2. ONINSIGHT
3. insight is something blinding obvious to normal people but a
revelation to a marketing department
4. The more data you have the more versions of the truth you
have
5. Call centres, competitive press releases, academic articles,
shopper data are amongst the most undermined source of
insight
6. Look in new places for insight e.g. we focussed on Oliver James
ideas around psychology of money for a banking client
7. Insights explain WHY, observations explain WHAT
8. The best way for many service providers, NHS, Stores, branch
businesses to understand their consumers is geography
9. ONPLANNING AND PLANNING STYLE
10. Be a student of the industry
11. My planning style? simple enthusiasm
12. it is the planners job to turn brilliant campaigns into company
profits
13. Planners are most useful when they provide better
beginnings
14. The job of the planner is to make the work, WORK
15. it is crucial to have a theory of what you are observing. To
quote Darwin, there can be no observation without speculation
16. you should develop your own planning style
17. Planners should be the warm up artist for the idea in pitches.
Do data like Peter Snow
18. My advice is to start with what you find most interesting not
what appears to be right
19. My planning style, I treat truth as my client and I ask
difficult questions to get to it
20. My advice, be the clever person that simplifies rather than
complicates
21. Use your cleverness to make things simpler
22. ONPITCHING
23. The best preparation for running your own agency is pitching.
You have to kill what you eat
24. The client is the target audience in pitches
25. Understand the WHY? behind pitch briefs not the WHAT?
26. Clients want BETTER not DIFFERENT
27. A chemistry meeting is like a first date. Dont go on about
yourself or your ex
28. Use pitch Q&A for hypothesis testing not for dumb
questions
29. Pitch into the client culture. Use their kit. Dont be showy if
you know they are frugal
30. Remember in pitches clients are looking for reasons to say NO,
to cross you off the list
31. ONCLIENTS & BRIEFS
32. What we do is not about big shifts in human behaviour. It is
generally about spending a few more here and there
33. I wonder why commercial companies are organized around cost
saving and not effectiveness
34. When thinking about your target objective ask what it means in
terms of audience behaviour and campaign shape
35. The more you know about what the client needs to achieve
commercially, the easier it is to talk effectiveness
36. If you want to be a clients business partners you should still
be different from them
37. You can win almost any client over with massive enthusiasm for
the brand
38. ONDIGITAL AND CHANNEL PLANNING
39. Audiences expect stuff to be social, in realtime and
mobile
40. Your brand is what google thinks it is
41. You will be more relevant if you think of communications as
audience based design
42. When Digital planning, a brands behaviour rather than its
positioning is the best place to start
43. Social media is like plumbing. If you do something well, or
badly, it flows through
44. Nothing is more frustrating that content creators with no
thought for where content will appear
45. Doing the content and context thinking together always shortens
the chances of success
46. It is the planners job to know where the idea will have most
effect, think moment not media
47. Think of engagement through content, participation and earned
media
48. ONIDEAS & MAKING STUFF HAPPEN
49. The only thing that keeps agencies in the fight is IDEAS.
Organize around the imperatives of the idea
50. People engage with ideas not channels. Ideas drive channel
behaviour
51. Aim for lots of small failures and a few big successes
52. It is time to break the production money monopoly. Fail fast
and cheaply. We dont innovate enough because its slow and
expensive
53. Small teams. Live by Jeff Bezos pizza rule. No team should be
any larger than one that can be feed by 2 pizzas
54. COLLABORATE. Youll be famous even if its a shared
endeavour
55. Small teams solve, big teams implement
56. Find your clients assets first. Be like the COI, their briefs
ask how you will use their owned media
57. In time shift culture you cant assume the viewer see a
particular channel first
