APG Noisy Thinking 2014

Our flagship evening event held 6 times a year in association with Flamingo. Each event addresses a provocative question or current theme focused on Planning & Strategy. These events are supported by Google.

Fast, furious and exciting is the name of the game, with 7 speakers taking part in a pecha kucha-style event, each with their own distinctive answer to the question: What is an insight?  If you've ever frowned over this much discussed and highly contested idea, you'll get a bellyful of answers.

Speakers:

Tracey Follows | JWT

Andy Davidson | Flamingo

Nick Hirst | Dare

David Wilding | PHD

Caitlin Ryan | Karmarama

John Griffiths

Following on from our packed 'What is an insight?' session earlier this month we're asking a new question by popular demand.  Some argue that the basic structure of the brief has remained unchanged in 30 years which is perhaps extraordinary given that the work has transformed over that time.  So is the brief a dodo, or testament to an enduring set of principles about how communications work?  Is it irrelevant as briefing becomes iterative and primarily spoken rather than written?

To shed some light on these and other fudamentals of our art we've asked:

Thiago de Moraes | ECD of Droga 5

David Hackworthy | CSO of Fallon

Craig Mawdsley | Joint CSO of AMVBBDO

Nathan Guerra | Head of Industry at Google

to shed some light in the darker corners of where work comes from.  Two Planners and Creative.  Is it fair?

Our 3rd event of 2014 in association with Flamingo takes place on the 20th May at Google.  We've recently reflected on what makes a good insight or creative brief. Now we're turning our attention to targeting ads and content; in this case to the biggest global emerging market; women.

Women control up to $12 trillion of the $18.4 global consumer spend.  Yet according to Jane Cunningham of Inside her Pretty Little Head, 70% of women claim to find advertising irrelevant.  And as Rachel Pashley - author of Female Tribes - would contend, a large proportion of the marketing and advertising community are still stuck in the 1950's defining a woman according to whether she's embraced motherhood yet.  And when she has, with only 19% of mothers saying that they relate to any mothers portrayed in advertising and only 23% happy with people other than their famiy calling them Mum, isn't it high time that we ditched the 'Mum' word from marketing altogether? At least that's the finding of brand new work from Saatchi and Saatchi.

How can this be when so many women work in our profession and women are such a crucial market?  Why do we persist in defining women in terms of their responsibilities rather than their achievements? There is the odd notable exception of course.  Dove Sketches seems to have pressed all the right buttons in the right way.  So what can we learn from Dove to apply to the myriad of other brands and businesses targeting women?

We've assembled a brilliant team to shine a light in this worryingly murky area:

Jane Cunningham | founder of Inside Her Pretty Little Head

Kate Smither | Global Planning Partner on Dove Sketches

Rachel Pashley | JWT who pioneered and brought to fruition a major new segmentation of women called Female Tribes

Richard Huntington | CSO of Saatchi and Saatchi who has just published a devastating report on how the idea of 'Mum' should be excised from the marketing and comms landscape.

For the last session of the summer we’re turning up the volume on creative and we’ve invited 4 exceptional people to give a personal view on the campaigns that stood out for them at the Cannes advertising festival. 

So if you couldn’t make it down to the South of France, or it was clear no-one was going to pay for you anyway; or if you went and are need of a fresh perspective untainted by hype and rose, get down to Google on the 14th July at 6pm for an evening of creative flair courtesy of:

Matthew Heath | Chairman and CSO, LIDA

Patrick Collister | Head of Design, Google

Neal Fairfield | Executive Head of Planning, BMB

Rachel Hatton | Strategy Partner, Dare

The video is unavailable, but we do have a fabulous write up from one of our Members from The Nursery that you can read here.

There’s an intellectually provocative speaker line-up including: David Wilding who has just joined Twitter as Director of Planning (from PHD), Alex Dunsdon of the Bakery, and Mark Given, Head of Brand at Sainsbury's.

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This brilliant combination of speakers will offer a whole new take on the status of brand building in the post digital age. So come armed with questions and your own provocations.