Russell Davies

jobs galore

Here's another job you might like. Paul Constable asked me to post it. If you're interested please contact him: paul.constable at samsung.com

Do you think I should be doing this? I'm assuming that it's a good thing to let people know about jobs but I'd be worried if this just turned into a recruitment site.

want a job?

There are some good sounding jobs floating around. You could be a customer insight leader in planning for Digitas Boston. Or you could be a planning trainee at ddblondon. Both good places to work and good jobs to have. I'd be very excited if someone who read about them here ended up with one of these jobs.

attendee generated speech

I'm hoping that, with your help, I can invent a new form of media - derived from Consumer Generated Content. I'm thinking of calling it AGS - Attendee Generated Speeches. I'm talking at this WARC thing - my bit's supposed to be called Brands and Blogs, but I've really no idea what to talk about. Partly because I don't know what the attendees might already know. Is there anyone reading this who's planning on going? What would you like me to talk about? Or if you're not going, and you were going to a thing about Brands and Blogs, what would you like to know? Suggestions gratefully received.

And anyone who thinks that AGS is just a cynical scheme to kick-start some ideas for a lazy presenter is too cynical by half, and should be ashamed of themselves.

flickrvertising

I've been accused of inventing a new form of advertising. God, you wouldn't want that on your tombstone would you? (Even if the accuser seems to think it's a good thing.)

What everyone seems to have missed is that the reason those books are up there is that I'm offering to lend them to people, for nothing. The Amazon link is really there as an extra service - more info etc. (Though obviously if someone wants to buy the book then I'm happy to make a little money through my affiliate number.) I guess this is a 'if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail' problem. If you're an advertising person, everything looks like an opportunity to do advertising. To me it doesn't look like advertising, it looks like an extra link to useful info. But even just typing that just makes me feel like some kind of evil spammer.

Jeez, I'll happily take everything down if it's going to result in the growth of some sort of nasty flickrspam. I hope that doesn't happen, and I hope it's not my fault.

lies, lies, lies, yeah

Inspired by the splendid Guy Kawasaki here are The Top Ten Lies Of Ad Agency Account Planners. In fairness some of them are lies told by agencies, just through the mouths of planners. And I’ll confess, I think I’ve told them all. I'm sure you've all got your own to add at the end.

1. “They always say that. They don’t mean that”. A planner’s key task is often to make sure the research ends up the way it’s supposed to. So there’s always tons of subtle (or not so subtle) meaning management on the client side of the one-way mirror. A top technique is to dismiss anything commonsensical, clear but inconvenient that the punters say as ‘something they always say’ – like it’s just a verbal tick and not something you should actually listen to.

2. “We’re really interested in your feedback here”. We’re not really interested in your feedback. We’re interested in your approval.

3. “This will enter the vernacular”. No it won’t. Whatever trite little phrase we’ve come up with won’t enter the vernacular, it won’t become part of ordinary speech and it won’t therefore deliver tons of media value.

4. “I’m doing groups”. I’m not doing groups, I couldn’t be arsed to come in to work and I’m sitting at home. But you don’t know that. You think planners are always doing groups, so I can get away with this.

5. “That’s how Innocent do it”. Or maybe not Innocent. Maybe Honda or Pot Noodle or whoever’s cool and interesting at the moment. We don’t know how Innocent do it, but we’ve read something in a book about how someone says Innocent do it, and it’s similar to what we think you should do.

6. “We’re going to own yellow”. Or blue or whatever. We’re not going to own yellow. Coke don’t own red. Pepsi don’t own blue. Orange don’t even own orange. So this silly little campaign with lots of yellow won’t let you own yellow. Bananas own yellow. Or custard. We won't. (Creatives love this one, it's normally them who make you say it.)

7. “It’s not statistically significant”. No-one really knows what that means. But it allows you to explain anything except the really disastrous stuff in the tracking study.

8. “I think there’s something wrong with the recruitment”. Allows you to explain the really disastrous stuff in the tracking study.

9. “Here’s a little thought-starter”. Really means – hey, creatives, here’s the thought that solves the whole problem and you don’t need to do any more work, I’ve cracked it, just like that, just write it up and away we go.

10. “I find it more efficient to take notes straight onto my laptop”. I’m not taking notes, these are the most tedious groups I’ve ever been to in my life. I’m playing solitaire.

Honda story

I was complaining to someone the other day, about how the version of my Honda paper in the APG book was so truncated because of the way it needed to be edited, and the lack of colour availability. You lose some of the jokes and most of the pictures. And then it occured to me that I could just put it up here. So here it is. (It's a 10MB pdf, sorry about that, lots of pictures.)

And if you liked this, you can read the one that Stu wrote two years later by going here, clicking on download and scrolling down to 'Honda APG Paper Sept 2005'. (Where I've just realised my thing has been available for download for ages. Ah well.)

one less person to hire

One of the 'hire these people' blog people. has ended up with a job. Hurrah. So he's coming off the list. He's very thoughtfully described his getting-a-job-odyssey here. Blimey. It wasn't like that in my day, we all just stumbled into advertising because we couldn't think of anything else to do.

crazy ad guys and the theatre of insight

This report in Business Week about Crispin Porter reminded me of one of the hidden purposes of planning which we're never really supposed to talk about; the theatre of insight.

The problem with advertising (and a lot of creative businesses) for journalists and clients alike is that the story of the process just isn't that interesting. ('We all sat around and talked about it for a while and then some of the guys came up with quite a good idea and we noodled with it for a bit, argued about it for a bit and it turned into something good'). When a journalist turns up, or when you've got a pitch or something you want a more dramatic story to tell, something with a bit of tension,discovery and ideally some appearance of intellectual rigour. That's where planning comes in (or 'cognitive anthropology' in Crispin's case, I know, I know):

"Two-hour in-home interviews with two dozen GTI buyers, all men 18 to 30, were done in five cities. The researchers sent the subjects an assignment in advance of visits: Make a collage with magazine pictures to illustrate how they felt about Japanese "tuner" cars, like Honda Civics, on which owners tack thousands of dollars in speed-enhancing and cosmetic accessories. Then cut out pictures representing the European tuner cars like GTI and BMW M cars that are accessorized at the German factories. One GTI fan contrasted cutouts of Tweety Bird and a tuner "dude" wearing a chrome dollar-sign necklace to represent the Asian tuner "posers" with images of a black wolf and Ninja warrior depicting the "more authentic and serious" Euro tuner crowd.

Crispin's researchers then asked them to write epitaphs on paper tombstones after the phrase "Here Lies the Japanese Hot Hatch," and recipes that begin with, "My perfect recipe for driving is..." One recipe reads: "One S-curve, a pinch of fishtail, two parts turbo toast, an ounce of hard rock music. Combine and bring to a boil." The strategy drawn from all this was to flog the GTI as tuned in Germany by speed-happy engineers rather than at some U.S. neighborhood retail joint."

It's a bit like the famous Goodby Got Milk research. It's not just great strategy, it's a great creation story. The drama of the story, the thrill of the chase, the excitement of the solution. Sure you could have got to the same place through common sense and a couple of hours around the big table, but that's not the point; planning is drama, planning is story, planning gives you something to talk about. Planning gives you that all time favourite pitch strategy - The Theatre Of Insight.

I'm not knocking this in any way. It's a valid use of the craft, I just think it's worth acknowledging that often what we're doing is looking for an interesting idea creation story, not neccesarily splitting the strategic atom.

looking for a job?

Brains On Fire asked me to post this job offering. Happy to oblige.

If you're interested, talk to Jennifer, don't talk to me.

"Curiosity is a must. Call this a "Jr. Planner" position if you like, but Brains on Fire - a naming and identity company based in Greenville, SC - is looking for more than that. We are in the preliminary stages of looking for a kindred spirit to support our Chief Curiosity Officer and help her (me) continue to develop the insight portion of our process. Please check out our website and our blog, and if you're feeling particularly kindred, email me (Jennifer at brainsonfire dot com) and we can talk interviews and experiences and resumes and whatnot.

I look forward to speaking with you!"

the early bird gets the corner office

Ben at The Design Conspiracy pointed me at this article which confirmed something I'd always suspected - successful people get up earlier than the rest of us. It looks at the work habits of the usual corporate success suspects and reveals the time they're getting up:

Carlos Ghosn - Nissan/Renault - 6
Howard Schultz - Starbucks - 5
Bill Gross - Pimco - 4.30
A.G. Lafley - P&G -  5
Amy W. Schulman - DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary - 5
Hank Paulson - Goldman Sachs - 5.30