APG Night School is a brand new kind of online training for planners and strategists who are new to agency life. It’s aimed at people in their first two years of work, typically under 25 years old.

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It covers the most important things planners are asked to do at the start of their career in a series of short, clear, practical modules.

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These include:

• Doing a competitive review

• Understanding the different uses of qual and quant research

• Coming up with and presenting initial strategic thoughts

• Helping out on a pitch

• Building confidence

• Learning what makes you most useful as a junior planner

Oli Feldwick, Head of Innovation at The&Partnership is a strategy and AI expert.  He’s at the forefront of thinking about how we could and should use AI for creative strategy and the practical use of the tools at our disposal.

His ‘How To Use Gen AI and Chat GPT’ was an APG sell-out earlier this year so luckily for us he’s volunteered to run a more in-depth practical workshop. In this session you will get hands-on and sleeves-up in applying AI in the everyday, and learning what works (and what doesn’t).

Michael Lee, APG Chair and Group CSO at the VCCP Partnership is talking Planning skills and much more. Michael is a gripping speaker and it’s a really good conversation. Highly recommended.

The Planning team at Leo Burnett carried away the Grand Prix for McDonald’s ‘Raise Your Arches’; a spectacular demonstration of transformational creative strategy.

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adam&eveDDB were crowned Stephen King Strategy Agency of the year.

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In the year where we had the highest ever number of entries, it’s a real accolade to win a prize and the winning cases are brilliant. And if you’re an APG member you can read the cases on Think Tank.

APG Arrive and Thrive is a cross-agency initiative to improve the way we recruit, support and train young people from diverse and more disadvantaged backgrounds. Click through to read more about it and watch the video from our launch event. 

In this post reflecting on what he’s learned from running APG’s Nailing Your Strategy course, James Caig considers the importance of embracing all that we are in the fight to develop distinctive strategies for our clients.

Building on the theme 'Creative Strategy Works', the shortlist represents an array of how creative strategy works in all its shapes and forms from the widest array of agencies in the UK and internationally.

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There are examples of heartbreaking insights, distinctive brand assets, social media storms, diversity, equity and inclusion, long term brand effectiveness, and purpose work that works.

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So, we hope there's something for everyone.

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Thank you to everyone who submitted a paper and thank you to the shortlisting panel who loved reading them all.

The Media Mix Navigator is a unique and free tool that helps answer business-specific media questions. Whether you’re looking for guidance on budget setting or a starting point for channel allocation, or looking for some insight for a pitch, the Media Mix Navigator has the data to support you. Have a play and see for yourself.

Each week we will be featuring a new piece written by Jim Carroll, a long serving strategist and former UK Chairman at BBH. Click through to read more and subscribe.

This week John Bizzell, WARC’s awards lead, talked to Martin Beverley, Chair of Shortlisting Judges and and Kate Waters, Chair of Judges, on what they were really thinking during this year's APG Creative Strategy Awards.

Here you can view the presentation from our latest event 'What Makes Great PR Planning?' We heard from Martijn Nieuwenhuis (winner of the APG Creative Strategy Awards PR Prize) who gave his winning pitch, a view on why this won from Rob Alexander and some real world examples of PR Planning at its best, with Teodora Coste and Will Butterworth.​

Here’s what we learned from the Grand Prix winners, Barbie, This Girl Can and Bodyform/Libresse with thanks to Bridget Angear, Vicki Holgate, Alaina Crystal and Margaux Revol.

A point of view on the APG’s updated Strategy Skills Survey and what we have learned from it.

This wonderful piece by wonderful Tom Roach is worth a read for any strategist or planner who ever had a moment’s doubt about their job.  We’re amazing, folks!

Tuesday night’s sell-out talk by Richard Huntington and Mark Hadfield was as good as the demand suggested. 

Clearly we all think we should do more viscerally effective interviews with real people. Check out Mark’s APG workshop, the book of the film, and this 'How To' on in-home interviewing by Kevin Mclean.

More and more PR agencies, from consumer, corporate, public affairs and financial PR have people doing planning.

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And a bunch of them are working with the APG to build a PR planning community.

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We’ve had one great kick-off event and we’re working on more. But in the meantime this page has the story so far...

The clue is in the name. It’s the place on the APG site where we bring together all the precious bits of strategic learning that can help you navigate a tricky problem, give you fresh inspiration or just wake up your jaded planning brain when you need help but don’t know where else to go.

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To get a taster of how excellent these resources are for members, we’re giving you the chance to download one example of each for free. You’re welcome!’

When you become a member of the APG you get a lot of really useful free stuff like access to our Think Tank with awards papers, video talks and strategic models, and lots of events that are either free or heavily discounted to APG members. 

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Click through to learn more about what APG has to offer.