the past etc
Something that Richard said here reminded me that I found a very old file the other day. A pile of all the rejection letters I got from advertising agencies when I was at college, trying to get a job. I don't know why I kept them, but looking at them now, they seem ancient and quaint.
Most of them are from agencies that no longer exist. At least not under the same name.
And they all speak of a more leisurely time. A time when everything was hand-written and given to a secretary for typing. Or dictated. A time when the post was perfectly quick enough.
But hopefully they give all you people looking for a job some hope. I never got a job this way. I ended up in telesales for The Independent, selling classified advertising. That eventually got me a job in a media department. I did that for a couple of years before I ended up in account management.
I was clearly pretty keen about Ogily. I must have written back to find out why they didn't hire me. Which led Cilla Snowball to write back to me with underlining.
WCRS did everything via telemessage (how modern). This was very cool at the time.
the future etc
I think I've worked out what to talk about for the APG Big Thinking thing. I'm not sure how to package it up yet but it's somewhere at the confluence of these conversations:
There's this question that Gemma asked here. (Which I've still not answered. Whoops. Will try to do that this week.) I like the idea of talking about the future of planning, communications, the creative industries. Not about brands. Thinking about how our lives might be different.
Which relates to a conversation I was having with Vas and Simon at coffee yesterday about the future co-evolution of planners and creatives. (And everyone else.) We were discussing the role of creative people with specific craft skills in a world where so much of what they're asked for is conceptual and completely indepedent of any need to execute. This relates to a feeling I've had for a while that the distinction between creative person and planner is becoming as useful and relevant as the current distinction between copywriter and art-director in the traditional creative team. ie not very useful or relevant most of the time.
I also think there's something interesting in examining Richard's provocative reversal of the usual planning/creative dynamic. Instead of thinking of us inspiring them, he suggests, let's think about them decorating our ideas.
Then you'll probably need to bake in Mark and John's new thinking about brands, people, society and business. And there's something in thinking about a revival of quant planning and attentionomics - given all the data that web 2.0 is going to give us.
Anyway, that's what I'm going to take a stab at. Anyone got any thoughts?
newspaper giveaways
Various people have been predicting the death of newspapers recently. Or at least their rapid decline. And they've been citing British newspapers reliance on giveaways to drive circulation as one sign of the end. (Apparently more DVDs were given away than British newspapers this year than have been sold by the movie industry.) The Guardian's had huge success with their posters. And we loved The Telegraph's Famous Five CDs. And people love to mock them, point at the cost and claim they're the beginning of the end for newspapers. But aren't they really just the beginning of a new beginning?
Because, apart from your actual news journalism, what newspapers are really good at is creating coherent bundles of opinion. They create interesting and useful edits of the cultural world; at the moment mostly through criticism and reviews, but the posters and DVDs could be seen as their first forays into distributing the actual stuff, not just pointing to it. I could imagine subscribing to a Guardian film-club curated by their reviewers.
Of course, the papers that have a less defined cultural perspective will struggle here. The Indepedent's differentation always seem to be based on adolescent politics to me, so I'm not sure what cultural thing I'd like them to guide me through. Maybe puzzles.
evolution of note-taking
I've been thinking a bit about PDAs and phones recently. And I had a really interesting chat the other day with Iain who was enthusing about his new k800i and explaining how he'd starting using his phone to photograph contact details off his computer screen before going to a meeting, rather than printing stuff off, or writing it down. This really made sense to me. And I realised that I've been doing something similar. I've been keeping lots of notes on my phone - I've been recording the records and books I want to buy by photographing them and sending them to flickr. And then they're there whenever I want them. The only slightly awkward bit of this process is the sending to flickr, which takes a few clicks. I would love there to be a 'send to flickr' button.
And, recently, I've started writing stuff down in my notebook and shooting it with my camera. Things like shopping lists like the one above. Because pen and paper seems to aid the editing process. I can't buy everything I think I might want to buy and the shopping list is the first filter. Of course, you could argue that I should just take my notebook with me everywhere I go. And I kind of do. But there's always some occasions when you forget it, but I virtually never forget my phone.
Anyway, I'm seeing this as emergent behaviour in my life - is it happening in yours? The reason I think it works is because it harnasses quite a lot of natural behaviour:
Pressing a shutter and shooting something is easy and natural - it's a quick way to capture a bit of information. Especially information like this.
The folksonomic quality of flickr (and it's permanence) you don't have to trawl back through old notebooks is a good way of keeping/archiving stuff. And the pictures help you sort and remember the information - you get this extra information from the visuals than you would from some ordinary database.
And it's becoming clear to me that scribbling a note with pen and paper, then photographing it, is a better way of 'digitising' information than scratching away with a stylus or trying to txt anything diagramatic or whatever. I wonder if phone/PDA design is going to start addressing this way of using them. Or maybe I'm a freak.
richard explains
Paul has done another splendid interview. This time with Richard Huntington. It reminded me what a tremendous facility he has with language, he just kept making up really useful little gobbets of language - continuity planning, plannersphere. Very good. Paul's doing something really useful here. Unless you're in a big planning department (and probably not even then) you never get the chance to hear the smartest people in your industry just talking and thinking aloud. It's fantastic. It makes me want to have another go. I think my interview lags way behind Richard and John's in the planning coherence and provocation stakes. Damn.
today's tea
Had a very enjoyable coffee morning / afternoon tea today. Big turnout. Such that I don't think I got pictures of everyone. Ben was there. As was Paul and his familiar. And Patrick. And Mark.
Above we have Martin and Theo.
Lebowski again, with Dave and Vas. (Nice to mee you Vas) (Obviously nice to meet you everyone too)
Here's Vas again with Simon from Big Picture. We had good chat about the evolving relationships between planners and creative directors. More of that later.
And, just as the final curtain's about to fall, here comes Henry.
I've not missed anyone have I? It was excellent to see everyone. Bit of a 100% bloke turn-out though. That's worrying. Hope it's not a trend.
richard arrives at optimism
Richard is concerned that his blog makes him look too grumpy. Maybe it's because Rob said Adliterate makes Richard seem about ten years older than he is. (I'm hoping my blog makes me seem thinner than I am)
Anyway, in a bold strike in the direction of positivity he's issued this challenge, called The Advocate, celebrating the efficacy of the campaigns we all love. Have a look, join in, discover Richard's inner optimist.