The Facebook: Uncool is No Way to Live

I remember when Facebook was The Facebook. I was in college when it blew up; I believe Boston College was the 6th or 8th school to get access. Way before moms and social media gurus were on there, we were being spoiled by its access while populating it with value. 

I believe there is a sense of ownership with our generation (using that term loosely and narrowly), and now I feel Facebook is losing that quickly as it is losing is coolness with a corrupt IPO and a daily stock price measuring its/our value. This wouldn't, and doesn't, matter for Apple, Pepsi or MTV, because they are products. They have intrinsic value. But Facebook has no value when it has no users, and users do not value the uncool. 

Something better will come along - and Facebook will buy it - but it will come along because the next generation wants their own Facebook. They want their own story. And they will become characters in the story by becoming users. They want to be the next Zuckerburg, and if they can't be him, then they will help build him. 

Now this doesn't mean Facebook can't make money. It has the capital to turn itself into a business that isn't a social network. It can turn into a business that builds products - phone, content tools, gaming, etc. But the days of equating a value to users is limited. 

An Idiot's Meditation: Breathe It In

This post is the fourth installment of A Complete Idiot's Guide to 2012 where I read a different self-help guide every month. Special thanks to A Complete Idiot's Guide for providing me the books. 

This month I read the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Meditation. Finding Zen was the goal but I never thought for a second I would come close. The long story short: I didn't, but, thanks to the book and the app Headspace, I felt something, and enough to think it was possible. And more importantly I learned how relevant meditation is to my life and career(s). 

If you’ve been following the blog for a while, you’ll know I’ve been working on launching a women’s shoe company called Union St. A company built on the purpose of being open to what the world is showing you: the shoes have unique soles and linings inspired from photos of anything – the back of a chair or street graffiti. And this is exactly what meditation is all about:

“Mindfulness means going through life awake and aware. To live mindfully simply means to pay attention – to your body, to your mind, to your surroundings, to the people in your life, to the tasks you undertake, to the beauty of the world, to every detail of existence – not to control it, shape it, force, or be worried by it. Simply to experience it.”

It is something I’ve always believed in – and in hindsight it is no surprise why I would want to start a company to spread the belief – but I never understood that mediation, and yoga for that matter, supported it. I always assumed meditation was about blocking things out. Finding a space where you didn’t think. Where you didn’t notice what was around you. Instead meditation is about an intense concentration on what is happening around you – “to lose subjectivity in favor of an objective appreciation of truth.”

This is an interesting space for planners. In theory we are suppose to get beyond our own subjectivity to speak on behalf of consumers. It is one of those things that sounds so great on paper that everyone thinks they can do it but in reality is extremely difficult to pull off.

Most of the book, and most of meditation, focuses on breathing. Breathing?! That’s boring! Well don’t say that around a Zen Master. The book tells the story of a young apprentice saying the same thing to a Zen Master. The Zen Master shoves the pupil’s head into a bucket of water and proceeds to hold it there. After finally letting him up for air, he bluntly says, “Now tell me how boring the breath is.”

An extreme point but a good point nonetheless: sometimes the most inspiring things around us are the most mundane. As planners we spend a lot of time showing the day-in-the-life of our consumers to find those touch points where we can add value (and not plug in another piece of media - hopefully). Perhaps instead of saying, “Walk in their shoes,” we should be saying, “Breathe in their air.” After all, the word inspiration literally means “to breathe in.”

Virtual Touching: It's The Small Things

BBM used to dominate how teens talked with each other. I never got a straight answer on why, and assumed it was a cost issue with avoiding texts. But now that I have iMessage, I have enjoyed seeing the indication that someone is writing me a message - something BBM always did. Of course I didn't realize it until watching this:



Incredibly simple and powerful. This idea of "virtual touching" - I just made that up - is extremely interesting. It may not change the world but it could bring a little more intimacy and happiness to the world, and that's pretty great.

From Neil Perkin.

Livehoods: My Street is Trending

"Livehoods offer a new way to conceptualize the dynamics, structure, and character of a city by analyzing the social media its residents generate. By looking at people's checkin patterns at places across the city, we create a mapping of the different dynamic areas that comprise it."

It is a great example of using existing data to create a platform. Too often we ask people to do too much to engage. Scavenger hunt idea anyone? But this aggregates the data without any user involvement.

As for what we get out of it, check out the related neighborhoods below. Seems like a very practical tool when figuring out where you may want to live.

From Goofy Sailors.

La-di-da-di: Office Decoration

La-di-da-di...:

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LEGO Movie Maker: The Next Instagram?

The LEGO Super Hero Movie Maker allows you to make stop-motion films using your LEGOs. You can now move from imagining to making. It is brilliant. And I really mean that. It uses digital to extend the existing engagement (creating additional value for the toys) and celebrates how kids already use them. And I don't see why it can't be used it to create non-LEGO movies - which has enormous potential. 

From Big Spaceship.

Color Forecast: Fashionable Data

Color Forecast shows you in real-time what colors people are wearing in Paris, Milan and Antwepr. The goal is to help you pick out what to wear, and it is a fantastically practical use of data. Fashion is dictated by what other people are wearing, whether you are trying to blend in or stand out, and the site aggregates this information in a way you couldn't do by yourself. For all the complex talk about data, this is a great example of how it can be useful and simple. Check it out here.

Remember: What I believe in (for now)

Andrew Stanton: Conviction & Negativity

Fascinating talk by Andrew Stanton from Pixar.



Call me a hippie but I'm adamantly against negativity (sounds like double negative). Yet Andrew outlines a few key goals they wanted to achieve based on what they didn't want to do, and really what they didn't like.

As he explains, it wasn't easy to overcome these standards - took a couple years of banging their heads against the wall for Toy Story - but they persisted. In essence, they revolutionized the animated movie genre by defining the core standards of the genre they hated.

Link from Neil Perkin.

Vans iPhone 4G Rubber Waffle Case – Back in Stock

Vans iPhone 4G Rubber Waffle Case – Back in Stock:

Back in December we told you about the waffle sole case for the iPhone 4, which at the time was sold out at most Vans brick and mortar stores, as well as online. There was a bit of hue and cry from the masses, with shoppers looking to nab the novel iPhone accessory as a stocking stuffer or for their own personal use. The case itself is a fantastic interpretation of a typical Vans sneaker, featuring all the major signifiers: the gum rubber waffle outsole, white rubber foxing with foxing stripe, and red “Off the Wall” heel badge. And for those of you still on the search for one … it’s available now through the Vans online store. Happy shopping, people!

Read the rest of: Vans iPhone 4G Rubber Waffle Case – Back in Stock

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RFID Future: Creating a "Voice"

As products become RFID-enabled, we will go from debating what a brand is saying to knowing what a product is saying. There will be no stronger voice in the brand's ecosystem than the actual product communicating. Exciting times.

Pothole Season: iPot

Great utility. From FWA:

Switching Media: On Demand Emotions

There is a lot of talk about second-screen experiences enhancing television, but this Time Warner Story hits on two implications for how the shifting between between mediums affects the interpretation of the stories, and therefore their emotional power. I would make a joke about how much David Simon must loathe this but he has cleared up his comments against people who came late to The Wire. Anyways,

"One major implication of these findings is that Digital Immigrants are intuitively linear – they want to see a beginning, middle, and end to stories. For Natives, stories still need a beginning, middle and end, but they will accept it in any order. Digital Natives are subconsciously switching between platforms and can pick up different pieces of a story from different mediums in any order."


"Young people are using media switching and swapping "to regulate their moods," said Betsy Frank, chief research and insights officer at Time Inc. "They don't let themselves get too high or low if they just switch.""

Via AdAge and @neilperkin

Target Markets: Vonnegut, The Wire and One Love

Every once in awhile I come across someone who doesn’t believe in targets/target markets. They believe having one excludes people from their message while they want to reach, and sell to, everyone.

Fair enough. But the result is generic work. The reality is a target doesn’t need to be your potential buyer. A target should be your guiding light. The one person you want to please who your potential buyers admire. (And by default, someone you admire because if you don’t your going to make some negative/insulting work.)

Zite (yes, I’m hooked) recommended me two articles in the past 24 hours. The first from Kurt Vonnegut provides tips on writing a great a story. One particular tip:

“7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”

Then a fantastic video and article on The Wire:

“And the video reminds us that while it doesn’t sound pretty, the underlying philosophy of “fuck the average viewer” is the best thing that can happen to a creative work--and an audience.”

It is not fuck the average viewer because he is smarter than them. It is fuck the average viewer as being the one to please. As Kurt Vonnegut and David Simon point out, when you aim to please everyone you please no one. You don’t make anything with a unique voice and style. You make everything generic. Just be smart about that one person. In other words, be smart about your one target by making sure it is someone you admire and your audience/buyer admires. 

Cain's Arcade: Must See Happiness

The best thing I've seen in a long time. Amazing. From @jamroc and dvice.

Bear and The Gang: Go Bruins

These are great. Nice job Arnold. 

Birth of a Book: Care and Quality

From adverblog: 

   

Collaborative Consumption: Sharing is Cool and Profitiable

Rachel Botsman: Purpose with Profits

View more presentations from Nesta

Via @andjelicaaa

Is Advertising Evil?: Unhelpful Mad Men

Because of the return of Mad Men there have been a few posts talking about working in advertising.

The first one from Gawker is lame. There is really no other way of putting it. I feel like it was written 20 years ago. There is no mention of how digital has allowed brands to help people do what they want to do. Or anything on brand purpose. I actually had no intentions of linking to it until I came across this short documentary about a modern day Mad Man in China. So it has some value through juxtaposition.   


Sunshine from American Buffalo on Vimeo.

There are many interesting sound bites in the doc. What I took away was the fluidity of his life. His acceptance of the silliness of what he does as a means to explore the world - this time in China. Unlike the Gawker article, his tradeoff isn't selling his soul. The tradeoff is not always doing fulfilling work - the artistic work he would want to do.

It is a giant hustle for him because he doesn't believe the ads actually work. The underlying truth is people are smart, and he clearly doesn't think he is changing the world by making an ad about a spicy chicken sandwich. He is just doing his job. Enjoying the perks.

Kevin Rothermal, when discussing the Bill Hicks stand up where he demands for advertisers to kill themselves after exaggerating their influence, says,

"It might be obscenely idealistic, but it could be that if marketing isn’t helpful to people in addition to business, it’s just poisonous to culture and barely scratching the surface of what it is capable of achieving."

He's right on.

It is just unfortunate that the only mainstream attention advertising gets is from a show about poisonous advertising from the 1960's. The future is much brighter than the past. Now we just need a slick documentary to showcase idealism rather than cynicism. 

Spices & Herbs: Growing Technology

This post is the third installment of A Complete Idiot's Guide to 2012 where I read a different self-help guide every month. Special thanks to them for providing me the books.  

Because my weekends in March are consumed with highlighting NCAA brackets, I chose a book that was more of a reference rather than a narrative. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Spices and Herbs is a comprehensive catalog of over a thousands spices. It provides some history on spices, some tips on buying, growing and storing, and then goes into the long list of spices. The great thing is accompanying the spices are recipes. Recipes like Purple Potatoes with Lavender and Turkish Coffee Cookies.

My problem is I'm an aspirational spice owner. Believe me I have a ton. But I know I don't use them enough, and any future ones I buy I won't use enough beyond the teaspoon I need out of the whole jar. Recently I wrote about how RFID tagged consumer products will make it easier to shop and keep track of personal inventory. Another use besides knowing when to re-order toilet paper is to know what ingredients you have and what you can make out of them.

In Boston, and without a car, we used Stop and Shop's Peapod for grocery deliver. After clicking through their website to make our shopping list I was always curious why they didn't suggest recipes I could make with the list. Or why I couldn't sync my existing ingredients (spices, etc) for more options. It seems like an easy way to up-sell me to buy more stuff while providing a useful utility.

Getting back to spices, there are some great tips on growing your own spice garden and how to store fresh herbs (I didn't know you could freeze them). Both suggestions I hope to take part in soon. I can imagine the garden being a relaxing experience, and hopefully next months book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Meditation, will be relaxing as well.    

   

SoDA Report: Reading is Innovative

The SoDA Report is 96 pages of interestingness.

The 2012 SoDA Report

View more documents from Society of Digital Agencies

Some highlights:

“Agencies are focusing on delivering digital innovation. But…such a focus requires that the agency challenge the status quo for brands. It also requires that they manage the often uncomfortable process that a successful outcome requires.” – Guthrie Dolin, Odopod

True innovation is risky, and most brands don’t take risks. And, in fact, most agencies don’t take risks. The solution is accounting for risk from the beginning of the relationship. It would require a truthfully aggressive pitch and budget allocated for risk/innovation.

“Our clients appreciate that we invest our own resources in the same types of strategies we recommend to them.” – Kenny Tomlin, Rockfish Labs

The Rockfish model is to invest a portion of its resources to developing products for itself. Similar to Anomaly, they make things and don’t only market things. I love his explanation of how it is a selling point. How many smarter recommendations would agencies make if they had to turn around and use the same strategies on their babies/brands?

“The social web does an amazing job of sniffing out and calling out lies in seconds…But true honesty is not just the absence of falsehoods. Brands need to go a step further and be honest with themselves and their agencies about the role they can play in their customers’ lives.”  Philip Rackin, Magnani Caruso Dutton

“Agencies often banter around the idea of a 360° offering for brands…this path has the tendency to create a reactive environment in which big picture thinking and more innovative ideas struggle to thrive.” – Guthrie Dolin, Odopod

A 360° offering creates buckets that have to be filled before identifying a problem. Does every product need branded content, etc? The brand has the same issue. As Philip mentions, the brand must be realistic about who they are. Do consumers want to see your branded content, etc?

“RACKIN: You market a 300-year old luxury brand. How has social changed the way you think about marketing?

HO: In this industry, there will never be a substitute for face-to-face interactions and tastings. It is a social and visceral product. Nothing is going to change that.” – Charles Ho, Remy Martin

“Capitalize on human behavior and choices, for they will remain the most static components of any marketing campaign regardless of any changes in the emerging media environment. What matters when you are buying a cup of coffee four years from now—whether you are paying with cash, a mobile device or an NFC chip embedded in your thumb—will not change.” – Jesse Brightman, AgencyNet

To steal the Gaping Void line, “Technology changes. Humans don’t.” Digital experiences are becoming more and more desired, but for many products, they can never replace the physical experience.   

The overall takeaways seem to be plan for innovation but don’t promise it until you research and identity the problem. Seems logical, but yet a lot of the report focused on how slow innovation has been. I was at first kind of surprised to find a recruiting part of the report, but after reading it, it made a lot of sense, and offered some explanations.

“An unfortunate reality is that the very things that we rely on as indicators of high performance – hiring the brightest students from the top business schools, using current jargon, and employing the same brand pyramids and integrated marketing communications plans – have over time created a marketing culture in which the process of marketing beer is no different from marketing cereal or personal banking. We should preserve the elements that keep us informed (i.e. data and years of collective experience), while embracing innovative practices that require us to do what feels wrong…One thing is certain: defying convention always results in progress.” – Justin Cox, Pereira O’Dell

The biggest barrier to change may be ourselves. We want to protect and validate what got us here: jargon, best practices, years of our lives, etc. In a time when we are challenged to keep up with evolving consumers, the capacity to learn is more valuable than time spent learning.

Anyways, a couple of last points of interestingness.  

I’m surprised to see NFC so low. I’m no expert on it but this kind of makes me want to become one.  

Lastly, I wish the experience of the report allowed for commenting in a SoundCloud/Wiki style. It would be great to put my thoughts next to the paragraphs, and have others comment and share their own opinions.

Your Scene Sucks: Hip Personas

Interesting personas - I mean illustrations. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I don't fit into any. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

From adverblog:

Who are you? A Guide To Recognizing 21st-Century Subcultural Tribes:

Let’s take a flashback A Guide To Recognizing 21st-Century Subcultural Tribes. Funny – which one are you??

Pretty cool set of illustrations by Rob Dobi.















Via Taxi

Virtual Retailing: Amazon Prime for Toilet Paper

The virtual retail model below is the last mental hurdle to completely shopping online. If you don't need to engage with the product in the store, then why do you need a store? The bigger hurdle is logistically delivering products to consumers in a timely manner. Amazon has shown with Amazon Prime there is a way to effectively do it.  For those purchases on the run, the future may be warehouses with a simple pick-up window. Submit orders through your phone and walk up to the window.

There may always be a place for retailers who sell products you must engage with to purchase (cars, etc), but a radical shift is coming for the retailers who sell household commodities (paper towels, etc). Especially when you consider the future of RFID to track your personal inventory to automatically order more when you are running low.

From obsessivecompulsive:       

Virtual retailing keeps getting more and more interesting with...:

Virtual retailing keeps getting more and more interesting with major retailers launching tests, particularly in tech-forward South Korea.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could “flip” the LCD display and quickly read the back story on a product you’re interested in?

Job Advice for Jr Planners: The Comprehensive Guide

Fantastic, comprehensive job advice from Norther Planner: 

The things I wish I'd known:

Someone emailed me, as they've just finished Miami Ad School and wanted my help in starting out to get work in New York, by sharing the things I wish I'd known when starting out.
As usual, I'm bemused anyone cares what I think,especially someone looking to work in New York.
Also, I thought I'd share what I wrote just in case anyone else finds it remotely useful. Here's what I wrote:
Congratulations on (nearly) graduating. Happy to help, but two caveats:

1. I’ll post my thoughts on the blog so the other 4 readers can benefit/disagree/dismiss
2. My experience is VERY different to New York, there are, of course, things that are true of most organisations, but still, while I’ve worked on global stuff that includes the US and worked directly with US agencies, I can’t pretend to have huge experience of the culture and practices of those places

I think what you mean by the question is what I wished I knew when I started out that would have helped me then, the stuff no one tends to tell you when you're new. So I’ll answer that stuff first.
But you might mean, things I know now that I wish I knew back then, so I’ll answer that too.
Do bear in mind that I started out as an account handler (don’t you hate that term ‘handle the client’)not a planner. I haven’t any experience as a junior planner because I’ve never been one. However, I’ve naturally worked with one or two and will try to share what they’ve told me or what I’ve gleaned from being around them and what their experience seems to have been like.
Finally, don’t mistake me for some guru. I really am not. Make sure you get as many insights from as many people as you can, especially those working in New York.
So, anyway, that’s plenty of prevaricating, even for a planning type, here are some thoughts.

1. When I started out, for personal reasons I won’t bore you with, I couldn’t attend a string of interviews with London agencies for their graduate schemes. This was a setback, but I wasn’t prepared to accept hanging around for a year for the next round. So I moved to London and worked for a newspaper in ‘media sales’ – the most hateful job I’ve ever done, and I’ve worked in a nursing home, on a health insurance screening helpline and even sold plumbing and drainage insurance. My reasoning was that any experience is better than none, that I’d build up contacts in agencies and maybe get in the ‘back door’and being in London was a whole lot more convenient for interviews and stuff. You see I had a fixed idea of the kind of place I wanted to work at and the kind of role I wanted – a suit at a big London agency. The trouble was, I soon found that I didn’t just dislike that job, I wasn’t too keen on London. Too big, too impersonal and definitely too expensive. So my focus shifted to getting a job with an agency OUTSIDE London. That’s my first point really, be sure you really want to work at the places you’re looking at. The job is bloody hard work, you need quality of life too. Be sure that New York or wherever you’re looking at is right for you, you need to work to live, not the other way around. I’ve known one or two people who have moved to New York for their dream job, one with enough money to enjoy New York to the fullest. But they’ve been disappointed to find you can live the fast life and enjoy all that teeming, thriving culture and sheer, but it’s tough and exhausting and not what they really wanted – they we’re really in love the idea, not the reality.
2. BUT you need to weigh all this stuff up carefully. In the US I think you tend to be fortunate that good agencies doing good stuff are all over the place, in major cities and less hectic locations like Portland or Boulder as well. In the UK, the concentration of agencies doing really great work on really great brands is concentrated in London. One really does choose between the very best job satisfaction and quality of life. I will always regret that I’ve only been able to do work we all really want to do once or twice. I don’t think I’m the best planner in the world by any stretch of the  imagination, but I’m not the worst. I’ll never really find out what I was capable of because I’ve never worked at those kind of places enough. You don’t want to finish your career thinking ‘what if’. So work at a ‘big name’ or ‘good name’ agency as soon as possible, wherever that might be. I’ve found it difficult sometimes in job interviews and stuff when talking about my experiences because many are looking for certain types of agencies and certain kinds of projects. If people get over their prejudice, I do fine, but certain names open doors for you, so it’s worth getting that on your resume as soon as possible, it will benefit you massively in the long term.
3. But in the end, when it comes to the first job, the objective is largely GET A JOB. Different agencies have VERY different cultures. Sometimes, very often to be precise, it’s not a perfect fit. It’s not a reflection on you, or them, it’s just the way it is. My first job wasn’t really right for me, my second was for a bit before the agency completely changed. I learned masses along the way, though, including the fact I was not very good at doing, but maybe OK at thinking and became a planner. My second job was at a coveted agency, hard to get into, which I did on the basis of what I’d achieved at the first place. What I’m saying is, the best chance of getting a dream job is having worked at any other place in any role, because it makes the kind of role you want so much more accessible. And you don’t yet know you’re really cut out to be a planner. You might find you’re better as a suit or even a creative.So do anything and triangulate.
4. I also wish someone had told me in those early days how important internships were. Now I didn’t know I wanted to be in advertising until after I graduated, I wish I’d know sooner because I would have spend my summers doing work experience there and of I didn’t get a job when I graduated, I would have pestered them to do internships. This really is your golden ticket into good agencies. I’ve had loads of students and graduates do internships with me and I’m so pleased they’re now at places like DDB, JWT, Publicis and others. All the books and courses (even Miami) are no substitute for learning on the job, agencies know this and hire people in addition to the graduate stuff if they perform well. Just like they’ll hire account  execs and junior planners who have worked somewhere for a year, even if they hated their job.
5. When you start your job though, I wish someone had told me the value of getting to know traffic. They’re the lifeblood of any agency, it’s their job to know what’s going on. Agencies have unwritten rules and cultures, the quickest way to get to know them is to get to know traffic. Now it depends where you work, but mostly, traffic keeps creatives behind a force field, the people you need to make friends with to prosper. Make friends with traffic and you get more access to the creatives.
6. Many junior planners (and account execs) are surprised how dull the job is when they start. Suits have do masses of contact reports, spreadsheets and other crap. Junior planners are doing masses of TGI analysis, competitor reviews, late night preparing workshops and being sent out to do street interviews. Be patient. This is called earning your spurs. Those senior people you see meeting clients, spending a whole day just writing a brief and doing the stuff you really want to be doing went through all this too. If you’re a planner, it takes between 5 and 7 years to find your voice and be really confident with this stuff. You can’t escape getting the experience.Embrace it.
7. But don’t be too patient. If you hear of a pitch, a great project coming up, try and get in on it and help as much as you can. Try and have an opinion on things. Contribute.The beauty of pitches is that are a big scramble, you’re up against it and everyone has to pitch in. The rules of who does what tend to stretch and you find yourself contributing more than you would in a ‘normal project’. Not enough junior people in my opinion fight for projects and work. I wish I’d known how much senior people respond to initiative and sheer enthusiasm. I spent too much time waiting for projects to come my way before  I got impatient once and got hold of the client brief (as an account exec) and wrote my own creative brief without being asked. There was plenty wrong with it, but I showed I had some sort of aptitude and more stuff came my way.
8. In any case, you might find you have enough on your plate anyway. I learned the fastest I’ve ever learned working on a supermarket account, because it all moved so fast everyone had to pitch in. In 4 weeks, just myself and another account manager effectively did 5 store openings (local campaigns more labour intensive than national ones), and a national telly campaign, while the account director was on paternity leave and the department head couldn’t be arsed to help. It nearly broke me, it was the only time in my career I found I couldn’t sleep with worry, but we got through it and it’s true what they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. After that, anything appears easy. You’ll have times like this, when you can’t see an end to it and you can’t see a way through it. It does end and it’s worth it. It wins you respect and teaches you so much. Welcome the chance.Endure.
9. I wish someone has told me how unimpressed people are with how cool you are. I thought succeeding in agencies was all about being a ‘character’, wearing the right clothes and, well, being cool. It’s not. It wasn’t for me, because I’m the most uncool person you could ever meet, I just looked stupid. It’s not for most people either, because people are really impressed with hard work and enthusiasm. This is even more true of planners. No one cares how clever you are, no one gives a monkeys about the latest theories or trends. No one really needs planners, creatives and suits got on find without them for decades. You need to be add value and be useful. For suits that means you’re going to make their lives easier – get great work out of the creatives, help get the client to buy it, make the client feel the relationship is really valuable. Creatives want to know you’ll help them do their best work and get it through the client and research-they judge their year on how many golds they’ve won. Clients don’t buy risks, they buy sure things, they want to know the agency output will help them sell stuff and if not, they can prove to the board they did all they could to make it that way. That’s it. That’s not cool, usually that’s hard work, mostly working harder than everyone else. I wish I’d known this at the start and not looked like such a tit.
10. Finally, I wish someone had told me to enjoy it. As I mentioned before, you’re impatient as a junior, you want to progress, you’re not on much money and sometimes it feels like hard, dull work with little reward. The money does sort of come in, but it takes time. But when it does, it quickly gets swallowed up as you find more stuff to spend it on, not to mention settling down and the money pit also called kids. You have more responsibilities to more people, while agency short-terminism and clients' too mean you always worry about job security even more. Sure, losing your job is bad for anyone, but when you have kids depending on you, it’s more important than when you’re renting and pretty footloose. At the same time, there’s a reason senior people get paid more – they have to worry a lot more about the actual job. It might seem you have the world on your shoulders when you’re in situations like my supermarket one, but that’s nothing next to what account directors or senior planners have to stress about. They might do more of the interesting stuff, but there’s pressure that comes with that. So enjoy where you are now, live in the moment. The brilliance of agencies is agency people and the fun you can have with them. As a junior, that means extra curricular fun too. Yes, you have to work hard, yes, the hours can be bloody long, but make sure you enjoy your youth and all that entails. You won’t experience life in Technicolor in the same way ever again, you won’t have the same freedom, you won’t have the same energy.  Don’t let your work define you, let you define you. Going out on school nights, being able to work with a hangover, drinks after work, the time to read what you want, see films, know all the good music and have time to listen to it. These are golden times, don’t waste them. This habit of making time to live life is something you should never lose either, it will make you a better planner, as in the end, it’s about people and what people are interested in, the more you’re plugged into this, as well as ‘category dynamics’ the better.
11. Oh, and one more thing, don't worry if you're shy and nervous talking to a lot of people in one go. So am I. Some people are just naturally flamboyant and can hold a room. That's not most people. The confidence comes from experience, the more you know, the more you have practised, the easier it becomes. Also, I think people really don't care if you're a bit nervous or don't appear slick, they respond to your enthusiasm and the fact you look like you've worked really hard. Don't try and be flamboyant and off the cuff if you are not, just do the work and you'll probably come off better anyway.

So that’s what I would have liked to have known about starting out. This is what I would have liked to have known about the long term:

1. Work abroad as soon as possible. Planning skills are transferable to any market, any agency. If you’ve worked in a developed market, you have a brief window where people in Asia will think you bring something valuable to the table (even if that’s the case, learn their culture as soon as possible, western rules just do not apply), don’t waste it. See the world, being a planner is an amazing passport to do that and when (if) you get back your broadened horizons will make you a better planner and person. I bitterly regret not doing this and always will. There’s an added benefit to this, it seems that consolidation is making more and more work global, having lived a more ‘global’ life will set you right for the future. I recently didn’t go to Australia and longer ago didn’t work for Rob Campbell because of starting a family. Nothing matters more than them, nothing in this universe makes me happier, but I do regret not having done all could have done before they came.
2. I wish I’d understood digital stuff a lot earlier. Plenty of planners claim to, but they don’t really. We’re all playing catch-up to an extent, you can’t do any form of digital planning without a rudimentary comprehension of the technology, you can’t do any form of planning these days without ‘getting’ digital and how it’s influencing culture. There’s a massive opportunity in any market for those who can apply old school skills to the new  disciplines, and few able to pick up the mantle.
3. On that, I wish I had known the consolidation that has happened with clients and agencies. Where I work, opportunities to do integrated, let alone ’advertising’ projects are few and far between, which can be frustrating since the ‘digital bit’ is often beholden to the strategy worked out by the advertising focused, lead agency based in London, or would you believe, the media agency. I don’t care what the medium is, I just want to do stuff that will change businesses, which can tough when your hands are tied by planning done by others that often haven’t really considered your bit. I enjoy the challenge of chipping away at the thought leadership of the London boys, and really enjoy pulling the rug out from under their feet when they’ve underestimated me because I don’t work in London, but as I mentioned before, I wonder what I might have done different if I’d known integrated work would dry up. I think that’s a salient point to anyone working in the west. When the exciting economies are in the developing world and there’s less and less opportunity in a shrinking industry in the UK and US (Australia?) perhaps one should think about working there?
4. I sometimes wish I’d shifted to the client side earlier on. My wife thinks I would have been bored and frustrated, perhaps she’s right,  I always feel like I have to keep moving forward or die, like  shark or something, repetition fills me with dread, but I sometimes I crave the longer term security and career path you get in a big, brand owning association. I would have liked to have given it a try to see what it was like.
5. But to be honest, I wish people in this industry would stop moaning. We’re incredibly privileged. It’s not big money like bankers or lawyers, but it’s so much more interesting (I think). We still get very good pay next to most people, we wear what we like, work with interesting people most of the time, we’re never bored for long and it’s in flux. Which means the future is not written. Never has there been a better time to create your own future. No one knows what the agency of the future will be like or the planner of the future. It’s not like the old days, but then the old days were not as great as people make out. They never are. Here’s to the new days and the people ready to create it rather than talking about it. Planners in my view.

Love and Books: Don't get read

From Design Crush.