The voices in my head

So yesterday, after 18 action-packed months, I left Proximity London.

(I'm joining iris in a group head of planning role.)

But I thought I'd do a top five personal achievements at proximity for my own records. Yes, a bit narcissistic, but that'll be blogging in general.... And there's nowhere else to put it.

1. Delivering digital strategies for RNLI and Harveys for 2009 (let's hope they're implemented), and winning a place on Shell's global digital roster

2. Seeing Harveys become a genuine challenger brand to DFS following the sponsorship of coronation street. It shows how a simple strategy, good advertising and a passionate client and agency teams can really make things happen. I think the most satisfying was seeing new work across multiple channels - TV, Print, Leaflets, Website, Email, Mobile, In store.....

3. Working with DDB and Mediacom on VW annual planning. The BTL agency wouldn't normally have had that level of involvement, so we (proximity) were very pleased. Some lovely campaigns for VW: Scirocco, Golf v6 (to come), Tiguan, Touran, Passat CC too.

4. Mentoring or helping or working with some great people who I know will do well - james hidden, james hough, jamie chadwick, kirtsy higgins, abi fletcher, mat spencer, jo dann, andy ford, emma bushnell, charlie h-s, nicole mackintosh, andrew waddell, matt tanter, scott hendry, anna booth, megan randell, emma slade, tessa clements.

5. Actually using semiotics, ethnographic research and discourse analysis sensibly and practically for some work! Simon W - the original map of possible positive charge inputs seems to be working....


Thanks to amanda phillips, mark hancock and kevin allen who took a bit of gamble letting me in the building in the first place. Thanks proximity and good luck in the future.

Stratstock

Last night I had the honour of speaking at 'Statstock: - how the other half plan'. This was an IPA Strategy Group event that brought together 9 planners to speak about what its like to plan from the perspective of their discipline.

The brief was to 'to help younger planners broaden their view of what strategy and planning can mean in very different types of agencies and consultancies'.

So I was speaking from the world of direct marketing. Which was bloody difficult as we had Max Wright from Rapier speaking about an integrated approach, Martin Bailie from Glue (digital), Sam Noble from iris (sales promotion). So as you can imagine, there was the potential for a lot of overlap... It was also made more difficult as we were speaking at the same time in a big room at the Mary Ward House with booming acoustics....

(Oh yeah, and there was no audio visual equipment either, so flip charts, pens and actual conversation were required)

The reality for me is that planning is planning is planning when you're looking for the 'grand strategy' (thanks to Stephen King's theory of planners here). It's about understanding people, motivations, moods, potential connections and how brands can be inciteful in linking these together in a useful and valuable way.

But planning is necessarily more discipline focused when you're 'advert tweaking' - i.e helping craft the execution (including the measurement / evaluation).

So for DM I tried to focus on the new and interesting things that i've been involved in that lead to more effective direct marketing: semiotics, discourse analysis and ethnography. (In retrospect, I tried to throw too much in to my 10 minutes!)

For me, the way that differerent speakers approached their chat was just as instructive on the shades of planning as their content:

• boards vs. live pen scribbling vs. just talking
• conversation vs. polemic (i didn't realise we were competing for which discipline was best...)
• facts and case studies vs. thoughts, ideas and suggestions
• looking back vs. looking forward
  

I didn't get to see all the other speakers, but overall feedback was that it was a interesting night, people felt that they had value for money and some ideas to take away. (as well as some top tips. which reminds me. this guy has scanned in all of the first pack of IPA strategy group fast strategy top tips. wow - check it out here)

The ipa girls were filming, so hopefully we'll see some good edits on the ipa website soon.