Category Archives: Planning

11Sep / 2007

Life outside London

I just want to make a few things clear before I get into this post. Which has been inspired by the very good Adgrads. First of all I do believe that the majority of the best brands, agencies and people, are as a rule, generally based in London – I’m certainly not disputing that. I also encourage anyone who is looking to break into the industry to start in London if you can.

But it’s not the be all and end all and it’s not for everyone. I did my one-year placement in London and loved it. I too applied to a lot of agencies in London after graduating, without much success. The couple that I did manage to pull off were paying less per year than my final total student debt. So as much as I would of liked to have taken them, it was a financial impossibility. It would have actually cost me money to work there.

I think this is quite a big issue for the industry, I’m not sure that the pay off of working in a creative environment outweighs the lower starting salaries anymore. Agencies will also be left with a workforce from one social class. Which to me doesn’t make for the most interesting environment.

As a result I decided to stick around my hometown and find the best agency I could. I managed to get an account exec position and I haven’t looked back since. Four years on I’m now a planner working across our entire group of agencies, working on everything from digital, PR, TV, to recruitment marketing. I certainly moved through the agency a hell of a lot faster than I would of in London. You could call this ‘Big fishes in small ponds’, and there is an element of truth in that, but I would just call it less competitive. You need to remember that that there is a lot of crap in London as well. With anything big and shiny, it will attract the good, the bad and the ugly.

There are some downsides I have to admit. Not everyone has the same enthusiasm as you in agencies outside London (I refuse to call it a regional agency), which can be really frustrating, but there are some very good, ambitious people here and some great brands willing to spend money with us. It is just a smaller propensity than in London.

You would also be surprised with how many people do the London thing and then move out to bring up young families in more pleasant surroundings. All our senior positions are full of people who have worked in huge London agencies, so you do learn from good people. I think it’s a myth that agencies outside London aren’t as capable, although you do have to do a bit of searching. As an example we were the only UK agency to win a Cyber Lion at Cannes last year. Not too bad.

My advice is if you can get in to London great, but if not don’t give up, it’s not for everyone and you can find some great agencies outside London if you put your mind to it. London is a tough place to start an agency career and for some it will be financially impossible to do so. So cut your teeth outside, fly through the ranks and then make the move. Just get yourself in somewhere that has good opportunities.

Not only that, if you are lucky like me you might find a place where you can go for a run in complete peace and quiet before work here


Or attempt to stand on a board after work here

Posted in Advertising, Graduates, London, Planning, The weird world of agencies

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06Sep / 2007

AAAA – The culture of creativity

This is one of the best vids I’ve seen for a long time. Sir Ken Robinson, at the AAAA Conference, gives one of the most entertaining and inspiring speeches on creativity I’ve ever heard. I can’t claim to have found it, Mark posted it last month. I’m surprised I’ve only just come across it. It’s so good I had to post it on here.

Not only is it good, it made me really think about my time at school and in particular one important moment. At the time it didn’t seem like such a life changing decision but looking back now I reckon it’s the reason why I now work on a PC rather than a Mac. When I took my options at high school I had to choose between Art or P.E. In fact there was a group of ‘creative’ or ‘enjoyable’ subjects that you were only allowed to pick one of. My school simply wouldn’t allow you to do more than one. I’ve know idea if this is the norm? I loved both and I reckon I was pretty good at them as well but I decided to take P.E, mostly due to the influence of my careers advisor and my Dad.

I ended up taking English, Psychology and Sport Science at A-levels, before going on to do a Marketing communications degree at Uni. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sad about it, I’m more than happy doing what I do. It just proves a few of Sir Ken’s points:

1 – Creativity should have the same status as literacy
2 – We shouldn’t be so afraid of making mistakes. If we’re not prepared to be wrong we won’t come up with anything original
3 – People don’t grow into creativity we grow out of it, or get educated out of it

Posted in Comms thinking type stuff, Creativity, culture, Divergence, Education, Planning, Sir Ken Robinson, The weird world of agencies

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05Sep / 2007

The Jane-O-Meter


This is Jane, otherwise known as my beautiful other half (I don’t know why she insists on wearing this mask). One of the many things that I love about Jane is her straight talking, say it how it is attitude. Jane isn’t afraid to give her opinion on a whole host of issues. Most notably me leaving my socks lying around. So whenever an ad of note comes on TV I always listen to see what she blurts out. I never prompt her and she probably doesn’t even know I do it until now. I think it’s a good way of getting an anecdotal, objective opinion straight off the cuff.

Now there has been quite a few posts lately relating to the Cadburys Gorilla ad and Smirnoff’s airplane ad with many people arguing the whys and wherefores of each.

So I thought I would post how they scored on the Jane-O-Meter, who is a heavy consumer of both vodka and chocolate I might add…

Smirnoff Vodka

The blogosphere said this, this and this

The Jane-O-Meter said: “How random…I bloody love it”

Posted in Advertising, Cadbury, Campaigns of note, Planning, Random observations, Smirnoff, TV

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30Aug / 2007

Planning agencies

Following up on this from PSFK, is this great presentation by Zeus Jones. Which I came across at Adam’s great blog – thanks for the timely find.

Now I wouldn’t say this is the model that will change things over night, but it’s the thing that is exciting me the most at the moment.

Posted in Comms thinking type stuff, I wish I'd said that, Planning, The weird world of agencies, Zeus Jones

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22Aug / 2007

Mickey sounds like an arse!


Watch the ad here

I like to think I’m a bloke that knows. And in my opinion every bloke that knows, knows a bloke like Mickey and probably thinks he’s a bit of a dick!

Posted in Advertising, Campaigns of note, Head and Shoulders, Planning

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15Aug / 2007

What’s your planning style?

I’ve only just come across this, but Leland posted this a while ago about the taxonomy of planners. Thanks to Adam for flagging it on the Plannersphere. I find stuff like this really interesting and I was particularly intrigued to see how I might fair doing the Myers-Briggs test. The Myers-Briggs test is used by Mckinsey to assess the cognitive processes of candidates.

According to Leland’s description my hunch would be I’m somewhere in between ‘emotional’ and ‘relationship acumen.’ So after a brief search on zee veb, I managed to find this very rough version of a Carl Jung and Isabel Myers-Briggs personality test.

I came out, so to speak, as a ENFP

Strength of the preferences %
Extroverted 56
Intuitive 75
Feeling 25
Perceiving 11

This means I’m apparently…

- Moderately expressed extrovert
- Distinctively expressed intuitive personality
- Moderately expressed feeling personality
- Slightly expressed perceiving personality

I think it’s actually scarily accurate. I agree that I am all of the amazing things it says I am ; ) It categorises me as a Champion Idealist. Which after reading makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. This part being my favourite:

‘This type is found in only about 3 percent of the general population (the top 3 or the bottom 3 I wonder?), but they have great influence because of their extraordinary impact on others. Champions are inclined to go everywhere and look into everything that has to do with the advance of good and the retreat of evil in the world. They can’t bear to miss out on what is going on around them; they must experience, first hand, all the significant social events that affect our lives. And then they are eager to relate the stories they’ve uncovered, hoping to disclose the “truth” of people and issues, and to advocate causes.’

Posted in Comms thinking type stuff, Myers Briggs, Personality Test, Planning, Random observations, Taxonomy of planners, The weird world of agencies

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10Aug / 2007

What can we learn from Duchamp?

Now I don’t know much about art. I’m interested in it, I appreciate it and I like what I like, but I don’t know what is good or bad. So apologies if this post screams of ignorance, but after reading this about Marcel Duchamp it got me thinking about the kind of art that those of us in communications are paid to produce and what we could learn from him. Duchamp had a really interesting perspective on art and it seems pretty relevant given the debate surrounding the future of planning, agencies and the general changes in modern marketing.

This post isn’t about commercial art versus art, or intended to suggest that visual art is dead. I simply found Duchamp’s perspective thought provoking. How’s that for sitting on the fence!

Whilst Duchamp eventually came to despise retinal art and the bourgeois, he started off by wanting to create a new kind of art that engaged the mind. Duchamp wondered if he could create works of art that were not conventionally works of art. This became known as conceptual art.

According to the Oxford English dictionary a concept is: “an idea of something formed mentally, combining all its characteristics or particulars.” This suggests to me that there are many different elements to the concept and not just visual and copy. Seems obvious and straightforward. So why the debate about who owns ideas?

In my agency, concepts are the things we review. No reason why it’s called this over creative it just is and always has been. I would argue that in a ‘traditional process’ quite often what is reviewed isn’t really a concept – at least not just yet. All the other ‘characteristics’ and ‘particulars’ haven’t been developed, such as the media for arguments sakes. It’s essentially just an idea at this stage. In other words a concept can’t be CREATED without varying perspectives and input.

Duchamp’s ‘Readymades’ are also something we can learn from. He purposefully aimed to break every rule in art in order to engage people’s minds in unpredictable ways so he could provoke the observer to participate and think rather than it just being aesthetic to the eye. And to top it off he believed in art that was free of pretence and artifice. He’s a clever bloke in my book.

However, probably one of the most interesting beliefs of Duchamp is that art occurs at the juncture of the artists’ intention and the observer’s response, ultimately making them a co-creator. If ever there is something that would unite people in agencies today and describe what we should all be striving for in communications this is it. Perhaps this is the art we should get more awards for?

Posted in Art, Comms thinking type stuff, Creative, Divergence, Marcel Duchamp, Planning, Readmades, The weird world of agencies

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24Jul / 2007

Don’t blame it on the creatives?

Adliterate is probably one of my favourite blogs. It’s the one that stirs up the most debate in my opinion. Many of Richard’s posts cover agency life, processes, organisational culture and topical industry issues. I think it’s more relevant to the actual ‘doing’ than most other blogs, hence the reason so many people (and not just planners that blog), comment on his posts. There are some great blogs in the plannersphere full irreverence, divergent thinking, social observations and commentary, but if like me, every now and then something niggles you, or you get annoyed when you can’t get something done, you will probably find the problem covered in here.

In Richard’s own words, he aims to be deliberately provocative and there is some good natured, mostly intellectual banter going on. In the style of Vanilla Ice (or probably someone like him) check it out.

The post that has hit the biggest nerve with me of late is Richard’s ‘don’t blame it on the creatives’. The premise. Are creatives to be blamed for the problems in the industry? I do agree that perhaps too much blame is laid at their door and it is everyone’s responsibility to come up with better ways of working, but lets be honest. Some people, irrespective of their discipline, or the agency department in which the lift tells them they reside, will just never want to change.

Everyone will have his or her (this correction by Word has got me thinking about another observation, post to follow shortly) own view on the subject that will be developed by his or her own unique experiences. Nearly every agency will have its own position, objectives, culture, structure and influential characters and as a result the subject isn’t really that black and white. I just don’t think there is a definitive answer, I just know it needs to carry on moving forward.

However, this quote by Da Vinci pretty much sums it up for me: “There are three classes of people. Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see”.

If you fall into the latter then you are the one giving people headaches, although it’s likely you will think you are in the former. So I don’t know how you sort that one out? Perhaps we should all just all meet up somewhere in the middle.

Posted in Adliterate, Creative, Planning, Richard Huntingdon, The weird world of agencies

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05Jul / 2007

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

We are currently in the process of developing one of the Group’s brands and as seasiders we had the inevitable conversation about how we might differ to London agencies? What does this mean for our clients? How could we show them the benefits of working with an agency outside London? Trips on a tractor, the smell of manure, you know, the sort of thing you would expect from an agency outside London. Any how, during this conversation someone bought up the name of the dead Cornish painter Alfred Wallis. Wallis, an ex fisherman, turned to painting at the age of 70 after his wife died.

Painting seascapes and St Ives, the area where he lived, Wallis developed a distinctive style that had a real sense of unrestrained creativity – almost endearingly child like. Wallis for example had no preconceptions of how the sea should look, he painted it just how he saw it in his head. Self taught Wallis would use anything he could get his hands on. The scarcity of paint and canvas meant Wallis would use old tins of boat paint and scraps of cardboard to create his work. Wallis’ sense of perspective and proportion wasn’t conventional and based solely on his own reality and memories of decades at sea.

I’m not sure what the moral of the story of this is yet, but it’s interesting nonetheless. Perhaps that’s enough. No worse or better than anything else. Just a different perspective and a different attitude.

Posted in Alfred Wallis, Art, Cornwall, Creative, Divergence, Planning

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