Northern Planner

Diminished heroes.

"The sophistication of modern sport workd against freakish solo-domination. In skill- centred sports rather than purely physical sports, some records are virtually unbreakable"

Which means..

"There truly was a time when great men were greater -but human progress means those days witll never come back, there really will never be another Don Bradman"

Which is immensely sad. It seems like blokes need high mimetic heroes today more than ever.

From 'What Sport Tells Us About Life" by Ed Smith. If you fresh insight into sport,or life for that matter, because sport is really a mirror for everyday life, you should read it.

This also puts the arrogance of planners into sharp focus. It's not that most are genius strategists, it's just that others are even less good. 

My career in a nutshell..........

 

How champions are really made and what planners can learn from it

I'm reading this book.

It's a must for anyone who wants to understand how superhuman sports performers REALLY got that good. I think it also provides a great lesson for planners.

The main thrust of the book is that incredible performance in any field isn't determined by talent, what matters is the work you put it. In essence, practice DOES make perfect, as long as there is lots of it and the kind of training you do is always pushing you towards slightly unattainable goals.

Champions are made, not born.They just put more hours in and fill those hours trying to do things they can't quite do just yet.

Planners have loads to learn from this. First and foremost, don't believe that rubbish your brain being wired the right way or not, you can train your mind to operate differently. If you're an Account Exec that hates schmoozing and thinks contact reports are really, really boring, start learning to think like a planner now....

Start talking to them about their work and how they go about it, they'll only be too happy to share, no one tends to make any effort to talk to planners unless they really have to.

Think about the creative work you like, try write what you think the brief might have been, get feedback from planners and creatives, do it a lot.

Cultivate a curious mind, read lots of stuff that has nothing to do with advertising, watch lots of popular culture stuff and every month, and every month, from what you are constantly absorbing, share three things you believe are really relevant and useful to your client and the category at large.

Start getting hold of the lots of data to do with your category. Get planners, the client's research agency or your analyst (if you have one) to take you through what they look for and how they find patterns in numbers. Start doing this yourself.

There's lot more of course, but as a start, if you begin to work hard at doing and thinking planner type stuff, if you want to be one, you can. Oh, and since the biggest criticism of suits within and outside agencies is that they don't think, they just sell, you'll make yourself the best suit in your agency anyway.

So don't believe the hype about rock star planners and so called 'genius' planning directors. They were not born that way, it's the benefit of experience and hard work. That's right, great planners are not cleverer than anyone else, they just work harder.

Cadence and leaving things in reserve for sport (and the day job)

When you're a serious athlete you live a life of no half measures. Every training session is flat out (until you're tapering down for competition), there is no challenge, no pain or suffering that has not been addressed by the time the big day comes.

That was my life for a while, and it was appropriate for then. But that kind of approach is not sustainable when you start to live life as an ordinary mortal. I still train pretty hard..and more often than is strictly normal, but different.

And I think that difference is all about cadence and rhythm. Proper athletes build up a terrifying momentum, day in, day out, giving it all. It really hurts at first, and then you hit a groove. The pain doesn't go away, but it becomes manageable, joyful in many ways. The momentum is there, you're on your way, and once the cadence is there, on you go. That's why injury is such a problem, it's not just missing on precious training time, it's having to find your rhythm again.

There's a different rhythm to training for ordinary mortals. At least for me - I can't work to utter exhaustion day in-day out anymore. If that happens, it's so much harder the next day. What seems to work is still working extremely hard, joy in effort, in pain...all that. But now I keep something back. There's an art in going very far, but not too far. That little bit left is kept in reserve for next time, and then the time after that and so on. And a new rhythm emerges.

I think there is something in this for all sorts of things. Especially working in an agency. Let's face it, while it's not coal mining or nursing, it's not the easiest of jobs. We work long hours and we work hard. You find your own way of navigating this - mine tends to be coming in extremely early and leaving relatively reasonably. But on top that, working flat out just leaves you with burnout, and doing bad work.

So once again, push yourself, don't be happy with alright or good enough, enjoy the late night pitch buzz. We're all this because we like ideas, we like the colour, we enjoy a bit if stress. But every day, just try and leave a little bit in reserve. Build up your rhythm, know each night when you leave you have just a little bit left. It puts you in good stead when you have to pull one of those all nighters and, in the end, you'll be better at your job.