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Let’s go

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If you want something, go get it. Period.

I fully believe in this, nobody is going to push to achieve what’s best for you more than you.

This doesn’t become truer than when you discuss what you want with others and they fail to follow through with what you know is best for you.

I’m referring to my last move to an agency that I thought held the same values as I did.

To be honest I knew the role wasn’t right from the get go but felt I could make it my own and that the opportunities raw materials were there to do so successfully. As the Pareto principle states, you only need 20% of the raw materials to get 80% of the effects. It became apparent over time the 20% wasn’t up for grabs.

The thing is and the advice you usually receive when you do realise the role, place and everything else isn’t what you thought it was going to be, or what you could make it is to just play the game and continue to get on with it. I mean lets be honest that is a lot of peoples game plan.

Life is short though, at the end of the day having a frank discussion with a few people gives you the answer you need and you just have to ask yourself, can I get what I wanted, produce what I know I can or get even close to the reason that I moved here.

I’m disappointed it didn’t work out, like any other kind of relationship, but shit happens. Thankfully I do like putting myself into situations that I feel uncomfortable in, as that’s how you inoculate yourself to making mistakes when you’re afraid. The only annoying thing is, when you are inoculated, dealt with the problem in question and the situation hasn’t continued to improve and evolve. You are fighting the same disease over and over again in slightly different guises.

So I have been inoculated to a variety of different things, most of which were very similar to each other. I don’t make the same mistake twice, so let’s go and make some cool stuff happen.

As Ne-Yo said:

It’s not about what you’ve done

It’s about what you’re doing

It’s all about where you going

No matter where you’ve been

Let’s go!

Made to believe in doing something different*

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*I’m not sure what different means, I just know that when I interviewed for new employment its ratio to the usage of any other word was formidable, although that is more than likely a flaw in my vocabulary.

I’ve been working at my new gaff for a little while now. I’ve ended up going to a place that stood out a bit from what is a wide landscape of carbon copy bricks and mortar in different wrappers, and the wrappers aren’t really that different. I’ve come to realise due to the incestuous nature of talent and client pressures you're unlikely to walk through the doors or into a conversation that doesn’t feel like Groundhog Day.

Having said that I am fascinated by adland. I constantly find myself reading into agencies propositions and new entrants that state they are something different. There is some interesting stuff going on with the whole ‘integrated’ offering that agencies want to put on the table for clients, the truth is though not many deliver it. This does become a bit of a frustration as not many places seem to really understand what it is they offer, it’s just whatever encapsulates everything you think needs to be there; data, brand, social, experiential etc etc.

The reality that I understood was at this point in my career I have nothing to lose, it’s just all about playing the landscape that’s there and as long as I’m learning as much as possible and facing different variations of challenges there can be no bad decisions. I wasn’t getting the challenges I needed in my previous place, although it did give me a lot from the beginning, so the best thing for me (and it is of course a selfish decision) was to leave on the best terms possible and keep moving forward.

The things I bought into through the interviews at my new place were luckily supported in the first few weeks #1 Getting the right people interested and into a room to meet a cool new start-up to help collaborate on projects, that really are doing different stuff #2 The proud display and discussion of their work and #3 There honestly was an entrepreneurial spirit that allowed for a slightly different approach with briefs.

As I continue my journey though I am starting to loose faith in the adland model and the part I can play to avoid being a robot in a machine. I don’t know if advertising can continue to be the answer to do so, all I know is I will try my hardest to not be part of the monotony that my future may face.

*Please note the word ‘different’ has only been used 8 times in the article you have just read.

And here’s my leaving speech that I recently got sent, I was 9 pints in at the time which may explain why I look a bit spaced out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5RQ8Mttw9o.

From T to U

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A planner looks to solve, clarify and discover what problem a client is trying to solve, getting the client to trust the approach and give an agency space to go about producing the best possible work that achieves the greatest return on investment. This is achieved by asking the right questions to get answers from the right places, inspiring the client and agency teams to develop ideas, finding new opportunities and being the catalyst for change for the better. This is what I see planning as at least; everyone will have a slightly different view.

When I first immersed myself into the advertising industry and found where my role was within it I saw the planner as the intrepreneur within an agency, I still believe this and it acts as the foundation for how I’m mapping my career. This is however an approach that I don’t believe fits with many agencies, as it may involve pushing back repeatedly to the client, discovering that some solutions actually aren’t profitable even though they may have got thousands of Facebook likes and not being scared to step out of your specialism for a solution.

This approach works in the same way it would to starting a business: Take data where you can take data, immerse yourself in qualitative research, build an idea, overlay the data, share and develop the idea with as many people as possible, calculate an ROI with appropriate metrics, hone, sell in, implement, evaluate and optimise. If you were to approach an investor with a business proposal the hard value would need to be known, yet so often business problems are ‘solved’ without this and that doesn’t seem right.

Over the years as I have shared this thought with a variety of Planners, Heads of Planning and CSOs I hear a lot of chat about wanting T shaped planners. A T shaped planner is someone that has a variety of shallow skills with a key specialism in which they are experts, with the thought being get a wide variety of T shaped planners and you’ll cover all the bases. As a planner though you are likely to be incredibly curious, a curious individual however won’t keep those shallow skills shallow for long as they will no doubt develop. I therefore don’t believe planning is about the T shaped planners but U shaped planners, with a constantly developing stack of skills.

A brief will never be solved exactly the same way across multiple T shaped planners, it will however likely be solved by their expert field in question. The HoP or CSO may have therefore given them the brief as their specialism is required in this case. It won’t however always be that specialism that is best though as you examine it and as that T shaped planner is blinded by their experience in their specialist field they are unlikely to see that. A U shaped planner aka an intrapreneurial planner would be unlikely to be blinded by this as they don’t hone in on their niche they are experts in and their bias to promote that field throughout the agency. There is no point starting from a set solution over and over again as the results will continue to be much of the same.

The industry is constantly evolving to try and solve the problems that the modern world continues to throw at it; I’m excited to see how planning and agencies continue to solve them. I just can’t see that T shaped skill sets are the way forward to do this, as a T shaped planner may just think of this,

without considering this,

or this

and that would be a real shame for creativity and the future of business.

Made to believe approach

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I’ve been thinking quite a bit recently about what my approach in planning and generally across the board is.

In particular in planning though and the reason as a career path I love it so much is the fact it’s not a process it’s an opportunity. Your value comes with finding value in clients, selling ideas and acting as the alley-oop for creative… you are basically the entrepreneur within an agency.

...So I sat down and figured out what I do and want to continue to do as my MTB approach:

Don’t be a robot

Always look to do things differently and better. Fix the machine don’t give into it.

Say “what the fuck”

If you believe in something and want to do it, don’t be afraid to fight for it. Experience as much as possible, live a broad and fulfilling life. Don’t hold back or be afraid to make the same point twice.

Care for others

Always be useful to others in a way they appreciate. Bring out the best in people, never take ownership of ideas and always stay accessible. Don’t be too clever for your own good.

Always be positive

No matter what keep the energy and enthusiasm. Be the catalyst, the motivator, stay interested and interesting.

Speak up

Share your opinion and always have one, growing and developing it at every opportunity. Do not seek praise, but constructive criticism. Always keep learning.

Task: Make an advert for you

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It has been an incredibly long time since I’ve last blogged, let’s see if this post can get me back into the swing of things…..

A lot has been going on that has be awesome fun. This post follows on from some self reflection and a course that I’m currently on that’s allowing me to put a lot of thought into practice.

I’m three weeks into an Account Planning Group course that focuses on building the ‘leaders of tomorrow’. The first week’s session was led by Mia Kennedy (Former Head of Planning at AMV turned expert Executive Coach, Trainer and Facilitator) who helped us to understand our natural strengths of which mine were (according to https://www.viame.org/survey/Account/Register, so obviously shouldn’t be taken too literally):

#1 Creativity

#2 Curiosity

#3 Gratitude

#4 Hope

#5 Bravery

….. how we can then leverage these core natural strengths to the best of our ability and understand others strengths in order to accompany them in the best possible way. From understanding this it helps you know where you stand among others and how you can develop yourself to become the best you can. The group that is part of these sessions is really good and has led to some really interesting conversations on from this first session.

The second session was led by Alison Chadwick (Executive Coach and former Director of BBDO University) and her session built on from Mia’s in the sense that the discussion moved onto emotional intelligence. From the understanding of who we are, how we operate and can naturally develop ourselves, how this then influences others, how our different motivations drive us to behave and how we can adapt or at least be aware of how we can compliment these differences…… both were very thought provoking.

For the third meet up we are having a session on making the most of your creativity. In preparation for this we need to put an advertisement together for ourselves on one side of A3 paper.

….. This follows on nicely from self reflection and the past two sessions focusing on understanding yourself and others, as well as their perception of you.

I have always been pretty aware of what motivates me, how I live my life, what makes me happy and what I want to achieve so I found this to be an appealing challenge that made me want to blog about it. To think about it a bit more:

When I look back to my childhood and speak to my parents I was always a really happy child but never fit into the school system, I in-fact got tested for ADHD and hearing problems a fair few times. As my Dad said their rationale for why I never did what people asked me to do was probably because I couldn't hear them….. turned out I could hear fine, I just didn’t see why I had to do it.

Later on I must have realised the awkwardness I showed through the beginning of primary school wasn't going to get me anywhere, there was a reason I had to do it and changed the approach after my parents had repeatedly been told I was a ‘difficult child’. One of my school reports actually stated ‘Matthew is an anomaly’, which can’t be a good thing at 9 years old…… instead I must have understood that if I was seen to be the most well behaved child I could get away with a lot more, while still being myself (I realise this is making me sound pretty strange, but if you can’t be honest then what’s the point). This was probably due to all the things Alison’s was discussing around understanding how different people are and how you need to behave in order to have a happy relationship….. thankfully 9 year old me learnt that.

Something that collided nicely with learning this was going to Disney Land when I was 9 and Disney World when I was 11. My perception of what a good day was had changed, the parks inspired me even more than Disney programming had.

From 11 I wanted to run The Walt Disney Company, I know this sounds like an odd childhood dream. It sparked the determination within me. This was me at 11, I’ve learnt a lot more since then having worked at The Walt Disney Company when I was 19/ 20, I realised it wasn't what I wanted and I wanted to make my own mark.

Anyway I still have my unbridled determination to do whatever I want to do, I’m yet to realise the full potential of what this can lead to but more than happy with the journey, therefore with all this insight it was clear what my creative stimulus was to build an advert for myself:

Number 1 – When you have a good day, don’t just settle for that. I never want to accept enough is enough from something, I believe there’s always more fun you can have.

Number 2 – Not doing things the way others always believe you should. You know what is best for you, go for that, let loose and enjoy the ride.

Taking these two principles into consideration of how I have been since I was a child and how I plan to continue to get what I want from life I developed the advert below to represent me:

The image represents the two sides of my personality, the fact that I will just say what the fuck, if I’m ever perceived as a goodie two shoes it probably is an act. The line refers to the fact that life is short and you should do whatever you want, even if that scare’s you as there’s no point settling for the status quo. It also refers to the determination of not wanting to just be average/ good at what you do…. Surely you should always try to be the best, so what if you fail, at least you tried.