Reasons to be Cheerful: 1-5

Sarah Newman
17 hours ago
3 min read

1. Being Noisy

When we announced the first Noisy Thinking of the year, complete with the effervescently positive title: ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’, I feared a backlash. I thought, despite the stellar speaker bench of Jo Arden, Martin Beverley, Lilli English, Pete Buckley and Sammy King, that people might sign up in dribs and drabs. Then we’d be wandering round the reception at VML half an hour before, bribing unsuspecting junior account men with copies of How ~~Not~~ To Plan to come in and fill the seats. (I made that up. You have to order your copy (see below) but you get the picture).

Wrong.

Noisy Thinking is full to bursting. The tickets flew. There’s a waitlist of 30 people that grows by the day. So that made me think …..

What a vote of confidence in being positive, and the sense we planners and strats can have agency (not the office kind)
I’m really sorry so many people haven’t been able to get a ticket. We’ll go BIG on the room for the next one
Candidly, we prioritised members as we always do. Just saying. (Here’s the link to join the waitlist)

2. Help if you're redundant (APG Stopgap Membership)

We are offering a new, free 4-month APG Stopgap Membership for planners and strategists who have been made redundant recently and are looking for a new role.

Stopgap Membership will offer you access to our Think Tank, events and training that we are running over the next few months. We also offer a discount on training courses for people in this situation. If you are early in your career, the benefits are further enhanced. We’ll ask you to verify your situation and set you up if you meet the criteria.

Find out more here

3. There is a new Intensive Creative Brief Drill with Matt Waksman

Matt has designed this short course to help younger planners refine their brief writing skills. He is Head of Strategy at Droga5, and one of the most creative strategists in London.

It’s one hour a week, in person, for 5 weeks, starting on 19th February.

Each week, 6 lucky young strats will go away and write a brief to a problem that Matt sets and come together as a group to share their thinking and get constructive criticism and feedback to help hone creative brief writing skills.

Go here for more information and booking

4. Generous people

Matt is one of many incredibly generous spirited very senior people in the APG community who give up their time, share their experience and commit to training and helping younger planners and strats through the APG. They do it for free and we are nothing without them; particularly when it comes to training. Shout out here also to Simon Gregory, the convenor of the brilliant Strategy Director Programme, Craig and Bridget, and Vicki Holgate, who are developing brand new courses with the APG, all the tutors and speakers who are currently showing up so inspiringly on our courses: Sam Williams, Omar El-Gammal, Max Keane, Jim Carroll, Aisling Lancaster, George Hackforth-Jones, Charlie Snow, James Caig, Shekhar Deshpande, Dave Masterman, Hannah Brady, Sam Fowler, Julian Saunders, Neil Godber, Phil Barden, Oli Feldwick, Christina Lemieux and Ruairi Curran.

5. Planning Fundamentals

This is the APG’s foundational planning and strategy course. Taught by Charlie Snow with guest speakers, it’s consistently rated ‘Excellent’, covers everything you need to know about the principles of planning and teaches you how to apply them practically to your job.