Helping brands communicate better
I’ve always been a less-is-more type when it comes to putting my thoughts on paper. In my first few years as a Planner in the early 2000's, I was fortunate that back then agency clients were generally happy with half a dozen slides of ‘show your thinking’ with a few cited insight sources. By the … Continue reading Keep it simple, Strategist
Recently I've been writing a lot of powerpoint presentations - short, to-the-point presentations of course because in my time I've lived through hours of Boardroom Powerpoint Hell and have no wish to inflict that on anyone else. I said I've written a lot of presentations recently - but I didn't design them. I'm a reasonably good … Continue reading why don’t we treat powerpoint like a piece of creative communications?
I attended a great talk about making debriefs better by Andrew Vincent last night at an ICG / BIG event in Manchester. Whether you're a researcher, planner, account handler or client-side there was lots of food for thought. Andrew pointed out that we deliver reports and presentations to clients in a distracting environment with ever-shortening time … Continue reading delivering in a distraction environment
I went to a talk recently about Behavioural Economics, it’s a topic that fascinates me and since the session was being hosted by a legal firm I was hoping for a different slant on the subject. What I got was a classic example of how easy it is for marketing activity to negatively impact on … Continue reading when poor presentation skills impact brand perceptions
I’ve been working on an integrated pitch where I had to brief in the entire pitch team on my ‘thinking so far’ a couple of days prior to creative briefing. So last week I started writing the ‘show your workings’ stuff onto sheets of A4 and adding in good charts from research the client provided … Continue reading why didn’t I think of this before?
Even though I’m freelance I still take part in quite a few proper pitches. I mean the full-blown strategy + creative + logistics + budget presentations in front of senior clients where they decide based on a ninety minute presentation whether or not to spend a million pounds plus with the agency. Comparing these agency … Continue reading The Laws of the Pitch Room
The eighth Bettakultcha was held in Leeds tonight. One tweet called it a middle class variety show, which actually sums it up rather nicely. You could also say it's a bit like Interesting, but an evening 'do with more beer and less geekery. I had one of the 5 minutes / 20 slides / 15 … Continue reading Bettakulcha 8
So I was at un-conference Interesting North in Sheffield yesterday. It was fab. The premise of the Interesting conferences (normally held in London and organised by Russell Davies, but transplanted to the North by Tim Duckett) is about ‘a day of brilliant people talking about their secret obsessions’. Basically, it’s about Brain Food that you … Continue reading Interesting North – the report
World of Warcraft is roughly the same size as the Death Star There are 28 billion UK coins in circulation, worth £3 ½ billion Boring audiobooks don’t help you get to sleep. They have to be a bit thrilling – although its OK if the writing is terrible ‘dongle’ and ‘waggle’ are funny words Rhopography … Continue reading Interesting things from Interesting2008