
APG
- Jan 15, 2018
- 2 min
The Next Chapter
Happy new year, and welcome to 2018. A year that’s surely set to be as full of change as last year. I’ve had the honour and pleasure of Chairing this extraordinary organisation for the last two years. A period of profound change both in culture & in the communications landscape. We’ve focused on simple mission: to enable a new generation of strategists to deliver ‘transformational thinking’. A rallying cry that pushes us all forwards through being: More digital: we’ve added m

APG
- Mar 8, 2017
- 3 min
5 tips to write a winning paper
If you want to do well at APG, then it’s really very simple. You have to tell a good story. Because by the time you get to this point, you will have already done some good strategy and inspired something interesting to happen in the market. Getting shortlisted isn’t about having done some good work. You don’t get shortlisted for the work. You get shortlisted for the story you tell about it. That’s not meant to sound shallow or to minimize the value of great thinking. It’s jus

APG
- Feb 23, 2017
- 2 min
It woz the team wot recruited more teachers
This is an edited version of the talk I gave at the APG Transformational team event. For a few years I was lucky enough to lead strategy for what was once called the COI. The task was deceptively simple – recruit more teachers, with a focus on hard-to-fill subjects such as chemistry and maths. The task was formidable - previous campaigns had been serially successful, and our targets were bigger than ever. Thankfully, surprisingly even, we succeeded. But not because we were do

APG
- Feb 22, 2017
- 2 min
Transformational Team Thinking
I’m not going to talk to you today about some of the transformational ways of working that we started to implement at Saatchi’s in recent months as I have no doubt they will be making their own way into the submissions process shortly. I want to rewind a bit to my experience of working at Droga5 in Sydney, because what was interesting about Droga5 was that they embraced a process for creative development that was impressive actually less for the fact that it generated truly m

APG
- Feb 20, 2017
- 3 min
APG Awards 2017 | How to win (1)
It’s here. APG 2017. And I am extremely excited to be here and to have been asked to help seek out and find the most exciting transformational thinking from around the world. Transformational thinking lies at the heart of all great strategy. Great strategy subverts and reframes established behaviours and convention to find breakthroughs, it always has done. However, in the face of unparalleled economic, social, political and technological disruption there has never been a mor

APG
- Jan 16, 2017
- 2 min
2017 a year of transformation
Hello, and welcome to 2017. A new year which brings not only exciting new possibilities, but a new reality politically and socially. A year where change has arrived banging on the front door - from Brexit to Donald Trump, AI-powered services like Siri & Echo, to self-driving cars, this is a different operating reality for clients and citizens around the world. A year where transformation is not only omnipresent but omnipotent. Where the challenges – and the opportunities - fo

APG
- Dec 12, 2016
- 4 min
Think like a CSO (with Stuart Bowden)
Stuart Bowden is the Global CSO at MEC and a man of vision; a vision shaped by an eclectic career across media and ad agencies, a period at BT and latterly very senior management jobs at MEC. Anyone showing up to Mintel on Thursday afternoon hoping for a cosy doze through some CSO trade secrets was in for a snaphot of Strategy Armageddon. The levels of change we are confronting in our industry are now so familiar it’s tempting to glance at them out of the corner of your eye w
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