Boy I need your help now. I've signed up to be a speaker for the APG Battle Of Big Thinking which sounds like it might be great - some of the stuff we've been asking for from the AAAA conference. But I think I've got to debate Jim Carroll of BBH and then the audience is going to vote who's best. Jeez. Have you seen Jim speak? He's fantastic. So, my only topic seems to be Big Planning Thinking, any ideas what I should talk about?
We're trying to find some thoughts/guidance on Russia for a friend of ours. Someone they can chat with a bit and get a feeling for a particular category there and maybe meet up with on a couple of trips to Moscow. So I guess anyone in the planning/research/brand/marketing world. Is there anyone out there who might be able to help? Please email me if you can.
(How many of these favours do you think I can ask before it starts to irritate the hell out of you all?)
Just got back from seeing Cars with Arthur. Very good. Not quite as good as the Toy Stories, drags a bit in a couple of places, but still better than most of the films you'll see this year.
But the most affecting bit for me was the way they captured some of the grammar and language of American roads. No-one things of roads having grammar but they do, it's one of the things you notice if you drive a lot in two languages. Signs appear in different places, merging has a different quality, juntions have different accents and sweeps. And, when you're a passenger there's a beautiful rhythm to the interstates that this film captures in a lovely sequence early on, when Lightning's being driven across country on the back of a big Mack truck. You see the ways your car's shadow stretches, receedes and then looms up at you as the landscape changes, you see the whipping rhythm of trees giving way to crops and back to trees. You see the mountains that seem to be just ahead of you, for hours, the long lines stretching to infinity. It's really quite lovely and evocative. It made me nostalgic for the drives Anne and I used to do, up and down the US listening to NPR and baseball commentary.
Michel Gondry played with some of the same feeling in this video.
Anyway, go and see Cars, it's good.
Had a splendid afternoon tea on Friday. Our first sighting of the famous Rob Mortimer.
Enoch and Henry.
Paul.
Seb and Karen. The conversation roamed wild and free which Henry's detailed here.
No coffee mornings for three weeks I'm afraid, unless you're in Glamorganshire next week, Mablethorpe the week after, or Robin Hood's Bay the week after that. Next one will be August 25th. Probably in the afternoon.
We were trying to imagine what the best planning conference ever would be like. Here are some of the ideas:
1. It should be like a festival. Three days, in some fields somewhere warm (Not hot, warm). There'd be a main stage. A quant tent. And some beat-up vans selling dubious insights parked around the edges.
2. Costs would be kept low by making everyone bring their own tent. Ad students would be allowed in for free but they'd have to chop wood and do laundry for everyone else.
3. 20 minutes per speaker. Only exception, Paul Feldwick.
4. No Powerpoint, but speakers would be encouraged to create data presentations using rock show style lighting and lasers.
5. No planning prize, but agencies would be awarded fabulous trophies for superior BBQing.
6. Compulsory - frisbee golf, fry-ups, teams of people reenacting 'scenes from the great spreadsheets'
7. Banned - croissants, ethnography, pads and pens with hotel logos
8. Every evening the planning flag would be reverently lowered while the whole of Testing To Destruction is intoned by a male voice choir.
9. At dawn every day basic planning techniques would be taught by wise old planners doing Tai Chi.
10. Everyone would take home their version of the perfect creative brief, carved in whale bone.
So, I'm in O'Hare, really missing the delights of corporate travel. (I flew to Miami on airmiles which meant flying home through Chicago. And Chicago is having a storm so who knows when the flight will leave? At least it's not cancelled yet. Jeffre's was cancelled, he has to stay the night.) If I'd flown on the Nike dollar, direct to London from Miami, I'd be home by now.
Oh well.
It gives me chance to reflect ramblingly on the AAAA Account Planning experience. And it will be rambling, I've not really had chance to sort anything out in my head.
Clearly good things
1. The organisation was flawless. We screwed up and set-up our
session in the wrong room but the organisers adapted without a hint of
panic or accusation. Many thanks to them.
2. Planners are lovely. We asked a load of them to play all sorts of silly games with no real hint of a reason to do it and they just dived in with smiles and enthusiasm, when they were perfectly entitled to stare at us sullenly. Thanks to everyone who just piled in.
3. Crispin Porter do good ads. And they talk about them interestingly. I don't think they're doing anything especially new or radical but full marks to their creatives for doing good work and full marks to the planners and social scientists for making it possible.
4. Mark Earls is a treasure. Despite his eminence grise status he always trys to shake things up and say something more provocative than the norm. That (plus brains, savvy etc) is clearly why he gets decent crowds at his sessions every year.
5. It was nice to hear someone speak from the heart without being too sappy like Carl Johnson did. As someone embarking on a new business venture of my own I found that thoughtful stuff.
6. Nick Bareham is clearly enjoying discovering a new world and that's rather infectious and appealing.
7. Piers from PSFK works very hard and makes it seem effortless and fascinating.
8. Discovery is one of those media brands that understands the world it's getting into, and is preparing rather well.
