NORTHERN PLANNER

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  • Peter Kay does M&S Christmas

    Thoughts?


     

    There seems to be a trend at the moment for retailers to create engaging showpieces that not only show off what is available and start the process of investigating the range, they make people feel good about making the choice within the brand's particular walls - two of the primary roles for retail marketing (third is tactical price promotion) that tend to be done seperately. MAkes budgets work very hard and, to my mind, doesn't dilute engagement, clarity or anything like that.

    Here's Curry's taking us on a tour of their range through the eyes of Artoo and Threepio (but where on earth is the online?)


     

    Here's some cats showing us what's available in Ikea


     

    Here's some skinny jeaned hipsters showing us Ikea's kitchens

    

     

  • Comfort food fast – quick duck/goose fat chips

    Who doesn't like chips? But what kind of chips? The lovely, soft, slippery greasy chips from a good British fish and chip shop? The big fat chunky and robust chips from a pub? The European 'fry' thin cut and dipped in mayonnaise?

    I love all of the above but on a cold, dark winter's night, one of those that requires a thick pullover and something good to drink, when only a comfy sofa, good telly and warming, casual food will do, I'm going to share the chips I want – or wedges really. Made with love, without fuss or waiting, but well worth the effort.

    Now that the clocks are changing in the UK, seems like the right time to share. Step forward duck, of goose fate, chips.

    You want Maris Piper Potato's. Don't bother peeling them, just make sure they're scrubbed. Cut into nice thick wedges.

    Choose a baking tray your chips will fit into with plenty of room and put in a good knob of duck fat or goose fat (you can buy it in the supermarket these days). Put the tray in an oven at 220 degrees C.

    Put them in a pan, cover with water and bring to the boil. Then boil for another 10 minutes. Drain the water, sprinkle with sea salt and shake it all about to rough up the edges and coat with the salt.

    Bring your tray out of the even, with the fat now hot and spitting a bit – gently tip in your chips and toss in the oil until they're all coated. Put the tray back in the oven, check after ten minutes. They should be nice and crisp and a fork should go through them easily. If not, give then another five minutes.

    Then enjoy however you like – I like Heinz ketchup and if I'm hungry, make a couple of sandwiches with lovingly buttered soft bread. The chips will be nice and crisp, but outrageously soft in the middle and there's something about the chunky, crisp softness laced with the duck or goose fat that lifts the spirits and warms the soul.

     

  • Want to work on Nike?

    WK London are looking for a planner that does. Makes me wish I was good enough and could move to London. You would be insane not to have a go at the challenge laid down here.

    Nike_logo 

  • What does China look like to you?

    Rob wants to know what picture you think best represents China.  Have a read of his post and join in, planning type people need tos stick together and help each other, plus, he's going to share collective findings, which will be interesting.

    Ming-dynasty-jar 
    I've chosen a Ming Dynasty jar because, from a personal perspective, when I make enough money to retire early (ha!) I'll go back to university and study Chinese history, both ancient and modern, I can't think if a richer or more diverse subject.

    On a more serious note, what happens in China will increasingly effect everyone's lives and you can't truly understand what drives a nation, it's psysche, what it wants and how it behaves without understanding how it got here, as Simon Schama's The American Future, a History so searingly demonstrates.

  • How different things aren’t

    The Narcissism of Differences is a book that persuades you that the US and European nations are far more alike than they would like to believe. It's more a case of how different they aren't – most differences are based on illusionary dogma, received wisdom and untrue stereotype.

    Different 

    I think that's a learning for far more than would be jingoists, and the title is one of those that can be nicked for all sorts of stuff.

     It matters to and for normal people, especially in the West, where we wrongly believe we're special – we're not, we're 99.9% (roughly) alike. As other's have said, that should mean planning type people should search for what unites people, not what divides them for lasting effect.

    It matters for agencies who, pretty much, do the same thing but claim to be wildly different. What it different is merely what they choose to emphasise, or, more likely, what they choose to believe about themselves that isn't true at all really.

    And it's very true of brands. What brand managers tend to love and obsess about is usually a slight variation on what every other brand manager believes leaving whole categories as, largely, a variation on the same thing, creating big fat category rules to break if you can find relevance with proper human truths (see the first point about people).

     

  • Proud


     

    Once upon a time, a certain junior planner I worked with was shamefully made redundant for no other reason that he was the easiest to get rid of. Mort, I salute you. Not only because you won through a really tough period, you ended up at DDB planning Speedy Gonzalez for Virgin Media. I'm more happy than I can say.

    Often, people in this business look at what they've achieved for themselves – as a planner, you might base that on IPA's Effie's or APGs, hopefully you look a little wider than that and consider if you've done stuff you're really proud of, or when you know you've made a difference.

    I'm beginning to learn that, personally, I value seeing people I've worked with and helped in a very, very small way flourish and do well. Mort's one Andreea's another. They'll say they're getting on because they ignored everything I ever said, but what they don't know is that's how I planned it all along.

     

  • The Men That Won’t Fit In


     

     

  • Humble pie


     

    I've said in the past that's one should think very carefully before criticising someone else's work. I forgot my own rules with this post about sausages. Amidst talking about the food, I got carried away and had a go at this work for Richmond. Personally, I hate Richmond and all it represents, I hate the uniform pinkness of the sausaged in the commercial, but I did something I hate in agency people even more than Richmond sausages, I got all elitist and forgot that somone worked very hard to produce something they thought was right for the audience, who don't live in adland's ivory tower, and the client.

    What made it even worse was the way John good naturedly set me straight in the comments. You cannot argue with return on investment on that scale. So John, I salute you and your patience. Next time in London, I owe you coffee and some gourmet sausages.

    And I should have known better, since I was responsible for this:roundly criticised in some parts, deliverered £21 million in revenue – we knew the business problem and what we had to do and this did the job.


     

  • Work like balance and embacing conflict

    One of the hardest things about this job is work life balance, which is little silly because it's essential. You can't do interesting work if you don't do interesting things and you can't really understand culture unless you actually dip into it from time to time.

    It gets harder as you get older too. There's the partner who resents you not spending enough time together and, in my case, the need to spend quality time with your kids. I dread the day my little boy has to be told that Daddy can't watch his school play, or be there in his birthday; it will happen.

    There's some sort of conflict between one side of who they are and another. In my case, the curiosity and need to do good work with good people makes working Up North a challenge but responsibilities as a father and husband matter too, not to mention the need to swim.

    What I've learned for myself is that I'm not defines by any side of these contradictions or conflicts, what defines me IS that contradiction.

    21st century is culture is porous, as are the people that live in it. We are constantly constructing and re-constucting our identities, trying new experiences on for size, playing with our appearances, sloughing off one layer of skin when it doesn't suit us anymore and taking on another…being lots of people at once. Contradiction is at at the heart of who we are and what we're becoming – embrace it.

    More reason to not let your job totally define you as far as I'm concerned.

  • Making segmentation good and working with your hands

    I've been wrangling with an audience in a global segmentation for a while now. You know the scenario: drilling down and down to make them unique within the category, while forgetting the real role of the category withing their lives. As other people have said, it's not entirely useful to search for profound differences between people when we're basically alike.

    Orange-segmentation 

    Whenever you're presented with a precise presentation, with the usual pen potrait and 'helpful' indexes against whatever panel resource your region uses (TGI for me in the UK for example), I suggest you don't just leave it there.

    What you have is all the things that make a supposedly different consumer, not what makes them a person. I sugegst you need to go further and find what really matters in their lives, because you're marketing to real people, find something to admire in them, find a link between the brand's beliefs and their own, a role in their lives rather what product advantage they're likely to buy into.

    That's not all though: in most cases you'll have to focus on a primary and second audience (at least) and you'll have to find something that's compelling to both – which usually means finding cultural significance or proper insights into human nature.

    Anyway, we are getting somewhere, to something human and true, to do with the kind of people we all turn to in a crisis, the reliable, boring ones we don't appreciate until we need them. 

    Man-sewing-life 

    Perversley, I wasn't going to talk about this, I was going to post about an emerging theme within this, the joy in making things with your hands, the satisfaction of a job well done and being capable at things that matter; rather than things that are necessarilly cool. Then I read this Simon Jenkins article and realised I might as well just link to that. Oh well.