Saturday, 3 May 2008

What's your magic?

There was a time when this sort of solid gold presentation was only possible to people who ponied up 500 quid at a conference, but is now available through the generosity of folks like Iris and Contagious with their 'Under The Influence' talks (held reasonably enough in London pubs) and of course Iain Tate of Poke who are probably the hippest and thought leading digital agency in London. This is magic.

Friday, 2 May 2008

Thursday, 1 May 2008

Stephen King - JWT

Have you ever wondered what the father of 'Account Planning' looked and behaved like? I first heard of the existence of this video in JWT London's weekly meeting and recall Guy Murhpy's (JWT Global Planning Director) face lighting up at the description of 'hammers' as examples of product parity in utility.

I then saw it for the first time at the launch of
'A Master Class in Brand Planning' with Merry Baskin and Judith Lannon back in November, and was taken aback at how plannery Stephen King was. Which of course makes complete sense. Here we can see the enthusiasm for the abstract from way back in this marvelous clip that Guy has released and which also includes the remarkable Jeremy Bullmore who shared with me the inside story on that JWT clothing allowance that John Grant talked about over on Brand Tarot here. Jeremy told me in London before I came to Beijing that the allowance was a tax break and that it was a choice between a lawn mower or a clothing allowance and not as suspected an elitist perk for the Toffs. I think this is as good an example as it gets of confirmation bias, narrative fallacy, silent evidence, and epistemic arrogance which are all weaknesses that planners should be conscious of struggling against when forming conclusions.