A deeply personal and very helpful perspective from Harry Neale about living and dealing with anxiety as a strategist in an agency

This is a new series of on-line 'skills therapy' sessions for mid-weight planners and strategists. 

These will cover getting to know and understand your number one audience; the creatives you work with. This is about framing things in the best way to get the attention of the people you need to inspire. From writing a brief to briefing, to feeding their process along the way.

In this post Ben Shaw, CSO of BBH shares the two things that most help him with his Job as a planner.

As the world adjusts to working from home and on-line we are readjusting our schedule and thinking about new ways to support the community, deliver value to our members and keep educating and inspiring.

I will be making various announcements over coming weeks, but right now if you are a member don't forget you have free, continuous access to Think Tank treasure trove of APG winning papers.  

We are also planning a series of on-line lectures that will be free for members.  We'll be announcing this programme next week, and how to get access to it.  And we want to hear from you.

What can we do to help intellectually and practically?  We're listening. So just get in touch with me about anything  

Strange times we are living. A lockdown is a matter of time, today we can’t hug our dearest and have to resort to elbow bumping and namaste to say hello to our frie...

APG is partnering with Hello Self to offer discounts on excellent clinical psychology and mental health support. Click through for all the details. Contact 

We are experimenting with making our site searchable. So please have a go and let us know how you get on. Contact

Top podcast recommendations from the APG community on advertising, digital, leadership, culture and more... Take a look, have a listen and let us know what you think. 

Over the coming weeks we will be putting on a host of Top Talks by top strategists.  We've asked them to choose topics that they are passionate about or think will be of most use to the APG community.  Some will have specific relevance to the times we are in, and others will have more general interest and applicability. They will all be good! They will be about 30 minutes long.

They are an APG member benefit and therefore for members only.  You can get your free ticket for each event on Eventbrite. 

“These are unprecedented times”. Four words that have been uttered by everyone from political leaders, to sports journalists to medical experts and industry leaders.

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Nobody could have predicted the sheer scale and impact that this global pandemic is having across the world. Turning our lives upside down (I’m currently writing this whilst trying to juggle work whilst home schooling two kids). Covid-19 has changed almost every aspect of our lives, from the way we interact with one and other, how we work together and how we live our lives.

We are planning to keep up all our training commitments over the next months, taking most of our courses on-line.  We are also going to deliver new courses and workshops on-line. More on this anon.

If you are booked onto a course and need more information, contact

If you have any other questions at all contact  

As home and work effectively become one, it's more important than ever that planners and strategists are able to demarcate their time and activity.  We need to agree and apply new rules of engagement to prevent the 10 hour back-to-back Zoom/Team meetings taking over our lives and trashing our thinking and our creativity.

If you are an APG member you can log on to Think Tank and search all the winning papers for the last 25 years.  If you are not sure about your login just get hold of  

The one thing every successful marketer needs - and the one thing agencies can provide better than anyone else - is imaginative ideas about brands. But we have lost our focus, asserts this article, and need to convince marketers once again that the most effective way to build brands is through the unique and unmatched power of great creative ideas.

Click through to read the Long Term Thinking papers that were presented at Noisy Thinking.

From the APG’s extensive archives, housed in technically advanced cardboard boxes, we’ve unearthed all sort of treasures from the early days including this speech made by Stephen King at the APG’s One Day Event in 1988. Also, notably, the year of Planning’s 20th birthday.