NORTHERN PLANNER

There's two juniors planners where I work, Dave (Dave Mortimer younger sibling of Famous Rob) and Martin. I'm not sure I like the term 'junior' planner, your either planner or not, some have done it for a little longer, that's all..but there you go.

Poor Dave get's quite a bit of grief from me. On his paleness, horrific diet, lesbian haircut and interesting taste in cardigans, but to be fair he gives it back in equal measure. He even stole someone's last biscuit and distributed the crumbs all over my chair, a la Gollum.

Martin escapes the bulk of this so called banter, purely down to the face he doesn't sit opposite me. That said, I think I've succeeded in giving him a complex about his newly beardless demeanor, and how it makes him look taller. Aaaaanywaaaayy……..

Of course it's nice to have juniors around, they do some of the jobs you hate. Even better, they're great people to talk to about ideas and thorny little problems. If you want a sense check, talk to someone who hasn't learned to be set in their ways yet. They haven't got an axe to grind or developed their own 'schtick' yet.

I've also found I really like mentoring. I use the word cautiously, it suggests arrogantly knowing better and telling others how it is. That really isn't the case. Having to explain things in more detail than youwould otherwise forces you to question your own practices. Relinquishing control a little bit and letting others get on with gradually more and more forces you to organise yourself better. And best of all, they end up teaching you stuff, how not to get set in your ways, how to use Tumblr. They'ev read stuff you haven't come across, met and done things you haven't.

There's also a real joy in passing on the things you've learned. I don't mean planning craft and al that gubbins, more things you've learned from having been around a little longer. Sometimes small, commonsensical things, sometimes things a little bigger. There's that responsibility of judging when to tell, when to suggest and when you should let someone learn from their mistakes.

Best of all, there's the thrill of seeing them flourish, find their stride and 'become' (and the worry that soon you'll be obsolete).

But, above and beyond that, there's the satisfaction of showing them how to make tea properly and always getting a decent mug poured straight from the pot.

That said, Dave gets very shirty when it's a coffee round and he gets left out (he hates coffee).

As you may have noticed, I've much of life has involved sport and swimming in particular. Much of who I am is because of the pain, joy, disappointment, surprise, setbacks, victories, exhilaration and challenge of being a serious athlete.

But it never came easily as a young junior. There were others who didn't have to work at it, they had perfectly natural strokes and didn't have to train very hard. It wasn't fair, but I got a lot of silvers, more bronzes and only a few golds at first, mostly by working harder than boys, yet losing to others who seemed to get there by doing nothing.

But something happened when we became teenagers. We had all sorts of growth funny growth spurts in all sorts of funny places. Boys who had been relative midgets suddenly towered over their peers, those who had been naturally bigger than others found themselves looking at other lads for the first time. We were little hormonal hurricanes.

I was lucky enough to be one of those who suddenly turned into a little teenage mountain. Clothes didn't fit, one arm was stronger than the other, I went from fly half to prop at rugby. I got big.

Almost overnight, my times in the pool got quicker. Demon fast. There is a point in swimming race for juniors when you hit wall, the arms turn to lead, you have no breath left in your lungs and it's a matter if surviving the final few meters. This point got closer and closer to the finish. Suddenly, when it came I was able to look inside, see what was there and find another gear. There's quite like it, thinking there's nothing more to give and discovering more there than you ever dreamed.

Many of the boys who had it easy before didn't know what to do. They'd never suffered losing before, they'd never had to really work for it. They gave up, they didn't know how to fight, had no idea what pushing themselves really meant. There was no patience for training longer and harder, no will. Those of us who were used to struggle never slacked off, even  when the growth spurts evened out a bit we kept on fighting, we didn't know any other way.

You see, sometimes, the worst thing that can happen to you is to be supernaturally gifted. You haven't had the chance to learn from failing, you haven't really found out all that you are. Eventually, someone always comes along more gifted, or more beautiful and you simply don't know how to respond. When it comes down to the wire, you choke never having to really compete before. You find it harder to come back from losing.

I sometimes think planning and creative is like that too. There are some very lucky people for whom ideas come easily. Sorry for aligning creative with planning, but in the end, both are about having ideas. Ideas have never come easy for me, I have to work that little bit harder. I came later to this and in the back of my mind there's always the fear that I don't deserve this job, should have stayed a suit. It's irrational (I hope), but I don't mind, makes me work that little bit harder.

I never fear the blank creative brief or the new project, even when nothing's coming, when it all doesn't make sense yet. I wonder how others, for whom ideas come easily, react when the well suddenly runs dry. It always does you know, no matter who you are, sometimes you get a mental block, you can't get anywhere, nothing comes.

If you're used to having to chip away at the rock to find the vein of gold, you just chip another way, you're used to having to slave to find it. But if you're used to having that gold just magically appear, what do you then?

I grew up doing a lot of retail stuff. Three supermarkets, one purveyor of furniture, beds, white goods…I've done a bit.

Not all of it was pretty, but itwas never dull. Having a certain marketing controller call you a twat on the phone at 7pm for getting the wrong price in a script, only to have him send a crate of wine the next day when he realised he was reading the wrong one, cannot be termed as boring.

You learned fast, you had to. You learned by doing..at one point me and another account manager we're opening 7 new supermarket stores, running the kind of TV shoot that needs four helicopters and making sure around 200 press ads went out every single week without a typo or wrong price. The account director was off on paternity leave at the time.

 

Despite the 'down and dirty' reputation of retail (come on, admit it, you think retail's easy. It's all reactionary, no thinking, just do what you're ordered week in, week out), I think a background in it makes a planner, or anyone else in agency land for that matter, better placed for the future than most.

In retail, you're judged on nothing but results. Not just long term brand measures, quarterly tracking dips and such, you're judged week in, week out on sales and footfall, at the granular level of product lines, regions, even singular product.

There is no where to hide when the results don't come it, you have to be ready for everything. Someone very wise said that the future is about 'always being in beta', and he's damned right. More and more, brands will be about experience, interaction and 'doing'.

But planning for retail has always been like. The US Army has a saying that no plan survives contact with the enemy, well very few retail plans survive the bank holiday footfall figures.

In short, you have to make people DO stuff, not just think or feel.

Bad retailers just react, constantly lurching this way and that, with no long term vision or plan. Woolworths fell apart in my view because they forgot what they existed for. But good retailers have a good, flexible vision, a role in life, they know what they want to do for their customers beyond sell them enough to hit their targets.

But they realise that they will be buffeted by more variables than other business model. Economic shocks hit them first of course, minute changes in buying culture, price sensitivity hit them first. But so does the weather too. They're constantly engaged with a version of 'game theory' with their competitors.

They have to think far beyond simply weaving emotional or cultural meaning into a product. In a world where brands are like a basketball – all the bumps on a brand that help their customers grip them, retailers are exposed more that others. Own label, POP, checkouts, staff culture, car parks, e-commerce, customer services, delivery, vans…..all of it matters, there's far more to get right.

Right now, agencies, their planners and their brands are getting used to having much more flexible ideas that touch different audiences in different ways. They're getting used to terrifying viral nature of the web and reacting quicker, trying lots of little things more often and learning by doing. They're used to having a great vision and always experimenting and learning, moving, chopping and changing within that vision all the time.

That's what planning for retail has always been about. It's about Sainsbury's 'Try something new today' working for a home made gourmet meal and being able to say, "Feed your family for a fiver". It's about Ikea being able to make us "Chuck out our chintz" and also make "Home the most important place in the world" when things are scary.

So that's why someone who's sweated blood (you always do) over retail is best placed for a world where you need both a big vision and the skills to react, develop, change and act very, very quickly.That's what they were already doing.