NORTHERN PLANNER

CONFUSED AS YOU ARE

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  • Here come the girls, but where are the boys?

    It's far from easy being a women in the 21st century, but it's far more difficult to be a man. I remember getting excited once I understood where articles like this were coming from, back when I was working on ghd. I remember pushing for ideas that tapped into the new narrative that was, and is, developing. The new confidence and momentum from young women who believe the world is there for the taking, no contradiction between beauty and brains and the sheer joy in both indepence, possibility and sisterhood.

    That was the REAL theme to Sex and the City, that was when the blood drained from my face when I first saw this:

    I remember twiddling with a creative brief about that, along with creative starters with iconic images of women who have taken on the world and won, with just a ghd logo on them – from Coco Chanel to Madonna, from Sophia Coppola to The Williams Sisters- along with a whole host of unsung heroes too. After seeing the Boots work, what was the point? I guess that's the danger of replaying culture back rather than influencing, or working from the brand out, someone else will have got to where you have, often quicker.

    That's why I like this Diet Coke stuff, it provokes rather than follows. It rejects the relentless pressure for women to achieve and be the best that they can be and just have fun – lighten up…which sticks to the brand truth of the Diet Coke break.

    Aaaanyway…

    There's an existing narrative for what it means to be woman, but it's confusing to know how to be a man. Women are outperforming men and everything, you'd expect we'll reach critical mass and the crap way mothers are treated at work will disappear and the glass ceiling and unbalance at home is redressed like it is at work…..in short, male confidence is taking a beating. Young men don't know how to be.

    So you can see the context for all that great Old Spice work and stuff discussed here. But I'm not sure it's all really good enough. Of course they're commercially powerful and offer men in culture a sense of confidence in being a real man like they used to be. But isn't that just prolonging the problem? Just maybe, airy fairy men with emotional intelligence, using hand moisturised and crying at films is exactly what is needed, as long as they can also be strong and dependable too.

    Modern culture is all about identity construction – becoming lots of different versions of you rather than a simple, consistent and unrealistic you, as discussed in Grant Mccraken's Transformations – this is only accelerated by Web 2.0 and the ability to join even more distinct communities than ever before – you can explore alter egos at will.

    Women get this instinctively, in the old patriarchal world they were required to be the caring Mum, the cook, the concubine, the dutiful daughter and the community pillar. While that's changed, any working Mum transforms every time she drives home from work to pick up the kids, and again when the kids go to bed…and no I don't assume that's the women's job, i hate the fact it is, but all the data paints this as the picture in most married homes. There is no contradiction in these pictures of Serena Williams for example:

    Men don't get this yet, despite the fact all people are all chameleons and actors to some extent, they're still encouraged to buy into a one dimensional view of masculinity, rather than embrace all the things they are, or could be.

    Yes, men can and maybe should be the strong person who knows what to do when the car breaks down, personally I lament the lost skills of being able to fix things, but they can be caring father, the vulnerable friend and even the vain fashion dandy as well.

    Until men feel able to explore a more complex (and true) version of masculinity, they'll grow up as confused as they are now.

    That's one reason I love Mad Men, it's about lots of things but at heart of it is Don's identity, a man who has completely invented himself and performs outwardly as the quintessential male ideal, while inside he's confused, conflicted and lost.

    Put another way, I'd be looking for the MEN your man could smell like.

  • Hello, we’re a brand consultancy……

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  • The Great North Swim is cancelled. Bugger

    2010 060

    I decided to do the Great North Swim for a number of reasons. Much of that was to do with doing something for me in a new life as a Dad that means doing nearly everything for someone else (happily I might add), curiosity about how I'd do, having a goal to keep my swimming alive and, well, just seeing what happened along the way.

    There were some setbacks along the way, like having to remodel my stroke, there were welcome surprises like enjoying hardcore training in a group again. However, behind all that was the event looming closer and closer. I loved how it felt when the swim morphed from an lovely idea, to something I slowly realised I actually had to go through with, to a creeping reality. It resolved itself last week to something I felt I was ready for last week – I felt energised by the challenge, knowing I was ready, but still afraid. Not by finishing or doing it well, I had put the work in, but knowing it was going to hurt…and at once relishing and hating it.

    There's a moment for anyone doing something challenging, especially sport. Just before you start, where you take a deep breath and ask, "Do I really want to do this?" Then the joy in knowing that you do, of course you do. It makes you feel alive, it makes you feel like not one of th ordinary people, it strips away all the extraneous rubbish that life in the 21st century entails, you're just you making a choice.

    That's what it was feeling like last week. Then I found out it was postponed, now it's been canceled. And I feel like somebody stick a pin in me and all the air is leaking out. I just couldn't be bothered to get up this morning and go swimming.

    Well balls to that! People have sponsored me, it can't just tail off into nothing. So I'm going to do a swim marathon in exactly two weeks time. That's 5K, or 3.1 miles metres non-stop. No, that's too easy. Let's say 6K – more than an official swim marathon, 3.7 miles. I reckon I can do that in 2 hours flat. It will hurt, but that's the point. That's 240 lengths of a 25m swimming pool. Cool. I've haven't done a swim marathon since I was ten years old. I've never done 6k – not even in a cumulative training session.

    There you go mean spirited bastard fate, take that.

    (I'm going to regret this)

  • New tea mug to break in

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    …after someone broke the last one and couldn't pluck up the courage to admit their guilt.

    There are some rules of thumb to tea mugs. Bone china tastes better than porcelain for example. But some mugs break these rules and taste amazing for no apparent reason.

    After the fruits of one pot, this one is shaping up rather well.

    Speaking to rules, here's one take on drinking the hallowed leaf.

  • VB is the same but different

    I love this VB ad from Droga 5. Why? It's funny, it makes me laugh. It's that simple.

    From a strategy perspective, championing masculinity in a culture than increasingly encourages young them to lose their way in a sea of metro sexuality is hardly new.

    That's what this is really about:

     

    And this to be honest:

     

    And even this (although it's done badly):

     

    What I think the VB campaign should tell us is that you shouldn't be afraid to recommend a position that isn't completely unique – it's what you do with it that counts, it's the detail, it's planning for executions, not just the strategy that leads to it.

    It's the detail that enables John Smiths to inhabit a world of No Nonsense, where the enemy is pretension.

    It's what makes Old Spice about being experienced, with an incredibly rich and subtle stance against today's men who have lost the skills their Dad's had in place of girliness and preening, with a rich ironic tone that allows it to say lots more than it otherwise could (while I hate Bono, I always admire the way they used irony in the 90's to say mostly the same stuff they were mocked for in the 80's. Shame they forgot that that in the naughties).

    What I think drives VB is a brilliantly  obvious observation that groups of young men don't mince their words with each other, they're brutally honest when someone is being a tit…and that shocking epiphany when you realise what an idiot you have been.

    The casting shows they don't champion masculine male cliches, just normal blokes who don't try and be something they're not, or forget who they really are. There is a real joy in male friendship too. In short, there's lots going on. That's because the strategic thinking didn't start stop with the creative briefing and the execution thinking didn't start with it either.

  • No Great North Swim

    The Great North Swim was postponed this weekend. Something to do with Green Algae.

    This was frustrating, all that pent up nervous energy etc. There's nothing worse when something you've been building up to doesn't happen. This resulted in a particularly intense bike ride on Saturday morning.

    On the other hand, there's more time to train and since we booked a hotel, we had to go anyway. This had it's compensations..

    Windernere

  • One more swim until THE swim

    It's the Great North Swim on Saturday, it's nearly here. Only one go in the pool, tomorrow morning, before the big one.No point making it hurt, just keep ticking over, maintain feel for the water and hope it was better than Wedneday, when everything felt off.

    Years ago, after few hard months before big events, we started tapering down over a number of weeks. The sessions got gradually easier as the day drew closer. Not this time. A week in the sea, an extra hard pool session and then a bit of easy gliding tomorrow.

    By 2.25pm on Saturday (hopefully) it will all be over. Time to check in here….

    Belsfield 

    …and go lo-fi. Fish and chips on the water's edge before holing up in a pub somewhere. But not before I have a very hot bath and a lay down for bit.

  • Understanding the audience and developing a planning style

    Two interesting viewpoints on understanding people.

    The first from Richardon planning from within, looking for universals in your own feelings and behaviour (in particular the problems with segmentation).

    The second from Rob on the need to actually get off your backside and talk to people that are not like you.

    It's tempting to ask which is right? But I think questions like that are part of the problem with agencies and the people that work in them – their process, technique or shtick is right and everyone else's is wrong.

    What I like personally about the way these two people (isn't it funny to use the word 'personally' about two people you've never met? Blogs etc are funny like that) talk about their work isn't about having one way of doing things, rather various tools to get to something good.

    On that note, Richard's slideshare on different planning styles. Of course,  you always develop your own, but mostly the best planning style in my view is one that manages to stay fluid and open.

    Darwin

    It doesn't say 'this is the right way' is says, 'this is the right way for right now'. People, companies, whatever, don't survive by just being the strongest or the cleverest, they survive by constantly adapting to change or innovating to stay ahead of it. 

  • The way we were

    So I'm back from a week's holiday, staying with Mum and Dad in Cornwall. Had a lovely time, my little boy gamboled in the sand and splashed in the sea, gurgling like a maniac while all and sundry wanted a play and a cuddle. Made me all reflective about growing up having holidays in St Ives myself, looking forward to doing all those fun things with him that my parents did with me.

    St_Ives,_Cornwall,_Rooftops

    As you might imagine, Mum kept on getting out masses of pictures of me when I was younger to see any similarities(it's uncanny how me and the poor boy look alike), and it made me realise that all family photography is propaganda. It's staged managed to edit out the sulks, the arguments and the realness.

    There's nothing wrong with that of course, but so much gets missed out. When we got married, we hired two photographers; one for the usual posed pictures, but also another to take continuous reportage of the day, not asking people to pose, just recording what was actually happening.

    If I'm honest, I prefer the reportage ones, they're so much richer, which is priceless to me, since a big failing of any wedding day is how much the bride and groom don't get to see and do. I don't remember much, it was too much of blur.

    Anyway, Mum got out some pictures from a family trip to Germany when I was around six. My sisters where competing (I was too young) and we all went.

    Back then, swim teams didn't stay in hotels, they stayed with willing families from local teams, and returned the favour when they came to over. We stayed with a lovely family, they were so kind and thoughtful. It was one of the best family holidays I can remember.

    Anyway, the pictures were not just 'staged' the older brother in their family was a keen photographer and was constantly snapping what was going on. He was kind enough to give my Mum a copy of the prints and there's everything on there. Me arguing with my older sister (we always did) a picture of Mum and Dad that somehow shows them as a romantic couple having a quit moment rather than Mum and Dad..lots of stuff that seems to show how things were rather than how we like to believe.

    Here's two pictures of me, one 'staged' in colour, one black and white, taken while I wasn't looking not (not scanned in case you're wondering about the the white splash thing that came from my camera flash)

    Me young

    Me bw

     

    I can't show pictures with everyone else, I don't have permission and there are better ones, but still, the black and white one captures something the other doesn't.

    It brings back what it felt like to be that age. I remember wanting to play and stuff like other kids, but my I used to spend hours just daydreaming about things by myself too. That's why I was such a clumsy kid, my mind was elsewhere. That's I drive Mrs Northern mental – mid-conversation she can see my eyes glaze over as my mind just goes somewhere else.

    I hadn't thought about being like that as a child for ages. I was very lonely at times, my sisters were swimming every weekend which meant tagging along, spending hours and hours at yet another swimming pool with no one to play with. That's one reason I started swimming, just so I could join in.

    Don't misunderstand, I'm not complaining, I was very lucky with the love and fun I had with my parents and the other kids I grew up with, some who are now by best friends. But I had be adept at occupying myself at times- and learned to love drawing, writing and reading for fun and, well, daydreaming.

    But I couldn't tell you if I 'got' good at occupying myself, or I was just like that anyway. I often thought it was the former, but coming back to being on holiday with my little boy, I realised how thoughtful he's already becoming and how good he is at playing on his own (not that he gets much chance), maybe it's just how I am and a part of how he will be too.

    Funny how a few pictures that haven't been 'stage managed' can make you think eh? So I'll be making sure that my boy gets to see some pictures and video that show how our lives really were when he was growing up.

  • Dave Trott on the Art of Persuasion….

    …or how technology, media and culture may move on but skills of surprising and delighting people are timeless