Helping brands communicate better
I know that the future is looking wobbly for lots of Planners/Strategists at the moment and I personally know several who have already been made redundant. It must be particularly hard for Junior Planners to work out how to make themselves indispensable/employable as quickly as possible, especially if they’re already on furlough. So I’ve come … Continue reading A little advice for junior strategists & planners who are nervous about their job prospects
Like many people, I’m spending a lot of time on Zoom these days. But I’ve been trying to limit the length and frequency of Zooms wherever possible and the other week I even asked for a planned Zoom to be switched to ‘camera-off’ or turned into a good old conference call. This isn’t because I … Continue reading We’re all Zoomed out
Before Christmas I ended up doing a lot of depth research interviews and it reminded me why I believe that Planners should, whenever possible, do their own qual research. The primary reason is, of course, that Insight can come from anywhere. If your involvement in the qual you’ve commissioned has been limited to what was … Continue reading Why Planners and Strategists should do their own qual
I’ve been thinking a lot about creative briefs recently – I deliver Creative Brief Writing training for agency account handlers and/or junior planners and I’m also currently prepping a brief writing workshop that I’ll be delivering to some undergraduate students soon. It turns out that I have pretty strong feelings about briefs and briefing: 1. … Continue reading I really care about Creative Briefs
I read a lot and yes, as a Planner / Strategist / Whatever-we’re-calling-it-this-week of course I’ve read all the big titles in my field like How Brands Grow, Nudge, Truth Lies & Advertising and Paid Attention. But that’s only a tiny percentage of what I actually read. I read Sunday newspapers and regional newspapers and … Continue reading Why there’s nothing wrong with a RomCom paperback
Sampling has come up a lot in my professional life recently, with grocery brands seemingly increasing both their spend and their creative focus in this area. With the Groceries Code Adjudicator keeping a careful eye on retailers who might be milking their supplier brand’s marketing budgets for their own purposes, the days of the big … Continue reading Sampling is on the up – but there’s more to the Path to Purchase than that
I was talking to a senior researcher who works for a research agency recently about how long research projects take from brief to debrief and how that doesn't sit well with marketing agencies and clients increasingly working in agile, or at least agile-ish. When the project is in a constant state of flux, timelines are tight … Continue reading Why agency projects need Agile research – and why that’s really hard to achieve
My last post Where have all the Planners gone? about the lack of trained Junior and Midweight Planners round here (due to the lack of available training and opportunities for them) resonated with a few people Up North, particularly former Planner Chris McCash, now of Breadwinner. He offered to host a Planning get-together in Leeds to … Continue reading Training the future
Up here in Yorkshire, there's loads of roles going at Senior / Midweight Planner level, but no-one to fill them. I've had many conversations recently with recruiters and agencies about this, but the reason is obvious really - no-one trained them. With the exception of Sarah at Home and Joey at CreativeRace / Intermarketing, as … Continue reading Where have all the Planners gone?
When meeting prospective Planners, I always try to find out if their brains are wired the right way to be a great Planner - are they interested in what makes people tick, problem solving, investigation and communication? Do they appreciate the link between brand comms and the bottom line? And perhaps most importantly, have they … Continue reading for Planners, gut instinct matters however experienced you are