Articles

This the part of the site where we upload, and encourage you to send and share lots of interesting stuff about planning and strategy.

APG

May 9, 2018
3 min

Information Diet | Tom Chatfield

This is part of the series 'How to be Curious - Cognitive Fitness for Planners' by Ian Leslie, our APG Guest Editor during April 2018. He believes that strategists need to be curious and stay curious and the only way to do that is to excersise your brain as you do your body. One important aspect of fitness is diet. Here he gives you a look at the information diets of different strategists, via a Q&A. Tom Chatfield 1. Outside of ad industry/marketing sources, what are your d

APG

May 9, 2018
3 min

How Technology Can Feed Curiosity

Throughout this series, we’ve emphasised the need to be open to insights and stimuli from outside the industry. For this final chapter in our series, I’ve decided to invite a non-planner into the fold to share with us his thoughts on curiosity, creativity and technology. Tom Chatfield is a thinker and writer that you should be following closely if you’re not already. He’s one of our most perceptive and erudite commentators on technology. If you want to understand technology’s

APG

May 1, 2018
4 min

Staying Curious; You Should Be T-Shaped

There’s so much stuff to know and learn about. How do you choose where to start – or where to end? You know how you read a book about, say, evolutionary psychology, and find it really super-interesting, and then three months later someone asks you about it and you can’t remember a bloody thing? OK, glad it’s not just me. In fact, it’s most of us. Scientists who study the “forgetting curve” have found that it is steepest in the 24 hours after we have consumed information. One

APG

May 1, 2018
3 min

Information Diet | Raquel Chicourel

This is part of the series 'How to be Curious - Cognitive Fitness for Planners' by Ian Leslie, our APG Guest Editor during April 2018. He believes that strategists need to be curious and stay curious and the only way to do that is to excersise your brain as you do your body. One important aspect of fitness is diet. Here he gives you a look at the information diets of different strategists, via a Q&A. Raquel Chicourel | Chief Strategy Officer at M&C Saatchi London Before I go

APG

Apr 24, 2018
3 min

Information Diet | Faris Yakob

This is part of the series 'How to be Curious - Cognitive Fitness for Planners' by Ian Leslie, our APG Guest Editor during April 2018. He believes that strategists need to be curious and stay curious and the only way to do that is to excersise your brain as you do your body. One important aspect of fitness is diet. Here he gives you a look at the information diets of different strategists, via a Q&A. Faris Yakob| Co-founder of Genius Steals, a nomadic creative consultancy 1.

What You Think Is A Function Of The Ideas You Consume

APG

Apr 24, 2018
7 min

What You Think Is A Function Of The Ideas You Consume

Within our industry, Faris Yakob is well known as a high performance cognitive athlete. He is one of the most consistently interesting, stimulating, provocative thinkers around. His work draws an eclectic variety of sources, from evolutionary psychology to poetry to pop culture. He’s also given a lot of thought to what makes a healthy information diet. So I’m delighted he’s agreed to contribute a post to this series – and to answer our Info Diet Q&A. Enjoy! - Ian Leslie, APG

APG

Apr 18, 2018
2 min

Information Diet | Ian Leslie

This is part of the series 'How to be Curious - Cognitive Fitness for Planners' by Ian Leslie, our APG Guest Editor during April 2018. He believes that strategists need to be curious and stay curious and the only way to do that is to excersise your brain as you do your body. One important aspect of fitness is diet. Here he gives you a look at the information diets of different strategists, via a Q&A. Ian Leslie| Brand Strategist and Author 1. Outside of ad industry/marketing

APG

Apr 18, 2018
1 min

Information Diet | Kevin Chesters

This is part of the series 'How to be Curious - Cognitive Fitness for Planners' by Ian Leslie, our APG Guest Editor during April 2018. He believes that strategists need to be curious and stay curious and the only way to do that is to excersise your brain as you do your body. One important aspect of fitness is diet. Here he gives you a look at the information diets of different strategists, via a Q&A. Kevin Chesters| Chief Strategy Officer at Ogilvy & Mather 1. Outside of ad i

Information Diet | Katie Mackay-Sinclair

APG

Apr 17, 2018
4 min

Information Diet | Katie Mackay-Sinclair

This is part of the series 'How to be Curious - Cognitive Fitness for Planners' by Ian Leslie, our APG Guest Editor during April 2018. He believes that strategists need to be curious and stay curious and the only way to do that is to excersise your brain as you do your body. One important aspect of fitness is diet. Here he gives you a look at the information diets of different strategists, via a Q&A. Katie Mackay-Sinclair | Partner at Mother London 1. Outside of ad industry/m

APG Noisy Thinking | The Art of Persuasion – how do you get your idea over the line?

APG

Feb 20, 2018
8 min

APG Noisy Thinking | The Art of Persuasion – how do you get your idea over the line?

This question certainly seemed to touch a nerve as over 200 planners and strategists showed up to listen, and the red wine ran out within 15 minutes. It was one of themes that I lifted directly from the feedback you kindly give after these events so it’s good to know that the feedback loop is working as intended. We chose our speakers carefully to represent different potential approaches to the question and it was interesting that although they all had different points of vie

APG

Oct 27, 2017
3 min

Leadership and the Amplified Self

It is perhaps appropriate that we end this series on ‘How To Get On’ with a few thoughts on leadership. I should say that great strategists do not necessarily make great leaders. While we may all aspire to being in charge, it’s not a path that I would encourage everyone to take! In the twilight of my Agency career I was asked to articulate my personal understanding of leadership. When I applied myself to the task I realized that, although I’d worked with many compelling CEOs,

The Unchanging Appraisal: Learning to Accentuate the Positives and Disregard the Negatives

APG

Oct 16, 2017
2 min

The Unchanging Appraisal: Learning to Accentuate the Positives and Disregard the Negatives

This is just a simple lesson in how to handle appraisals. It took me some years of frustration to arrive at this conclusion. Do you have the same appraisal every year? I did. Do you get the same set of gently positive observations about your core strengths, skills and achievements; the same slightly irritating list of shortcomings, flaws and failings; the same sense of disappointment that another year has passed and seemingly little or no progress has been made? I did. Do you

APG

Oct 6, 2017
3 min

Not Doctors, But Psychoanalysts

I wrote this piece a while ago. This broad approach to Client engagement has served me well over the years. Most Clients nowadays don’t want outsiders to march in and tell them all the answers to their problems. Rather they’re looking for people to help them articulate and express their vision and opinions. It is a melancholy truth that the more expert I have become, the less my expertise is valued. I recognise that this may be because my dusty tales of Levi’s watchpockets, s

APG

May 31, 2016
4 min

Clients are collaborators too

So, what are we collaborating for, exactly? Sometimes, ‘collaboration’ feels like one of those words. You know the ones. Words like ‘innovation’, ‘disruption’, or ‘data’. Clichés. Vessels too easily emptied of meaning. Ideas fetishized as achievements in themselves, rather than nurtured as a mind set, one with which far greater things can be achieved. These are ideas that are important but end up as so much planning soufflé – full of air and always likely to fall flat in t

APG

Mar 22, 2016
3 min

Fern goes to SXSW

A promised round up of Some Things from SXSW 2016 For full disclosure, my experience of SXSW was truncated (I was there for one day) and suboptimal. If you haven't been to this giant expo of interactive/ tech/ entertainment/ content speaker sessions with an associated fringe scene of demos and stunt, it is possibly the best example of the Paradox of Choice ever. Being unschooled in who was likely to offer the best exploration of the opportunities of artificial intelligence

Articles

Information Diet | Tom Chatfield

How Technology Can Feed Curiosity

Staying Curious; You Should Be T-Shaped

Information Diet | Raquel Chicourel

Information Diet | Faris Yakob

What You Think Is A Function Of The Ideas You Consume

Information Diet | Ian Leslie

Information Diet | Kevin Chesters

Information Diet | Katie Mackay-Sinclair

APG Noisy Thinking | The Art of Persuasion – how do you get your idea over the line?

Leadership and the Amplified Self

The Unchanging Appraisal: Learning to Accentuate the Positives and Disregard the Negatives

Not Doctors, But Psychoanalysts

Clients are collaborators too

Fern goes to SXSW

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