Russell Davies

Book tag

There's now a book tag going around, like the Musical Baton. Cup Of Java tagged me, which is nice, but I'm now starting to worry the whole thing's getting a bit spammy so I'm not going to pass it on.

Anyway, it's a good opportunity for me to demonstrate what a Philistine I am...

Total number of books owned:

Couple of thousand? Most of them products of living in Portland for five years - Portland's the place where second hand books go to die.

The Last Book I Bought:

Not The End Of The World by Christopher Brookmyre. Not really started this yet, but at the moment I'm reading a new Brookmyre every three or four days. You can race through them, they're funny and clever and full of explosions and shootings.

Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me:

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Imaginative, funny scifi. And the best scifi writers are like the best planners - they draw all kinds of random threads together, they imagine possible futures and they tell compelling stories.

The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte. I get the sense that Tutfte isn't that nice a bloke. And his stance on PowerPoint is ridiculous and over-simplistic (which is ironic given his stance on the presentation of information) but he makes the most gorgeous books ever. And they're full of wisdom and provocation.

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. As with the Stephenson, except when you're dead bored, stuck at Schiphol, you can sometimes pretend you're a character in this.

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers. Brilliant book. I've read this dozens of times. About a murder at a British advertising agency in the 20s or 30s. Blustery account guys. Dilettante copywriters. Irritating clients. Drugs. They're all in here. Nothing changes.

so you're a trainee planner...

This is a response to Lisa's comment below. She's got a trainee place as a planner and she's looking for advice. I've been a bit slow about this. Sorry.

Here are some random thoughts from me, hopefully other people will add theirs. I'm hoping so because I'm not sure I'll be able to come up with anything non-obvious.

Firstly, be pleased and proud. There aren't a lot of trainee planners around and you're right I don't think people will know what to do with you. But you've done dead well to get hired, so you must have something special about you.

1. Generate enthusiasm

Planner's are mostly aspiring academics and/or intellectuals. So they're often tempted to do the cool brainy thing; all knowing cynicism and ironic detatchment. Don't be drawn in. Not many can get away with it, and it annoys the hell out of your colleagues, who'll be tempted to hate you anyway because you don't appear to have a real job.

Be enthusiastic, positive and optimistic. Do a lot of offfering to help, you won't get taken up on it a lot because it's often too much trouble to brief someone than to do it yourself. But you should offer.

2. Make friends

The obvious thing to do is suck up to all sorts of senior people and if you can make friends with impressive senior people then great, but you probably won't see enough of them to do that. So make friends with everyone you can.

Hang out with that junior creative team who no-one seems to have any time for, or that regional account person who everyone ignores. a) they've got stuff to teach you and they'll probably take the time to do it (senior people won't take time to train you and they can't remember how they did all the basic stuff anyway) b) they won't be junior forever.

It's especially important to make friends with all the people who actually get stuff done; admins, production, traffic, travel, TV, IT. A lot of your first year will be about getting documents made, or videos or stuff, you probably won't be making lots of ads or meeting lots of clients. So you need to get the agency machine working on your behalf. You need to know how to get things photocopied when the photocopiers are all broken. Or how to make that presentation you've got to do to your planning director look really cool. Don't dismiss these things as trivial or beneath you. Most of agency life is execution not strategy, you need to know how to get things done.

3. Collect ideas

You should be trying to build a personal portfolio - not just the things you've worked on, but the things you've thought of, the things you've noticed. Make sure you notice and collect everything that happens. And, make sure you collect your own opinions. Look at all the ads your agency makes, work out what you think of them, have an opinion on them. Be ready to talk about that. You should probably get yourself ready to have opinions on everything. Whether you stay where you are, or whether you move, you're going to have to get used to talking about communications and offering an opinion - so start practicing.

4. Read And Watch

You should be devouring all kinds of books and thinking about brands right now. All the usual suspects. Adam Morgan. Malcolm Gladwell. All the APG books. Mark Earls. Jon Steel. All them.

But the more interesting and useful stuff will be the documents and presentations that the people in the agency generate.

Because they'll be generating stuff about subjects that are too small for anyone to write books about. Fishfingers and Buses and Yellow Fats and Consumer Perceptions Of Interest-Rate Led Advertising.

This stuff is going be your trade so you need to start finding out what it looks and smells like. And you need to work out what's good and what's bad. Read every document you can get hold of, go to every presentation they'll let you attend. Steal from the good stuff, work out why the bad stuff's bad. Start to develop a personal presentational style before you get infected too much with plannerly-ness.

5. I've run out of steam.

Anyone got anything else?

Derby In Gloom

Took this while driving into Derby last week. It's supposed to say 'Derby in Bloom' but doesn't really. What makes it better is I then saw a report in the Derby Evening Telegraph saying the Derby In Bloom people are aware, but aren't sure whether it's due to vandalism or just the way the plants have grown.

The topper is that they go on to say that the same thing happened last year and they're not sure what the cause was then either.

I love that. That's the East Midlands spirit; embrace failure, resist change. We rule.

work a bit and fight for time off

I just found this in a drawer. Bought it on my last trip to Portland. I like it a lot. Wonder what the European version would be?

fat controlling

Great excitement in the house today. We got an email from Sir Topham Hatt. We're going to the Thomas The Tank Engine 60th birthday celebrations in a week or so and The Fat Controller himself emailled us with suggestions for the day. More brands should have fictional characters who can email you and cause this much excitement.

out late

My mate Ben took me to see The Chemical Brothers last night. fantastic to see that the Great British public are rejecting all this nonsense about dance being 'over'. The place was packed.

I always like the desultory dancing acts like The Brothers Chemical do - especially when they raise a single arm like a platform inspector announcing the departure of a drum pattern.

the force is strong in this one

more

Be The Planner

Most of the emails I get about this site are people asking how to get into planning. Which just goes to show how fascinating all my pictures of Arthur are. So in a bid to offer a little bit of public service, I'm going to share some thoughts about that. And then hopefully other planners will add their thoughts too and the world of the would-be planner will be immeasurably improved.

I'm going to start with what kind of person you need to be, to be a good planner. This is about temperament, rather than skills. And, NB, its based on my own peculiar view of the world.

1. You Need To Be Interesting

Which means someone who's Interested in stuff. Planners tend not to have much power. They have influence. They're often competing for attention - of their clients or of the creative people - the best way to win that attention is to be interesting. So you need to be good at presenting, talking, listening, writing and you need to be interested in what you're doing.

2. You Need To Be Broad

See Creative Generalist. Planning is, for the most part, not about originality or startling creative breakthroughs. It's about making connections between seemingly un-connected stuff. Or taking lessons from one category to another. You need to be able to get interested in, and up-to-speed with all sorts of odd things, pretty quickly. Yellow fats one day, mobile telephony the next. All the time being able to talk about top directors and photographers. And exciting new regression analysis tools. And you should want to read the HBR, Blueprint, Heat and The Beano. You need to be numerate, literate and visually competent. You need to be happy to talk to all kinds of people about all kinds of things. (This is where I fall down. I'm too shy to be a good researcher.)

3. You Need An Enthusiasm For Brands And Communications And Advertising And That.

Yes, lots of your friends think brands suck and are manipulative and are ruining the world. If you think that, then a) you're mostly wrong and b) you probably shouldn't be a planner. If you think they're just trivial in the larger scheme of things, then a) you're mostly right and b) you probably shouldn't be a planner.

4. You Need To Be Happy Not To Be The Hero

Planners don't do much on their own. They're always part of a team. The clients build the brand. The creatives make the ads (or whatever). Account management have the power. You're always part of a process - never at the end of it. So you have to be comfortable with never being the hero; never being the striker. The best you can hope for is mid-field general. If you want to be a hero you have to sublimate it into something else, like starting your own blog.

Anyone got anything else to add?

Next time I'll get to skills. And then talk about the good and bad bits about the job.

account planning
brands
advertising

baton down the hatches

things has passed the musical baton, which has made me anxious, because I'm not sure I know five people to pass it too, but I'll worry about that later.

Total volume of music on my computer: 41.85 GB representing 7264 songs, most of which I don't like, according to my ipod shuffle behaviour. I'm always shuffling, never listening. There's probably that much again on vinyl. And I seem to like that stuff a lot more. Perhaps it's just because there's not a convenient shuffle button on a turntable.

The last CD I bought Billy Crystal presents The Milt Gabler story. Fantastic.

Song playing right now: You're In A Bad Way by Saint Etienne. (From Smash The System, Singles And More)

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

ABC: The Look of Love
Genesis: Supper's Ready (live from Seconds Out)
Major Force: Return Of The Original Art Form
The Carpenters: Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft
Trouble Funk: Drop The Bomb

Five people to whom I'm passing the baton: Richard, Anne, Gareth, Dave and Sergio.

soft play, vader cake, birthday

Arthur's 5th birthday party today. 5. Already. Blimey. In a big church-hall-like place with lots of big soft-play things. Soft play is a one of those things that's better than it used to be. We didn't have soft play when I was 5, just hard play.

Even at a party for 5-year olds, I end up in the kitchen. Beyond the counter and the parents you can see The Great Custardo working his magic on the kids. A top man. The children adored him.

The Vader cake. This was Sainsbury's response to the Star Wars cake dilemma. We're going to try making a Millennium Falcon cake next week.

You can guess what he's wishing for.