NORTHERN PLANNER

What follows is stories of blokes trying to attract women. Both come from my time as a student. Both have something to tell us about brands and social networks.

The first concerns me, or the me I was back then. Shy, odd, and wonky (no change today). Fortunately, one of my best friends happened to be a girl who both both funny and cool. We used to go out a lot and I was even invited on girls' nights out.

What a revelation. There was none of the natural one-upmanship that typifies young men, none of the false bravado, you could talk about all sorts of stuff you couldn't with the lads. At that age, girls tend to be far more interesting than boys. A little more grown up, a lot less led by base desires.

Amazingly, there began some success with girls she knew and a little more from strangers. They even came up and talked to me, escaping the horrors of making a first move. The secret? Simple. Girls seeing boys around girls decide your 'endorsed', you must be OK if women in general like your company. You're 'let in'. This was no cunning stratagem devised by a dark mind, just happy accident, Every now and then, nice things happen to shy people. 

The next concerns someone I used to work with at a nightclub, where I earned precious beer money. This dashing fellow was something of a player. Confident, good looking, never short of something to say, he was funny if a little arrogant.

For two weeks, he was given the job of checking on the women's toilets. The girl that usually did it was away. He jumped at the chance, believing this was a goldmine to chat up all the lovelies just waiting to swoon at his unquestionable charm and dark good looks.

After two nights he begged for someone else to do it. His success was less than he had envisaged; not only did suffer zero pulling success, he was soundly abused, verbally and physically. Girls simply hated a bloke in their territory, where they re-applied war paint, swapped gossip and (still don't know why) went to the loo together.

So what's this got to do with brands and social networks? The breath- takingly tenuous link is the laziness, nay, arrogance of brands expecting something for nothing.

There is still an amazing contingent and marketing and creative types that believes it's easy to get people doing marketing for them for free, that the newly web enabled consumer (don't yu hate that word!) is impatiently waiting for them to turn up on Facebook with all sorts of spurious groups, apparently they're all salivating at the prospect of co-creating all sorts of stuff with brands, itching to tell all their friends how shiny and perfect the latest washing powder is.

But just like my colleague in the women's toilets, the breathtaking of trying to infiltrate and interrupt their territory with nothing if value, the hubris of expecting anyone to even pay attention, let alone even bother to get angry gets you nowhere. There is maybe a tiny minority of brands with fans who may do this, but they're incredibly rare.

If you want people to join in, or pass things on,you can't get away from creating something interesting, useful and rewarding. Seed it in the right places by all means, but if you're not creating anything of value, don't expect to generate anything of value. In other words, it doesn't matter if you're creating telly ads or something online, you can't get away with being lazy. Worse than being abused, you'll just get ignored.

Which brings me back to my limited success with student girls. If you make the effort to win genuine acceptance, don't pretend to be something you're not, good things can happen, but there's no such thing as a free lunch. 

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?