Shapes and Organisation..

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..

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...

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...

'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..

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..

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..

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..

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?

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..

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...

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?

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...

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...

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...

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?

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...

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..

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..

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...

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.