APG Noisy Thinking 2012

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.

Where is planning going? This was the question that the APG posed on Tuesday 6th March to three planning luminaries- Adam Morgan, Richard Huntington and Cameron Saunders. Hailing from the worlds of consultancy, business and the heart of a creative agency respectively, their perspectives on what planning is doing right, what it’s doing wrong, and where it’s headed were eagerly received by a packed audience at the Wellcome Collection.

Last night at Fallon, the APG convened for some more Noisy Thinking about the present and future of planning.

This time it was the turn of clients past, present and future to chare their views on the state of the discipline and the challenges facing Planners….

Andy Fennell | Group Marketing Director of Diageo

Mark Lund | Partner at NOW and former CEO of COI

Alison Hardy | Owner of Headstrong Thinking and former Director of Marketing Services at Doctor Foster

Business Bites Back

10 May 2012 | Craig Mawdsley

5 Client Tips

16 May 2012| Lee Fordham

‘Planning on the World Stage’ was the topic of APG’s third, in the series of six, Noisy Thinking events, hosted by Google and sponsored by Flamingo. Guy Murphy (Global Planning Director JWT); John Shaw (Partner, Rapier and former Global Planning Director at Ogilvy); and Jackie Hughes (Group Strategy Director, Flamingo) were the keynote speakers of the evening, reflecting on their experiences of global and local planning.

The fourth in the Noisy Thinking series for the APG took the beginning of the APG's Autumn programme by storm. This event had sold out shortly after it was announced and every chair was taken – justifiably, as it turned out.

Andy Nairn, CSO of Dare, Sue Unernam, CSO of Mediacom and Rory Sutherland, Vice Chair of Ogilvy took the podium. Deliberately chosen as speakers not just for their intellectual passion and leading thinking, but also for the fact that they represented different kinds of agency and would, we predicted, illuminate some interesting skirmishes in the turf war over data between agencies serving clients.

How often have you sat and worried about whether you're doing the right thing, in the right way, for the right business? About whether Planners are really useful, and if so, to whom? About what's on the agenda for Planning and what should be on the agenda for Planning?

Tracey Follows | CSO of JWT

David Hackworthy | Strategy Partner at The Red Brick Road

Alex Dunsdon | M&C Saatchi's Development Director

Tracey will set the scene for 3.0 and ask whether we are semantically all at sea with the idea....and whether machines will be dictating to us, teaching us, informing us....and communicating brand to us. Or is there a way in which planners can regain authority in a brand world increasingly bought to us by the IT Crowd?

David thinks that you should "free your mind and your ass will follow"(*). He thinks planning is over-prescribed and over-thought, and this gets in the way of making the best contribution we can to creating better work. He also has some trenchant things to say about how we organise ourselves and get paid.

Alex thinks Planning is obsessed with revelation when clients want transformation, that it's more profitable for us to have meetings than do stuff, that Planners should behave like Marketing Directors - and that it's time for a rebellion.