Northern Planner

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Blogging isn't what it used to be. These days it's easy to wonder if anyone is listening and if these written blatherings are any use.

It's liberating when you think no one is there of course, because you can say what the hell you like, but only wierdos like talking to themselves.

But then you get emails like the one I got this weekend. from someone who asked for a little help a few months back, showing not only the great work that help contributed to (completely turning the market rules upside down by looking at the real culture around the category), but the fantastic commercial results it generated. 

One cannot deny that blogging is slightly arrogant - to believe you have anything interesting to say is not exactly modest - but it reminded me the whole point for me is to help. I 'became' a planner by myself with little help in a region where the species is rather rare, extremely grateful to planning bloggers back then for sharing their thoughts.

This one story of actually helping someone is worth a thousand comments or a million quotes in Campaign magazine to me.

 

 

The day your child is born is the day you start preparing to let them go

It was our little boy's first day at Jolly Tots (day nursery thing) by himself today. We had discussed if he would be OK by himself, if he would scream for Mummy or anything like that.

When it came to it, he just hurtled in, without saying goodbye and started playing with the other kids.

First time we've experienced that the hardest part of being a parent is letting go.

I read something about a Dad and his teenage daughter. How the Dad fell the shock of loss when his daughter ran to her new boyfriend when she arrived off a train, rather than her Dad.

We got a little of what that's going to feel like today

Not just a book

Mrs Northern got this for Mothers Day.

Yes, it's only a photo book. To be precise, a lovely handmade glossy book of our family photos since just before little Evie was born. But she loves it, maybe more than anything else I've ever got her.

Because:

It's our children. Enough said.

Because it will last forever.

Because it's a one off. A book that's just about us.

Because she can see the effort I put in to edit it all and get it just right.

Because it's a real object that compressed with story and feelings.

This kind of thing wasn't possible a few years ago. We live in magical times.We should remember this every now and then.

 

Simple fun

We took Will and Evie to the zoo last Sunday. I've never seen my little boy s excited. He ran around for nearly six hours in a state of perpetual, about to explode, enthusiasm. Ever day since, he's asked to see the monkeys again.

Evie's turning into a beaming little bundle of joy. I'm so curious about how she'll be different to Will, yet at the same time I don't want to get any older.

In comparison, while he LOVES Cars and Cars 2, he always ends up playing with his little collection of diecast cars, or his train set. Other stuff, even his beloved Thomas the Tank engine, or games on the laptop or Iphone just don't compare.

And none of that stuff, not even his toys compare to visiting the farm down the road and seeing the pigs and cows. The Geese terrify him in the most delicious way.

It doesn't even compare with playing outside and blowing bubbles, or kicking a ball.

In other words he always has more fun when he's playing with someone, or when he's seeing something real. Simple things, inexpensive things.

Uncomplicated times.

 

Books, finally back to books

Baby Evie is sleeping in her own room now and going to bed at a reasonable hour. Which means, oh joy, reading books in bed. I drive to work, I'm busy - bed is the place I read.

The backlog is considerable and has been driving me mad, just sitting there taunting me - the bedside table is just the smallest tip if the iceberg.

Anyway, just finished Norwegian Wood. Perversely, I've read and loved tons of Murukami but never got around to the book that took from him from cult to huge. I've always loved his surreal approach and despite this book being much more straightforward at first, there's as much going on with this book as any other, in fact, possibly more. It's a real skill to pull the extraordinary out of the mundane and he does it in spades here.

And there's a quote I'll take with me forever, "only arseholes feel sorry for themselves". Quite so.

If I was a puppet (tea goodness)

 

Back in the pool soon.

I may have mentioned that I like to swim a lot.

I don't think I've mentioned that I've actually gone swimming about three times in the last 4 months. New baby, having a job and demanding toddler have just meant something had to drop.

I've been doing the gym and getting on the bike, but to be honest, it's been killing me not doing what I really love.

Which is why I'm extremely thankful the mini sabattical is nearly over and we're in a place where I can start to go on a morning again.

To be even more truthful, I'm also a little nervous. For a while, by body will fiendishly resist what I want it to do. It will hurt. I'll be slow and weak.

Which will mean patience and a little determination, and there's nothing like a meaty goal to keep you going.

Not like The Great North Swim and chasing times I did when I was a kid, like before. Something both realistic and sufficiently out of reach. So I'm going to work towards doing a 400 metre medley.

That's four lengths of each stroke in succession - butterfly, backstroke, breastroke and freestyle.

The last three are easy, it's the butterfly bit that's the challenge. I reckon right now, I'll just about be able swim two lengths. Rubbish (to put it in context, when I trained as a kid we used to do 5 x 8 lengths with about 15 seconds between as standard training).

So the first challenge is just to get strong enough to do four lengths fly.

Then be able to continue and do the whole thing without my lungs bursting.

I used to be able to do it in around 5 and minutes. I'll never get close to that again.

Lets see if I can do 7 minutes by the end of the year.

No reason, just because.

Children teach us too

I'm sorry if banging on about kids is boring, I guess it is. Funnily enough I remember, in the days when I used to moderate focus groups more, going mental with parents who couldn't talk about anything without seeing it through their kids' eyes. It's remembering stuff like that ensures I'm determined for myself and Mrs Northern to always have some part of me and us that remains just that. We were two people who wanted to be together way before children and still do.

But, oh, they make you happy. From 4 month olf Evie laughing for the first time this weekend, to 2 year old Will going sledging for the first time on the same day. From him nearly exploding when he got a beleated Christmans present in the form of Lighting McQueen and Mac to Evie pulling at my arm if I dare to talk to someone else when I'm holding her.

I realised something this weekend also. As much as we like to think we educate our children, they do a pretty good job of teaching us things, or at least re-learning them.

For example, it's so much more fun to give than receive when you get older. Every blue moon, something comes along that excites me, that really captures my imagination and makes me really happy (but I have my eye on a new bike). But nothing like it did when I was a child, or even ten years ago. But when you make or buy stuff, or just think of things to do with children, you get outrageously excited for them, or with them and the reaction you get is worth a thousand Prada bags or limited edition trainers.

But despite this, kids are the purest evidence that doing stuff always trumps having stuff. Will always goes back to his little box of metal cars, no matter what we buy him, but nothing will ever match what he was like going to an aquarium for the first time, or the bi-weekly visits to the pet store to see the parrots, or just walking in the park looking for sticks to throw in the river. And as for going swimming.........

Will doesn't know anything about status or fashion, he doesn't even suspect that people are not all nice. The only clothes he really loves are anything that has Thomas the Tank Engine on or Cars. He doesn't second guess anyone or anything. He just gets on with it. One day he'll suffer the same insecurities as the rest of it, but he still reminds me how superficial image and status really are and how liberating it is to see the best in everyone rather than the worst.

Finally, he reminds me that defining yourself by your work is really stupid. To him his Mum and I are just Mummy and Daddy, his world basically (though Evie is creeping into his affections). I like what I dom but it's impossible to take it seriously next to the feeling of being his (and her Father). Nobody needs me like they do. Nothing matter more than being able to hold him when he falls. And I'll tell you something else, the feeling of satisfaction when you win a pitch, see your work run and stuff pales next to seeing him wolfing down the food you cooked or learning to throw.

I've felt other things as keenly as the things I feel around them, but you get more jaded as you get older. Kids remind you what it felt like to be young, when you felt really alive and nothin mattered more than having fun. When the scariest thing in the galaxy was Darth Vader and you ran everywhere because you couldn't wait for the next thing.

Of course, kids make you miss things like going to the cinema when you want, holidays where you please yourself and being able to read a book a week. But that stuff is inconsequential.

Kids remind you the difference between happiness and pleasure.

If you want to know what someone is really like you have to actually meet them

I once met Amanda Holden. Let's be precise, I fainted 5 yards away from her for reasons I won't go through here.

And no, I wasn't star-struck. In fact,I didn't like her. Based on what I'd read and what I'd seen on TV. Which means I didn't like HER I didn't like her image or the accepted wisdom of what she was like.

When I fainted in front of her, it was in a busy hotel reception, she was been fawned over by loads of assistants and was about to sweep outside to the waiting press corps (they were filming Britain's Got Talent). But when I did my sparko act, she stopped what she was doing, picked me up, asked if I was okay and got her assistant to get me a glass of water, plus she wouldn't leave until she was sure I was okay. Amidst all that showbiz hurly burly and the waiting journalists outside, she showed genuine concern and helped a muppet like me.

Which made me realise she probably anything like I was led to believe. She was probably quite nice. She'd certainly been nice to me.

When I was a student, I spent 3 years months not really talking to what I thought was the most pretty girl in the swim team because I couldn't see what she has to do with me and she seemed very aloof. It was only at a reunion thing 4 years after we graduated that she asked me why I never talked to her and admitted she had a 'thing' for m (no I don't know either). I found out she was very shy and found it hard to make friends because everyone assumed she was super confident, super cool and super elite.

Yet again she was nothing like what I'd expected, or even like my superficial impression.

It's a bit like that with research and 'consumers'. Data, segmentation, analytics and all that are great. So's listening to social media conversations etc. But if you think you'll understand what people are really like and what they really care about from this stuff, you're sadly wrong.

(Picture from the wonderful We are What we Do.)

Take social media. So much of what people share on these platforms isn't what they're like,it's an idealised version of who they are, or who they'd really like to be. You won't get much truth from that. Just like the 'conversations' you see do not have the same conditions as real life (being anonymous, or at least not face to face makes you do and say all sorts of things you wouldn't do in the real world).

More to the point, I've banged on about the need to tap into what people really care about, not what your brand's agenda is. Much of that will come from habitually absorbing everything you can in popular culture, but also fishing where other don't fish. Anthropology and sociology papers are a useful bet for example. Not to mention dabbling in behavioural economics and stuff like that. 

But nothing beats meeting them. In their own environment. As soon as you take them out of that, you affect their behaviour, just like a monkey isn't anything like what it's like in the jungle if you put it in a zoo.

In particle physics, one of the core pillars of quantum mechanics is that you can't pinpoint both a particle's position and momentum, by measuring one, you're interfering with it and affecting the other. It's just like that with people, if you want to know what people do or think, you need to meddle with what they're doing as little as possible. An artificiality lit room with 7 other strangers talking about stuff you never usually discuss or have really thought about is as nearly as much 'meddling' as I can think of.

It takes patience and you have to develop the skill for striking up conversations with people you have never met, which is tough for shy people like me, but who said this job was easy?

For example, I spent half a day hanging around a motorbike retailer, talking to the staff and customers. I was shocked by how many women came through the door and completely changed my view of them. From reckless idiots that get in the way of my car to a weird tribe that see themselves as the last wolves in an overly cushioned world of sheep. They all wanted to feel something in a jaded existence. I began to admire them in fact.

I've learned more about Mums over 35 and coffea/tea and biscuits by being around when my, maternity- leave enjoying, wife has her cronies over than any segmentation study (and you know what gents, they don't talk about us).

Just like I was in no real position to judge what Ms Holden was like until I met her, I don't think you can really say you know your customers until you've spent some time with them in their environment.

Fish madness

 

When Will is happy, I'm happy

( I don't put my kids on tinternet too often but he's reasonably oscure, visually at least)

38

I turned 38 yesterday. It's just a number. Like all sybols and signs, it's the context that brings meaning.

So here's some context.

My nephews came to stay this weekend. They roll their eyes when I go on about how all 'their music' is just a rip off of the stuff I liked in the 80's. Just like anybody who grew in the 60's tells me about the 80's.

Ten years ago there would have been lazing around in bed, after a heavy night out. Yesterday we took the kids to see the ducks, I got to do a bike ride AND read the paper from cover to cover.

I'm double the age I was when I started university

I look every single hour of those 38 years (if not more) but I'm just as confused and feckless as I was when I turned 18, 20 years ago.

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Year Resolution (again)

Every year I make the same promise to myself and every year fail ingloriously.

(picture courtesy of Andy Smith)

That promise it to procrastinate less and be on time more.

It has become an unquestioned cliche that agencies tend to work late. Usually justified by the claim that it's a creative process, you need to let ideas ferment by themselves, we've too much to do and so on and so forth.

It's, yes, we're busy and usually have lots on.Yes clients' brief late and demand early. We need time to think, develop and shake things about.

But it's also true to say your not Dali, Mahler, Kubrik or Plath. You're just late.

taking a break see you in new year

Kids are there for us too

I had quite an October all in all. The birth of second child, moved house. It didn't all go swimmingly, not least because baby Evie spent her first week in hospital, the week we were moving house. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, it's not that tough really, but it seemed so at the time. When they say they need to scan your baby for brain damage,it's not something you feel very calm and rational about.

It meant that Mrs Northern was in hospital with Evie for that week too, which meant I was in full charge of my two year boy. I'm lucky, we've always had a close relationship, but something happened that week and we've become even closer. Which is all good, I've often been a little jealous of Juliette having more time with him than I do, even thuough, thankfully, I'm able to be more than a weekend Dad. That one week when it was just myself and him was pretty special amidst the chaos.

It also taught me that parenting isn't all about being there for your kids, in a very fundamental way, you're kids are there for you. They don't support you with kind words, good advice or a cup of warm cocoa or anything, they do it just by being alive. There's nothing that feels like home more than your little boy coming over and giving you a cuddle, or pleading with you to put up his train track.

Not even tea does that.

Isn't she lovely?

My little girl is 6 weeks old. She's just started smiling this week.

When it all comes together.

One the main faults of planning blogs is the habit of portraying the world as perfect. You see it in APG case studies too. If your only experience of life as a planner originated from these sources, you would get a very wromg opinion of the what it's like to do the job.

This stuff tends to propagate the myth that all a planner's job is startling original thinking, stuff that constantly shifts the paradigm. Work hard at examining the problem and all the stuff around, think brilliantly and everything will into the place.

As if everyday was an episode from the A-Team and a Hannibal is loving it when a plan comes together.

It doesn't. For a start, there's lots of very dull stuff to do also. Planners don't spend most of their days composing grand strategy, they're swimming against the tide of pointless meetings, writing decks for clients, Neilsen data and god knows what else.

It doesn't happen at the 'cool' agencies all the time either. Not at WK, not at Mother, not at Crispin Porter. They might megaphone their trophy work, but look at their entire reel and you'll see all sorts of pedestrian stuff and other bits that are just plain wrong. Getting it bang on is bloody hard. These organisations constantly look to do it better, but it's not just about specific departmental excellence.

Planning needs to gel with creative and account handling. More often than not, you need great research relationships and to be able to get on with the media people. Any dissonance here can be catastrophic. The research agency might ask the wrong question if they're pre-testing, or fail to see how the work builds on their original findings for example.

And then there is the client. You need to be able to inspire the client and persuade them. Make no mistake though, buying the best work is always a leap of faith for a client no matter how wonderfully you present it. Few get fired for following the category rules, which means not cutting through, as opposed to taking risks that don't come off. Or LINK testing until it's beating heart is completely ripped out

Then there is the culture of the region you work in. If you work in London, New York or some other 'creative hub' it's more expected to push things than regional outposts like, erm, Sheffield, where I work.

If it's not often it comes to together in Madison Avenue, it's a hundred times harder in Birmingham.

But if you're at a place where 'doing it right' is that much harder, should you give up? No way. If you can't constantly push things to get better, to open the eyes of those around you, I don't see how you do the job. Planning needs to add value or it shouldn't be in the room.

So I don't care where you work, or what client you work on. It's not acceptable to say the client, suits or even the creatives don't 'get it', are too conservative, don't care or whatever. There is always something you can do the make a difference and make things better than they would have been otherwise.You're job is not be right, it is to inspire, persuade and bring change. 

For myself, I made a decisions that I wanted my kids to grow up happy, near family and fields. I wanted to be able to get home for bathtime and stuff. That means my work circumstances are such that it's that much harder to do the kind of work we all want to do. But not impossible. There's satisfaction every day in knowing you made a difference, and the quest to get into that place when everything comes together.

Just once, to do it really right. If you don't believe you can make that happen, even worse, if you don't care, you're in the wrong job.

Double the feeling

One of my silly concerns getting closer to the birth of my little girl was how on earth I would ever love her as much as Will, our 2 year old little boy. He sometimes felt like my entire world and loved, and love him with a fierceness that's exhausting. I was afraid of somehow dividing that up, because I didn't believe there was anything more to give. Foolish.

It's just doubled. The visceral, ridiculous, joyous fierceness is simply X 2. Exhausting.

 

Arcade Fire: No Cars Go

On my favourite bike ride, the last stretch us a mixture of short sharp hills and great flats for psychotically fast sprinting. If I push it, from start to finish, it's the length of this song on the Ipod.

 

Lou Reed and John Cale: Hello it's me

 

The Velvet Underground are not to everyone's taste and, perhaps are a tad overated. But I always loved them and, maybe, love Lou reed and much of Johns Cale's solo stuff more.

Songs for Drella was their collaboration in tribute to Andy Warhol when he died. Not only was it the best of either's work in years, never have two people buried the hatchet in a more dignified fashion.

This track is maybe my favourite. It's manages to be sad, loving and celebratory all at once, tinged with the regret we all feel when we realise we've lost the chance to say what we wanted to someone.

 

 

The Prodigy: Breathe

One the best training songs for ever. It's what waterproof MP3 players were made for.

 

Tori Amos: Me and a gun

Visceral.

 

 

Joni Mitchell: A case of you

Some songs command your full attention every time you play them. This is one of them. I imagine giving my daughter this song when she's teenage, in preparation for the first break up.

 

We're all home

So, after having a baby, moving house, having said baby and her Mum go into hospital it's all over. Or, rather, it's the beginning.

Purple Rain (alternate version)

I've been caught air guitaring to this. This song made we feel what the death of relationship feels like and still makes me think of a certain girl of Polish ancestry.

 

Talking Heads: The Big Country

 

Overlooked. We've all heard Once in a Lifetime though (which has some context as 40 years of age becomes more real with every year)

 

Ryan Adams

After the night  I first met my wife, I couldn't sleep for the week I was waiting for our next date.

This song feels like that.

 

The National: Bloodbuzz Ohio

I like new stuff too.

 

The Blue Nile. Tinseltown in the Rain

I love this. (John Dodds would, no doubt berate me for EMOness) I've only ever met one other person who likes the Blue Nile and I can't get anyone else to listen to them. This song bleeds genius.

 

New Order: Bizarre Love Triangle

The soundtrack to the summer of 1988 in Chicago. In the pool for training at 6am watching the sun come up, then frozen yoghurt and the beach.

One of those summers you didn't want to end.

 

To be fair, we all loved this too (we were 14, don't be too hard on me)

 

Incidentally,I now work in Players House. It used to be a bar Def Leppard owned.

Ben Folds Five: Brick

Perfect simplicity.

 

Home.

It had been quite a week. As I write, my little baby girl is in hospital for the 6th day,with her Mum looking after her (and the NHS' finest). Nothing to worry about, all fine and will be home.

Home is an odd word right now. I'm writing this on a sofa, surrounded by boxes, while Will sleeps in his little bed upstairs in his amidst his own little cardboard city. We're moving tomorrow you see.It also makes you thankful for family who have helped in all sorts of ways,including babysitting, lifting and general support.

But with my family strewn across our home city it reminded me that a house doesn't make a home. People do. You can have the most palatial gaffe, the latest designer furniture and all the mod cons but it's the people that live in the house that matter, not the stuff. I can't wait for us all to be together again.

It's a little daft to think of any house as 'yours' anyway. Before I was born, someone thought the place we're leaving was theirs, just as someone else thought the same of where we're buying. Few people live in the same place all their lives. Like I said, it's the people you live your life with, not where you live it that matter. Or at least that's what I think.

A rainy day in England. And goodbye for now.

Today, not unusual for the UK, it rained a lot. That meant I couldn't play outside with my little boy. No farm up the road to see the moo moo cows and ba bas, no swings in the park.No going swimming either. We're off for his lesson tomorrow. But we have the garden centre.

That's right. The mecca of having 'given up' for any self respecting grasping at youth GRUP.

Well balls to that. My boy loves it. Running amok amidst the, just in, glittering chistman trees. Pointing in awe at the womderfully kitsch gnomes and outsized frogs. But that's nothing next to the petstore.

He can spend hours gazing into the fishtanks, trying to touch the turtles through the glass, cooing over the 'babbits'. Then there's the parrots and stuff.

He loves tapping the cages of the birds and watching them flutter all over the place. Scratch that. It makes him laugh so hard he'll give himself a hernia.

There's magic in the way a toddler laughs. It's never put on like a grown up. It doesn't require a social setting or the right mood. It's a force of nature. He's happy, it's funny and he laughs. That's it. But Will just doesn't laugh, he explodes, dribbling like a demented idiot, guffawing from deep inside his little belly.

Nothing in this world could make me happier that he does.

Except for having another. Which is lucky because it's coming on Wednesday.

There's so much to look forward to, while at the same time feeling determined my little boy will never feel like he's missing out now there's a new one...and feeling equally resolved to be as close to number two as the chestnut flash we already have.

So that's it for two weeks or so (genuinely this time). While we get used to not sleeping again, move house and get used to being four rather than three.

Bye for now.

 

 

Now is the time for Yorkshire Tea Gold

A new baby a week away

Moving house

Scary big work things

There's still always time to indulge in the good stuff

And If there was ever a time to indulge in the extra good stuff, I believe it is now

Old and with no shame

One of the better aspects of getting older is not having to bother with what other people think.

I don't mean mean inconsiderate or ignoring other people's feelings mind, in fact, I can honestly say that's improved with age.

I mean not worrying what other people think of your preferences and choices. I really enjoyed Submarine for example and I think I understand it's supposed to be something middle class, Guardian reading people like me 'should like'.

But I don't care. I just like it very much, it reminds me what it's like to be a boy who is at once fascinated and terrified by girls. I also like how it breathes and resists the urge to rush anything. Too many films rush to the action or the obvious plot device or inciting incident, mostly because the focus groups told them to. And if you're a planner, you know collective focus group wisdom has shit for brains.

On the other hand, I'm at once excited and deflated to be imminently watching the final season of Battlestar Galactica (the new one, not the one with Face from the A Team). It's not as clever as it thinks it is, but I really like multiple plot strands and the embracing of ambiguity. I know this makes you think I'm a Sci Fi geek, but I'm old enough not to care.

I'm also mortified to note it's 20 years since Achtung Baby. That makes me feel old, but it also makes me rather wistful for being 17. I'm supposed to hate U2, aren't I? I hate THEM, of course, I really mean I hate BONO. The hypocrisy, and sheer self importance. But I love this record. I know much is inspired/stolen from Primal Scream and Sonic Youth to name but two, but I don't care. It's still dark, brutal, confused and unsure and makes me feel something (at least it's not Queen). 

I wonder if that's really why kids find their parents so embarassing. It's not what they like, it's that the allow themselves to like it.

 

Second child coming part 2

On the other hand while I love being defined as Dad and all the responsibility that entails, that isn't the whole story.

While I feel less defined by what I do at work and more by what I do at home, there wil always be a little rebel inside that refused to accept mediocrity and can't stop fighting for great work.

There will always be the 'me' that needs to be alone on a bike, that craves the simplicity of the swimming pool, that feeling of doing something you were made to do.

Every now and then, there's the need to cut loose, to drink too much and act very childishly.

Sometimes, you just need to read a book on your own.

Other times, you need to take your wife out and remind each other you existed before your children did and you wanted to be with her because she took your breath away.

Being this other person is not contradictory, but it isn't selfish or hypocritical, as long as there's balance.

Embracing all the stuff that comes with being a Dad, to me at least, just makes the other stuff more special.

To deny you want these other things too sometimes is lying to yourself. But to pretend you can, or even want, to do do as much as you once did is lying too.

I don't really know why I'm telling you this.

Anyway.

Second child coming, part 1

Today is Mrs Northern's last day at work before maternity leave. I could go on about my awe of how she's handled a difficult pregnancy while dealing with an overly energetic toddler, move house (still in progress), look after me through a minor operation and still find the energy to smile and put up with the general frustrations of being married to me, but I won't. Oh, I just have.

Anyway, the imminent arrival or our second baby is becoming much less of an idea and increasingly a real event. It's not as daunting as the first time, but nevertheless, I'm steeling myself again for the sleepless nights and, just as we got used to having evenings and stuff, no time.

That's easy of course, it still amazes me how all of this come naturally. It's not even hard really, it's a joy, the intense pleasure in feeling useful, needed and wanting to be there for people. Of course, it's not like going out fighting in wars, fending off sabre toothed tigers and such, but there's much meaning to be found in caring for someone (soon someone's) far more than yourself, when the most special word in the world is, 'Daddy'.

It throws work into sharp perspective, not only showing up what we do as a little silly, but also as the most important thing in the world. It puts roof over our heads, feeds and clothes us and buys Thomas the Tank Engine stuff.

The most surprising part of it all for me though, it the realisation that suddenly, you don't judge what you do are don't do by what you can get away with, what you want or don't want, or even what it right or acceptable. You want to make sure that when the little ones grow up, they're going to be proud. You want to be able to look them in the eye and tell them you did your best. When they're toddlers, you're a God, when they're teenagers, you're an idiot, but eventually, they're going to able to look at you and be able to judge. I suppose I'm saying I want to survive the scrutiny.

Call centre flashbacks

The two worst jobs I ever did were both in a call centre.

The first was selling insurance for burst water pipes and blocked drains. Phoning people and asking them for money, for something even less interesting and useful than Celebrity Big Brother. People incandescent at having Eastenders interrupted, others hopping mad at me refusing to talk to anyone but 'the account holder' (it was with a water company). You find out a lot about yourself doing a job like that. 

But it wasn't the numbing mind clamp of boredom I found tough, it wasn't the abuse. It was the feeling of being excluded. You don't work in a call centre if you're doing amazingly well in life and every call was a little exposure to the kind of lives that seemed in another dimension to me back then. You could hear happy families chattering in the background, kids answered the phone and shouted for mummy or said Dad wasn't home yet, or partners calling to their beloved.

There's that story of African forest dwellers who laughed themselves silly at the tiny trees when they left the forest for the first time, not realising they were actually far away. It's a bit like that working in a call centre in my view. You can be perfectly happy with economy baked bean, cycling everywhere because you can't afford the bus, bedrooms with mould in them and even no girlfriends, but that's much, much harder when you are physically exposed to how the other half live.

I'm a little luckier these days, but I've never forgotten how it felt, those calls with my nose pressed against the glass, looking at a life that seemed very, very far away. You won't be surprised that I'm very nice to people who cold-call me, no matter how invonvenient it is.

The other call centre job was both worse and better. It was better because people called me instead, for something they wanted. It was worse because they had a medical condition and needed 'screening' before they could get travel insurance. I got the lot, cancer in remission, terminal illness. Tears, impotent rage (not at me at their lot). Of course, most calls were just boring blood pressure, diabetics and sprains, but every now and then there was a searing reminder of the how transient and occasionally cruel life can be. It was a very different intrusion this time, into the way different people deal with things - from denial to defiance, from despair to wild optimism.

Most of all, it was a window into the incredible bravery in everyday life.

That was really the case with the first call centre job too. I always knew I wouldn't be doing this for long, some of the people I did it with had no such knowledge.

What a night in a pub tells us about the need for humanity in agencies

I went to a pub quiz last night. With my in laws. A small pub where they serve good beer, they don't have Sky and they don't play music. That's right, I'm approaching middle age.

Anyway, I had a chat with the landlord. He's leaving the pub and new tenants are coming in. He's not retiring, he hasn't got anything else lined up. He's, to quote him directly, 'running away'. This is a man who doesn't want riches, he just wants run a nice pub  that's like they used to be, and be able to afford to live.

The pub is thriving, but he can't stand to work for the brewery anymore. He used to love it, but since they were taken over by a bigger group, they've made his life impossible. So he's leaving his life's work, not much but it mattered to him.

Why am I telling you this? Because out there in the real world, beyond our fake world of NHS rimmed glasses, 'brand innovations' and aching coolness is an extraordinary world of very normal people that's full of more passion, drama, romance, tragedy, heroism and importance than most people in adland can imagine, if they even bother to try. That's what great stories are about, that's what great communications are about.

It's not just ads and stuff though. Most of the movie's released are big on 'talk value' and low on heart. Take the sci fi genres. Compare Transformers bollocks:

 

With ET:

 

I think people miss the point about Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. Both may have great special effects and stuff, but they're stories about people you care about. People in cinemas for the final Harry Potter film are actually cheering and crying.

This is one of the problems with even the best campaigns. agencies create So many of them are high on talk value and low on heart.

The stuff people actually care about. I'm not saying that shouldn't be done in an entertaining way, quite the opposite, it needs to be jaw droppingly great, better than the stuff it's interrupting. But like ET was insanely great, but also a story about a lonely little boy (and so was Harry Potter) our work needs the beating heart of humanity at it's centre, not just influences from German cinema or the latest fad for brand characters (what the competitors don't get about Compare the Market is that people respond to humanity of the character and the way he doesn't know he's funny.

 

There's a story about misunderstandings and the fierce pride humans have in things they've built themselves, no matter how irrelevant it is to everyone else...that's where an annoying Opera singer goes wrong. He might be a brand icon, 

 

but he's just, well, annoying).

This spellbinding work for Chrysler is about people, specifically, the deep romance America has with the values of hard work and perseverance and the right for everybody to live with dignity (or that's what I think).

 

One final thing about my friend in the pub. He's like lots of people who work in agencies. Most of them want to do great work, they want to work somewhere they feel pride in. They want to work with interesting people. They don't really care about their face in Campaign or doing a TED talk. They just want to do what they love with a level of security and fun. Because let's face it, if working in an agency isn't fun and stimulating, why else would you do it? But most of them work very, very hard in spite of the huge groups most of them now work for, you know the ones to whom they are just a number, where their livelehoods can be taken away from them with the flick of a pen. The ones that do their best to extinguish every flicker of originality, personality and spirit in everyone who works for them.

You wonder how many people take the decision of my pub friend. Not because they're retiring, not because they're off to something else great. But because they've lost all the joy in something they should love.

10 things that make me realise I'm approaching middle age

1. I can go into Marks and Spencers and consider buying stuff that isn't food
2. Some of the 'retro' fashions are stuff I still wear from last time around
3. I approach a night in, all by myself, with glee
4. I spend more on food than I do on alcohol
5. I prefer to read a physical newspaper
6. I refuse to see the point of Lady GaGa
7. I don't have the time for a hangover on a weekend
8. I haven't slept in past 8am for 2 years
9. My nephews talk about 'the 80's' like I once talked about the '60's'
10. I realise that many of the things my parents said were actually right

Dad stuff and doing something worthwhile

THis is an unashamed Dad post. If the thought of that bores the pants off you, look away no.

If you're still here........

It's been an interesting week. We've had the 20 week scan if our second child. Words are completely insufficient to describe how this feels so I won't bother. Seeing your unborn child blink is amazing. I can't wait to meet him/her and find out how different he/she is to our loud, joyfully demented little whirlwind of a boy.

In the same week, that same boy was really ill. We had to take him into A&E and, thankfully, he's fine, but holding him tight, as he cried his eyes out with a sky high temperature, looking up at me, wanting me to make it better made me realise what I really love about being a parent.

Don't get me wrong, it's fun. Will's my partner in crime and his mother rolls her eyes at how stupid we both are. But all that pales next to the hard stuff: The nights you're kept awake, putting a smile and engaging in hide and seek at 5am because someone is up and wants to play, no sleep ins for 12 years, those book you've no time to read, those films you never get to see. The copious amounts of baby sick. The tantrums.  It's fantastic.

It's partly the feeling of someone needing you,  (no one will ever love as completely and without agenda as your small child) but it's also  doing something that's hard enough to be worthwhile. In world of easy options,  labour saving short cuts and simulated experiences, I bet I'm not the only Dad that feels more alive with his child anywhere else.

Off

This is the last post before the annual spring pilgrimage to Mum and Dad's in Cornwall.

Only two years ago, I was looking forward to slowing things down, outdoor swimming, flailing in waves, rugged walks, over indulging on Mum's cooking, clotted cream and drinking cold Guinness while the sun goes down, sea salt still suck to my body.

I still am, but there will be much less of it, due to something else I'm looking forward to even more.

To be honest, I've been waiting for this moment ever since my little boy was born. This is our first summer trip when he can walk, or to be honest, hurtle from a to b like a demented twin of 'Dash' Parr:

  

I can't wait to get him on the beach, race him into the sea, build sandcastle and watch him discover rock pools and pebbles with the unbridled marvel and joy you only get when you're under 5.

I grew up spending my summers here. I can't describe how much I can't wait to share it with him.

See you in a week or so.

Will

 
My little boy is 18 months old and while I miss him as a baby sometimes, it feels really special right now, partly because we're communicating. He understands what I'm saying and amidst his own gibberish are proper words and even half formed sentences.

But it's the things we get to do together now that I really love, like when we're sat on the sofa and he clambers down to get a book, hauls himself back up to read it together, then clambers down to go through the whole process again and again. The mayhem in the bath (to the eternal frustration of his Mother). There's the endless running in the park, chasing Daddy and chasing him, until he's tired and the little arms reach out to be picked up.

It's exhausting, but he's the most fun I've ever had. Wonder what number 2 will be like?

 
 

Object 6. Tea straining tea pot

Next in the pointless history of me in 100 objects is this:

 
I'm something of a purist when it comes to tea - always made in a warmed pot, pou r the milk in the mug first etc. I'm also pretty loyal to my beloved Yorkshire Tea.

But my Grandmother, who instilled much of this ritualistic fetish wouldn't be proud of me. She always used leaves. She didn't care about the mess when you cleaned the pot and I can still see her now, with her little tea strainer over the cup, making sure no bits got in my drink. I loved her very much, she was so kind, never spent any money on herself, she saved it all for her daughter (my Mum) and us.

I remember there was always an aura of sadness and loneliness around her. She didn't want for friends, and she lived until she was 90 largely by keeping active. Charity shops, the over 60's club, she did it all. But her husband, her Fred,dies before I was born and despite living a full life, she always missed him terribly. And when she died, ten years ago now, I missed, and still miss her.

So in honour of her, I bought this teapot to do it properly. And it does taste better, but it's not just right. My Grandmother would have ignored the new fangled contraption in favour of a proper china pot and her tea strainer. And she's right, some improvements might make things more convenient, but they don't make things better.

So I'll be buying some more leaf tea, a proper strainer and every now and then, do it properly and raise my china cup to the memory of the kindest woman I ever knew.

New trainers

I got them.

 

Whitby, Singapore and Freddie

So I was working in Singapore last week. Quite a change from the week in Whitby that preceeded it.

 

 
This car thought it was a swan.

 
Anyway, very impressed with the tea in Heathrow.

 
 
I got lots done, but still managed to get a couple of beers with Freddie.

 
Two beers wasn't nearly enough time, Fred was great company. Amidst discussing fatherhood (including one of my first public pronouncements that we're expecting another child - me and Mrs Northern I mean, not Freddie and I), what it's like to work for Nigel Bogle and the joys of TBWA, Fred was really nice about me getting totally and having to come get me.

A pleasure.

Being a foodie, I took full advantage of the cuisine.

 

 

But after all that, I couldn't wait to get home to a proper cup of tea, my long suffering wife and my slightly deranged little boy. 

Failure, but Account Planning School of the Web is coming soon

I was going to publish the next Account Planning School of the Web project today (if you don't know what the hell that is read this), but I've run of time. A miserable failure, I know.

 

And it won't happen next week, since I'm off to go lo-fi doing family, non-work things away from phones wireless and such.

So the project will be up a week on Tuesday.

See you in a week or so, tara.

Sometimes

All I want to do is drop everything and go do something makes me feel alive, that works by body so hard I can hardly breathe or stand. The mind is at once clear and totally present in the moment.

No internet. No Ipod. No Twitter. No TV. No orders. No duty. No one.

Just me. Mostly swimming, sometimes riding my bike like there's no tomorrow (hopefully in the rain).

Then putting on something warm and making a proper cup of tea. There's nothing quite like the feeling of 'good tired'.

Obects 5, Nike Air Tech Challenge

So the latest in My History through 100 Objects are trainers bought in around 1990, sadly long demised.

 
 

Apart from a, now sorted,  wobble over sweat shops etc I have an irrational love for this brand. Not as a strategist mind, but as an emotionally driven human being. In fact, locically, all planners should be immune to brands, since we're supposed to know how they work, but we fall their irrational lure because we're still people with a deep need to construct and share our identity like everybody else.

Walk into any boutique agency and look at the sea of check shirts and thick rimmed glasses if you don't believe me.

Anyway.

I remember at school,it must have been around 1988, everyone had Nike Air Pegasus, but I can't say I was particularly interested until I saw this ad.

 

I loved playing tennis but hated the culture that went with it in the UK.

Juniors should be seen and not heard.

We encourage you to wear white.

Does your face fit?

It's not polite to want to win.

Rules. Conformity. A bastion of middle class. I was brought up in a 'well to do' market town. Naturally I hated it.

That ad was everything I wanted in tennis. So I saved the money I earned from working in our local sports shop on weekends and bought a pair of 'Hot Lava' trainers.

Horrifically gharish and ugly. That was the point. And yes, I know how quaint it sounds, little middle class boy thinks he's a rebel buying trainers. It is silly, but brands are silly, they're irrational.

Somewhere in my subconscious, I've never forgotten how that felt and it's only been enforced by over 20 years of other ads and stuff. Despite demonstrating a rebelious streak by opening my mouth these days, rather than uniform, I still only buy Nike, anything else just wouldn't feel right.

By the way, if you know where I can get a pair of these trainers again, let me know, I'm going through some sort of grasping at youth retro thing (that's an invite for spam comments if there ever was one).

 

I'm an idiot. Good.

 

When I started out as a planner I didn't really have a clue what I was doing. No planning director mentor type person, little time spent with planners as a distinctly average suite none of that. All I got was a a few (useful) APG courses, the generosity of planner blogs and the suspicion I'd never really been a suit, but a sort of planner who always always lost, forgot to invoices and far too shy.

And that is why I'm convinced I've survived out here where planners are both rare and, largely unwanted. Much of 'being a planner' has involved figuring out what a planner actually is. And that has largely been a good thing.

 

 When you're a little scared because you don't know something you really should, you work bloody hard to make up for it and, here's the good bit, the lack of constraints from 'rules' provides all sorts of possibilitily that's absent from 'doing it properly' .

Contrast that with knowing it all -  you stop trying, you stop developing and just like a shark, when you stop moving forward, you die. When you're no longer an idiot, you're fishfood.

That's why I still love it when I'm nervous, when I don't think I quite know what I'm doing. It's those times, when you're Using the Force, when all you've got is your instincts, when you're the most likely to do something great, that no one else will because you won't be doing it like them; for Gods sake, you don't KNOW how to do it like them. I like it when I'm making it up as I go along.

Which is why I like stuff, people and situations that shock me to death, make me uncomfortable, have no respect for me at all (yes I know that's everyone) and make me mad, angry and even scared. That's why I like digital stuff, lets be honest, no one really knows how to 'do it', come to think of, no one knows how to 'do' old school advertising either, they just try and bring in 'sciency' rubbish that makes it look that way - sometimes they even believe the sciency rubbish.

There's another by product of not knowing anything. It doesn't have much respect for authority and experience it doesn't have any time to kiss someone arse for what they did 10 years ago or even 10 minutes ago. 

The problem with tried and tested people with all that experience and knowledge is that they tend to do things the same way every time and, according to Einstein, doing the same thing over and over, with the expectation of a different result is the very definition of insanity (I'm presuming this was before anyone was getting to grips with quantum mechanics by the way) which is what 'The Disruption Agency' is such a contradiction in terms. As soon as you have a process for Disruption (and believe me they have. In triplicate) guess what happens? Dead right.

So if you're in am agency that 'doesn't do it right', if you haven't got a world famous, genius mentor, if you've been asked to do something right out of your comfort zone, your head feels like it's going to explode, you don't know what you're doing or how the hell you'll figure it out...good. That's right where you want to be as far as I'm concerned. Figure it out, make it work, you're probably about to do the best work of your life. 

Don't accept what someone else tells you just because they're older, more important, more famous or whatever. Be a pain in the arse, question everything; authority, the process, the ideas, the research. Everything.

Forget all that 'you can't break the rules until you know what they are' claptrap. You're at your most lethal when you don't even know what they are.

Nothing much happened this morning

Some days are better than others, some days are worse. Most days are pretty much ordinary and slip by unnoticed.

The first cup of tea is always the best, naturally made a little more special using a properly warmed pot

 

Porridge for breakfast

 
But jazzed up with some rhubard compote. Yes, it looks revolting but it tastes like heaven. Porridge is, of course, the breakfast of champions, complex carbs with all that slow release energy, which was much much required for:

Sitting in a room, putting things on a wall and tapping away on a quaintly out of date laptop

Producing nothing worthwhile in the first hour or so apart from some wall magnet art, thankfully making some sort of progress eventually, to be celebrated by more tea

 And that is an average morning in the achingly, dynamically hip life I lead. Bet you Soho, Shoreditch and Madison Avenue lot don't feel so pleased with yourselves now eh?

In updated news, work's very own chef made Prawn Laksa for lunch. Nothing ordinary about that. Like I've said, ordinary moments can be made special with a little effort.