I’ve been working as a freelance Planner for six and a half years with no intention of going back agency side – then I got offered my Dream Job which it would be nuts to turn down. So I’m now officially Head of Planning at Bloom in Leeds, who recently became part of Jaywing.

Bloom’s clients might be a bit surprised to read this as ‘new’ news as I’ve been in the role since January and was doing contract Planning work for Bloom for months before that, but now that everything is official I can announce my news properly.

I know Bloom well as I’ve been freelancing for them on and off for four years, I’ve worked with lots of the senior team before and in a nice full circle I’m now working in the same building where I started my Planning career at CWG in 1999.

Bloom are like an iceberg – on top is a mid sized integrated agency driven by Planning and Insight, with a refreshing approach to work/life balance and creds that firmly state they only employ nice people who are shit hot at their jobs.

The lower part of the iceberg is Bloom’s awesome data science team. Who wouldn’t want to get their hands on cutting edge intelligence products that turn Big Data into the kind of actionable insight that has global brands queuing up for a turn. And when your work colleagues include Data Scientists, PhDs and enough high IQs to start a branch of Mensa there’s no risk of coasting along.

Add in the wider Jaywing offering of sister agencies in Sheffield and Sydney, search specialists Epiphany, PR and CRM divisions and a specialist financial and regulatory risk management arm (i.e. even more data scientists, statisticians, mathematicians, information architects and computer scientists) and you have the ability to look at the customer journey end-to-end. Basically, I’ve been given the keys to an amazing toy box.