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Can Planners Really Find An Insight In An Hour?

Apr 6, 2018
4 min

Can Planners Really Find An Insight In An Hour?

Why the demand for ‘quick-turnaround insights’ devalues great Planning and what we can do about it. In 2011, Richard Huntington wrote a presentation called: ‘What’s So Good About Trends?’ where he explained that a great insight is ‘a revelation’. The opening slide from Richard’s presentation Back in 2011, I was a qualitative researcher, and hadn’t yet made the leap from research into my first planning role. Reading Richard’s presentation and discovering the romance of finding

How technology will influence how we work

Jun 1, 2016
4 min

How technology will influence how we work

Pop culture’s representation of AI would have us think it’s the stuff of a dystopian future. But in reality it’s closer than we think, and is set to have a metamorphic impact on business over the next few years. While APG’s Strategy vs Robots event at the Royal Institution discussed many of the multifaceted relationships between technology and the human brain, one of the questions on everyone’s mind was inevitably how AI will impact the future role of the strategist. A quick

Sources of Inspiration and Insight

Mar 29, 2016
2 min

Sources of Inspiration and Insight

Last week I went along to the ‘Sources of Inspiration and Insight’ Young Planner’s event The night was hosted by BBH’s John Harrison at their Kingly Court offices. John shared with us his biggest bugbear – that all too often we are focused on finding the consumer insight, when actually insight can come from other places (like the product, the competition or the media environment for example). We then went through a some great ads and thought about the insights behind them all

Why Don’t You?

Mar 2, 2016
3 min

Why Don’t You?

When I were a little girl there was a programme on Saturday morning telly called “Why Don’t You?” which had a theme tune that ended “Why don’t you switch off the TV and go off and do something less boring instead?”. Which was counter intuitive, and exactly what I am about to do. All that follows are sources of inspiration through the illuminated rectangle of your device. My real advice is to close that down and go off and do something less boring instead. Good new book Aziz A

What is Planning? | A view from Vaughan Edmonds

Jun 30, 2015
1 min

What is Planning? | A view from Vaughan Edmonds

As someone who is new to the world of marketing agencies, I initially struggled to get my head around the concept of planning. I had a rough idea of the roles and responsibilities of a planner. The planners were the team that had the earliest access to a client brief; they were the writers of creative briefs; and they used a variety of online tools to assist their work. However, it’s only since I started working with our planning team that I realised the importance of planner

Day in the Life of Simin Radmanesh

Feb 5, 2015
3 min

Day in the Life of Simin Radmanesh

WHAT’S YOUR OFFICIAL JOB TITLE? As of 3 weeks ago, Planning Director, Memac Ogilvy, Qatar HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE TO YOUR DAD WHAT YOU DO? I have fascinating conversations about human behavior, culture and business. HOW WOULD YOU ACTUALLY DESCRIBE WHAT YOU DO? I apply human and cultural insights in a creative way to communications and branding challenges, to help clients build better businesses. PLEASE COULD YOU WRITE A SENTENCE OR TWO ON WHAT YOU WERE DOING AT THE FOLLOWING T

What is an Insight? The APG in combative and revelatory mode

Feb 5, 2014
5 min

What is an Insight? The APG in combative and revelatory mode

Last night the APG brought together six of the industry’s best minds to answer the question: ‘What is an insight?’ From poptarts to the importance of truth, we covered the lot and all left enlightened, wondering how our agencies would change their briefing template, and a little merry from the bevvies kindly supplied by Google (thank you!). First up was the APG’s newly appointed Chairwoman and CSO of JWT London, Tracey Follows. Tracey began by sharing her view that an insight

What is an Insight?

Feb 4, 2014
5 min

What is an Insight?

Tracey Follows of JWT spoke of “noticing when you are noticing” and in particular slowly realizing that you are dealing with a “weird kind of normal” (CF Gilbert and George, Seinfeld) that might be of some use. This realization comes from your brain trying to extract meaning from this odd mix of weird and normal. Often (cf Seinfeld) this realization feels literally funny. The advice, by implication, is to operate in zone that is clearly not normal but is not so detached fro

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