LIFE MOVES PRETTY FAST...

Why the IPA Search grads are the Chief Strategy Officers of tomorrow

A while back the IPA asked me to deliver the graduation keynote to the grads who had completed the IPA Search Summer School. They asked me to talk to them about the future and my advice for their careers moving forward.

One of my many learnings from my WPP mentor Jeremy Bullmore is to treat every audience regardless of level with time and respect. So I sat down and did some serious thinking about the world of Search and the skills that I thought the discipline unlocked.

This is where I netted out - I think that these Search grads are the Chief Strategy Officers of tomorrow.

Why do I think that?

This slide tries to sum up why:

In a nutshell I think that the grads who are immersed in the world of Search have a better understanding of Brands, Technology, People and Culture than anyone else in the agency world.

The old traditional view of a Planner is someone who understands the consumer and represents them as the agency develops work. This could be done through focus groups, research panel information, ethnographic studies etc. But the fact is that its through the words that people type into Google that give you the best sense of a brand's health. Search terms capture people's inner-most feelings in a way that focus groups never do. So these grads have their finger on the pulse in an utterly unparalleled way.

So keep an eye out for the IPA Search Grads of 2012 and if you have a Search division in your agency and you don't know the guys who are working there, then make it your new years resolution to go and take them out for coffee and find out more about what they do and what they think.

My bet is that you'll be talking to a CSO of tomorrow.

How to pitch and win - lessons from London 2012

I love pitches.

I love the adrenaline.

I love the tension.

I love the brutal focus on a client problem and  the relentless concentration on a strategic and creative solution.

I love working out how best to tell the story that sells the strategy and creative ideas.

I've wanted to meet David Magliano since reading the chapter on the London 2012 bid in Jon Steel's excellent book, Perfect Pitch (best book I have read on how to pitch and win) David's pitch strategy for the bid is a world-class example. He talked at an event at the IPA on the 27th as part of their "Pitching Legends" series. What a speaker! If you ever get the chance to go and hear him talk move mountains to do so - you really won't regret it.

I am going to try and encapsulate his story and share what I took out.

The first thing that David asked the audience to do was to think about the audience, the members of the IOC. He wanted us to put themselves in their shoes. He then showed us the first 30' of each potential host cities opening video - Paris, Rio, Madrid, Moscow, New York and finally London. Each video felt like a love story to a city - beautiful, stirring, emotional. Expansive cityscape shots, fly over views and smiling friendly people. London on the other hand started with footage of a sprinter at the beginning of a race and then showed the story going backwards to that moment when as young child in Africa this boy was inspired by grainy footage that he was seeing on a TV screen of London 2012. This wasn't a film selling a city, this was a film selling a vision - a vision of using the power of a London games to inspire young people all over the world to choose sport, a vision of re-connecting the ideals of the Olympic movement to millions of young people and a vision of legacy. It dramatized a problem and showcased a solution.

It still amazes me that so often agencies still choose to start their pitch with their credentials, Magliano calls it "the plumbing." He said "I trust that you have offices in the right place." Get to the heart of your thought right from the start, build that emotional connection from the outset, show you understand the problem, demonstrate empathy and understanding and then work from there.

The London 2012 bid script was so tight, each word was important. not a single word was extraneous. There was one phrase in particular that I just loved: "As leaders we have a duty to reach beyond our own time and borders." It's beautiful, like poetry even. It also makes the audience feel that its not a choice between cities, its a vote for the belief in the lasting legacy that the Games can bring. "What city," they asked, "has the vision that best serves the Olympic vision?"

In the Q&A David was asked how they could prove that London was more likely to inspire young people than New York or Paris. David's response was fascinating. "We didn't have to prove it because no-one else claimed it." I asked whether any other city had a similar singled minded thought that there pitch was based on, he said no and that they all  had multiple messages and all sold the city, not an aspiration.

Some other take outs - Authentic stories not just research facts: Seb's story of being 12 and being taken in a school hall to watch the Mexico City Olympics was hugely moving because it was authentic and because it turned Seb into a walking case study of what the London 2012 team were hoping to achieve around the world. Seb also talked about the fact that his heros were Olympics, "my children's heros change every month." Every parents or grandparent in the IOC must have been nodding along. 'But we must understand and respond to their world."

Know your audiences and tailor your messages: On the night before the bid the London 2012 team had a list of the floating voters (mainly the South Americans) who they needed to convert. Blair took a suite on the 55th floor of the convention centre and as each floating voter was coming up in the lift, he was being texted to say what hot buttons to push. Did this IOC member care most about the legacy in the UK of their particular sport, were they passionate about sustainability, did their grandchild just want a kick around with Beckham. They had all the options covered.

Ownership: Let one person write the script of the pitch, the "narrative arch", rather than each presenter write their own little bit and then worry how to piece it together. Its one story, with different parts voiced by different people. Think of it like a script for a play.

It was a night of illuminating anecdotes about the pitch - for example, when London and Paris when back into the conference hall to find out the result there were 57 photographers stationed in front of the Parisian team and only 3 in front of the London team, apparently in some TV footage you see photographers fighting and scrambling to get over to get pictures of the victors, so utterly convinced was everyone that Paris had won. David talked about the fact that they used images of Tony and Cherie Blair at the opening ceremony of the Athens 2004 Games, because Chirac and Bush had both decided that post 2001 the security risks were too great and had not gone. Simply by showing this image as part of a much longer film the IOC were being subtly reminded that GB was always an active supporter of the Olympic movement. Fascinating. Final anecdote, the strategy about inspiring a generation actually came out of an insight into a business problem that the IOC had, namely an aging TV viewing population which was less attractive for broadcasters and advertisers, so originally the strategy had been to get more young people watch the Games than ever before. It was Seb who made the strategic leap to say that actually its not about getting young people viewing, its about getting young people viewing.

I will find out if the event was videoed and post a link if it was.

Great night!

 

Don Draper and the art of pitching

I was running a "behind the scenes in advertising" mentoring session today with a group of sixth form students. I really enjoy doing things like this, it reminds me why I love the industry I am in. It is so easy to get bogged down in the day to day, the niggles and the frustrations that occur in our world of advertising/media/PR etc but when you have to tell a smart bunch of teenagers, who smell bullshit from 100m, what it is that is that makes your chosen profession so exciting it forces you to look up from your desk and remember the good bits. And there are so many good bits!

One of the things that we covered in our session today was presenting and how to engage an audience and tell stories that sell - sell a strategy, an idea or a campaign. One of the students presented to us and to illustrate his point he said, "you know that feeling when you have priority boarding on an aeroplane and you walk past everyone else in the queue and you just feel so special and a bit smug. That's the feeling that we want to bring to life." We just sat there nodding because we all know that feeling. And half the battle of any pitch type presentation is getting your audience onside and nodding. I was trying to think of the best example to give to the students and I still think that the Don Draper "Carousel" example is one of the very best examples that I can think of.

If you haven't seen it recently, take a look again. It's pitch genius.

 

 

Ferran Adria's top 10 tips for innovation

A lot of people tweeted me asking whether I could condense the Ferran Adria post into a top 10 tips list.

Based from Ferran's story I have pulled out what I think to be the key recommendations for any creative organization looking to be world leading. Hope that you find them useful. If I was starting an agency tomorrow these would certainly be my checklist:

 

1. Don’t chase short-term cash without a long-term vision
2. Make the time to reflect and think
3. The journey is not done when you’re number 1, that’s when its time to change
4. Make sure that your physical space is flexible enough to move and change with you
5. Do everything to avoid falling into routines
6. Bring in “agitators” from outside to push your creativity and thinking
7. Being creative doesn’t give you license to be an arse, you still have to take out the trash
8. Work out how your organization can function at its most efficient
9. Don’t sign away creative freedom for the sake of money
10. But always remember at the end of the day, it has to be about making money!

Ferran Adria and the power of innovation

It started with a question about Cannes. "If you could bring anyone in the world to Cannes deliver a keynote, who would you bring?" We'd been talking about the superstar speakers that had appeared recently - the likes of Bill Clinton, Kofi Annan, Bob Geldof, will.i.am (ok, so will.i.am might be pushing the "superstar speaker" descriptor, but you know what I mean)

My dream keynote, I said, would be someone from outside of Adland who would talk about innovation and creativity. The expression I think I used at the time was "science and magic" because to my mind that is the key combination that our industry needs. The person that I thought best encasulated that was Ferran Adria of El Bulli fame. Not that I actually knew an awful lot about him, it was more of the impression of the man gleaned from the incredible tales of his molecular gastromomy and ancedotes such as his closing of El Bulli right at the absolute height of its worldwide fame.

So when I got invited by Telefonica to be part of an audience with Ferran Adria at their start up accelerator Wayra I was enormously excited. I went with a Spanish foodie friend of mine who was quite possibly even more excited than I was. Everything was set up for a great evening. But you know what, it wasn't great. It was so much better than great.

Ferran told a story in three parts: the first was about El Bulli and what occurred there and why; his new Foundation and Bullipedia, the online gastronomic website that he is in the process of building.

I will tell you the story that he told, as far as possible I will try and use his words (I was noting like crazy) but if not then I will paraphrase and hope people don't mind: 

Right from the start E Bulli was only ever open 6 months a year but that's hardly surprising when you think that we were a restaurant located on the Spanish Costa Brava, a holiday coast where tourists simply didn't come to in the winter. So we had no choice in the matter. For the first 14 years El Bulli did not make money, but we believed in something. When success came it was hugely important for us to make time to refect and think, afterall if you don't make that time then you'll never reflect and think. So we decided to close at lunchtime. We lost the equivalent of £6m a year. But it was necessary. Then we decided to get rid of the menu. It got to the point when we had 2 million requests a year for reservations, which was also the point that we knew that we had to change. I said to the press that we were going to take a 3 year sabbatical. And do you know, no-one seemed to believe that we just needed some time out to focus back on creativity. No-one understood when we announced that we were going to launch a new restaurant which would also be a creative foundation and centre. They all thought we were crazy. But that is exactly what we are launching in Cap de Creus. The space will be utterly flexible, think of it like a film set, you're meant to move it all around and change it. We don't want anyone to fall into a routine. So we do things like change the pencils that we use every single year.

We will have three distinct spaces in our new centre - one for reflection, one for brainstorming and one for worksharing in which we will invite in "agitators" from other disciplines around the world to come and give us their point of view. This is about creating dialogue with other disciplines. The whole centre will be sustainable in every way possible, we want to be a reference for the world. We also want to create the most efficient environment possible. Just because you are creative, it's not like it's a divine right. You still have to be efficient. I really admire McDonalds in the way that they function. We take out the trash, we clean the kitchen. But we are also creative. Also I want to think about how best people work  - are you more efficient if you work 5 days and then have 2 days off, or are you better working 10 days and then having 4? Are you better in the morning or the evening? In a group or solo? We need to consider all of that.

We are also creating "Bullipedia" as an online gastronomic resource where you can learn with precision, accumulate knowledge and get inspired. You can think of it like a curated search engine, I like to think of it like a neat and tidy cupboard with a lot of drawers. It will not be sponsored as we want to have absolute freedom, I want to make the decisions. People will pay for it but we are working out the payment model, it's not fair that a young chef pays the same as a large corporation so we are looking at how this will work at the moment. It has to be economically sustainable, that's what the internet revolution has to be about. It's not about giving everything away for free.

It's impossible to do Adria justice with my re-telling of us story. But there are so many elements that I think are hugely inspriational and also hugely applicable for our industry, here are my 5 key take-outs: 

1. Take time to reflect and think  (given the Ferris Beuller quote that this blog is named after, that should be a surprise that I agreee so whole-heartedly with that sentiment)
2. Be prepared to forego short term gains for longer terms success.
3. When designing work spaces flexibility is key- keep changing.
4. Being creative does not mean you're allowed to be an arse.
5. Bring external "agitators" in otherwise you fall into the expected.

I will try and find out if Wayra have a video of the talk that I can post up here.

 

Presenting without slides

I presented tonight at She Says's event on "2020 - imagining the future" event. And a funny thing happened. I didn't present any powerpoint slides.

I present a lot - whether it's at work or at conferences and events. And I always have powerpoints. They're pretty nice powerpoint slides to be fair - big, interesting images, not a ton of words on them but I always have them.

Today I didn't.

There's a true-true reason and a half-true reason about why I didn't have any slides.

The half true reason is that I had 10 minutes to talk to a small audience, so why should I have to have slides? As Jon Steel says more eloquently than I can in his brilliant book Perfect Pitch (read it, read it, read it!), Churchill didn't use powerpoint, Martin Luther King didn't use powerpoint, OJ Simpson's lawyer, who achieved the near-impossible, didn't use powerpoint, so why do we all? I have been doing some work recently with Mark Choueke who was a journalist and now works agency-side at Chime Communications (VCCP's holding company) Mark is a grown up and super smart and until he went agency side he never once had to write a powerpoint slide. So he had to go on powerpoint training. His view was that powerpoint seems to be the currency that the advertising/PR world trade in. How depressing.

The true true reason is that I was going to write my slides last night but the boys didn't want to go to bed and then I figured that I would write them at work, but a client meeting started late and ended late and I just didn't have the time. So although I had written my presentation I had not written any powerpoint slides. A presentation and a powerpoint deck not being the same thing obviously.

So I had no slides. Every other speaker did.

I was speaking last and as I watched the 4 speakers before me I suddenly realised that all of them had to keep stopping to click the computer in order to get to the next slide. I realised that often I was watching the screen more than I was watching them. I also realised that if your slides are in the wrong order than your story gets screwed.

So I stood up and I spoke. And I felt totally exposed, like a child without a much loved security blanket. But once I stopped worrying that the screen behind me was blank and concentrated instead purely on the audience and the story that I wanted to tell them it suddenly all made sense to me. This is the way  that we should be presenting. Unless you have a specific visual that you are referencing and want to share.Why do we always default to powerpoint??

My new resolution is to get myself out of my powerpoint comfort zone more often now. Something that I would urge all of you to try as well.It's not as easy as it looks, but often the right thing isn't always easy.

 

 

In Praise of Jeremy Bullmore (and the WPP Marketing Fellowship)

Many many years ago when I was a naive young thing sitting in my ivory tower at university I found a copy of Campaign in our careers service library. I had been thinking about brands and brand image standing, as you do as a student, in a queue at the supermarket. I had been looking at people's baskets and was trying to work out what kinds of people I thought that they were without looking up at them! It sounds like an odd game to play, but it was eye opening to me in terms of the power of brands.

On the front page of Campaign was an article by Martin Sorrell talking about how ad agencies were losing the war for smart young graduates - who he said were choosing better paid careers in banking and management consultancies rather than advertising. So I wrote him a letter and told him to put his money where his mouth was and give me a placement at WPP. To cut a long story short, I didn't get a placement but I did get a job.

I was in the second year of the WPP Marketing Fellows in 1997. And I was enormously lucky to have Jeremy Bullmore allocated to me as my mentor for the 3 years of the Fellowship. Since graduating from the Fellowship Jeremy has become a proper friend and essential confidante.

I was asked to say a few words at the Advertising Assocation dinner in his honour last week as he recieved the Mackintosh Medal. I thought that I would share with you the speech that I wrote and the advice that JB has given myself and other Fellows over the years.

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I think that I’ve got a pretty raw deal here tonight if I am honest with you.

Firstly I’ve got to talk about a subject that everyone in the room knows about.

In fact many of you have probably known Jeremy for longer than I have done, so you probably know more about the subject than I do.

Added to that, I’ve got to stand up after a talking heads video by the great and the good from around the world. Some of the most eloquent speakers you are ever likely to hear.  So any attempt at erudite humour, or sparkling wit is going to sound a bit turgid in comparison.

Finally Martin who spoke directly before me was the person who hired me out of university - my first boss. Absolutely no pressure then.

So I won’t tell any of you about Jeremy’s enormous generosity of time and spirit. I won’t tell any of you about his modesty or his insight or his razor-sharp wit. And I wouldn’t dream of telling you about his kindness and thoughtfulness because - (a) you all know about that already and (b) I am in danger of making him out to be as sickly as the Werthers Original grandfather from the adverts, which as you all know couldn’t be further from the truth.

I wanted to share three quick stories with you tonight which I think sum up some of the best Jeremy Bullmore career advice he has given myself and other WPP Fellows over the years

I think that many of us here tonight consider Jeremy to be an un-official kind of mentor. I was lucky enough to be allocated Jeremy as an official mentor when I was awarded a WPP Fellowship back in 1997. Over the years Jeremy has helped me to understand and navigate this fabulous and sometimes tricky world and in the process has become what I hope is a genuine friend, although I am constantly reminded of my place in life’s hierarchy as I am known in Farm Street as “Amelia 2” (“Amelia 1” being his hugely talented daughter)

It was in my first year of the Fellowship that I became fascinated by this thing called the internet and it was thanks to Jeremy that this fascination began. “Just find something that you do that no-one else knows who” JB had advised me during one of our early mentor sessions. So I looked around at the folks at 40 Berkeley Sqaure and I “taught myself” the web as the only other people who seemed interested was the IT department. Coming up to the end of my year at JWT I  was again with Jeremy to try and work out where to go to next to learn more about this new area. I was full of questions to ask him - which agenices, which countries, which people? Having listened to my digital babbling, JB remarked: “You’ve always got me here for advice, but just remember that no-one cares about your own career as much as you do.” I remember feeling a bit put out, as though it was a kind of rebuke but it was actually the best careers advice I had ever been given. The knowledge that actually the only person who has control over your own professional destiny is yourself was a great wake up call.

The second piece of advice that has stuck was actually to another Fellow, but its advice that I have since taken to heart. The Fellow in question had recently graduated from the Fellowship and was looking for some guidance from Jeremy. She outlined a number of big sounding job offers that she had on the table and asked for his opinion. JB listened quietely and then gave the following advice: “When faced with a number of different opportunities always take the one that is most terrifying. At the very least you’ll learn what humility tastes like.”

Finally a tale told to me by a Fellow here tonight: “Early on I went on one of those university milk round WPP presentations, it was Oxford I think. JB came along. All the Fellows, in our varying degrees of cockiness, were intending to busk our parts of the presentation. Jeremy however came with a typed speech that he had written specifically for the occasion. As respectful of the undergraduate audience as he would have been a room full of CEOs. He delivered it in his own quiet way, and there was compete silence in the room as everyone leaned forward to listen. It was a lovely example of JB being “humile” - even though of all people, he needn’t be.”

So three lessons for professional development - self reliance, bravery and humility. Three pretty good rules to live by I think.

It’s a huge thank you from myself, your mentees here tonight and all the others around the world who couldn’t be here tonight. Between all of us you have forced your way through countless bottles of white wine and fish and chip lunches. The impact on your cholesterol must have been dreadful. The impact on all of our careers profound. And for that I just want to say thank you again.

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The WPP Fellowship was a fantastic experience for me and totally shaped my career. I wouldn't hesitate ot recommend it to any graduates out there looking for their first job in the industry! There would be no way that at such an early stage in a career that you would have access to people like Jeremy, Jon Steel and Martin. It really is brilliant.

And if you haven't read everything that Jeremy has ever written (then shame on you!), here is a list of them all.

 

How to succeed in being a working mum (TED Women)

I found this video by Sheryl Sandberg at Ad Broad and it really resonated for obvious reasons.

I am now three weeks into being a working mum and despite loving my time on maternity it's actually great to be back at work. Great to be sharpening my brain and ordering my thinking, but also great to be able to read an article, send an email and think -  or just share a coffee and have a gossip with friends without a tiny hand constantly trying to pull at my leg or bash at the keyboard or in fact trying to eat the keyboard. There have been a few days when I have left the house and he's asleep and I get home and he's asleep and that's hard but I know for me at this moment in time I don't want to be a full-time mum, so getting that balance of baby and work is hugely important to me (though I certainly raise my hat to those women who do - hardest job in the world!) I am sure that on the days and the times that I am with Felix I am a better, more attentive mum and the times that I am at VCCP I work so much harder than I have ever done before as I really want/need to get home while the little one is awake.

So this video connected and as I hadn't seen it before thought it was a good one to share.

 

I think her insight into the way in which women and men operate in the workforce is spot on and her analysis of whether women can be successful and well-liked is fascinating (albeit depressing) Her advice about how to succeed at being a working mum is to be make sure that the job that you are in is rewarding, challenging, interesting before you even think about having kids otherwise it's pretty tough to go back and leave your little one! I think that she's right. Many years ago my mentor at WPP told me over a fish and chip lunch to remember that "no-one will care about your career as much as you do." That was great advice, tough but bang on. No-one does care as much as you do. Why should they? It's your job, your career, your life. Remembering that has always helped me think about the roles that I want to play at the places where I work.

Hope that this video is useful or interesting to women (and men) thinking about combining parenthood with a career.

"future of advertising" is utterly depressing

I went along to the IPA's 44 Club this evening to hear a talk on A Glimpse Into Advertising in 2020. The write up sounded fascinating:

• What will agencies look like in 2020? Consolidated, function or category specialised, and how many agencies should a client need to hire etc
• What will the average ad-mans day consist of? In home vs in office. Science vs Magic?
• How will social trends affect the way we work in 2020? Will there be older people, more women or greater flexibility in the industry?
• What role for the 30” ad? Is traditional TV doomed?
• Who will be the most influential man in the room?
• Where should we be focused on now if we want to make ourselves indispensable in 2020? Essential skills vs core disciplines

Maybe my expectations were too high, but the IPA is so often the platform for really smart debate and inspirational speakers. I was looking for sparks, controversy, a challenge. I wanted to be inspired and scared and excited, in the way that I felt after reading Danielle Sack's brilliant Fast Company article "Mayhem on Madison Avenue." But instead I came away feeling rather flat and a bit depressed.

Tom Morton the new Chief Strategy Officer at Publicis (who I work with on the IPA Strategy Group) did a great job at trying to articulate and frame the debate and as well as talking about one of my favourite books (Jane Jacob's The Death and Life of Great American Cities), coined a memorable moniker for building change and innovation into agencies - HELP. Hack, Experiment, Learn, Punt. Graham Fink said that nothing had really changed in advertising apart from the fact that there was a lot more fear in agencies and that all we need is a table to sit around in order to talk to each other. Not sure if I totally agree but I get his point about the power of ideas to connect and tap into basic, un-changing human emotions. And I get his point about the table (although it's 2011 and I can't really believe that we are still talking about moving "digital" up from the agency basement to sit together with the rest of agency) Tina Fegent talked about procurement and how agencies needed to think more creatively about their approach to procurement. Again which I totally understand and agree with.

So why did I come away feeling depressed? I think that I felt that the really big issues weren't properly addressed.  It felt a bit like we werre all fiddling around the edges while missing some of the massive issues staring us all in the face. I agree with Tom that there's little point in trying to predict the future as you only end up looking like a bit of tit when you're proved wrong. So from that starting point, here are some questions that I am starting to think about at VCCP:

As channels proliferate and skill-sets deepen and diverge, it is going to be impossible for an agency to effectively "own" all the skills that they need to service clients. Given that, how do we start to build a loose network of partners, developers and producers who can work along side the core agency hub? I am increasingly thinking of it as an "...and Friends" model, based on the insight that you choose your friends and not your family (I hate the expression Sister Agency, so many sisters I know seem to hate each other - but that's an aside) 

As real-time truly kicks in we need to find new and smarter ways of charging for time and ideas. Yes, payment by results but the truly integrated campaigns are so tightly intertwined and aligned, how will we be able to tell which part of the campaign truly accounted for what % revenue growth. How do we charge and how do we staff continuous participative conversation-driven campaigns?

How do we ensure that the art of story-telling is not lost? It's all well and good to know your Quora from your Qwiki but how do we combine technology and narrative in a way that truly connects on an emotional level? Have we lost the skill of wrapping a story around an idea?

Thinking about always-on campaigns, how do we work together better with the likes of sciptwriters and games developers and political campaign agencies? I can see what's in it for us, what's in it for them?

Where does crowdsourcing fit? Does it fit?

 It seems to be that its a question of innovation - harnessing the power of adaptability. Evolve or die.

It's going to take enormous energy to try and attempt to find new and looser ways of working. It's a new business model that no-one has really cracked yet.

I think that the future of advertising is about these 5 things:

1. Smaller units
2. Madder people
3. People who don't know (or dare I say, care) about Snow Plough or Saatchi & Saatchi in the 80s
4. People who can find stories in numbers
5. People who don't work in the office

I wish that we could have debated some of those areas.

Any thoughts on "the future of advertising" happy to hear them!

How to get your first job/placement in Planning

I've met a ton of folk over the last few years all looking to get into planning - either with a full-time position or as a paid placement. I was chatting with Michael who is our head of planning after an interview that he conducted last week with a wanna-be planner. There were some useful tips that came out of our conversation that I wanted to share. Many many seem like common sense but you'd be surprised how many times people just don't seem to have considered them.

1. BE DIGITAL - or to be more precise - BE POST-DIGITAL: Most of you trying to get into the industry are young, at least 10 years younger than I am if not more. You guys grew up surrounded by digital technology. I wrote by uni essays with a fountain pen, never turned on a computer and had to sign up for time slots to use the public payphone. I want to be surprised and engaged by new stuff that you're excited about - maybe its specific sites, pieces of online content, technology platforms. It depresses me enormously when I seem to know more about the digital space than people I'm interviewing. We're living in a post-digital age, we need post-digital planners.
2. KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT THE AGENCY: This should be the most common sense piece of advice that there is, but it is astonishing quite how little homework some candidates do. Try to find something thought provoking or another angle on work that the agency might have done. It's not enough to say (for example) "I really like the work that you did on Meerkat because its funny." What do you think that the insight was? How was this positioned Vs its competitors? What do you think the proposition/creative brief might have been? What might you do differently or where might you think about taking the campaign.
3. USE YOUR EYES AND EARS DAILY: I often ask questions about everyday brands that I know that candidates will have come in contact with. Sometimes I'll ask about supermarket chains - as its a pretty good bet that most of us use them, have seen/heard some advertising, maybe gone to their website etc. I'll ask people about how they think they are are positioned in the marketplace - what kind of audience are they trying to attract, how is this demonstrated through advertising or in the in-store experience. Too many times I have been told "I've never worked on supermarket brands so I don't really know." You don't need to have worked on something to have an opinion.
4. SHOW ME STUFF: Treat it like a show and tell. Maybe it's some form of advertising or club flyers or pictures of graffiti or some thoughts that you've been having about specific brands or a categories. It helps the interviewer to understand what excites and interests you and gives you a great springboard for smart conversation.
5. BE CONVINCING: David Ogilvy once said "we sell or else...". An interview is your chance to sell yourself and to convince your interviewer that they should give you a job. If you can't sell yourself, what chance do you think you'll have in front of clients or agency colleagues selling a strategy, or a proposition or a creative idea. Why should the interviewer hire you - what's unique or different about you? What will you add? Maybe you've found out that they're working on 3 pitches in the next month and actually you're offering to simply be a spare pair of pitch hands (and every agency needs those!) Maybe there's a new client that you have a deep understanding of. Find that angle that will make you convincing and stand out.

And that's it really, 5 thoughts on how to get into the world of advertising.  It is hard especially it seems at the moment, but then once you're in advertising its pretty hard too so you should probably get used to it. All the good people that I have met have ended up getting a job, it may have taken a bit of time but they all got there in the end.

Good luck.

Career Women Make Bad Mothers ... FAIL

New year, new advertising controversy. This time courtesy of Garry Lace's agency Beta and the Outdoor Advertising Association. As I'm sure that you've read about its a campaign designed to demonstrate how outdoor advertising can generate mass public awareness.

Did it work?

In one sense without doubt. Debate was sparked all over the web (though mainly on Mumsnet and Twitter from what I can see and ironically not on BritainThinks.com which was the stated objective) and  the ad was pulled yesterday.

But does this prove that outdoor "works" as a medium or does it prove that a controversial message generates controversy?

On Monday Islam4UK announced that they would be marching in Wooten Basset with empty coffins in an anti-war demonstration. They likened the British Army to the Nazi Army and all hell broke loose.  Just take a look on Google. Islam4UK didn't use an outdoor billboard to spark this, they used a press release but it got the required result.

Messages that upset and anger people get them talking.

The message not the medium.

It's quite simple.

If Beta had decided to make a short film about how inadequate working mothers are, then seeded it and released it online I think that it would probably have had the same effect.

And now apparently Beta have decided to sue Mumsnet (can anyone confirm that's true??) The Mumsnet community certainly seem to think that is the case. Click on the link and read from about the 60th page of comments for the latest.

As one mum said "He Who Shall Not Be Named" (they are not allowed to mention the Beta founder by name anymore) wanted a campaign that sparked debate and when it sparked debate he now wants to shut it down.

Ridiculous.

Happy new year.

...................................

UPDATE 7/01/10: The Mumsnet legal action was initiated because of the comments about Garry's genitalia apparently. See comments below.

APG BATTLE OF BIG THINKING '09

Gordon Macmillan wrote a post last week on Brand Republic in which he talked about the Battle of Big Thinking.In it he said:

In what is likely to be one of the hottest sessions of the day Head of Strategy and Innovation at VCCP Amelia Torode will share what she has learnt from campaigns including comparethemarket/meerkat.com, in Big Thinking in Social Media.

Having just finished working out what my big thought that I want to share on Thursday is, I just wanted to tell Gordon that I am afraid that I am not talking about meerkats or markets. It has been a great campaign to be a part of, but I wanted to use the opportunity to talk about something totally different. I didn't want my session to be simply an agency creds, so have taken another approach and am not actually talking about any Social campaigns that I have been a part of. It's about stuff that excites me and I'm grappling with at the moment, I hope that it's useful, entertaining and above all I just hope that it's big thinking not medium sized thinking.

So meerkats will be missing (although I do reserve the right to reference other animals) The other thing that seems to be missing from the Battle of Big Thinking are women. I don't believe in positive descrimination for women, preferring that everyone is up there on stage on their own merits but there have to be more than 2 "big thinking" women in the UK? I asked the organizers when they invited me why there weren't more women taking part. What about people like Lady Geek,  or TechnoKitten? Most of the senior clients at o2  are women and more than capable of some serious big thinking! It would be great to see a wider range at next years event. I worry that at most conferences the panels look a bit like like the one in the cartoon below, albeit with more hair...

Anyway, saying that at least the girls will stand out stand out. There'll myself and Sandrine Plasseraud from We Are Social. You should be able to tell us apart. She's French and lovely. I'm British and a bit pregnant.

Come say hi if you're going on Thursday

Details here: APG BoBT Some tickets still available.

CROWDSOURCING Advertising - can it work?

I'm a bit torn on this subject. It's something that's been troubling me for a few weeks now ever since I saw Nic Ray from crowdsourcing company  Idea Bounty present at Media140 .

The decision to cheaply outsource, sorry I meant to write, "crowdsource" Peperami's latest integrated advertising campaign frather than use an advertising agency worried me. I know that this is going to sound like sour grapes as I work in a creative agency, but I wanted to share my concerns and get your thoughts. Very open to be proved wrong on this and I am genuinely looking for other POVs.

In principle I am all in favour of a policy of Radical Transparency. I believe that opening up issues to a larger audience leads to unusual and unexpected solutions (incidentally it also leads to a lot of shitty ideas that you have to sort through in order to find the half decent ones but that's not the point) and  the crowdsourcing approach of Walkers Do Us a Flavour (Win a Packet) and the Netflix $1m algorithm recommendation competition never troubled me in the way that the Peperami case did. In fact I use them as examples of best in breed innovative thinking.

So what's different about Peperami?

It might be to do with the monetary reward that Peperami put up, $10,000 for an integrated advertising campaign. That's 6,000 in UK pounds. Now I don't know about you but I think that it's a bit of a rip off. I have said as much to Nic personally and he pointed out that the fact that they had over 1000 entrants meant that there was a considerable number of people who felt that it was the right level of renumeration. Maybe its a sign that there's a terrible recession going on and a lot of out of work creatives are prepared to work for peanuts? Because let's be honest about it, this initiative wasn't PR-ed in developing countries where that amount of money would be worth considerably more. No it was PR-ed, according to Ideas Bounty, on sites like Brand Republic and to the UK creative industry in general. The winner hasn't been released yet but I was led to believe that it was won by ex-agency creatives.

I also have issues with the creative role that Ideas Bounty take. It's up to them to whittle the 1000 entrants down to a managable number for the client to choose from. Suddenly Ideas Bounty is the creative authority. That just doesn't feel right to me. It takes real skill to ascertain whether there's a brilliant creative idea lurking under the surface of an idea that might not sound that good (meerkat anyone?) I also think that it take real expertise to be able to build and shape a good idea into something extraordinary and I also know from experience that reading someone's creative idea as opposed to having them in front of you and explaining it properly are two totally different things.

Maybe it just troubles me as the logical conclusion of an initiative like this is that you don't need agencies anymore, you simply crowdsource the creative ideas cheaply and then partner with production houses. Maybe that is a good thing - over-paid, over-precious, over-protective are all allegations that can be thrown at some advertising agencies. But I hope they're not allegations that are true for all agencies. I hope that some a proper creative and business partners to their clients.

There's a great article in Forbes magazine The Myth of Crowdsourcing, in it Dan Wood takes issue with Crowdsourcing and writes " let's not ... pretend that 10,000 average Joes invent better products than Steve Jobs." Is he right when it comes to creative ideas and advertising campaigns? I wait for the next Peperami campaign with interest and also to see whether as a client they feel that they ever want to work with an advertising agency again.

_{(SOMEONE EMAILED ME SAYING THAT THEIR COMMENT NEVER APPEARED - AT THE BOTTOM OF THE FIRST PAGE OF COMMENTS IS A TINY ARROW, CLICKING ON THAT GETS YOU THRU TO SECOND PAGE OF COMMENTS)}

GUINNESS - Is there anything to talk about?

I enjoyed this BBH Labs post that Pats tweeted to me yesterday - "if you want a conversation say something interesting."

Then I watched the new Guinness ad online and was struck by the fact that the only thing that I could really say about it was "I wonder how much money they spent on that?"

It's beautiful, but feels very 1980s and a bit out of touch.

About 30,000 views on YouTube so maybe it wasn't just me who wasn't that interested by the ad.

Going Loco with Southern Railways

This just makes me smile.

When the "more bums on seats" pitch brief came into the agency, we were looking to find a different way of approaching this creatively. We didn't want to do a category job for all trains it had to be Southern specific, we also didn't want to do the job of the South Coast tourist board and simply talk about the great destinations that Southern trains go to.

The insight for the brief was sparked off after reading Alain De Boton's The Art of Travel - we wanted to try and work out WHY people feel the need to travel. It's a great read BTW.

Southern trips are all quiet short-haul, in essence great day trips. I'm not sure about you, but often my Saturdays are fairly routine - I can predict with worrying certainty that I will go to the local farmers market, drop off clothes at the dry cleaners, go to the gym, phone my folks and generally potter locally. We briefed creative teams to BREAK THE APATHY OF SATURDAY.

Which was the springboard for Loco Toledo.  Loco is a wrestler from a small town in

Mexico

, where there are very few trains, and having recently arrived in

England

, is overjoyed to find that there are hundreds of trains going everywhere.

We are also developing the character through social spaces online, such as Facebook ,  with the hope of a wider roll-out next year. If you travel on Southern you may well see Loco around on your travels.

And don't forget to check out the Southern website for some brilliant online only ticket offers and thought starters for easy places to explore.

We're looking for a new Planner

Sadly Emily one of our senior Planners is leaving these drizzly shores and heading back home to Australia. Obviously we're happy (and maybe just a little bit jealous) but it does mean that we are actively recuiting for a new Planner to take her place.

A bit of background -at VCCP we aim to hire what we call T-Shaped Planners, Planners with a broad comms overview and interest but with a deep centre of gravity. That centre of gravity could be PR, it could be Media etc. In Emily's case her centre of gravity was Digital having joined us from AKQA. However the reason that she joined was that she wanted to expand on of a pure Digital focus into a more T-Shared one. She hadn't had Brand Planning experience till she came to work for us but is now as happy on pure Brand projects, as Digital ones as Integrated ones. Most of the work that Planners do here tends to be Integrated, that's what our clients are looking for and that's creatively where we get most excited.

The clients that you'd be working on are Very.co.uk, the new Social Shopping site that used to be LittlewoodsDirect.co.uk and o2. You'd also be working on pure-play Digital briefs when they come in and get very involved with pitching and new business.

• At least 5 years working experience
• Confident client facing at both junior and senior levels
• Genuine passion for Digital, innovation and technology
• Proven experience working on Digital and Social solutions
• Ability to think strategically and broader in terms of solving Brand issues/proven Brand planning experience (and desire to move more into this area)
• Baking skills useful (regular agency Bake Offs and weekly Planners Teas part of role)

Please send me an email: AmeliaT@VCCP.com and Michael Lee who is our Head of Planning MichaelL@VCCP.com

Ideally we are looking for someone to start in at the start of next month, though there is obviously flexibility for the right person.

DIFFERENT ADVERTISING APPROACH: o2 Sim Rugby Online campaign

It's a tricky creative brief.

Talking about free sims doesn't seem to be the biggest creative opportunity on the surface. But then again people said that about the car insurance comparison market and that turned out ok for us...

We talk about three key planning questions at VCCP:

1. Why would I talk about this idea?
2. How can I get involved in this idea?
3. What keeps the conversation going?

This is how the "pass on the free sim" brief was brought to life: Sim Rugby

The boys here had a lot of fun making the website for SimRugby looks as Web 1.0 as possible. There are a lot of terrible touches that only a true geek would appreciate - the ComicSans typeface, the shading. I think that it became an odd kind of labour of love.

You have to try different approaches to categories which seem low interest or low involvement. Otherwise there's nothing for people to talk about, nothing for them to participate in and nothing that keeps the conversation going.

More than happy if you can help and pass this on (just like your free sim - sorry couldn't resist it!!)

Compare The Meerkat - RESULTS

There have been quite a few article on the success and business results of CompareTheMeerkat.com, so I thought that it might be good to pull some topline results together and share them as it's a good business case study.

Though of course, he's now at 556, 677 fans on Facebook and 25, 120 on Twitter

If you want more stats, the best place is the Admap article on "How a meerkat became a social media hero...".  The article talks about the VCCP planning methodology which aims to help encourage participatory creative ideas. The second phase Unlimited Creativity essentially asks 3 questions:
Why should I talk/blog/tweet about this idea?
How can I get involved in this idea?
What keeps the conversation going?

It's also interesting to see the effect that this campaign has had on their price comparison competitors: according to Hitwise rival MoneySupermarket.com's traffic fell shed 25.2 per cent, Confused.com dropped 5 per cent and GoCompare.com fell 31.8 per cent.

All competitors have put their advertising up for pitch since Aleksandr's arrival.

I hope that this helps demonstrate the process and some of the business results behind a much loved creative campaign.

Simples.

o2 Scrum On The Beach

I think that its a lovely piece of film that perfectly captures the spirit of messing around on the beach. Except that this time the (big) kids messing around with the rugby ball just happen to play for England. The reactions of the folks on the beach who had no idea that this was going to happen is lovely. Thom talks over on his blog about fake-ness in advertising that proports to be real (the example that he cites is T Mobile) I can tell you that none of this was faked in any way.

Find out where Scrum on the Beach will be in July and August. The first session will be held in Martello Bay, Clacton-on-Sea, Essex 4 July, 11-6pm and the last Lusty Glaze Beach, Newquay 29-30 August, 12-11pm

(FD: 02 are a VCCP client. I did not have anything to do with this campaign although I do sit next to Clem and Rich the creative team, who were also the team who devised Compare The Meerkat)

R.I.P. Scamp

I was genuinely saddened when I got an email from Simon aka Scamp from BBH saying that he had decided to call time on his blog.

Back in 2006 Scamp was one of those early ad-bloggers, alongside the likes of Russell and Iain, who inspired me to start blogging.

What I loved so much about Scamp's blog was that you were pretty much always guaranteed to have a really good read. He was witty, opinionated (sometime overly) and the site quickly became the digital centre of gravity for conversations about creativity.

While there were lots of Planner types blogging, Scamp seemed to be alone as a representative of the Creative department. I always knew where to go to find the newest creative work and the latest creative controversy. When I read Scamp it felt like I was sitting in a dark Soho pub surrounded by bitchy, funny creative teams. It often veered into car-crash territory, sometimes got too bitchy, too personal and probably sometimes illegal (it broke the Hate-Speak rules on occasion) and it annoyed me that the majority of people who posted hid behind an Anonymous moniker, but working life will be less fun without Scamp.

RIP Scamp and remember that you can always change your mind!

UPDATE: I have been emailed to remind people that Scamp is recommending If This Is a Blog... as the new digital space for disecting creative work. Happy to do that!