Northern Planner

What my son's broken arm tells us about working with other people in agencies - and why the best strategists are forgotten

So my son broke his arm in October. Badly, really badly. It's mostly okay now, but took a fair amount of rehab. We were at the hospital the other day for a check up and, like always, he didn't complain at the endless waiting, the pain of getting his (still tender) arm bent all over the place, or anything. 

This is nothing though, next to what he went through during the initial break. Pins put in, genuine pain. Then pins pulled directly out of his arm without anaesthetic. I've never been prouder.

And yet. 

And yet.

Like all parents, it's easy to get frustrated in the hurly burly of the day to day. When he argues over time on the Xbox. Forgetting what you told him two minutes ago.

Normal human stuff. 

Just as it's easy to not appreciate the brilliance of everyday. Playing football in the street together. Arguing over who's better at FIFA. Seeing the latest Star Wars movie (which we both loved). Swimming lessons. Gently winding up his mother. 

Whenever I lose patience, thinking about how brave he was (and is) with his arm always pulls me back.

Just as I always try (and sometimes fail) to stop, to just take in the moments we're having fun just messung around. 

Being a parent isn't the same with people you work with of course.

However, I bet they wind you up frequently and I'm sure there is an everyday flow of great stuff you're so used to you don't even notice. 

I'm also confident there have been moments when you've been incredibly grateful for them. Maybe they've got you out of a tight corner, maybe they've blown you away with something amazing. Maybe they've gone out of their way to help you when they didn't need to.

Just as with my boy, it's easy to focus on the little frustrations and not the daily flow of perfectly ordinary brilliance. Sometimes the here and now can also cloud those big moments you were so thankful they were there.

People are doomed to only notice either the very good or the very bad. The perfectly brilliant of the everyday passes us by. 

And past greatness is soon forgotten, the last experience is always the most vivid (which is why film studies focus group the ending more than any other part of a film. It's always why a really good campaign should end on a high note, not simply stop when the spend does). 

We just don't appreciate a kettle until it breaks. Just as we don't miss people until they're gone. Just as you don't need insurance until something goes wrong. 

Why am I telling you this?

Because it matters more to a strategist than most people.

Your work quickly gets forgotten when the creative work gets done and everybody loves it the executions. 

Unless the creative work is bad. Then the strategy, or the brief, is of course wrong. Then everyone remembers it. 

Yet the moment you try and wow folks, let your ego take over, you're buggered. When you try and do a strategic set up in a pitch like Ted Talk and forget people are waiting for the creative work. When you try and write a wow brief that is a really a thinly disguised creative idea. 

In other words, when you get in the way, rather than liberate others. 

It's not fair, but if you want to wow a crowd, join a band or do stand-up. 

 

 

What the British and booze can teach planners

If you're from the UK, you might remember a bit of a hoo hah when they decided to relax 'licensing laws' - in plain English, the legal times you can buy and drink alcohol in public.

Some thought we would suddenly turn European and drink more slowly, while perhaps while sitting outside with a extra shot of joi de vivre.

Others thought Britain would become the 8th circle of hell, descending into a chaos of debauchery, violence and creating city centre no-go areas.

Britain's modern relationship with booze is soaked in binge-drinking, violence and the image of half naked dolts 'largin it' in Ibiza. So you can have some sympathy with those who thought that more drinking time would equal no violence.

But when the laws changed, hardly anything happened. Alcohol related crime barely moved an inch.

Because, time after time, in experiment after experiment (inluding one where half of people were given Vodka and half given tonic- but all thought they had stiff Vodka and tonics..and all displayed similar displays of drunken behaviour. Another got people of identical age and build to drink identical drinks and observed wildly different behaviour and levels of intoxication), the way that people behave when drunk is based on how society expects them to behave.

Now consider this, in 2003, a Home Office report stated that fighting while drunk was seen as 'an inevitable fact of life' by many.It's part of the culture for some cohorts in British society.

The problem of British behaviour when drunk,  is less to do with British drinking,  as British behaviour itself.

The root cause is the culture around drinking, not drinking.

Yet so much of the national conversation is around curbing alcohol consumption, rather than looking at the root causes of behaviour alcohol is linked with.

What can planner and brand folk in general learn from this? Just the usual.

Avoid bad research.

Avoid making the available facts fit your argument.

Don't get cause and effect in the wrong order. 

Learn to discern between symptoms and fundamental issues.

Try and look for cultural and societal issues rather than artifical 'brand issues'.

This is heavilly borrowed from Mark Easton's excellent Britain etc. Which is the final thing we can, don't read books about marketing and planning. Read books about how culture, people and the endless quest to understand how and why people behave as they do.

So goodbye News of the World

I guess few middle class skinny latte drinking planner folk will lament the demise of News of the World and I guess, from an ethics point of view they might have a point, but that's not really for me to say.

 

I will regret its loss for slightly more mundane reasons.

The News of the World knew its audience and what they were interested in. There was no pretense in being something it wasn't, it had an incredible instinct to know what its buyers were interested in and deliver it.I will miss a direct line into the real beating heart of UK plc, which was invaluable for my job.

Evidence of mistaking what people care about for what you care about is the way broadsheets went Tonto over phone hacking into the lives of the rich and famous, but the public didn't really care that much. When the hacking became about normal people like them, well, you know what happened. That's a problem many politicians, media folk and ad folk have, they just can't relate to real people and what they are really bothered about. There's a lesson in there too somewhere.

 I wonder if certain planners could learn something from an organisation that really took the time to deliver content people really wanted, rather than what would impress their peers. 'twas always thus, but now you can't afford to start with what people care about and work back. What interests THEM, not a small community based around West London,Maddison Avenue or whatever agency hub you might work in. That doesn't mean yo shouldn't seek to change their minds of course, but it needs to be about something they're bothered about in the first place.

By the way.........

Speaking of cadence, (see above and below depending on how you're reading this) with a new baby, the only cadence is that there isn't one. After extended parental leave, I can report that my boy is is beautiful, fit and healthy and I hate being away from him.

I can also report that this blog won't be passing into the realms of the undead just yet. Little and often my well be the way forward.....