Confessions of a Wannabe Ad Man

'Sciency' Communications & Partnerships...

2011-11-28T20:44:00.003Z

How a lot of ads are made...

The title of this post might confuse anyone who's not read Douglas Holt's latest book, 'Cultural Strategy'. If you haven't (and you're reading this whilst in possession of a job on communications), you owe it to yourself to have a look. It's really very good.

Anyway, in the book, Holt uses the term 'Sciency' to refer to the vast majority of measures that marketers use to measure communications. Pretty much any brand tracking or ad evaluation, in Holt's eyes, falls under this lens.

It's something that I'm sure a large number of planners and researchers would violently agree with (and especially Rupert Howell - read a fragment of his 2000 MRS speech). Using rubbish measures to assess the efficacy of work has led to a short termist (or at best, medium-term) culture, one where the number of long lasting brand strategies can be counted on the finger of one hand.

Don't get me wrong, I don't simply think it's as saying 'research is the devil' or 'research needs to be more representative of real life - then it'll work'. Life is far too chaotic for that. Sometimes concept testing does give you the right answer, or a series of clues to test further.

My problem comes when business judgements are made solely as a result of soft metrics. When bonuses are attached to scores on a brand tracker, everybody loses. Marketing becomes needlessly short termist.

It becomes more troubling when the markets aren't immune from this kind of behaviour. Thomas Cook, if reports are to be believed, lost 75% of its market value on the basis of a report about cash flow. One thing led to another, confidence was low amongst business forecasters, and the business suffered. This is the same principle as an ad being judged harshly in research, researcher confirming it, clients passing it on and the organisation rejecting it. A good idea (or business) could take years to re-emerge.

Yet, look what's said by Thomas Cook, amongst those that control the business. Patently, the business wasn't failing, but needed more money in the short term for working capital. However, because this corporate story was read as a potential threat to consumers (it wasn't), the market panned it. If the ad in my example could be proven to benefit the business (focusing on what's happened to the business historically, rather than the mostly short-termist, false idol of brand), then it should be the measure given most weight.

If 'information' or 'Sciency' findings lead to a short term reaction without considering the broader picture (or indeed, what's actually important - that the business's sales come from markets across Europe, or that the ad will be seen in context beyond a darkened focus group room, and - hopefully, as part of a wider strategy), then 'Sciency' conclusions are indeed to blame for a lot of bad comms. They lead to short-termist thinking, and short termist thinking risks undermining the business, in much the same way as Thomas Cook and The City appear to have operated.

And, in truth, it's never been easier (or indeed, more seductive) for the metrics obsessed marketer to fall into this trap. What IS my Klout score? Likes on Facebook? Number of RTs for my tweet?

Or, indeed, the notion of 'awareness or brand loyalty as a 'key metric'. It's deceptively simple to gain awareness; parading your agency down the street starkers with your brand name emblazoned across their chest would do the trick. And the notion of loyalty, as Ehrenberg has demonstrated, is largely false.

No, what needs to happen is a return to business basics. Over a significant period of time, what has happened to sales? Why? How can we isolate this activity? What happened in the test market versus the control market? What does the overall competitive landscape look like in terms of sales? Are we representative? Yes? No? Why, or why not? Who buys what brand/s, and do they make up the majority of the share?

If we can answer some of those with authority, we might just be getting somewhere. If we can't, no amount of social media monitoring will make a ha'penny jizz to your business performance. It might put a sticking plaster over some of the 'Sciency' metrics, but not a lot more.

Thinking about this further, there is a very real need for partnerships as a means of growing business and brand appeal. Marketers; your brand is not the white, shiny snowflake you'd like it to be. To punters, it's just another toothpaste they sometimes buy.

But, if your communications wants to move the needle from A to B, to tap into a behaviour that is relevant and interesting for your brand (that you've tested to see - and not just ad testing; ethnographic findings/google search analysis/SKU purchasing over a significant period of time) and business - why not consider some form of partnership?

It would seem to me that nothing is created solely on its own, if indeed it ever was. People buy into brands for a myriad of reasons, but there's usually a contextual reason why. It may be you buy a Philips electric shaver because your father did, and you're assured of the brand's quality.

If I wanted to move the needle for you to consider my Braun shaver, I'd have to tap into something potent, with obvious cultural resonance, that meant something to you. No amount of boards in a darkened room (or indeed, fully finished ads on the telly) would do that.

But my friends might. And, if I knew that my friends were buying or doing something which related to shaving in some faint way (such as using a Braun as a result of a cultural tie up with Movember or something similar), then I might switch.

Heck, if I was the Braun Marketing Director, I might just try this out. And I might see if it moved the needle. Not in a month. Not in 3 months. But over years. Medium term measures could be moved away from if I had access to a robust database of the kind of people I wanted to target from another, receptive and culturally relevant brand I'd tied up with - this would go some way to avoiding a 'the ad's shit' response from my colleagues. I'd have proper data at my disposal, and some way of tapping into the hard responses - checking brand buying behaviour from those who liked Braun AND were doing Movember.

Then, and only then, would I consider my Marketing a success. Not when celebrity X retweeted my campaign, or the number of hits on Youtube. I've watched all sorts of things on Youtube; if it led to purchase in any way, I'd be in the possession of about 5 cats that could play the keyboard.

I guess what I'm really driving at is getting businesses to base their decisions on what's happening to sales of a product/service over time, or by consulting a robust database (either their own or a brand's that they've partnered with) and then getting into more spur of the moment research.

That'd stop the small-minded, short-termist pissing money away, and, I'm sorry to say, it's only likely to happen with a long-term relationship with an agency that was allowed access to historical data from which to make decisions, and these are all too rare. A business that understood historical business data, and was quick enough on its feet to help navigate where the brand could play culturally...that's the dream, I think, whether you're a client or an agency. Wouldn't that be nice? We might actually be *gulp* business partners.

Not all data's created equal...

2011-07-10T13:03:00.001Z

The famous class inequality sketch from Cleese and the Two Ronnies.

Hello there.

I've been away for a little bit, visiting the US, so sorry for no posts during the past few months.

Being in the States got me thinking; whilst I was there, I was struck by just how much of the US journalism adopted 'Metro style' reportage - articles that were basically glorified press releases with some poor branded polls to support some nonsense thought; barbecue sauce gives you cancer or something similar.

And it got me thinking about the importance or unimportance of data. Though I think he's often an insufferable arse, Ben Goldacre published a good article in the Guardian (and a decent rebuttal to criticism about the first piece) about how far people should trust medical data, something which is fairly close to my heart - I don't like the idea of spurious surveys being used to 'prove' some faddy nonsense that does people more harm than good.

His point was that some 62% of data published in national newspapers in the past two weeks would have failed the World Cancer Research's Scale for provable claims; the data would have been 'insufficient'.

I worry a bit that in an age where statistics can be generated/read about as easily as tying your shoelaces, that it has become ever harder to try and sort the wheat from the chaff. Frankly, if I was a client, I simply wouldn't believe half of the 'data points' that my comms agency (be it Advertising, PR or any of the above) came up with.

So why try to regurgitate stuff they already know; or, indeed, fill presentations with evident stuff? Far better to use data in a creative way (and no, I'm not talking about every planner's wet dream, the infographic) to enlighten, and to use to help support lateral thinking. Not telling Sony about the TV market. I'm all for demonstrating that planning/agencies understand the landscape, but oh so many data/'scene setting' new business presentations do little more than add a rudimentary few slides, almost as a embarrassed beginning.

I'd far rather we got on with the business of surprising and delighting our clients, rather than '8 of 10 cats believed'. Show human reactions to things. Proper ones, not some manufactured focus groups. How do people REALLY behave in the juice aisle? (Yes, I'm aware this may involve people being booted out of Sainsburys, but it's undoubtedly worth it).

It is a concern that in a world of MROCs/personalised panels et al that we're far too quick to outsource data gathering to those who are only a piece of the puzzle. After all,' facts only make sense in the light of an idea', as Stephen King put it. Far better to acknowledge what we don't know to a client, to be honest and grown up - and seek to surprise them with genuinely insightful information that isn't easily garnered by their own research department.

This would, I hope, partly stop the endless use of 'post-rationalisation planners' (though it'd never stop it; sometimes a good idea DOES come at the 11th hour). I don't want planning to be relegated to a 'backer up' of creative ideas that aren't founded in thinking about the business. In a dream world, planning would be a conduit, able to surprise creatives and clients, using research in a creative way.

I think it's no coincidence that TNS have appointed a creative director. As a nation filled with dubious 'quick surveys' in our national papers, the likes of TNS, more than anyone, have a need to stand out. I just hope it goes beyond infographics and focuses on why people do what they do. God knows, we've never needed to know that more.

Grit makes the Pearl...

2011-04-12T08:57:00.013Z

It looks like a variation on a G. Could be wrong, though.

Hello. Happy Easter, first of all. I'm enjoying the chance to potter at home, to play a little golf and reflect on the past four months or so since Easter.

Anyway, I thought you might like to know that since Christmas, I've begun to try to learn the guitar. Now, this is a bit of a new thing for me; I've never, ever learned to play any musical instrument. It's kind of odd, especially when you consider that I love music - I've spent thousands of pounds on it since my teenage years.

And, well, let's just say that it's not as easy as it might seem, this guitaring. I've spent hours and hours practicing my chord changing, learning basic pentonic scales and beginning to learn bits and bobs of songs I like. Perhaps most notably - I can now play the beginning to 'The Funeral' slightly slower than Band of Horses can. Heh.

It's been fun, so far, partly helped by the fact I have no expectations (save to be able to play songs/be able to noodle). I don't have any desire to pack it all in and become a musician, but I do find myself getting cross when I can make a chord change quickly enough.

That in itself's been interesting; my guitar teacher's got me using a metronome to get quicker, and that led to an admission from my flatmate (a former teacher of guitar himself) that he'd never used one. No, he'd just used his ear, and never been taught the 'proper' way, and wished he had, as he admitted his tempo wasn't up to snuff, and that would've helped. He, like me, played to amuse himself.

Now, I want to learn the 'proper way', even if I at a later date I short-hand it. I know what my musical desires are (though my teacher tells me that as soon as I play with other musicians, I'll want to kick it up a notch), and am happy enough. I'm sure there'll come a time when I know more to challenge some of the things I've been taught, though.

What interests me about all of this is that I think proper practice does require proper grit; to learn things the 'right' way and ask pertinent questions as you go along. I've always wanted to learn the way it's been done, historically - to challenge what's been accepted as the norm, and find out when it's useful/when it can be disregarded.

Running AdGrads, I have met a lot of graduates. Many incredibly talented, many incredibly conscientious...with the odd one that's so talented that they'll re-write the way the business is thought of.

What I find most interesting (bearing in mind AG's been in existence for about 4 years now) is to track the progress of those who have been successful the first time round versus those who've had to work at it and those who've given up and done something different.

Without question, there are some brilliant, brilliant people in communications. Like my flatmate's guitar playing, they've demonstrated a natural ability. But, occasionally, they get to about two years in, and stall. They've made it. To the average person (and client, in a lot of cases) they know what they're talking about. Yet they're disillusioned; they've put so much into the goal of getting in that there's no real incentive to push on. They're able to play their songs, tap out their beats and, ultimately, be a cog in a business. I think this happens most often to the planners I've seen - there's no real job title change, short of getting in and on.

It's the triers that do best in both businesses; those who can internally motivate themselves, be gritty and ask the right sort of questions. These callous-finger-tipped sorts don't just 'settle' for things. So you can't move from F to C quickly enough? Keep working. Find another way of doing it. Hum along to the song you're trying to master to learn a better way to play it than the oft-wrong tab pages suggest to do so. When it comes to comms, don't just accept that because you're two years in and working in London that planner x's word is law, or that what a client says is the way it always will be.

Get out there, meet different sorts of people, and apply some real life to situations (as Rob's excellent post points out). Don't just listen to Twitter or Campaign Magazine. Those promote a very 'media' way of thinking about the problem at hand.

It's perhaps no wonder that the public no longer thinks that the ads are better than the programmes - so many communications initiatives are created as much to please the 'in' crowd as anything else. I don't give a fuck what famous planner Y thinks of my campaign. If it met/exceeded its objectives (which, in truth, only you and the client will know), then it's worked. It's like this tweet; I have no doubt whatsoever that the people they wanted to talk to weren't 20-30 something comms professionals in London. No doubt at all. So many people judge 'the work' not as punters, and that's a big problem.

I think lazy judgements on the work is another symptom of a lack of grit; a lack of willingness to think about just how real people (remember them?) will behave when work like that is placed in front of them.

To take this back to the guitar again - my guitar teacher, Ryan Carr, is trying to make a go of a career as a full-time guitarist (rather than as a 50/50 teacher/guitar player split). He has a refreshing attitude to the notion of grit. On my second lesson (after buying some more kit - a capo/metronome from a nearby shop), I asked him why most people in Denmark St music shops were such dickheads. Most of them sneered like bastards when I asked some pretty simple questions about just what brand of capo I should buy. He said to me that most of them were washed up, the sort of guys who had/have some natural talent, but were unwilling to ever chance their arm and try for full time careers as musicians. He knows that he's in a risky position, and that he's got some difficult creative decisions to make - to the T-Mobile example earlier, just how populist does he make his music? Regardless of which way he goes, I respect him for giving it a go, and being true to what he actually thinks, and not a sneery musical sycophant.

It's the worrysome nature of creative careers that it's often easier to sit in the sidelines, being in with the in-crowd, going along with the popular consensus because you're too frightened to make something happen or venture how you really feel.

And, frankly, I think that's a bit sad. I think, for the likes of comms folk, that we shouldn't be frightened of arguing fully for the work, about just why it will/won't work, and be less frightened of just blithely nodding along with what famous planner/creative x says. If we don't do that, we run the risk of sitting, working in the ad equivalent of the music shop from High Fidelity, where people wank on for hours about gamification - something, which whilst wonderful as a theory, just might not sell more bars of soap.

I like working with people who have strong beliefs. People who don't work in a culture of fear, who say what they think and argue about the direction of accounts. People who I can raise my voice towards and go to the pub with afterwards. People who have their comms callouses, who love what they do and have tried to get better. Not people who've glided in, grown disillusioned and are too scared/lazy to do something about it. That's where the best work comes from, whether it's a song, an event or an ad.

Anyway. Back to trying to learn the Crane Wife 3.

Consultancy with Conscience...?

2011-04-10T16:03:00.008Z

I wonder if it's Santa. Photo via jurvetson. Usual rules apply.

After what seems to be a (sadly) typical four month pause in blog posts, I've decided to get off my arse and write another. Prompted by Neil's excellent Firestarters evening at Google, I began to think a little bit about agencies, and just what will endure or be left behind in the next ten to twenty years and beyond.

I've talked a little bit about my slight skepticism about the notion of 'agile'. I think it works well from the get go, when it's a founding principle, but when you're dealing with disconnected/disassociated big businesses whose PR and Advertising departments don't even talk to one another, it starts to ring a little hollow.

To be honest, I think that it's a good principle, but won't work all of the time. For an agency like Made by Many, who make their name on iterative development and working in close proximity with clients and as a smaller business, it makes sense.

Now, what I'm really interested in is attitudes and behaviours which foster good work. Organising principles are all well and good, but they can easily gather dust if the mindset's not right inside and outside of the business.

The one thing I want to think about today is conscience. Since the beginning of the agency world, every half-decent shop has realised what's needed it is a strong professional conscience - it doesn't matter what type of employee you are. All considered folks realise that yes, the work's difficult at times, joyous at others - but there's really only one method of ensuring you don't go mad, whether you work all the hours given, or have an enviable ability to get everything done, please the client and have a life outside of the day job.

It's a sense of good conscience. The best places know that they've set parameters with their client ahead of time (often odiously referred to as 'managing expectations' on occasion, which sounds like an excuse for a fuck-up) and if something's thrown this into doubt, have had the wherewithal to raise it with their clients quickly.

In all honesty, they've behaved like a proper consultancy, not just a simple provider of service. In my experience, providers of a service and nothing more get taken advantage of. I must confess, to thinking back to my long running part time job between University; there were similar situations where people had no empathy when you were busy and short staffed, asking for everything now or sooner, if possible.

Those people are just as likely to come with an MBA and live within a Marketing department as they are to sit in a burger queue or be after a pint at your local. So, if we acknowledge that those people exist, why not deal with them honestly, demonstrating a considered professional opinion and setting what can/can't be done ahead of time?

The further splintering of creative disciplines promulgates this 'can't you just?', service only approach - it's too easy to treat each part of the puzzle as that and nothing more. People chase after easy to prove 'vanity metrics' (a wonderful phrase, nicked from Neil's event) which are short-term and satisfy that their 'bit' of the puzzle is working.

If a client has chosen to split their budget across a spectrum of agencies, and there's no clear lead (as would appear to be happening more frequently these days), then it's got to fall to the group to set decent, longer term measures and not just fight for control over their bit or a little more.

To promote your way of working as the best in this scenario just doesn't ring true. It comes across as more agency willy-waving. Be shown to be the agency with the conscience, those who are empathetic to what goes on in the agency circle/with the client, along with explaining why something can or can't be done, and I'm sure rewards will follow.

You'll be respected for your counsel, something which appears to have gone missing in the search for dwell time and youtube hits. When it doesn't work (which happens), you'll be in a better position not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and just change the creative/approach. It's got to about learning, not lurching from execution to execution without a guiding principle or pre-set parameters.

Agencies shown to have good consciences will be able to (shock!) answer the client back if they don't agree, behaving more like they used to. After all, you SHOULD be employed for your point of view, not just because you can argue the production company to do it a couple of grand cheaper, or ensure celebrity x turns up to party y.

Mystique will only get so far. And, to be honest, the only way to start fires is to behave like a considered, thoughtful, conscience-riddled grown up, not like some reactionary child.

Johnson, Writing, Briefing and Orwell..

2010-11-07T13:11:00.006Z

It's been a little while since I updated here. A combination of laziness, work bits and bobs and just not really having much to say has meant I've left WAM well enough alone.

Anyway, after going to see a lecture at the LSE by Steven Johnson (which was excellent - he's very good value) on the topic of his new book, all about where good ideas come from, sparked a thought.

Recently, I've been getting a tad fed up with the use of buzzwords in the communication industry. 'Glocal', 'Agile', 'Transmedia', 'Platform' - all of these make me wince whenever they're used.

Yes, most are shorthand for a bigger thought, but I don't find them particularly helpful.

And there was one thing that Steven Johnson referred to - the need to make your ideas as easily understandable as possible, to increase the size of your network. Basically, ensure that what you're saying can be understood by many, to increase the likelihood that it'll be picked up, adopted and shared.

Jen, my colleague at work, pointed to a T.S. Elliot essay, 'Tradition and the Individual Talent', which asserts the need of creative work/ideas to have some nod to the tradition in which it is born into, in order to be understood and be accepted.

And, after reading that, I began to think about the odd good idea I have when I write briefs. Without exception, the best thinking happens (or, indeed, the best selling to client) when complicated things can be translated into simple language, which can easily be shown to be spreadable - people read it, and it leads to a debate or a thought from it.

Not something which is self evident (I'm looking at you, Transmedia) and has a word attached to it which confuses the 95% of the world that don't work in comms - and some of those who do. When words like that get accepted, I think they lead to exclusivity, and not great ideas.

Now, I don't mind words which coin something brand new - but they should be able to be understood from the get-go. Otherwise, I don't think Planners are doing their job, which is (partly) to synthesise complex topics, encourage lateral thinking, new, useful ideas and, ultimately, behaviour change.

So, I decided to have another look at my writing Bible, George Orwell's 'Politics and the English Language'. If you haven't read it, stop reading this and take ten minutes to sit down, have a cup of tea and pore over it.

Like Richard, I'm a very big fan of George Orwell, and thought it was worth splicing in some of his thinking with Johnson's lecture, and what we know about Eliot. This next quote is a great introduction to how to write decent briefs (especially propositions, for my money):

"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: 1. Could I put it more shortly? 2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?"

And, next, Orwell continues to explain (much, much better than I can) about why using lazy, shorthand phrases is wrong:

"But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you -- even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent -- and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself."

The last point is crucial. Certain industry buzz words don't help foster innovation or lateral thought - they have the effect of confusing most people, and acting as lazy shorthand, not helping people express what they mean. For my money, if you have to explain it to your creatives, account team or client and it's not clear, take it out. Simpler and shorter is almost always right, not academic and perplexing. You aren't doing your job if it requires a BA in Cultural Studies to 'get it'.

In his essay, Orwell also does a neat job of explaining just how you can express what you think is a good idea. Interestingly, it's not always found within language, and this next passage is fascinating:

"When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose -- not simply accept -- the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally."

In short - think about what will best sell your idea. What combination of pictures and sensations will most easily lead to your idea being sold? Don't simply risk using the comms word of the day.

To bring this back to the Steven Johnson lecture, he talked a lot about the 'Architecture of Serendipity', environments that take advantage of the slow burning nature of ideas, that make the connections between people. Comms agencies need to not quash these thoughts, not impose artificial environments (I'm looking at you, lazy briefings and brainstorms) which don't help.

You can see in your mind's eye, can't you? A planner with no time, cobbling together some of the latest shorthand buzzwords, confusing the creative/account team, and pissing in the well of inspiration.

Those three writers are why I have a natural tendancy to dislike whatever the comms word of the month is. I like analogies, because they tend to do the sensation and image part much better than an 'Agile' or a 'Platform', which already lead you to the wrong places.

I'm aware of the need to coin a term, but most, I don't think, are that helpful. The lazy definition of a planner as 'the smart one' encourages this, in truth. Heck, just look at the Big Society - it reads like it was written by a bunch of planners with not enough time.

The folly of categorisation...

2010-08-01T12:43:00.005Z

Harsh, but fair.

In recent years, I've become a bit of a muso, as the odd post on this blog (and how I spent my student loan) should testify.

And, in no other part of my life do I get as much pleasure as recommending a new band, or an old band that no-one else knows.

There's the old horse chestnut when you have to describe a band to someone else, and compare them to others. I'd argue that there are bands or artists who take such a right turn from their usual sound (though I don't like him, witness Plan B recently, or say Radiohead for Kid A) that they defy categorisation.

This sort of thing is why I worry a bit when people apply arbitrary labels to people to explain their behaviour. An 'early adopter' for one product doesn't necessary apply to the next one they release. I love the iPod, but would I buy a Mac? No, and there are a variety of reasons. I would consider Nike for running shoes, but fashion trainers? Not a chance.

Segmentation is fine when it works for broad behavioural patterns, but the whole Gladwell bell curve attempt by agencies to neatly fit people into an assumptive model, or to assume buying patterns somehow have a rational pattern is bullshit.

Much as I find him to be a grumpy bastard when he writes, this is something I cede to Taleb. People are too chaotic, and life is too random, to assume that the most middle of the road strategies are going to work. Why not do a combination of the safe and highly dangerous when planning or executing campaigns?

Middle of the road means your market share will atrophy. Grouping consumers as early adopters means your values will parallel theirs; witness brands which chase an ideal too strongly; one which has gone out of fashion (say most mobile phone brands and having an eye on the future) - or those which succeed by re-harnessing an ideal which has come back in (say, Old Spice or Hovis).

Daily, people defy audience segmentation. So why do we bother? Increasingly, it looks like something which results in jobs for the boys; a lazy back up plan for weak-willed Marketing directors.

I'd far rather be a brand which did the basics brilliantly and hedged its bets on consumer behaviour, rather than executing a strategy which has been passed around so many people that it now bears no resemblance to what was first presented.

Given these trading conditions, strategies either have to be so, so basic (I'm thinking of a certain jeans brand's recent work) as to seemingly insult the intelligence of its audience and not really say anything, or contain a lot of mixed messages which don't DO anything.

We talk in hushed tones about a 'purpose idea' or a 'brand ideal', but all of this is bullshit if it relies on the sort of Stone Age segmentation which a lot of marketers seem to be so fond of. People just aren't a brand character; they have more interesting little niches or jagged edges - it's those which'll make money going forward, those fascinating gaming inspired Easter Eggs (like Google's Pacman display, or Dole's approach to labelling) which tell you more about the people who are going to be your consumer for the next twenty years, rather than an empty current figure.

In fact, gauging the lifetime value of a consumer is interesting these days. A Facebook 'fan' is obviously not a reliable metric here. As discussed on twitter, there's quite a gap between being a fan and being an advocate, someone who will keep on buying.

A personal example - I love Adidas trainers. I like the style, I admire the Predator connection, and love their golf clobber. Yet, I think their marketing (compared to Nike) is often a bit amateur hour. I wouldn't favourite their stuff on Facebook, but give me some money off some Stan Smiths, and I would buy. Nike, I'd love the thinking behind the work, but would I buy their trainers? Not a chance.

Digital metrics are great. I think it's wonderful to be able to gauge the sentiment behind work, and see how well it's been received online. But would I rely on them to knock out a segmentation, or be able to tell how easily my product would fly off the shelves? Not a chance. Would I use them to figure out how to place my budget, and how much of it is for straight promotional activity and how much of it is for more chaotic activities? Damn right.

Obliquity: Why You Shouldn't Behave Economically..

2010-07-10T17:23:00.003Z

Hello there. It's been a little while since I've posted. Sorry about that. Been busy at work, doing a variety of new business bits and bobs, along with trying to hire a Junior Planner for the burgeoning department.

One of the more fun things which has happened has been getting a book budget (a bit sad, but very exciting if, like me, there's a lot you want to read). And, one of the first books on the list was Obliquity by John Kay, which has been oft-trumpeted by the IPA.

Now, if you click on book's link, you'll find it's had a bit of a panning by certain people, who claim the book only contains one idea. Well, they aren't wrong. And, it is short. That said, I wasn't expecting more than an idea in 180 pages.

Anyway, on with the review. Kay merges some of Taleb's Black Swan thinking with Kahnemann et al (which makes sense, as an former think-tank employee and a senior financier) to come up with the central hypothesis about life and problem solving. Essentially, all what he calls 'high level objectives' (life objectives like being successful/happy et al) are best achieved indirectly. Life, for Kay, is too complex to try and map a direct solution onto it.

Most people, in his view, after they have achieved something, back their opinions up with post-rationalisation (sound familiar, planner folk?) as they can't adequately explain all of the factors which governed what they did. He calls this Franklin's Gambit, in homage to Ben Franklin, who wrote about how he made moral decisions:

“Divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns; writing over the one Pro, and over the other Con. Then, during three or four days’ consideration, I put down under the different heads short hints of the different motives, that at different times occur to me for or against the measure.

“When I have got them all together in one view, I endeavour to estimate the respective weights… I have found great advantage for this kind of equation, in what may be called moral or prudential algebra.”

This was known as Franklin's Rule, but it is rarely so black and white as that when dealing with major corporations, government or the like - decisions have already been made internally, or a narrow picture has been painted and acted upon, so any work done creating models or the like is simply justifying the decision that's already been made.

Does this sound familar to anyone who works in oooh, Advertising, PR or Management Consultancy? Kay preaches the need to get started, to focus on those small tasks which work towards the larger goal; new problems and thoughts will occur.

I'm somewhat divided by this book; part of me thinks it's terrific, and a very good justification for trying, failing and carrying on, and has useful ammunition to stop clients deciding that the communications solution is black before they've ever contemplated white.

The more cynical side to me agrees with the Amazon critics; for all its worthy case studies and writing, it does essentially play the same note throughout the whole book. Yes, of course people act with a sense of pluralism - no-one (save the brain damaged) can focus wholly on one goal and never be shifted. Real life's not like that; a small child could let you know that it's not fair, never mind a FT columnist/former Director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

I would say to you (whoever 'you' are) to have a look at it - particularly if you've not dealt with many big corporations in your time; it's a welcome voice of sanity when it comes to goal setting and focusing attention on getting the small things right as an absolute necessity. It also does a good job of justifying some of the more obscure bits of Planning, in my opinion; i'm not surprised the IPA liked it so much.

Far too important to leave to chance..

2010-05-15T10:57:00.005Z

They aren't a comfortable pillow, believe me.

This blog was originally started with selfish reasons (aren't they all, to begin with?) I wanted to get into the ad business, and I wanted to be heard. Happily, it worked.

Now, as time went on, the need to stop people doing what I did (or learning from what went well and why) became more of a primary focus. So much, in fact, that it helped spawn AdGrads, and I'm delighted that it continues to help people into the business.

It helps throw the curtains open and show (I hope), just what goes on the murky communication world, and what agencies are really looking for, even if they don't always say.

However, there's still an itch on my part - there are some massive, massive barriers that the creative industries suffer from, and this is sort of a plea to my readers to help out:

1) Staffed by people "like me"

I am white, middle class and British. I don't have data to hand, but people like me make up the overwhelming majority of the UK advertising industry. I'd like to say this is fine. I really would. But I can't. If you get people who think the same, act the same, go to the same places, live in the same area, you get vanilla work. It's not helped by archaic agencies only allowing those who are vaguely related to people who work there get work experience.

Now, I can't help my background (having spent most of my degree course apologising, it would seem, for being responsible for the world's literary ills, and I don't mean my shoddy undergrad essays), but I recognise that diversity is not just an old, old wooden ship, and will lead to more interesting places to work, and better, more focused work.

2) Economy and Geography

It is BLOODY expensive to move to London, and it is hard to relocate to a big city where you know few people. The web's helped to minimise this, to some degree, but if you're not from the South East, you have a far harder time getting into the industry, especially given pretty piss-poor starting salaries (yes, they get better, but £18k when your flat costs £550 a month before bills means you'd better love free museums in the first year in the business).

This needs to change in some way shape or form - people need to have a way of justifying being paid just a little bit more, and the comms world needs to see beyond the borders of Kent or Surrey when it recruits. A broader recruitment policy, and paying just a few thousand pounds more would help a great deal.

3) Prizing academic qualifications over practical ability

I've met an awful lot of Oxbridge graduates since working in communications. Many are bright, erudite (as you'd expect) and well suited to their jobs. But, on the other end of the scale, i've met those who really, really aren't - there's no hunger, no passion or fire, and no real interest in the career. They signed up because they wanted an academic exercise and aren't sure what to do with themselves. Some should be academics. Some should just do something else.

And, given what I know about how agencies recruit, red brick University status shouldn't be everything. The IPA have done their bit with Diagonal Thinking, but more needs to go on. There needs to be more stories of people starting in the post room and working up. The comms industry needs to get better at marketing itself - there's a curious reluctance to, partly because whenever a camera comes into one, agency people behave like tits, and parts of the job seem faintly unreal to those who spend their days in front of organograms and spreadsheets.

4) Lacking hunger

Through AdGrads, I've met an awful lot of people who want to get into comms. Some are very bright, others who aren't as bright but are damned persistent, and those with the magic combination of both.

Part of it is because the industry doesn't promote itself very well - so those who are genuinely bright aren't as hungry as they perhaps need to be because they don't know the ins and outs of the job. Generally though, whilst it's easy to decry passion as being somehow a misdirected trait, I want to see people who will turn their hand to anything. It's more important than a first in your degree. The future belongs to people who care about what they're going to do - you can always teach people the basics, but you can't teach them how to explore new things. That's born, not made.

What you can do

Now, with all of this said, I had a very interesting meeting last week. It appears there are other people who are committed to coming up with a solution to those four problems, rather than just blogging about it, like yours truly.

I met a man called Marc Lewis, who is Dean of the newly (re)formed School of Communication Arts. Marc was the last scholarship student of the school when it existed in its previous incarnation. A successful career later, and he's now committed to helping break down those barriers by encouraging those who'd have been put off otherwise to apply for his school's accredited qualification. They accept scholarship pupils, and encourage entrepreneurial folk to get involved - watch the video on the site to understand more.

Now, the reason this post is on WAM rather than AdGrads is because it concerns you, dear reader. Their syllabus is written entirely by wiki by people who are currently in the industry. They are not far off from opening for a new term, and need YOU. You can do as much or as little as you'd like, which is always a good thing. I've signed up, and think you should too. Have a look here.

After all - I want to be sure the industry's still in rude health, and finds the best people. Who knows? You may end up employing some of the school's alumni.

Time, Time, Time..

2010-05-03T09:04:00.004Z

The title of the post allows me a spot of Waits. Good stuff.

How long is too long? Does it really take weeks and months to write a thoughtful piece of creative work? What would happen if we tightened the screws and made it days and weeks? Why do some people need years to summon up the courage to tell someone they love them?

Flipping it - when does quality begin to suffer with not enough time? Coming up with a decent creative solution shouldn't be like keeping battery hens and expecting a golden egg every time.

I'd think that this would vary depending on who you asked, like the Tom Waits song of the same name. Account handlers would always like more time. They are those who are often placed in battery hen situations, and it's nice when you have a select few who can rise above it and see the blue skies. I think the reverse happens to planners, in truth. We don't often have particularly concrete deadlines for our work (save pitches and big bits of client scheduling).

And, as the Fast Strategy conferences touched upon, there may be some merit in speeding up the whole planning process now and then. You can have too long to think about something. I bring this up because, well, PR planning has a lot less time than Advertising. You get a month to pitch? We get two weeks. When faced with this sort of thing, it's easy to understand why there's a historical divide between the two disciplines.

Personally, i've always been an advocate of it taking as long as it takes. Yes, I know that sounds incredibly woolly, but to assume that you can come up with anything more than a semi-decent strategy in a day is fallacious. I think the bosses i've ever worked for have understood this - you can come up with a piece of thinking on Sunday that's infinitely better than a week's worth of work when you're obviously trying to think about it.

Strategic thinking's not a linear process, and any job which is actively engaged with the creative process should recognise this. It's not a simple matter of hot housing ideas or thinking. It's about doing stuff to take your mind of it, often. Cwoffee is an extension of this, or even something like my banal twitter account. The aim of both is almost to take my mind off the day job, so I can allow my unconscious mind to chug along to a more interesting solution.

It's also why it's so heartening to realise that most marketeers are beginning to reject the notion of a straightforward purchase funnel. Real life isn't like this, so why the hell should a 'buying process' really exist? It's comforting, but it's damned wrong. It's why the idea of lining up or organising your organisation like a client troubles me; we're The Agency. We are the people who should surprise, shock or delight their clients. Not mirror them. If clients can mildly ape what we can with some talented staff writers and Mac-ites, then proper lateral thinking is the best weapon we have. To foster that, we need to not be tied to being a little sub-client doing factory which you find in many of the agency client relationships around the world.

And when this comes to media, as discussed before, it really puts a lot of the big buying shops under the microscope. Why would you bulk buy media packages? Why wouldn't you be more reactive and creative? To buy even a series of TV spots around a certain type of programming ever more looks like you're spunking money up the wall. Find out where people are inspired and reactively buy. This jars horrendously with the big meeja agency shop's principle of having largely junior staff to fill in spreadsheets and bulk buy, with a smattering of senior staff overseeing the process. Why wouldn't you entrust where the message goes to those who come up with the creative messaging, and actually have RESEARCHED the audience, rather than some limp and out of date dataset which tells you nothing more than what people who like filling in research said, at best, six months ago?

With all of that said, I don't think being thoughtful and being fast are as oil and water as many seem to think they are. To have a set of base principles which inform upon action, which are flexible enough to allow new discoveries to change things (in much the same way Nokia changed its focus from engineering to mobiles many moons ago) seems to be the way to go. To rely on a silo to ensure business success has never seemed so inapt.

Of PR, 'The Sell', and Advertising...

2010-04-25T12:41:00.005Z

Hello gang. I've been curiously quiet on this blog for a little while. I'd like to claim that was because of a lack of time, but in truth, I've been thinking about what to say next.

And, in truth, one topic kept bobbing up. I wanted to write about what i've noticed the differences are between Advertising and PR, as it's almost been four months in the new gig, which is pretty astonishing. Time's moving quickly.

There is no such thing as a perfect form of communication. We flutter and stutter on the phone, we misplace commas when we write, and get coy face to face. My background's that of someone who's spent his whole life in and around the Advertising industry, and to suddenly have that change in the last four months has been a very strange (but very nice) change.

Some thoughts, then:

1) Generalists vs Specialists

Next to Advertising account handlers, PR people do a far, far, FAR greater number of things. There are no creatives here, remember, so they have to be the ones selling in their own ideas to journalists or clients, making sure everything's on time, on budget and to the required level of creativity that the client expects.

And, they have to attend the events which're put on, which may not sound like a hardship, but you just try maintaining a sense of optimism when you not only have to talk to a client all day, but have to socialise with them in the evenings. The range of skills they are expected to pull off is quite remarkable.

There are obvious similarities in some of the roles, and I might venture that the structures are such that there's a need for different labels at times. I mean, in Advertising (rightly or wrongly), I tend to associate Account Directors with not necessarily being uber-creative, but having a strategic and business mind. In PR, there are aspects of all of these within each AD - though one side is always stronger, because, let's face it, as human beings, we're always better at one thing or the other.

Now, there's a need for the debate about the kind of skills a 21st century communications professional has to have. I value specialists, and always will - but the nature of the way PR bills (by the hour and less by the product in the same way an Advertising agency does) means there has to be generalism, by and large. How do you integrate the two, and stop one seeing the other as meaningless fluff that complicates the job? That's something forward thinking agencies of both discipline will have to wrestle with going forward. One thing's for certain - it has to be more than *just* a service in order to ensure strategic and creative relevance.

2) The more things change the more they stay the same

To any ad or communications wannabe who's chanced across this blog, and is wondering whether to go into Advertising or PR, I would honestly say it doesn't matter. The world may be changing at a ferocious pace, but there's no 'right' way into the two businesseses.

You still need to have a sense about how your clients are going to react to a new idea, and how receptive they'll be to some of the tough conversations you're inevitably going to have with them about budgets/timings/approaches/who they talk to.

The one thing which is absolutely paramount for both disciplines (and indeed, the marketplace in general) is a sense of optimism, tempered by a realistic sense of what's possible. If you don't have a sense of 'making things better', you absolutely, positively shouldn't consider either a viable career.

I'm not talking about being blindly optimistic that things will get better (because that's just naivety in another form), but being able to deal with rejection. You have to be empathetic about why a client has said no to your latest 'game-changing' idea, and why they doubt some of your attempted positioning statements.

There's also never been more of a need for an agency to act, not just as a service, but as a partner. Being a partner means you need a set of account handling antenna to know when things are about to be ballsed up, and when to talk honestly about the direction you think things going, and how to fix them. Both disciplines can be very good or very bad at that depending on the client relationship - but it's something which absolutely has to happen regardless of your background.

3) Replicating client models isn't right (whatever the industry)

Next to Saatchi & Saatchi, where I work now has been the biggest agency I've ever worked in. It has many different departments and moving parts. I still don't know half the names of people in the building.

It's been an interesting time for me, moving into a world where planning isn't automatically thought of, as it's such a new thing. It's not been around in PR since the 1960s like account planning, so there's an element of explaining just how and why you can be useful.

Clients haven't met PR planners before, and we need to explain how and why we can fit in. I think it's bloody helpful to be parachuted into different situations; not to mess with the status quo, but to prevent things becoming too comfortable - it's too easy for agency people (of both sides, I hasten to add) to get used to the day to day with client x and not challenge it. And this, after all, is why planning was invented; to offer a different point of view.

Not - in my opinion - to become as naturalised as it's become in certain spheres of advertising/marketing, where the planner is nothing more than a sense checker before the work leaves the building. Planning SHOULD be a bit bolshy and difficult, and being a shiny new resource is a good thing, because we can be a force for change. We're not here to match up with how client x sees the world, and I think that's always helpful.

4) Selling stuff remains a core skill

The wheels tend to come off any agency when they forget themselves, and their overall role; it's to sell ideas and thinking to clients. This may, or may not involve flogging product. Often (and excitingly) in PR, it's about shaping CSR strategy, or advising on just what a client is doing in country x and y and how to manage that.

There's a danger when any agency tries to client please too much, and presents too many ideas. Both sides can be guilty of this - the risk it runs is that even if a client loves them all, it looks like the agency hasn't been able to make its mind up. I understand why Richard harks back to a time when the agency only presented one route, rationalised it, and tried to sell it. The agency was a true partner then, and (though I think presenting one route is sometimes dangerous) had the courage of its convictions.

Both industries NEED salesmen/women to help push the business forward. Those people who can bring to life ideas through the force of their will, and borrow from James Webb Young, show a sense of 'salesmanship'. This doesn't mean death by PowerPoint, it means considering just what would move that client to a different place, and help them think laterally about a problem. Those people hold the keys to the kingdom, same as ever, regardless of discipline.

5) Idea generation has no silver bullet

The biggest change for me has been working in a place where there aren't 'creatives' in the sense there are with Advertising. My favourite part of the job within Advertising was spending time with the creatives and shooting the breeze.

To suddenly come somewhere where a lot of ideas are generated through brainstorming (with, as mentioned before, a lot of account handlers/client leads) is a bit strange. However, I will say that i've seen just as many good ideas generated quickly in PR as Advertising. It is interesting though, that there's a lot less navel gazing about the 'key message' as there is in Advertising - it's more about what the story will look like when it eventually comes out. It's a mindset shift, and a bit of a headfuck for me, as I've never worried or thought about this sort of thing.

BBH used to say 'how can we make this idea famous', and moving to this (arguably more PR centric) conversational approach is, I think, the right thing. Craftsmen will always be important, but thinking about the story and working backwards is a bloody useful approach when it comes to proposing the idea - and one both disciplines should always bear in mind when generating ideas.

So there we are. Five musings on the differences between Advertising and PR. Add your own. I'd love to hear 'em.

Decoding Decode.

2010-02-07T12:10:00.008Z

If only real life was a bit more like this. Photo via Tim_D (usual rules apply)

Hello there. Been a bit silent on the old blog front in the last month. Sorry about that. It's been rather work-tastic, which has been excellent, but keeping me from writing about of the stuff i've been up outside of work in the last few weeks.

The most interesting thing i've seen has easily been Decode. It's on at the V&A until April, it is only a fiver, and YOU NEED TO GO.

It is the kind of thing that Lauren would fall head over heels in love with, were she still in London educating ignorant people like me about the wonders of contemporary art. Me, I liked it because of all the interactivity and bright colours. But then, i'm a simple beast (albeit one who likes to do star jumps when an exhibition calls for it).

I'm not going to go into detail about the specifics of the exhibits (We Feel Fine was there, natch, as was the video/visualisation for a Radiohead song - House of Cards), but suffice to say, they were a glorious mixture of the fantastic, the obscure and the intriguing. And a few of them were broken, but it made me feel less intimidated and less like a luddite.

No, what i'm going to talk about is the booklet I snagged from there, which features interviews with a few of the leading exhibitors. It really opened my eyes about how certain segments of the art world are facing the same debates as the comms world - about physicality, of how information is managed and dealt with, and how to manage the blurring between logic and magic. (NB: I'm not claiming communication is art, or even getting into that debate right now...heh).

Daniel Rozin (the man behind the 'Weave Mirror' exhibit- check it out here) in particular had some fascinating things to say. When asked about his work, and how much it represented an evolution of a new practice, or whether it was a brand new discipline, he had this to say:

"I certainly think of my work as part of a continuum of artistic expression that is constantly evolving. The main issues of my work - interactivity, point of view, human perception, image creation, participation etc - are by no means new subjects of thought for art. Artists have been thinking about these issues for centuries. The tools that I currently use are tools of technology (and artists have always used new technologies for their art). So I feel like my tools are different, and with the new tools come new opportunities, but the sensibilities are the same."

And there was another good one. When he was asked about the nature of his work, and what it posed for museums and established collections, he said this (shortened slightly):

"On the artistic side of things, both museums and collectors need to build up a literact when it comes to digital art. It takes a certain amount of experience and knowledge to be able to identify the outstanding and significant pieces from the more ubiquitous pieces which are merely flashy technological demonstration."

Now, this is interesting. I can barely code, but like to think I have a reasonably firm grasp on just what to look for in a good piece of communication (digital or otherwise). I do think there are those who don't have much of a digital mindset - by that I mean a lack of an appreciation that pieces of communication are there to be useful, to be shared and to be inclusive.

The facility for identifying this in pieces of communication, or to be able to tell when a tool presents a new opportunity - those are the traits which I think should be valued above all else. Thinking about the space in which things are going to be consumed, how cross pollinated things will be, how contrary people are, how likely things are going to be played with and remixed - those are skills which should always be applied. Slapping a tired old demographic on something, or a hackneyed, banal cliche - that's the enemy of lateral thinking.

Decode taught me that - you had grandmothers doing a dance to change the colours, and small children acting INCREDIBLY seriously around pieces of interactive art (as if they owned it, and it was only performing for them)...it opened my eyes a bit.

And i'll leave it to Golan Levin (creator of the fabulously named 'Opto-Isolator II') to have the last word. He was asked what digital technologies allow you to do that design technologies don't:

"I can create behaviour".

Music of 2009...

2009-12-24T14:08:00.012Z

Most of the music I liked featured guitar in some way. Quelle surprise.

I don't know about you lot, but I fucking hate lists. Lists of banal things which you'd not previously thought about in the year. I really don't even like making lists at work - usually there's one or two things which are actually important to do, and the rest just sorts itself out.

Anyway. With that said, i'm going to turn on my heel and announce the albums which've been doing it for me in 2009. And, y'know, they'll be in reverse order, pop pickers. I've also made a Spotify playlist of some of the tracks I've liked a lot from these albums. Go 'ere to find it (along with some other tracks from the past year which haven't quite made the list).

10) The Leisure Society - The Sleeper

The Leisure Society are one of those bands I'd have never, ever listened to without a friend encouraging me. Garnering critical praise from the likes of Guy Garvey, Chris Martin and others who inch towards bed wetting music, I was a wee bit worried when a mate gave me his copy to listen to.

I needn't have been worried. This is brilliant stuff. A debut album, but you'd never ever know it. Upon hearing Mumford & Sons (who are also a good band, but not in the same class with their album, in my opinion), I had a little smile; if the Leisure Society had half of the commercial backing, they'd be all over the airwaves.

The music itself is sugary sweet, but in a good way, not in a 'I need to abuse several household pets' vein. Ahem. I've not heard better harmonies this year. A sweet folksy indie album. We've had a good year for them, but these guys have been amongst the best.

A note on the album - I bought the original version of the album, which isn't what's linked to - the new (and cheap!) version has a fucking amazing cover of Gary Numan's cars (a live version's also on Youtube). Check it out.

9) Decemberists - The Hazards Of Love

The Leisure Society don't have the monopoly on folksy indie music though. These guys probably have as much of a claim to it as anyone. I was introduced to them by an old girlfriend, and dismissed them as oh-so much folk meandering, designed for people who still loved their very first compass. This was back in 2005, with the release of Picaresque. I liked some of it, but most of it wasn't for me.

Now, I rather liked the album they did before this, The Crane Wife. About half of the songs were tip top, and all told rather bizarre stories about gun fights and mythical cranes (the bird, not the equipment, though that would be brilliant).

Come 2009, and they released The Hazards of Love. It's kind of an odd fusion between folk, prog and indie. The pretentious lyrics are still there, but somehow i've grown to like them. Colin (the lead singer) Meloy's voice is an acquired taste (someone from Oregon singing in what sounds like an affected mid 60's English folk singer), but I think it's gotten better, and sounds less affected. It helps he's singing duets or harmonising a lot of the time.

Anyway, it's easily the best folk/prog/concept album of the year. And, it's worth mentioning - they are fantastic live. I saw them live at the Coronet with Anjali (I believe Neil was in the crowd too, somewhere), and they were cracking. Check them out.

8) Them Crooked Vultures - Them Crooked Vultures

Now, this is probably a pretty easy selection. But, in my mind, it's not the best rock album of 2009. Early pretenders to the throne included Jack White's new side project, The Dead Weather. They were cracking at Glastonbury...but the album was slightly disappointing.

Now, Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and John-Paul Jones are the Crooked Vultures. I was desperate to listen to this album, ever since I listened to the 15 second leak during the summer. I'm pleased to report that the Amazon reviews on this album (and in various music mags) are spot on; it's a great record. That said, some tracks are obviously better than others - Elephant and Nobody Likes Me (and Neither do I) are the ones to listen to. It's an album to crank up and run with, or to play when everyone else's out of the house.

It's very derivative of Led Zep, but I don't care about that. I like Homme as a vocalist/lead guitarist, love JPJs's basslines and Grohl's powerhouse drumming.

I was gutted I couldn't see them live, but it'll hopefully happen next year. I hope.

7) A Place To Bury Strangers - Exploding Head

These guys came out of leftfield entirely. I heard reports about a band which were the loudest band in New York City. Bearing in mind the Yeah Yeah Yeahs come from there, it was a bold claim. Then someone on twitter (I forget who - probably Mr Kendrick) linked me to a track from their new album, Exploding Head, telling me to listen to it turned up. That track was Ego Death, and it was LOUD.

To describe their sound, it'd be like combining the Jesus & Mary Chain with shoe gazing bits and pieces. I really like that sound, even though I think I got a bit fed up with over-listening to Glasvegas last year.

It's easily the loudest album in the list, but it's really cracking. Heartily recommended, especially if you like your music loud and raw. I want to see them live in 2010.

6) Gomez - A New Tide

Gomez's debut album in 1998, Bring It On, is one of my favourite albums ever. In the top 5 debut albums ever, in my mind. Now, I love Gomez. Love them to bits. They've always, like the SFA, been able to do slightly odd things with music (though it always trended towards the bluesy side of things, given Ben Ottewell's voice) and make it sound fantastic.

I'd bought every Gomez album up to Split The Difference, which was just...ok. I thought they'd lost it in truth. Not enough long tracks (which the band are famed for), not enough melodies...it just sounded like a band devoid of ideas. So, I didn't buy the album after. And again, wasn't sure about buying another one...until a friend of mine told me their new album was a cracker. And he was right.

Tracks like 'Mix', 'Airstream Driver' and 'Little Pieces' would all sit very nicely on a Gomez best of. Pop, but not...all with enough quirks to keep me entertained. If you don't know Gomez at all, this is actually quite a good introduction. Then buy Bring It On.

5) Joe Gideon & The Shark - Harum Scarum

I first heard these guys live in the basement of a pub in 2008. There was something captivating about a tall, swaying preacherman whose bluesy voice barked tunes over a jangling electric guitar, whilst the drummer and ex-model (his sister) was in command of the sticks. A bit White Stripesy in lineup, but they sounded nothing like them. Actually, I was reminded of Nick Cave tracks (always a good thing) like John Finn's wife or even earlier. A lot of storytelling, which always makes me happy.

So when they released Harum Scarum in 2009, I was dead chuffed. 'Johan Was a Painter & An Arsonist' was better on record, 'Kathy Ray' finally made sense, and 'Civilization' was just as bonkers as I remembered it.

They're starting to get a little bit more mainstream attention these days, but I for one think they wholly deserve it. Have a listen. It won't be to everyone's taste, but if you like bluesy storytelling (some of which is very peculiar), you'll love 'em.

4) Fanfarlo - Reservoir

Another band I saw a year or so earlier - Fanfarlo are an indie band who did the small venue circuit (rather like Florence & The Machine) in London for a year or so. Having heard a few of their tracks - including this one, which for some unknown reason, didn't make the final album - I was hooked. That they had a massive band with a lot of drums and a brass section made me very happy indeed.

So, when they decided to launch their album by effectively giving it away for a pound, I downloaded it and had a listen. By this time, Coldplay (urgh) had decided to give them a support slot with them, and they were beginning to be widely listened to. Tracks like 'Harold T.Wilkins', 'The Walls Are Coming Down' and 'Fire Escape' were absolute corkers.

The sound is...i'll be honest, quite like Arcade Fire. And yet, I didn't really understand what all the fuss was about with Arcade Fire. I really like some of their tracks, but they were a bit..glacial. There's much to admire, but little to enjoy. Whereas these guys are all about crafting really great indie pop songs, and it shows. Go and see them live - the last time I did, they came into the audience with a few instruments during the encore, and did an excellent version of Neutral Milk Hotel's 'In An Aeroplane Over The Sea'.

The album's well measured, has some excellent strings...if I had to criticise, I'd have to say some of their best tracks weren't included on the album. Seek them out, they're on Youtube. Still, a cracking album.

3) The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Pains of Being Pure At Heart

I have a friend called Ben, who writes some excellent music reviews here. Not a man to get overly enthusiastic about bands for no reason, he trumpeted a band called 'The Pains of Being Pure At Heart' as one of the best he'd heard all year.

And, having downloaded the album over the Summer, I had to agree, he was damn right. There's something about this album which is all about being young, loving the sunshine and just believing there's something vital about a band with guitars and a sense of euphoria which can only be understood when you listen to the tracks for the first time.

'Come Saturday', 'Contender'...they're all quality tracks. It's an album lovingly devoted to the three minute indie pop song. There've been criticisms online that they sound like C86, a band I don't know, but to hell with it - this is music at its most vital. And for the half an hour or so the album rattles through, I bet you'll agree. They are also cracking live - I saw them with a mate at the Scala this month, and was delighted they could pull it off.

2) Biffy Clyro - Only Revolutions

I've had a bit of a strange relationship with Biffy. Part of me, when I heard their first few albums, was determined (despite the obvious musicianship) to write them off as another My Chemical Romance, full of pretension and screaming. Yes, screaming. I didn't much like it then, and I don't really like it now.

Now, over the years they've been active (pretty much my University years onwards), I've softened towards them, culminating in seeing them live in Bristol in 2005. They'd just released Infinity Land, and I thought some of the tracks off that - most notably Glitter & Trauma and My Recovery Injection - were excellent.

An album released in 2007, Puzzle, divided fans. More obviously poppy than the earlier stuff, it won them a whole new legion of fans. I sort of ignored it, to be honest, partly because I was more interested in...uhh, moving to London at that point.

So come to 2009. A mate invites me along to see Biffy at Brixton. I thought i'd better check out their new album, 'Only Revolutions'. And bugger me if it isn't the best thing they've released. Obviously poppier than the early recordings, it retains the musical schizophrenia and melodies of the earlier stuff with more grown up (strings! on a Biffy album!) elements. I then buy Puzzle, and understand the shift. The last album was quite a lot poppier, and more of a straight rock album. This is a move back towards the older stuff, but not losing the more refined elements.

Josh Homme, I'm told, was involved with 'Bubbles', and it shows. Tracks like 'The Captain', and 'Golden Rule' are proper slices of rock though. Here's hoping they've influenced him too. And yes, they are quality live; you'll be amazed so much sound can come from three Scotsmen.

1) Idlewild - Post Electric Blues

Idlewild's 'The Remote Part' is probably my album of the decade. It had everything; hard rock, soft acoustic numbers, and brilliantly clever lyrics. And, i'll be honest, I love all of their albums. From the punky start of the Captain EP through to today, they've evolved as i've grown up, which is cracking.

The album before this, 'Make Another World' was a return to the slightly louder Idlewild and had more obvious riffs than the folkier stuff. Roddy Woomble, the band's front man, had begun to pursue solo projects, which were EXTREMELY folk orientated (but still quality albums). I think it was to try and keep the projects separate.

So when the band decided they'd release their latest album, 'Post Electric Blues' by themselves first of all (before the label release), I decided to order a copy. And it really didn't disappoint me. It took elements from Roddy's latest solo project, 'Before the Ruin' (most notably, the backing vocals of Ms Heidi Talbot, who made my favourite track from 2008; the studio track's here) and mix it with the more guitar based sound from the prior album.

And the result's, in my opinion, the album of the year. Tracks like 'City Hall', 'Younger Than America', 'Dreams Of Nothing' and 'To Be Forgotten' are all utterly brilliant. And, naturally, when I saw them in Camden in November, they knocked it out of the park, with a nice mixture of tracks from their whole career. Quality stuff.

Also Recommended:

The Wave Machines self titled debut album is very promising; if one half of the album was like the first four and final track, it'd be top 5 album for sure. Check out 'Punk Spirit' and 'Dead Houses'. Kasabian suffer from their perennial problem - they only make half an album. While that half an album is probably the best thing they've ever done, it's still not worthy of all of the hype. They are quality live though, if you can get by most of their frankly nuts fans. Bat For Lashes' album 'Two Suns' is worthy of a listen, especially if you turn off half way through. It's great going to bed music (and I mean that in the nicest way), but it's not coherent, though I understand that was kind of the intention.

The XX's debut is sort of worthy of its plaudits. They do sound like no-one else, and it's a great sound. The problem? Every song sounds very, very similar. If you can put up with that, then it's an album you should own. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs album 'It's Blitz' is their best yet. It took me a while to get into (being such a fan of their earlier stuff), but 'Zero' is one of the songs of the year, definitely.

The Raveonettes' new album 'In and Out of Control' is an absolute corker, and only isn't in the top 10 because i've only very recently discovered them. Give it another week, and i'd probably have put it in. The Golden Silvers were brilliant live, and I love a couple of their tracks, but the rest of the album is damned patchy. 2009 was also notable, because it was the year I finally saw the point of the Maccabees when I saw them at Glasto. Their new album is a good 'un. I also was introduced to Andrew Bird, and liked him a lot (especially live), but I don't like all of his album, so it's in the top 20, but not the top 10.

Finally, the SFAs. Their album 'Dark Days/Light Years' deserves plaudits. Like most SFA stuff though, I tend to lose interest halfway through; the songs meander a bit too much. I think it's the best album they've released in years, but 3 or 4 tunes stop it from denting the top 10.

Live:

The best live gig was probably Neil Young at Glastonbury. I was instantly converted, and now own a lot of his stuff. The second best was Drever, Woomble, McCusker and Talbot all performing folksy stuff in the Union Chapel in Islington - 'Cathedrals' is my most played track on Last.Fm as a result, and I discovered the joys of Kris Drever. I love the venue too.

Fanfarlo at the ICA were great, along with Biffy Clyro at Brixton, Idlewild at Camden, Massive Attack were good at Brixton (I can't wait for the new album), Pains of Being Pure At Heart were cracking at the Scala, Red Snapper were quality at Glastonbury, Blur were good at Glastonbury, Andrew Bird was very very good at Shepherd's Bush Empire, and the Decemberists at the Coronet were cracking too. I also was finally able to see the Secret Machines at the Carling Academy in Islington, and they didn't disappoint; the drummer has the biggest kick drum i've ever seen.

Finally, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds were good at Glasto. I don't know how any band could've followed that. They're consistently the best live band i've ever seen. See the full line up, and witness the genius of Martyn P Casey, Warren Ellis and Nick Cave himself.

Here's hoping 2010 is a good year for music. I enjoyed 2009. You can hear my favourite tracks from 2009 here and here.

What's Too Slow?

2009-12-20T15:18:00.001Z

Yes. This IS too slow. Picture via Al_HikesAZ.

Hello there. I've been a wee bit quiet over the last month and a bit. Sorry about that. Have had some fairly major things to sort out. Moving into a new flat, and oh, getting a new job.

One which makes the title of this blog (already a bit of a lie) seem like a complete nonsense. I'm just about to begin working in PR as a planner, for these guys. I'm not changing my blog's title though. I'll always be WAM. As much for the 1950's style ad man dress as anything else.

And I wanted to write a little bit about why i'm excited to be starting my new gig, and why I think it's interesting from a planning point of view.

First and foremost, it is going to be interesting, seeing the difference between advertising and PR. When I began my career, I was told the best planners were still in ATL agencies, and (based on who i've met since I was told that, think it's right) that PR shops 'didn't understand brands'. That last part was spurious nonsense. The arrogant assumption that a discipline can have an absolute handle on a brand is just madness. If a brand is something that people associate with their own experiences and the experiences of other people, then I can't see how one place can have a monopoly on the thinking. To think anything else is to be unhealthily obsessed with triangles made in PowerPoint.

What really prompted thinking about PR as a discipline was something simple, really. I was thinking about speed. Even the most successful piece of advertising, that nods to/creates culture (at its best) takes a awfully long time to come to market.

Now, I don't necessarily believe that 'Fast Strategy' is the answer. Quality thinking can happen quickly, but the best solutions can't be rushed. But nor do I believe the 'one true insight' thought - that a clever bit of thinking will remain true forever, or that advertising's ability to capture the zeitgeist (or create it) will be able to be bottled for three/six months whilst the campaign is delivered.

In fact, I think it's damned dangerous to think in campaigns. Look at the recent Eurostar furore. All the branding in the world, no matter how APG award winning, won't stop the brand taking a knock in a lot of people's eyes. And while I think 'social media' is a nonsensical term, and that the need for specialist agencies to do it is bloody lazy, I do think crisis management within the clientside and agency side is very important.

But what's perhaps overlooked is the month or three after this. Could a creative solution play on this? I'm not talking about pile it high and sell it cheap 'community management', which social media agencies claim to do - I'm talking about a genuinely thoughtful piece of lateral thinking which acknowledges the crowd, and what's happened in the news. For example, with RATM getting Christmas number 1 - if their record company was wise, it'd produce something a little bit more meaningful than cheaper prices on all of their albums.

Various agencies where I worked would unfairly deride this as 'tactical' or 'promotional' advertising. But it's not, not really. It arguably builds the brand more than those strategies which are incubated for ages and take a long time to come to market. It's only throw away when it's not built upon, and is a one-off thing. But what's to stop a lot of 'tactical' activity being chained together and built upon? I still get drawn to the model of keeping 10% of the marketing budget back to be spent to capitalise on things like this.

It all obviously has some bearing on where research money gets spent both inside and outside of agencies. I'm really not interested in old quant data which purports to tell the future and doesn't seem to be quota-ed properly collected (TGI, i'm looking at you), and would love to try and dissuade clients from spending money on quant like this - which seem to be numbers for the sake of something to cling on to. Map qual/attitudinal data with sales. Don't use a damned crutch. That'll be a big job in my new role, I can already tell. Heh.

Regardless of how the shake down goes in the upcoming years, i'm looking forward to the new challenge and the new discipline. I'm not going to get drawn into a 'PR vs Advertising' debate. Both have their merits. I'll forever be grateful to the people i've worked for in adland - they've taught me a lot. I hope PR can do the same.

When is it right to experiment?

2009-11-09T10:47:00.002Z

Would you let this man do it? Picture via jbcurio, usual rules apply.

As the last post on anti-social brands alluded to, my position on what brands should and shouldn't do is very much rooted in their history.

Ignoring history is, I think, a problem of the communications industry; it gives what's gone before a short shrift, always trying the newest and most exciting thing, which it claims is going to be the new and revolutionary approach to branding/thinking/marketing/life. This is perhaps unsurprising; agencies are founded and built on their thoughts and approaches - to always be seen to take the lead, so they can 'add value'.

Though it's a bit GCSE Business Studies, what's the damage of doing this? What benefits do you lose when you discard previous thinking? Recently, there's been a raft of new campaigns that fly in the face of the past 10/20 years of advertising. If all you're trying to do with your brand is ensure it's able to be 'remixed', I think you ignore an important point, that brands are founded on points of view - either superior product, or a thought about the world/marketplace they operate in.

That's not to say i'd try to stop brands from innovating, or from agencies from pitching the latest in content, but I would try to stop the relentless need for change that seems to have blighted the marketplace in the last ten years or so. Maybe it's got something to do with the speed of technological change, or the length of time Marketing Directors have in their job, or that agencies have become increasingly like magpies - only interested in the next shiny thing.

In fact, it's a funny thing. In a time where planners are obsessed with the psychology of loss aversion (the fear of losing something, a feeling that's so strong, people go out of their way to avoid having things taken away) it's surprising that we don't apply this thinking to marketing or advertising. Why aren't we more worried about brands trying to do away with our expertise? Agencies like being seen as cutting edge when they suggest it. But why don't they do away with this need? Why don't they man up, and point out the economic danger of playing with the brand, both for the client and the agency.

I think this is also wrapped up in the 'wisdom of crowds' (which, i'd suggest, is used improperly a lot of the time). Often, the masses have a confused opinion when aggregrated - as Jeremy Bullmore highlights. With that in mind, what hope have they of creating a coherent campaign? I'd rather one or two informed people's strong opinion shining through the work, and that opinion disseminated to their respective agency/client sides, so there's a sense that the brand's position doesn't get confused.

Wanting to be the rainmaker in your agency or industry is all well and good, but it's not always the right thing to do. Knowing when experimentation should happen, or how conversation can enable experiments - that's the mark of a top quality comms person.

I'm thinking of brands like Walkers, who took a commonly held truism (that their consumers all would like a specialised version of their products), asked the masses, and then aggregated it themselves. They didn't just blindly turn the brand's point of view and communications over to consumers. That would have flown in the face of their years of building a brand and product that is too good to share.

And, most importantly, I don't think most people can be bothered with it. I'm in complete agreement with Tom Ewing here. Walkers worked because people wanted to get involved, and there was a commonly held thought that people could come up with good flavours.

Participating in conversations about your brand, whether they are about politics, economics or culture is surely a good thing. I worry that the magpie within a lot of comms folk leads to people to getting involved in situations which aren't right for their brand/s.

Anti Social Brands...

2009-10-07T13:51:00.005Z

Lolcat goodness, via msmail. Usual rules apply.

I'll be honest, I didn't go to IPASocial, despite the ferocious twittering around it. So i'm going to caveat these remarks with that.

I didn't go despite the fact a lot of my friends were speaking. While I like socialising with them, I can be sociable just as easily in the pub, as well as debating the finer points of online and offline behaviour (I'd also forgotten when it was on).

Plus, as Sam rightly pointed out, for an event about social behaviour, it was unusual with its differing charges for members and non members (which I usually don't mind, but it seemed to be against the principles of the evening; especially rule 2 - a social agenda, not a business agenda).

I'll be interested to see whether it goes, and what happens when a brand adopts some of those principles directly from the event; that'd make a case study i'd love to find out more about.

With all of that said, I think there's a point it might all be missing; that being 'social' isn't for every company or brand.

I don't give a stuff what most brands think about things - do I care that my bank thinks about the world differently, or cares that all of its customers are bright, shiny snowflakes? No. I don't. I care that it's able to manage my money, not rip me off, and not go bust any time soon. And, to be honest, i'm more interested in giving to a bank which cares about what I think it should be good at.

In fact, I somewhat admire this close minded stance for brands who offer an emotional or physical experience which is like no other brand's. Making a virtue of sticking to what you know, and what you're good at still creates loyalists.

And it can even live on 'social' networks. Look at Tower Bridge, or Henry Winter (the Telegraph's tip top football writer). People know about them, and them not being social or responding isn't really an issue.

I think getting too wedded to social brand behaviour is bloody dangerous, especially as 10% of twitter users generate most of the content. Yes, we're inherently social creatures, but to our friends and family. Not necessarily to brands.

Brands - I don't want to be your friend, I just want you to do your job, and do it better than your competition. In fact, I rather like it when that's all you focus on. Be useful to me and i'll like you. Don't get hung up on being social for the sake of it.

I hate to use the 'brands like people' thing here, but it's true to some extent; some brands are the life and soul of the party. Some are the socially awkward introverts who have other interests than being loquacious. And there's nothing wrong with that.

The Great Integration Myth...?

2009-09-19T19:58:00.005Z

How it should be?

You hear a lot of chat about the importance of being integrated. About how, when all the bits are working together, communication seems to be a lot better. Reading the IPA DataBank backs this up too - when there are 3 or 4 channels, client money tends to work an awful lot harder.

So really, using a myriad of channels isn't in question. However, what that doesn't tend to address is the overlap. It's tricky, because most agencies believe they can do just as well as the others at brand building, at social media (because, let's be honest, isn't all media social in some way?) and at generating 'buzz'.

And who should lead? The ad agency? The PR agency? The digital agency? Media? Should it be divvied up by the activity the client wants to perform, or should people work together and decide who gets the lion's share of the budget?

The problem comes when one agency is clearly the generator of the idea and strategy, and yet, executionally, won't get monetised for making it. What value an idea, and so on - it seems to me why a lot of bright brand consultancies don't last that long, because billing for an idea is like nailing jelly to a wall. It just won't stick.

It gets even more complicated when there's one holding company, with each agency having its own bottom line. And it got me thinking - why don't clients make it quite clear about what channel/s they want to use, and pay for an overall 'organising' agency - the agency which is going to provide the strategic glue to hold it together?

Without this payment, you just get a boatload of activities which either don't correspond, or don't work as hard as they should, as agencies are fighting for their own slice of the pie. And it tends to be woefully short termist. If it were me, I'd reserve 20/30% of the budget to adapt the thinking as the campaign goes on, to be spent refining after the work has been responded to by your audience. That part of the budget would be left as money for the strategic partner to assign to a channel as the campaign continues on; after six months, say.

This thought isn't perfect, I admit. But it's clear that the one stop shop is yet to wholly bear fruit (although there are examples out there - VCCP's integration of digital/search/PR and ATL work has worked well for several clients, it'd seem), and this 'come up with an idea' approach by some clients leads to a bunfight a lot of the time.

Thoughts, gang?

Why I Play Golf...

2009-08-16T17:35:00.005Z

The great man, Bobby Jones. Better than Tiger. Honest.

It's the evening of the final major of the year, the USPGA (the red headed stepchild of other majors), and i'm about to settle in and see whether Tiger can win another to close in on Mr Nicklaus.

And, I thought - amidst all the nonsense I wang on about brands, I thought I'd write a piece about just why I like the sport so much.

And God knows, I do. I've played ever since I was 14, when I watched my father get into it around the time of his 50th birthday. That was 11 years ago, and my interest has waxed and waned depending on how well I was playing. But I still return to it. And now, based in London, I feel the need to play more than ever. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.

I've always been moderately competent at sport (or cheerfully mediocre). I've got reasonable hand eye co-ordination, and can usually be relied upon to give someone a game of football, tennis or badminton. But as time goes on, I find all of them lacking a certain something when I play. I mean, I love to watch football in any form, along with tennis - some of the things the pros can do really fascinates me. To watch, football is still my favourite, just because when it's played with any degree of skill, there's a lot more artistry to it than any other sport. The likes of cricket and rugby can be exciting, but there's not the constancy of football.

Now, when it comes to playing, it's got to be golf. I still remember going down to the driving range with my first club (a slightly too small 7 iron, as it turned out), and thwacking balls. It was in no way as intuitive as tennis, where I was able to return without really thinking about it. When it came to golf, you really had to think about your grip, your setup and concentrate on making good contact. And so, with a mixture of tops, thins, slices and hooks and, now and then, missing the ball, I worked my way through 90 balls.

God, that was bloody frustrating. But it was also exhilarating; when I saw my little yellow ball (range balls are frequently scrubbier/yellower/not as good as normal course balls) flying to the 100 yard marker, I felt a sense of achievement I just didn't get outside of scoring a goal in football - and even then, it wasn't quite the same; who knew if you'd do anything like as well with your next swing?

And, looking around, you saw a mixture of ages, sexes and athletic abilities doing exactly the same thing. People who would quite obviously have been bloody fantastic at the usual sports were bloody AWFUL at golf. And this was interesting to me. A chance to be good at a sport which was as much played between the ears as anything else.

So I embarked on a series of lessons. Lessons which taught me how to hit the ball with some degree of competency, and finally prepared me to hit the course with my little half set.

And, as you'd expect, round a proper 18 hole course, with my first go - I worked up a cricket score. I remember most of the shots in that 110. And you'd have been forgiven for thinking I should have thought about giving up; but no - one of the truly wonderful things about golf is that no matter HOW badly you play, there's always one shot to give you hope for next time, to make you think you should be able to play like that all the time. For me, it was a 5 wood to within 10 foot on a par 3, which I parred. I was hooked.

Golf allowed me to meet up with various people, to play lots of different courses - way before advertising was amazed about 'communities', I was part of an online golf messageboard (yes, sad bastard, I know), and met some of the guys and played with them.

As I got better, I became more competitive, but it wasn't with a person. It was me versus the course. Golf is the only sport where one moment can entirely unravel your day; where a duff iron shot can cost you nine shots on a Par 4, where your carefully planned round can fall apart.

And, of course, my patience with it came and went. I have quit, vowing never to play again, several times. I swear, I mentally beat myself up. But I keep coming back. Why?

Well, it's not just the one perfect shot. When i'm out on a golf course, I feel more at peace than anywhere else. I love the countryside, and walking around, soaking up the beautiful scenery whilst playing with some degree of skill, and just talking to my playing partners. More often than not, it's my father, and we swear and moan our way round, as well as chatting about how well things have gone.

Crucially, I think I love it because of the imagination involved. Every shot is completely different. The skills required to hit a 7 iron off a good lie are completely different to hitting a low, hooking chip and run from behind a tree. You have to be able to think and plot your way round. What's the wind doing? How does the lie look? What would make the most sense - should you play out sideways or go for it?

It's why so many of the top players have such complex pre-shot routines. You have to be able to imagine these things coming off, in a way you really don't for tennis or badminton, or rugby and football - it's too quick. Whereas in golf, you have time to assess your lie, to think about all the things that could go wrong in your swing (and believe me, there are a lot), and be put off by things around you.

I also (and this is the middle class Englishman in me) love the etiquette inherent in the game. There's so much respect. You don't stand in your opponent's line of sight, you rake bunkers, you replace your divots/holes in the ground after you've played. You praise good shots. You don't make noise when other people are playing. You attend the flag/pull it out for your playing partners. You show respect for the course and for others. No other sport has such levels of respect, and I'll include cricket in this. It's not so much a part of the fabric of the game, right through to the highest level. In no other sport can you call a penalty on yourself, and the pros do.

Then there's the 19th hole (or pub, to the uninitiated), where your round is endlessly replayed and talked about. Which will, I'll be honest, bore any non golfers - along with watching golf on tv - which, if you've never played, is about as enjoyable as watching grass grow.

Yes, there's a lot wrong with the sport - the sexism at certain clubs, the exorbitant price of playing, the slightly over the top dress code (though any sport which insists on a collared shirt being worn is frankly doing the world a favour - no-one wants to see 40+ year old men in football shirts) and the snobbishness. But that's getting better, in my experience.

The sheer pleasure of walking 18 holes, of all the little dramas that come and go in the course of one hole (never mind 18), the camaraderie, the continual thought process of each shot, and the beauty of wandering around beautiful countryside is why I play.

Anyway. I'll get back to seeing if Tiger can hold off Paddy. Let's see.

Responsibility & Job Titles..

2009-08-15T10:36:00.006Z

Ah...it's all clear. Via T.Young, usual rules apply.

In the hubbub of a summery Friday, two seemingly unconnected things happened. One was this post from Ben, which sparked a lot of anonymous anti-planner chat in the comments. Which is fine. I despair at some of the planning, and some of the briefs i've seen(not mine, obviously - they're always excellent...*cough*) in the time i've been a planner. Some of the worst are those which lift too directly from the client brief, and don't have any hint of a lateral thought, or any kind of springboard. But I digress.

The second was something which happened at my work. I don't tend to write about work, partly because it's pretty standard stuff if you've worked in an ad agency before - making ads/not enough Don Draper esque antics - and partly because detailing the inner workings of an agency often makes said agency look a bit farcical (unless you're W&K, whose blog is excellent). Anyway. We have a brief in the agency which involves writing an awful lot of football orientated headlines. The sort of brief which is a bit like the Economist, in that anyone with a vague knowledge of the topic could write lines for.

And that's what we did. We opened it up, whilst assigning a team to work on it. And you know what? It all went swimmingly. The creative team in question didn't mind us opening it up to other people, and we had a cracking collection of lines to go back with. What was telling was that they were prepared to admit they didn't know it all about the subject, and didn't get defensive when yours truly, a dastardly planner critiqued stuff. It helps that my English degree background (and slightly obsessive football fan nature) means I can have a reasonable stab at what'd work and what wouldn't in this case. I'm not saying it'd work all the time, but in this case, it was the best solution when we didn't have a creative director to hand, and an impending deadline.

And yet, I'm sure a lot of folks reading this have worked in places where people get needlessly defensive if their job feels like it's being done by other people, or 'assisted'. The sort of jobsworthiness that leads to planners getting pissed off if account handlers come up with a better proposition than them, or creatives being able to present ideas better than the account team.

There are many things I can't do. I can't really code HTML at all, create CSS, draw, present without going umm or swearing to break the tension, use photoshop (but i'd like to learn) or write blog posts without using too many ellipses. But there's a host of stuff I'd like to think i'm not bad at - and for this to be shelved because of my job title is frankly, fucking ludicrous.

I mean, why would you want to adhere so religiously to your job title? I may not be the world's best presenter, but for me to put this down to me being a slightly bumbling planner and not attempt to learn how to do it better is a nonsense. To me, it just makes you close your mind, and, in my opinion, ultimately stops you from getting better at your job.

Outside influences are hugely, hugely important to how you think about things. They shouldn't take over - obviously, a well trained copywriter is a much, much better judge of creative work than yours truly - but when your other talents are allowed to come to light now and then, it allows you another perspective, and that surely helps. Think about your favourite musicians, and how they are influenced by other artists/groups. They don't say they haven't had influences, do they?

I think those guys who want to close their minds should watch this video from Google, specifically the piece about Hippos in organisations and how they damage product development and innovation. (NB: A hippo is the highest paid person's opinion, able to kill ideas quickly):

Some of the best people I know are multi-talented ad folk, who've been creatives, planners and account handlers when required. Strategy isn't a department. (Yes, I know that's hugely glib, but it's very true).

Whingers who just want to have their own corner in their agency somewhere, who will take their ball in and not let anyone play with it aren't long for this business. And that can't happen too quickly.

We ALL work in PR.

2009-07-27T09:32:00.001Z

Looks like a flume, but isn't. Guess. Photo via Whatsername?

It's a little bit of a black hole, isn't it? This being on the internet malarky, creating a digital footprint with every tweet. God knows where it all goes.

I was a touch worried to find out (don't worry, I haven't been googling myself that much...honest) from Priyanka that if you type in my name into google, it begins to auto complete. Fuck me. I'm one of them proper internet people (or tremendous nerds - in fact, almost certainly the latter).

Something, in truth, I never really thought about when I first got into blogging, or writing nonsense on the internet. I wrote to amuse myself. And it got me to thinking. Has this sort of attitude changed?

With the tremendous takeup of twitter by celebrities, do people now primarily use the web as a source of fame, rather than writing to express their opinion? And if so, at what cost? Has 'honesty' been bastardised?

I've always been acutely aware of just what I write online. I don't write anything that I wouldn't say in real life (yes, even taking the piss out of social media, or ranting about how badly put together most organisations seem to be). And I wonder, as people grow up with the technology to say whatever they want, whenever they want to - whether it'll begin to have more negative aspects.

Kids who've never thought about censorship will continue to be positively encouraged to tell brands what they think. With this power, do you honestly think it'll make things better in real life? I don't. I think it'll lead to a lot of people who speak first and ask questions later.

Surely, some of the benefits of being online - being able to enforce change, to speak your mind and improve things - will persist. But I do worry about the other side of things. Is it a job for parents? Part of me shudders at that; no-one had to teach me how to 'be' online. But then, I didn't get online properly until I was about 14 or so, I didn't blog until I was 21.

I'm not suggesting anything so drastic as a code of conduct. That seems like bollocks to me, tremendous overkill.

But, as the title of the post aludes, we are all in PR. All of us have a measure of responsibility of ensuring our online image corresponds to the real thing. I'm not suggesting naming your kids some unique name to ensure you can get the URL (God, that'd be cringey, wouldn't it?), but taking care when you're online is undoubtedly a Very Good Thing.

And this includes those older folk in the communications business. I get hacked off when I get told how to think about twitter by a supposed communications 'guru' who has 34 tweets to his name. Or worse, one with 20,000 followers, who hires people to tweet for him (which he does constantly) - that's not communications, that's the equivalent to pushing 5 yellow pages through the internet's post box daily.

Maybe it comes down to some form of web manners. Which shouldn't mean a stuffy, fastidious code - but more behaviour centred around basic politeness or thoughtfulness.

And to even THINK about this sort of thing boggles my mind. Alongside people needing media training (which is one of the ultimate examples of money for old rope), it's staggering to think people don't interact with media as an everyday thing.

I'm sure the passive massive are out there, but i'm sure their number is dwindling, what with ever increasing opportunities to interact - either to post product reviews or participate in their interests.

And, to me, it's somewhat comforting to know the individuals, not the organisations behind certain things. I like knowing who i'm dealing with, not some faceless agency or business. I can have a relationship with a person. I'm not quite so sure I'd ever value a PR or ad bod's paid opinion in the same way.

In short, it seems honesty's a bit of a two way street online. I'm interested in how it helps (or hurts) people. Especially those who have always had the tools to express it.

Funny old thing, nostalgia...

2009-07-06T17:29:00.000Z

What a cheeky chappy. Not as good a frontman as Liam, but still.

Like a lot of people, last weekend, I was at Glastonbury. Yes, I'm sure you're sick to the back teeth of hearing about it. Hell, I am, and I was there.

There's a point to this post, rather than shamelessly sticking it to those who weren't there. Chiefly, this; it was the first time in my life that a band (that I can actually remember, and know most of their music) that formed a major part of a musical movement, were reformed. I remember both incarnations.

It's not like the Smashing Pumpkins reforming. In truth, I was too young to properly remember the early Pumpkins - i'd have been about 6 when they first started making music.

No, Blur reforming and headlining on the Sunday was an odd experience for me. I was always more of an Oasis fan (they have two cracking albums, whereas, in my eyes, Blur have none, though they are a great singles band), and in all honesty, was keen to see Blur, but just as excited to have seen the Dead Weather earlier in the weekend, as well as Neil Young (who was the unquestioned highlight of the weekend for me).

And, looking back as the week went on, I failed to understand just what it was that led to such a mass outpouring of nostalgia for Blur. I mean, they've only not been recording for 6 years. Add to that Damon Albarn's faux emotion at Glastonbury; I thought it smacked of a cash in.

I could fully understand the Neil Young fans cheering wildly when he played stuff from Harvest. I mean, imagine finally seeing your hero at Glasto (he'd never played there in his 40+ year career) playing songs from his most successful album. Absolutely brilliant.

But then, I thought about it some more. Do I think that because I wasn't around then? Do my incredibly rose-tinted notions about the 60's and 70's entirely colour my beliefs about Neil Young?

I reckon they do. I lived through Britpop, and to me, Blur were a good band. But then, so were the Bluetones and Supergrass, and they weren't still headlining (though not having split up probably has a large part to do with it) Glastonbury. They also weren't seen to have begun the movement, as Blur were.

But my memories remain - Britpop, for me, doesn't really feature Blur. It's all about Oasis, about Definitely Maybe, about playing and watching football, about What's The Story and knowing all the words to do, about discovering the Stone Roses after, about knowing the day it died (somewhere between Urban Hymns and the Spice Girls, in truth). I dislike what's been seem to be a reframing of a musical movement that I was a part of. Hell, I base getting old on whether people I talk to can remember What's The Story. If they were born late 80s or early 90s, they probably don't, and fuck me, does that make me feel like i'm getting old.

Interestingly though (especially given the ranty nature of the previous post), when you look at the etymology of the word nostalgia, it comes from the combination of two Greek words (nostos a return home and algios pain). It's not necessarily a particularly positive thing.

Listening to Blur DID bring on feelings of nostalgia for me - for what i've just outlined. And (God, I KNEW a smattering of Godin-like tendencies would creep in...sorry) it also made me think about the heavy reliance a lot of brands have on nostalgia.

Why would you willingly induce nostalgia if it can provoke such sadness? I know sadness can sell, but God, it's not a long term position. Memories get fuzzy, worn and replaced (I'm sure in ten or twenty years time, I'll believe Blur were one of the better Britpop bands). So then can the point of certain brands, unless they keep providing me with new experiences to show how they fit into my life now.

Blur stopped being relevant to me after 1997. And so did a lot of brands.

Reason to believe?

2009-07-04T16:46:00.005Z

Tastes like piss, or so i'm told. Picture from PreciousKitty, usual rules apply.

I'm beginning to think that if any organisation gets to a certain size, it has to invent jobs for the boys. That is, those people who don't really have 'proper' jobs, save producing the rather lovely vintage above.

I'm talking about brewing up a healthy bottle or two of jargon. Needless, pointless, bollocks talk. It'd seem that those who work in communications have come down with a particularly large measure of it. Words and phrases which really mean nothing.

Let's look at that old favourite, 'Reason to believe', or RTB for short. RTB? I mean, come on. It's phrase you'd never even contemplate if you thought about it. It implies that there is one universal reason why people buy a particular product/service or brand. If it's a value brand, the RTB MUST be price. That's horseshit. Sometimes it's because people, shockingly, prefer the taste or convenience.

RTB is a terrible word as well, because it assumes oh so much. It's a lazy shorthand for people who can't be fucked to research things properly, or realise that circumstances and attitudes may have changed. It's a monolithic expression, which should be consigned to the 1950s.

Another wonderful term is 'social media'. I've already ranted about this earlier, so i'll leave it alone, if only to say one thing - all media is social. Yes, even press. It's such a wide ranging term as to be utterly useless.

Let's have a look at another term which needs to be consigned to the dustbin. This one's one of Sam and Eaon's least favourite terms. Yep, it's a 'viral'.

For something to be viral, it has to be spread around. To call something a viral and assume it's going to spread is hugely naive. Until it does, what you want, dear agency or client, is a short film that you hope people will watch. Mostly, these aren't pieces of branded film. Nope, they're things like Keyboard Cat (click the first video, it is a JOY).

Let's have one from Cluetrain (much as I agree with lots of it), shall we? Yes, the prosumer. Like any frankenword (an unholy combination between two words which really shouldn't ever be brought together), it deserves to beaten like the red headed stepchild it is.

Dissecting it (as the wikipedia article does), prosumer could have multiple meanings. However, the one most commonly arrived on by comms folk is to suggest that it's a proactive consumer, who can now self publish, and will change the world. Have these people done any groups with people (you know, those people who you sell, yes SELL stuff to) in the last six months? Or ever been in the pub and talked to their mates?

I'd bet most people who don't live in the comms industry bubble aren't fucked when it comes to self publishing, much less behave like prosumers. Your average punter may take matters into his or her own hands now and then, but that doesn't mean they can operate as a separate segment. People are motivated by their own ends, and more often than not, that has the square root of fuck all to do with publishing stuff on the internet.

Judge people by how they have behaved, but to assume people will become or are prosumers because of past behaviour is a fucking nonsense. Research only tells you what's gone before, after all - people are motivated by a variety of things; by their own situation, by the environment around them - and God knows, most are passive. It's why telly ads won't die off, or the printed word.

There's one underlying theme with all of these words. They are damned assumptive. Lazy shorthand for not putting the hours in. Using them means you can easily dismiss certain options, or suggest things because they ARE the RTB for our prosumers, who are engaged by social media, especially virals (!)

Nonsense. If you work in communications, and pride yourself on the ability to be able to speak directly to your audience (I don't have a problem with the term target audience, but that's another post), why the fuck would you use words like that? If you can't communicate internally or to your clients, what hope do you have of communicating to punters?

The next post will be less ranty. Promise. It may even be about Glastonbury, though i'm sure you're all bored of that by now.

Shapes and Organisation..

2009-06-07T15:56:00.000Z

That said, the tastiest shape is pear shaped. Via Kaptain Kobold. Usual rules apply.

Hello there.

I've been doing some more dangerous bits and pieces. Yep, i've been thinking again. Mind you, with recent events, I've had a little bit more time to.

One of the topics which keeps cropping up is organisational structure (yes, I go to really, really boring dinner parties in my spare time). Is it better to be a triangle? A circle? A rhombus? A diamond? After a while, it all seems to become as redundant as Terry Venables' famous Christmas tree formation.

You use what suits your organisation, surely? If the founders are still there, and still have a stake, it'll naturally be like a triangle, with a lot of capable wingmen who have to cede to the overall bosses.

However, if you're set up as a co-operative, or something a la John Lewis, you can try and be a circle. Everyone has a stake, and everyone needs to keep things turning. And this works great in the good times; when everyone sees what the end point is, and has a palpable sense of reward and duty.

And given that digital agencies seem to favour a far more freeform and flexible approach (usually practiced by smaller shops, in my limited experience), which leads to favour quicker, more shared meetings with genuine shared agendas to get stuff made, it should perhaps be no surprise that the wider communications industry isn't sure about just what shape'll help it embrace the next ten years.

I think more traditionally minded agencies can learn something from the likes of PR and Digital shops - two models which mean you simply can't have much waste.

PR, with its more legally minded ways of billing, is interesting. Project billings with allotted hours mean you really can't have much time spent dicking around. But it also leads to the assumption that those amount of hours will solve that particular problem - and hell, it can be solved in twenty minutes or a month, if it's a creative problem, and there needs to be some way of recognising this.

Digital, with the amount of technologists and developers involved, also needs very strict timelines and demands a lack of wasted time. There are more, shorter meetings. Not endless hours of umming and aahing over the problem, which can usually be defined quickly.

And traditional creative agencies, where there are lots of meetings which are devoted to strategy, contact reports, tissues and brainstormings, where the clarity of idea is paramount, and there's an unwritten assumption that the organisation should be agreed and then executed. There doesn't tend to be the flexibility to amend it as it goes. TV doesn't tend to lend itself to this.

And what now happens when these three organisations merge together, when you really can't afford to to try and fit in a bastard hybrid, nor have separate bottom lines? (It strikes me as madness, which leads to infighting and politics).

I think that it comes down to how you regard strategy and ideas. Is one fairly fixed, and the other flexible? Are they both? Should one dictate the other?

Personally, I don't believe either is static, nor one leads the other by the hand. Agencies need to get less precious about the 'right' strategy, and allow ideas to shape it as you go. In my experience, the most effective work is based on an original strategy that has the flexibility to be amended as you go.

I'm a fan of having a solid base; a base of web monitoring/real time search/qual research, which feeds into the amount of hours you bill, the amount of strategic and creative time. A certain level of this will be fixed into the overall fee. 'Digital' will be at the heart, though the definition will become increasingly unnecessary.

I'd like to see research feed a LOT more into how agencies bill; if the communications agency is going to be seen as the lead partner and an agent of change, then clients have to accept that they'll bill for different research, research which is more attitudinally focused.

How they react to this will surely have implications on what the agency's shape looks like - if they accept it, then project fees will lead to something like a chinese fingertrap; rigid with research, yet loose with how strategy and ideas are developed and fed in.

If they don't, the agency will have to make allowances, and develop their own research more generally across their client base, at a cost to them. Project by project fees will drive the agency, much like Digital and PR. The shape would be a bit more circular, and I can easily forsee a mixture of the two approaches, depending on client.

What do you think? This is very much a work in progress.

Less Haste, More Speed..

2009-05-17T18:04:00.000Z

Not me; I drive like a little old lady. Photo via Lazyousuf. Usual rules apply.

Hello.

I've been to rather a lot of talks in the last week or so, so I thought I should write about all three of them, and the overriding thought that's been left with me. It's about not dicking about with things and, rather, doing them speedily.

Speed has been on the mind of the planning community for a little while - most notably the 'Fast Strategy' conference last year which I went to. I think if I learned anything that day, it was that really good strategy can take a long time to get to, but given enough pressure and a (lack of) time, you can get to a good place. It's how pitches are won, and also - why so few clients have the confidence to go with a pitch strategy.

And, thoughts turned to how to sell quicker strategies. Not hasty, ill-formed strategies - the kind of which are hypothesis which haven't been tested, but instead - well founded thoughts which are arrived at quickly using client data, the t'terwebs and tested against current punters. Often, these come from outside the category.

So it was with some interest I wandered along to meet possibly the father (in my eyes) of Fast Strategy, Mr Adam Morgan. His book, Eating The Big Fish, has been a staple for planners in the last ten years or so.

And he spoke on Tuesday about how he was, frankly, a tad pissed off. A little bit cross about how folk (marketeers, planners, communications bods) misinterpreted his theory about challenger brands. Most people, he proposed, view challenger brands as a David vs Goliath story. You're always the little guy, picking on the big brand, or the big issue. And, frankly, he thought it was toss - there was far more depth to the theory than that.

There's probably not enough space for me to go into a massively detailed look at how he sliced it (13 times, which I, in all honesty, thought was stretching it a little far). I liked the idea of a brand being the people's champion (any excuse to use The Rock in a presentation is something we should all get behind) - to fight for a cause which the public believed in, though the danger is that it becomes a little po-faced and obvious going forward; I wouldn't see it as a long term strategy if the brand hadn't done in the beginning. I also thought the idea of a brand as a visionary was interesting - taking a position which is well above that of a category, and never returning to it. The brand is in the category because it believes it sees further than the rest. Could potentially become very arrogant, but it's still interesting. The next generation was another good one - working in a category you know has to change, and you're the first, trying to get it to realise that things have moved on.

There were ten more, but they were all variations on a theme. Essentially, be provocative, but pick just what it is you're going to be provocative about. What *really* interested me, which wasn't talked about, was how you arrive at that challenger position. How do you pick a fight in the first place? Which is the right one? Do people properly quantify it?

My theory behind all of this was a reasonably simple one. I think people like the theory of challenger brands because it's bloody quick (usually) to find what you want to fight against. What's tricky is not being hasty when you're refining it. What IS it about the company/belief/you're going against? Sure, you want to pick a fight, but have you really considered just why you want to challenge it?

Great strategy is born when the challenge is well nuanced, and shaped to be the right one. Getting there will take some degree of time, unless it's so overwhelmingly obvious everyone has decided to do it.

Anyway, the second talk I went to was another IPA sponsored one, but this time, was by the IPA Strategy Group, who had put on a talk about those cheeky 'game changers', who have flipped how we see comms. Or rather, as I took from it (again, broken record) - how to do innovative things quickly.

We had Dan Hon from Six to Start (the name of which I later discovered is from board games...funny) talk about the project the guys have done with Penguin, Tim Malbon from Made by Many talk about MBM's internal processes, and how successful they've been, and finally Giles Andrews from Zopa, who talked about how it came into being.

And again, the same old horse chestnut kept resonating. Be bloody rigorous with your thinking, but don't be precious about it - that way leads to rigid corporations and hasty, and ill-advised decisions. These companies are doing well because they've worked in a genuinely collaborative way - check out the slideshare presos from the first two.

I did stop and wonder just how hard it'd be to implement some of the processes at work. I wondered whether it'd only work with quite small companies; the more people you get, the more emphasis there is on haste, the more messages fail to get disseminated, and the processes begin to break down.

But then, thinking along those lines, what would happen if you set a limit on the number of permanent staff on board, and kept the processes the same, getting your freelance staff/exterior companies to work to it? I think it'd potentially be very compelling.

It ties in a little with the final talk I went to this week, 'What can Google see?'. In short, don't worry if you missed this. I hadn't read the book, but the talk was spoiled by the amount of people who turned up who were either conspiracy nuts, or didn't really know what Google had done in the last few years - what programs they'd developed.

What was interesting was the topic of the 'numerati', which was term used to describe all of the mathematicians, statisticians and computer scientists who have a access to the digital footprints we leave online. I wanted to know more about these people, rather than the pat explanation of what search terms people look at, and the idea of very basic market segmentation they can do, which was what the talk focused on.

Imagine, if you will, a flexible, but tight process (think Chinese Fingertrap agency), which is run by a combination of creative agency people, and the numerati. That'd be really interesting; staffing it partly with freelance people who buy into the principles of the agency, and full timers who have the ability to work flexibly yet tight when the need dictates. There'd have to be a cap on the amount of people who worked there, to ensure the agency kept its principles and the quality didn't slip.

This would go along with Tim's thought about the first, small strategy, which could be overruled in an environment where you have to rigorous and speedy.

Anyway...those were the three talks. Some randomness; let me know what you think.

Global Shouldn't Mean Good Enough...

2009-05-07T22:16:00.005Z

It's a cheeky globe. Look at it there.

Hello hello. Not written anything for a little while, but I thought I should.

Working for a very big network agency with quite a lot of worldwide business, I come across all sorts of brands every day, ones i've never heard of, and may never work on ever again, due to some of the obscure markets we work in.

This has some tremendous benefits - you get to work with and observe consumers of nationalities you don't know a great deal about, and deal with markets you really don't know anything about. So it's a great learning experience.

That said, it's also hugely daunting; who am I to say or judge what housewives in Russia will look for in a deodorant or a bleach? And you do begin to realise that no-one really knows much about certain markets and segments - it's amazing really, but there's a damn good reason why they're called emerging markets.

One thing that working here HAS taught me, having worked on the odd global campaign or two...is just how much harder it is to sell really good work globally. Sure, you can sell 'nice' or 'good enough' work. But that's not why I got into the business, and surely not what most people wanted to either; nor work on clients where all you do is adapt, adapt, adapt the work.

And it makes you appreciate things - like just how good an idea has to be to work across each market, and how very good the whole network has to be to get each networked agency (because, God knows, sometimes the biggest problem is making the decision about which agency does what) singing from the same hymn sheet.

No, I wanted to write this post to talk about how, because there is such a fight, and because there are so many more people the work has to be sold to (unlike nice, straightforward domestic work, which basically has a Marketing Director and his or her wishes) - 'good enough' is presented as the right way a lot of the time.

And i'm tired of 'global' being used as an excuse for the work being crap. So that difficult Portugese client won't buy the work? So craft something which'll appeal to him or her. Don't just sit back and let the final hurdle bugger all of the work. Frankly, i'm tired of lowest common denominator work selling.

I'm chuffed that thinking like 'When a baby is born, so is a mother', 'Dirt is good' and 'The world's local bank' survive. But these are too much in the minority. And if advertising's becoming more worldwide, there's never been more of a need to stop thinking of global as another swearword (next to 'client') and as a reason why the work didn't sell. The work didn't sell because the agency didn't do enough.

Attitude Not Audience...

2009-04-25T11:20:00.019Z

'Tank man' standing up for what he believed in.

I am in the midst of trying to gather information and write an APG paper for work I helped plan in the last year or so. We've got what I think is an interesting angle on the business problem, and how we tried to treat the audience, which is good. It's something which i've tried to do across all of my briefs and any business problem I have looked at in the last year or so.

So, I thought to help better flesh out what I mean, I might as well blog some of the general thinking in my mind before it's submitted. I'm sure a lot of it will seem as obvious to a lot of people, but I wanted to note it down.

After cocking a squint at JWT's Planning Begins at 40, a celebration/look to the future of the discipline (watch the videos, they're good), I was struck by just how many folk called for a fusion between old school data collection - quant, qual and all of the above - and new school, digitally led, adaptable, creatively and intuitively led thinking.

Rather like this word document on what's next for planning, provided by the APG (I think Russell wrote it, but I'm not sure, it's not attributed), it all seemed to call for planning to be more adaptive, to help clients not be so short termist and to not get stuck in the sheet music approach to planning and strategy that many practice - to tick boxes and make things fit at all costs.

And, I'd suggest there's still a problem between the more formulaic approaches of the old (which seem to lead certain clients easily to box ticking) and the new style (which still can't adequately be quantified, or obviously led back to ROI).

I have been told in the past to not get too focused on target audience, for that way leads to generic ads (ads about togetherness for main shopper mums, anyone?). However, what if we went one step further?

In a world where target audience definitions can't really be trusted, regardless of what segmentation data tells you - because things are moving too fast on and offline with the changeable economy, the digitisation of content and the exorable rise and rise of opinion being able to destroy brands and new product launches (witness Stephen Fry and the Blackberry debacle - I'm not sure i've met anyone who owns an iPhone, for example, who wasn't aware of this before they chose it), is it wise to rely on it in any way shape or form?

Yes, your client will tell you (or the media agency's crafted TGI, in my experience) that buyers are ABC1's who live in the South East, are University educated and are 'heavy users' of the internet. But then, next month Hitwise will tell you that your supposed technologically savvy audience are outstripped by a far older demographic than you thought, who upload more and interact more with the brand's channel.

So don't stop at the target audience. Build on it.

I'm suggesting we remove the target audience box, and replace it instead with attitude:

What attitude are we trying to convey?

It's NOT tone of voice, though that is important to the work. Witness APG papers like the Coke Side of Life from 2007 - which worked hard to work to discover an attitude, used research on and offline to establish where that attitude is shared, and targeted those people. It's a long term, targeted approach. Far better to use sniper bullets than tommy gun fire in this instance.

Interestingly, at the planning event, Jon Steel quoted an something that Stephen King said about "the end being a certain state of mind in the potential buyer". I'm suggesting we move straight to the state of mind - we tie ourselves to not just a point of view (which is static), but a attitude, which is fluid, and able to adapt and have a point of view about various news/economic/consumer responses.

I'm hypothesising, but what if, say, Blackberry's attitude was one of convenience - allying itself with those people who wanted the easiest access to email, and didn't want the inconvenience of a battery poor phone, nor the latest bells and whistles? Their PR strategy writes itself from this, and they could have batted off Stephen Fry's assertations - his attitude would never ever have allied with this.

I think it's capable of marrying old and new styles of planning. You have to undertake research to help discover who buys into this attitude, finding out your audience (which may change over time) - but you don't arrive at it, necessarily, from a static process of researching ads. You do hard yards with the consumer, segment, look at historic data and pay a lot more attention to discovering just what attitude the majority of consumers would like your brand to have. It should be the definitive approach to the communication, and work should flow from it. Circumstances may change, but attitudes don't easily.

Crucially, it's not a short termist approach; it doesn't just latch on to what's cool and trendy this week, month or year. I think prevailing brand attitudes are best arrived at through detailed ethanography, from the company itself or a combination of the two - this leads to a fluid, culture centric approach in both cases.

And you could perhaps use the 'attitude' approach when performing NPD - it lends itself to more purposeful thinking than just a straight segmentation, for who knows how they'll react to a new product and a new environment? Importantly, it can bear in mind the cultural mindset, but doesn't kow-tow to it in the same way just using a target audience might.

I'm aware this thinking could come across as a little woolly, but by using something like NPS, by factoring out things like price increases, and using prevailing attitudes that don't tend to change regardless of context, you'd have a way of quantifying just what the work's done. I like to use year on year market share as a first step to answering whether the activity has worked and qualifying its effectiveness.

Anyway, that was my random twaddle for the day. Let me know what you think.

Interests vs Professions..

2009-04-04T09:40:00.010Z

If I was around in the 70s...photo via angatuba-legionaire, usual rules apply.

I read a very interesting quote t'other day, and I may misquote hideously here - it was concerned with journalism, and went something like this:

"Journalists are going to have to get used to the idea that their professions have become interests".

And it reminded me of the conversation Richard and I once had about whether advertising was a profession or a trade. I was won round to his thinking that it was, in fact, a trade (for numerous reasons - have a gander at his post).

To be honest, thinking of yourself as working in a trade gets people to focus on selling stuff, and not to act like rambunctious, conceited advertising wankers (the world doesn't need any more thanks).

It also got me thinking about job satisfaction, and how lots of people I seem to know, some three years into their career (given that the first year is usually scrabbling to get in or making your mind up) seem to get along when they can monetise their interests, being careful not to make it become soulless - to do things so much for money that the joy comes out of it.

Would you become better at your job if you regarded your work as a collection of interests? It would certainly mean that planners had greater levels of empathy with people, and they'd certainly get on better career-wise.

I like to think of myself as having a professional attitude, rather than being a professional myself, who has had to learn specific, set down things - like the names of organs/what they do when studying medicine or case histories for law.

You'd have thought that acting like a professional, but viewing what you do as a series of professional 'interests' would have the best of both worlds - you'd take great care in seeing what you do to the bitter end, and turn up on time, and do all the good things that being involved with a profession has - and you wouldn't turn into some achingly twattish person who is a massive jobsworth and who cares about the wrong things.

And flip that - assume you are in a profession but it's not a collection of interests (or something that has any interest to you personally). You're dehumanised. You stop viewing your job as something which impacts on real people - regardless of what it is, and become some faceless automaton. You don't stick up for your colleagues because you want to shinny up the ladder, and you don't care who you bugger over on your way to the top.

Acting professionally means you care, and having a collection of interests - rather than just one, which could destroy your versatility/love of it all - means you like the links between things. Both useful career skills, never mind just for planning.

If the web has given us the tools to determine that history is written by the writers and not the winners now, and that there are many tools for determining the plots and subplots of us personally and professionally, why can't we be the sum of our interests, even at work? If nothing else, it'd get us all to think more laterally, and to not be petty, small minded people who are only defined by our jobs.

So nice one journalism, I think.

Twitter Presentation, Take 2..

2009-03-26T13:35:00.011Z

Look at the birdies!

Let's try this again. Below is a presentation which I tried to post earlier, to help educate the agency on twitter...here y'are:

An Introduction to Twitter

View more presentations from leftywill.

It may be useful. Let me know what you lot think of it...

Delayed NESTA Thoughts..

2009-03-22T11:55:00.004Z

Where the silliness went down. Via TravelEden, usual rules apply.

This is something of an apology. I went to see Mark, James and Johnnie for a morning at NESTA, and promised i'd write it up. This was a month and a half ago, and my half written notes have been sitting on my desktop, squinting at me with all of the intensity a word document can.

Annnnyway, here they are. Better late than never.

Mark Earls (writer of Herd, ex Ogilvy planning chief), Johnnie Moore (performance artist, creative trainer and facilitator) and James Cherkoff (ex PR man, management consultant, London’s modern marketer) providing a mini conference/lecture on influence.

Or at least, that’s what it was billed as. In reality, it was a really free form event, where we did a series of group exercises. Now, this might sound bloody terrifying, but don’t worry – I’m as much of a sceptic as the next man, and though I actually quite *like* talking in public, I’m not much of one for ‘performing’. Especially not when Sammy, Sarah, Amanda and lots of other people who i've forgotten about were there.

But given Johnnie’s excellent demonstrations, we were all able to get involved (even the more concerned amongst us), and learn about how different people approach tasks.

To give you a couple of examples – the first was a hierarchical, evolutionary chain, which (scarily for a bleary eyed Monday morning) involved some mental arithmetic, starting as an egg, evolving to a bird and finally a human. You could only interact with people on your level, and when you met, you had to both hold your hands up and add, really quickly. Those who got it right evolved, those who didn’t, devolved.

I loved just how people made their own rules up as they drew (it seemed to me that women in particular chose to evolve when that happened, which is interesting in itself).

What was also interesting was those people who held up the same number of fingers (or no fingers) in order to ‘win’, despite the fact there were no real parameters – it just goes to show you that people will always have that competitive spirit regardless of the situation.

For what it’s worth, I didn’t really follow the rules myself – deciding to have a count off with anyone who was around. This meant, coupled with my (decidedly ropey) mathematical ability, I climbed the ladder, but got busted down to egg status pretty quickly.

Another one of the amusing activities we were asked to do was to partner with someone of about the same height, then grab their elbows with our hands at the side, and to quote – ‘lift them off the ground’.

Now, apparently we were a very advanced group; people very quickly got the notion that you had to jump up and down, rather than wrestle them to the ground. A few clients and agencies were namechecked; apparently more than a few tried to fight each other. Heh.

There was one more exercise, where people were put in a line, and told to mimic the person behind them's action. It was frankly STAGGERING to see how much it changed by the end, and how only the very vivid action (in this case, an arse slap, which amused us all - very Carry On) got through unscathed. It led me to think about ad agencies and actions (which is possibly the closest i've ever come to channeling Seth Godin) and behaviours which we should present to the client.

Thanks to all of the guys for putting it on, and to NESTA. It was fascinating. I'd go to another event (but maybe I'd write up what I thought straight away).

Herdmeister Wants Your Briefs..

2009-03-19T11:23:00.002Z

Arty briefs. Via brittnybadger. Usual rules apply.

Hello there.

This is the blogging equivalent of a retweet, but hell, I think this is quite important.

It's do with Planning For Good - check the wiki out here.

Anyway, I'll let Mark take over now:

This is an urgent request to planning & strategy folk (responses needed by monday night)

Can you help us help the Ideas Foundation? [http://www.ideasfoundation.org.uk/]

It's a UK charity that is committed to championing creativity in young people

"We broker projects between industry and education. We spot & develop young people’s creativity.
We pilot creative education projects and champion transferable skills within the creative industries and beyond.

We provide effective work experience, internship and apprenticeship opportunities. We signpost further & higher education routes to creative employment and enterprise.
And having done all that, we encourage our creativity scholars to stay in touch and get involved"

So here's the shout out to Planning for Good types - do you have a social policy brief that you've written that these kids can do work from?

Maybe the client didn't buy it? Maybe the suits or the CD didn't like it? Or your boss? Or you?

So what are we after?

A brief to target a youth audience on a social policy area

It could be in areas such as smoking cessation, sexual health, knife or gun crime, drug or alchohol abuse, bullying, internet safety etc.

We'd just like your old briefs.

Or, if you really want to write a new one, please feel free to do so but just make sure you include the usual information (the problem defined, the audience, etc) and try to ground it in reality and evidence...

Thanks very much in advance on behalf of the Ideas Foundation - we promise to keep you in touch with what folk send in and what they do with them

Pls send your briefs to me at markearls [at] hotmail [dot] com by Monday night.

Adidas or Nike?

2009-03-15T09:42:00.006Z

I've never owned a pair. Lovely though. Via davesneakers. Usual rules apply.

Which side are you on?

Words to live by, via the Dropkick Murphys.

Nike v Adidas is kind of like this. Sure, there are pretenders. Your Reebok, K-Swiss, Converse or New Balance.

But none come close to the main rivalry. I've had friends who were so strongly Nike it hurt. I think for Seb, it'd be like i'd slapped his face if I told him Adidas were better. I think the same applies to Age.

Both of these guys are about my age (*coughs* older), with vaguely similar interests and within the same professional world. But I completely and utterly disagree with them as to who is the 'better' brand.

I love Adidas. Always have, and recently, it's turned into a bit of an obsession (my new ones, sniped off ebay are here). I love the professionalism, the styling, the sports heritage (they are strong supporters of football, tennis and golf, the three sports I most enjoy watching and playing).

Nike, for me, denotes basketball, running (no thanks) and a different culture all together. Those of you who have met me will realise i'm about as far from being 'street' (or 'urban' or whatever the kids call it) as it's possible to be - I even helped organise a tweed meetup last Friday.

And it's strange, no about of communication will really change how I think. I love the new Nike 5 a side work W&K have made:

Well done Doug and co (also, check out the Rooney nutmeg on youtube, it's genius). The work manages to capture just what I love about football, and about how it can be so social, yet so competitive, even for the bigger players. I love the old Parklife spots for Nike as well, and the 'Eric 1966' print work:

Despite these being wonderful spots, I still love Adidas more. I admire Nike, but I buy Adidas. I trust that the Germanic precision applied to my trainers will mean even someone of my limited talent will be able to kick a ball like Muller or Beckenbauer (or at least, give me a fighting chance). Plus Stevie G wears them, so it's good enough for me.

Adidas have just launched a new website too, which amalgamates all of their content in one place. I like the football spots, and the little interactive Liverpool bit I fooled around with. I think, in its way, it communicates WHY people like football, though I do wonder about uniting the originals content (which, like Nike's hip hop allegiances - features artists who love/have customised Adidas).

To be honest with you, when it comes to how i'd use the site - I don't care about the originals/hip hop bit. It's nice, but i'm more interested in the sport. I'm sure others will be, and Adidas do well when they use their 'straight' trainers and embed them in popular culture, though I'm sure Run DMC helped a lot. Heh.

Perhaps what i'm trying to say is that I view Adidas as professional, with a real history. Nike seems to me to have that for running, but not for football. Now, it got me thinking - what would cause me to switch to Nike? What would they have to do, or how could Adidas strengthen the bond?

I'm not a fully paid up believer in Gladwell esque Mavens, but I do think both brands could do a lot worse than using their trainer heritage (and 'something from nothing' mentality, if you check out their histories - do, it's worth a read) to help others realise their goals. Not just big sportstars, and not just 'fashionable' sportspeople or celebs (though those are naturally, important).

Again, though I think defining a brand in one word is largely bollocks, for me - if Adidas is all about professionalism, and Nike is all about perseverence, what does it mean? Well, if Adidas values professionals, why doesn't it do more in this area? I like the fact they sponsor Garcia and Goosen, two of the more expressive and thoughtful golfers on the circuit - and that the footballers they get into bed with tend to be the more Germanic, sparing variety. Could they not run initatives off their new site in some way?

You could see how it could apply for Nike as well, and something like Run London came closest to putting this perseverence into practice. Amateurs may never be pros, but they can damn well train and try like them. What happened after? Did they capture the stories of people north and south of the river? How has it changed their lives?

In short - I prefer Adidas to Nike, and like what both brands have recently communicated to me. But to both - deepen the relationship. I love 5-a-side, but i'm not sure i'd sign up for the Nike event (i'd get blown away), nor order a customised football shirt for Adidas, much as I had fun shooting at Pepe Reina.

How about you? Which side are you on? Why?

Red Instead of Brown Noses..

2009-03-12T19:29:00.004Z

I can do both faces. Via osde-info. Usual rules apply.

I don't usually big up my work, but we're going to be doing something a little bit silly for Red Nose Day tomorrow.

Go here and have a look from 10am. It will be silly, and you may even get to see me making a tit of myself (nothing different there then).

Clue: It involves balls and endurance keepy ups. I'll impress you all with my sporting prowess..

Smartphones and the INQ...

2009-03-08T10:05:00.006Z

The iNQ phone from 3. Via 3bilder. Usual rules apply.

Much like Amelia's launch of O2's Cocoon, 3 have decided to help launch their new phone with some thoughts from the general blogging public.

One of those people happened to be me, and i've been bloody lax at writing a review at it - real life has a nasty habit of getting in the way at times.

Anyway, here 'tis, with a few caveats:

1) I don't usually review stuff on this blog. I'm opinionated enough in real life to power several thousand zeppelins, and criticising/appraising extra stuff on the blog isn't usually what I like to do.

2) I am in the market for a smart phone - hence my reviewing of this little electronic fellow. Before this, I had thought about a Blackberry 8900, as I liked using the email/t'terweb on it. No iphone for me - emailing looks like a chore, despite the apps on it.

3) Obviously, I wasn't paid for this, and I have to return it.

Right then, onwards...

My usual phone is a Sony Ericsson K800i - a silver one with a good camera on it. It's replaced Nokia in my eyes as the go to phone for ease of use. How I use it is principally for ringing people, texting and taking photos. I don't really use the web, as I find it a bit clunky (and also damned expensive).

Crucially, i'm on 3 mobile at the moment. I like their pricing plan, and (despite what other people have told me) really think their customer service is very good - when my phone was nicked, they were able to tell me what to do, and have always been honest when I've asked them about billing and what to do to configure my price plan.

So, this phone had the potential to be a bloody useful. And the Guardian's tech person liked it, so I had a thought that it might be decent.

In a sentence: I won't be getting it, but I can imagine other people will love it to bits.

First of all - it's a slide phone. I have the fear about slides, about them fucking up and breaking. I also dislike flip phones for the same reason. On the plus side, it is very very light, and easy to carry around; given the amount of technology powering it, it weighs less than my Sony.

Secondly, and crucially - it's bloody fiddly. I like blackberries because I can use the web/write emails easily with them. No, it might be a bit of a chore to upload photos from there to facebook, but it's not really what I use a phone for. Maybe the odd status update, which - for me, even with my bony digits, took a long long time.

The good points:

It's all your social life in one place - it has Facebook, Skype, MSM, a straight to google link. I can see if you have more patience with the keys/typing than me, then you'd really get on with it.
It's bloody good at syncing everything together; you can run multiple apps and it'll cleverly remember what you've been up to. So it can act as a proper electronic diary.
The packaging/help - special props must go out to whomever designed the little help cards which come with the phone; they're great.

But yet - it's not for me. I want a simple (ish) phone that can write email, access the web, take photos, text and make calls. The web isn't the most important thing, by any stretch. And I did discover one thing about smart phones - the keyboard needs to be big enough for me to be able to type with my thumbs.

I'd give it a 6.5/10. Or, a 8/8.5 if you use a phone primarily for sociable bits and pieces and require less work functionality. 3's claim that it's the world's first social mobile probably isn't that far off the mark.

Thanks to the guys at 3 for letting me try it. A little request for you - pleeease get the Blackberry 8900 on your network; I think it's going to be my next phone.

Expecting Entrepreneurs?

2009-03-05T12:49:00.010Z

That's what I'm talkin' 'bout. Via Edmittance. Usual rules apply.

I've got another confession to make. I got into advertising because I had it in my mind that, while it wasn't going to be like Mad Men, it may well have been a bit more like the 80s. Not in the sense that I expected Ferraris and very long lunches, but more just in the potential out there.

The sort of work places I imagined were those people with big intellects, slightly addictive personalities and with ambition off the scales.

The sort of people who'd want to sell; to sell ideas, to sell new ways of thinking, to want to reach for the skies. Slight hyperbole, but that's what I was after.

And, in truth, I find a lot of people who aren't like this. A lot of people who like to do the job, however long it takes, and leave. Ideas are important, sure, but to be entrepreneurial? Nope.

It got me thinking - why are these people like this? Surely, the whole point about advertising is that really, it's based on confidence. No amount of data will *wholly* prove a point, and it only tells you what's gone before.

If we then have an environment where ideas and confidence are championed, why don't we have more entrepreneurs? And more start ups?

Well, I can't help but wonder if it's got something to do with upbringing and education. I come from Generation Y, for my sins. We're the most highly tested generation ever, a generation that is used to being able to publish whatever we like (as Russell and Lynette have said) and say what we want to say.

In short, we've never been this scrutinised. If we fuck up, we fuck up in public. We're a generation acutely aware of our self image (who doesn't have a friend or two who is militant about which photos of him/her go on Facebook, say?) that's used to being tested and hitting targets.

I'd hypothesise that we've had a great deal of our creative thinking and ballsiness crushed out of us.

Advertising/comms used to be a place where you could rise through the post room. And to a great extent, it is still a meritocracy, assuming you can get in.

So we're stifled, despite these tools in front of us. And it seems that a lot of places talk a lot, especially certain agencies which over rely on 'social media' tools; they're are chock full of a lot of people who, in the words of James Brown, are 'talkin' loud and sayin' nothing'.

Frankly, i'm sodding bored of that. Self referential (yes, i'm as guilty as anyone at this) bullshit which is obsessed with its own navel. Proclamations about 'how we're going to change the world' - you know who you are - are found in those people who don't do anything, just preach.

I want to create places where if someone has an idea which works well with a brand, they aren't afraid to go and pitch it. We're salesmen at the end of the day. We may be salesmen with more of a social conscience than the 1980's, but we're still in the business of making things happen, of bringing ideas to life.

So let's start creating and stop fucking talking about it. Working in media, 'social' or otherwise, is in danger of powering hot air balloons and nothing more. I want more entrepreneurs in our business.

Mentors, Experience and Knowledge...

2009-02-14T11:08:00.008Z

We'd all hope for something like this - well, maybe more careery...

Hello there.

By trying to get Sammy I elected as IPA Hottie (vote Ismail, vote often - send it round your agency), I thought I probably wouldn't write anything until that had been decided.

But no, Neil's posted something on the topic of being engaged with your career which has stirred me to blog. More specifically, how surprised he was that so few of his audience had read certain key marketing textbooks which (given that they were 3-5 years into comms planning) you'd have expected them to read.

He shot me a cheeky PM to ask what I thought about it from an Adgrads perspective. Well, with or without my Adgrads hat on, I feel pretty sad - and a little justified for helping set up the blog (and this one, to be honest).

I've posted on the topic on his blog (warning, turns into a bit of a rant about process), though I thought I should address the topic here as well.

Having been in this business for about 2 1/2 years now (almost time for my two year planning birthday, lordy), I'm almost at the experience level his audience were and I think I can have a stab at just why so few had read those books.

Bluntly, I think it comes down to mentoring. An awful lot of agencies (media, creative, PR etc etc) claim to practice training. But it's a nonsense. Agencies don't have very big HR departments, and don't know - more than ever - just what to train their staff in. Should they be digital specialists? Should they focus on strategy? What about being able to source things, in order to be entrepreneurial and exploit new channels?

I've been very lucky, and very fortunate in my career. Growing up with a father who worked in advertising meant that whenever I had a silly question to ask, I could ask him. So before I ever got into the business, I had a good grounding in what was acceptable practice at an ad agency and what wasn't.

Then, I was hired by one of the best minds in planning and (though it wasn't for very long), learnt a lot from him. Namely, to have ideas, to read weird shit, to keep looking for ways to surprise and delight my clients.

Bouts of freelance and blogging meant I met an awful lot of very smart people who helped shape my thinking and kept me reappraising how I approach things from a professional (and personal) way.

And then, finally, in my current role, i've learnt core planning skills, and worked with some of the best in the business. What's really important, I feel, is that I'm allowed a free reign; yes, I work on clients, and do conventional work - but if I really want to go to an event, or to meet with a company to talk about a partnership, i'm allowed to. Not every job would give me that freedom, and i'm hugely fortunate and thankful for that.

Now, compare my experiences with say, the average planner at a media agency or ad agency. On a grad scheme, you'll spend a long time learning the ropes of how an agency works (I didn't have to, to be honest - been told about that from day dot), about how to deal with clients (ditto - when your father deals with concrete manufacturers, it makes you have a low tolerance for juniors bleating about 'boring' brand briefs or clients shouting 'insight' when something obvious is 'discovered') and about the process.

Well, fuck the process. The process makes you stupid. Efficient, yes. But so what? I'd rather be the lateral thinker than someone who knows how to put figures into an Excel spreadsheet or doing lots of 'crazy builds' in PowerPoint.

It's not to say the process isn't something you need to be aware of, and yes - as a planner, you do need to know how to use PowerPoint and Excel. But is it the job?

God no. If it was, I wouldn't be in this industry. Read Rory Sutherland's account of how he got into the business, and focus on the last few paragraphs:

"This is one of very few jobs where doing almost anything of interest can make you better at your job.

Actuaries, bankers, acountants - their jobs aren't improved by watching people in a cafe, listening to conversations from bus passengers or taxi drivers, reading a book about history or economics or watching a film. We can become better copywriters in our spare time. Never forget what a rare and wonderful thing that is."

Remove copywriters and add in planners or account management. The same applies. I want to work with those who can think laterally first, get shit done and be willing to learn. They can learn the process at any time.

And, for my part, I think it's taken the sum of all of my many mentors - from Richard to Amelia, to Rebecca, to my father - to help me learn this.

Aha, you say - but my current comms job is a war of attrition, is boring and I have no shining light...

So what? FIND one. Make one up if you have to. Come along to the odd coffee morning. Inspiration is where you find it. Write something. Blog. Tweet. Most importantly, have an opinion.

Just don't be like the client (who shall remain nameless) that my father told me about when I was a little lad:

[NB: It's a fairly well known FMCG brand]

Every two years, my dad would meet the new junior brand manager, someone fresh from University and brimming with new ideas for a new campaign.

Sounds good, you might think. But wait.

"Mike - I've had an idea for our new campaign. You see, I think we've been missing a trick. People don't buy x product for the taste. No, it's more than that. More sensorial, more something which stirs the senses."

"I think, this year...we should focus on conveying aroma in our communications".

Right, you think. This sounds fairly conventional. But bear in mind that my father'd spent probably a good 15 years with this client on his roster. And, routinely, there'd be a junior brand manager - each one who'd say the same thing. Every two years, regular as clockwork.

That's what not having a mentor does for you. That''s never going to happen to me, but I worry it happens at some agencies.

I DEFINITELY would...

2009-02-11T15:04:00.005Z

Phwoar. I would.

Just thought I should alert you all to something very important. The IPA have launched a top industry hottie award. And, being childish, I'd quite like Sam Ismail, my partner in crime at Adgrads to win it.

Look how wistful, how deep that gaze is - like wells of emotion anyone would want to swim in. Ladies have melted under the intensity of his gaze - women want him, men want to be him. But he's a renegade; a cowboy if you will, who hangs his hat where he sees fit.

His company is Geronimo, and his position is creative strategist.

I really think pink's his colour, don't you?

All I have in this world is my word and my balls...

2009-01-31T10:54:00.009Z

Wordle comes through again. Via FastcodeDZN, usual rules apply.

...and I don't break 'em for no one".

That infamous Scarface quote has been resounding with me recently, what with all the chat about revelations and where they sit in light of research companies (read the comments, they are fascinating). It reminds me of a client/other agency relationship version of brand swagger, which I wrote about a while ago.

When it comes to research, I still see the value of qual, but like Richard, would like research companies to surprise with proper insights - as I tweeted, the word insight is so horribly overused it's not true.

In defence of research companies, the last lot I used for one of my clients did genuinely tell me things I didn't know about my van driver target audience...such as the absolute necessity a van is, and how too premium a brand puts them off. Useful stuff when shaping a brief. But will I learn just as much by doing some on street qual, by reading trade magazines - these are just as likely to lead to plannerly awe (check out the Einstein quote on the last page) as anything else.

Research, in its many forms, should promote lateral thinking in the planner when he comes into contact with it, and inspire creative thought in all. This desire to hunt for the type of 'plannerly awe' should change a few things though.

No more should planners be quite so...passive when it comes to research. While i'm not advocating everyone attacking research companies (there'll be blood on the streets of Ealing, in Mintel's offices and around Synovate, if we're not careful), I think planning has a horrible tendancy to sit back too much, even in all agency meetings.

Don't be scared of being ballsy in them, of coming across as a little obnoxious - because, ultimately, it's your responsibility to your client to make sure the work works, and is as applicable to the target audience as it can be.

The same applies to the tired old media laydowns that get dragged out when the direction of the work changes/with a new year. Why is there £5m in TV? What proof do we have that it works? Do we have any benchmarks (SEO 'specialists', i'm looking at you) - did they work for other brands in the sector? Why are our target audience based upon TGI (or worse, some sodding 'proprietary' tool that the agency has which they don't understand or bother to explain)? It's something which is deeply, deeply flawed in its sampling.

Why don't the agencies use our experiences of the target and properly craft an audience? Surely this is far better than flicking more budget into stuff which didn't really work last year but no-one got sacked, so it's ok...

By being slightly more opinionated (not annoyingly so - media chaps and research folk are your friends in doing good comms), the work will get better. You'll, to use that horrible, horrible phrase, 'add value'.

Lazy thinking does us no favours - you have to want the work to work, and filter out all the needless, unbenchmarkable (is that a word? ah well..), non creative thoughts which are brought to bear.

My promise to clients is to always say that i'll not bullshit them, nor will I hide if i'm not sure about something, or if the work didn't work. Easy to type, not so easy to live up to. But it's a good standard, and prevents my planning disappearing up its own bottom.

Christ, if we worked towards a feeling of awe for our comms, just think of how powerful they could be. They may never scale these giddy heights, but it's better to aim for the stars than not.

Coffee Morning Anyone?

2009-01-29T12:47:00.002Z

How I like the stuff.

Just thought I should point out to any readers of mine - I'm hosting a monthly coffee morning because I miss the chat of the last lot which Russell began.

The first is taking place at Lantana on Friday 13th (eek) of February. Their lovely blog is here, Scrambling Eggs. You can find out more details about it on the Facebook event page, or on the general Coffee Morning group.

It'd be good to see you there. It may get a bit plannerly, but hey - that's not always a bad thing.

PSFK...

2009-01-25T19:42:00.004Z

Well...more than you'll hear in the average day at work, certainly..

I've been sitting on this for a little while, so sorry Piers & the gang.

Anyway, PSFK are hosting a Good Ideas Salon, filled with some great speakers. The blurb is below - and to give you idea what the last London one was like, here was some of my writeup...

"On 30th January 2009, PSFK will host a day long Good Ideas Salon in London in association with The Guardian newspaper. For the event, PSFK will curate a collection of their favourite forward-focused innovators and thought leaders to discuss ideas in the fields of arts & culture, collaboration, design, digital, marketing, mobile and youth.

SPEAKERS

PSFK will bring almost 30 speakers to present and participate in panel discussions. Confirmed speakers include:

Kevin Anderson \ Blogs Editor \\ The Guardian

Mike Butcher \ Journalist \\ Mbites
Richard Banks \ Interface Designer \\ Microsoft

Coralie Bickford-Smith \ Designer \\ Penguin
Matt Brown \ Editor \\ Londonist

Pat Connor \ Vision Executive\\ BBC

Mark Earls \ Author \\ Herd
Jeremy Ettinghausen \ Director of Digital \\ Penguin

Piers Fawkes \ Trends Analyst & Founder \\ PSFK
Paul Graham \ Partner \\ Anomaly UK

Amanda Gore \ Trends Consultant \\ PSFK

Terry Guy \ Founder \\ Monorex\Secret Wars
Matt Hardisty \ Founder \\ Analog Folk
Dan Hon \ Founder \\ Six To Start
Sophie Howarth \ Founder \\ School Of Life
Matt Jones \ Founder \\ Dopplr
Cameron Leslie \ Founder \\ fabric\matter

Jonathan MacDonald \ Senior Consultant \\ Ogilvy

Kate Moross \\ Designer

Colin Nagy \ Partner \ Attention
Colin Nightingale \ Creative Director \\ Punchdrunk \ Founder \\ Gideon Reeling
Jenny Owen \ Founder \\ Ruby Pseudo
Christian Nold \\ Artist
Justin Quirk \ Associate Editor \\ FHM
Nicolas Roope \ Founder \\ Hulger\Poke
Taryn Ross \ Founder \\ Urban Junkies

Eva Rucki \ Founding Partner \\ Troika Design
Jeff Squires \ Trends Consultant \\ PSFK

Simon Waldman \ Director of Digital \\ The Guardian
Paul Andrew Williams \ Film Director \\ Steel Mill Pictures

Hope you can come along. Should be good.

Editing Makes A Difference..

2009-01-15T13:15:00.004Z

She's coming for your souls.

Now, I'm not the sort of person who'd go out and shoot a load of film, nor do I have any interest in monkeying around with it. I like making podcasts, writing nonsense and sometimes creative briefs...

But I do really respect people who can. Some of the lovely creatives at work have pointed me in the direction of two absolutely brilliant rejigs of some famous films....which completely change them.

The first, of The Shining, is absolutely brilliant. Scary Mary is also good. See for yourself:

And one more....

I'm proud of this..

2009-01-14T14:53:00.005Z

I don't tend to post about work i've directly been involved in, but i'm very pleased with this:

It's from Lowe Brussels, promoting MTV's Aids Awareness charity, Staying Alive. Though it didn't come out of the London office (here's hoping the next one does), it was from my brief, so I thought it worthy of a post.

I'm dead chuffed with this 'un, and they've produced a suite of ads (some more surreal, some more comedic) to have a look at it. This is one of the more design-ery ones. See what you think:

Shortcrust Pastry Is Best...

2008-12-28T11:21:00.005Z

Percentage of pie to pacman...mmm. Photo via watashwasi. Usual rules apply.

This is rapidly turning into a festive flurry (see what I did there) of posts.

Anyway. This is a semi serious post on the topic of transmedia (or brand story telling mixed in with a little bit of anarchy) and what it can do with three bored twitterers (whose blogs are here) and a brand property.

As you probably know, Paul was behind Don Draper on twitter. It was genius, because of the characterisation, and because he got a whole host of other 'characters' to follow him (who have yet to reveal themselves). There were an awful lot of intertwining dialogues between the characters, and it was great fun. Exactly what brands should be doing on twitter, if they choose to - yes, I do think they belong, but with a few caveats.

Namely, that it doesn't come across as too 'brandy'. I don't just want to hear about promotions (unless you are lastminute.com or Dell), or the absolute minutae about an uninteresting job. Be compelling, or be fictional.

And it is with that sentiment in mind that I happened along the last tweet from our Don. This happened to correspond with Zero's desire to start a twitter bar fight. A notable intention, i'm sure you'll agree.

So, putting two and two together, we got Mr Draper involved (check mine, Zeros and Nick's tweets from late last night). Sorry Betty, Don's not coming home for supper. He IS supper.

As damned funny as it was (and check the blips out, they made me smile), I think it's an interesting lesson for brands. Put your characters out in the public domain, but be prepared for loyal fans getting really involved, knowing more than you - and just sometimes, making a chicken and mushroom pie, with a 1952 piece of meat.

Semantics, Recession and Merging..

2008-12-23T14:00:00.004Z

Really is as simple as that. Picture via Torkveen, usual rules apply.

Hello.

That meme thing has prompted me to write something proper. That's right, with real grammar and punctuation. Maybe even with some proper spelling. WARNING: There'll definitely be some ranting.

Like almost every person in an agency environment (whether it be PR, Digital, Advertising or Meeja), I've been asked a lot of questions about recession and the nature of it - and for any useful case studies (all of which is vaguely useless, as every recession will be markedly different from the last one - it's like asking someone to compare each grain of sand on a beach).

Ogilvy have had a stab at it, and I applaud them for their efforts. It saves me a job, at any rate, which is always welcome. However, when your clients may well go bust tomorrow, they don't really worry about that - more about whether the EU will follow America's lead. It puts status meetings and fucking stupid brand onions into context.

Of course, a lot of people view this recession as the door being opened for those who are entrepreneurial and future facing. And in both PR and Advertising, a strange beast has arisen. One that claims to be digital, ad focused and interested in 'talkability' and 'advocacy', those two buzzwords which have been comfortably powering the internet and comms in general since before Altavista stopped being the dominant browser.

I'm talking, of course, about the Social Media Agency. It's a bit of a hydra in the world of communications. While I'm a fully paid up believer in the power of social media, and of an overall communications agency, I have a bit of an issue with the term and the agencies I've seen.

First of all - surely every successful piece of communications should aim at advocacy, and achieve it, either subliminally (low involvement processing, anyone?) or actively through talking and recommending it to people.

Communication is inherently social. Duh. Otherwise it wouldn't be communication. As Mark has repeatedly emphasised, we're social animals.

So with this in mind, let's pick apart what a social media offers other than this. From what I can see (and I've been contacted by one or two through this blog), it amounts to emailing bloggers to ask them whether they'd consider writing about the next big ad/product/event that's going on.

Again - isn't that the job of the shoddy PR agency that hasn't done its homework? What some try to sell as 'Digital PR'? Or some gimp in an Ad agency who doesn't know what he's doing?

Ok, so that doesn't wash. Let's have another think. Oh yes, mastery of the latest social media techniques and software. Err, right. I work for what some outside observers would call a 'traditional' ad agency, yet I know what's going on in new launches....the failure of Pownce, the usefulness of Remember The Milk or how Last.FM's new menu doesn't seem as user friendly as the last one. And as for the software point - WTF? The whole POINT of social media is that it's easy to use, and EVERYONE can use it....

Right. Maybe some love can be found in measurement. Last time I checked, no-one (even you, NPS, much as you're not too bad) had found a golden metric which goes all the way through, nor judges which part of the mix was the most useful. Social media metrics are notoriously ropey as well - so a lot of people signed up online. And? Did sales increase? That last question buggers most.

So really, on the face of it - most of this is either already done by the PR, Advertising, Media or Digital agency...who each have specialisms of their own.

Come on then Social Media Agencies; either call yourself communications agencies or do something which can't be done. I don't see evidence of the latter at the moment. I wonder, with the recession, whether they'll prosper - as clients need to compartmentalise spend, will it make more sense to give them little bits of budget to ring fence as their own, or will they all get truly fucked by the other agencies? Something's got to give.

My true rage is at the term, in all honesty. There are good agencies who call themselves 'Social Media', and do get digital comms and advertising. But to claim yourself as masters of the conversation is the height of arrogance. That's like me blindly assuming my consumer on a well known American car brand is a Texan cowboy and nothing else, who'll buy out of habit. Misguided and foolish, really.

I think JC makes a good point on this topic. The Digital and Analogue argument must definitely die. As he puts it: "the big winners will be those who can mix the proven strengths of the old with the innovation of the new. The ability to deliver that double-whammy will be the only thing worth measuring." Damn straight. And the 'new' Social Media agencies haven't done this. Yet.

Resolution Taggage..

2008-12-22T15:18:00.003Z

Not mine. Though I like 1 and the last statement. Via Gillian. Usual rules apply.

I've been tagged again in one of those meme things. (Have actually been tagged in 3 odd, but sod it, this'll answer them all, hopefully) by Nick.

So then, shall I answer this personally, or about work? Ah, I'll do both. Starting with worky stuff...

1) Write an APG Paper. If I was entirely honest with myself, i'm not as left brained as i'd like to be. So, being commended by Marketing Week for an effectiveness paper I cowrote for one of my clients was very pleasing. So, I need to get one out for the APG, and I have an idea of what it might be, if the project moves quickly enough...

2) Get back into the habit of writing strategic 'sentences'. One of the things I used to do at United, which I've not really done at Lowe, was to pick a random brand, have a think about what their business or category problem was, write their brand position, their promise, and the brand idea arising for that. NOT a proposition, it could serve as an endline, or just a tone of voice for the brand to think about. It was all Richard's doing, and I really liked it. I had moleskines full of these, and they were always good for getting the juices going.

3) Do one cultural thing a week. Whether it's the Saatchi Gallery across the way, or the Tate, I need to keep expanding my mind. I'm not much of a scrapbook person, but getting as many different experiences as possible is always a good thing. Likewise, I went to the Nutcracker recently and loved it - I should try to see more ballet this year.

4) Continue to think beyond advertising. It's oh so easy to think, working for an ad agency which has such a good reputation in creating big, largely TV led campaigns, that that's what we should be doing. Unquestionably good for a lighthouse effect, it's not always the right idea, no matter what overzealous clients/media agencies/agency teams think. We've bought a stake in a new digital agency, have some interest in PR, and I think the future's bright. No excuse, really. :)

5) Continue to develop AdGrads. We've built a great community, have been chuffed to have the support of BrandRepublic and others, and to have met some really cool folks along the way. We'd relish the opportunity to speak at a few Universities, to link up with some programmes abroad (such as VCU et al) and to continue to be as useful as possible. We're in this because we think advertising (and comms in general) needs to improve its recruitment policy; especially if it wants to remain competitive in the long run.

6) Not become a comms wanker. Sometimes this one is harder than it seems - but damned if i'm going to suggest media ideas which are just London focused, use bullshit bingo terms, pretend the south east is the centre of the world (or the UK ad scene, for that matter) or swallow new trends hook line and sinker. I may sound like a Surrey schoolboy, but not talking (too much) bollocks is part of my Midlander USP. ;)

Now for some 'others':

1) Write more. And by that, I don't mean blogging. I mean begin to write fiction again. I've got a lovely new place, and when I've bought a good writing desk (suggestions, anyone?), I should really write more. Being by the Thames will help, I think. I find water very inspiring (as opposed to the grimy nature of Old St), and I have no excuses now.

2) Get back into the habit of gyming. I play 5-a-side football once a week, but it's not enough. I don't particularly want to look like Daniel Craig, just less like an elastic band.

3) Start playing golf again. It's expensive, it's time consuming, it drives me insane and makes me angry, but I love it. I hear there's a course in Dulwich, and a range in Croydon. Will be sampling both soon enough...

4) Attempt to play an instrument (guitar probably). Not Guitar Hero, but I'd love to learn to play something. And not annoy my flatmates. No idea if I have any talent, but i've always been told I have the fingers of a pianist, so I should learn something, just to see if they help...

5) Save more cash. Setting myself up in my new flat/going to Oz (post forthcoming on that bad boy) hasn't helped, but putting some money away for a house/flat is probably a good idea. That, or winning the lottery...

Phew. I tag Seb, Nina, Lauren, Angus and Sammy I.

A little rugby viral action for you all..

2008-11-28T17:00:00.006Z

Back when we could play the game. Picture via BombDog. Usual rules apply.

Short and sweet post, this one. We've put together a viral for the RFU, which talks about the Oxford and Cambridge varsity match. I think Dan and Mark will find this funny.

Taking famous historical characters who (may) have turned out for their rugby teams, below is the result. It's a bit of fun. Made me smile, anyway...

Nice work Ben & Seb, our newest creative team.

Bullshit Bingo and the web..

2008-11-02T12:42:00.005Z

It happens. Oh yes. Click to see more. Thanks to Saltation. Usual rules etc.

Everybody surely knows about bullshit bingo by now. All of those silly words which somehow manage to find their way into common parlance. Words like 'drill down' to take a 'helicopter view' (actually makes a degree of sense, but is damned odd) have found their way into speech.

God knows, I found myself saying I should look at a brief to 'sense check' it the other day. I think i'm losing the plot a little.

That said, I think when anyone's talking about the web, it gets infinitely worse (and I'm just as culpable as most when doing this). It also gets infinitely worse when people are in the presence of clients - in an attempt to justify the fee, maybe? - using the word crowdsourcing in polite society may well deserve a mild flogging.

Photo via Barry_Adams. Usual rules apply.

These aren't even the best ones. Which terrible examples have you witnessed at work?

Two videos..

2008-10-26T19:33:00.003Z

Memories...photo via Marta Crowe

It's a funny thing, the t'terweb. Leave it alone for a little while, and it suddenly sneaks up on you and updates thousands and thousands of RSS feeds. Cheeky.

Anyway, I've been alerted to two highly amusing videos. One of which is intentionally hilarious. The other that isn't (and is curiously like a Eurovision entrance).

See if you can figure out which is which. The first is just off a linky. Click and see. T'other is just below:

So so funny, eh? In case you hadn't figured out which I thought was just a little bit sad (though comedic), it was the agency themed one. Why oh why do agencies do this sort of thing, eh? There's so much interesting stuff they could show and share with the general public barring their output, but they choose not to.

Christ knows you could use a good agency video to sell the agency rather than some tired PowerPoint preso. It's just a shame some people believe this has to involve *shudders* singing.

(Before you ask - no, I'm not singing a song in honour of our Frank).

Best bit of meeja this year + Brand Promises..

2008-10-23T14:29:00.005Z

For me, it still tastes a little like Cherry Coke..

I'm a big fan of brands, like people, coming through on their promises. So this proclamation from the head of Dr Pepper made me very happy indeed. He's basically promised that if Guns 'N' Roses finish their long awaited (some 13 years in the making, I believe) album, Chinese Democracy.

Check out what their Vice President of Marketing said: "We never thought this day would come. But now that it's here, all we can say is 'The Dr Pepper is on us'".

Absolutely classic. Sadly it's only in the US. Have a look at the linky.

And in other, brand related warblings, I've got to give a meeja shoutout to whomever was the media agency involved with IKEA (NB: I think it was Mediacom, but I could be wrong - anyone know?). The strategy of home being the most important place in the world (a nice thought and very relevant in today's economic times, where people are naturally inclined to nest) is amplified by this clever piece of media.

Who hasn't seen these in London? They could do them nationwide if they wanted to...it's a thought which could run and run. Very clever. So different to the amount of prosiac media thinking out there - the best media isn't always conventional...

Conflict & Brands..

2008-10-03T17:19:00.005Z

Get your brand to do this.

It's been a while since I decided to share a few cheeky pearls of wisdom (!) with my wider audience.

And hell, I've decided to share it on the topic of fighting. Yes, having a bloody good scrap. Too much planning is passive, quiet and muted, keen to step quietly into the night.

Great planning (and great brand ideas) are all about conflict. How it's resolved - and how the monster can be slain. Hat tip to Adam Morgan for the thought about Monsters, picked up after going to Wednesday's IPA Fast Strategy conference.

So have a butchers. You might have to view full screen to see some of the smaller type...Let me know what you think:

Conflict & Brands

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

IPA Night of The Ad Eaters..

2008-09-29T11:21:00.004Z

There they are...photo via Mr. Whisper. Usual rules apply.

A few IPA related bits and bobs to tell you about (this should probably go on AdGrads, but still).

This event looks interesting. Facebook page is here. All being well, muggins here will be there (I like Short & Sweet as well, but it's not an IPA affiliated event).

The lovely Adah at the IPA has also informed me about the following events at London Universities (a few of which are in the past...oops, should have blogged it sooner):

FRIDAY, 26 September
Goldsmiths, Freshers' Fayre, Students' Union Building, 1:30 - 2:30pm

UCL 3pm - 4pm Entrance: Wilkins Building, North Cloisters

TUESDAY 30th September
London Metropolitan University - City Campus at 84 Moorgate, London EC2M 6SQ
lunch time

WEDNESDAY, 1st October
University of the Arts at the Truman Brewery 4pm till 6pm

FRIDAY, 3rd October
Westminster University, Harrow Freshers Fayre, Sports hall, 2:30-3:30pm

Worth popping along to one of them, if you're keen to get into this crazy bidness...

Stop what you are doing...

2008-08-24T09:37:00.006Z

The great man himself. Antonio Damasio. Hero.

Those of you who read my twitter or blip stream (thanks to Iain for pointing the latter out, it's great) will know I've been on my hollybobs for a little while.

But, in addition to brushing up on my Hemingway (Moveable Feast is a great read - should really have a butchers at some more of his work; not quite sure why I haven't yet), I've done a classic plannerly thing.

Yes, that's right, not being content with the typical holiday reading, I thought I might try my hand at some of the more planner-centric texts which are doing the rounds at the moment. The first was me finally reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's 'Black Swan'. I can understand why so many planners and people within comms are so fascinated by it; for someone (who was a former head of deratives/a very talented mathematician/philosopher - a polymath in the true sense of the word) to come out and criticise how much we think we know, and how, in his terms, 'Platonicity', is a mistake.

Essentially, through a series of case studies, Taleb dismisses the idea that the world is so straightforward, so easily quantifiable as we'd like it to be, and this blinds us from ever considering extreme random acts (the Popper inspired 'Black Swans'). It's very interesting, and I liked the bits about fractals (images which appear solid, but when looked at closely, are actually entirely different) and his belief in Benoit Mandelbrot to show the way - have a look at this:

Pretty amazing, eh? Makes you more aware of what you do, and how post-rationalisation seems to be just as bunk as, privately, people believed it is.

Anyway, I digress. On with the subject of the nice chap in the first photo. Mr Damasio, to be precise. I was alerted to him after reading Paul Feldwick's piece on 'Fifty Years Using The Wrong Model of Advertising', as he had some interesting things to say about Damasio there.

Namely, that he doesn't separate rational thought from emotional responses. The title of his book (Descartes' Error) was a bit of a giveaway, but yes, given his background in neurology, he uses a lot of examples to explain it to the average layman. It's not quite so user friendly as Taleb's book, but when he chooses to focus on some of the case studies (Phineas Gage is particularly fascinating), the book gets really interesting.

It helps to make sense of why certain patients with certain types of brain damage can seem to be just fine mentally, but in fact have their personalities change as they get older and develop. Interestingly, he raises the notion that parts of the brain work in conjunction with each other, so this can happen.

A good summary is below (it's not Damasio speaking - not sure who, but it's interesting):

And as to how this relates to the planning day job (or indeed, how both of them do). Well, bluntly, both argue for more emotional appeals to people, as their emotions (and subsequent randomness) are commonplace. Far more than all the people in all the groups in all the brands you'll ever work on. We should be producing work that stirs people into thinking with their heads and their hearts at the same time (because it's what they do).

So yes, bloody useful (if complicated) fodder for the day job. If you're in the least bit interested in what makes people tick (and can stand the self-righteousness of Taleb), read 'em both. Now...

Pharrell and Tabula Rasa..

2008-08-02T19:14:00.009Z

He is a little scamp, isn't he?

This post could have been entitled ‘Coming through my drive through’, but I thought that too many people would get a little bit overexcited. You know who you are.

Onwards. Converse have just launched an initative called 'Three artists, one song' to promote their association with all different sorts of muzak. From indie to hip hop, it appears to be all there. Have a listen:

You can download that bad boy from the Converse site as well, if you like it. The work's courtesy of Anomaly.

Tabula rasa, for those of you not bothered enough by it to use Wikipedia, is a concept which suggests that we are born with no innate memories at all – that we are uniquely a product of our experiences. Stephen Pinker disagrees with it, as it happens. Fine, all well and good, you might ask. So – what the hell does this have to do with Mr NERD?

Thinking about it further, I think it’s obvious that we are the product of our earliest days. It’s why I’m still so fond of Graceland, why I feel no shame in having read (and re-read) books like Fantastic Mr Fox or The Whitby Witches. And this, in turn, is why African music and macabre humour still plays a great role in my emotions and thoughts.

And if we accept this (that we're essentially a blank slate when we're born), it would make sense to assume that someone who has the ability to tug on a wide variety of interests, someone with this polymathic ability such as Pharrell (with a healthy dollop of just generally being a cool guy), can still really cut through.He’s not nailed to a precise genre. Being unclassifiable means that he doesn’t fall into any of the traps that the average celebrity does when they advertise a certain sort of product, or why he’s a PR man’s wet dream; simply put, he’s a swiss army knife celeb.

Now, I’m not quite so convinced that Julian Casablancas is like this – he’s a rich bugger already who, whilst cool, isn’t the polymath in the same way that someone like Pharrell is. He doesn’t really represent the brand of Converse in the ad/music video. He’s too one dimensional, as far as I can see. An indie singer with an interesting (some might say awful) voice.

So perhaps it’s fairly evident. If you are a brand which is founded on the notion of customisability, of allowing people to play, and, as a result, get emotional with your product or service, then using a 360’, deep and thoroughly multi-skilled and recombinant thinker and do-er like Pharrell makes sense.

Hell, even if the brand was comparatively mundane, he’d work much better than the average celeb, simply because he can’t be defined, and has a much greater chance of garnering an emotional response from us; making us (as Feldwick says - caution, opens a pdf), more likely to buy a product/service/thing.

Of course, it obviously matters that the song is damned fantastic, and that the content is just generally able to be used as an ad/viral/music video (some of the executions don't use the Converse signoff). Engaging emotional content (either through what it says or celebrity associations) will always have a home in any comms mix.

It’s just bloody expensive to buy up these multi-talented folk, and just as costly to use less-skilled celebs for a product which doesn’t really fit with the association. But the dartboard does get bigger the more talented the person who endorses the product is. More likely to tweak an emotional response, more likely to buy the product. Easy, eh?

Well, maybe not. What happens if you don't want to use a celebrity, and your product is either functional or just dull as ditchwater?

Certainly, no amount of celebrity endorsement or clever seeding will lead to a rise in sales. In fact, you might as well be using your product as a doorstop, for all the good it would seem to do you (and I think celebrity endorsements, if handled wrongly, can be bloody dangerous).

I think in that case, it's time for a good old fashioned form of tabula rasa; the blank sheet of paper. Use it to answer why (through focus groups/intelligent, focused media), and you can easily compete with some of the sexier brands.

What do I have to know?

2008-07-12T13:45:00.004Z

A Hungarian chap looking pensive. Cheers Gaby/Crumplestiltskin.

There's a very real trait in the planning world to gaze, thoughtfully, at one's navel for what seems like a very long time. And I'm just as guilty as most when it comes to this. Sitting around and not doing quite what I should be doing, thinking about the consequences far ahead of the actual event. Which, in itself, can be hugely paralyzing. And not that useful.

Most of this lies in the economic uncertainty that most readers will be familiar with (if you aren't, stop reading this blog immediately and go and have a look at the FT, or the Beeb) - bluntly, wondering what the advertising world is likely to look like when it all hits in the next 6 months to a year. Whether this'll increase the fragmentation of the entire communication industry, and help speed it up (privately, I think it will, and I bet we'll see a rise in the number of 'communications agencies' who used to be PR/Advertising/Integrated shops).

So, this leads me to wonder just what skills will actually be of use in the next five to ten years. God knows, skills like rigorous analysis of data (whether it's qual/quant or otherwise) will still be of interest. And so will creative (though, again, whether we'll have more designers, people who know how to actually make things, and web ninjas.

Part of the nature of most planners, I think, is to want to know more about anything and everything. Turning this off is often quite difficult, especially when you are trying to balance much-needed reductive behaviour with your desire to open 15 tabs, and 5 of them are work related - the other 10 are open because you, like the net equivalent of collecting bits of string, think 'it'll be useful'.

I was having a very interesting conversation the other day with Jon Leach (formerly planning supremo of HHCL, now head of planning at Chime), about the nature of conversations, and how a lot (particularly ad agencies) of comms agencies don't wish to engage with the conversations that're going on around them, and how so many of them are pretty bad at engaging the general public/promoting themselves. And this, in short, can turn out to be death. Track your conversations - don't worry about squeezing out another 30 second spot which either won't engage or will be ignored by the general public. I'm reminded of this quote from his blog:

"If you had the choice of bringing your friends or your books to a desert island, we'd call you a sociopath if you took the books over the breathing humans. Yes, track the content, but if you don’t track the conversation then you’re missing the main story.If you had the choice of bringing your friends or your books to a desert island, we'd call you a sociopath if you took the books over the breathing humans. Yes, track the content, but if you don’t track the conversation then you’re missing the main story."

Contrary to this is the current situation though - those agencies that're doing well at the moment concentrate on their own disciplines, to become true specialists, rather than being creative generalists.

So it leads you back to the central thought - what do I have to know? Should I forsake a rigorous approach to data in favour of keeping an eye on conversations about my brand? Can I do both? Is the concept of 'T Shaped people' the only way to keep a handle on what people should learn - namely, take an avenue you think you know the most about/want to learn about, and explore it fully, without keeping your mind of the notion of other items of importance? Is the job title, as a result of this, effectively redundant?

It's amusing; I've been calling myself a 'plannerger' at work, because I am involved with a few basic account management things, and don't mind ever increasing amounts of client contact. But this, I think, may dilute my abilities as a planner (and I do believe each planner falls into either a creative or business focused role - dependent on how your mind is geared). I suppose the overall question is this: What part of your brain will be neglected (and necessarily so, to keep all of your marbles)?

Again, it ties into the question of whether google is making us smarter, or stupider (read the comments, especially the one about intensifying your personality). I think it leads to a tendancy to be a little bit more lazy, definitely - less interested in the search, and what you'll find out along the way.

And I don't want to be this lazy, technology dominated person. I want to be challenged, and learn 'what I have to know' along the way. It comes back to the notion of using a team of planners on a piece of business, or just coupling two people when trying to solve a problem - preferably with complementary skills, as each person will have an ability to 'fill in the gaps' with the other. Of course, also to keep your eyes open for any potential black swan - allowing the role of serendipity to enter your life.

So tell me, humble reader - what do you, regardless of experience in your role, think you'll need to know in the next 5/10 years? Or is it one of those navel gazing questions after all, and you don't know until you move forward?

No, I'm not going to quote Rumsfeld at you. Not this time.

Borked.

2008-07-12T09:00:00.000Z

It's probably best to think of this blog like that at the moment. Via Fudj - usual rules apply.

Hello there.

I wish I could claim the lack of blogging was down to something like me having a massive mental relapse, but the fact of the matter was that I've been pretty damned busy (and slightly at loss as to what to write about - hopefully my delicious feed has kept some folks interested).

At the moment, my blog might be a little bit on the back foot, due to a buggered home computer, but I will try and keep blogging in spite of that (nabbing a cheeky laptop from work is always a good start, in my view).

Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Keep on believing...

2008-05-05T14:00:00.000Z

Well, it happened. The mighty Potters are going to be playing football in the Prem, the top tier of English football (sadly relegating my father's team, Leicester, which is a little sad).

And, all of a sudden, mainstream media became very interested in the last day drama of it all. And who wouldn't, let's be fair, it was a helluva story - despite the endless long throws and scrappy football that turned out to be the reality.

But it got me to thinking. Dangerous, that. When exactly, does a story, or event, cross over and become 'mainstream'? How exactly is 'mainstream' achieved? Why do we regard something as mainstream? (Barring the recent London elections, or tragedies, obviously).

It's interesting. I still tune into the good old BBC as my first choice of news, followed by whatever my RSS reader (tuned into the New York Times, The Indie, Telegraph & The Guardian) says is worthwhile.

And, let's extend this further to, yes, you've guessed it, the great 'where's the industry going?' debate which seems to uniquely conflict the ad industry at the moment. Either Mindshare are taking over the world, or PR companies are, or maybe even management consultancies (when they inevitably bring creative in house).

For a comparative junior in the business, it's not a simple case of boning up on your APG case studies and doing the odd blog post (though I wish it was). To try and define what'll become 'mainstream' in communications has become like trying to pin the tail on the donkey after about 5 whiskeys, blindfolded and after having eaten a very heavy meal.

So who do you trust, and talk to? Those hipper than hip digital agencies? These, who promise metrics and interactive experiences, the likes of which you've never seen before - which can seemingly create measurable worlds, which of course everyone will want to interact with. Or maybe a media agency, with 13 floors of econometrics, management consultancy and extreme targeting. Or maybe, just maybe, the traditional creative shop, with its base of ideas.

The latter option reminds me an awful lot of a religious theory I read when I was a wee nipper (good old AS Level Philosophy), about the God of the Gaps. Essentially, the theory can be distilled down into this - there were areas which Science cannot account for (time before time can be measured, essentially). For those bits, you fill in with God/your chosen Deity. Could creative agencies become like that?

NB: For what it's worth, I think the next split will be between those who properly outsource creativity and those who outsource analytics. 'Creative' agencies will have PR, Experiential and all the rest of that gubbins. T'others will, I think, become like management consultancies. What does everyone else think?

That's enough musing. Now have some music:

Restlessness...

2008-04-27T19:30:00.000Z

.Damned cool picture. Nicked off Flickr, but I can't remember who from.

This is a blog post that is scuttling out of the ether that has been the last few months (I'm pleased to say worky stuff has slightly died down).

I look upon planning at this stage as a little bit of an Everest (or at least, a Ben Nevis). There's always so much more to learn, and I definitely think that the planner of the future needs to be able to process so much information (and not go mental, as I have, by subscribing to far far too many RSS feeds) and synthesise it simply. There's still a danger that we behave a little bit like Jack Nicholson in The Departed, whose character sums up the old model of comms neatly: 'I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me'.

The problem with this is that as advertising is pushed from all sides, from mee-ja agencies who have whole departments devoted to carving up audiences for a product or service, to PR agencies, who claim to understand the science of communication far better than their ad counterparts, to design agencies (who are, as has oft been said, the new management consultants) ad agencies scrabble around to try and pick up pieces of a new puzzle which they don't have the instructions to.

Simply put, we can't work harder with the information we have been given. But we can work smarter, and build upon what we already know - that people's cognitive attention spans are limited, and, as Clay Shirky puts it here, look for "[that] place that a reader or a listener or a viewer or a user has been locked out, has been served up passive or a fixed or a canned experience, and ask ourselves, "If we carve out a little bit of the cognitive surplus and deploy it here, could we make a good thing happen?"

This, in my eyes, is the future of communication. Destroying the 'canned' experience, of the same thing happening every time - messing with people's heads, making them laugh, smile, and want to play with our content.

And, quite simply, asking 'would I want to engage with this?' should be a mandatory on every brief (or at least, asked), rather than assuming that people will want to - and Christ, I've been guilty of just assuming that this is the case (or been complicit in it, at any rate).

All of this musing has led me to realise that sitting in the office isn't going to get things done. I need to be out there, be slightly more of a bedouin, engaging with all and sundry, especially if I'm ever going to understand the range of brands I'm working on at the moment - and by that, I don't mean a cursory trip to the factory, or subscribing to a few loyalists' blogs, nor going along to the odd focus group. I mean actually exploring people's passions, and whether or not they can be applied to the product/service I'm working on.

And one slightly more practical thing that I have definitely realised is that damn, I need to get me a laptop. Having a slightly knackered desktop, both at home and at work, doesn't do me any favours. Being able to bugger off to a cafe to crank out a brief, or concoct a 'fast strategy' should be the order of the day, if there's a need to (I'm not convinced that fast is always right, though).

Something which isn't the order of the day, but still surprising, is that we're still top in my absence. Goarn the Potters..

Some moments will be lost forever...

2008-01-27T17:27:00.000Z

And some won't be. Thanks to Betty Blade, usual rules apply.

Bet you've been wondering where I've been. Well, unless some clever person has found out my password/offed me in a particularly clever way, I'm back again.

I probably, like a naughty child, should explain where I've been. Well, mostly, i've been working. Been learning planning, the processes behind it and just getting back into the swing of things. Along the way, I got my very first print ad out (I'd suggest you click on the image):

I've also learned what Zero means by 'Doesday'. And, indeed, just how much I've got to learn. I think advice from NP and others about learning planning holds true; you never, ever stop learning, whether it's brushing up on basic PowerPoint skills (yes, mine do still leave a bit to be desired, but hell, clever thinking trumps dissolve ins, heh), looking at my Outlook and groaning, or dealing with creative teams.

What I've been most impressed by is the people around me; there's such a mixture of skills, talents and mindsets. Yes, I know I wanted to get into advertising for the stimulating conversation and lateral thinking, but little did I know I'd have been involved in so many peculiar and interesting conversations (from the Quantic Soul Orchestra to the best briefings people have ever been involved in, to what motivates mums of six month old babies - the latter was an eye opener, let me tell you).

And of course, as for the stuff outside of work. Well, it's been a nice mixture of watching the mighty, mighty Potters stride to 4th, a bit of gigging (the Manics were best the second time around) and some socialising with a lot of old (and some new) friends.

I'm going to try and do some more cliched London things, and document them here. Never done an open top bus ride or visited the Tower of London, but hell - here's a line in the sand, I'm going to try and do them soonish. Yes, it's horribly touristy, but that's the joy. Reading some Peter Ackroyd at the same time will hopefully help fill in the gaps as well...

Can you care too much?

2007-11-24T13:13:00.001Z

Or not enough in this man's case.

Well, I've no doubt that a fair number of the readers of this blog have noticed that England's Euro 2008 campaign has ended, in spectacular style.

And, amidst all of the caterwailing that followed, the inevitable accusation came - that these pampered, over exposed, overpaid players just don't care about their country. Because I'm a perverse bugger who tends to try and see the other side of things, I think the opposite is true. If anything, I think they cared too much, that got inside their minds, and they bottled it, despite obviously having the technique to be able to get a result.

As for McClaren, well, it seems the opposite is true (I tried to find the photo of him with an umbrella, but sadly couldn't track it down). Out thought by Slaven Bilic, dear oh dear.

And it got me thinking about caring about things, and the notion of caring too much. It's particularly relevant to me, as I (when I'm unsure of what to do) worry unduly. Part of that is when I'm doing and learning new things.

It can be almost paralysing, especially if you publically handwring - something which doesn't help anything or anyone (and was, let's be honest, shown by the England team in their 'performance' against Croatia).

But should it be surprising? In this world, where continuous partial attention rules ok, where shuffling through vast libraries of music is the norm, and where everyone has about seven tabs open on their browser, there's often a worry about priorities.

And given that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in something, according to Radio 4, it can seem like a massive mountain - will my performance be adequate, whether I'm an international footballer, an ad bod or a barrister? I guess the difficulty comes in just experiencing things, and not worrying about whether you'll be up to the task (which is, I think, what happened to England on Wednesday).

So yes, experience and trying and failing rules ok when it comes to learning. Care about that. Everything else is just unnecessary window dressing, and hey - if you don't chance your arm when you're learning, when will you?

I like free things...

2007-11-11T11:38:00.000Z

John's new book.

...but I like smart thinking even more.

Given that I'm currently trying to think about a lot of green issues for a lot of the brands I'm working on, this post was particularly timely.

Greenormal is a great blog. Have a butchers, if you don't already. I really like how John has shed some light on the notion of green thinking, and how it relates to the dichotomy between green and commerce. I can't wait to have a read of the book.

Having a 'green matrix' is a particularly fine idea, and potentially a great framework to use when talking to organisations about how they can update their thinking, behaviour and, subsequently, their communications. (Notice how that came last).

Link to John's post (at least, the first 50 people) if you fancy reading some more on this topic...

Brain Food..

2007-11-04T09:11:00.000Z

Depends what you mean..photo via Bifurcate.

Time for something not directly about my workplace (aka, getting this blog back on rambling nonsense mode).

It occurs to me that quite a lot of my time as a planner is spent filtering out what I have to, and what I don't have to know, in order to know about a certain subject, whether it be a brand of car, dominos, faberge eggs or Stoke City.

Now, the danger is, with this filter in place (and I'm sure it happens at every workplace, or whenever you just want to relax), you lose the ability to challenge yourself, and at worst, intrigue and inspire those around you.

And it's something which can't always be easily done. But sod that; to be stimulating, you need to be stimulated. It's why I get on the tube every morning and read classic literature and not the latest 'man falls in love with cactus' story from the Metro. I need to be pushed, to be challenged by my reading, viewing, or whatever it is I'm listening to on my iPod.

It's just so easy to rely on random fodder for your mind, something which requires no thought, no challenge your preconceptions. Particularly when you are exposed to so much information on a daily basis. Well, I didn't get into adland, or indeed, do anything in my life, without wanting to be interested and interesting on a daily basis. The need to be interesting should overwhelm everything I do.

Bluntly, I can do that by reading Fitzgerald's account of madness, by going to gigs, by going to the V&A once and a while. Not by being chained to my desk, as much as I like my work colleagues.

And no, obviously I recognise the need to crack on, to do work. But in times where work dominates things, this should serves as a little reminder to myself (and hopefully to others) to make sure I keep on being alive to all the many cultural nuances out there. God knows, there are enough of them..

If anyone has any brain foody suggestions going on in London in the next month, hit me with them..

Still Here..

2007-10-28T20:01:00.000Z

I didn't beat the security guard in, sadly.

Phew.

It's been a few weeks now. So I thought I should write a short missive, before I bugger off to soup/Match of the Day 2.

I have been a busy boy, with quite a few accounts on the go, an inability to remember names/learning how to filter out unnecessary stats (the last bit is taking quite a long time), and just generally worrying that I seem to spend quite a lot of time thinking about things, rather than on the phone, like my account team.

Revisiting the old master.

Still, all's going well. I'm getting to grips with Outlook/meetings and suchlike. I'm also slightly in awe of the account team I sit with, and reminded why I was so rubbish at account handling.

Indeed, I'm learning how to work in a team again, what with all of the different personalities and behaviours. Working as a freelancer really doesn't teach you that, as nice as it is. Of course, those same people can also give you work to do, which is sometimes a bit of a bugger, but ah well...it's a learning process, and I'm trying to get to grips with working on multiple accounts with different priorities.

It's all a bit mind bending, jumping from one strategic problem to the neck. But I'm learning. The next thing will be briefing folk. I'm sure it'll all be good...

All of that said, I wish the Piccadilly line wasn't such a bastard. Bloody tourists. Heh.

Back To Work..

2007-10-12T11:39:00.000Z

I hope I don't have to sit at a desk like this.

Since the demise of my former agency, I have been a rambling man, hitching my spurs to various freelance assignments.

Well, I'm pleased to report that yes, I have a new job. It's here. I start on Monday.

Needless to say, it's been a very interesting last 6 months. Interesting in the character building sense, but I think I wouldn't be as appreciative of my new position if I hadn't had to work for it. I'm grateful to be able to put my head down, and learn some more proper planning. I still have a fear of groups which needs to be overcome (having never done any - though I have viewed them before).

I'd also like to say thanks very much to everyone who has had to put up with my whinging, networking and ruminating on the topic of advertising recruitment. Special thanks must go to Rob, Charles, Sam, Andrew, Lauren, MJ, and my Dad. Thank you all.

And one really good thing came out of all of this malarky - Ad Grads, which we hope will provide a useful resource for any grads, or people wanting to switch careers. We aim to keep up the momentum of the blog, and encourage more and more people to write copy for us, to keep things interesting and ticking along. If you fancy it, shoot us an email..

Not a load of old cobblers..

2007-10-10T11:08:00.000Z

Nice boots. But could they be jazzed up a bit?

I've long been a fan of brands which have a real historical factor, and are constantly seeking to innovate. Penguin, Kodak and Guinness, to name but a few.

And I believe Dr Martens fall into this category. As they put it on their site, "No other ‘brand’ has been mutated, customised, fucked up and freaked out like DM’s. Without asking or being able to stop it."

Now, a lot of brands over a certain age try to assert their historical, 'we were first' credentials. And a statement like the one above looks like puffery if you aren't careful. So, it is nice to see them actually walking the walk (not an intentional pun, I promise), and actually giving the masses something to play with.

A contemporary classic is what, I'd imagine, the likes of Converse and Vans are constantly trying to achieve. Where those brands differ from Dr Martens, for me (as an innocent shoe bystander with no real loyalty to any of them, to be honest), is that they aren't regarded as having the ability to last. Dr Martens, as a brand, and as a shoe, can actually make assertions like the one above because I would imagine (in the event of any post apocalyptic landscape) that Doc Martens will still be about. Not quite so convinced by t'others.

Annnyway, all of that waffle leads me to a site which some friends of mine have designed for DM.

Yes, you can make a design for a boot, which will be available in DM shops worldwide, and you'll receive a thousand pounds for your trouble. I like these kind of campaigns. Especially when I'm guaranteed to win the money:

I'm not sure if ANYONE can beat that bad boy, but if you think you could do better, go here..

Nina, Lauren, Tom LR, Ben, Smithy - I expect submissions. With pictures, just like mine..go on. If you are interested, join the Facebook group here.

Karl Lagerfeld and Creativity..

2007-10-02T10:30:00.000Z

The man himself. Picture via Robtanphotos. Usual rules apply.

I've been contemplating the nature of creativity for a little while now, and thought I should share with you a few quotes from Karl Lagerfeld as well as an interview I read with him.

Obviously, as a planner, I'm interested in the process of creativity, and how best I can help stimulate creatives to make brilliant (and effective) work. Now, while fashion is a wholly different world to advertising in some respects (does it really matter if conventional models of effectiveness are adhered to in fashion?), there are some fascinating similarities, and some thought-provoking pieces of thinking dictating how we go about creating new work.

The first gem from Karl is: "I don't like standard beauty – there is no beauty without strangeness."

Let's stop and think about this, in relation to advertising. Take the Cravendale work, right from the 'Cows want it back' through the current W&K 'Miiilk' executions. Distinctive, eh? I think so - and for me, the purpose of the advertising is to emphasise the moreish nature of the product, yet doing it in a wholly new way for the category, in the case of both executions.

Compare this to the endlessly bland ads you see on a daily basis - when was the last time (honestly, without your advertising hat on), you tried to analyse a print ad, or a TV spot? I bet it was a long time ago - because what the industry perceives as beautiful - say a stunning piece of print art direction - has become something people expect, or have gotten used to seeing (that's not to say it can't be spot on, of course).

In my opinion, some of the best outdoor stuff (Ogilvy's cigarette tanker for Cancer Research UK) and print (RKCR's 'Soon' for Virgin Atlantic). Both are very different, what I believe Lagerfeld infers when he talks about things being 'strange'.

On with the quotes.."People who say that yesterday was better than today are ultimately devaluing their own existence."

This one, for me, is interesting - it really speaks to the notion of what, I think, fashion is. And also why it is so widely decried as a waste of time by those people who see it as being fantastical, but ultimately a needless indulgence.

Now, when cameras come into ad agencies, the results seem to be very similar - the general public seen it as a waste of time, rampant creativity at its worst. And yes, I've been in situations where you dearly wish people would remember their history (as they should), but that's not to say we should cling resolutely to Messrs Bernbach, Krone, Saatchi et al when it comes to playing with the notion of a layout, or challenging some of the limitations of conventional advertising.

Essentially, continually striving to make the next piece of creative work the best it can be. Don't be content to have another car ad with it driving along fast, with a rock soundtrack. No, think about what the driving experience is actually like, for example.

Right, enough creative cheerleading, have some more Karl (this is the only quote from The Observer Magazine on 27th of May 2007 - read the article here), on the subject of how he goes about creating ideas:

(After illustrating a model) "Lagerfeld ripped the drawing from the pad, crushed it in his hands, and tossed it into a large wicker hamper, which over the course of the evening filled with similar small masterpieces. 'I throw everything away!' he declared.' The most important piece of furniture in a house is the garbage can! I keep no archives of my own, no sketches, no photos, no clothes - nothing! I am supposed to do, I'm not supposed to remember!' He smoothed a gloved hand over the empty page in front of him and visibly relaxed."

Now, I think that bit in particular is telling about the nature of creativity, and creatives. The idea of chucking everything away and starting again is really interesting - and if the planner has written a half decent brief, that sort of zest should manifest itself in the work.

Of course, it is also potentially problematic - the way Lagerfeld is implies someone who wants to shut themselves away, and not take any guidance from anyone else (which is rubbish - he's met a friend of mine/'borrowed' one of his ideas). And this, if applied to advertising, suggests a sort of creativity which is at odds with the notion of sociability, of creating ideas that get infused into culture (which is when, I think, advertising is at its best).

I think Lagerfeld is a fascinating man (anyone who loses 6 stone in little over a year has to have an iron will), and I'm going to enjoy seeing how creativity, both advertising and beyond, continues to manifest itself in the light of technological advances.

When it comes to advertising, I'm with Laurence Green's article - I think the best work taps into people's innermost beliefs and desires, and makes them want to play and engage with it.

The Boy in the Bubble..

2007-09-25T11:46:00.000Z

A future 2012 event? Picture via thebiggfrogg. Usual rules apply.

No, not the Paul Simon song. Though that is a corker. Today's diatribe is more concerned with the nature of my working environment.

It is very very easy for people who work in this business to live in a dream world. We work, let's face it, in a niche environment, populated by people who deal in business building ideas.

Even after little over a year and a half in this environment, I remain amazed at who knows who. And, being honest, it's very easy to get into a pattern of gossiping, or speculating about things. Contrary to popular belief, I don't have much of a problem of the 'garden fence' type of discussions that go on - it's what the entire industry, to an extent, is founded upon.

I do worry about blogging to some extent, that the tendancy is to reject what has made this industry great - to slag off big agencies without much knowledge of what goes on within them, for example. And too much navel gazing isn't good for the soul, I'm finding - goodness knows, I tend to find myself self-referencing every now and again, which is pretty odd, let me tell you.

This, if left unchecked, would result in me never actually DOING work (one of the primary concerns about blogging, which is a fair point), and using borrowed opinions to make a career, which really isn't on (what is blogging if not the misappropriation of a mish-mash of influences/blogposts/thoughts?).

Breaking out of this self-imposed bubble is oh so important, whether it's a blogging bubble, or industry related, or over-focus on a particular brand. Though I've not read the Perfect Pitch, it is, I believe, partly what Jon Steel infers when he talks about disliking Blackberrys and so forth, as they chain you to a rigid way of thinking.

And it is particularly necessary within the creative industries. A too focused approach on rigid 'accountability' means people can't do their jobs properly (obviously, a degree is necessary, otherwise we'd end up navel gazing again), and don't work to the best of their abilities. Additionally, I've always distrusted the requirement to 'say the right things' in graduate interviews, for example. Load of cobblers. That won't find the innovators, the people who change how the business works, who'll lead by example.

It also encourages agencies to not hire those people who spend their time doing things; moreover, people who can think, but not do. To use an analogy - I can read you chapter and verse about certain historical periods if I've revised them, but could I live the life of a historian? Hell no.

Now, I'm very culpable of not doing enough (especially during this bout of freelance, when I've had a bit more time), but I'd like to hope that's changing, because too much thinking, like too much doing, isn't necessarily useful. And I'd like to see the business recognising that it needs thinkers and doers (because there will be always people who trend towards one side or the other) from outside the bubble.

If you get trapped in it, you start thinking brand onions and pretesting is the be all and end all of a successful piece of your employment. God help us all if that happens.

Usability and T'internet..

2007-09-24T15:20:00.000Z

The $100 laptop in all its glory. Picture via cheesebikini. Usual rules apply.

Well, it would seem that the $100 laptop is not far away from being launched. But the truly clever bit is that it's being sold over here as well, as 'buy one, give one' trial.

I think this generous idea is one which should be applauded. And it's something which could really be adopted nicely on the internet. After all, what's to stop people from working out how its made/making a better, cheaper one? I think it's great, and without the internet, we'd never have been able to push this idea forward.

And it ties into a thought I've been having about usability and the internet/general product and marketing success stories. Something which, indirectly, Rob's blog highlighted. Nokia are number one worldwide, due, in a large part, to their easy to use phones.

In my opinion (increasingly), the same is true of every successful internet venture.

So, in that spirit, I must salute two different sites. JustGiving is a great charitable donation site, and I used it to donate to a friend's marathon against Alzheimers (a very worthy cause, which you can help out here - go on, he's only £200 off his target).

Deezer, the second (formerly Blogmusik) is a site which Mr Brown pointed me in the direction of. And with good reason - 's bloody good, and so easy to use. I've been happy, finding out some more LCD Soundsystem to listen to, as well as some classic Bluetones. So thanks Marcus. Everyone else, check out my working playlist:

Good eh? Very easy to use, and what I think the internet was designed for. Any other good sites you know of?

Selling a Turkey...

2007-09-21T14:11:00.000Z

Hello there.

Just before I bugger off/stop thinking advertising related thoughts for the week, I thought I should have a bit of a rant and a pontification about the nature of products and services.

Recently, this blog has seemed concerned with advertising's purpose and future. Well, I'm afraid this post isn't going to be massively different (but don't worry, mindless nonsense and some news is coming soon...honest).

I believe in the power of advertising. I think, if used well, it can tell stories which can irrevocably change the fortunes of people, yellow fats and more besides. And, I think there'll always be a place for this.

Sadly, what it can't do is change what people, products et al are. If your product is crap, if your customer service is poor - yeah, you'll be found out, and buggered. Especially nowadays. I can, for example, write a blog account of just what good customer service I've had from 3 mobile - especially if I seed it well - it'll (hopefully) impact on someone's purchasing decision.

No amount of advertising, PR or otherwise can turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. It's certainly possible to take an average product, throw loads of cash at a comms solution, but advertising can't do it alone.

It's why I'm so fond of Richard's way of writing brand positionings, because it has its roots in some form of brand truth - you cannot lie; your brand promise has to be rooted in some kind of truth. If it isn't, first of all it's sloppy planning, and secondly, it's downright lies.

I'd be mortified if any kind of planner got sucked into believing the hype around the product or service. Planners should never be too in love with any brand they work on - cold hard objectivity is the order of the day, along with the ability to be a (I heard this the other day) 'culture prostitute', keen to lever in just whatever works with the brand. Just not outright lies.

Look Familiar?

2007-09-18T14:09:00.000Z

Remember those days? My mortarboard didn't fit. Sigh. Via David. Usual rules apply.

You'd have thought the majority of people in the picture above will have graduated recently, and will be wondering what the hell to do with their lives. However, an awful lot of them will have made up their minds, and I'd have thought those lot would have been interested in working in our business.

Rewind a year, and ask yourself. Did I, or my agency, do enough to make them consider advertising/media as a career?

Well, if that picture isn't from select Universities, probably not.

God knows the career options I faced were either become an accountant, a lawyer or a recruitment consultant. And, with respect to all of those professions, they weren't what I wanted to do.

And I'll be damned if the same happens to the next generation after me.

So it heartens me that Ad Grads is beginning to whir into action. We've now got 5 star stories (the most recent one is Scamp, aka Simon Veksner of BBH), some graduate accounts of what the business is really like, some notifications about the newer schemes being opened and have (finally) begun to cobble the wiki together.

Heck, we've even gotten into Media Week this week, apparently (nice one Sam).

But that's not enough. No, we want even more accounts from you guys, whether you are a recent grad or an established star. If you read this blog and would like to contribute to it, shoot me an email (it's on the right hand side of the page), or email ad grads at gmail dot com.

And it's not just account handlers or planners we want. Nope - traffic/creative services, researchers, all are welcome.

Additionally, if you think we've not raised something which should be discussed (working conditions, for example), let us know, and we'll see if we can't help sort it out.

What Ad Agencies can learn from AC/DC..

2007-09-18T12:11:00.000Z

Angus doing what he does best. Picture via T-Klick. Usual rules..

I've been listening to an awful lot of three chord music recently (no, no Status Quo, happily). And it seems to me that there's a parallel there with the swirling, ever changing advertising world.

Namely, that very simple songs can seem infinitely more complicated than they are, and if people over analyse them, it's usually a bit of a mistake. Indeed, one of planning's cardinal sins is to buy into the overcomplication, to not put its foot down when people are taking part in flights of fancy (does any FMCG need bloody twitter, eh?).

And I know that there have never ever been more terms to describe things than there are now. Hell, just take planning. Am I a creative planner, a strategic planner, a comms planner? God knows.

I sometimes wonder, with this increasing vocabulary, whether we try too hard to see things that aren't there; after all, I'm a firm believer that the simpler the communication message, or the more natural the use of technology, the better the results - look at the Sainsbury's with 'Try Something New Today' and Tesco's Clubcard implementation for proof of this.

And it's one of my tenets, which might not be massively fashionable - I think advertising is essentially simple. People don't really change much; we all lust after the same basic things, we all want to be entertained, and advertising is all about working out how products fit into this mix (that's the more complex bit).

I'll leave you with this from Wikipedia, something Angus Young said when he was asked why AC/DC's music was so simplistic:

"It's just rock and roll. A lot of times we get criticised for it. A lot of music papers come out with: 'When are they going to stop playing these three chords?' If you believe you shouldn't play just three chords it's pretty silly on their part. To us, the simpler a song is, the better, 'cause it's more in line with what the person on the street is."

Sound familar?

Effort and Reward...

2007-09-13T15:54:00.000Z

Being able to shift tyres = a life skill. Picture via macredeye. Usual rules..

A little while ago, I read Herd, written by Mark. And in my Amazon review of it, I expressed that I was really chuffed about the chapter on belief systems. Well, this post is a little bit about one of my own beliefs, sharpened by something James Cherkoff has written and a piece of work Lee has blogged about.

Speaking personally (is there any other way?), I've got to say that I'm someone who really believes in the application of effort. That is to say, if you are someone who is willing to put the effort in, to give it your all, you deserve a reward. I have a lot less time for people who rock up and expect things to fall into their laps. Perhaps this is rooted in the fact that I was an average student who tried, and, through a bit of effort, became a halfway decent one. I don't know.

Put in the hard yards, and you'll get your just deserts. It's why, I think, I don't tend to champion an awful lot of brand ideas; because there is no sense of any effort being put in - if advertisers aren't willing to entertain/enlighten/inform me properly, why the hell should I reward them with a purchase? This ties in nicely with James's blog post above - being thoughtful, and generous as a brand (a Richardism) would seem to be essential, and a lot of 'ad' people don't get that, and believe they can easily sway people's opinions (which they have formed from their trusted friends, in this new 2.0 landscape) ahead of their conversations with, you know, REAL people.

I may not go quite as far as James suggests (I still believe good advertising, which puts in the effort, can have some influence - if I didn't, I wouldn't work in this business), but, bluntly, I'm not much of a fan of the church of the 'brand' or the 'advertising or death' mantra which still seems to crop up in the odd conversation I have with people.

Annnyway. Ahem. Good brand advertising can work if it tries as bloody hard as this Brylcreem spot. It's a lovely bit of thinking, but an even better, harder working creative idea. And, people ACTUALLY participated, unlike a lot of these sorts of things. Enjoy (and check out the Myspace page - it's absolutely brilliant):

The Five Worst Songs on your ipod..

2007-09-12T17:54:00.000Z

Right, it's time for one of them thar meme things.

I'm about to embarass myself - and is there anything worse than revealing moments of musical weakness?

No, of course not. Here's my five:

1) Phil Collins - Easy Lover

Does this one really need a great deal of explanation? Given the amount of Phil Collins in advertising at the moment, it's a drop kick choice. Hell, upon looking at its Wikipedia entry, it was even used as some of the music for the inaugural Wrestlemania. And yes, Philip Bailey (he of Earth Wind & Fire) duets with our Phil. What's not to love here? From the overdone synth/cymbal/drum intro to the glorious harmony, this is a bit of a winner...listen to it here.

2) Rednex - Cotton Eye Joe

I seem to have some sort of odd fondness for music that was popular when I was about ten years old. So, this bad boy has to be on my ipod. Don't quite know how it's survived the cull. If you were (un) fortunate enough to not to know of these living Swedish legends, find out more here. Almost got into Eurovision last year. Pity. As for the song, it's an uptempo, very silly country esque number. One of those grab your partner jobs. Urgh. Listen to it here.

3) Ace of Base - All That She Wants (Is Another Baby)

This one is a bit more popular. Number one in loads and loads of countries...hell, it's the best selling #2 in the US ever. It still doesn't excuse me having on the ipod, as it's a synthy, horn ridden mess of a song that (shamefully) makes me grin like a loon when it comes on. Listen to it here.

4) New Order - World In Motion

This is possibly the only song of the five that I've tried to learn the lyrics to. Ok, ok, just the infamous John Barnes rap..catch me if you can, because I'm an England man. Wonder what I'm talking about? Go here. Yep, it's the only New Order song to get to #1 in this country. Partly due to the rap and overall hilarious lyrics - 'when something's good, it's never wrong', and clearly down to the England 1990 World Cup Campaign. Oh yeah, the song... it's your typical drum heavy early 90's New Order track. Only with John Barnes rapping. Listen here (no, it's not until 3 minutes in that John does his stuff).

5) Pato Banton (feat Robin & Ali Campbell) - Baby Come Back

This one is particularly shameful. Originally by Eddy Grant (yes, it's that bad), and featuring backing vocals by Birmingham's finest - UB40, this is another song from the mid 90s which was a number one (didn't we have such fantastic charts back then?). The wiki entry is here. Didn't realise he was from Brum himself. Anyway, the song is a jaunty number, with some cracking rapping from Mr Banton himself. Bet you are looking forward to it - listen here.

Anyway - to anyone who reads this - what're your five worst songs?