as 'people look up to sports stars' or 'men like driving cars to escape'. Then the brand needs to be reinvented. All this needs to be wrapped up in mediawank language and take forever before you get a re-writing of the creative lexicon with stuff like 'lets go behind the scenes of sports stars training'. Or even better 'tell stories about why men have always loved driving'.

15. Anyone who isn't a media owner should always treat media owners with extreme caution. Never let them present straight to the  client without leaving at least two weeks between you seeing it first and the presentation date.

16. If you work in media agency, take every opportunity to make a creative agency work with a media owner of other content partner. It will complicate everything, but the comedy you will see unfolding totally makes up for it.

17. Ignore everything a brand consultant says. Everything. They get paid to come up with a hallowed document that will change everyone's fortunes, only for you to find it's just a few words in boxes that no one can get any decent work or direction from.

18. If you are short of money, get into brand design. Getting paid thousands to change the pantone reference of the logo, or change one word in a strapline no one cares about is perhaps even easier money than brand consultants.

19. Just call yourself a planner. A strategist, provocateur (really!!!), The Invention team…..it's a stupid title, but let's not look like brand consultants when it comes to branding ourselves.

20. A planning type must put deliberate mistakes in every piece of work. No one likes a smart arse, and by definition, a planner is a smart arse. Also, people are always more likely to like something if they think they helped make it. So put a deliberate mistake in the brief – media/creative/media owner/cross agency whatever and the TV buyer/creative/overpaid 'strategist (hahaha)  at Channel 4 even more overpaid 'strategist at the social agency will happily correct you and think they own the damn thing. Same principle in client presentations.

21. Anyone using the following words in any situation will be henceforth known as a complete dickhead. Ideation. Interface. Visioneering. In fact anyone caught using overlong words will have a drink spilt in their lap. The more complex your language, the more people think you're a complete twonk (and less intelligent).

22. Never ever comment on another agency's work in cross agency meeting. If you are asked, always be positive, or if you are good at damning with faint praise, do so with caution – for example, 'I love the idea of a partnership, it's great when we all have to roll our sleeves up and work with a new partner, that's the thing about really great campaigns, you can't get around having to do more work, but it's well worth it'. Of course, in private, it's tempting to slag them off but clients really can't be arsed dealing with agencies that can't get along, who are always trying to get more work at the expense of someone else. By all means, stab people in the back, but don't let ANYONE know that's what you are doing.

21. Whatever time you want to give the client to approve stuff, double it. That's life.

23. Creatives/media buyers and anyone in production can lose it as often as they like. Planning and account handling folk can never lose their temper and slowly simmer. If you need to vent spleen, take up an active sport, buy a punchbag or, even better, just deal with it. This is just the way it is.

24. Never ever wait until the day before the presentation before you show the stuff to your boss/CEO or whoever. In fact, don't show them it unless you really must. They'll change something just because they can – and since they are now better at bean counting, dealing with politics and cooking the books, they won't be any good at actual advertising any more. Just use them to charm the client now and again and make sure they don't say anything daft.

25. Be nice to the head of client services. They have been put there to keep them quiet and pacify them for the fact they'll never make CEO or MD. In fact, the only reason they are still here is because their one skill is making clients like them.

26. Give up the suits. Of course, creatives should never wear suits, but strategy types shouldn't either – just never look as casual as creatives. Suits should consider giving up the suits too, clients really don't care that much. Of course, one or two do, but with these exceptions to the general rule, only the suits should worry about wearing suits. It's just the way it is.

27. Never ever cut corners with coffee or tea. Obviously, this goes for client meetings. Tea made in the pot, coffee in a cafetierre is a minimum, but respect each other too and make the effort to do it right. No fucking instant coffee, no substandard tea bags. Never pour any tea or coffee unless it's brewed for at least three minutes. If you want weak tea or coffee, just get some hot water, as weak tea or coffee are just water pretending to be something else. Warm the milk if you're making coffee, never warm the milk if it's tea.

28. Surround yourself with quality. This relates to the quality of the hot drinks, but also your sound system, your books and so on. Quality stuff will rub off on you.

29. Get out of the bloody bubble. Marketing folk are not normal. It's not normal to want to make transient stuff that makes people want to buy stuff they don't need. But the folks we're trying to persuade to buy stuff they don't need, they require us to understand them. So get the fuck out of your office, out of SOHO, Brooklyn, Madison Avenue, The Northern Quarter or whatever cool postcode you're in and go be with real people. As a minimum, once a month: Go to a popular shopping mall and a supermarket. Consume some popular media you think is beneath you. Go to where your target customer is and try and talk to some of them.

30. Do not believe any research that was done anywhere but where people are buying or using what you are selling. People lie, they lie to themselves. The only useful research is done in real time, in the jungle rather than the zoo.

31. Get better at traditional research than researchers. Know thine enemy.

32. Make friends with traffic if you're in a creative agency. Make friends with all the PA's. They know everything that is happening. Everything.

33. Don't count the powerpoint slides. Sometimes 100 slides is okay, sometimes 5 is perfect. It depends on your pace,style and what you need to deliver. Rehearse and time the presentation, rather than count slides.

34. Never get so pissed on a works do you can't remember what you have said. Trust me on this.

35. If you must have to drink with the client, stay at least two drinks behind. Never go home before them, unless you're a lightweight. Better to be thought of as no fun than try and sleep with them, tell them how much you hate your spouse, or call them a c***t.

36. Edit everything you do three times. It will be too long and not watertight first time. It will be better next time around. Only at the third round will it be acceptable. It's just the way it is.

37. It never gets easier, you just have more to deal with. The more important you get, the more shit you have to deal with. If you're a junior, an account director should make it look easy because they need to instill confidence in you and their clients. They will be crying inside close to a deadline as much as you, they just get better at dealing with it…and deal with more.

38. If you're under 30 stop moaning about how much money you are not making. No one makes much until they reach 30, and even then, they won't be paid as much as a lawyer or banker. If you want to make serious money, start and agency and plan to sell it (and you're soul).

39. The size of an agency is inversely proportioned the quality of its I.T. That's just how things are.

40. Look at your job very hard every two years. if you're bored, if you're stagnating, or if you are underpaid, consider looking elsewhere. Never move for the money alone, I know too many people who left a great job to become highly paid malcontents in places that weren't right. If you're bored or stagnating, see if there is something you can do about it, if not, jump….your bosses will probably be wondering why you are still here anyway.

41. Respect the past. It wasn't much better, but most of what you think is the latest thing has been done before and better.

42. Ignore awards papers. In awards land, everything works, the process is simple, there is always a catastrophe and a flash of insight that came from nowhere. Awards papers never reflect what really happened, not even the original strategy. IPA papers are just the ones where the client would pay for econometrics. Creative awards are designed to impress creative directors, not real people. So when you get a case study that says the strategic leap was imagining the brand was a woman, rather than a man, you know what to do don't you?

43. Don't become mired in the past. Culture changes, markets change, the trick is to move with the times and keep what was great about the past. Every great brand (agency brands too) tends to fail when they stop moving forward, or forget what made them great in the first place. Yes, that is a contradiction, deal with it.

44. It isn't death of TV.

45. It's not the age of whatever you think it is.

46. If an agency with a reputation for being ruthless, formulaic or really dull wants to hire you, if that kind of think suits you, fine. If not, run for your life, they will never, ever change.

47. If client wants you to shake thinks up and challenge them with more original thinking, and they have a past of being hard to work with, dull or formulaic, unless there is a new CEO or CMO, run for your life if it's a pitch. They will never ever change. If it's an existing client, make sure you have a formulaic plan B, that's what they'll buy in the end.

48. If you work in a media agency you need to be able to drink. This is just the way it is.

49. if you work in a social media agency, you need to be able to sell snake oil.

50. if you work in a creative agency, you need to be OK with drinking yourself to sleep occasionally.

51. Everyone who doesn't work in marketing thinks they can do your job. That's just the way it is.

52. All deadlines, no matter how long you have, shall be ignored up until the day before when everyone shall spring into action and do two weeks work in two days.

53. The senior person buys lunch. Always.

54. Never, ever, sleep with a client. It always ends in tears. Trust me on this.

55. Work is to be measured by quality, not quantity. That goes for how long your hours are, the length of any document, the number of slides or any work you are doing.

56. The purpose of pitching is to win. It's not a time to tell the client their brief is wrong, or stick to your guns on challenging work. You don't know them yet. Read the brief, follow the brief, give them what they will want to buy. It won't be what eventually gets bought or booked anyway.

57. Marketing Books should be read with caution. Marketing books are usually written by people wanting to sell their services and based on bad evidence, or evidence that supports an argument that sells books rather than client products and services. Always have your own point of view and read stuff about what your clients are selling. That should always include the annual report.

58. Follow the money. Get to know the clients finance officer, they know more about what the business thinks it needs. And find out who really makes the decisions, in one case for me, it was the CEO's son. Once you know who it is and what they like, shape your sell to this person. The greatest work you ever did was probably something that never got bought.

59. A great idea is a great idea. Legend has it, the Cadbury Gorilla was in a creative's draw for years, waiting to be post rationalised for the right brief. Always keep great ideas on file, you never know.

60. Post rationalisation isn't a crime (as Russell Davies would say) it's a valid way to get great ideas made. Never sell great ideas if they are not right for the brief, but if it's great and it's right, no one cares if the strategy came before or after apart from the strategist.

61. Process is a smokescreen. Any kind of agency flails around, drinks lots of caffeine, panics and eventually something good emerges and it gets developed just in time. A process is to to give clients the illusion of professionalism, it never works like that in real life.

62. The only way to get a good idea is to work hard. Flashes of inspiration are rare, great work usually comes from getting a bad idea quickly, and then working out what is wrong with it.

63. Never kill an idea by speaking before thinking about it. Our industry is supposed to be about originality, and our first reaction to new stuff is fear and rejection. You're first response will be wrong, live with it for awhile – and shut the fuck up.

64. Never encourage anyone to kill your ideas before they have chance to think. You present something, you're desperate for approval like a little puppy , bouncing up and down, desperate for appreciation. But if you ask someone what they think, before they have had chance, they'll say something they don't mean, and to keep face, will stand by it through thick or thin. Well done, you've just killed your own work.

65. Have the courage to change your mind. We're all wrong sometimes. It's not weak to admit you're wrong, but agencies can be very macho and all about winning the argument. Don't win arguments, win pitches, do great work, go home.

66. Have the courage to stand your ground. Sometimes you know you are right. Just know when you want to pick your battles. A client I trust once told me what they want is to be listened to, to have their feedback taken on board, but also for agencies to have the courage to say what they think and recommend what is right, but be aware the decision is the clients at the end of the day.

67. The start time of a day is fluid, just as the end is. That's just the way it is.

68. No one cares about the 'brief' as much as it's author. The creative director cares a bit, because it's make them feel like they still matter when they insist on changing a word in the proposition. The client likes to sign off the brief sometimes to make them feel creative. The planning director likes to sign off the brief because they can change another word and claim the thinking if it becomes next year's award winner. Creatives like arguing over the brief because it's fun toying with you before they ignore it completely. The TV buyer likes you doing a brief because they can refuse to work until they've got said brief,  and recover from the heavy night out with Channel 4 (which is why the brief will get ignored if they can't put Channel 4 on the plan). The suits like a brief because they like the illusion of holding creatives/media buyers/media owners to account. Of course, everyone ignores the brief and does what the hell they like. Which is why you should write one brief for the briefing and another after the first review, based on the work people like. No one will notice, they hardly read the brief anyway.

69. Have fun for Christ sake. You're not in an agency for a quiet life. You're not in it to be super rich. You're there because this is what suits your talents and, more importantly, you like being around interesting people. If you're not having fun, the hard work will get too hard. If there is no banter or good conversation, what the hell are you in an agency for?

70. Develop a thick skin. Agencies get through the day with a very sharp humour and wind each other up mercilessly. It's just the way it is.

71. if you work in a media agency, you'll find everyone swears more than they should. Get used to it.

72. Be nice to everyone. It's too hard for politics as it is, but more importantly, the industry is too small and an enemy will probably end up as your boss or your client.

73. Lighten the fuck up. We are not doctors, none of this really matters.

74. Forget the babble. Reach as much of the market as you can, as often as you can, say something about what you do or sell in a way that cannot be missed, try and get talked about, continually remove reasons not to buy.

75. You are there to sell things. You are not there to build brand meaning or change culture, these things MAY be a means to sell things sometimes. If you want to make people laugh, be a comedy writer. If you want to do culturally significant stuff, work for HBO. You do need an appreciation of what makes people laugh, what moves people, what they like, what they hate. But all this is in service of making people want to buy things……which tends to be as simple as being the one they've heard of that sort of feels right. And no one cares about the brand positioning apart from brand babblers.

76. Celebrate the introverts. The people who rise to the top in fast paced, sink or swim agency life, tend to be the charismatic people who are super confident and own the room. We support their decisions because we want to believe them. But while there is merit in acting quickly and then refining as you go along, their is little room for the quietly spoken, the ones who don't win by speaking first or being the loudest, the ones who think a little more, question things and don't naturally think they are right. Let everyone speak and bloody listen to them. The job is more complex than ever, don't fall in love with your first idea, listen to everyone, the more eyes you have on a project, the better it will be…as long as their is a benign dictator overlooking everything.

77. All agencies will try and fight over the core comms planning. That's the way it is……and can be healthy if everyone listens to each other.

78. Creative agencies can't do media. They just can't. If you want to do media, start a media department.

79. Media agencies can't do creative…but think they can.

80. Digital agencies will never be unbiased, only let them do digital.

81. Media owners can't do ads, yet. They think they can, but do not them do comms strategy or creative strategy…….just brief them right based on a good idea.

82. The term 'native' shall henceforth be banned……….it's a bloody advertorial.

83. Obey the rules

OK, so after the 'how not to train junior planners' here's some thoughts on how to go about it.

Although, I guess much of it has been covered by pointers in the last post.

Still, worth a positive outlook and some general pointers.

 

Much of it is based on some simple principles:

First, great planners are interested in much more than planning or advertising or even brands.We're interrupting what people care about, or these days, finding a way to be part of it, so the more we care about THAT the better.

Second, no two planners are the same, nor should they be.

Third, happy people produce better results and stay far longer.

Fourth, planners without evidence based work are just suits with more opinions.

Fifth, creative planners are losing their role as 'lead planner' with many clients.

Finally, it's hard enough being a senior planner type when you have to earn your right in the room, for a junior, it's Everest.

 

1. Great Planners are interested in much more than planning

This means you need to give them both the space and the encouragement. Agencies can work long hours, but when you are a junior, it's easy to think you need to stay late every single night, or get in at the crack of dawn. Some places make it known that this is encouraged, but all you get are tired and stupid people who are nowhere near their best.

What is worse, if they spend all their waking hours talking about advertising, they'll only plan for 'advertising' rather than planning for making real people care. Rather than pulling stimulus from the world at large and being able to inspire the team around what really interests people, to make advertising register, they'll just start doing 'advertising'.

Even more dire, they'll start thinking it's a desk job and not go out and meet the people they're supposed to making strategy for – real human beings. As has been said a billion times, research is a waste of time unless you observe people in their real environment. If you want to understand a species, go to the jungle. not the zoo.

So apart from sending folks out of the agency and protecting them from a 'presenteeism' environment, here are two stimulating things you can do:

First, give every junior planner (in fact every planner) a 100 day task every single year, where they have to go and find out something new and interesting about an important target audience for your clients. To focus the minds, they have to present to a senior team and even the client if you have that relationship. The evidence can only be what you have discovered from 'non-advertising' tools, no TGI, no WARC, no NVision. And they need to have some video of actually talking to people.

Second, get an 'interesting fund' set up, where everyone in your department gets £200 to invest in learning something new and interesting, or enriching a private passion. It could be learning to play the guitar, doing a video production course. They just have to write why they are choosing what they are choosing -  and share what they're learned and what it's taught then about the job at the end of the year. 

2. No two planners are the same.

In the previous post, we discussed the wrongness of the one size fits all planning approach. The problem with a proprietary process is that it makes you approach every brief the same way, and usually come out with the same solution. It's why every campaign out of Chiat Day looks like an Apple campaign and always has a manifesto in it somewhere. Just as doing the same workshop over and over again yields the same kind of idea.

Boundaries and guidelines are good. Fixed rules are not.

But it's much more than that. There are core planning skills of course, but even these are debatable. This is a good starting point.

Nowadays, the skills of a planner are too broad to be contained in one human being. Generally, you need to know how most stuff works and be able to knit it together into something more cohesive, but 'most stuff' is getting a very large requirement. Getting to grips with data, the rapidly changing media environment, digital and social media, the need for content as much as ads.

You need a team that's good at different stuff and can do things different ways.

Someone ace at data, I mean the really hard stuff, not just TGI.

Someone who lives and breathes digital (but get's it's place, double so for social media).

A good comms planner is a must these days.

But then someone who has the rare instinct for retail too. If you think retail is easy, try writing a brief that stimulates people into the saying the word 'sale' a different way, or someone who can handle a sales force.

You might need someone who get's healthcare, B2B, maybe someone who get's international brand planning.

In short, you need to recruit for filling gaps, not for carbon copies.

Especially folks who are good at what you are not.

They need to be assigned accounts that suits their skills and interests – and some that do not.

So they get to do what they're good at, plus enrich their knowledge and skills base. Give them enough space to learn from mistakes and issues, with enough support and 'open door' sensibilities so they feel they can come for help (and not be made to feel stupid).

As mentioned before, making them do secondments in other departments really works here.

All of the above kind of goes towards happy people staying longer and producing results by the way, which was point 3.

 4. Planners without evidence or just suits with more opinions.

There's a vogue for 'ideas' rather than insight. I don't mean some sort huge revelation, which are hard to come by, but evidence based thinking that unlocks other people's skills.

My view on this stuff is that our task is to get to a really great task, a jumping off point for everyone based on: brand/product/market/customer/audience/media/shopping or customer journey/culture. Our task is to knit these sources of input into once clear task for communications that everyone can get behind. If you miss one of these, you haven't done your job, and if any of it doesn't have some evidence, you haven't done your job.

The core observation might have some sort of focus or emphasis.

For example, this was all based on a shopper insight that women bought lots of shower gel for men:

 

This campaign was based on a cultural insight that the Scots are very optimistic supporters who deal with defeat and victory really well, supported by all sorts videos from sporting events and street interviews..

 

With a special bookend after the games, based on the pyschology insight that we remember the end of things best, and stories of how movie companies film and research the ending scenes to death.

 

Anyway. For junior planners, I think we need to get back to training them to be very good researchers. Planners used to be focus group moderators who then turned the findings into usable hooks for strategy and creative work.

We rarely have budget to moderate groups for development (and I can safely say most of us know it's a waste of time) but now we have all that data freely available from the internet, trends stuff coming our of our ears, all sorts of market data, Mintel reports and, if you are lucky enough, TGI and Touchpoints. A really great planners will look at all that stuff and connect it in a way someone else won't.

Or they'll just go out an meet their audience and talk to them enough to understand the business issue in the context of real life…which is always the real competition for the brand. Just get some proof video, quotes and try and quantify it in some way.

I think our job is to teach junior people these skills (and some bloody senior people) and as a leader of a department, hold everyone to account .

And train your team to connect things. There are not really new ideas, just new re-combinations of old ones. I think that means teaching them to mind-map, teaching the unfashionable are of distillation and….

Make sure you have some sort of scrapbook initiative. Some of that is taken care by the 100 day projects and interesting funds from above, but it's worth having a scrapbook initiative. A vault of interesting stuff for everyone to draw on. I suggest a team TUMBLR, perhaps with a different editor every month. But the trick is to get the team to all contribute – as long as your hiring people with different skills and interests (you should be).

For me,  all of the above will really help that 'lead planner' issue. It's fair game for any agency now and I feel that the planner that:

Has the most interesting things to say, the one people want in the room, will be that planner by default.

That doesn't mean they talk the most – in fact, they should be taught to keep their mouths shut, listen to everyone else and speak last (see IRN BRU thankyou ad insight).

They should be taught to plan for meetings, to have something evidence based to say that will make everyone think, create a discussion point and shed light on the agenda .

Like Gordon Gecko says here:

 

They should be taught to always know more about client business, target customer and relevant culture than any other supplier and, in the case of customer and culture, anyone in the client business.

These are more important than 'ideas'.

Catalyst.

Simplifier.

Provocateur.

And, dare I say, the person that brings real life, the lives of real customers and culture into the room.

Which brings me to a final point.

The more complex your language, the more people think you are an idiot. The best planners speak human. The task of a leader is not tie their team up in knots with needless jargon and buzz words.

It is to set an example by speaking plainly and bollocking anyone in your team if they don't do the same.

Hope this helps.

(very busy, this will be riddled with dreadful typos, sorry, no time to check overly!!)